Stoner

Political S&T

2012-02-11T23:19:00.004-07:00

First, a short discussion on the complex issue of contraceptive insurance in the implementation of the Federal health care bill. We have opined on this issue as long ago as 2009: contraceptive insurance needs to be a part of the standard package of health care insurance available to all Americans. Reduction of unwanted pregnancies, abortions, and all the attendant effects; these benefits make contraceptive insurance a public policy necessity.

With the Obama Administration's concession last week that religiously-sponsored hospitals and universities would not have to contribute to these offerings, it is hard to find exactly what basis they would have to continue to oppose the policy. Insurers will instead pay for them--it probably was fairly easy for the insurers to calculate and confirm to the Federal health administrators that the cost to the medical system would be lower by paying for these features, than for the alternatives. Any opposition from the religious community is based on sheer bloody-mindedness: they would oppose contraception for anyone, and rather than allowing people to make the choice whether to use birth control, they would block it for all. For me, the only question was whether the contraceptive rider should be free to those who choose it, but apparently its economics pay for itself.

That being the case, it is pretty hard to find the justification for opposing the policy on the grounds of expanding personal freedom, or on the grounds of opposition to abortion, either. The ship has sailed on allowing people access to contraception (some 50 years ago); I see this issue fading pretty quickly, as the petty disputes about whether the "morning-after" pill constitutes abortion will hardly be compelling.

The Santorum Blip

Rick Santorum pulled off a couple of big upsets over Mitt Romney last week in Republican votes in heartland states. In terms of delegate strategy, the losses by Romney were not serious, but they did re-open--once again--the battle for control of the nomination contest, or at least for perception of its control. Romney had taken command with an impressive win in Florida, but his strategists gave a low importance to the contests in Missouri, Minnesota, and Colorado, leaving an opening for Santorum, who won all three.

As has been the case in the past, the show of strength by a Romney challenger in individual states immediately translated into a dramatic change in the national surveys of Republicans. All of a sudden, Santorum is polling about equal with Romney nationally. Romney still has a big advantage in every strategic sense: more money, better organization, and more delegates than all his opponents combined; however, the party's primary voters remain unconvinced of his inevitability. As long as that remains true, his nomination is not, in fact, inevitable, even if every Republican campaign in living memory suggests otherwise.

But, if you were to ask me if Rick Santorum is the man who can win it--my reaction would still be to say: 1) impossible; and 2) if only!

Electoral Strategy Fakes
I am suspicious of either party disclosing strategy at this early stage: what they say may have some validity, but the real strategic decisions are yet to be made.

A good example is the "Road Map to Victory" I received from the Obama campaign recently. It has some good information, for example, the number of electoral votes each state has, and their early assessment that they believe they can start with all the states John Kerry won in 2004, totalling (after the 2010 Census) 246 Electoral Votes of the 270 needed.

They then offer four "paths" to get to the required number, or just beyond. The first is the West Path, featuring CO, NM, and NV--what they don't say is that they slipped IA in there to get to 272. They are more straightforward with the Midwest Path: add OH and IA to the Kerry states, and you get exactly 270 (hey, what about the Omaha Congressional district in NE, which Obama won in 2008?) The South Path requires just NC and VA, plus Kerry, to get to 274, though I think that the whole NC play (which includes having the party convention in Charlotte) is a head fake. Finally, the Expansion Path adds to the West Path the state of AZ--a longshot if Obama doesn't get Gaby Giffords campaigning actively for the ticket, which I think is a lot to ask of her--and, once again, IA, but has quietly backed out the Kerry states of NH and PA to land at 272.

The bottom line on these strategies: add PA to the critical states of focus I identified last year--VA, NV, OH, and IA (and take NH off the list if it's Romney). FL and MO are missing from these strategies, which is disappointing, as both have close Senate races critical for the Democrats if they are to hold any kind of majority. This strategy discloses the long-term plan of building organizations in key states--CO, IA, VA, NM, NV, OH, etc.--to make the strategic position one of strength, forcing the Republicans to counter in these and miss opportunities that may exist elsewhere. As such, it is true as far as it goes, but I think there are some alternatives remaining undisclosed (such as a late Super PAC bombing run in FL, now that Romney has shown how well that works and that the Obama campaign has reluctantly conceded they will need to go the S-PAC route).

As for the Republicans, the word is that the real strategy will be discussed only among the elites--the big money givers, Congressmen, party national committee--and anything that's out there in public is not the real strategy. This I can believe; I also think that Karl Rove is going to be right in the war room, calling the shots. Given the weakness of their eventual Presidential candidate, whether he be Tea Partier, Bushite, or Salamander, their real strategy has to be to hope for a Democratic blunder and dig in, throwing big money into closely contested Congressional races.

Tactical Investment
My friend Norman Goldman (.com), speaking on Chicago's Progressive Talk Radio the other night, was referring to the secret Republican strategy, which he described (and I paraphrase) as bailing on this Presidential race, holding Congressional losses to a minimum and planning for Chris Christie for 2016. He concluded that the appropriate response for progressives was to put their money into House and Senate races this year, as Obama's re-election feels assured to him.

With all due respect to Norm's acumen, though, I have to disagree somewhat. Yes, the battle for control of Congress may end up being the one that keeps us up late on Election Night; however, I think the shortest route to success in that battle is an Obama victory of landslide proportions. We need to run the score up like the 49ers in those '90s Super Bowls (Norm, it was Denver they beat 55-10!); only that will carry the Democrats through in some of the House races that would otherwise lean Republican, and those very tight Senate races in swing states (NM, NV, WI, FL, MO, VA being examples).

I think the Obama Road Map is fine for showing where the ground game will be fought and won, but the battle for Congress will be an air war, battled with the big money on the air waves, and I see it focused in three states where the Republicans and their 2010 Congressional gains will be vulnerable: PA, OH, and FL.

If you're a little guy like me, your money isn't going to make the difference in these field of fire ordnance saturation encounters. After I make a single contribution to each of the big 5--Obama for America, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign committee, the Democrati Governors' Association, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee--each with my own plea for campaign reform after this election cycle, mind you--I will keep my powder dry for tactical contributions down the stretch in selected campaigns, and I may make myself available for some volunteer work in my beloved New Mexico. More on this later.

S.B. Sunday Sports Report

2012-02-05T13:16:00.008-07:00

Today, of course, is Stupid Bowl Sunday; the trick will be finding enough things to do so that we do not sit around watching the endless pregame, postgame, and during-game blathering. I'm hopeful that my son's Sunday tennis practice will go on as usual; that would keep me busy driving back and forth--I can still catch some of the telecast if the game is engaging enough.

The usual pattern is for a tense first quarter as each team tries and fails to establish a running game, then some key turnovers or big passing plays setting the stage for one team taking a significant lead, with the trailing team becoming gradually more desperate, and the leading team's blitzes becoming more all-out, leading to blowout conditions. This is certainly a possibility for tonight's game, but I'm hopeful that whichever team ends up trailing will keep its cool, as both certainly have the capability to score in bunches.

Though the betting favorite is New England, there is big money coming in for the New Jersey Giants: the point spread has shortened since the opening line, and many of the "experts" are predicting the mild upset, which would be a repeat of the huge upset Eli Manning and the Giants pulled against the Patriots four years ago, when they were seeking to achieve only the second undefeated NFL championship season in history (after the '73 Dolphins). The Giants also won a closely-contested regular season game with the Patriots during the regular season last fall. What I find to have little merit is the argument that the Giants have the momentum coming into tonight's game: the Patriots have a ten-game win streak, during which they have sometimes shown the ability to score at will.

My prediction is for a high-scoring game: possibly some early scores leading to a wide-open second half, or just a lot of late-game heroics from both sides. I will go with a score which will win me the office pool, NE 30, NJ 28. With this score the Pats would fail to cover the 3-point spread, but the teams would surpass the over/under line of 54 (see below for a--by now, too late to be useful--analysis of the final digits of teams' final scores in past Super Bowls).

One thing is certain: tonight's game featuring two of the teams with the largest fan bases, representing large TV markets, will get great ratings. Regardless of the S.B. outcome, the NFL is to be congratulated on fully satisfactory season, recovering from the threat of disaster with the preseason lockout. Give the owners credit--and I basically hate their guts, all of them--they gave ground in time and got a good agreement, which the players seem not to have accepted.

Chelsea-Man U.
Tonight's American football game would need to do a lot to reach the emotional excitement of this morning's English football game from Chelsea's Stamford Bridge stadium--televised on Fox's regular network, with (intense Arsenal fan) Piers Morgan coming over from CNN to help out with the broadcast.

The teams have had a great rivalry in the last decade, often decisive in the Premier League competition, and sometimes even in the Champions League; each has suffered rare home losses at the hands of their opponent (Chelsea, for example, lost a key Champions League game at home last spring, probably cooking the goose of last year's coach), and most of their games have been close ones (the Champions League final in Moscow four years ago being an example: Chelsea lost in penalty kicks when John Terry slipped while taking his shot).

This week's game had all the hoopla but a little less at stake: Chelsea fell off the pace with a shaky spell late last fall, while Manchester United has so far been outplayed by its crosstown rival, Manchester City, whose surge of expensive player purchases has finally paid off this year with a solid team getting more than its share of good fortune. Man U. needed a win to get back to a virtual tie with "City", while Chelsea needed not to lose to hang onto fourth place (fourth being the critical dividing line at season's end between those teams getting a place in the Champions League and those in the second-level Europa competition).

The game had three distinct phases, something like the S.B. experience I described above. The first third of the game was scoreless, with Chelsea tentative and Man U. unable to use its ball possession to do much, either. The second third--bridging both sides of the halftime break--was all Chelsea: first, an "own goal" (going off a defender) set up by superior ball control by Chelsea's Daniel Sturridge. (His move--pushing it along the end line, which eliminates the possibility of an offsides call, then centering the ball backwards at close range toward teammates and defenders--has been producing a lot of these own goals recently.)

Then, after the half, Chelsea scored two brilliant goals: the first off a wonderful cross from Fernando Torres with a well-timed volley from the back post by Juan Mata, the best of Chelsea's additions this season. Torres has been struggling to score, but partly that is because he draws a big crowd of defenders, and he used that effectively to create a wide space for Mata to convert the perfect pass. The third goal was a free kick by Mata headed in by David Luiz.

Some may have thought that 3-0 lead with 30 minutes left was a safe one, but I knew better. Man U. applied the pressure and was rewarded with two penalty kicks in the next 15 minutes, both converted by arch-foe Wayne Rooney, the second penalty award being a faulty call by the referee. (Why does Man U. always get awarded the penalty kicks, and their opponents, never?) Their third goal, with 10 minutes left, was well-earned, badly defended, and converted by Chicharrito--Javier Hernandez of Mexico--the most recently-acquired and deadliest of Man U.'s many weapons. The last 10 minutes were wild and woolly, Chelsea's ace goalie Petr Cech doing well, but Man U's De Gea making the save of the match on another Mata free kick in the last five minutes.

The 3-3 result did not fully satisfy either team--both coaches complained of the refereeing afterwards--but at least Chelsea impeded Man U's chances to retake first place, while avoiding a damaging loss. (I predicted a 2-2 score on Chelsea's website, correctly calling for goals from Rooney and Mata.) Chelsea's goals for the season are straightforward: finish no worse than 4th in the EPL, and win either the F.A. Cup or the Champions League. Man U. has been eliminated from both of those competitions, so for them it's all about winning the Premier League battle with City.

NBA Update
The players and the coaches hate the compressed, shortened regular season, but I don't share their opinion: their normal regular season is too long, too slack in terms of effort and stakes. This season there was not enough preparation and conditioning, and that combined with the concentrated weekly load of games has led to a rash of injuries, and those are having a strong influence on the battle for playoff positions.

The Miami Heat still looks to be the best team--they have now augmented their Big 3 of James-Wade-Bosh with a better supporting cast--though the best records belong to the upstart Oklahaoma City Thunder (the Durant-Westbrook axis has been dominant) and the Chicago Bulls (Derrick Rose defending his MVP title well). The defending champion Dallas Mavericks have fallen off the pace as I predicted in my preseason review, and the Lakers and Celtics, who have been injury-ridden, are also underperforming. The big suprise of the early season has been the strong play of the Philadelphia 76ers; they are such a surprise that they haven't even been scheduled for national TV games thus far, so I don't have much to say about them. I will say that they destroyed our local team, the Bulls, when Chicago showed up short-handed and tired, and that they have a mix of underrated veterans (like Andre Iguodala and Elton Brand) and rising stars (like their young point guard Jrue Holliday). More healthy teams in the East is definitely a good sign for the league, so this helps make up for the disappointments from the Amare Stoudamire/Carmelo Anthony Knicks and Deron Williams' Nets.

Footnote on Super Bowl Betting Squares

A little empirical data from the history of the first 45 Super Bowls:

The winning team's last digit of the final score is well distributed: all 10 digits have at least 3 occurrences, with the leading ones being 7 (7 times), 1 and 4 (6 times) and 6 (5).
Not so the losing team digit: 2 and 8 have never occurred, and 5 only once for the losing team (last year). 7 and 0 are the winning choices for losers: the loser has had a score ending in 7 twelve times, and 0 eight times (though never a shutout).

In terms of the 55 combinations, there are 27 that have never occurred and 16 that have happened once. The leading combination is 7-4 (or 4-7) which has occurred 5 times in 45 years. Ones that have occurred 3 times are 1-5 and 0-7, and the following have occurred twice: 7-7, 6-0, 5-0, 7-3, 6-3, 4-3, 9-0, 4-1, and 7-1.

I hope this has told you all you need for me to tell you--if not, too bad! Please note I'm only looking at final scores--quarter-end odds may differ.

Money and Politics

2012-01-31T12:52:00.001-07:00

For the most important issue emerging from the 2012 election campaign, you would search vainly in both the transcripts of the 18 (so far) Republican debates and President Obama's overly-lengthy State of the Union address this week. Also, disappointingly, nothing on the topic can be found in Esquire's "79 Things We Can All Agree On" that I discussed (see the next post down), even though it is something that a huge majority of people would agree--and I'm talking about Democrats, Republicans, and independents.

The Supreme Court, in its Citizens United ruling following on the 2008 campaign, swept away the campaign finance restrictions on private organizations, not affiliated with individuals' electoral campaigns. I have condemned the ruling, not so much on the legal merits (about which I don't claim to be expert) but on the horrendous impact it would have on national campaigns, which already are enormously over-expensive and with the quality of the effect of all that spending continuously deteriorating.

What I basically expect, and there is already plenty of evidence of it, is that the unlimited spending from the uncontrolled Super PAC organizations is going to produce a very strong reaction from the public. There will be a decline in turnout from usual Presidential election years because of all the negativity (and possibly from other methods the Republicans are trying to use in some states to suppress voting), but the stronger reaction will be revulsion at the sewage put on the television ads and their frequency during the general election campaign.

I see no chance at all that there will be any serious ceasefire in the money war going on this year (Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown have made a truce regarding their Senate campaign in Massachusetts, but that could easily be broken if one or the other finds things not going well under the restriction). The Super PAC's will weigh in most heavily on some of the closely-contested Senate and House races. Will the influence of negative advertising paid by outside money benefit the campaigns of its big-money backers--as it has often done in the past--or will voters recognize they are being bought and sold and produce a backlash? I am not optimistic about that, but I am hopeful that the bad taste that will remain in all of our mouths (or at least those of the districts whose stations will bombard us with poisonous gas) will lead us to speak out and purge the vitriol.

There are two main directions this reaction should take in 2013--To the Supreme Court's equating of speech with money, and of corporations having the same rights as people, the only response sufficient would be a constitutional amendment to the effect that "Corporations are not people; and only people can contribute to electoral campaigns." This will be difficult, but it needs to be established--this is the only way. When the public will is sufficiently motivated on a bipartisan basis, an amendment can be passed in months--an example being the repeal of Prohibition. There are a couple of online petitions I have seen and supported, one from Sen. Sherrod Brown and one from a group called Democracy for America and signed by Bernie Sanders. I know my Senator from New Mexico, Tom Udall, is supporting some action. As I believe this is--and must be--a movement with bipartisan support, I will also be looking for initiatives coming from Democrats and Independents (besides Bernie) that I can support. Basically, I want to use this year to show consistently my support for change, and I expect the blowback to materialize next year, with serious debate and votes on initiatives.

Unfortunately, even a constitutional amendment will not be enough to clean up our elections. PAC's and companies could still buy time for unofficial statements on political issues that are not specifically endorsing or attacking individual candidates; these ads were already prevalent before Citizens United. There is legislation to provide for Federal financing of campaigns for Congress, the Fair Elections Now Act, but I don't think it will get too far: incumbents like the advantages they have which this legislation would reduce, and libertarians don't like the idea of the government paying for elections.

What I want is the equivalent of multilateral nuclear disarmament. Elections should be reduced to a period of three months (six including the primaries), with no paid advertisement whatsoever on political topics. The television stations should be required to put the candidates on in public forums (and get paid for their time). On this issue, I am willing to support measures in the interim which offset the disastrous trend that I see, but I will not let go of it until this poison on our political system is purged.

My Donation Strategy in 2012
I ignored virtually all appeals for money last year--I'm not interested in fattening anyone's war chest, as that just makes them more eager to do battle with their money. I will not be able to lay off entirely this year, as this election is--or could be--very consequential; however, I intend that any money I give this year will be accompanied by a personal statement (there are lots of opportunities to do it) that my #1 issue is campaign financing, and that I expect the candidates I support to be in favor of humans' political expression in years to come.

Today's Primary
I've already expressed my opinions enough: I don't expect today's Florida primary to change anything. Newt, Santorum, and Paul will hang around for a longer or shorter time, possibly doing some additional damage to Romney, but I feel that the outcome is inevitable. For the record, my prediction for Florida: Romney 41, Gingrich 34, Santorum 13, Paul 11. Santorum has done pretty well and will get some sympathy vote despite this being a winner-take-all primary in which he has no chance. Paul has already moved on to Maine, a caucus state in which he believes he can score some delegates.

79 Things Upon Which "We" All Can Agree

2012-01-23T20:55:00.011-07:00

Last week, returning from a business trip, I needed a magazine to read. Esquire had a cover with the heading "An Issue for our Divided Times" and the related cover story "Agree: Bill Clinton and 78 Other Thing We Can All Agree On".

I picked it up: I'm looking for areas to broaden the "new consensus", and ya gotta like the preposition they ended their title with(see above!) Anyway, Bill Clinton was a good choice for their theme: even Newt Gingrich, his nemesis, seems to remember Clinton fondly, and, since he got a bit older, Clinton's testosterone seems to have given him a break, releasing him from his sex addiction (or was it the open-heart surgery and the vegetarian diet that did it?), and allowed him to turn his talents wholly to worthy pursuits.

So, yeah, I read the opening interview with Bubba and the editors' promise that they would present 78 other "things that, regardless of party, region, or class, we can agree are great, lousy, true, false, beautiful, stupid, delicious, or crazy."

Alas. There wasn't much more upon which to build a political consensus. Turns out "we" are the Esquire readership--or their perception of it--which is a moderate, metrosexual, manly sliver of our society. Not that I have anything against that particular fragment; they're better than many. It's just not a sort of a "we" that one would recognize as being representative of American society.

Very little of it was political, none of it a statement as clear as their choice of Clinton. Most of it, as you'll see, was tendentious opinion about stuff that doesn't matter much or about their taste in the arts, drinking, and fashion. You'll also see that they started pretty well (put their good ones up front), then lost the thread, and then they wandered into a bunch of random short pieces they had lying around.

I'll try to categorize the other 78 (either quoted or paraphrased) in a few groups and give a little backing thought to my classification. Starting positively,

We Do/Should All Agree:
#1 Bill Clinton. see above
#5 "The electoral college should be abolished." Score one for Esquire!
#7 "Boss (on Starz) is as good as anything...on HBO." (see my recent post on that show, and note my comments on the Oscar nominations made this week)
#21 "the worst...Followed closely by the NCAA." (see #20 below, or my posts on the subject)
#22 "SNL is pretty good these days." Could've been written 25 or so of the past 35 years, but I will admit that my children have caught the bug in the last year or so.
#24 Navy Seals. OK, I get the point of this one (OBL); you need say no more.
#26 "Tina Fey is a national treasure."
#40 The National Parks.
#42 "Turkey: Also the Man." Corny line, but the sentiment is right (see #41 below, and Rick Perry should read the argument--it's short, Rick.)
#56 Bruce Springsteen. Yes; anyway, this is someone on whom everybody used to agree, 25-30 years ago.
#66 "There's no way to master all the...data in the world." They've got an article about someone who's trying to do that, and they're justifiably skeptical.
#69 "...Dr. Ralph Steinman deserved his Nobel Prize." He's the guy who died after they decided to award him, before he found out about it. No reason to penalize him just because his luck was all-time bad.
#73 "Larry Summers is an a--hole." Even Larry would agree, objectively speaking.
#75 Martin Scorsese. Probably someone doesn't like his movies; that person would probably hate all movies.

We Agree to Some Extent, That Is, I Agree:
#4 "The Sarah Palin episode in American politics is a bafflement." Yes, but I disagree that it's over.
#9 "Sooner or later, the Monday after Super Bowl must become a national holiday." The Stupid Bowl should be played every year on Feb. 13--they don't need it to be a holiday because it starts in the evening!--and Feb. 14 the men should make up for it with a holiday for their women.
#12 "Kids, Career, Marriage: In That Order." That's fine for those with kids, I guess, but that's not everybody.
#13 "Kevin Durant is the best combination of talent and personality in sports today." He's good, all right, but what about Derrick Rose?
#19 "...you can always find one area of agreement between polar opposites." Cute graphic with Venn diagrams--the best one is the intersection of Tim Tebow and Lady Gaga, being "Shoulder pads have their uses."
#23 "The United States needs an active manned space program. With its own spaceships." Well, not exclusively so, but we should have our own.
#37 "Men are Men." Dissing the trend of faddish articles about the disappearance of men; I do agree about the recent lead article "The End of Men", in The Atlantic, by a woman who led men on about commitment for most of her life and then decided it was better that she should never marry.
#41 "Mark Wahlberg is the man." I've grown to respect him since Boogie Nights.
#44 "Howard Schultz is the most interesting billionaire in America." He's OK, but there are others.
#54 "Screening for Cancer, like screening for a lot of other diseases, ain't all it's cracked up to be." The point being, what's the point of detecting if you can't do anything about it? It does absorb a lot of money, certainly.
#57 "In retrospect, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are the biggest mistakes our country has made in our lifetimes." Some of us are old enough and would argue that Vietnam was a bigger mistake (at least 5X the US deaths); and, to nitpick, the first war with Iraq was no mistake.
#58 "Most people really shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a handgun."
#63 "Marijuana should be as legal as cigarettes or alcohol."
#68 Roast Chicken. Well, I like it, anyway.
#70 "There is nothing we all agree on." They give some good examples of things most, but not all, people agree about, but then why did they make this whole piece trying to argue the contrary? Because it would/might sell more magazines, surely.
#71 "We can all agree to hate a few things." They give 15 examples, and true to form, it's about 20% each for Yes/Maybe/No Way/Who Cares?/What are you talking about? This post is already too long, or I'd give examples, and Esquire hasn't put the list on its website yet.
#79 "Things are not so bad." I agree, though I don't think that many others do--but does that make the pessimists right? I'll give Esquire some credit here for arguing a minority point of view, though it's hardly the case that "we" all agree.

Totally disagree:
#3 Chris Christie owes his popularity to being fat. Quite the contrary.
#6 "Bono should sing more, talk less, and never write at all." Sure, sing, but I actually like his writing in the Times. They're jealous they didn't score him.
#10 "The Obama presidency has been a disappointment for everyone involved." I read that as meaning "for everyone" (and of course I disagree); if they mean everyone in the Administration I think they have to back that up a bit.
#11 "Even if he's accomplished more...than any of his five predecessors." That's what I was talking about!
#14 "Whoever rebranded rich people as 'job creators' should win some kind of award..." No, that person should be fired, then shot, then eaten.
#20 "Banks are the worst." My self-serving opinion: not all banks! More objectively: Insurance companies are the worst, and particularly health insurance.
#25 "Baltimore is America's next great underdog city..." I've heard some people speak well of it, but I'm not convinced of its greatness nor its uniqueness. Cleveland?
#27 "Economics isn't dismal; it's foolish." No, you are! It's not foolish to try to understand economic behavior, it's just sad that there is so little agreement about this "science"--for example, it should not be allowed for someone who calls himself an economist to say that reducing tax rates will not reduce tax revenue.
#45 "Nobody ...replaced..what the young Eddie Murphy brought to movies." Certainly it wasn't done by the older Eddie Murphy, but I do think there are claimants.
#46 "The same can probably be said for Julia Roberts." I was never a big fan, though she did a good Erin Brockovich impersonation.
#48/#49 "Everybody roots for Jennifer Anniston...and wonders why nothing...ever works out for her." I like her OK--no strong feelings--but not everyone does.
#50 "Same for Billy Joel." OK, the same for me, too, but from a different starting point: not everyone feels the same.
#51 Woody Harrelson: Who Doesn't Love Him? OK, the same again. Some really don't like him. Actually, Esquire just wanted to use the interview they had with him. It was kind of interesting, not as surprising as they think: he's trying to live clean but finds it hard to do.
#55 "Past Results are no indication of future performance." examples being Robert Downey, Jr., Indianapolis Colts, Lindsay Lohan, and Mitt Romney's former position in favor of abortion. As an empiricist, I must object and argue that the seeds of the reversal of fortune of each were always present.
#59 "There are so many instances when medium rare is not the call." If they're talking about beefsteak, I disagree: it's always the call.
#60 "They Greeks can f--k off for all we care." Some--Greeks, people who care about their indirect effects on the US economy--would disagree, and I'm one (no, not Greek).
#61 "After all this...scripted dramatic television is the most satisfying of all the entertainment media." I'll take movies, music, and TV sports over that one.
#76/#77/#78 "Tim Tebow has us all riled up about football (and God) again....soccer is really going to be big in this country...even though we all agree that's not true." Three statements that couldn't all be true, though they could be, and are, all false.

