so i've been reading some things.

and why have i chosen to headline this post with a totally badass previously not seen photo from Empire Strikes Back? Yeah, like someone needs a reason to do that.

The Tea Party

So...I know the dialogue on this is pretty uninteresting. But I did read a few pretty interesting articles that, while not addressing the Tea Party per se (a narrative that is kind of played out) deals with the importance of the ascension of the Tea Party:

Sean Wilentz of the New Yorker kicks things off by rehashing the ol' "history repeats itself" with specific reference to the Tea Party and how it owes its roots directly to the John Birch Society and a man named Willard Skousen, whose ideologies revolved around surprising tenets such as equating the Ivy League with the Illuminati (I wish.) The piece also touches on Glenn Beck's carrying forward of Skousen's paranoid interpretations of the politicians of his day. Perhaps more interesting, however, is his description of William Buckley's efforts to recenter the Republican party (pretty sad when you have to look to a McCarthyist to be the GOP flagbearer, but still). Wilentz depicts Ronald Reagan's shrewd ability to consolidate Buckley's pragmatic conservatism into Republican victories, a step forward for the GOP that was ignored during the Gingrich "Contract for America" resurgence in 1994 and positively obliterated by the Tea Party surge in 2010.

Matt Taibbi, to my great joy, takes advantage of the greater leeway he is offered by Rolling Stone. "Let me get this straight," he says to David, a Tea Party tax protestor. "You've been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?" Of course, I love that gonzo journalism stuff, but the real good stuff is in Taibbi's detailing of the Tea Party, and its mascot Rand Paul's roots as an unrecognizable perversion of Ron Paul's libertarian rallies in 2008. Ultimately, Taibbi offers us a chilling reminder that the co-opting, subjugation, and assimilation of taxpayer fury into corporate sponsored gridlock is the essence of our modern political system:

The bad news is that the Tea Party's political outrage is being appropriated, with thanks, by the Goldmans and the BPs of the world. The good news, if you want to look at it that way, is that those interests mostly have us by the balls anyway, no matter who wins on Election Day. That's the reality; the rest of this is just noise. It's just that it's a lot of noise, and there's no telling when it's ever going to end.

Finally, Todd Purdum of Vanity Fair talks about the challenge that John Boehner, a somewhat pragmatic dealmaker in his old days who sold his soul to the Tea Party early on, will face. Purdum notes that Boehner may be one of the few remaining hopes for Republican pragmatists sure to be overwhelmed by a sea of incoming partisan fury:

Boehner is, in the end, a most unlikely candidate to lead any kind of revolution. He is a traditionalist, and an institutionalist, and, Lord knows, he is anything but a fresh face. He is the captive of forces more powerful than himself, and he has evidenced a form of Stockholm syndrome, which his captors may or may not find convincing. The pitiful reality of contemporary Washington is that institutional perspective is in such short supply that anyone with even a smidgen of it might pass for having qualities of statesmanship. If John Boehner is a statesman, he’s one who starts from an unenviable position: neither the leader his party may really want nor the kind his country most needs.

Obama and Pals

I think this piece by Tim Dickinson may be the most important, however. In it, he tells us all to get off of our enormously high horse, and realized that our president has made almost unfathomably large pieces of legislative progress in his first 2 years:

But if the passions of Obama's base have been deflated by the compromises he made to secure historic gains like the Recovery Act, health care reform and Wall Street regulation, that gloom cannot obscure the essential point: This president has delivered more sweeping, progressive change in 20 months than the previous two Democratic administrations did in 12 years. "When you look at what will last in history," historian Doris Kearns Goodwin tells Rolling Stone, "Obama has more notches on the presidential belt." In fact, when the history of this administration is written, Obama's opening act is likely to be judged as more impressive than any president's — Democrat or Republican — since the mid-1960s. "If you're looking at the first-two-year legislative record," says Ornstein, "you really don't have any rivals since Lyndon Johnson — and that includes Ronald Reagan."

It is, rather, the talking points war that has been lost by the Obama administration. In some ways, I think of them as these kind of insular policy nerds, who have always just made the best available decision and figured people would come around to realize the value of their pragmatism. Unfortunately, they overlooked the fact that modern consumers don't simply value sensationalism over rationalism; they actually invert the two and elevate people who have either barely, or not even, graduated from college, to the level of pundits.

Malcolm Gladwell describes one such ambitious accomplishment/failed narrative: the auto bailout. He describes the fairly impressive turnound of GM, something that was news to me (I guess I'm victimized by the news cycle as much as anyone else). This is all couched within a story about the power struggle between Steven Rattner, the private equity maven hired to oversee the auto bailout, and Rick Wagoner, the villainized former CEO of GM who flew his chartered jet to Washington to ask for taxpayer money, yet is more responsible for GM's turnaround than Rattner.