Couldn't Care Less:
#15 "The 100th birthdays of Julia Child, David Packard, and Fenway Park are worthy of celebration." Most would choose 1 of the 3.
#16 "Not to mention those of Arizona and New Mexico." 1 of 2, and I'm partial to that one.
#28/#29/#30 (see #27) Ezra Klein worship. He's OK, but the whole thread was lame.
#32/#33 Russell Banks. Lyle Lovett. No explanation--tell me why. Like or no like?
#34/#35/#36 "It's still better to read the paper on paper...Especially The New York Times, the only essential newspaper left. Except for the Harrisburg Patriot-News." Basically, just filler: on #34, I'm changing my mind; on #35 I can't really say it's the only one, and I've been reading it almost exclusively online for years, and regarding #36, I know nothing about Harrisburg's paper; do you think anyone else does?
#38 "You can ask a man anything except how much money he made last year." Go ahead and ask, if you want. What about asking a woman?
#52/#53 "No cocktail should take more than 45 seconds to make"; picture, recipe of some (unnamed) cocktail with egg whites, sugar, half and half, Heyman's Old Tom gin, etc.
#62 "Berenice Bejo should be in more movies". They have a nice picture of her in a negligee and a short interview. (she's the wife of the director of The Artist and stars in it)
#64 "Everybody loves a good dip." They have a recipe they like for pimento (sp) cheese dip.
#67 They've got an article about a new Jeopardy! hero who taught himself all the subjects he didn't know.

Buh?
#2 "J.B. Smoove and Larry David are the best black-white duo since Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder...."
#8 Siri. No further comment necessary? Do we love it, hate it, or ignore it? I couldn't tell. Maybe I should ask Siri what they are talking about...
#17 "Speaking of Arizona Muse." (see #15/16 above)
#18 The Egg McMuffin. See #8 Siri above. They show a picture with lots of them; is that supposed to make me hungry or puke?
#31 "The moment you hit the water." Sometimes good, sometimes (like when it's freezing, when you bellyflop, when you fall from 300 ft. up) not so much.
#39 "The Tiny-Suit thing is getting a little silly." I have no idea what they are talking about.
#43 "Ashley Greene can go any way she wants to, it's all up to her." picture of a fetching woman in a body suit (last month's cover model?)
#47 Watermelon. Some like it, some loathe it, even without the seeds.
#65 "Counter-terrorism is getting complicated." It always has been. They have a researched article on four old white geezer would-be militiamen who got stung by a provocateur and a guy from Homeland Security on the make. It's just complicated because they're white and not Muslim.
#72 Tim Gunn. They have his picture; I don't recognize him at all.
#74 "Sinclair Lewis was right: It carries the cross and comes wrapped in the flag." I looked this up: the reference is to "When fascism comes to America...", but this is a truism: it was the case when fascism came anywhere, that's always how it came. So we can agree, but it doesn't mean much.

The Final Tally:
We all Should/Do Agree--14
We Agree To Some Extent, That Is, I Agree--17
Totally Disagree--21
Couldn't Care Less--16
Buh?--11

A Spherical Oscar Re-Preview

2012-01-19T09:23:00.005-07:00

The Golden Globes awards last Sunday provide a good view into the Oscars. Not so much into the nominations, which will be announced soon and should be already fully baked, but the format of the Globes' top movie awards, though, with separate categories for Drama vs. for Comedy/Musical, helps identify the two top contenders for Best Picture, Actor and Actress. (Other categories like Director, the Musical ones, and Supporting Actor/Actress, strangely, are combined into one award; also Screenplay, which Oscar breaks into Original and Adapted).

So, it would seem that Best Picture will end up a showdown between The Artist and The Descendants, that Best Actor will be between Artist's Jean Dujardin and Descendants' George Clooney, and that Best Actress will end up being a battle between The Iron Lady's Meryl Streep and My Week With Marilyn's Michelle Williams. I would buy into each of those as a current state of play assessment.

While the movie-about-a-movie gambit in Artist plays well with Hollywood's movie industry population, I do not think its silent French accents will do quite as well as it did with its foreign press (the voters for the Golden Globes). I see it winning for Musical Score and Art Direction, but Clooney, Payne and Company winning the big awards. Director could be interesting: Marty Scorsese won for Hugo at the Globes and his chances should not be discounted, but he was (finally) recognized a couple of years ago for The Aviator, so he's not owed. Woody Allen would get some consideration--he should be nominated--but for his habit of dismissing award shows. I like Alexander Payne's chances, but I'd be thrilled if Terence Malick pulled off a surprise (for Tree of Life) and will be disappointed if he is not at least nominated.

The Globes showed that sentiment is running low for J.Edgar, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (was it too late to be considered for the Globes?) The Help would have been a serious contender for top honors except that it was released too soon. It's too soon for me to admit that my initial foray into the previews, before most of the movies were even released, missed the mark, but it doesn't look good for my advocacy of Gary Oldman in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

The award for Best Animated Film is usually a formality, but this year's contest could be a spirited one between the production starpower of Steven Spielberg/Peter Jackson for The Adventures of Tintin, challenged by two critically-approved comedies, Puss 'N Boots and Rango. My kids' vote is for P'NB: that's who should decide the category (not my kids, specifically, but kids).

Finally, I think the Globes' Foreign Language film award for A Separation from Iran would be a likely indicator (though the Oscars' electorate is mostly American, and thus automatically anti-Iranian, the movie's director made a good move by choosing to make a political statement on behalf of his people--and implicitly against the regime). Wim Wenders' Pina was not nominated for the GG's but may have an outside chance in the Oscars.

Besides being a good indicator of final Oscar winners, the Golden Globes also tops off the television award season with a few select awards. The only one I want to comment on was the one given to Kelsey Grammer for Best Actor in a Series for his role in Boss. This searing drama--seen, I'd imagine, by few people on the Starz network--and Grammer's performance as a ruthless, corrupt Chicago mayor fighting off intrigues from his rivals and a hidden, debilitating illness is far from a reality show, much more dramatic than something like The Wire--almost Shakespearean in its archetypal situation and its high-stakes political battles. The show hooked me from the start and left me with my jaw dropped by the end of most of its eight episodes.

Ricky Gervais' hosting was deemed somewhat tame this year. I think it was mostly perception--the element of surprise was gone for those watching him; the talent was laying for him (and for Harvey Weinstein, who was getting abused mercilessly all night for his usual vote manipulative tactics). It seemed that the crowd of stars, starlets, and production folk were having a great time getting sloshed. More power!

I've Seen Enough

2012-01-18T10:33:00.011-07:00

I watched the Republican candidates' debate the other night on Fox News, and my conclusion is that I don't need to see any more of them. The entertainment value of these telecasts has dissipated, and their political importance is evaporating very quickly.

The name of the game Monday night (MLK Day) was for each candidate to try to one-up the others by showing he was more "conservative"--in the South Carolina context, this meant more militaristic, more xenophobic, lower on taxes for their flat rates, cutting more from government assistance programs, putting responsibilities and authorities with states rather than the Federal government. Everyone except Ron Paul joined in the game at every opportunity, and the large, vocal crowd applauded the red meat being thrown out to it.

Mitt Romney, with a big opportunity to exploit his opponents' divisions, win a plurality in South Carolina, and get an even stronger hold on the lead for the nomination, generally showed himself willing to match his most rabid opponents. A good example was his flat refusal to consider negotiations with the Taliban. As President, he will no doubt see things differently, but in SC it was more politic to refute his foreign policy advisor's position (he blamed it on VP Biden and ignored his advisor's position stated in the question) and stick with a determination to fight and eliminate them (something well beyond our capability). He was caught out once, by Rick Santorum, advocating a tougher position on voting by felons than he actually administered as Massachusetts Governor, but that's one issue that is truly a state-administered one, so his position as President would be legally irrelevant.

Paul was certainly willing to play when it came to taxes--the others merely suggested tax reductions, but he said "why not a 0% rate?"--to service and aid reductions, and to devolution to states. He challenged the consensus and the crowd, though, on our military policy. He argued against "these undeclared wars", the huge quantity of overseas bases, and the concept that spending more on military brings improved defense of our country. His argument to apply a Golden Rule toward other nations was heckled and booed, but Paul is contributing something new to the debate of what is truly "conservative", something the national party is unwilling to consider but that many of the party faithful--and probably a growing number--will find attractive.

The worst of the worst was Rick Perry. Pandering to the evangelical base by arguing that the Obama Administration has "a war on religion" and that we can have "no space" between our policy in the Middle East and Israel's--something which is hardly going to assist us in making peace there--these things are nothing more or less than we should expect from his limited political strategy options at this point. Fox's Brett Baier threw him a poisoned piece of bait with a question about religiously-motivated violence in Turkey, and Perry went for it. He accused Turkey of being like "Islamic terrorists", questioning whether he would allow them to stay in NATO. The Muslim-baiting got by the crowd without a murmur, but the comments did not escape the notice of political forces in Turkey, one of our critical allies, a democracy, a major regional power in the Middle East and one generally having a positive influence on international affairs. Again, his pandering to the evangelicals is totally expected, but his willingness to advocate outrageous and poorly-considered policies is, once again, clear evidence that he is in over his head. Fortunately, it seems he has no chance of success in SC, and I would presume he will pull out shortly (as he did--for 12 hours or so--after his failure in Iowa).

As for the other two jokers, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, there are several points to make. One is that both can be reliably expected to be "bold" in coming up with extreme positions. They are very interested in pointing that out, and they are having some success--apart from the activity of hammering away at the presumptive nominee and exposing his weaknesses. I think there is emerging the possibility of a tag-team strategy between the two which would have some hope of countering Romney, state by state: Gingrich would hammer Romney in the "Santorum states", Santorum hacks at Romney in "Gingrich states". Newt's states would be the Southern ones, Santorum's the Midwest, Rust Belt, and others where the social issues predominate. If their combined efforts--and they are very close allies, probably just couldn't agree that one should drop out in favor of the other--can keep Romney from winning most of the states by focusing the "anti-Romney, non-Paul" forces in each on a single candidate, they might be able to prevent Romney's attaining the votes for a first-ballot victory.

I don't really see that as a big success, though; either would likely be a worse President than Romney, if it came to that; from the Republicans' point of view, either would be a weaker opponent to Obama. And it would put Ron Paul in the potential role of kingmaker--it probably wouldn't work to the benefit of either Santorum or Gingrich.

In other words, I'm getting used to the idea that Romney will be the major party opponent, and I think any plausible alternative (other than fantasy scenarios like a stalemate, no candidate nominated, complete fracture in the party) would be worse. Romney has plenty of exposed weaknesses that make him look very much like a true successor of Bushism: his advocacy of tax reductions for the wealthy and corporations, his history of flip-flopping, his support of big government Republicanism. We don't need this charade to continue, and its ability to hold our interest is over.

With God on Their Side

2012-01-08T21:09:00.006-07:00

The much-anticipated Saints-Lions game was indeed a good one, but the clear highlight of NFL's Wild Card weekend was the last game between the Steelers and Tim Tebow's Denver Broncos.

The Broncos played boldly and well, and Tebow's passing put his critics to shame, but the Steelers managed a late comeback to tie the score. I think Pittsburgh's destiny was sealed, though, when they essentially chose to let the clock run out on the last play of regulation time, setting up an ineffectual Hail Mary that never happened on the last play rather than trying an improbably long field goal. Clearly they decided to trust in fate.

Fate was not kind, though. The Steelers lost the coin toss to begin the overtime, and on the first play from scrimmage, the Broncos connected on an improbable 80-yard pass and run touchdown to end it.

Tebow's famous prayers were once again answered. Unlike how I feel about politicians doing it, I don't mind sports heroes giving praise to the Lord(s) as they see Him/Her/It/Them, even if it's kind of boring for the rest of us to hear. They have been blessed in some form, and it is humility that is appropriate, if sincere, that they give credit to something beyond themselves.

My only regret about it is that I hadn't posted my feelings going into the game. I heard all the "experts" picking the Steelers, but I didn't like the combination of Rothlisberger's unreliable leg (I think it was a bit of a factor, though not major), the absence of the Steelers' top running back, Denver's home field, and Tebow's dangerous karma and competitive instincts (they were on full display in the critical game against the Bears I saw some three weeks ago). I did post my qualms about the Steelers' chances in a comment after my last post of 2011.

With All That Time, This Was the Best You Could Do?

2012-01-06T21:42:00.004-07:00

Iowa's Republicans did accomplish something with the endless run-up to their exciting, symbolically important, but practically meaningless caucuses this week. The combination of a long campaign and dozens of debates did serve Iowa's traditional purpose of eliminating candidates not ready for the marathon ahead. Cain, Bachmann, and Pawlenty were winnowed out, with Perry and Gingrich's runs probably permanently crippled. These are good things.

Still, the anti-Romney forces in Iowa had a very long time, reviewed several potential options, and the one they ended up choosing was....Rick Santorum? Sanctimonious P. Rick?
This has to be one of the worst ideas for a major party Presidential contender in history. As Larry Sabato pointed out today, Santorum's defeat in 2006 by Bob Casey was historically bad; the 17+ percent margin was the second-worst defeat by an incumbent Senator in two decades.

It's not just that his political positions are odious, though they clearly are. His manner is off-putting, a combination of arrogance, prudery, and whininess that is going to be very unpopular once people get to know him. He affects a stance of moral superiority, yet his ethics are demonstrably defective. He has extreme positions on social issues--about which most Americans are tired of fighting--and nothing useful to say about economic issues, the ones for which Americans truly hunger for ideas. Foreign/military policy? He claims expertise, but again has little to say.

I've held off from condemning his candidacy because his level of support was nonexistent; I mistakenly thought he was going nowhere fast. With his win (I think the recount may show that, instead of losing by 8 votes, he actually won, though the count is just a popularity contest with no delegate implications), he will gain some additional support, some money, but he has no organization, no natural base, no plan. And he's the one who's supposed to stop Mitt Romney?

Gingrich went to New Hampshire for the purpose of going after Romney one more time; I see him dropping out and endorsing Santorum before South Carolina votes. Rick Perry is skipping NH but has decided to contest SC--some claim it is to help Romney, which it will do, nominally (though he won't get many votes). I don't think he has anything that complicated in mind; he's just never lost an election before and doesn't know that once you get beaten, you stay beaten. Huntsman still hasn't given moderates a credible reason why they should choose him, and there aren't that many of them left in the party, anyway.

So, it will quickly boil down to Ron Paul, Romney, and Santorum, as long as he lasts. If Romney wins SC, Florida and Nevada will follow and it will be over quickly. If Santorum can somehow win SC, though, or yield to someone who can (though I don't know who--Huckabee?), it could go on for awhile. But I think that the Iowa result basically has put Romney onto a path to the nomination that he would have trouble losing.

Hopes for a New Year

2012-01-01T21:26:00.002-07:00

I've got a lot of them, even limiting myself to those I'd choose to post on this blog. I may post some follow-ups later.

Sports
First, of course, my Reds: Though I'm not crazy about either of the pitcher swaps they made in the offseason (with Cubs and Padres), I think they are going into the 2012 season with both a decent pitching staff and a good everyday lineup. With the Brewers, Cardinals, and Cubs all weakened, I think they could win the division this year. I don't see them as World Series material, but once in the playoffs, there's always a chance (just see the example of the Cardinals last year).

Chelsea has basically blown its chances in the Premier League--last weekend's embarrassing 3-1 loss at home to Aston Villa being just the latest evidence--but, it is the leading surviving team in the Champions League. They should de-emphasize the League matches and focus upon the Champions League--their next matchup will be against Napoli, and that will require all their ability. The Blues have plenty of offense, but have been subject to sudden lapses on defense, way too often.

In college basketball, I have very high hopes for my regular teams: Kentucky, Louisville, Syracuse, and on behalf of my parents' alma mater, Indiana (I'm OK with them since Bobby Knight left). In the next poll, I think SU and UK will be 1-2, with U of L and IU in the top 10. So, I'm not just thinking rooting interest in the Final Four, but a possible title. The Tar Heels and Buckeyes appear to be the chief rivals, and I will enjoy seeing them fall.

NBA-wise, I'm very optimistic about the upcoming season. The players and coaches don't like the heavy, short regular season necessitated by two months' loss of play, but I do.

US Politics
I know I shouldn't get my hopes up about the behavior of this nation's electorate, but I feel that there's a decent chance the Republicans could get a well-deserved repudiation this year. I stand by the viewpoint that they had forfeited their privilege of governing by 2008 and have not done anything to change that since then.

Really the only reason for my optimism is the weak field they are putting out for the Presidential nomination this year. Where President Obama should be in a nearly-desperate situation given the domestic economy (unfair, but it's reality), I see him winning easily against any candidate except Romney, and I see his chances as better than 50-50 even against him.

The bad news is that the campaign up until now could not have gone better for Mitt, and if things don't change soon (by South Carolina), he will have the nomination practically won by Feb. 1. And in the Palmetto State (a/k/a the Hardcore Confederate State), it appears that the right-wingers (Santorum, Perry, Gingrich, and Paul) will split their votes, giving Romney a chance for a win he clearly should not expect. If he can somehow win there, Florida's primary will wrap it up for him.

Romney will present a challenge in critical Mideastern and Upper Midwestern states (PA, OH, MI, IA, maybe WI) that Obama would badly need for a safe Electoral College victory, and it appears that there will be nearly unlimited funds from Super PAC's to buy an advantage. If Obama loses a couple of those, he might have to pick up VA, AZ or FL (beyond states like CO, NM, NV).

And, the general election campaign could go very badly for Romney, opening the way for a decisive victory on the order of the one Obama produced in 2008 in spite of everything. If that happens, the Democrats could regain the House and hold onto the Senate. I actually think there's a chance for the Democrats to retain a Senate majority even in a close Presidential race.

I kept a stone wall against campaign contributions in 2011 (with one minor exception for Emily's List), but I will be loosening the wallet a bit this year. This is not because I can suddenly afford it, and I hate--absolutely hate--the fact that the Obama Administration has not made a move to challenge the current campaign finance regime (or lack thereof). I'm only going to do it because it's necessary, and I will try to be tactically astute and strategically sound. The fact that Ben Nelson has decided not to run again in Nebraska helps--now I can give to the DSCC without fear that it will be wasted on DINO's. Frankly, I felt that all those appeals to give before some arbitrary deadlines in 2011 were phony and unconvincing.

My hope is that after the totally expected orgy of negative ads and obscene levels of spending in 2012, both parties will turn, exhausted and bleeding, to legislation that will somehow limit the ugliness in future elections. It will be my #1 political priority, and I hope it will enter Obama's list as well--after, of course, he makes the most of the current monstrous system this year.

Finally, on a local level, I'm waiting to see how the Congressional districting turns out in my section of the northwestern Chicago suburbs before I decide whether I will retain my New Mexico voter registration (I certainly could do so), or switch to the area where I'm working and spending most of my time. If I get a chance to vote against Joe Walsh, or against Bobby Schilling (see my 2010 election post for the significance of the latter), that would be interesting. Otherwise, the Senate race in NM will be a close and a critical one.

Economic and International Politics
My hopes are more for GDP growth than reduction in unemployment or a big stock market rally. The key thing is to avoid a new recession, and I think that should be possible.

As far as the Euro is concerned, I will think there may be some triage, with Greece being reluctantly jettisoned (as I've suggested, that could be a big opportunity for Turkey), and with Italy and Spain salvaged. The nations (excepting Britain) are reluctantly going to allow stronger regional control over national budgets, and that is a formula that will ultimately solve the problem. Britain may decide to seek something like an associate membership, along with Sweden, Turkey, Greece, and a couple of others: trying to get the benefits of trade without the political mess.

I'm going to continue along this rather outlandish tangent of predictions and suggest a couple unexpected countries where the spirit of rebellion against unjust authority will rise: Russia (it's started, but I think/hope it will go much further) and Israel. I hope (but don't expect so much) there will be some sort of progress in the talks to make peace in Afghanistan, with participation of some Taliban elements, Pakistan, India, and Iran.

Personally, I want to wish the best for all friends and family--health, wealth, and happiness!

Sports Report

2011-12-30T21:19:00.003-07:00

Among the campaign promises President Obama has failed to fulfill, the one that is most painful to me is any absence of effort to fix college football's Broken Championship S---bag. Seriously, there are more important gaps, but he really should make the BCS illegal by Executive Order, or put out a contract for it to be demolished by a drone or something.

This year's messed up championship game will feature a game that was already played and wasn't very interesting. I don't doubt that Alabama and LSU are the two best teams--basically, the regular season proved that, while there may be more productive offenses, they were the only two with defenses capable of shutting down top offenses.

The results show just how much the SEC now dominates national college football. They could make the whole controversy a lot simpler by just crowning the SEC champion--even simpler, the SEC West champion. No need for conference championship or any of the BCS nonsense.

Actually, I don't really care about the BCS muck-ups, and it's really no worse than the inconclusive Bowl arrangements that preceded it (except they didn't have the slimy sponsorships in their names back then). What I resent is the negative effect on basketball's organization that the unseemly scramble to participate in the automatic-berth BCS football conferences has had. As an ex-hoopster, President Obama needs to stand up and be counted--not to create some new integrity around big-time college football, which corrupts everything that it touches, but to preserve other intercollegiate sports from its stench.

So far, we've had a couple weeks of Nothing Bowls between Whoever and Whatever and sponsored by Who Cares? College football underlined its ineptness by completely punting all its traditional January 1 games to January 2 so as not to offend the networks or Big Daddy NFL. That being said, there are two BCS games that should be entertaining to watch: the Rose Bowl between Oregon and Wisconsin, and the Fiesta Bowl between Oklahoma State and Stanford. I'm pretty resistant to the appeal, but not totally immune.

NBA: Nothing's Been Anticipated
If they hadn't built a new, hard-won 10-year collective bargaining agreement around 82-game regular seasons and their associated economics, I think all would've found the 66-game scramble this year to be a superior product. It's going to be intense--the way it should be--and none of the teams will be able to do much slacking. I like the way the abrupt start to the season has not allowed too much hype to precede the real action, as opposed to, say, the Republican nomination process.

While I was very critical of the owners and their bargaining stance during the lockout, which was basically necessitated by their own incompetence in negotiating and signing talent and their inability to share revenues, I was not as critical of league Commissioner David Stern. Since then, Stern inserted himself controversially in blocking a trade of All-Star point guard Chris Paul to the Lakers, taking advantage of the league's ownership of Paul's 2011 team, the New Orleans Hornets, to prevent a new superteam forming to oppose the player-created monster of last year, the Miami Meltdowns.

Speaking of meltdowns, one of the most interesting storylines will be the Oklahoma City Thunder, which have emerged in their short history since moving from Seattle through the development of the best scorer in the league, Kevin Durant. The Thunder surprised most everyone last year by reaching the Western Conference finals, but then their chemistry deteriorated, and it's unclear whether they will get it back together again. Miami, on the other hand, looks to have learned its lessons, and with a second year of experience playing together, the Big 3 of LeBron, LeWade, and LeBosh are the league favorites once again; this time it appears to be justified.

One team that seems unlikely to stop them this year is the defending champions, the Dallas Mavericks, who lost the key mid-year addition of last year's team, Tyson Chandler, and picked up some unneeded veterans. Similarly appearing unready are perennial contenders San Antonio Spurs and the Lakers themselves.

The team most likely to stop Miami would be the Eastern Conference runner-ups, the Chicago Bulls, which return their nucleus,featuring MVP Derrick Rose, and have added some good additional pieces.

Finally, there are several other teams ascendant, something that warms Stern's heart: the Pacers, the Knicks, the Hawks, the Warriors, the rebuilt Nuggets, and, most importantly, the Clippers, who ended up with Paul in a trade Stern deemed acceptable for league dynamics. None would appear to be championship contenders, but their development makes for better economics and better early-round playoff matchups.

NFL: Networks' Friends Livestrong!
This postseason will mark an important test: whether the dominance of top quarterbacks is absolute or just a feature of the regular season. The Green Bay Packers, with Aaron Rodgers, and the New England Patriots, with Tom Brady, emerge with the best records in each conference, despite having two of the worst defenses (as measured by yards allowed to opposing offenses). The question is whether this formula will allow them to win in the playoffs and reach the Super Bowl, or whether the classic norm, that defenses win chmpionships, will still apply this season.

The Packers and Patriots do have a predecessor, Peyton Manning's Indianapolis Colts, which were able to outscore opponents and reached two Super Bowls, winning one. And, to be fair, one reason the Packers and Pats allowed so many yards on defense is because their offenses were so efficient in producing quick scores that the defense had to be out there a high percentage of plays. Still, the Saints, whose quarterback Drew Brees was almost as supremely effective as Rodgers, were able to produce better defensive results.

There are a couple of teams in each playoff bracket who would appear to have the required capabilities (an adequate starting quarterback, a good running game to control the ball, and a good defense) to defeat the conferences' number one seeds: San Francisco and New Orleans in the NFC, and Pittsburgh and Baltimore in the AFC. But all teams making the playoffs have a shot (see the Cardinals' success this year in baseball), so it's worth mentioning the improbable qualification of the Giants and Broncos, and the unusual postseason presence of the Texans, Lions, Falcons, and Bengals. Postseason experience does matter, though, so I would not like the chances (vs. the odds) of any of these teams except the Giants (who've won the Super Bowl with Eli Manning).

The Big Top in Iowa

2011-12-29T21:35:00.009-07:00

The circus in Iowa is finally reaching its grand finale, and it's clear that there are three rings: 1) the Clown act/trapeze of the rising and falling Tea Party/evangelical dramatic players; 2) the ongoing barker performance of the Romney Show; and 3) the trained dog-and-pony show on the highwire of Ron Paul's libertarians.

I am somewhat amazed by Newt Gingrich's late drop in the polls, as I thought he was somebody that people knew, so that the inevitable dogpile once he emerged from the pack of right-wing hopefuls would not be as effective as it was. I don't even blame Newt for his fall, though his organization was always a vulnerability that massive negative advertising was able to exploit (just like Newt's past).

It is perhaps less surprising that sanctimonious Rick Santorum now has his moment in the sun, even though the polls have recorded only in the last few days; he is a true believer in the religious right credo who has put in his time and effort. The fact that he was routed by 18 points in his last Senate race in Pennsylvania is something he has somehow managed to obscure from those desperate for a trusted white male conservative mouthpiece. Bring him on, I say; we should be so lucky.

Once again, Romney gains from the chaos in the non-Ron Paul/anti-Mitt portion of the Republican electorate. With Romney and Paul each maxed out in the 20-30% range in Iowa, the other 50% could either be split fairly evenly among the four remaining right-wingers (Gingrich, Michelle Bachmann, Santorum, and Rick Perry), which would ensure Paul and Romney finish 1-2 (or 2-1), or someone can dominate among that group and secure a spot to challenge Romney in future primaries in the South and other favorable terrain (like the Midwest, Rocky Mountain states). Gingrich's fading currently makes it look like no one will emerge in Iowa. This will mean that Florida and South Carolina will be the last chances for a surviving right-winger (a couple should drop out no later than New Hampshire's primary) to challenge Romney head-to-head and prevent an early Mitt victory.

Once again, with Gingrich fading and Santorum rising, Paul at the peak of whatever percentage he can draw, and Bachmann and Perry appearing to be close to the end of their runs, it is unclear around whom the anti-Romney, non-Paul faction will rally, and if they don't get it straight very soon, it will be over. Republican establishment politicians all over the country are in line to endorse Romney and get it over with; they are going to need a pretty strong reason to hold off past January.

Drone Wars

2011-12-29T21:35:00.006-07:00

The dramatic increase in use of drones to carry out attacks against terrorists in remote locations--in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia in particular--has brought forward a debate about the morality and future of this form of unmanned warfare.

In its capability to destroy at a distance without much risk to the attacker, it is not that different from missile attacks, which are in turn a direct descendant of artillery fire. Because the remote-control attacker can see the targets at fairly close range before firing, it would seem to have the potential to reduce collateral damage and civilian casualties, a potential upon which today's vague or nonexistent statistics don't convince, one way or the other.

I think that the criticism from some left-wing sources that drones are immoral because they bring no risk for the attackers is wrongheaded. Similarly, I dismiss the argument about how our use of them subjects us to what would be "totally unacceptable" counterattack by other nations' drones sometime in the future. These methods only work because of aerial superiority; they wouldn't be that hard for a defender with strong anti-aircraft or counterforce capability to take out. We are no more wrong to use these forces than we would be to take advantage of our aerial superiority to attack with bombers, cruise missiles, or long-range artillery. So I don't see a qualitative difference in the morality of their use.

Still, like mustard gas, nuclear weapons, or biological weapons, these new capabilities have dangerous implications for the future, and their use could eventually make conflicts more likely and resulting in more casualties. It is not appropriate that the US military may refuse to acknowledge the methods that it uses, or to provide its citizens with data documenting their effectiveness (or lack thereof). I also think that the international community has every reason to seek to regulate their use; I do not know where the discussion will lead--though I think it unrealistic to think there will be universal agreement to ban their use, or that such a ban would be effective--but I think the discussion should be opened, and that we should not be ashamed or furtive about participating in it.

Eric Cantor: Tea Party Sophist

2011-12-20T09:47:00.003-07:00

The history of the extension of the payroll tax reduction is a tangled one, so we should review the facts to understand what the current developments indicate.

The reduction in the payroll tax, by 2% for the year of 2011, had been agreed in the lame duck session in another pressure-filled compromise, for which the Republicans extracted concessions. President Obama saw by mid-year that the economy's recovery remained weak, so he asked for an extension of that tax reduction for another year. The House passed one, a week or so ago, but with riders on it bad enough that the Administration threatened to veto it. The bill could not get to the floor of the Senate, but the Senate did manage to come to an agreement to extend the tax reduction, with some riders:

an extension of unemployment insurance, up to 99 weeks (not the 59 of the House bill);
delaying a provision which would have otherwise reduced payments for doctors providing Medicare services (a perennial fix needed to hold up that costly house of cards);
and a provision requiring President Obama to accelerate the decision on proceeding with a pipeline for sending Canadian oil-bearing sands to the Southeast refineries--Obama sent back the pipeline proposal (known as Keystone XL) for more study on its potential environmental impact.

This agreement was only for two months, but the aim was to keep the tax cut and insurance extension in place so that a longer duration could be negotiated. The main sticking point in the discussion of the tax cut was how to pay for it--the idea of ending the upper-income tax reduction to pay for it was discarded by Republican insistence--the House bill paid for it with cuts to domestic programs. Obama praised the Senate compromise and asked the House to approve it.

Speaker Boehner had given the Senate a nudge to pass something which the House would take up; then, when they passed the compromise he said the House would vote on it.

The Plot Sickens
Boehner has been rebuffed, not once, but twice this week. First, the Senate's bipartisan compromise that he implicitly endorsed was rejected by his party's caucus; then, it rejected his promise that he would allow a vote on the Senate bill. Boehner is hanging on to his leadership by his fingernails; his only hopes to keep this role are: 1) that his Tea Party members will be rejected in the polls in 2012 (which should encourage him finally to stand up to the more extreme views within his party's caucus); or 2) that Eric Cantor enjoys Boehner taking all the heat, with Cantor pulling his strings like a puppetteer.

The House Republicans, clearly feeling the heat of the American public for resisting the extension of the tax cut, found an ingenious way to turn things back to the mode they find more comfortable--applying the pressure and extorting concessions from their opponents. They decided to reject the bipartisan compromise on the basis that the agreement was two months, not 12 months. Then, they constructed the rules such that the votes would be to commit the bill to conference committee, not on the compromise itself.

The debate is instructive on the difference between the two Houses of Congress. Not just the traditional, envious respectful disrespect with which the members refer to the other, but the fundamental difference. With the current Senate rules, and in the absence of a filibuster-proof majority of 60 Senators, the leverage lies with the minority of the minority--in today's Senate, with those few moderate Senators who are willing to work with the Democrats selectively. With the House, all the power is with the majority, but specifically now with the majority within the majority, those radical right-wing Republican House members who seek a very extreme agenda. Those two groups have been placed in direct confrontation by this crisis for the Republicans.

The Democrats' stance now is an interesting one: both their leaders, Nancy Pelosi of the House and Harry Reid of the Senate, are taking the position that they will not appoint their party's conferees now, so this resolution of differences that the Republican position ostensibly seeks would not happen this year. Thus, we have, once again, a game of chicken; the Democrats believe that by continuing to apply political pressure, the Republicans will be forced to come to agreement on terms more amenable to the Democrats--this time.

Truth Behind the Talking Points
When the Democrats say, "The Republicans are to blame for the tax cut not being extended", they mean, "We are happy to be able to give the blame to them, and hope people can understand the convoluted chain of logic which would give it to them."

When the Republicans say, "This two-month extension does not give certainty to job creators", they mean, "We are more than happy to create more uncertainty by blocking any temporary solution."

When the Democrats say, "The Republicans will not permit a clear vote on the Senate bill for fear that it would be approved," they mean, "They don't want a vote against the extension of the tax cut on their records, but we do. We know that, if their discipline is this strong, they would reject the Senate bill now."

When the Republicans say, "President Obama requested the one-year extension, and we are supporting that" they mean, "He changed to the two-month extension when he saw that was all that could be approved now; he and the Congressional Democrats want the 12-month extension as much as we do--in fact, more than we do. The main thing is to turn the pressure around and get control over the other items--how the tax cut would be paid for, getting the pipeline approved."

When the Republicans say, "We want the Senate to do its job and come back," they mean, "we want to pass the hot potato to them so we can go on vacation."

When both sides say, "This extension of the tax cut is needed for our economy's recovery," they mean, "this will not do anything more than help prevent a deterioration, but it's much more important as a political flamethrower to burn the other side."

It's Finally Happening

2011-12-07T18:08:00.007-07:00

My horse in the 2012 Republican nomination race is finally getting some attention. Ron Paul has kept to his business and true to his principles, while all the other Tea Party flaves came and went. Newt's time is still in full blossom, but my sense is that his flavor will be unpalatable to many TP'ers--too unreliable, poor moral sense, too much the man on the white horse for the libertarian flange of the right wing--and many of the supporters of failed candidates like Herman Cain and Rick Perry will drift Paul's way, as someone they can trust at least to uphold his principles--intelligently--whether he has any chance or not.

The latest Iowa poll results have Gingrich at 25%, Paul at 18%, Romney at 16%, but that leaves 41% undecided or clinging to driftwood. I think that Michele Bachmann will stay the course in Iowa and draw about 10%, while about 10% will end up "committed" to non-starters like Rick Santorum, Perry, Huntsman, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, and whatever remains of Cain's candidacy (not officially dead, just practically dead). I believe that Paul, among the three front-runners, will draw the largest share of the remaining 21%, some of whom will be backing lesser candidates but will need to re-group to another candidate when theirs does not meet minimum threshold levels. For one thing, Paul's organization on the ground is superior to Gingrich's, while Romney's organization is flummoxed by its sudden loss of clear front-runner status.

Thus, I now make my official prediction for Iowa: Gingrich 32%, Paul 27%, Romney 21%, Bachmann 11%, Others/Uncommitted 9%. The major media will spin this as a win for Gingrich and Paul and a defeat for the rest. Paul and Gingrich will then battle for a distant second-place finish in New Hampshire a week later. This, and Paul's demonstrated record of fund-raising success, will give him enough impetus to stay in the primaries at least through February and March; all of those, by rule, will have somewhat proportional allotment of delegates.

He should therefore have 10-15% of delegates selected before the "winner take-all" primaries start in April, and potentially 5-7% of delegates if he stayed in the race to the end. This quantity, though small and not enough to get him ever in serious discussion as the nominee, quite possibly could be enough to leave the outcome in doubt if the likely pattern--Gingrich wins big in the South, Romney wins most of the other states--ends up in a close division of delegates.

The question I can't answer is how Paul would utilize his delegate base if he finds himself suddenly in a strategically decisive position. I can't imagine he would want to end his campaign by supporting either one of those guys in such a situation (though I guess he will endorse either once he's won it). In the meantime, for example, Paul logically will spend a lot of time and money going after Gingrich, who is his principal competitor for votes from the right wing. (I would still bet that either Romney or Gingrich would yield to the other, though, taking the VP slot, if it were clear that they could not win--both are consumed with ambition and ideological chameleons.)

Intrade now has Romney with 45% chance of winning the nom (down a third from my last quote here in October), Gingrich up to 35%, Huntsman at 8% (I don't see it), and Paul at 7%, with Bachmann at 2% or so, Santorum at 1%, and nobody else above 0.5%. Though the punditry has missed the significance of Paul's campaign with great consistency, I can't argue that he has a higher chance of ultimately winning than that 7%--in fact, it's probably a bit high. If I were betting, I would've bought into Paul's chances earlier, when he was cheaper (like the 1.7% he had in April), and be looking to take profits the day after the Iowa caucuses, when it will peak.

I would be looking now at a long-shot bet on either Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana or Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, two names that Republi-cons generally of all stripes (and backers of the "Ron Paul Revolution" in particular) could rally behind if Romney-Gingrich looks like a stalemate in the weeks leading up to the convention. Daniels, for example, didn't run after being widely courted because he didn't want to go through the exhausting campaign; Ryan basically said he was too busy being a Congressional scourge. I suspect either would accept the nomination if handed on a silver platter, and neither would be a pushover for President Obama in a general election campaign--Ryan is telegenic and smart, but green; Daniels smart, experienced, and the opposite of telegenic.

Euro Faces Its Music At Last

2011-11-21T08:12:00.002-07:00

I think it was Warren Buffett who said that when the tide goes out, you can see who's been bathing without their swimsuits. So it has been with Europe in these days: we are now seeing the continental Empire's New Clothes to be much less substantial than we thought.

The sins of the Euro, as regards Greece and Italy, were largely committed long ago. The rules of admission, having to do with size of budget deficit and national debt (as a percentage of GDP) were fudged for Italy at the Euro's founding in 1999; then
more brazenly so for Greece when it joined just a couple of years later, then these sins were swept under the rug since.

Now, having let these serial road-can-kickers in the club in the first place, and having compounded the mistake making their admissions irrevocable (instead of maintaining their old currencies, the lira and the drachma, on a shadow basis), the European authorities really have no choice but to make good on their sovereign debts, while compelling the national governments to start to follow the fiscal requirements they should have had to follow all along.

Politically, this is unpalatable in a variety of ways. Most significantly, though, it is that the situation has forced the regional powers that be (really it's the national governments in Germany and France) to impose rather nakedly their power through the European Central Bank. The requirements--for revenue enhancements and spending cuts, particularly for employees in government agencies and enterprises-- placed upon these governments have caused each country's parliamentary government to lose political control, succeeded now by willing, bankerly technocrats without political constituencies.

The austerity being imposed upon Italy and Greece, and the unelected governments that have been chosen to impose them, will no doubt be bitterly--even violently--resented and resisted by those two volatile societies. The irony, commented upon and lamented by some in these days, is that these two nations which in ancient times defined our original notion of what a "republic" is, now have lost political control of their economic destiny.

The fact is that these two countries have had very weak democracies throughout the postwar period; their people were poorly led and not doing much following, either. Like the Soviet workers who pretended to work while their government pretended to pay them, in Greece and Italy the companies and individuals pretended to pay their taxes and their governments pretended to have authority.

For Italy, at least, this crisis has already had one good outcome: what appears to be the definitive exodus from government of the Great Clown, that "Bounder", the Gentleman who is no gentleman, Silvio Berlusconi (it also appears that Umberto Bossi, head of the odious Lega Nord, will oppose the new government, a big plus as far as I'm concerned). The former political opposition, the center-left coalition which has traditionally governed with ineffectual honesty, as the alternative to Berlusconian disrepute and corruption, will have a good opportunity to provide implicit support for the needed reforms in the national interest, so they can claim credit if they work and disavow them if they don't--clearly a good position. Italy is not a player on the world stage, but it is a first-class prize for Europe, and as one of the original six members (with France, Germany, and the Benelux), dismissing it from the club would be unthinkable.

For the Greeks, the failure of the Socialist government will be borne bitterly, as it will be felt to have betrayed its supporters, then fell short of its aims. The right will gain power as a result of the Socialists' failure, but the timing will make its ascension a poison pill. Politically, I see the country wandering in the political wilderness for a long while, which could make it vulnerable both to vindictive forces in Europe looking to punish it, and to its hostile neighbor, Turkey, which now has a well-founded grudge against the EU. If the EU were to punish Greece beyond its capacity to accept humiliation, look for a shocker--a "historic compromise" with the Turks!

What the whole story illustrates is the internal contradiction in today's European Union, with its combination of strong and weak national economies, a centralized currency, and a weak central government. For those who remember the early days of American history, I would suggest that Europe is going through its Articles of Confederation moment. Even the Euro's legitimacy within the EU has big problems: think of how problematic the dollar would have been in those days if Virginia (think: the U.K.) had stayed out. We realized we needed a stronger central government, but it didn't come easily. Our Constitution, mighty as it is today, barely passed in several of the states, and we had to weather our Shay's Rebellion, our Burr-led Western Secession movement.

History doesn't exactly repeat itself, and it could go the other way with Europe, toward fragmentation and reasserted national sovereignty. The stakes are higher today; we're not talking about fledgling republics with a toehold on an undeveloped continent. I say that Americans should continue to provide quiet support and patience for them to work it out, and, most of all, refrain from gloating.

Today Is Admission of Failure Day

2011-11-20T21:39:00.005-07:00

Sometime today, probably in the evening, the co-chairs of the Supercommittee of 12, Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Jeb Hensarling, will come forward, together or separately, and admit that the group has failed in its appointed task to come up with a package of deficit reduction proposals for Congress to review and approve. Technically, they have two more days to get the proposals passed, but House rules require posting a bill 48 hours before it's voted upon, so no posting today means no bill by the deadline of the 23rd, thus its failure.

This result is certainly no surprise; I predicted as much as soon as the concept was announced in the Big Deal Deal of August, even before the members of the committee were named (which basically clinched inertia). I don't fear in the slightest the "mandatory" cuts which must, by law, follow this absence of legislation. I would describe the billion dollars in spending cuts, half from defense, some from discretionary spending, and a tiny bit from Medicare, as "a good start". They won't kick in until 2013, anyway, and the lame duck Congress will change them at the end of 2012, or if not then, whatever Congress comes in after the 2012 elections will change them in 2013. Or not, and I'm fine with that, too.

I would suggest that the Democrats make a surprise ploy in the final hours, one last-ditch attempt to do the Big Deal for real. Half a billion in phased tax increases, half a billion more from restructuring the tax code (details TBD), half a billion from defense, half a billion from discretionary, half a billion in interest saving, and half a billion from Medicare and Social Security combined. It would never pass the committee, or the House, or the Senate, but it has the benefits of simplicity and fairness, and would put the Democrats on the right side of the moral divide.

In time, I think the collapse of the supercommittee's deliberations will be seen as the Pyrrhic victory of Grover Norquist. His "no tax increase" pledge bound all of the relevant Republican Congresspeople such that they could not propose anything that was reasonable. Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania did make a late proposal for $300 billion in increased revenue through removing some tax deductions; I have the feeling he got a waiver from Norquist because it included a clause to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, something which would lose much more than the $300 billion in revenue he claimed to produce, as compared to letting the tax cuts expire through inaction--something which now seems very likely.

It will be Pyrrhic because Norquist's Folk (sounds like a tribe of dwarves), now to be known not as the GOP but the "GNP", as in Grover Norquist Party, will bear the brunt of the failure--which will be manifested by end of day today or tomorrow in the form of a big market sell-off and downgrading of US debt. A few more Republicans will dare to leave his camp of indentured servants, and a few more will end up paying the political price next year. Pretty soon it will be like having voted for the invasion of Iraq--a political embarrassment for those who can't effectively repudiate it. Unpopular as tax increases are, and will remain, the Pledge will be an albatross, an artifact of the decrepit House of Orange.

The Devil We Know

2011-11-16T08:12:00.001-07:00

This Month's Flavor is Amphibian, Hypocritical
I've been avoiding it, trying not to admit it, but the baton has been picked up, this time by someone who knows how to run with it and is unlikely to let it drop.

I have long--very long--kicked around in my mind an idea for a future-oriented story that I probably will never write. The heroes of the story are a couple--an interracial couple--who defy tradition and local custom and dare to become celebrities, working as a team, and put their love out there--too much. Their "transgressions" cause a rupture in society, and a right-wing demagogic leader, called "The Perfesser", leads forces of reaction in the country, rises to power, and brings things to a definitive, self-righteous confrontation with the rest of the world--the only way we can really lose. The Perfesser is the "intellectual" who unleashes the atavistic, anti-intellectual tendencies lying hidden within our society.

This idea goes back beyond the '90's, and I never really saw the Newt as the incarnation of my bad daydream--until now. I didn't see him as that great a threat to our way of life, even at the peak of his power in the 1994-1996 period. He seemed like someone whose appeal was too peripheral, who inspired little trust even among those who were his political allies. His career since that period, on the edge of significance, hasn't suggested the potential that he could re-emerge and do massive damage. His Presidential campaign hardly seemed serious; he seemed more interested in selling his books than convincing us he could win, and he turned over his whole staff in the early days; they left saying that he was not serious.

Perhaps not, but he's just kept up his ego-driven, impassioned, self-righteous invective, and now, with the fading of the other anti-Romney candidacies--Herman Cain being just the latest to lose his shine--Gingrich has risen to the top, like algae. Surely he can be stopped--he can fall short of the target, just as others have done, and his ceiling, in terms of his favorability rating and in the portion of the electorate that might ultimately vote for him would seem relatively low. One thing about Newt, though, is that he will persevere; his campaign to date has shown that.

I would give him little chance in a head-to-head race against President Obama; though Gingrich is a capable debater, he would find Obama more than a match, intellectually, and far better in other dimensions (humanity, military leadership, diplomacy, public policy, familial and moral virtue, etc.) The possibility that a third-party could arise and draw support of moderates could make the election's outcome unpredictable, though.

Gingrich is certainly vulnerable on all these counts. I also give some credence to the notion that, just as Rick Perry seemed less attractive to the right-wing when it came out that he had a human side, willing to help illegal immigrants go to college or young people get HPV vaccines, so Newt Gingrich's history may disqualify him in the minds of some purists for his willingness to peddle influence for Freddie Mac, a government-backed enterprise the right-wing places right at the heart of the causation of the economic crisis of 2008.

I certainly hope so. Because of his ruthless nature, his knowledge of legislative strategy, his big ideas, I consider Gingrich absolutely the most dangerous and destructive of the candidates if he were elected. In Romney and also in Gingrich I see a Nixonian quality: the real person is hidden behind screens, the arguments are for whatever will advance the personal cause, the ambition is relentless. Gingrich is worse than Romney, though, in that personal virtue is totally lacking in him, and I have to believe that he does know what he wants to do. And what he wants scares me.

I was wrong about whose balloon would rise after Cain's, inevitably, began to lose air (his has not totally deflated, but, as a gasbag capable of holding his air, his has little future). I thought it would be Ron Paul's turn, and that may still happen; I'm thinking it may surge with good, though not great, results in Iowa and New Hampshire, particularly if Gingrich turns off his current band of followers, and they turn to someone with greater moral authority and consistent political philosophy.

That would likely be too late, though, if Romney can spin his likely close second-place finish in Iowa as a tactical victory, which will be followed by a big win in New Hampshire. That combination might give him enough momentum to pull off a win on the difficult turf of South Carolina (Cain, Gingrich, and even Perry would seem to have the advantage there): if Romney wins there, it would all be over. Though South Carolina has a track record of deciding contested Republican races, I'd be betting that it will have an inconclusive result this year, which would then make Florida the likely decisive result.

2011 Elections: It Don't Mean a Thing....

2011-11-12T08:11:00.003-07:00

...if you can't get that swing.
Doppa-doppa do-bap a-bop bap boop.
That's the take-away from this week's voting in several states, and the theme for the 2012 elections: the return of the moderate voter, and the essential importance of the swing states' electoral behavior. It's not that the offyear elections we had yesterday were unimportant; sorry, if my title suggested that.

The facts in the key election contests are well documented, because there weren't really that many contests of note.

In Ohio, the voters sided with public employee unions and against Gov. John Kasich and the state legislature, which turned heavily toward the Republicans in 2010. A bill they had passed this year limiting the range of topics those unions could include in collective bargaining was decisively repealed; however, in the other direction, in the same state, ths voters chose in a symbolic vote to support an initiative negating the health insurance mandate of the Affordable Care Act (a/k/a "Obamacare"). That vote is symbolic because the mandate's constitutionality will be determined in the Supreme Court, and state laws about it will ultimately be superseded by Federal law.

In Mississippi, an extremist anti-abortion referendum giving legal protection to all fertilized zygotes went down to defeat. Even strongly pro-life Republican politicians expressed qualms about the referendum, though the state's new governor and pandering Mitt Romney said they supported it.

In Arizona, the state Senator who authored the odious anti-immigrant legislation, Russell Pearce, lost his seat in a recall vote. The person who defeated him was another Republican!

In Maine, another statehouse that had turned Republican in 2010, the law that blocked Maine's beloved same-day voter registration was repealed. In Kentucky, one of the redder states, a Democratic moderate governor won big.

The common thread in all these results was the re-emergence of the voice of the moderate voter. In 2006 and 2008, the swing voters rejected Bushite Misrule and chose Democrats. In 2010, they either rejected perceived excess from the Democrats or, disappointed, stayed home. This year, they seem to have found some topics which moved them.

Committed Democrats and committed Republicans can be counted on to turn out and vote their political passions in any contest where they are at stake. The swing voters can never be taken for granted, but in our political system, anytime they show up to vote and swing to one side or the other, their influence is decisive. This fact explains the persistent effort of President Obama to try to appease moderate factions of the Republicans, to seek compromise, to avoid full expression of his more left-wing views, and to take positions which he knows will irritate his left-wing supporters: It's all about getting and keeping the swing voters, whether independents or moderates from either party.

Next Year: What Could Swing it from Being a Swing Thing
The most probable scenario for next year is a close Presidential election, with serious contests for control of the Senate and the House. The Republicans have the edge for each house of Congress, though the dynamics of the two differ somewhat. The Presidential race, I hope to show, favors Obama as the incumbent, but it is likely to be close and depend on the outcome of a limited number of state contests.

There are four events which would change that scenario--three of them would favor Obama and the Democrats, while only one would put the Republicans in position to take decisive control of both houses of Congress and the White House. The events which would favor the Democrats, in increasing order of probability are as follows:
1) A dramatic improvement in the US economy, with GDP growth over 5% and unemployment dropping from today's 9% to something below 7%.
2) An outbreak of open warfare in Asia, possibly involving some kind of craziness in Pakistan, but more likely involving Israel fighting against (in decreasing order) Iran, Palestinians, Lebanon, Syria, or Egypt. Such hostilities would emphasize Obama's superior handling of international issues (and the Republican candidates unpreparedness); otherwise domestic issues would predominate.
3) The nomination of a looney-tune Tea Party nominee by the Republicans, or the fracturing of the Republicans' unity and a major third-party candidacy by the someone capturing the rump (losing) part of the party. In the category of the former, I would name (in increasing order of likelihood) Santorum, Bachmann, Perry, Paul, or Cain.
The nomination of any of these candidates should ensure an easy Obama victory, probable retention of the Senate, and likely recapture of the House. A split in the Republican party, which could occur either with one of these jokers winning the nomination, or with Romney or Huntsman winning the nomination but not the hearts of the Tea Party, would ensure an easy victory for Obama but Congress would still be in play, as Congressional races would play out tactically according to their local dynamics.

In the other sense, severe additional deterioration in the US economy, with unemployment breaking double digits and negative GDP growth, would likely doom Obama's chances, regardlsss of the degree to which anything he did or failed to do caused that recession.

But Swing Most Likely Be the Thing

Except for the economic alternatives, it is possible for more than one of the above to occur; the economic deterioration would take priority over anything else, but any other combination of would work in Obama's favor. I'd say the chances of none of them happening is upwards of 60%, which prompts our discussion of the states which will decide things in a close race for the Presidency and for control of the Senate.

One-Horse Races
There are a whole bunch of states which are really not expected to be contested in the Presidential race next year. You know, I know, everybody knows--I don't really have to recite them, but I will tell you that sum of their electoral votes, newly reallocated after the 2010 Census, totals 172 electoral votes for the Democrats and 151 for the Republicans. Failure to win any of them, as McCain somehow did with Indiana in 2008, is a clear signal for a landslide win.