Honestly, the piece on Sean Parker was pretty lame, so I'll end by saying that you absolutely have to check out 'Abstract City,' Cristoph Niemann's blog on the New York Times. Some of his stuff, including his visual chronicle of a trip overseas and his Lego interpretation of New York, are transcendent.

Back to science next time!

douche.

let's recap our president's statements from this week. He:

1. won't release photos showing more torture of detainees at guantanamo and other locations, despite (or maybe because) such evidence would make it all the more likely that torture was not the "isolated work of a few" but rather a broadly organized policy with culprits at the highest levels of government (and that includes you, nancy pelosi).
2. is now planning 'military style tribunals' for prisoners held in such locations, most likely because the amount of torture that prisoners were subject to during their holding makes very little evidence obtained actually admissible and would make convictions almost impossible to achieve.
3. has no plans to move on 'don't ask, don't tell' despite the discharge of almost 1,000 service members every year.

So, as Jon Stewart so ably puts it, America is entrenched in a war with stakes so high that torture must be permitted if it gives us any chance at getting the slightest bit of extra information. you would think that in a fight where the stakes are this high...anyone who wants to serve would be welcomed into the fold. nope. sorry gay people...it's not your time.

So, congratulations, president Obama, on a real winner of a week. You're a dick.

watch out, arlen specter

glenn beck may try to kill you for this.

maddow on GITMO accountability

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

in my ongoing love of bombast, here's rachel maddow explaining why guantanamo and the torture memos are so damaging to us. Long story short: their existence severely compromises our ability to appeal for proper treatment of our own citizens, or POWs, or anyone who comes in harm's way while outside of US borders. You know how I love righteous fury.

torture doesn't work, dummy.

For any idiots still crowing about the value of harsh interrogation tactics, the patriot act, warantless wiretapping, or any of the other asinine Bush administration "security" tactics put into place without public discourse or supporting evidence, let this be the end of all that garbage:

When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an al-Qaeda leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed. The methods succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of al-Qaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads. In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida -- chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates -- was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.

So please. How many fake 'sleeper cells' need to be exposed as bullshit to continue either allowing this type of illegal behavior, or revising history to paint Dick Cheney as some type of freedom fighter? With increasing evidence that harsh interrogation methods were initiated with instructions directly from the administration, count me as someone who's happy to see warrants issued for John Yoo, Alberto Gonzalez and other deserving douchebags. Cancel that Barcelona trip, Cheney. I'm sure there will be indignance over this -- how dare Spain stand in judgment of the decisions of a former US Vice President? But let those same indignant wonder how they would respond if American citizens were tortured under the aegis of the Spanish government without being given a fair trial.

Interesting corollary: Atul Gawande's excellent piece on the psychological impact of solitary confinement.

And finally, Matt Taibbi kicks ass and takes names. Today's victim: the unregulated Federal Reserve/Treasury Department's ever-growing shadow government.

jon stewart kills it

suck it, huckabee.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mike Huckabee Pt. 2

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

On Mumbai

Hi, I'm pre-empting my overdue post on domestic issues to talk about Mumbai, and more importantly, the Indian and Pakistani response to the Mumbai attacks.

Obviously, as an Indian and a Hindu, I'm very sympathetic to feelings of betrayal and exploitation by the 80% Hindu population in India. I'm well aware of the cynical and growing belief amongst the citizenry that this exploitation comes from a desire by elected government officials in India to appease/retain the minority vote in order to stay in office. I'm sure that as a result of attacks such as the one this week, an increasing number of Hindus in India want to see India declared a Hindu state, open to people of all religious faiths but transparent in seeking as its primary objective to protect Hindus from what must appear to be increasingly dangerous external forces.

Despite these sympathies, I'm categorically against such a move. I would ask anyone trending towards such a view to first truly consider both the motives and the path to success for terrorists such as those organizing this most recent attack. So. Why do terrorists attack? Yes, ultimately, their goal is the establishment of some sort of religious state atop which they would presumably be perched, but in the short term, they are looking for capital, both monetary and human, with which to continue their agenda. And in seeking to gain such capital, they benefit from either promoting, or exploiting 1) financial disparity, and 2) religious extremism/isolationism. Financial disparities increase a class of poor and disenfranchised people, who are more susceptible to groups such as Al-Queda that offer them a sense of community and purpose in the absence of economic promise. Isolationism and religious fervor promote the cause for obvious reasons.

So how does this apply specifically to India and to Mumbai? India suffers from a tremendous amount of financial disparity, with a majority of its 13% Muslim population at the short end. Nevertheless, widespread belief among the Hindu majority is that the government has been too quick to coddle the Islamic minority for aforementioned vote-related reasons, including but not limited to a) permittance of Shari'a law in some circumstances for muslims and b) a presumed "soft" stance on terror. This has driven the majority increasingly towards Hindu nationalist parties such as the BJP, whose emphasis on domestic counterterrorism has a clear isolationist stance. The growth of parties such as this further marginalizes the already poor, underrepresented Muslim population in India, no doubt providing ample incentive for them to become more radical.