There are a couple of important Senate races in these states, though most of them will not end up being close. Two very important ones will be the Democrats' attempt to reclaim the Senate seat held for some five decades by Ted Kennedy but lost to Scott Brown in a special election (Elizabeth Warren looks like a favorite to gain the seat to me, though it might help Brown if Romney is the nominee), and a possible close contest in North Dakota--the seat being given up by Kent Conrad is certainly endangered for the Democrats, but they have a plausible candidate.

Big Leans

These states will have fairly narrow margins, but the direction they should be expected to fall is clear from the outset.
Democrats: New Jersey (14); Minnesota (10). Except for Obama's home state of Illinois, Minnesota is the safest of the upper Midwest states, and Amy Klobuchar should be able to retain her Senate seat. New Jersey could be very close, but I like Dems' chances.
Republicans: Montana (3), Arizona (11), Georgia (16), and Missouri (10). Montana and Missouri have critical Senate races for the Democrats to hold (Tester, McCaskill) if they hope to retain control of the Senate. They will be narrow underdogs in both races, but this extra value in the state will make the Obama campaign work hard there, no matter what their assessment of the overall state of the race. Obama campaign folks claim that they can make Arizona and Georgia competitive because of their strong minority votes, but I don't see it, except in a blowout situation.
(Cumulative: Democrats 196, Republicans 191)

Moderate Leans The election may effectively be won by the ability of the parties to hold these states; if they can't, a break or two in the 50-50 atates won't do the trick.
Democrats: Pennsylvania (20), Michigan (16), Wisconsin (10), New Mexico (5), Colorado (9). Obama will go into the campaign with small leads in these states, and he must hold them. If he does, he will be very close to victory. Two Senate seats the Democrats must hold to keep their majority--the New Mexico one Jeff Bingaman is giving up, and the Wisconsin one Herb Kohl is yielding--will be extremely tough ones, as the Republicans are likely to run moderates--Heather Wilson in NM and Tommy Thompson in WI--who will make things very tough. I see Pennsylvania as the most vulnerable one of this group in the Presidential race, and its loss would be catastrophic.
Republicans: Florida (29), North Carolina (15). The importance of these two is reflected in the parties' choice of Tampa and Charlotte for the Republican and Democratic national conventions next year. I expect the Republicans to name Marco Rubio as their V.P. nominee, to further attempt to lock up that state, without which they will little chance to win. If they don't name him, it will mean something bad about Rubio, or an extremely high level of confidence about the state. Still, they should want to put maximum effort there to try and take the Senate seat from Bill Nelson.
(Cumulative: Democrats 256, Republicans 235).

Total War: The True Swing States
The final five states--New Hampshire (4), Nevada (6), Virginia (13), Iowa (6), and, of course, Ohio (18)--are the ones we'll be watching if the most likely scenarios play out. With the states above allocated as I've shown, Ohio would be an absolute necessity for the Republicans, but the Democrats could win without it. Note that three of them (Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada) are among the first five states to have primaries this year, so their early sentiments will be keenly watched.

If they were not already important enough, three of them--Virginia, Nevada, and Ohio--will have critical Senate races, as well. Nevada is a rare chance for a Democratic gain, while Virginia's battle for Jim Webb's seat--expected to be Tim Kaine vs. George Allen--will be one of the closest, and closest watched. I like Sherrod Brown's chances to hold his Ohio seat, but it will be well contested and his opponent very well financed. I like Iowa for the Democrats and New Hampshire for the Republicans (especially if it's Romney), which would make winning Virginia or Ohio decisive for Obama. I think he can win both, and Nevada, for a final tally of Obama 299, Romney 239, and I think Romney would do better than any other candidate.

As far as the Senate's concerned, I see the Democrats losing Ben Nelson's seat in Nebraska (good riddance), the seat in North Dakota, and I make them slight underdogs in New Mexico, Montana, and Wisconsin, while I make them slight favorites in Ohio, Missouri, Virginia, and for the possible pick-ups of Massachusetts and Nevada. If it plays out that way, the Republicans would net a gain of 3, making it a 50-50 result, with the V.P. breaking the tie for control.

The House is more difficult to handicap than this--and this has not been easy--but I would summarize by saying that the Democrats will find it very difficult to pick up the 25 seats they need without a decisive electoral victory for Obama and the Democratic party. The Democrats' best hope is for more Tea Party candidates--as the Presidential nominee, and in the House.

Sports Update

2011-11-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

With baseball over, NBA unable to get its act together (see below), and college hoops just in its early, it's-really-exchibition-though-the-games-technically-count phase, I'm more or less forced to watch football (thank goodness for soccer, though). So, we'll start with a few comments, and my annual pathetic attempt to pick against the point spread in NFL games.

The Shame of College Football
This season, the question is which is the greatest shame that the sport has suffered? Apart from the usual dose of inappropriate favors to players tolerated by college athletic officials (Ohio State was hit, not nearly hard enough, I'd say), there is also the usual shame of the Big Cheesy Series and the unremediated selection process for the quote-unquote National Championship game. This year, as the candidates progressively eliminate themselves, the quote-unquote looks to be a choice between the blowout matchup of LSU-Oklahoma State or a repeat of the recent "Game of the Century" snoozefest game between LSU and Alabama.

The tragedy of Penn State reached its ugly climax this week, and it was shameful in so many ways: the acts alleged to have been committed, over a very long period, by one of the top assistant coaches; the cover-up, the humiliation imposed on Joe Paterno after 45 hugely successful seasons of coaching; the behavior of the students who rioted in favor of the principle of concealing sexual assaults against children; and let's not even consider the victims' emotional devastation. I've never been much of a fan of the Nittany Lions, though I may have supported them situationally in certain games (and they usually provided good value, as in having sufficient beef to bang with the best of them). Now I've got a new team to root against.

I would select as the greatest shame, though, the unseemly scramble among the various colleges changing conference "loyalties". It's a derivative effect of the BCS folly: most of it is about the colleges from the conferences whose winners do not get one of the eight automatic BCS berths trying to upgrade their status. That, and for all of the major colleges, trying to make sure that their conference has the requisite 12 teams so they can have their big-money playoff game to earn that berth.

The culmination of this travesty is the invitations apparently offered to Boise State and Texas Christian University to be part of the no-longer Big no-longer East. Louisville and Cincinnati (and DePaul and Notre Dame) were pushing it, in basketball, but the departures of the likes of Syracuse and Pittsburgh for greener pastures meant this proud conference was headed the way of the dead-and-buried Southwest Conference and the doomed Big 12. You can't tell the conference players without a scorecard, and it's getting so nobody should even care.

Although there are some partial arrangements, in which some colleges participate in conferences for only certain sports, the part that disturbs me most is how the distortions of the BCS have affected the relatively intact other college sports. This somewhat includes men's basketball, but I suspect there will be ugly echoes in many others: women's basketball, baseball, soccer, etc.

NFL at the Halfway Point
The lockout suffered by the NFL was settled in time for the regular season's planned start; only a week of preseason games was lost, and that is less than nothing. The deal, I must admit, was quite fair to the players and much better than I expected. So, I'm not feeling too much guilt in enjoying the NFL games, which I have done on a few occasions--more than I usually do--this fall.

I would say that the stories so far are these:
1) The 8-0 unbeaten start of the defending champion Green Bay Packers. As one of the Tribune beat writers noted, their pass defense is too weak for the team to go undefeated, but their scoring punch should get them through most challenges and makes them a favorite with a good chance to repeat.
2) The Detroit Lions have emerged from--years? decades? generations? of mediocrity and have surged to a playoff-worthy start in the same division as Green Bay.
3) The Indianapolis Colts' weak defense has been fully exposed by the injury to Peyton Manning and they have lost all their games, mostly by large margins.
4) The AFC in general seems to be in decline, with the exception of the Baltimore Ravens and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

My system relies upon difficulty of schedule balancing out by this point in the year, and the weakness of the AFC makes that assumption invalid this year. An easy schedule is mostly defined by playing lots of AFC teams, and one should avoid picking AFC teams in inter-conference matchups. That being said, here are my picks against the spread this week:
1) Houston Texans giving 3 at Tampa Bay (I have them winning by 10);
2) Cincinnati Bengals getting 3 at home vs. the Steelers;
3) 49ers giving 3 1/2 at home vs. the Giants; and
4) Lions getting 3 at the Bears. This last one is probably the most controversial pick (though the Steelers may be due for a big game against their familiar patsy). The Tribune had eight writers and the results of a video game as guides to the game: all the writers picked the Bears, but the game had the Lions by 7. I'm going with the machine here.

Soccer: Chelsea Going Down?
The Blues are in fourth, just behind Newcastle (in whom I believe very little), but it is their style which makes me doubtful. They lost 5-3 to Arsenal in a game full of defensive lapses, then failed to win vs. Genk in the Champions League. If this season doesn't improve, I think they will end up keeping their young coach and jettisoning their veterans in a rebuilding move. The players to watch will be Drogba and Cech--if they go, Lampard and Terry will follow soon after.

Manchester City is the new team made with money; they look to be a terror upon the league after their 6-1 defeat of Manchester United two weeks ago. They have not lost in the Premier League yet, and some are thinking they may never do so this year.

Finally, the NBA?
The next few days will probably determine whether there will be a regular season worth talking about this year for the NBA. We have seen the owners' best offer, and it is spurned. 50-50 did have a certain charm, but the technical aspects--how the owners would hamstring the movement of free agents, protecting themselves from their own mistakes--were too many. I don't feel that the players will do well to sit this one out. If the season must be cancelled, let's see them put together their own barnstorming league of a few teams, whatever arenas they can find, and a squad of insurance claims agents and medical cut men to fix any problems. These are valuable commodities.

2011 Oscars (almost entirely through) Previews

2011-11-07T21:00:00.002-07:00

Now is the time for all good movies to rise to the service of their studios, if they want an Oscar. This Friday, the numerologically propitious 11/11/11, will mark the serious beginning of the serious movie season. I'd say that a couple of longer-shot contenders have come out, one last weekend and one several months ago (I'll get to those later), but the real players will be opening in the next six/seven weeks.

I've been reading from some critics that the Era of Movies is over and that television rules our visual popular culture. I don't agree with that, but I would say that the annual cycle of movies has become too predictable while TV, which now has new programs popping up in all seasons, with annual series of all different lengths, has a much more interesting seasonal execution plan. The problem with movies is that there is no plan, and that all the studios with major product are looking at the same promised land.

As I don't care much for splatter or most action pablum, I skip most of the movies released in the period starting February and ending October, but I have seen three or four respectable ones which had the previews for most of the big releases coming up this Oscar season. Those trailers, and a couple of season previews (I recommend the week-by-week one imdb.com has in its "Coming Soon" feature, at least if you look now, no critiques but a fairly complete list, as a research resource), give me enough material--without any special access--to have a good idea
what's coming, and on the Oscar outlook. It's presumptuous, not to say pretentious, to pick the Oscars purely off the trailers and the hype, but presumption and pretense are what the Academy Awards are all about. That, and entertainment.

As Warner Wolf used to say, Let's Go to the Video Tape!

Released Too EarlyAnything already out there has two strikes against it from an Oscars point of view. There are exceptions in the nominations, but very few in the actual awards. I'm suggesting here there may be basis for one this year, but I suppose I'll eventually be proved wrong once again in thinking that Oscars voters have a memory that extends beyond two months.
Melancholia--the Lars Von Trier end-of-the-world drama is getting some good commentary from the Film Festival circut. Von Trier isn't popular, but lead actress Kirsten Dunst could get a nomination (though probably not the prize).
Contagion--Soderbergh made it thoughtfully and well, but it wasn't sufficiently gross or scary to be popular; a movie like this has to cut a swath through society like the plague in order to make an impression.
Ides of March--It could've been a winner in a different scenario, but the cynical story didn't fit in 2008, and (despite some parallels with the breaking Cain story, and an overall increase in the level of disillusionment) it still doesn't. We could all see the fall of both the candidate and his handler from the first 15 minutes, we just weren't sure what the mechanism of their destruction would be. The answers--sex with an intern, ambition for the handler--were not imaginative enough, and that is the fault of the original play. I thought Clooney did well both acting and directing, but I don't see any awards coming.
Moneyball--I'm a huge baseball fan, I love Michael Lewis' storytelling, and I felt "The Blind Side" deserved its accolades, I even like Brad Pitt's acting, but I've never had any desire to watch this film. I was lukewarm about the book, and I feel its time (and those of Billy Beane and of the A's)passed some years ago.
Tree of Life--Watching this movie was excruciating: it was agonizingly slow, confusing, and also emotionally wrenching. I was glad when it was over, but I have been returning to it in my thoughts ever since (5 months ago). Is this the exception, or will it prove the rule (two different things, as far as I'm concerned)? Because of its early release, it could get shut out completely, but I think it could be a multiple nominee and could even win some major awards: Supporting Actress Jessica Chastain (few speaking lines, but unforgettable visual images), director Terence Malick, cinematographer, sound. Not, however, for its big stars--Pitt and Sean Penn.
"Tree of Life" brings to mind "2001: A Space Odyssey" in many of its aspects (tedium, obsessive attention to sensual detail, all-encompassing perspective), and I think that, like "2001" and regardless of Oscar, it will be marked as a classic and remembered through the years, mostly by people who have never sat through it. All of Malick's movies are near-masterpieces, and this one is unmistakably so.
Anonymous--It looked interesting, but the November 4 release date suggests the producers of this fantasy about the "real author" of Shakespeare may feel insecure about its prospects. I will see it and hope for the best, which would be a more thought-provoking "Shakespeare in Love".

Misguided Family Missives and/or Skewing Young
War Horse--I can't believe Spielberg is going to flog this one. It's a story of a horse that survives the horrors of World War I and returns to domestic life. I'm sure it will look good, and as always with Spielberg, it will manipulate your emotions mercilessly. It just seems a little too obvious for me.
Sherlock Holmes 2--There's some subtitle, I forget. The return of the cast of the debut album (Robert Downey Jr./Jude Law/Rachel McAdams), plus Professor Moriarty, suggests a big hit. I could be terribly wrong, but I think this one will be a bit too clearly repetitious of the formula that made 1 a success.
Hugo--Scorsese doing a sci-fi Jules Verne-y Paris kid story in a Metro hideout in 3-D. I'm disbelieving the hype.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo--The Swedish mystery thriller trilogy has already been produced, and apparently well; this will be the big-money promoted version. The preview looks good, and I haven't been spoiled by reading the books.

Star Turns
I would expect that the preponderance of Best Actor and Best Actress nominations, as well as the eventual winners, will come from these big screen character profiles.
Tinker, Tailer, Soldier, Spy--Gary Oldman in the star role of the John LeCarre spy novel. It seems as though Oldman is an Oscar waiting to happen, and this could be the one.
Iron Lady--Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher: Her nomination is guaranteed; I think this could be a tough win this year, though, and Thatcher is not much of a crowd-pleasing persona, really.
My Week with Marilyn--Michele Williams as Marilyn Monroe. See "Iron Lady", except that I think Williams will win. She certainly looks the part, and there's a lot of residual sympathy for her out there since Heath Ledger's passing during the season of "Brokeback Mountain" (hers) and "The Dark Knight" (his).
J. Edgar--Leonardo DiCaprio playing J. Edgar Hoover, with direction by Clint Eastwood. This could be "The Aviator" all over again, though Eastwood has won before. What I want to know is how it took this long to have a major production of Hoover's life story, which would be impossible if it weren't true. The only way this could miss would be a failure to face up properly to Hoover's latent homosexuality, or whatever the dressing up in women's underwear stuff is supposed to represent. Somehow, I don't think they'll miss the story; DiCaprio would be my pre-viewing pick for Best Actor, and there could be more here.
W.E.--Madonna directed this story of Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII, which you'll remember from "The King's Speech" last year. I'm sure they're looking for similar results, and reports are that relative unknown Andrea Riseborough as young Wallis could surprise in the Best Actress category. I have the feeling that anti-Madonna feelings, which I think are pretty strong in Hollywood, could poison Riseborough's chances after she gets the nomination.

Serious Stuff
In the Land of Blood and Honey--This movie, with Angelina Jolie directing a story of a cover-up of sex crimes in wartorn Bosnia, is a real dark horse. It could be a dramatic masterpiece or an overblown monstrosity. I'm fascinated, and, if it was filmed on location, should at least be scenic.
Pariah--another Film Fest fave, being released on Dec. 28 suggests its handlers like its chances for some "Precious"-type Oscar buzz. I hope it's good.
The Descendants--Alexander Payne ("Sideways") directing George Clooney. A humorous and bitter story set in Hawaii; I think this one has serious Best Picture potential.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close--when you look at the cast (including Tom Hanks, Max von Sydow, Sandra Bullock), the director (Stephen Daldry--"The Hours"), the storyline (a polymath kid's experience with the 9/11 disaster that killed his dad), you have to conclude that this is the early betting favorite for Best Picture. I'm extremely sure that it will be incredibly central to the Oscar balloting, and may be deservedly so.

I was a bit dismissive of some of these efforts, and I may have underrated several of them. Nevertheless, I think this looks to be quite a good Oscar season, really. I'm also looking forward to January, 2012, when the flawed efforts come out--some of those may be very interesting.

That $4 Trillion Thing

2011-11-07T19:15:00.006-07:00

Out of nowhere comes a report that gives great hope. It appears that the Republican leaders in Congress, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, have come to the conclusion that the thing that President Obama most fears is a comprehensive debt reduction agreement on a large scale--like $4 trillion over ten years--such as has been proposed repeatedly in the past.

Therefore, since they perceive Obama is against it, they're now for it. This after months when it appeared they would block a deal 70% less than that because it would be too difficult to pass.

I never realized that the "Tar-Baby" approach would work so well: all Obama had to do to get a deal was have some of his people suggest it was the thing he feared most. He needs to stick to this line long enough for something to come out of the Supercommittee (and that means a few well-placed whispers in the ears of Supercommittee Democrats). Then, once the Gang of 12 votes it out, he can give his support--and the rules will prevent a filibuster!

We're not in agreement with those of the left who are opposed to any deal like this. It does have to be the right kind of deal, though: reductions in military spending, reductions in "tax expenditures" (loopholes) or an increase in tax rates (the former is more likely), and sensible adjustments in Social Security and, in particular, in Medicare. We've been backing such a deal for a long time. President Obama needs to support such a deal, as the best way to provide for our future, and I believe he will. Just not too soon in the process.

Let the High-Tech Lynching Begin!

2011-10-31T21:54:00.003-06:00

Herman Cain is the Clarence Thomas of Presidential candidates: a political embarrassment to his race, a really bad shaggy dog story that just won't end. Now, with the news that he has his own alleged sexual harassment story, the equivalent of his own Anita Hill, the analogy is complete.

Cheer up, Herman; Clarence passed through his klieg-lit trial of fire and got his big power gig, which he has managed to fill despite never making any public utterance for years, and so far is surviving a nasty piece of news about failing to disclose his wife's career as a paid lobbyist. He wouldn't seem to be anyone's idea of a brilliant Supreme Court Justice, except Herman Cain's.

I just don't think it's going to work for Cain to clam up this early in the process and shut out the media, which made him as a candidate.

Complete this series: Trump, Bachman, Perry, Cain....does the Anyone but Romney Right-wing Darling of the Month Club need to find a new flavor, can Cain survive after being banished East of Eden, or can one of the current flavors out there somewhere rise up from polltaking mediocrity? I would point out that Ron Paul is the unacknowledged heir to the title, as he is a solid third in every poll now (behind Cain and Romney). The difference is, Paul has staying power. The other differences are that Paul really represents something different, and that he is not considered a legitimate contender by most of the pros. His moment may finally be coming.

It Was Theirs To Lose, And They Did

2011-10-28T09:06:00.003-06:00

I am reeling from the dramatic sixth game of the World Series played last night. The Texas Rangers had a 3-2 lead in games over the St. Louis Cardinals and the opportunity to win the series and gain their first baseball World Championship.

Playing on the road, the Rangers struck first, and, with the exception of a first-inning two-run homer by Lance Berkman, Rangers' starting pitcher Colby Lewis did well and gave his team a chance to win. Rangers' hitters produced repeatedly with big longballs and timely hits when presented the chance by Cardinal miscues, giving the team leads of 1-0, 3-2, 4-3, 7-4, and then finally, in extra innings, 9-7.

Somehow, the Rangers bullpen managed to blow all five of those leads. The worst was Rangers closer Neftali Feliz allowing the Cardinals to score two runs in the bottom of the ninth with two out to tie the score at 7. The indelible memory I will keep of the game was of Rangers outfielder Nelson Cruz drifting over, gloved arm outstretched for David Freese's long flyball, with the ball dropping a foot or two out of reach. Freese got a triple that scored the two tying runs, and the game went on.

When Josh Hamilton then hit a two-run homer in the tenth inning, it should have been over, but again the Rangers bullpen failed to seal the deal. This time it was less dramatic, with the balance of sloppy play now shifting to the Rangers' side, but once again the key hit came with two out and two strikes, this time a single from Berkman.

Finally, Freese put all of us out of our misery in the bottom of the 11th with a homer.

The word for the game is not "classic"--it was much too ugly for that--but something suggesting the manic excitement and sensation of risk of a roller coaster or a joyride in a stolen car. How about "cringeworthy"?

It is hard to imagine that the Rangers can put such a devastating loss behind them so quickly as to win the decisive Game 7 which will be played today. It would, however, fit with the improbable story line.

I should close by mentioning the most famous 10-9 baseball game prior to this one. It was Game 7 of the 1960 World Series between the Pirates and the Yankees, won by a walk-off homerun by Bill Mazeroski of the Pirates in the bottom of the ninth. I wasn't there, or barely cognizant, at the time, but the game appears to have had the same kind of topsy-turvy, back-and-forth dynamic (I don't know about the errors.) I'm not sure this will surpass it, because the truly decisive game is yet to be played, so in that regard it may be more like Game 6 of the Reds-Red Sox series won 7-6 by the BoSox by Carlton Fisk's homer, though I see that game as being more "classic" in terms of the quality of play.

Two Sorts of Mideast Extrication

2011-10-24T21:09:00.006-06:00

In a single week, the US' prospective global participation level dropped by a couple of messy Middle Eastern affairs. Former Libyan dictator Qadhafi was captured and killed near his home in Libya, effectively ending our military involvement there, and President Obama announced that the US will withdraw its military forces completely from Iraq by the end of the year.

At least for the time being, the events in Libya should mean an end to hostilities in the civil conflict. The NATO alliance had its most successful military engagement there, achieving its objectives with a minimum of fuss and casualties to the alliance's member forces. The future for the country is far from assured, but the result gives it a chance for self-government, and, after it reactivates its oil economy, it could gain a degree of prosperity.

In the case of Iraq, we didn't really have a choice in the outcome, though Obama was quick to accept the Iraqis' decision to request our military's complete departure, which allowed him to claim fulfillment of one of his campaign promises. There were discussions to change the 2008 agreement between the Iraqis' government at the time, more or less the same they have now, and the Bush Administration, which required this departure by year-end. The negotiations broke down on the issue of whether US military would be given immunity against prosecution for crimes against Iraqis. It's a very likely premise to wreck any such discussion, basically a fundamental requirement for us to occupy another country and an unthinkable notion for any self-respecting nation which has not just suffered the indignity of being conquered.

In other words, the only terms Iraq under which it could have kept significant US forces would have been a surrender of its sovereignty. Not surprisingly, getting our forces out was one thing all of Iraq's factions could agree upon. There are still real potential problems going forward, besides a clear possibility of a reopening of internal conflict: We will have a substantial number of CIA operatives and Blackwater-type consultants operating in the country, with risks both to those individuals and possibly to Iraqis, and the largest embassy in the world is an attractive target for terrorists. The powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has threatened the embassy already, and there may still need to be a reckoning with him and his forces, if they destabilize the government or try to bring it too close to Iran's orbit of influence.

Although the circumstances and recent history are quite divergent, I'm struck by some of the similarities between Iraq's case and Libya's. Both countries' dictators were found hiding in holes and were rather brutally disposed of by their countrymen. Both countries are riven by tribal loyalties and breakaway tendencies from regions remote from the capital. Their national futures are cloudy but hopeful due to the potential oil revenues.

I'm beginning be to think there may some sort of Mideast multi-national political initiative in the offing, involving the nations recently liberated from their dictators (Egypt, Tunisia, Libya) and such possible partners as Iraq, Kuwait, Turkey, Jordan, and (if it can shake its bonds) Syria. Such an alliance could be a powerful counter-force against an intransigent Israel and could even pose a challenge to Europe, which has rather clearly chosen to draw a clear line to keep its predominantly Muslim neighbors at a distance. As always, the trick for the US is to provide influence in a positive direction to these nations, helping to lead them toward what they should want to do for themselves, without being seen too clearly as directing their behavior.

Fruity Fisticuffs

2011-10-18T20:07:00.002-06:00

I managed actually to watch the Republican debate tonight. There were plenty of potentially vomit-inducing statements, but also enough fireworks to keep my attention. The first set had to do with Herman Cain's controversial tax plan, where he dismissed concerns about his nine percent national sales tax being piled on top of existing state sales taxes by saying that was "mixing apples and oranges". Mitt Romney got him, though, by responding that "you get a fruit basket, with both apples and oranges, and Nevada doesn't want them". Cain's argument that low- and middle-class people would pay less under his plan "just won't fly", as Rick Perry said.

The real problems Cain faces were illustrated in that discussion. His program is simple and largely understandable, which makes it a problem: Cain can either disguise its regressive nature (which he's trying to do), or he can acknowledge it. He's a Republican, he may as well as admit it, and it is eventually going to come out that he is a former member of the Federal Reserve Board (it doesn't seem to have come up yet), and thus a card-carrying member of the moneyed elite--the group that would benefit most from his program.

The fisticuffs were between Romney and Perry; they were not thrown, but I'd bet a closeup would show they both had their fists clenched. Romney got slammed as a hypocrite by Perry for having had illegals mowing his lawn; Perry got back a dig about how he was just getting testy because he had "a couple of bad debates". Perry's look in response to that was purely feral; Romney got frustrated with Perry's willingness to get in his face and interrupt him.

Actually, though, the glove that did touch Romney was Rick Santorum's, with his accusation that Romney has no credibility in his attacks on "Obamacare", having been a principal in the development and legislation of a healthcare coverage law in Massachusetts that closely paralleled the Affordable Care Act. It put Romney in a difficult position of having to defend the success and popularity of his Massachusetts law while condemning Obama's very similar one. It will come back.

I was impressed with how lame all of the answers were for several of the questions: on foreign aid, on what to do about the foreclosures in Nevada, about the Occupy Wall Street movement, about what any of them possibly have to offer for Latino voters. But that was to be expected, I guess.

So, especially for those who couldn't stomach it, I must answer the simple question: who won, and who lost? Bachmann, whose answers were largely irrelevant except for a couple of appeals to emotional, conservative women, and Santorum, except for his jab at Romney, were further marginalized. Ron Paul got some good points in, but he is clearly not mainstreaam Republican. Jon Huntsman definitely lost by not showing up; his absence was hardly noticed.

Newt Gingrich showed that he is the best debater, but that it won't matter in the nomination battle--he probably did well enough to keep him in the race until the balloting starts in January. Rick Perry gained by keeping himself in the ring; he didn't make any friends, but his money will buy continued viability. Cain did enough to stay in the top three, but I still see his position as a losing one. Romney came in the leader and left as the leader, but he failed to knock Perry out, and he will be bruised in a long battle with him (more than if Cain is the surviving leader of the anti-Romney forces).

The winner, because his most plausible opponent's long-term position got weaker, was Barack Obama. Except for Bachmann, most of them were too busy attacking each other to say anything intelligent about Obama's shortcomings, and there will be more of this to come.

Man of Nor and Gold

2011-10-18T10:25:00.006-06:00

My wife picked me up from work the other day very excited. "I found this great guy on the radio--he's a Socialist!" It turns out that it was my longtime friend, Norman Goldman, or as he gives his handle on his Talk Radio program "NOR-man GOLD-man".

For the record, Norm is not exactly a Socialist (not that there is anything anti-American about advocating some Socialism--it's not illegal anymore). His program, which is repeated frequently on the program and on his website, NormanGoldman.com, is a very simple, populist one:

1 Tax the Rich--Also
2 Stop Corporate Welfare
3 Downsize the Global Empire
4 Bring the Jobs Home

All pretty self-explanatory. He is a fervent backer of the new Occupy (fill in the blank) Movement. He castigates the "Republi-Cons"--a great coinage, "con" meaning not convict but "con men", and it's such a true description of the politicians of that party. I like it so much I'm going to use it as the label to identify my posts about the party's politics for the 2012 election--when I do, my tribute to his insight shown in that label will always be implicit.

You may be somewhat surprised, though, when you hear him light into the Democratic politicians, which he does just as often and almost as vehemently, because they are not true to their professed principles. He is looking for a New Politics, and he is trying to capture the 99%-ers' aims in his 4-point program.

When I met Norm, he was an intern in the City Planning Department of New York (I'm going to guess mid-80's); later, I knew him as a storefront lawyer struggling against the crooked lawyers representing the insurance and banking industries. He used to fill in for Ed Schultz sometimes in the days of Air America (have I got that right?), the attempt at Progressive Talk Radio that featured Al Franken for awhile. Some of the content, as you can see above, matches up well with Ed's, but his style is radically different: highly urban, educated, but also colloquial.

He's a big baseball fan (Cleveland Indians) and a great guy, a fine American, and I'm happy for him: he really sounds like he's having the time of his life. I wish him a long run, but we all should know he's up against some big opponents, taking on both parties as strongly as he does. Let's hope there remains a place for Norm on our air waves.

Some Current Intrade Quotes

2011-10-17T22:39:00.004-06:00

The wagerers at Intrade agree with my assessment that the rise of Herman Cain's candidacy (combined with the collapse of Rick Perry's) is the best news yet for Mitt Romney's candidacy. He had hovered in the 30-35% range on the probability of winning the Republican nomination until the last month; now he's given a 67% chance. Perry, who for a brief period was seen as having a better chance of winning the nod, still has second highest at 14%, Cain is at 8%, and the others are quoted at less than 5%.

In terms of the Presidency, President Obama's chances of winning the 2012 election are rated at 47%, while the Republican nominee, whoever it will be, is at 49.5%. Romney is granted a 34% chance of becoming the 45th President. Perry quotes at 7%, Cain at 4%, and none of the others are even close to that.

The betting is leaning heavily toward the view that each house of Congress will have a Republican majority: 77% for the House of Representatives, and 75% for the Senate. I am less convinced about this than the majority of Intrade wagerers seem to be, but more on this later. In what will surely be one of the highlighted races next year, Scott Brown's chances of holding his Massachusetts Senate seat for the Republicans next year has fallen sharply, from 65% to 35%, since the entry into the race of his nemesis, Democrat Elizabeth Warren.

Finally, on the Republican VP nominee, Marco Rubio leads the betting, but only at 27%--Cain is second at 8%. Rubio's chances are the only one of those I've named here that I'd actually bet on--even, from the point of gambling investment, Barack Obama's.

This Month's Flavor Combination is Redneck, Black

2011-10-12T21:24:00.007-06:00

If it seems like a contradiction in terms, it is. Herman Cain is surely the most outlandish idea for a Republican front-runner yet. He's never been elected to anything; his sole claim to fame was as the CEO of a mediocre pizza chain; his idea of a great Supreme Court justice (as he told David Gregory on Meet the Press this week) is Clarence Thomas; and his natural constituency is about as broad as Thomas's-the 5-10% of African-Americans (some 12% of the voting-eligible population) who like policies that are clearly directed against the interests of their own minority, and the people who think that our biggest problem is that we don't have a black President sufficiently willing to help the moneyed elite.

This blog will be coming up to its 666th post shortly; we will devote it to a review of the Republican field: the Devils we know, the ones we don't, and the other candidates for Antichrist; Cain's "9-9-9" will certainly figure into that discussion.

All I have to say right now is that Cain's ascendancy is a dream come true for Mitt Romney's candidacy. The one thing that would stop Romney is someone uniting the stop-Romney factions of libertarians, right-wing paranoids, and evangelicals (now broadly referred to now as the Tea Party faction of the party), currently split among the likes of Cain, Bachmann, Perry, Paul, and Santorum. If someone from that wing could emerge from the pack and pull together the various anti-Romney forces, he/she could pose a serious threat to what seems otherwise the most likely scenario: Romney's likely steady march through the primaries, competing and scoring respectably in all of them, drawing most of the support of the major party leaders, and winning big where the primary vote does not swing to the extreme right.

I absolutely cannot imagine those forces rallying around Cain. For one thing, if he somehow won the nomination, it would almost certainly provoke a split among the Republicans, ensuring their defeat, and even if it didn't, he'd get wiped out by Obama in a two-way race. I think Cain's best-case result is to win a couple of primaries, show up for a few more, and be in a position to take the second spot in the ticket if he throws his support to one of the other would-be Romney-stoppers. Even that seems unlikely: Cain's ego seems too big to accept the #2 spot, and I can't imagine any nominee, from any shade of the red spectrum, choosing anyone other than Marco Rubio as running mate (Florida being what it is, a huge swing state).

Unlike Perry, Bachmann, or even Romney, Cain communicates well, with forceful convictions, plentiful sound bites and ready formulaic answers, and with only occasional major gaffes. So it may not be easy to put his candidacy down, but it will assuredly happen--I'm guessing because he won't get the backing of the big money backers when the campaign shifts from retail politicking to expensive regional and national television.

In the debates, Bachmann, Perry, & Co. have a difficult task, as they must seek to undercut Cain's support but should avoid giving him the prestige of being the most prominent target. Attack on him for lack of public sector experience probably isn't going to work among this crowd. I would say Perry would have the best chance by showing how he's been able to manipulate Texas' legislature into giving him what he wants, and by having some semblance of a coherent national domestic and foreign policy. That's probably giving him too much credit, but surely his big bucks can get him some quality political advice, even if the Bushes and Roves of the party have turned him out. Much as I despise and fear Perry, I'm rooting for him to rebound and overtake Cain, as the best hope to stop Romney, whom I see as the only Republican candidate with a decent chance of beating Obama.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

2011-10-09T20:19:00.005-06:00

President Obama's American Jobs Act legislation failed to get close to the 60 votes it would need to move to debate on the floor. It will come back in pieces, and a few of them may eventually be passed. I'm thinking that the payroll tax cut (tax cuts are always welcomed by both parties), probably the portion for building and modernizing schools and hospitals, and perhaps the incentive for hiring will pass in some form resembling the one that Obama originally proposed. The revenue piece designed to offset this spending, raising increase in tax rates for the wealthiest, will not, of course.

I'm not sure that the result will achieve any of the objectives: most importantly, employment may be bumped up a notch or two (or a bump down may be offset), but it seems certain the official rate of those without will still be upwards of 8% on Election Day 2012. The record of the vote will be a mushy political weapon: many Senators, even many Democrats, had things they didn't like in such a multi-faceted piece of legislation, and a couple of Democrats even voted against it—others indicated they might have voted against it if it had reached the floor. Obama will certainly be able to claim that he has been hamstrung by a “do-nothing Congress”, a claim which may resonate but will not necessarily buy him, or his party, much in the way of political gain.

Following my general observance of the Talking Heads' Psycho-killer philosophy (“Say something once, why say it again?”) I will not go into too much detail, but I will refer you to one of my better posts, two years ago this month, in which I diagnosed and prescribed for this jobless recovery.

I will repeat and expand my suggestion that the Federal government provide sponsorship for community programs which would restore neighborhoods ravaged by foreclosure and abandonment. Banks should be required to provide support, in the form of contribution of some percentage of owned real estate properties to be turned over and sold for public benefit or conversion to public low-income housing, as well as wages for skilled and unskilled labor doing the restoring. In return, they should get CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) credit, improved value on neighboring properties to which they would retain ownership, and tax deductions for their expenses. It's the least they should be required to do, and it might improve the public's view of their utility and relieve the pressure on them (see below).

Occupy: Is it all about Occupation?

The Chicago Tribune posted me to this site, which lists the “demands” of the Occupy Chicago movement, as follows (I could not find on the site that these “proposed demands” were actually adopted, but I assume they were):

1. Pass a bill to reinstate Glass-Steagall, a safeguard separating banks' commercial lending and investment operations. “Its repeal in 1999 is considerted the major cause of the global financial meltdown of 2008-09”, the group states.
2. Repeal Bush-era tax cuts.
3. Prosecute “the Wall Street criminals who clearly broke the law and helped cause the 2008 financial crisis.”
4. Overturn the Supreme Court decision allowing corporations “to contribute unlimited amounts of money to campaigns”.
5. Pass the Warren Buffett rule on fair taxation, close corporate tax loopholes, prohibit hiding funds offshore.
6. Give the Securities and Exchange Commission stricter regulatory power, strengthen the Consumer Protection bureau and help victims of predatory lending whose home loans have been foreclosed.
7. Take steps to limit the influence of lobbyists and eliminate the practice of lobbyists writing legislation.
8. Eliminate (the) right of former government regulators to work for the corporations or industries they once regulated.
9. Eliminate corporate personhood.
10. Insist the Federal Elections Commission “ensure that political candidates are given equal time for free at reasonable intervals during campaign season”.
11. Pass the Fair Elections Now Act.
12. Forgive student debt.

My comments. I really only oppose the last one, which is impracticable and basically an unconstitutional confiscation of legitimate debt (“only” some $900 billion, they say), and #8, which would excessively limit the right of employment for public servants. I would favor some limited version of that one, in which incoming public servants would agree not to work for certain specified companies or narrow industry code definitions for some period of time (like 5 years), and I would favor some legislated reduction of the debt burden for many student borrowers.

On the other hand, I strongly support #9, #7, #4, and #2, although they might require major legislation (thus, unlikely to happen anytime soon) and #9 or #4 might require a Constituional amendment. I strongly support #10 and #11, though I think they have no chance with either party. I support #1, though I think its importance is overstated; it was seriously considered for the Financial Reform legislation in 2010 but other areas were considered more critical, with good reason. #6, #5, and #3 are commendable in intent but too vague to have much meaning (except the Buffett rule, which I support).

What's missing is anything that would create any jobs, though I admit I'm not sanguine about the chances of any political argument claiming to do that on a lasting basis and large scale here. I think it's a fair criticism to suggest that the Occupy Chicago movement isn't really that interested in getting jobs for its participants (who, clearly, have none)—not that they have to seek them. It just might make the movement a bit more appealing to the working stiffs that make up a good portion of the 99% they suggest that they represent.

And Then There's Mr. Jobs Himself

It's time for me to pay my respects to the late Steve Jobs. First, I must express my sympathy for his family and friends, and my admiration for his determined efforts to carry on despite his debilitating and painful disease.

Respects is most of what I will pay, though; I'm excessively proud of the fact that I don't think I've ever directly paid for any of his products. I find them too expensive for what they do, most of which I don't need. I keep waiting for the price of his laptops to come into range, and they haven't followed the usual pattern. I got an iPod for one of my round-number birthdays from my sister: I said (and say) “thanks”, but I didn't use it much and eventually gave it to my daughter, who appreciates and needs it more. OK, I may buy an iPad before too long if the price comes into line (maybe that's more likely than their laptops' prices do).

What I did do, a few months ago, was buy a few shares. There's no doubt that Apple has the consuming public, and the investment market, too, in thraldom. Not even Jobs' demise could derail the stock, and that was what I was counting upon.

I may not be a big fan of Apple's products, but there's no denying the transformation he brought about, in this country and beyond. Is it healthy? I don't know, but it's certainly what we'd call “progress”, and that should be appealing to a progressive like me.

I haven't done a study of the jobs he's created, but there must be a lot (maybe even in the US). He's certainly created a lot of wealth here, and that shouldn't be a bad thing. Finally, let's salute his success--supposed by Fitzgerald to be rare in America--in performing a hugely successful second act--and third--for himself!

Redeeming the Promise of '08

2011-10-07T09:39:00.005-06:00

I am hardly one of those who regret their 2008 support of President Obama based on his performance in the job, or who condition their support for 2012.

Some criticism is justified, and I will get to that, but first, some deserved praise. His conduct of the most important area under his control, the diplomatic/military sphere, has earned a solid A grade.

International Wins
Last week he called for the trigger to be pulled on Anwar al-Awlaki, who imagined that he could threaten his native land safely from a desert retreat. There are legal issues about signing a finding authorizing his death by covert means, but this is another case where the result was fully justified. The previous example, last month's stunning victory by the Libyan rebels vindicated his middle-ground strategy there: encouraged by the U.N. and the Arab League, he chose to provide critical, timely support, preventing general reprisals and massacres, allowing the rebels the time to develop a winning strategy and overthrowing a bloody dictator. Most importantly, he achieved that success with minimal risk to American lives.

Back on the military side, Obama's administration won the big prize in May with the successful raid into Pakistan which took out Osama Bin Laden. He has successfully wound down the Iraq occupation, and he is on a path to achieve a reasonably successful extraction from the other inherited counterinsurgency quagmire, Afghanistan.

Not everything has gone well. Diplomatically, his policy toward Iran has not yet worked, and the country still poses a major destabilizing threat. With the critical nation of Pakistan the results are mixed, at best: the civilian regime is an ally, but a weak one, unable to overcome the nation's historic tendencies toward insubordinate security forces and regional troublemaking. There has been no progress toward resolution of the Israel-Palestine mess, which means more steps backwards. Finally, the illegal prison in Guantanamo has not been closed; though that is more a domestic failing, in the eyes of the world it's clearly a black eye on our reputation he hasn't been able to heal.

All these areas would be better served, though, from a continuation of Obama/Clinton handling rather than any foreseeable alternative. Hillary Clinton has been an excellent Secretary of State, and if she can be persuaded to serve out a second term, could rank as one of the best ever in the position.

Domestic Woes
As good as the advice, strategy, and results have been for most of the foreign/military projects abroad, that's how bad most of the domestic initiatives have been. The first responses to the economic crisis--the Bank bailout (actually before his inauguration, though passage would've been very difficult if he'd opposed them), the auto industry assistance, the stimulus plan--these were reasonable compromises made because the urgency of the situation did not allow for prolonged consideration. Some of it--the bailouts--achieved their immediate aims, and the stimulus was not a failure--just not quite enough of a boost (though it's questionable any amount would've been sufficient, and certainly doubtful if much more could've passed Congress).

The accomodative pattern from those early, critical acts was very evident in the signature domestic legislation of his first Congress, the Affordable Care Act. Here I disagree with the notion that speed was essential, or even possible; they were in a big hurry and it still took a year or more to bring to law, not to mention the legal challenges which will take about two years to resolve.

The piece missing from the legislation, which may end up being required if, as I see being quite likely, the Supreme Court rules that the mandate to buy private health insurance is beyond Congress' authority (and thus unconstitutional) is the public option. Unfortunately, in his zeal to get a bill done, I think that Obama and his advisers made a bad deal with the private insurers--no private option, and the insurers lobby would not try to block it.

The Christmas deal to keep the tax cuts in place was one made under duress: the House was just about to be taken over by a heavily Tea-flavored Republican majority. The deal extended the tax reductions for the wealthy and for the middle class, basically an unacceptable compromise. Worse was to come with the next big deal under duress, for the debt ceiling; though the Administration rejected the confrontational approach of challenging the need for the ceiling--something which might not have worked, the deal may still produce something acceptable in the form of the desired combination of cuts and revenue enhancements, but I wouldn't count upon it. As I feared, the roster of the membership of the "Gang of 12" supercommittee seems designed to continue the partisan logjam. What that will mean, though, is a set of mandatory cuts in both domestic programs and military spending--a sharing of pain, no real gain.

Obama's tax policy lacks a coherent direction. His December, 2010 extension of the tax cuts for the rich broke a campaign promise, one he didn't so much betray as reveal that he couldn't deliver. With the backing of friendly billionaire Warren Buffett, he has come up with a modest proposal to create a new Alternative Minimum Tax for those with income over $1 million. More complication, little likelihood of success--the AMT we already have is a headache, little more, and this one will never pass through the current Congress (I can hear it now: "if the rich--excuse me, 'job creators'--knew they had to pay tax, it wouldn't be worth making a million a year".) Obama seems to welcome the idea of a revision of the tax code, but isn't providing the kind of push it would need, no doubt because he doesn't want this House anywhere near it.

The worst, for me, has been temporizing on Obama's moral and value-based position as the best protector of our greatest possession, our natural resources. He is blocking regulations of ozone and greenhouse gas emissions proposed by one of his best Cabinet members, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. He also seems to be greasing the way for oil exploration off the Arctic coast, and relaxing protection of endangered species. This sort of behavior, favoring the coal, gas, and oil interests, is less than I expected; Ohio and Pennsylvania may be important for his re-election (West Virginia, Louisiana, Texas, Wyoming, Alaska and Kentucky are not) but I am not convinced that the voters of any of these states want Obama to gain them prosperity through the sacrifice of their natural inheritance.

Obama has finally thrown down the gauntlet to this Congress with his Jobs Act. It won't pass, but the strategy of challenging the Republicans to do something about unemployment may work in the long run. While the weakness of the field of possible/likely Republican opponents for 2012 means that Obama is likely to eke out a win without taking forceful positions moving from a cautious, centrist approach, only a strong battling stance as leader of his party would give the Democrats a chance of regaining control of Congress for a second Obama term. And, without that, that second Obama term is never going to fulfill the promise his candidacy, and his inauguration, originally promised--something his first term has clearly not done.

My standard is moderately high: I expect him to be the best President we have seen in my lifetime. It's still there to be achieved--which means he has not yet done so.

Some Top 10's, Pt. 1--British Rockers

2011-09-29T21:42:00.003-06:00

This is another in a series leading up to my All-time Rock Playlist, in which I will list my top 200 (I'm now thinking) songs, with a per-artist limit of one each (and an honorable mention or two, if applicable). I've previously given listings for a couple of the tougher ones to pick favorites--John
Lennon and Steely Dan.

For a few artists, though, ones with huge breadth of work and many great songs, I'm going to go into more depth. I need to elaborate, to explain a little my quirky preferences, and just to help me work through the task. In today's listings, we will field some really tough calls from the British Isles.

Pink Floyd
came to Floyd relatively late. I'm not so crazy about "Atom Heart Mother" (I like the cover art, though), "See Emily Play"-type stuff, or even (sacrilege!) "Dark Side of the Moon" (except the last cut). In spite of my ambivalence about the early Syd Barrett phase, I especially like the album that was clearly devoted to the absence of the late Mr. Barrett, namely "Wish You Were Here".

10. Grantchester Meadows/Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict--but of course! (Ummagumma)
9. Nile Song (More)--The hardest that Floyd rocks.
8. Fearless (Meddle)
7. Careful with that Axe, Eugene (Ummagumma)
6. Run Like Hell (The Wall)
5. Pigs (Animals)
4. Comfortably Numb (A Momentary Lapse of Reason)
3. Great Gig in the Sky (Dark Side)
2. Echoes (Meddle)
1. Wish You Were Here (the whole album belongs on the list; clearly “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”--either part, or both--would belong, I'm opting here for the title cut)

King Crimson
As I've raved previously, we're still waiting to catch up to where Robert Fripp was forty years ago. I love about 90% of Crimson's output, and about half of Fripp's other stuff. My feeling is that the middle period--"Lizard" through "Red"--has held up best.

I recently read the Wikipedia article on the band, from which I learned some new things. The most interesting was the quote from percussionist Bill Bruford—a hero of mine; he left the guaranteed celebrity and money of Yes for a musically more challenging, roller-coaster of a job with Crimson. The quote, from his biography, said that coming to KC he got a reading list including Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.

This told me quite a lot; I had a fling with schools of esoteric knowledge based on those two (with reference to great Works which had concealed references to their doctrines) in the early '80's (it ended when my jealous first wife confronted my teacher about the money I was paying for the school, and we all agreed I should give it a rest). There's a lot of good in the program,discussion about personal development and exercises to free the mind from its normal binding habits, but also a lot of outrageous blarney that you are required to follow literally. It's possible, if the band's cranky genius Robert Fripp was deep into that stuff, that some of the various machinations and formations and deformations of the band were partially due to judgments of Fripp's mentors about changes he should make to continue his personal development—and the advice of the teacher is paramount in the program.

In particular, I figure the League of Crafty Guitarists (a “solo” effort with 15-20 guitarists trained by Fripp playing together) could have been his teacher's order for him to share his skills and develop his interpersonal skills. Anyway, my top 10 from Crim:

10. Cirkus (Lizard)--The album deserves better, but it's hard to pick out an individual track other than this one for special commendation. The whole thing has a great feel, high production value.
9.Exiles (Larks' Tongue in Aspic)--I don't know what to say about it, except that it belongs in here; there's a wistful sound to the instrumentals, the tone of the lyrics, that is so appropriate for the band..
8. Trio (Starless and Bible Black)--Incredible improv., recorded live and put on this (otherwise) studio album. Bruford got writing credit for recognizing in mid-song that the performance needed no percussion whatsoever.
7. Cat Food (In the Wake of Poseidon)--I had this album on 8-track in the 70's and listened to it too much; hearing this song recently made me re-discover my appreciation of it.
6. Larks Tongue in Aspic (part 2)--Does it make sense to say it's both subtle and powerful?
5.Waiting Man (Beat)--For my money, this album is their underrated one from the '80's. I saw them on tour with this album outdoors on NYC's Pier, and this was the most memorable song they performed.
4. 21st Century Schizoid Man (In the Court of the Crimson King)--Their groundbreaking first album deserves better treatment from me, and I like all the songs (even “Moonchild”), but I couldn't squeeze them in. This song—almost perfect--is an uncanny vision of the future, and 40+ years ago, when it came out, we knew it. It was really just a matter of seeing the present with great clarity..
3. Great Deceiver/Lament (S&BB)--It's not a cheat linking the two cuts; they blend these two perfectly on the album, and together they are a marvelous study in dynamics, with some of their best lyrics.
2. Starless (Red) The best of their many organically built, chromatic instrumentals—and it's got good vocals, too (a bit melancholy, though).
1. The Night Watch (Starless & Bible Black)--Unlike a lot of their tunes which are almost perfect, this song is perfect—-it's flawless, a masterpiece. If you haven't studied it, the topic is the painting by Rembrandt by that name, and musing about the people in the painting.

Eric Clapton Even more than Fripp/Crimson's, his is a never-ending story that's hard to break into clear segments. When it comes to The List, I will probably split it into E.C. solo and E.C.-subsumed-into-bands, but that is a difficult task to draw the dividing line. Anyway, here's my miserable attempt at ranking his top 15 or so (I note a definite tone of tragedy):
15. Sittin' On Top of the World— (Cream) Many (the majority) of E.C.'s best efforts were on songs he didn't write. This song's history is as old as the hills.
14. Further on Up the Road ("solo")--This is the song Clapton chose to perform for The Band's finale concert, filmed by Scorsese, "The Last Waltz". It refers to a love affair gone bad (of course), but I see it as Clapton looking ahead to better times.
13. Layla--(Derek and the Dominos) probably deserves a better rating, but let's face it, we're all tired of hearing it, even the slow version on “Unplugged”. .
12. I'm So Glad--(Cream) after this, the sarcasm gives way to sincerity.
11. Tell the Truth (Derek and the Dominos)—pick a version, I like the really slow one.
10. Strange Brew (Cream)—-I could mention several other songs on the Cream masterpiece album, “Disraeli Gears”, such as “Dance the Night Away” or “We're Going Wrong,” (great drumming on both of those), or “World of Pain”, or “Tales of Brave Ulysses” (Clapton at least shares songwriting credit on that one), but next I would list:
9. SWLABR--says here that it stands for "She Walks Like a Bearded Rainbow"--no comment!
8. In the Presence of the Lord (Blind Faith)--a moment of Clapton seeing his future redemption.
7. Had to Cry Today (Blind Faith)-it's mostly a Steve Winwood song, but I don't think the guitar solo is...
6. After Midnight (solo)--it's by J.J. Cale; I'll take that over his Cale's “Cocaine” any time.
5. White Room (Cream)—has always been my favorite big Cream hit (over "Sunshine of My Love")
4. Badge (Cream)—my choice for the best Clapton performance—singing/playing—of the early years.
3. It Hurts Me Too (solo)--pick any song out of "From the Cradle", as they're all great, all covers.
2. Tears In Heaven (solo)
1. Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad—-(Derek and the Dominos)--The studio version w/Duane Allman was superb; the one on “In Concert” even better.