Now you add the attack on Mumbai. First, the attack is on a financial centerpiece of India. Disrupting economic growth is a surefire way to drive more people towards religious extremism, and remember: an increase of extremism of either Muslims or Hindus is an unequivocal win for terrorists because of a multiplier effect (extremism in one direction drives extremism amongst opposing constituents). It's an attack on a city with many Hindus and Muslims living in tenuous, but functional, cohabitation, and so the attack has tremendous symbolism. And finally, we have the potential of this attack to lend more weight to the voices of political parties promoting religious isolationism. And while i understand the tendency for that type of protectionism, I would say this: one of the most wonderful aspects of India is its secular embrace of all cultures (something it has in common with America). I mean, there is a professed Islamic state just next door, and yet there are more Muslims living in India that in Pakistan, and why? Partially, yes, because they were living in India before the partition, but at least partially because, especially for more secular Muslims, its probably much nicer to live in India than in Pakistan. For all its faults, India still has a functional democracy whose ability to maintain the rule of law is orders of magnitude better than Pakistan's. India is the one country in South Asia still offering hope for a religiously integrated hegemony of all people rather than a series of religiously isolated states privately stoking the fires of resentment , each progressing towards inevitable conflict.

Does this mean that I think there should be no response to a terrorist attack - of course not. But let me quote the awesome Fareed Zakaria:

The problems of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh are now bleeding into one another, and any purely national approach is not going to work. The best outcome of these attacks would be if they spurred cooperation and reform. If instead they feed rivalry, bitterness and finger-pointing, the victims will have died in vain, and there will be more victims and an insecure neighborhood.

The crucial point is to remember the common enemy. When discussing causes and cures, never forget who is to blame first and foremost: the terrorists, the evil men who chose to deliberately kill innocent men, women and children, to burn young families to death. They are the ones who did it.

And while Indians have many troubles, they have one great counterterrorism policy—resilience. The Mumbai stock exchange reopened last Friday and closed higher. The country will persevere, the city will bounce back, and all those who have reasons to go there should not be deterred.

I could not agree more. Let the response to this attack be strong, but properly directed - unflinchingly at terrorists, and terrorism of any and all kinds. Certainly, I think that India should strengthen their counterterrorism initiatives, including increased surveillance at ports, increased power to police in dealing with terrorism suspects, ability to prevent extradition of terrorists, etc. There is a great opportunity for the Indian government to work with Pakistan to seek out the perpatrators of this attack. But let their stance be against terror, and not against Islam. Don't give the terrorists what they want, and put a wall between Muslims and Hindus. Instead, seek to protect all citizens, and protect the cultural and religious diversity that is so great about Mumbai, and India.

return post: PREVIEW

yikes. i don't even know where to start, but here are some of the issues on which i plan to ruminate later today. probably in the evening.

1. Obamaland appointments - not because this is the most critical, but because its the most fun. Clinton, Geithner, and Daschle are sure to be atop my love-fest on the Obama meritocracy.

2. Obamanomics and the stupidity of lame duck presidency - some blather on issues that i understand the least, including but not limited to: Citigroup, the automotive big 3, construction of a service-based economy, a green "war" time economy, etc.

3. A few thoughts on congresspeople: Lieberman? Barney Frank? Who knows?

4. Recent cultural observations: Slumdog Millionaire, Quantum of Solace, Decadancetheatre, the first chapter of The War Within, Saturday Night Live, 30 Rock, Keith Olbermann, This Week, the Planet Money podcast, the return of Radio Lab.

rahm emmanuel

i dont know that much yet, but from what i read about him in rolling stone, i like. a hard-nosed pragmatic former clintonite with a penchant for getting things done and taking no prisoners, whose political ideology seems well matched with Obama's...seems good to me. plus, who doesn't like this kickass anecdote:

The night after Clinton was elected, Emanuel was so angry at the president's enemies that he stood up at a celebratory dinner with colleagues from the campaign, grabbed a steak knife and began rattling off a list of betrayers, shouting "Dead! . . . Dead! . . . Dead!" and plunging the knife into the table after every name. "When he was done, the table looked like a lunar landscape," one campaign veteran recalls. "It was like something out of The Godfather. But that's Rahm for you."

Awesome.

what does mccain mean by "weath redistribution"?

look. john mccain was awesome on SNL. and in many ways, he's probably a cool guy. but lets not pretend, even for a second, that the stump, neocon john mccain of the last 8 years hasn't put funny john mccain in the backseat. case in point: his attacks on obama concerning "socialism" and "sharing the wealth". the new republic, like many of us, has been confused about this line of attack, because americans, particularly in pennsylvania, overwhelmingly favor a progressive tax system. So why would he be using this argument?