U2
This is really unfair; I could have filled the entire top 10 with songs from “Achtung Baby” and wouldn't have felt cheated—the album is that good. I settled for four of the top 10, so I could include some others that particularly fascinate me. I'm trying to give the band the respect they are due, and their work, despite stylistic and contextual changes, is all of one piece, one unchanged set of individuals. And I freely admit that I have shortchanged their excellent albums of the 2000's in favor of some of their more aged classics.
10. Gloria—My first exposure to the band; also the first music video I really liked (they're on a barge in a harbor—Belfast?)
9. An Cath Dubh—A quirky song, title is Irish for “the black cat”; from their first album, “Boy”, which I really should have represented more fully, but there's just no space.
8. Love Is Blindness—Achtung Baby!
7. Gone—This song (originally on "Pop", but remixed nicely for their best of 1990-2000 release) is rising rapidly up my chart.
6. New Year's Day—One of their best live songs; the guitar is searing. Same comments apply to another special “Day”, as in “It's A Beautiful (Day)”>
5. Until the End of the World—here I need to mention “The Fly”, “Zoo Station”, “Even Better Than The Real Thing”, and my wife's favorite, “Mysterious Ways”, all similarly great songs from “Achtung! Baby”.
4. Two Hearts Beat as One—My favorite song from “War”
3. One—A.B. Just as it's fair to say every song on the album is great (OK, maybe not “Who's Going to Ride Your Wild Horses”), it's also fair to say this one is clearly the best, for its simple but profound message of love.
2. Unknown Caller—My best from their last album, “No Line on the Horizon”. I don't mind that it's clearly religious, because it's so unconventional. For U2, religion is an irritating necessity of the human condition, which is a pretty reasonable take on it (See also "Staring at the Sun").
1. Pride in the Name of Love—My very favorite song of the '80's; this song made me realize how high their ceiling would be. .
0. Bad/Where the Streets Have No Name—OK, this is a cheat, I know, doubly so, but the way they combined these two songs (from different albums) seamlessly in their live concerts (c. 2002) was spine-tingling. I had to slip it in at the bottom, er, top.

Paul McCartney
My taste with Sir Paul is for the clever jokester rather than the romantic balladeer or the sporadic hard-rocker; he's a clever, talented fellow and that's what I think he does/did best. First, some Honorably Mentioned songs, maybe not quite serious enough to make the top 10: Oh! Darling, Rocky Raccoon, The Night Before, Maxwell's Silver Hammer, I've Just Seen a Face, Fool on the Hill.

10. When I'm 64—he's actually now 69, and going strong.
9. Hey Jude—without the “Na na na”, it's a great song with well-chosen lyrics.
8. Drive My Car—Yes, You Can!
7. Can't Buy Me Love—not with money, no, no, no.
6. Uncle Albert/Helen Wheels –the only post-Beatles song by him that makes my Top 10 list.
5. Mother Nature's Son—pretty close to autobiography
4. Penny Lane—even closer.
3. Eleanor Rigby—his masterpiece collaboration....with George Martin.
2. Lady Madonna—Of his big hits, my favorite.
1. Back in the USSR —you can call it dated; you can call it a petty dig at the Beach Boys; I'd call it inspired, and intensely clever.

Elvis Costello
OK, this guy is a chameleon. He's a great songwriter, but a lot of his best work has been collaboration and covers of others' stuff. He can rock with the best, but he's always turning his back on rock and trying other stuff—usually sappy, like his country music, or his current turn as a lounge lizard (probably it's just an effort to try to impress his wife, who's much better at it). Anyway, this list will pay due homage to his cover efforts, but none at all to when he strays from what he does best, which is intricately-worded, fast-paced rock.
10. Days—A song by Ray Davies of the Kinks, which E.C. Covers brilliantly on the “Until the End of the World” soundtrack.
9. Good Year for the Roses—If you've spent any time in England, you'd appreciate this commentary on the incessant rain.
8. No Hiding Place—Great piece on 21st-century living with fame, from “Momofuku”
7. I Want You—I love the intensity.
6. Lipstick Vogue—Great rhythm, and despite what you would think from its title, actually not sarcastic.
5. Radio Radio—My favorite from the early, Attractions-do-Buddy-Holly rocker period.
4. Beyond Belief—My favorite of his Dylanesque scornful songs about love.
3. What's So Funny about Peace Love and Understanding?--a signature Costello cut, it's by Nick Lowe.
2. I Don't Want go Go to Chelsea—I love the sharp edges, both in the music and the lyrics.
1. Oliver's Army—never more sincere or clever with his lyrics. Certainly never more politically on target (Oliver refers to Cromwell, and the song's basically about the British military occupation in Northern Ireland).

The Who
With time, critical attention has turned from their concept albums (“Tommy”, “Quadrophenia”) to their early pop and to Pete Townshend's pieces intended for the never-quite-realized “Lifehouse” masterpiece that eventually became the guts of “Who's Next” and “Odds and Sods”. Not so for me—I still love the early rock operas, as well as the hits, some of the early experiments and other Townshend
gems that didn't become hits, such as much of his collection of demos, “Scoop”. With all that scope to choose from, it's not easy for me to narrow down to a few favorites.
My experiences seeing them live—and they were at the top of the list of the very best live performers, of the ones I ever saw—came in the middle-late period, when they were doing “Who Are You” (1979) and re-creating Quadrophenia (1996). After Keith Moon, but they still had Entwistle and Townshend at peak level, playing seriously.
From the live cuts on the extra disc that came with “Endless Wire”,
though, I don't think I'd want to see them now.

Before I count down my top 10, here are 10 great songs which somehow didn't make my
list: “The Kids are Alright”, “I can See for Miles”, “Go to the Mirror”, “Amazing Journey/Sparks”, “Bargain”, “5:15”, “Trick of the Light”, “Mary Anne (with the Shaky Hand)”, and two great ones from “Scoop”--”Mary”, and “To Barney Kessell”.

10. A Quick One (While She's Away)--first preview of what would become “Tommy”
9. Eminence Front—the band's last great single
8. Naked Eye—in case you don't recognize the title, the tag line is “It don't really happen that way at all.”
7. Helpless Dancer—I always liked this short piece the best out of all the great “Quadrophenia” album.
6. Zelda—It's from “Scoop”; if you've never heard this album, and care at all about The Who, you must.
5. Won't Get Fooled Again—about as close as they ever get to a political statement, one that's held up—it's basically an eternal truth.
4. Pure and Easy—Contrary to some opinion, The Who can be uplifting, though it's not easily so.
3. Who Are You-a great, honest late statement
2. Underture—I love this piece, but it's not my #1 because it lacks Roger Daltrey's vocals; he's been a great mouthpiece.
1. Behind Blue Eyes—I think it's what they—and particularly Townshend--are all about.

Gang of Four
This is a tricky one; the range of their product is not all that broad, but it's really top-notch, with a unique approach to building a song in layers and some great chicken-scratch guitar, plucked bass, and very politically pointed lyrics (but very post-modernist in the ambiguity of their stance). My problem is that they have ten or so songs that are superior work and its hard to prefer one over another.
10. Outside the Trains Don't Run On time
9. Satellite --best of the songs I've heard from their later work after the early '80's.
8. Call Me Up--”give me a reason for living”--a later one, as in not from the first two albums.
7. Natural's Not in It
6. In the Ditch—antiwar, or is it?
5. History Is Bunk—they can't really mean that, can they?
4. Damaged Goods – their first hit
3. I Love A Man In a Uniform—clearly sarcastic, I think.
2. Anthrax—a truly bizarre, hypnotic piece: “Love is like a case of Anthrax”
1. I Found that Essence Rare—yes, it is. The bass line will knock you over.

And That Leaves, Of Course... No, not Led Zeppelin: "When the Levee Breaks", with mentions for "Kashmir" and Robert Plant's recent cover of Low's "Silver Rider".
Nor Stevie Winwood, one of my all-time favorites: my clear choice for him is "Gimme Some Lovin'" with mentions for "Empty Pages", "Night Train", and "While You See A Chance" (theme music at my wedding--not kidding). As with Clapton, I may break down Stevie's into pre-solo and solo for The List, as a little bit of cheating is permitted by Blogger to me.

Speaking of cheating, though, we are of course now up to talking about "The World's Greatest Rock 'n Roll Band", or whatever. The Stones. My preference is generally for their work from the Brian Jones Era (through sometime in 1969), though I have to give some credit for the body of work since then (up until about 1990 or so, and none after that). So we've got 22 songs here, 10 of which were from the
BJEra, 10 not, and the other two being ambiguous, from "Let it Bleed", which was recorded before Jones died--with little help from him, according to his survivors--and released after that event.

22. Waitin' on a Friend
21. Before They Make Me Run
20. Get Off Of My Cloud (BJ)
19. Can't Always Get What You Want
18. We Love You (BJ)
17. Some Girls--despite the misogyny.
16. Under My Thumb (BJ)--despite the misogyny.
15. She's a Rainbow (BJ)--now, that's more like it.
14. Gimme Shelter (BJ)
13. Midnight Rambler*
12. Shattered--the classic Stones-in-NYC song--Mick Jagger's probably the most famous person I saw hanging out on the streets there, ever.
11. Wild Horses
10. Street Fighting Man (BJ)
9. Jumpin' Jack Flash (BJ)
8. Dandelion (BJ)
7. Let It Bleed*
6. Gimme Shelter
5. Paint It Black (BJ)
4. Can't You Hear Me Knockin'--there was a period when you had to have sax on your record. This was from then, for them, and they used it well.
3. Ruby Tuesday (BJ)
2. Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)--"The po-lice in New York City..."--see above comment about the sax.
1. 2000 Light Years from Home (BJ)--Give me the Mellotron, every time.

No "Satisfaction"? No "Satisfaction"!! I also lied about how many Brian Jones Era songs there were. Deal with it.

Bruford's comment on being given Ouspensky and Gurdjieff to read when joining the band is in his autobiography (per the Wikipedia): Bruford, Bill "Bill Bruford – the Autobiography", Jawbone Press, 2009.

Ten Years After

2011-09-10T21:47:00.005-06:00

The Day...

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the day of the attacks on the US through hijacked airliners (also, my 18th wedding anniversary, but that's totally another story). Rather than jingoistic breast-beating or re-cultivating the spirit of revenge, I suggest that we think of the innocents and the heroes who were lost that day, and those who were injured or killed in events both before and after 9/11/01, and give some thought to what we can do to reduce the unnecessary death toll in the future.

At this distance in time, we can begin to have some historical perspective about September 11 and what happened in the months and years following. My thought is that 9/11, though hugely significant, is neither more or less memorable a day as Pearl Harbor Day: December 7, 1941, a day that President FDR rightly said would “live in infamy”. As with that day, we were attacked suddenly—though the event of the attacks, if not the manner, might well have been anticipated—by foes who felt they had legitimate grievances against the US and wanted to carry their fight to our shores at any cost. As with Pearl Harbor, the attacks were audacious in concept, nearly flawless in execution—and certain to produce the opposite effect of the stated aims. The Japanese hoped the attack and its follow-up invasions of Pacific Islands and British and American colonies in East and Southeast Asia would lead us to sue for peace; one of Al-Qaeda's stated war aims was to get the US out of the Middle East (!)

We think of ourselves as straight shooters, but Pearl Harbor and 9/11 show how much we are misunderstood. Didn't they know our reaction would be implacable, unrelenting anger, an eagerness to unleash the greatest military power in history, the might of an industrial, technologically-advanced giant with the full support of a democratic populace and mass conscription? In retrospect, the Taliban should feel lucky they were routed from Afghanistan in a couple of months; their country would've been turned into a sheet of glass if they were somehow able to retain power and brazenly shelter Bin Laden after 9/11. Iraq, of course, was not so lucky as many previous US foes; having tried most everything else, we can only hope that the impending departure of US forces from there will allow that country's self-immolative efforts to come to an end.

...And the Band

If I hear the mawkish, 9/11-revived anthem “God Bless America”, I'm going to be thinking of the rock band with the same name as this posting, and their one big hit. Ten Years After was a popular band of the late Sixties, one of the prominent performers at Woodstock, but they have faded into justified obscurity. The band 's songs were basically excuses to allow its lead guitarist, Alvin Lee, to exhibit his speedy riffs at great length. And their big hit's chorus is practically a theme song for our generation's woolly-headed, idealistic inactivism, and its unfortunate results:

I'd love to change the world
But I don't know what to do
So I'll leave it up to you.

The 2012 Race: We Move to Phase I

2011-08-14T23:03:00.005-06:00

The Iowa straw poll yesterday marks the beginning of the active phase of the Republican presidential contest—as opposed to the preliminaries, which have been going on for several months. Not coincidentally, yesterday brought the addition to the field of an important candidate, Rick Perry, and today brings the retirement of one who was supposed to be important (but wasn't making the grade), Tim Pawlenty. I think this is a good time for a review of the progress of the Republican nomination contest.

The Republicans' politicians are a scurvy lot, full of false prescriptions for our society and our economy. With the exception of a few moderates from the Northeast, I have no use for any of them, and even those few are usually opposed by Democratic candidates who are just as good or better. They would do better to be honest with themselves and their constituents and admit that their national party is irredeemable. Their backers—the ones who count, the political pros and the big-money manipulators, are no better: self-justifying and selfish. I consider them phonies or fools. My fondest wish is that their party disintegrate and be replaced by something better, something sincere and worthy of debate, whether libertarian or moderate.

Their national leadership has once again been exposed as posturing scoundrels in the current manufactured crisis around raising the debt ceiling, but it is far from clear that they will be punished, certainly not sufficiently. I am contemptuous of their behavior and their policies, but I can not dismiss the possibility that they could win the next election.

It is therefore an important matter to consider the Republican Presidential contest and who wins the nomination. The goal is to advocate the candidate who would do the least damage if elected, who has the least chance of defeating President Obama, and someone who has a chance of getting the nomination. (Otherwise, I'd just endorse Fred Karger, the obscure Republican candidate who is the first openly-declared homosexual to seek the office.)

After the Iowa straw poll, the pundits have already narrowed that last criterion (who can win the nomination) down to three: Mitt Romney, yesterday's winner Michele Bachmann, and fancied new entrant Rick Perry. I watched several programs reviewing the event today, the day after, and all the talk was of the winner, and the third-place finisher, Tim Pawlenty, who quit the race today.

Not a word was mentioned of the person who finished second, barely a percent behind Bachmann in the poll. To the press, Ron Paul is dismissed as a crank, certainly not a person with a real chance; he is someone who has won the straw poll in the past to no great effect; however, he speaks honestly, coherently (if errantly), is more Christian than most of these in his tolerance and unwillingness to judge others, and gets some of the major issues right. His followers may not be the most numerous, but they are loyal to him and he to them; unlike Pawlenty, he will stay the course. His greatest problem is not that his views are too outlandish, but that his positions have been co-opted by much of the Republican “mainstream”. I see him as the one who would do the least damage of all of them if elected; it says here that he also meets my other criteria, of being unlikely to win the general election and of being a serious contender for the nomination.

I find the policies he advocates as being much less harmful than those of Bachmann, or Rick “Sanctimonious” Santorum, or the black redneck millionaire, Herman Cain. It's pretty clear that Rick Perry's candidacy is likely to swallow up their support in short order, anyway, particularly that of Santorum and Cain—their backers have just been biding their time waiting for someone like Perry to come along. Bachmann has outperformed expectations, but I think she will have a hard time holdiing her support beyond Iowa, unless Perry makes a major gaffe, which probably for him would be either failing to handle his little Texas/secession remarks tactfully (accidentally revealing his contempt for the rest of the country), or somehow letting his facade slip and showing a bit too much sensible moderation. I consider the former more likely than the latter.

If, as I fear, Perry smites down his opponents on the right, reduces Paul to irrelevancy, and Mitt doesn't drop the ball (allowing Jon Huntsman somehow to make an impression), it will come down to Romney and Perry. There, I'd have to go with Romney: not so much because I think he'd be an easier opponent for Obama—my opinion is that the opposite is true—but because Perry would be such a dangerous person to allow anywhere near the White House. He's basically George W. Bush all over, but worse.

See also my previous posting, on "Mitt and the Seven Dwarves".

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Deal?

2011-08-05T11:53:00.007-06:00

There are several parts of the debt ceiling deal legislation that was passed that I don't like, but the worst is that it really isn't over. Yes, in theory, President Obama kicked the debt ceiling obstacle down the road enough to get it past the 2012 election, which was his bottom-line requirement of this debacle. But I don't think it's really a done deal.

There will be another crisis towards the end of the year, hopefully a little less dramatic but probably just as intractable, just as partisan. A "supercommittee of 12", three Democrats and three Republicans from each House, are required by the legislation to come up with recommendations on additional debt reduction--there is an understanding that their focus will be on tax reform and on entitlement reform. If the committee makes recommendations of sufficient magnitude by a majority vote, these are to be guaranteed straight votes in both houses of Congress without amendments. If they don't, a series of automatic cuts are supposed to come into effect, across the board reductions on discretionary spending, military spending, and Medicare payments to health care providers.

There are several potential pratfalls in this scheme, but I want to highlight just one now: the selection of the members of the supercommittee (the SC). There have been several of these kinds of improvised panels in U.S. history--one of the most momentous was in the 1876 presidential election. If the membership is chosen based on reliable partisanship, a deadlock is assured. It would be a great sign if a moderate Republican were chosen for one member, as it would if a moderate/conservative Democrat would be. Either of these would suggest that the powerbrokers in Congress want a deal.

The Tea Party members in the House who rejected the deal, even though it was a very favorable outcome for the Republicans, should be excluded from the negotiations on merit: they had a chance to contribute positively to the country's avoidance of misfortune, and they turned their backs. It would probably be more politic, though, to include one or two of them, though; otherwise, I could see a populist movement to politicize the SC's deliberations even before they start. If that were to happen, its success would be most unlikely, and I could even see an attempt to undermine the year-end schedule; a bill could be passed to undo the debt ceiling deal, in the form of a measure of disapproval, one to change the automatic cuts, one to preclude tax changes, one to override the protection of Medicare benefits envisioned in the deal...the list of possible partisan misadventures goes on and on endlessly.

My grades on the key players and their handliing of this unnecessary calamity: President Obama gets a C grade; he didn't oontrol the terms of the debate well, his leadership was late, and not successful in most of his stated objectives. Speaker Boehner gets a B: he could have lost his leadership post if he'd handled it badly; he got a decent number of his members to vote for the final agreement, and of course got most of what he wanted in the deal (whether what he wanted is what he should have wanted is another question). Majority Leader Byrd, like Obama, was fairly ineffectual and gets a C as well; Minority Leader McConnell came out relatively unscathed and actually contributed something positive to the deal, so he gets an A-. House Minority Leader Eric Cantor was in great danger at one point, as a point negotiator who was getting squeezed from all sides, but Boehner stood with him and they both survived, Cantor earns a shaky C+. The payback, for him, will be probably another thankless negotiating role on the SC.

As for the deal itself, it came short of what I expected, because there was no tax increase on the wealthy paying for a payroll tax reduction. The devil will be in the details of the automatic cuts, which I think are very likely to end up being the legacy of the deal: I'm confident our military can survive the squeeze, and it will probably be healthier for it (in the way our corporations have made do with less expenses); the cuts to Medicare providers worry me as they will weaken the program without reducing demand for it, and the cuts to discretionary programs are sure to be overridden by the priorities that will arise in the next 10 years, so a nuisance rather than a disaster. I'd give it a pass, a D-.

Don't Let the Downgrade Get You Down
In the immediate aftermath of the debt ceiling deal, the economy took a one-two punch, in the form of a huge stock market sell-off on Thursday--driven by new bad news from Europe as much as anything--and the announcement Friday evening that Standard & Poor's was downgrading U.S. sovereign debt from a AAA rating to AA+.

We should be able to get over both of these insults/injuries, though our immune system has been weakened by the events of recent weeks. AAA does not mean what it used to mean, partly because S&P itself contributed to the rating's debasement during the run-up to the financial crisis, bestowing it upon many doomed mortgage backed securities. Also, though, because many other institutions have survived downgrades fairly readily, and because of the way S&P did it, with shoddy care for the numbers it published (even if its arguments were somewhat undeniable), and going against the decisions of its competitors Moody's and Fitch to uphold the AAA for the moment means S&P will be the exclusive target for some sort of retribution from the U.S. Treasury--just you wait and see. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.

As a result of the S&P downgrade, there will be another bearish run in stocks, a discounting of the dollar, and possibly an increase in the ridiculously low interest rates for debt. I'm just hoping we won't be seeing 10,000 again in the Dow, as I've already tried to say goodbye to The Best Prediction I Ever Made.

Stock Market Aside...
This does seem to be a bit of a watershed moment in the way we look at our economy and its prospects. You could call it pessimism; I call it a realistic view of the end of the perpetual growth machine. I believe that there have always been limits to our ability to grow the economy endlessly; this is starting to become apparent to more, and I consider that progress.

For example, I recommend reading a provocative article by Andrew Sullivan in the Daily Beast on the subject. Sullivan doesn't really have much of a coherent view of the world (he's veered from Trotskyism to neocon and back, was a fervent Obama supporter in '08 and a persistent critic recently), but he does still have the ability to think creatively and write stylishly.

I think it is time for us to be a lot less vainglorious about our domestic economy, and a little more cognizant (and even proud) of the fact that the American economy is just a part--a very sizable part--of an integrated global economy. Americans ascribe much more influence over our economy to the federal government than it has--President Obama can do very little about unemployment by himself (though, by contrast, the Executive has a great deal of ability to control foreign and military affairs on its own), Congress is no better, and the Fed is a creature created by, and acting for, the banks and their creditors.

Obama's policies have actually been very business-friendly; this stuff about businesses requiring "certainty" to hire is nonsense--businesses always have to invest in a climate of uncertainty; they just see no necessity to invest, and especially, not in hiring in America. That is largely because there is a surplus of cheap labor all over the world. Simply put, enterprises do not need to employ all able-bodied Americans who want to work in order to produce all the goods and services we need--not even close.

There is little solution for the jobs problem in the middle-to-long term, except to restructure our economy so that it can survive and thrive with less full-time employment. That means making it possible for individuals or families to live on part-time work, and in particular it means inexpensive catastrophic health care insurance, convenient mass transit, and affordable housing.

In terms of the latter, I think there is something quite significant that we could do in these days to help get our domestic economy back on a track towards health. A public/private partnership to rescue our housing from vast foreclosure and decay could restore home values and the construction industry, two huge issues in the current doldrums. When banks can show legitimate ownership of the property they have confiscated, government-backed enterprise can help restore that housing; in return, the banks need to contribute to the restoration of the housing they have taken without proper documentation (numbering in the millions) and to the generous refinancing of those that they would seek to take with similarly improper documentation. I am certain the banks would sign up, if the government--and I mean the Administration, with backing from both parties--were to offer. If they did not, they should be subjected to harsh justice which would wipe out much of their largely-undeserved windfall profits since the 2008-09 crash.

Finally, I advocate some form of incentives to hire for small, private enterprises. Our tax code is a mess, full of old, outdated, and ineffective loopholes, but I don't advocate a flat tax: taxation can be a valid form of public policy, properly applied. With our debt problems, it is one of the few methods left to government to try to improve the job situation.

The Sound of Distant Thunder*

2011-07-22T22:46:00.002-06:00

I was watching Gwen Ifill's excellent public TV public affairs show "Washington Week" tonight when the cable signal began breaking up, then dropped completely. Outside, thunder rumbled in the distance from yet another tempest, none of which has yet been able to break this execrable heat wave.

Ifill & Co. were discussing the hubristic failure of the Obama-Boehner talks on a grand deal to reduce the deficit towards coming up with an increase in the debt ceiling. They made a mistake going for too big a deal, one that necessarily had cuts in Medicare and Social Security as well as tax increases on the rich. All well and good, I say (the increase in eligibility age for Medicare and indexation formula for S.S. are coming, sooner or later, as are the tax increases), but Obama's party rebelled against one, and even more forcefully, Boehner's rebelled against the other, and Boehner had to pull out So to speak.

Our political leaders now basically have one weekend to get a deal together, the necessary characteristics of which I outlined recently. Monday, if there is no deal (or a fig-leaf kind of deal with no significant budget cuts agreed), Armageddon will be visited upon us in the form of a massive selloff of both stocks and bonds. If you can get some gold on the weekend, Sunday night would be a good time.

*with honor due to Ray Bradbury for the title

Live By the 120th Minute Tying Goal and Penalty Kicks...

2011-07-17T22:04:00.002-06:00

The US women's soccer team victory over Brazil in the quarterfinals of the Women's World Cup last weekend was one of the most exciting games I've seen in any venue. Abby Wambach's 122nd-minute goal, tying the score at 2-2 and putting the outcome into a penalty kick shootout (which the US, with that kind of momentum, finished successfully), was a thing of beauty, equalled by Megan Rapinoe's crossing pass from some thirty yards away right onto Wambach's forehead.

In today's final, Wambach had a similar goal (crossing pass, just by a diving defender, straight off her forehead, though the cross was from shorter range) that put the US up in overtime 2-1 with a dozen minutes or so to go. Problem was, Japan's team had seen this show and wanted to play their part. Today, they got the goal with a couple minutes to go, took the momentum into the PK shootout, and we were the ones left devastated.

I congratulate the Japanese women's team on an impressive, inspirational effort through the whole tournament (they knocked out tourney favorite, host team, and two-time defending champion Germany the same weekend the US pulled off its win over competitive rival Brazil). They came back--twice--courageously against the US women, and, given their country's tragedy this year, are more than deserving of our emotional favor. I also congratulate the US women's team, for which nothing was easy (they barely made it into the WC field, after losing a key qualification match vs. Mexico). They accomplished a great deal and should be proud of it.

Slow Trains Coming Together on the Same Track

2011-07-15T23:29:00.004-06:00

It's disappointing, but it became clear this week that the $4 billion deficit reduction deal is not going to happen. It seemed close at one point about a week ago, with Speaker Boehner and President Obama negotiating directly on a package of that size--the size that a number of parties have indicated all along was needed for credible deficit reform--that included some reductions in entitlement costs and tax revenue increases, both of which were clearly necessary for an agreement of that size.

What happened since then is that Speaker Boehner was rebuffed by his party's caucus in the House. The problem is the Grover Norquist Pledge to vote against any net increase in Federal taxes--most House Republicans, and sufficient Senate Republicans, have signed it--and most who've signed it are unwilling to go back on it. Republican House Minority Leader Eric Cantor became the mouthpiece of those House Republicans, and they effectively undercut Boehner's ability to negotiate a deal of this magnitude.

So, there will be no tax increases, and there will be no corresponding ground offered on Medicare cuts (My proposal, to make Medicare benefits taxable, would make the two items--increase in revenue, and effective reduction in Medicare costs--equal, without making an explicit tradeoff, but I haven't heard it proposed yet, just "means tests" to make Medicare benefits more expensive for the wealthy.) This seems to limit the cuts that can be agreed upon to something like $1.5 billion over the next 10 years.

Boehner laid down a principle that the budget cuts should exceed the approved amount in the debt ceiling, which would need to be some $2.5 billion to get the government safely past the 2012 elections (or so I'm told). This is where the nefarious scheming of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell comes in. He's proposed some kind of complicated approach would give Obama the power to increase the debt limit for some amount of time unless two-thirds majorities of both houses voted to block it; it has the benefit of removing debt limit increases as a stumbling block for the economy, and it would allow most Republicans to vote against Obama's Debt Limit Increases.

So, the outlines of the final deal become clear--at least to me. $1.5 billion in cuts over ten years, some small increases in taxes through loophole closing, offset entirely by extensions of the payroll tax cut (so, no net increase in taxes and no violation of the Norquist Pledge), which would ensure sufficient Democratic votes for passage, and the McConnell clause which would come up in a year or so, during the election campaign, to allow Obama to get the debt limit past the election, but in a sufficiently politically damaging fashion to please Republican Congresspeople.

Tea Party Economics
Michele Bachmann has emerged as the anti-Romney candidate for at least the first portion of the 2012 Republican nomination race--I still think she will fade, and that Rick Perry will take up the torch--but that will happen sometime around when she loses in New Hampshire, gets creamed in Nevada, and doesn't do quite well enough in South Carolina. Meanwhile, her strong standing in polls, particularly in Iowa, make her someone everyone has to notice.

What she's saying about the debt ceiling is that Tim Geithner and Company are not telling us the truth if they say we will default on our debts on August 3rd if the debt ceiling is not raised. In this, I think she is factually correct, but completely wrong in the conclusion she draws from this, namely that it is OK to deny President Obama an increase in the debt ceiling, something she's basically promised to vote to do.

The statements of Geithner and Obama on this have been careful and are relatively clear. The Federal government is limited by statute to $14.8 billion (or whatever the exact number) in debt. When we reach that debt, they will pay some bills from cash on hand, they will raise money by selling assets to pay other debts, and they could challenge the constitutionality of the statute (on the 14th Amendment grounds), though they don't mention that one. They could prolong any default on any debts for some number of months--not a lot, but long enough to create a major crisis and probably break the resolve of Republicans to prevent a debt limit increase--if they had a resolve to do that.

I think it is clear that they do not have such a united resolved. The Republican leaders in both the House and Senate have shown that they recognize the danger: it's not so much an economic danger (more of that in a moment), but a political one that they don't want to face. They don't want to re-do 1995, which had a shutdown crisis which caused the Republicans to lose their hard-won House majority and go into the 1996 Presidential election already defeated. Something like half of the Republican members of the House have a hardcore Tea Party view like Bachmann's and will vote against any debt limit increase, but that will be offset if there is a compromise that is acceptable to a comparable number of Democratic House members.

The economic consequences of an actual government default are huge, but that is not going to happen, for the political and administrative reasons I've outlined. An economic catastrophe could still happen, though, and it would look something like this: we get to the last week in July and there is still no deal. Wall Street and the global capital markets finally decide the crisis is real and interest rates shoot up dramatically, led by Treasuries, but including all forms of debts. A small, late deal is produced by August 2, or shortly thereafter, so there is no default, but the meager nature of the deal inspires no confidence--rates come down very little or not at all, the country is plunged back into recession (with the rest of the globe following), and the political consequences--well, they would be severe, most likely punishing both parties somehow, with some kind of third-party desperation move (or multiple ones) emerging (Bloomberg? Donald Trump? Something even worse?)

I would conclude that it is in the interest of both parties to come up with that middle-small, face-saving deal that I outlined, and that they should do it in the next 10 days.

In Which We Attempt to Solve Some Major Sports Issues

2011-07-04T18:35:00.003-06:00

MLB: How to Realign
It's been reported that Major League Baseball is taking a hard look at realignment. What I've heard is, first, that the playoffs would be expanded to five teams per league, the first round being a brief elimination contest between the fourth- and fifth-place teams; and second, that one team would go back to the AL, bringing each league to 15 teams. Finally, there is a notion of eliminating the divisional races i, simply having the playoffs consist of the top five teams in each league.

My advice would be to keep the first two ideas, but lose the third. Another round of playoffs means a few more high-ratings games in the fall (hopefully cutting deeper into the early-season ratings of the NFL), and it could be constructed in such a way that the three divisional winners get more of an advantage vs. the wild card survivor than is currently the case (they'd get the days off, but there could also be a more pronounced home-field advantage in the next round).

I get the idea, and I sympathize with it: The lords of baseball would like to enhance interest in the regular season, and in the playoffs, too; however, I think that having six playoff races (or at least two or three, with the inevitable Wild Card year-end frenzy) is better than—at best—two, and those would probably be for the unenviable fourth and fifth spots, with the league leaders coasting in.

The key question for the realignment is probably the team that will need to go over from the NL to the (I hate to say it, as a NL fan, but tougher) AL. The answer is definitely not the one I've heard, of moving over, so it can compete with its natural rival, the Texas (Dallas) Rangers. Houston should play Texas, but as its “natural rival” in interleague play, which will become more fundamental—going throughout the year—when both leagues are at 15 and there will need to be an interleague game in any full-schedule day of play. No, I'd say it should be an NL West team—Colorado, San Diego, or Arizona, and probably one of the latter two—that should go over, with Houston moving to the NL West.

That would achieve the key objective of balancing out the league with 6 divisions of five teams each (just like the NBA), with a good natural pairing for each team: a lot are obvious, but one pairing would be America's Team (Atlanta) vs. Canada's (the Blue Jays), and another would be the best in the NL, 2011 version (Philadelphia) vs. the AL's best (Boston).

Under this framework, there is a very natural breakdown of the schedule, as follows: 64 games vs. one's own division (16 per each opponent), 80 vs. the other teams in one's league (8 per), and 18 vs. the other league's teams in the same geographical division—three vs. four of them, and six vs. the natural rival. In terms of interleague, this is a slight increase—288 games vs. the 2011 schedule's 252—but not a big change. The AL teams already played 18 interleague games each this year (NL teams played differing amounts; for some reason unknown reason MLB did not go with the logical number of 224, which is 16X14).

There would be a stable set of appealing matchups, and the home vs. away nature of the interleague games against secondary rivals would alternate. Seems pretty fair, except that there would be some variation in the interleague difficulty for purposes of Wild Card qualification—but I don't consider that a big problem if the divisional races are fair. Compared to today's approach, it is much more fair, and the amount of change is small (except for the team convinced to move, which should be generously compensated).

My honest advice would be more ambitious: expand MLB to 36 teams, adding two in Asia (Korea and Taiwan—leave Japan's league alone), two in Latin America (San Jose/Santo Domingo and Mexico City) and two more in Canada (Montreal and Seattle's only real natural rival, Vancouver). To those who think it would water down the talent, I would respond that the talent is out there, it just needs a heightened worldwide interest level in the game in order to emerge (again, see the NBA). I think it will happen; I hope I live to see it.

NBA: Don't Be Blockheads
On the tail of probably the most successful season ever for the league—in terms of quality playoffs in all rounds, high fan interest in the finals, and (I presume) TV ratings—the owners have chosen to put a gun to their own heads and are threatening to use it. They've already fired a warning shot in the form of announcing a lockout, the same player-and-fan-unfriendly tactic currently in use by the NFL's greedy, blockheaded owners.

Unlike the NFL owners, the NBA's have been fairly open about their books, which show that they are not making much money, at least in relation to the cost (or value) of their franchises. The bad news is that they are looking to make up huge amounts of money in a new deal, unrealistic amounts. The good news is that the relations with the players' union are fairly respectful, and that the players are motivated to make a deal. NBA players are a relatively small number, compared with baseball and football, and they are really very well compensated, and they know it.

The main problem, as I see it, is the owners' zeal to compete has caused them to make a lot of very bad guaranteed contracts to a fairly sizable set of players who are underperforming or perennially injured. My solution does not cover the bad performers—owners just need to be a little more restrained about giving the big contracts to guys who are unproven (and that especially applies to big men jumping from Europe or skipping college)--but I think the injuries are a problem they can easily be protected from losing money upon. The players should offer to fund insurance, on the order of $300 million in potential annual benefit, to the owners. The conditions should be no more than $20 million in a year, $50 million in five years, and no more than three players at a time. If the owners need more injury insurance benefit than that, they're gambling on too many physically shaky individuals.

P.S. Congratulations to Dirk Nowitzki, Jasons Kidd and Terry, and the rest of the Mavericks' players for their championship win over Miami. They earned it, for sure.

Tennis: A Midyear Championship Series?

While we're at it, I congratulate Novak Djokovic for his success this year, capped by his gaining the No. 1 ranking, then defeating Rafael Nadal in the Wimbledon final. I have to say it's a good thing that he won the final (though he didn't need to do it to attain the top ranking). I'd be in favor of a midseason championship series—maybe just the top four players, playing on three different surfaces—as a big moneymaker which might make the ratings a lot less important in our consideration of the game.

The women's game shows how bad things are: unlike the men's game, where the top four are clearly known, and, despite intense competition, show up in the semis and finals with regularity, the women's game has no one deserving of the top spot. It's been that way since Kim Clijsters and the Williams sisters went out with injuries (the Williams' just got back, but not quite all the way) and Justine Henin retired. Suppose they had a championship series and no one qualified?

NFL: Just Give Up
The owners are doing their best imitation of Congress: they dither and make unreasonable demands until the last minute, then they will rush a deal, force the players (who've been locked out of training) to show up for their precious preseason travesties, and make other moves to grind the players' brain pans and limbs into glue and dust.

My only advice is: the players should refuse any deal in which they have to play more than two preseason games—this year, especially, and for the future, too. Other than that, I continue to enjoy the absence of the NFL and continue my boycott of all things related, until we get a new set of owners.

Halperin's Painful Boner

2011-07-01T14:13:00.007-06:00

Warning: As with my recent posting on Anthony Weiner, this posting contains an excessive amount of silly reference--direct and indirect--to male sex organs. I apologize for the necessity.

Last week, Time political editor and MSNBC regular talking head Mark Halperin went on Joe Scarborough's "Morning Joe" show to talk about President Obama's news conference the day before. Obama had scolded Congress for failing to do its assignment of finding a way to pass the debt limit and warned them that, if they didn't get their work done, the public would give them bad grades, in the process comparing them unfavorably to his daughters.

Helperin was asked about his opinion of the Obama scolding. He indicated his honest opinion should be bleeped out and checked that they could and would do so, then said, "basically, I think he was being a dick". Pretty soon, he was mortified to find out that the producer had tried to use bleep the comment (using the six-second delay on this type of telecast), but had failed to do so. Halperin "manned up" (boy, I hate that expression) and apologized, on air at the time, and since then.

Helperin has been suspended indefinitely by MSNBC and probably will be disciplined in some way by Time. Personally, I think this unfair: if anybody's job should be endangered, it's the producer (or the person who trained him/her and didn't sufficiently emphasize the necessity of keeping his/her thumb by the button at all times). Whether or not you believe in the appropriateness of the delay and the squelch button, this was one time it should have been used, as Halperin's comments clearly show he meant the characterization should be off the record. I think that an appropriate punishment for Halperin is for him to live with a new nickname, a dimutive of Richard.

The Chicago Tribune's Clarence Page had it about right in today's column when he pointed out that the real issue is not "Dick" Halperin's mild vulgarity or "Morning Joe's" failure to push the button, but whether Obama's scolding isn't right on target. It's not "being a dick" to expect them to do their job. He should be playing hardball, and wielding the bat is how to do it.

Finally, it's way past due for me to credit Garrett Epps, writing in the Atlantic Monthly, for a brilliant constitutional argument that the debt ceiling itself is unconstitutional. A provision of the 14th amendment, passed during Reconstruction, clearly states that the Federal government's debt must be honored. It's certainly not a strategy to be preferred, but if the stalemate looks to go past August 2, it is now looking like a possibility for Obama to announce that he will require all debts be honored, and, if necessary, challenge the constitutionality of the ultimate debt ceiling legislation ("the debt shall not exceed $XXX trillion").

Political Catchup Post

2011-06-18T10:46:00.006-06:00

(I'm thinking of the messy red stuff, a good image to describe our domestic economy, and also the fact that I've been remiss in commenting on recent political news.)

Why Isn't Capital Making Jobs Here?
This is, more or less, the theme of a discussion on the business social network Linked In, to which I contributed the following post:

Unfortunately, there is no law of economics that means everyone who wants a decent job can get one, even in times of prosperity. We have raised productivity and outsourced jobs to the point that I see an oversupply of labor--under any government--for the next 15 years or so (until the Baby Boomers are largely out to pasture). It is true that the cost of medical benefits to employers means less will be employed; this is nothing new, though, and we failed to fix this problem with the health care insurance reform.

We can't spend our way out of this--the 2009 program was the best we could do, politically, in a crisis, and it wasn't enough. Tax cuts to create jobs are a joke, it wasn't even funny in the '000's (job market was weak, held up temporarily by wars, building houses we didn't need, and phony mortgages), and the party out of power is selling the same snake oil in the same bottle with a new label.

Here are three things I think could help on the margin:
1) A government-and-bank-supported effort to reclaim and restore foreclosed homes in ravaged neighborhoods.
2) Make a low-cost catastrophic health care insurance plan available to all (a/k/a the public option) so people can live on part-time jobs; and
3) Reduce future entitlement liabilities by making Medicare benefits taxable, and by allowing people going into well-funded retirement to give up their Social Security benefits in exchange for unused Federal land in trust (a new homesteading program).

While Playing Golf...
Here are some points the President might make with his orange-hued playing partner:
1) We are going to make a proposal that is going to revitalize the states that are hardest hit by the recession (see #1 above). It will be very popular, and you will oppose it at your peril. If you go along, we will all benefit.
2) We have some major suggestions to reduce future deficits (see #2 above), including $500 billion or more in defense spending, totalling some $2 billion, which will take this off the table until 2013. Again, you will oppose them at your peril, because we are prepared to take steps to prevent default and keep the government running indefinitely without an increase in the debt limit, but it will destroy your party's political fortunes.
3) We will consult with you on the Libya campaign, but a vote is not required, and we will ignore any measure that ties the hands of NATO in the program. We look to wrap it up within 60 days, one way or another.
4) We are close to a political deal in Afghanistan, and the troop withdrawals are going to be very real.

Mitt and the Seven Dwarfs
I have to admit that I couldn't watch the Republican Presidential debate the other night--it was too much for me to stand. So I'll take the word of those who watched it that Romney won (by not losing), Pawlenty missed his big chance to lay mitts on, and Bachmann emerged as the purest anti-Romney, anti-Obama, anti-government Tea Party-type candidate. Fine.

I recommend Larry Sabato's recent column handicapping the candidates--Sabato's a political scientist with moderate to conservative leanings, but on something like this is very reliable and well-informed. So I will accept his point of view that Ron Paul's support is too much on the margins of the party primary electorate to be a serious threat to Romney, that Cain (who I see as a black redneck, if such a thing is possible) will yield his support to Bachmann if she takes the early lead with a strong performance in Iowa.

Fine. I would still say that there is an opening for a major entrant, and it looks to me that it will be Rick Perry (not Palin, not Christie). I have to say that this disturbs me more than a little, and I will not dismiss his chances by saying what should be obvious--we've seen his like before, and we're just starting to recover from it. Perry's popularity in Texas is at a peak now--2016 will be too late for him--he's got the bug to run, he'll get Bushite money, and his story might just gull the voters yet again, even in the general election. So, I see the race as being Romney and Bachmann leading early, Perry trying to break in before South Carolina, and Romney and Perry being a very typical high-forehead white-guy Republican nomination battle.

As for the VP nominee, whoever the Presidential nominee will be, I think he/she/it will choose Marco Rubio. I think it's clear he would take the job, add value to the ticket (in Florida, and with Hispanics), and any nominee would be crazy not to choose him.

Now, I was originally thinking of the race as Mitt and the Seven Dwarfs: Cain, Bachmann, Santorum, Gingrich, Paul, Pawlenty, and Huntsman. But, in trying to cast the original (Gingich is Grumpy, or maybe Doc, Huntsman--the last guy to appear--Sleepy, etc.) it occurs to me that Bachmann is actually better cast as Snow White (with Palin as the Wicked Stepmother, who will bring a poisoned apple to her at some point--a tainted endorsement?), and Romney is really one of the dwarfs (Dopey?) Then there's Perry, Prince Charming, who would come to S.W.'s rescue when her campaign becomes paralyzed, winning the nomination and rides off into the sunset with her riding behind as the V.P. It works better--as an analogy, as a dramatic plot--but is it realistic? Then again, the GOP has been living in a fantasy world for quite a while.

"Bulworth" in Real Life

2011-06-14T07:18:00.003-06:00

It's not new, but in going through my old emails the other day I ran across this incredible piece in the New Yorker about Rodrigo Rosenberg of Guatemala, and his decision to arrange a hired killing--of himself:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/04/04/110404fa_fact_grann?currentPage=all

The article, by Curtis Grann, is very well written and suspenseful, so I won't spoil it any more. The upper class of Guatemalan society is extreme in its no-holds-barred, rough-and-tumble battle for power and all it brings. Rosenberg comes off as someone who was too credulous for full-tilt Machiavellianism.

"Bulworth", of course, was the movie starring Warren Beatty from the '90's in which the Senator pays hit men to kill him off, then he falls in love (with a character played by Halle Berry), and changes his mind and tries--unsuccessfully--to call it off. It's quite amusing, particularly when Beatty/Bulworth, with nothing to lose, starts telling the truth--in rhymes, white-man hip-hop style. Rosenberg's story is not at all humorous, but it is fascinating in its own way.

Weiner: Cooked

2011-06-08T19:14:00.004-06:00

It's hardly worth debating whether Rep. Anthony Weiner should resign or should have to resign or should be somehow removed from his job (the latest I heard was to gerrymander his district out of existence). He will resign; the pressure on him will increase steadily, irresistibly, until he gives up--and it won't be long.

Speaking of which, I would say that someone with his name has three choices: 1) don't be a "weiner", 2) admit his "weiner-ness", or 3) try to change what it means to be one. As someone often known as "stoner", I should know: I've tried them all, settled on 3) (hence the blog).

Speaking of "should know", the most bizarre aspect of this has been watching former Gov. Elliot Spitzer commenting to other talking heads (on his CNN show "In the Arena") about how Weiner should handle his sex scandal. I feel like those folks should be saying, "well, Elliot, he should do what you did and hide from public view until he shows up with his wife to announce his resignation". Wonder what Spitz would say to that one?

I have to disagree with those who say that it was his lie--not his sins--that has let the animals permanently out of his barn. For one thing, it was the fact of his denial! One must not deny such things, true or not true. There are two valid responses to an accusation of this sort (and I repeat, true or not): "I don't remember" or "None of your business". I would suggest the following: "I've got two answers, take your pick: 'I don't remember' or 'None of your business'. Or both." The key is to use that answer consistently, not just when there is something embarrassing that you'd rather not admit.

Beyond that, though, it's not true that it was his lie, not his sin, that brought him down. It was the disclosure (and clearly, his poor choice of the target(s) of his indiscretions)--after that, it was just a matter of how, and how long. Americans are prudes, and voyeurs, and journalists are the worst of them, dogs with a bone they just can't ever give up. Andrew Breitbart, the contemptible right-wing blogger who has apparently been exonerated of misdeeds in this case, said on Spitzer's show that he was not part of the Morality Police, and in the next sentence said that public figures should never do anything that could subject themselves to blackmail. The point is, there's always a reason to drag it out until the climax, the public confession, the denouement.

I want three, and only three, things of my elected representatives: 1) to take no compensation for the job beyond the publicly approved amount; 2) to be informed enough to know what they are talking about; and 3) to faithfully represent the views and interests of their constituents (in this case, me). I could not care less about what they are 'tweeting', to whom, whether they are good spouses/parents, whether they show up in a clown costume, whatever. If they broke the law (not venally), well, they may have to go to jail, so that only impacts their ability to represent me.

Finally, my advice to the young: fame is an illusion and a calamity. Avoid it if you can, and if you can't, try to limit its damage.

Sports Update

2011-05-27T12:51:00.004-06:00

During this past holiday weekend, the major leagues reached the 1/3 mark for the regular season--it would have been a bit sooner except for the persistently bad weather this spring in many parts of the country.

One-third of the season is a good place to look at the emerging races for the divisional leads, the wild card, and to project some of the full-season stat levels.

The single player who deserves most comment is Toronto's Jose Bautista, who is on a pace to hit 60 or so homeruns this year. That's nowhere near the asterisk-tainted 73 of Barry Bonds, of course, but close to the old standard of a superlative slugging year before steroids.

One would think it impossible in today's era of frequent drug-testing that Bautista's performance would be enhanced artificially, but last year he did follow the pattern of many past juiced-up batters who emerged from ordinary pro levels with monster seasons. He has failed to regress; instead he is hitting them out at even a faster pace, so one must somewhat grudgingly admit his credibility as a legit big-time slugger.

I would also note the Yanks' centerfielder Curtis Granderson, one of my favorite active players even if he did go over to the Dark Side, the Cardinals' Matt Holiday (similar comments apply) and the surprising re-emergence of his teammate Lance Berkman, and the Reds' lefty-hitting combo of Joey Votto and Jay Bruce (manager Dusty Baker usually tries to sandwich in a righty hitter like Scott Rolen between them).

In terms of pitching, there are few standouts to note, even though the pitching in general has had the upper hand so far this season. Some young bucks are emerging as top starting pitchers, such as Tim Lincecum, but also Jair Jurrjens in Atlanta and Jared Weaver of the Angels.

In terms of the races, there are a couple of major surprises whose success this year remains less than assured--the Indians in the AL Central and Arizona in the NL West--but the teams that looked the best, the Phillies and Red Sox, are emerging as leaders despite injuries, in the first case, and a horrific start in the second. A lot of teams are bunched around .500, so the opportunity will be there for a team to break out of the pack if they've hung around close and then can get it together. My Reds are a feared opponent because of their hitting and defense, but they can't keep five good starters in a rotation, so I'm not overly optimistic.

....Get Out of the Kitchen
That's my advice, if you can't stand the (Miami) Heat. I've overcome my resistance to players' engineering their own core squad, as the Heat did and the Celtics more or less did a few years ago. They faced down a tough Bulls team in the Eastern Conference, and I would make them slight favorites in the Championship series.

First, though, I have to express my gratitude to the Mavericks for putting the Lakers down so decisively, and to salute Dirk Nowitzki for some of the finest late-game heroics (in the Mavericks' series with the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference finals) since Dwayne Wade's in the Miami-Dallas finals of five years ago.

Some Shorts
I should have posted my predictions for the Preakness; better yet, I should've bet them. Shackleford had looked like a good front-runner in the Derby, staying close until the final 1/16th of a mile, so I thought it would have a good shot of winning the Preakness, which it did. I might've even wheeled the four top horses and gotten that $6000+ Perfecta, even though it had the two horses with the shortest odds in it.

Now, as for the Belmont, Shackleford would definitely be a horse to avoid; Animal Kingdom should have a great shot, and (if it runs) Dialed In, which runs way to the back and charges late--too late to contend in the Derby and the Preakness, but that Belmont stretch goes on...forever.

Chelsea wasted no time in booting its coach, Carlo Ancelotti, after a campaign in which the squad got no trophies and finished second in the Premier League. He got no residual credit for having won two trophies (the F.A. Cup and the Premier League) the previous year. His greatest sin seems to have been to push for the signing of yet another high-priced forward who couldn't fit in (Fernando Torres this year), and his second was losing to Manchester United, repeatedly, in Manchester (particularly in the Champions League quarterfinals). At least Man U. lost in the finals to Barcelona.

Is this Really Necessary?

2011-05-21T20:34:00.008-06:00

Suppose they held a series of Republican primaries and nobody showed up? No candidates, no primary voters, no one caring to caucus--then whom would they nominate?

My guess is it would have to be Mitt Romney, as he will be out there even if nobody else shows up.

So far, nobody else who should be considered a serious political adversary for President Obama has entered the race. Now, somebody could grow into the job, and somebody will be the anti-Romney in the primaries for those Republican voters who can't handle the Mitt, but that person is not yet evident.

Donald Trump? No, it was just a publicity stunt for his TV program. Sarah Palin? She's disappearing from relevance fast, regardless of whether she tosses her CPO jacket into the ring. Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Rick Perry, Haley Barbour--they all have declared themselves to have too much sense to go into this particular steel cage match, and Mitch Daniels is leaning outward from it (in spite of many trying to push him in).

So, who do they have in there? Gary Johnson, Herman Cain (today), Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul--I think all officially in. Jon Huntsman seems very likely to go in, and Michele Bachmann seems compelled to enter. There's a guy named Buddy Roemer, a former Louisiana governor (one who, incredibly, does not seem to have been convicted of a felony), who for some reason said he would run, though he was not allowed onstage in the first official debate, held by Fox News in South Carolina a couple of weeks ago, because he couldn't break the 1% barrier. (I forgot Rick "Sanctimonious" Santorum--go ahead, nominate him. I dare you.)

Numerically, it's enough to fill the stage, but not enough to provide for an interesting campaign. Gingrich has already self-destructed, violating the Republican script by labeling Ryan's proposed spending cuts "radical" and "right-wing social engineering"; for this truth-telling he was seriously punished, and it appears the old hands who guide the Republican contests didn't want him around, anyway.