Well, its because he's not playing on fears that Obama will take from the rich and give to the poor. He's playing on fears that Obama will redistribute wealth between 2 other groups:

The McCain campaign trying to play on fears that Obama will take money from whites and give it to blacks. Hence McCain's claims that Obama plans on "taking from one group of Americans and giving to another," that Obama would turn the IRS into "a giant welfare agency," and his television ads repeatedly flashing the word "welfare" to describe Obama's plans.

Certainly, Pennsylvanians seem to see McCain's argument here as something other than an attack on the principle of progressivity in taxation. The Boston Globe reports: "Still, there remains a deep distrust of big government programs here, and strong skepticism about Obama. A number of voters feared he would transfer wealth from the middle class to help people "who don't work" or who don't deserve it. ..."

It's not like I think that McCain has run an intolerably lowbrow campaign. His resistance to Reverend Wright references is certainly commendable. But he hasn't been above more insidious forms of race-baiting, and this is a classic example.

chris rock

on the eve of the election, lets remember how awesomely prescient chris rock was 2 years ago.

keith olbermann and race

you know that keith olbermann idolizes edward r. murrow (his "good night, and good luck" stuff), but its really nice to see when he has an opportunity for sincerity instead of duking it out on bill o'reilly's terms. this is a phenomenal comment.

the "voter fraud" fraud

hi,

i've been busy/away for a week and im away for the next week which will make it tough to post. but there's been a lot of press about ACORN and Obama's ties to it, so I thought I'd post a link.

Voter fraud isn't real. At least, it isn't a real problem. Study after study has demonstrated that voter fraud is either completely, or mostly, a myth. It mostly serves as a clever front to enact widespread voter disenfranchisement and intimidation, 2 things that are a huge problem. Exaggerating a negligible fear in order to further one's political agenda....does that sound familiar? Don't buy into more of this GOP-sponsored bullshit. Slate sums it up pretty well.

And by the way, this Joe the Plumber nonsense is just that, nonsense. I'm sorry, but his claim to Obama that he was "planning on starting a small business making between 260 and 280 thousand dollars a year"...first of all, who exactly thinks of a business they are starting in terms of its yearly gross? Jesus. Make your plants a little less obvious. For example? Try to make sure that they're not related to Charles Keating. Oh, you should probably also make sure that he is a registered voter who doesn't owe back taxes. Oh yeah, and he probably shouldn't compare Obama to Sammy Davis, Jr.

I think Tina Fey said it best: "If [McCain/Palin] wins, I'm leaving Earth."

jason, michelle, tom, and the power of nightmares

after a little manny tearfest in my previous post, i owe a few props to jason bay, our return on the manny dump. there are so many things to like about this guy:

• toiled away in pittsburgh on an awful team, never once asking to be traded and putting up huge numbers
• has a sense of the moment (hitting 2 huge homeruns in the ALDS)
• has learned how to play the Monster well in less than half a season (well, either that, or it's not that hard, and we gave Manny waaaay too much credit)
• under 30, cost controlled, puts up >900 OPS. I don't think i really need to 'sell' this guy.
• i insist that everyone refer to him as "the canadian, jason bay."
  

follow this link to read a nice SI article (yes, sports illustrated still exists) on how Bay is the real deal.


do we need more proof that michelle obama is the freakin shit? one millionth case-in-point: she goes on larry king live and kicks ass in the way we want her to kick ass. She's first ladyesque in exactly the same lofty, inspirational way that barack obama is presidential, particularly in recent days: an ambitious campaigner, an aspiring policy maker, a proud mother, and absolutely uncompromising in any of these respects. Plus, she refuses to be baited by any of the rampant negative campaigning surrounding her and barack obama in recent days:

What you heard in that debate, when you saw his passion, it was when he was talking about the health care crisis, and he talked about his mother dying of ovarian cancer, and how angry it made him to see her worrying about the insurance company and the payments rather than worrying about getting well.
And that's what we're seeing. That's the kind of stuff that makes Barack angry. It's not the back and forth. It's not something said about him. I think Barack said today, he can take, you know, any name-calling or the back and forth that -- you know, that stuff doesn't bother him.
But the unfairness that we're seeing across the country, that makes him mad.

and on Sarah Palin, despite attacks by Governor Palin suggesting that her husband sympathizes with terrorists:

I think she provides an excellent of example of all the different roles that women can and should play. You know, I'm a mother with kids and I've had a career and I've had to juggle. She's doing publicly, what so many women are doing on their own privately. What we're fighting for is to make sure that all women have the choices that Sarah Palin and I have. To make these decision and do it without hurting their families.

Everyone should read the transcript of her amazing interview with Larry King. I truly come away with absolutely equivalent respect and admiration for her as for her husband every time I get to read or see anything about her. You rock, Michelle.

Contrast that with Cindy McCain on the stump, referring to Obama's campaign as "dirty" and suggesting that Obama voted to put troops at risk (when her husband voted for the same bill). It just emphasizes the differences between these 2 camps. The difference being that Michelle Obama is an accomplished professional whose behavior matches her ideals, whereas Cindy McCain inherited a beer company, and her negative campaigning complements her record of stealing prescription drugs from her own nonprofit to feed her drug addiction.

Taxation, Spending, Patriotism, Friedman.
There is an incredibly important point that was made eloquently by Thomas Friedman in a recent opinion piece. It speaks of McCain's, and even more so Palin's, characterization of taxation as unpatriotic, and as government programs as waste. Friedman disagrees:

Sorry, I grew up in a very middle-class family in a very middle-class suburb of Minneapolis, and my parents taught me that paying taxes, while certainly no fun, was how we paid for the police and the Army, our public universities and local schools, scientific research and Medicare for the elderly. No one said it better than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: “I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.”

And I agree with him. This demonization of taxes as unpatriotic is ridiculous. You might argue that the government is inefficient in how it uses taxpayer money (the bailout perhaps being a prime example), but the idea of paying taxes is woven into the fabric of what makes us a democracy: citizens donate a certain portion of their income that can be better utilized by a governing body for services that should be provided to everyone (military protection, health care, education, etc.) Am I wrong?

There is an unbelievable amount of material on which I have yet to post, and I hope to get to it tonight. Including:

• The New England Journal of Medicine's report on the health care proposals of both candidates (thanks Amana)
• My increasing attempts to understand the basis and marketing of Democratic and Republican ideology, including a great piece Rosa sent me as well as an awesome documentary called The Power of Nightmares, which Todd showed me.
  
• Maybe a few thoughts on Alan Greenspan.
  

uh, i guess that's it for now

top 5 of today!

2 phenomenal pieces from the new yorker begin today's post:

1. the new yorker endorses barack obama. This campaign has been so long and wearying that it took quite a bit to inspire me. and the editors of the new yorker did just that, with this stirring piece in which they remind all of us of what we've forgotten. I had forgotten the extent to which the idea of Obama restores every facet of life in which we find ourselves betrayed by government. and this is important, when you turn to another riveting feature on
2. evaluating voter tendencies in ohio. george packer paints a compelling, if concerning, portrait of the struggles of ohio voters to accept a candidate of obama's mold: lofty, young, and liberal with a littany of promises. While Obama has the coherence to validate his proposals, is this marketable to low-income white voters who have been burned by democrats over the years and are conditioned by the subtle prejudices of race and class? a legitimate question, and a concerning when when you consider the critical swing states (colorado, nevada, florida, ohio, north carolina, pennsylvania, new hampshire, minnesota).

Next, paul krugman skewers the mccain health care plan. the argument is very simple. mccain cuts the tax breaks for employers to provide insurace. so obviously, they don't. then everyone gets some money to buy health care. people with money have some extra money to buy it -- great! sick people and poor people get fucked - bad. what encapsulates the mccain campaign better?

But the people gaining insurance would be those who need it least: relatively healthy Americans with high incomes. Why? Because insurance companies want to cover only healthy people, and even among the healthy only those able to pay a lot in addition to their tax credit would be able to afford coverage (remember, it’s a $5,000 credit, but the average family policy actually costs more than $12,000).

Meanwhile, the people losing insurance would be those who need it most: lower-income workers who wouldn’t be able to afford individual insurance even with the tax credit, and Americans with health problems whom insurance companies won’t cover.

Note: post-debate, this has got to be the biggest point that obama scored over mccain, particularly in noting how people with pre-existing conditions get left out. well, that and mccain's insane plan to buy all the bad mortgages, which is either a) already in the bailout, in which case, who cares, or b) not in the bailout, in which case, wtf is the bailout for, and c) way to increase government ownership, stalin. oh, and also mccain's insane "speak softly"/"next up, baghdad" gaffe.

Sarah Palin Ruminations
The new republic has a very nice piece entitled, "barracuda". the critical point here: palin often took challenges personally, turning dissenters into political opposition, and devoting herself to eliminating her detractors. does this sound...eerily familiar? (new york times subnote: cheney! cheney! cheney!) Part of the reason i found the article so fascinating was that it paints palin as motivated very little by logic, and very strongly by victory. and that seemed to work out quite well for her.
slate's ten to toss
i absolutely loved slate's "ten to toss" article. in this article, the awesome emily bazelon along with chris wilson tear apart 10 of president bush's most egregious executive orders (reminiscent of this american life's evisceration of bush's "signing statements"). from presidential secrecy to separation of church and state to violations of the geneva convention, there are are some great orders to toss in this list, and the list itself is a reminder that we did not have merely a well intentioned neophyte in office, but a president/VP tandem determined to covertly push forward a socially neoconservative agenda while protecting their consituency at every turn.

the red sox advance, defeating the angels 3-1. what are the key points here:

• jon lester. amazing. even if he didn't beat anaplastic large cell lymphoma, amazing. but he also did that.
  
• jason bay. the kind of 5 tool player i love.
• theo epstein. this red sox team is the 4th iteration since their first championship. they continue to be competitive in a way that's one step ahead of the market by being flexible. by the way, this is also a testament to terry francona's managing.
• justin masterson. jesus, the guy is a rookie. he's not ready to be your 8th inning setup guy. okajima and delcarmen can do the trick. save masterson for 6th/7th innings eating. trust me; with daisuke, you're going to need to fill those middle innings.
• the rays are a great team that terrifies me. great pitching, good OBP guys, great defense, great speed. we'll see.

i'll leave you with a graph that teaches us what makes people go to grad school. sad, really.

www.phdcomics.com

random thoughts, part 1: baseball, disenfranchisement

it's really tough for me to comprehend, as the baseball playoffs start, that i'm not going to see manny donning a red #24 and hitting cleanup for the red sox ever again. my personal history with baseball is a weird one. when my family moved to boston, i was 6, and looking for a hobby. i settled on baseball cards, and adopted the red sox as my baseball champions. i really loved baseball as a kid, especially because my dad would often score tickets to baseball games (i didn't go to a basketball game until I was in college, and I barely remember the one football game I attended.) I went through a lull in my fandom from about age 8-16, mostly because I wasn't in Little League, and additionally because of the baseball strike. My love for baseball was brought back by 3 seminal Red Sox: Nomar Garciaparra, Pedro Martinez, and Manny Ramirez. Nomar, a brilliant but brooding hitter, took business negotiations from the front office personally and was sent packing in 2004. Pedro helped deliver the first Red Sox championship in 86 years before cashing in on one last paycheck (sorry Mets fans), but Manny stuck it out until this year. From a fan's perspective, Manny was always a joy to watch. We loved his goofy personality (including ridiculous handshakes individualized for each of his teammates, my favorite being his 'gunslinger' handshake with Millar) that served as a perfect counterpoint to how locked-in he always was at the plate. I'll never see anything in baseball as great as the 1-2 punch of Manny and Ortiz: Ortiz with his ability to just muscle anything over the fence, and Manny, the hitting savant par excellence.

But the other reason I loved Manny is that he recognized baseball for what it is: a game. He loved baseball, worked hard at it, and was great, but his life didn't end on the field and he said as much. Sportswriters hated this about him, and always got on his case about not being the kind of 'gritty, dirt-dog, hustler' types that they always love. Here's a hint about why writers hate Manny and love David Eckstein. The gritty dirt-dogs? They're always white. Guys who 'play the game the right way'? Always white. Guys like Manny, whose combination of athletic ability and work ethic make his at-bats look easy? They're lazy (and they're usually black or hispanic). These are the same guys who think that the great era of basketball was in the 80s, because everyone was slower, and Larry Bird was amazing. Anyways, I'll miss you, Manny, and if the Sox go down in the playoffs, I'll be rooting for the Dodgers, no doubt. Well, actually, maybe not. I'll probably root for the Cubs, with their 100 year drought, or for the Phillies (because I'm getting slightly worried about the psyche of Philadelphia sports fans). But I'll watch the Dodgers, and when Manny hits a bomb, watches it for 3 seconds too long, jogs around the bases, and does a 14-move handshake with a bewildered and slightly annoyed Jeff Kent, I'll cheer.

By the way, the Sports Guy wrote an awesome article about Manny, so if you're a sports fan, read it.

And in other thoughts, voter disenfranchisement! I went to rolling stone to read an awesomely vicious takedown of John McCain's seemingly spotless biography (I loved it, but if you like McCain, you'll hate it, and maybe hate me) and ended up reading a 23 page report on voter disenfranchisement in Ohio in 2004. In an example of everyone's tendency to revise history in order to make it more palatable, I had completely forgotten about how overwhelmingly exit polls had favored Kerry and how incomprehensible it was that the polls were off by as much as they were (John Zogby called the explanation for the discrepancy, that democrats had participated more in exit polling than Republicans, "preposterous.") Well this piece painstakingly reconstructs all of the separate voter intimidation, voter exclusion, and plain old fradulent tactics conducted in Ohio, at the behest of the GOP. Upon reading this, I immediately thought 3 things:

1. It's really sad that voter disenfranchisement may be my number one fear about why Obama might not win on November 4th. After all, we've already seen examples of voter intimidation in Michigan, and I certainly don't feel confident that the type of organized intimidation orchestrated in the last 2 elections is going to either suddenly cease or be overcome in this election.
2. There's a really interesting article in the Times that talks about George W. Bush, and how his likeability may very well increase when he is a former president, as his personality shifts to the forefront and his policy decisions fade into the background (the article notes similar transformations for Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter). But I think its important that we not forget that beneath his charm, and even beneath his "aw shucks, I'm not that smart" populist sensibilities was someone not afraid to break the rules to win, and certainly not hesitant to expand executive power to push his agenda forward, even if it included trampling basic rights of American citizens to privacy, habeas corpus, etc. If anything, I think in the future, I'll look back on President Bush as a genius for hoodwinking everyone into believing he was too dumb to be sinister. And this brings me to my most important point:
3. Potential voters need to recognize the GOP they are voting for. Republicans at this point (no matter what talking points they parrot) are not the party of small government and self-reliance. They're the party of lobbyists, fat cats, and influence that say that if you can't win by the rules, make sure you've got enough money and power to change the rules, and make sure of it by buying off all the people who've got the money and enforce the rules. It's a smart plan, honestly, but its vile, and lets not pretend that it has anything to do with the party of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. This is a party that guts the financial security of Middle America by preying on their hatred of gays, immigrants, and abortion so they can give kickback to the billionaires that illegally finance their re-election campaigns.
   

More soapboxing after the VP debate. The Times had tons of weird, non-political stuff, and I plan to talk about it. For now, enjoy Homer Simpson's attempts to vote!

so much cooler stuff to offer

ive got a pretty wonky post building up, but for now, enjoy this clip about roe v. wade. not because it continues to make me wonder if sarah palin has a slowly growing subdural hematoma, but because it shows how reasoned and, honestly, likeable, joe biden is.


Watch CBS Videos Online

more shenanigans!!

well, what else would you call mccain's plea for a 'timeout'?? its a shenanigan, plain and simple. (yes, i am enjoying the use of the word 'shenanigan'. both in its singular and plural forms).

So, anyone, what the hell is this all about? Is it just a stopgap to try and piece together a new strategy after the "Palin/Change" combo didn't have the lasting effect the campaign hoped?

By the way, Rachel Maddow is awesome, so it was a nice to read an article that describes how she rose to success by sticking to her political guns instead of turning into a hack. You rock, Maddow.

the deciders

so, a few podcasts to kick this off:
NPR: Planet Money is a great podcast for people (like me) trying to understand what the whole credit/mortgage crisis means. It's run in part by Alex Blumberg, who did many of the economics segments for This American Life.
I've also been enjoying KCRW's Left, Right, and Center. It's a roundtable discussion, very straightforward, but manages to recruit more interesting voices (read: less partisan TV faces who just vomit talking points) to the discussion.

So.

It seems like there are kind of 2 economics-related debates going on, although they both relate to the central idea of government 'meddling' in the free market. Now, I left all the cool articles I printed out at home, so I can't link to all of them right now, but the gist of it (and feel free to disagree if you want) is that progressive approaches to the market seem to be more successful than supply side approaches. It's still unclear whether a perfectly unfettered market will outperform both of these approaches, but frankly, Ron Paul isn't going to be president, so we don't have to worry about that. I'm sorry to Reaganites, but frontloading the uber-wealthy with money doesn't work. Now, it works if your definition is to increase the GDP over time, but the "trickle down" portion - not so much. I'll leave this with a quote from a recent Times editorial:

For decades, typical Americans have not been rewarded for their increasing productivity with comparably higher pay or better benefits. The disconnect between work and reward has been especially acute during the Bush years, as workers’ incomes fell while corporate profits, which flow to investors and company executives, ballooned. For workers, that is a fundamental flaw in today’s economy. It is grounded in policies like a chronically inadequate minimum wage and an increasingly unprogressive tax system

The other portion of the debate is over the bailout. It's almost impossible for anyone to argue that the bailout is unnecessary. The questions are: who are the true culprits, and how do we protect from what appears to be happening (a reverse Robin Hood situation in which the taxpayers are funding economic relief for CEOs). In discussion of all of this, one of the most insane ideas is a call for some sort of ironclad plan for 'solving' this crisis. This is a talking point that John McCain has been parroting: he came out with a definitive "step to take" (fire Chris Cox) whereas Barack Obama has offered more nuanced responses. (Apparently, 'nuance' has jumped the connotation fence from positive to negative). So, lets take 'stock' (ha!) of our most important "deciders", shall we?

1. Henry Paulson
'King' Henry is trying to pull the exact same BS that we've gotten from the Bush administration before. He has taken a crisis and is attempting to capitalize on its emotional component, proposing a $700 billion bailout plan with no protection for taxpayers and ownership over allocation of said funds with absolute immunity over his decisions. His response to authoring a 2 page plan to outline an enormous investment in what amounts to "toxic waste" loans? He says, "Now is a time for action." With the unspoken, "and later is a time for questions, but never for me."

Does this sound familiar? This type of "we have to do what I say, and there's no time to explain why" attempts at mob hysteria are exactly what got us unto untenable situations with no roadmap in our recent foreign policy blunders. And its what is leading Paulson to promote a plan that (and get ready for a string of NY Times articles here - I told you, I left my bigger, cooler set of articles at home) Paul Krugman calls "cash for trash." William Kristol shares his concern:

I’m doubtful that the only thing standing between us and a financial panic is for Congress to sign this week, on behalf of the American taxpayer, a $700 billion check over to the Treasury...[it] would enable the Treasury, without Congressionally approved guidelines as to pricing or procedure, to purchase hundreds of billions of dollars of financial assets, and hire private firms to manage and sell them, presumably at their discretion There are no provisions for — or even promises of — disclosure, accountability or transparency.

Let's also not forget: Henry Paulson used to be the CEO of Goldman Sachs. And while defenders of Paulson suggested that we "not question the firemen who are here to put out the fire," Stephen Colbert awesomely noted that these 'firemen' also happen to be the arsonists, so some questions might not be so bad.

2. John McCain

This brings us to our GOP candidate. McCain is in love with this sort of knee-jerk decisiveness. This recently surfaced with respect to the Russia-Georgia crisis. McCain called it"the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War" (forget that whole 'Islamic terrorists' thing he's been hooting about), suggested to pull Russia out of the G8, and threatened military action, while deriding Obama's nuanced approach, which he likened to "voting present." It has continued with this economics discussion. McCain has derided Obama's nuance, while touting his own decisiveness in suggesting the firing of SEC chairman Chris Cox. Decisive!

Too bad its been universally derided. And by universal, i mean "including George Will":

I mean, he says that McCain "once again substituted vehemence for coherence". If there's a more thorough indictment on rash decision-making, I'd like to see it. Well, maybe there is, in Will's followup article:

But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

Yeah, this guy is no Michael Bloomberg. Now, the other issue referenced in Roundtable was McCain's attempt to rebrand himself as a deregulator, something that is categorically opposite to McCain's economic instincts.

3. Phil Gramm

And this is because he is an economic protege of Phil Gramm, the former senator who also used to be McCain's campaign advisor until he made that unwise remark about "a nation of whiners" and was excused officially as a McCain advisor while still traveling with McCain and, frankly, continuing to advise him. Gramm authored the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act which reduced government regulations in existence since the Great Depression separating banking, insurance and brokerage activities. Gramm and McCain are supply-side deregulators attempting to paint themselves as something else, in an era in which deregulation has been catastrophic, and that's the bottom line. Let's remember this when we wonder if John McCain learned his lesson from the Keating Five scandal, in which he aided the chairman of Lincoln Savings and Loan during the Savings and Loan crisis.

So what does he do? He specializes in the kind of counterbranding successfully used by Roger Ailes and Fox News. He repaints himself as a regulator and "fresh-blood" in Washington with an unparalleled show of "truthiness". (Read that truthiness article by Frank Rich). He pushes to "otherize" his opponent, playing on bigotry and xenophobia. (Amana should enjoy that Kristof link).

But recent polls have suggested that he pushed too far with this type of propaganda and that his contentions are finally being rejected in favor of the truth. And this brings us to the first presidential debate. New York magazine has a nice article on the challenges facing each candidate. Will Obama tame his tendency to over-ruminate? Will McCain's increasingly innacurate catch-phrases win the day? We'll find out. And I want to extend an invitation to anyone reading: I'm going to attempt to live-blog the debate. If anyone else also wants to live-blog the debate and send me your thoughts, I will pool everyone's comments and publish a presidential debate live megapost next week!!!!! Cool.

2 final thoughts:
1. There was a NYTimes Magazine article that I can't find on how fish are basically disappearing. Well, I heard something very cool on the Takeaway yesterday, called The Blue Ocean Fishphone. Basically, when you're considering ordering fish at a market or restaurant, you can send a text, find out the environmental cost of ordering this fish (based on fishing practices, species population, etc) and get viable alternatives. Sounds awesome.

2. Such a cool Op-Ed that I'm going to post it separately.

joe biden!!

You know, he's really flown below the radar, but I think that's OK. I'm also really starting to like him. I like his "aw, shucks" type demeanor, and how he plays like your really smart uncle who's still cool enough to let you have a beer or stay out past curfew or something. Here are some more things to like:

1. He's a true champion of women's rights. This article details his very personal struggle to classify gender-based violence as hate crimes. It shows how passionate he is despite being a bit of a blowhard.
2. He delivers reliable, affecting, and substantive speeches on the campaign trail (such as this one in Michigan). The Obama campaign seems to focus on directed messages at target populations. This is why they don't seem to be bothered that Palin is receiving lots of national coverage, while Biden is quietly campaigning in swing states. It doesn't hurt that he and Obama can split up and campaign independently, whereas Palin and McCain need to compensate for each other's lack of knowledge and charisma, respectively.
3. People don't know that much about him, yet, but those that do, generally like him. This is reflected in yesterday's New York Times polls, which clearly show: 1) more people are undecided on Biden than Palin (less national exposure), but 2) a higher percentage of decideds are favorable on Biden (he engenders less negative backlash than Palin), and 3) far fewer people view his choice as politically motivated (he represents a more substantive choice than Palin). I think as the VP debates air and we get closer to the election, most of those undecideds are going to shift towards positives, and this previously "safe" pick is going to show itself to be more and more of a smart one.