The party's plutocratic old farts recognize in Romney the face of the Great Deceiver, so they like him OK, though they are worried he can't carry the day. That's why they are encouraging Daniels to run, and they are tolerating hacks like Huntsman and Pawlenty as contingency candidates if Romney should implode.

The real battle to me still looks to be one that has not yet emerged: between Romney and some right-wing champion who will oppose Romneycare and the tired, failed policies of supply-side economics and neo-con military interventionism. That paladin will be known by his/her white horse and primary win in Iowa. Ron Paul has the credentials to make that case, but will the evangelicals rally to him? Bachmann will hope not, and there's nothing too silly for her to say to turn them off, if she runs. I still see her as a stalking horse, though, not riding one like a knight in shining armor.

I was extremely surprised that Huckabee didn't run, given the very enticing polling numbers he had; Palin should've been able to fill that gap, but seems unready or unwilling. I think there's still a chance she will come in late, but there hasn't been a successful draft nomination campaign since Wendell Wilkie in 1940, and I don't think it's even been attempted since Henry Cabot Lodge in 1964--certainly not since Jimmy Carter changed the nomination game forever with his marathon run in 1976.

Riding the Ripples

Take the weak Republican field and add President Obama's moderate domestic policies and the huge national security success with the Bin Laden raid in Pakistan, and Democrats should be thinking landslide. Instead, regaining the House is very much in doubt, as is the party's chances of holding any kind of Senate majority, and the Presidential campaign is not talking to reporters about an aggressive 50-state smashing win, instead about focusing its resources in a few (less than a half-dozen) critical swing states.

Of course, they shouldn't be overconfident, especially at this early stage, and some of those key states--Ohio, Florida, Virginia--have critical, close races for Senate seats that the Democrats will need to hold to preserve their majorities. (The other two states where they plan a big push, according to this Roll Call article, are Colorado and North Carolina). On the other hand, Missouri, which will have another critical race as Claire McCaskill tries to defend her seat, seems off the priority map, while Nevada and New Mexico--both with key Senate races--are believed safe for the President (or maybe just too small in electoral votes to qualify as priority targets).

Why the bummer mentality? I'd cite two reasons: The first is the hangover from the 2010 elections, and the inevitable, unending slow-motion train wreck on the budget (and now on the debt ceiling). It's unclear whether the voters realize that they (or their fellow citizens, especially some of the non-voting ones) did a bad, bad thing last year. The polls indicate that the majority favoring Republican House candidates is gone, and they don't like the long-term budget resolution plotting the destruction of Medicare that all but four Republican House members (and no Democrats) supported, but they don't want the debt limit raised: they seem to believe the nonsense that we can just cut "waste, fraud, and abuse" and the Federal budget will balance.

Then there's the economy, which seems to have lost its momentum. In my descriptions of the Great Crater, I think I erred: the situation is more a fluid one, less a dry moonscape. Think of a giant whale being dropped into a lake with a Great Bellyflop. We have ridden through the initial wave that produced, and are now riding through the secondary troughs and peaks following, as the whale bobs back to the surface and disturbs the waters again.

It's way too soon to know where our ship of state will be in these unsettled waters in November, 2012, and it's also too soon to foresee the nature of the general election campaign (though the images of what I see as probable Obama-Romney debates are clear enough). I remain hopeful that 2012's ultimate outcome will provide evidence that is clear enough, even for the American electorate, that the Republican party, as it operates today, serves the interests of none of them, even the ones who habitually support it.

In this regard, I thought a recent Gallup poll on public interest in a third-party was interesting. Not that there was a slight majority seeking one; actually, that number has come down from previous high levels, and there is always a majority of independents who want another choice. What was interesting is that a majority of Republicans now want another party: This could reflect the Presidential race, it could be that there are large numbers of Tea party Republicans who find their party's leadership insufficiently obstinate, but I think it's a beginning of a realization that their whole shtick, whether it's preening militarism, 19th-century-style coddling of robber barons, nativism, Reagan-clone haircut pols, or class warfare against the lowest nine deciles of income earners, just isn't cutting it in the 21st century so far.

On Plain(e)s Drifting: Was, High; Now, Des

2011-05-21T19:45:00.005-06:00

This post marks the first since my transfer from Taos to Illinois. I have changed my subtitle from "High Plains Drifting" to "Des Plaines Drifting"--Des Plaines being the name of a river and a town nearby. Floating downstream--Des Plaines Drifting--is the theme for this new phase in my life.

That being said, my re-emergence into the world of work is hardly an easy downhill coast. Many things have changed, and it is always a significant task to learn the culture and the ways of a new employer. I never comment specifically on my employers, past or present, but I will say a couple things at this point: I am back in the financial services industry, but this time on the "liabilities" (deposits) side. So far, I find it refreshing, and somewhat in line with these times of (attempted) de-leveraging.

And, in case you are jumping to unwarranted conclusions: yes, I used to work on the credit-granting side of banking, but, no, I had nothing to do with the Great Bellyflop (and ensuing Great Crater). The last time I was involved in the USA was in the mid '90's, before the practice had become to give a credit card or mortgage to anyone who asked for one.

All's well so far in Chicagoland--the people are very friendly and helpful. My "training" at 7000 ft. would stand me well in an athletic competition at the <1000 ft. altitude here, but at this stage in my "career", that doesn't seem necessary (unless someone is chasing me).

I'm looking forward to a trip tomorrow from the suburbs into the city, to see Hyde Park and to come within a few hundred yards of the Obama Manse.

Hey, Hey, Goodbye

2011-04-24T21:09:00.009-06:00

I congratulate our military, our intelligence services, our national security team, and our Commander-in-Chief for the brilliantly successful attack into Pakistan which killed Osama Bin Laden and brought his body out to verify that result.

He was killed in "a firefight", as President Obama announced. I had imagined that an act of justice would've been to incinerate him with a flamethrower. I'm sure that our forces didn't do that, as retrieving the body would have been a priority, but I think bringing him back dead was the best outcome. Not just an anonymous drone strike, but our forces had the chance to look him in the eye and take him down once and for all. No need for offshore detention, vulnerable trials, interrogation (what would he be able to tell us anyway, now that we had him?) "Shot while resisting" is better than "shot while trying to escape".

Clearly the government and military of Pakistan must have allowed our helicopters to enter their country and conduct this operation, which was in a small city not far from the country's capital. We need to recognize that at this critical moment, the mission was not compromised and the necessary permission for passage was given.

I have called for President Obama to bring to an end the "Global War on Terror" in his administration: it is premature to declare victory and an end to the struggle against terrorists inspired by religious extremism, but I do think this is the singular highlight of that effort and an important psychological triumph.

A Time to Review, and to Make Changes

Before this extraordinary event, I had been considering a posting on the idea that now, for the first time since September 11, 2001, it was becoming politically possible to consider major reductions in our military posture and our military expenditures.

Two or three recent developments prior to the Osama operation had led me to this conclusion. One is the major reorganization of the intelligence and military leadership, with CIA head Leon Panetta recently named to be the next Defense Secretary and Gen. Petraeus coming to CIA. Current Defense Secretary Gates has done great service to the US in his job (under both the Bush and Obama Administration), and he has broached the idea of cuts in spending. Now Panetta--a hero of the Bin Laden mission, which was run by the CIA--will be a savvy civilian leader who will continue Gates' efforts to trim the military, and he will also be politically in tune with the Administration and responsive to the political need to continue reductions in overseas troop commitments.

Another fascinating development has been the semi-anonymous publication of an article by a pair of high-ranking military officers. Under the name "Mr. Y"-a clear reference to the famous article outlining the strategy of containment of the Soviet Union by George Kennan, in the early days of the Cold War--their article makes a far-sighted appeal for America to change our focus toward investments, education, and a foreign policy based more on values and less on sheer military force. I encourage all to read it. If Mr. Y realizes that we need to move from empire-building and overdevelopment of the military-industrial complex for the future of our country's security, then the usual bureaucratic impediments to military spending reductions should not be operative.

In order to reorient our military strategy, it will be necessary to ramp down our military forces abroad, and in particular the major ground forces engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Iraq adventure is finally coming to a conclusion, in full cooperation with the Iraqi government, and withdrawals are promised to being this year in Afghanistan. In this regard, I would recommend reading a second article, by an accomplished investigative reporter named Ahmed Rashid, in a recent Financial Times. Rashid reports that there are now real negotiations going on, with the cooperation of Pakistan and Afghanistan, to engage the Taliban, with the aim being an eventual agreement to bring the war to an end.

Then, of course, there is the running battle over government expenditures, and especially the need to set a series of stakes in the ground to mark expected levels of revenues, spending, and within them the amount committed to various government priorities. Any success we can make now in lowering the trajectory of future military spending--based on rational security needs, not pork-barrel considerations of local basing desires--will make it easier to develop multi-year budget plans that fit within the overall framework of $4 trillion in deficit reductions over the next decade.

Finally, there are the incredible developments of the Arab Spring--the successful overthrow of dictatorships in Egypt and Tunisia, and the uprisings in Libya, Bahrain, Syria, and elsewhere. Not all of these are going to end well, some are running into vicious resistance from the powers of the status quo, but there is a feeling that is ultimately unstoppable in these countries. To the extent that Mideast peoples feel they can accomplish changes in their authoritarian regimes, that will cut the legs right out from under al Qaeda and its rationale for violence.

Osama's killing is one more, huge piece of evidence of historic change. We need to adjust our strategy to new realities, and doing so will help us by reducing global tensions and will make possible needed reductions in our level of military spending.

The Royal Scam

2011-04-24T10:01:00.010-06:00

Nice Dress, Kate: Give a Kiss 'Ere, Duchess
I had to skip the nuptials of Prince William and the commoner, Kate Middleton this morning at 4:30 a.m. (Mountain time). It was my duty, I think, as an American not to be among the 2 billion who watched (or is that people who watched something? I am, unavoidably, seeing the highlights, so that might count me in.)

Though I certainly don't begrudge the lovely couple their chance to have a proper marriage, certainly there is something incongruous about a nation which is leading the world in government austerity having such a lavish ceremony. Yes, the royals are supposed to be footing the bills, though I am sure there is a sizeable cost overrun for security, military overflights (William's a Flight Lieutenant--that's "lef-ten-ant"). Maybe all that deficit spending and voyeuristic tourism will assist their nation's flagging recovery a bit--I'm willing to hope so.

The fact is that the royal family is an incredibly large, government-subsidized luxury burden on the nation, a long-running private enterprise of huge wealth (does Fortune bother to include them in their table?) The Queen and her grandson should make the country a wedding gift of a billion pounds or so to help pay for their share of the belt-tightening that everyone else has been told they must take.

And Now, for Something Completely More Interesting

I'm working on a significant project for the blog; its working title is "My Playlist of All Time". I'm planning it as a list of 200 songs, with no more than one from each artist (though I will allow myself to mention one or two others from artists who have multiple cuts of greatness). It'll be rock-centered, with some blues and soul, songs released during my conscious lifetime. The idea would be a playlist that is long enough, diverse enough, and with songs of good enough quality that I would never tire of it (though I may never actually put together the physical collection of the music, and will certainly never listen to it in 24-hour continuous fashion).

Sometimes the line is blurry as to the bounds enclosed by a single artist: for example, think of all the different groups Eric Clapton has played with--how many songs from Clapton will I include? (the answer is, I haven't decided yet). With regard to the Beatles, I will go by lifetime recordings by songwriter--Harrisongs, songs by John Lennon, as a solo artist or ones that he wrote for the band (as best as I can determine, and I took a stab at it last December on the anniversary of his murder), and McCartney's solo songs or ones written for the band.

It will still be a hugely difficult task for some artists--there's only one Bob Dylan, one Stevie Wonder (though I'm going in thinking I will allow myself to differentiate Rolling Stones with Brian Jones and without him). So it is with Steely Dan, defined as Becker + Fagen + whoever (their solo efforts could, in theory, get separate entries).

So, in honor of the royal couple, here is an effort to rank my favorite 25 Steely Dan songs, counting down. The music in all these is so good, it's hard to have much preference. That comes more from the songs effect on my emotions, and from a fairly close study to try and figure out the lyrics. As you'll see, I like least their snobby put-downs (despite great music, such as 'Barrytown' and 'Gaucho' are not included here), not so crazy about their pervasive perversity, I appreciate their "character studies", and love their offbeat philosophical statements.

25: The Royal Scam--A big-time con, not something about the royals. The tone is an admiring one.
24: Haitian Divorce--I like this song for its offbeat musical styling, not for its story of illegitimacy and accidental miscegenation.
23: Two Against Nature--Nice pace in this one, as the duo re-emerge from retirement to take on everything. I have to say I share their point of view on this one more than I usually do.
22: Cousin Dupree--I'm going to hope that this popular recent ditty, about some old geezer's fling with his underage cousin, has no basis in their reality.
21: Your Gold Teeth II--A rarity--the groove was so good, the band had to continue it in a cut from a successive album.
20: Brooklyn--There's a clear tone of nostalgia in this rambling early piece.
19: Sign In Stranger--It's about plastic surgery for mobbed-up criminals, but that doesn't really matter.
18: Third World Man--Satire about the suburbs and desegregation, with a false tension and lyrics perfectly fitting the slow rhythm.
17: Reelin' in the Years--The first SD song I knew, for a long time the only one. Catchy chorus, tight soloing; it's got to be about waste (of time and oneself), but it's hard to tell if the viewpoint is supportive or just nasty.
16: Charlie Freak--A brilliantly-layered musical construction with great tension. The subject? Some poor sap's drug overdose.
15: FM--To me, this is nothing more than a razor-sharp recorded paean to the glory of modern sound reproduction, which the Dan exploited to the max.
14: My Old School--One of the few songs that I think is definitely about the boys themselves, rather than the voice of some twisted folks they know or imagine. The key word is "Annandale", a reference to Annandale-on-Hudson, the location of Bard College, where they went ("studied" would be the wrong word) for a year or so.
13: Chain Lightning--I don't know what it's about, not sure I want to (smoking crack?) Great guitar work.
12: Doctor Wu--See comments on "Chain Lightning".
11: Do It Again--The subject is recidivism--on criminality, gambling, bad romance--and the outlook is clearly pessimistic, the tone reproving, the music uplifting.
10: Your Gold Teeth--A piece that is seriously underrated in the pantheon; one practically never hears it. It has a complex musical format and lyrics that actually approach profundity for once. It's about using the I Ching to answer one's short-term questions, and how that fantasy somehow fits life's real strangeness.
9: Show Biz Kids--This, and the next three titles, are about as political as they get. This one's message is unmistakable, about the phony, self-absorbed Hollywood culture.
8: With A Gun--This one's condemning violent criminality. Perennially relevant in the US.
7: Black Friday--a typical upbeat song on a very dark subject, about heading for the hills when it all comes tumbling down.
6: King of the World--following on the "Black Friday" apocalypse theme; it seems to be about a nuclear holocaust in our area, the Rio Grande. I remember the band playing it on an outdoor stage near Albuquerque in '07(?), a plague of moths--attracted by the light, no doubt--getting in their faces and bugging them.
5: West of Hollywood--My clear favorite from the albums of the Nouveau Dan. Great, long sax solo, piercing lyrics about slacker-ism.
4: Kid Charlemagne--Can a groove be both dark and happy? Invokes nostalgia for the early hippie days, I think--could the title character be Owsley, the king of early-day LSD production?
3: Bodhisattva--I have always loved the Buddhist concept of the enlightened ones staying with us mortal fools to help us fiind the way (meaning of the title). I don't focus on SD's (no doubt perverted) use of the idea; instead I love the non-stop, infectious energy of the song.
2: Pretzel Logic--The band making a statement, I think. A great slow-rocking platform for soloing, with historical and philosophic references, all twisted up. The point of it is exactly that it is not all so straightforward.
1: Aja-Perhaps a bit of a surprise. I remember listening to it repeatedly as I walked the streets of Hong Kong with my new Walkman in 1987. I'm still not sure what it's about (I have a feeling it's something about drug dealing--"when all my dime dancing is through"--but it's seductive and affecting).

Their Gold, Our Blues

2011-04-24T09:55:00.007-06:00

With professional sports, our enjoyment is hostage to the whims of unfeeling plutocrats.

The NFL Loses its Case to A Bunch of Players
I applaud Judge Nelson's decision that the NFL owners have unfairly combined to deny the livelihood of professional footballers, an antitrust violation. She could have taken several different steps--breaking up the league into competing units (such as was done with Ma Bell some 30 years ago) or imposed crippling fines. So the owners should be relieved that she only did what the players wanted her to do: allow them to play again.

If the owners are under the impression that they do not need the players to take the field in order for them to make money from their franchises, they should be disabused of that notion--utterly, completely, violently if necessary, and preferably legally. I support boycotts of NFL merchandise, certainly a total disregard for their "draft" going on tonight (without an Collective Bargaining Agreement with their current stock of players, what do they think are they drafting for?), and I would suggest a process to separate them from their money through fines--real soon. (Though I would presume they would be smart enough not to disobey an injunction to allow "sporting activities", once they have completed their appeals.) As far as I'm concerned, the owners went too far, and they need to be slapped down, with games resuming and no concessions to them.

Frankly, though, this is not enough for me. My plan is to boycott all support of NFL (which, for me, is mostly watching games on TV and blogging about them sometimes)--indefinitely--until they get a better, wiser set of owners. That's probably forever.

What will I lose? I like watching the playoff games, and about half a dozen to a dozen regular season games a year. The Super Bowl, not so much; preseason games, never. We'll give this approach a try for a couple years and see if this is too much to give up--or maybe the owners will give in first.

The Dodgers Get Hit By A Brick

The takeover of the Los Angeles Dodgers by the Major League Baseball organization illustrates a perennial problem: How bad does an owner have to be before the
other owners decide he/she must be replaced? The Dodgers owners--whose sin was a divorce battle so fierce that Mr. McCourt had to start pumping money out of the team to protect his other interests--had gone over the line.

The owners of the New York Mets, the Wilpons (which my friend Muhammad Cohen, in a brilliant pun, has labeled as "WMD: Wilpons of Mets' Destruction"), have a different problem which has not yet put them beyond the pale but may yet do so. The Wilpons were major investors in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, and Madoff allowed them to retrieve their money before his business collapsed. The threat to the Wilpons, and thus to the Mets as currently constituted, is that the trustee of Madoff's bankrupt enterprise will successfully claim huge sums from the Wilpons', and the Mets', kitty. If it becomes apparent that will happen, the Wilpons would be forced to relinquish their control, just as the Dodgers' McCourts will have to do.

The threshold of pain required before the commissioner acts is very high for the same reason kings, historically, have always been reluctant to endorse regicide: the commissioner is just the agent of the owners, and they realize their turn could be next.

To me, the NFL owners have joined hands and jumped over the line--and off the
cliff. Their league is dead to me (until they get a new set of owners). The
jury is out for the NBA; they have a superb product, and their commissioner is
the smartest one going, but their owners have pulled out their knives and are
threatening to cut their throats unless we yield to their unreasonable demands.

Unlike the NFL, baseball has an exemption from antitrust law granted long ago by Congress. This privilege suggests a possible improvement to the game's management that will never happen. It would be some sort of Congressional oversight on owner behavior and the broad "vision" for the game. I guarantee you that, if there were such for the NFL, there would be a franchise in L.A.

The NBA May Bring the Cruelest Cuts
If there were oversight of the NBA, I guarantee there would not be three franchises in the L.A. area, as is likely to happen after this year. The peripatetic Sacramento Kings, a franchise that started in Rochester, NY, I believe (though that was before my time) came, deluded, and left Cincinnati (as the Royals), then the states of Missouri, Nebraska, and Kansas (when it had the catchy name of the "Kansas City-Omaha Kings"), now plans to leave Sacramento (where their fans have earned the reputation as the most loyal, noisiest supporters of any NBA team) because of the owning Maloof brothers' business shortcomings and dispute about yet another arena they wanted built for them at public expense.

Worse than this travesty, though, would be if the NBA goes the NFL route after this season. The Collective Bargaining Agreement between the players and owners expires, and the threat of lockout has been looming for some time. The owners are claiming that too many of their number are making insufficient returns on their capital, and thus the new agreement will have to reduce players' cut of the overall till, or they will take their (generally publicly-paid) arenas, hoops, and balls and go home.

The irony is that this may have been the best NBA season ever, in terms of sustainable interest provided by a variety of competitive teams without a prohibitive favorite. The first round of the playoffs has been exceptionally exciting--though none of the series may go the full seven games, none of the top seeds has seemed invulnerable in the first round (there was only one sweep in the eight series, the Celtics over the Knicks, the early games at home were very tough for the Celtics, and the sweep only became likely when two of the Knicks' top three players became injured), and plenty of excitement lies ahead.

The issues which separate the owners and players will be portrayed as very abstruse ones about reductions in salary cap, "franchise players" who can be protected from free agency or trade (as the NFL has), and perhaps more provisions to protect owners from overspending on players that are too young or too lame. Because the real issue is the weakness of the franchises in smaller markets, and because the NBA is the sports league in which the players are most recognizable and relatively powerful, the solution will lie in sharing of revenues between teams--but will they find the answer without having to lock out the players and go through the legal struggles the NFL is experiencing?

To me, the NFL owners have joined hands and jumped over the line--and off the
cliff. Their league is dead to me (until they get a new set of owners). The
jury is out for the NBA; they have a superb product, and their commissioner (David Stern) is the smartest and most powerful one going, but their owners have pulled out their knives and are threatening to cut their own throats unless we yield to their unreasonable demands.

Enhancement through Lower Regard?

2011-04-18T12:06:00.006-06:00

Today the leading credit rating agency Standard & Poor's (S&P) announced that they have given a "negative outlook" to US government debt. This is not a downgrade in itself, but does provide a more specific qualitative assessment when combined with the rating itself.

What does it mean, and what have the reactions been to the announcement? In one sense, it means nothing new at all: the rating remains AAA, and S&P had already provided warnings that it would consider downgrading US debt if we did not get our house in order. S&P indicated that its negative outlook suggested there was a 1-in-3 chance that the rating could actually be downgraded within the next two years.

I am guessing, and I hope that it's true, that this means that about 1/3 of the times that they have provided a negative outlook on AAA debt in the past (over some reasonable amount of time observed), they have ended up downgrading the debt in the following two years. I hope that it does not mean their assessment of "probability" in the specific case of the US government's debt, because that would be completely bogus. The actual event depends on a whole lot of possible contingencies, some political, some economic; it would be ludicrous to estimate a "probability" on the outcome, and anyway I can tell you my strongly felt opinion--the chances that they would downgrade US debt, short of some sort of default, is zero. To do otherwise would be to invite a political cataclysm which would lead inevitably to S&P losing its duopoly status at the top of the credit rating game with Moody's. They aren't that dumb.

One question that has been asked today is: "Who cares what S&P thinks?" This blog has certainly been unstinting in our criticism of the principal rating agencies' performance in recent years, and creation of a new, better business model for rating debt quality is one piece of unfinished business from last year's financial reform. In this case, the US government is not paying S&P to provide a rating, so their opinion may be more untainted than usual, and what I see S&P reacting to, and also trying to forestall, is the fear of a credit crisis due to failure of the US government to a) develop a long-term deficit program of some sort, and b) raise the debt limit when it comes in a month or so. S&P is providing a warning from the credit markets, which both parties' strategists would do well to heed.

This is not to say that the Obama Administration need be governed by the desires of the bond markets; there are lots of forms of long-term debt reduction and short-term debt limit increase which would forestall a crisis. It is also a mistake to think that the markets speak with one voice: there are even some "experts" out there who are advising politicians not to compromise their values, to go up to the brink and even over it if necessary, that a default would not be catastrophic to our attempts to escape the Great Crater. Those voices should not be heeded.

Today's sharp drop in stocks (slight firming in bonds, gold, and the dollar; also a drop in oil and other commodities) may be much more meaningful than S&P's squawking. It appears to me that a new consensus is developing around a slowing of the pace of growth; with any additional government spending cuts around some sort of budget deal, even the partial one that is the best we could expect (see our recent forecast of the kind of agreement we should be able to get), we should expect nothing that will help recovery; only the absence of a collapse. In this scenario, there will be conflicting evidence affecting the markets, with slowed growth accompanied by possible rises in interest rates, prices, and flat job growth.

Thus, while the stock marketed overreacted, as per usual, with its immediate reaction to the "news" (in fact, a third of that reaction was corrected by the end of the day), it may still be in order for there to be a general retreat, until the quarterly earnings reports (and, especially, any future guidance) helps the market sort out the winners from the losers in the next few months.

As for the bond markets, they demand a lot but reward little. Today's announcement and its reaction produced public statements from both parties and from the White House, all pointing in the directions sought--more urgency on budget cuts and entitlement slashing from the Republicans, more urgency for a negotiation from the Democrats and the White House. It all may make a limited deal--the only one that's possible--more likely, but it won't be rewarded by anything more than the absence of a crisis and of a run on bond rates. I guess we should be grateful if we get small favors.

Miral

2011-04-13T15:43:00.006-06:00

I have been lax in documenting and reviewing the movie "Miral", the new movie directed by Julian Schnabel ("The Diving Bell and the Butterfly", one of my top 10 movies of the last decade). On a recent visit to New York about two weeks ago, I happened upon the opportunity to watch the movie, followed by a Q&A session with Schnabel himself, and with the writer of the screenplay and the memoir upon which the movie was based, Israeli Palestinian Rula Jebreal.

Jebreal's book is also named "Miral"; the movie and the book are the story of her youthful experiences growing up a Palestinian in Jerusalem, as well as stories about her mother and about a remarkable woman--named Hind Hussein--who started an orphanage and school there in the aftermath of the chaos around the creation of the Israeli state in 1947. Rula Jebreal was "Miral", a character named after a flower that grows by the side of the road in that region, and she grew up in the orphanage, attending the school, after the suicide of her mother (I believe it was the early '70's).

Filmed in a variety of great locations in Israel and the West Bank, the movie shows the misery and strife of military occupation from the point of view of Palestinians. Rula/Miral has the status of being an Israeli citizen, as her ancestors never left, and finds her identity as a Palestinian as a teenager. Miss Hind, the towering figure of the orphanage/school for some 40 years from the time she founded it, provides hope for the young girls there and does her best to protect them from the dangers of the intifada (uprising). At the story's end, she arranges for Miral to go to Italy to attend university, then dies, a local hero.

Rula's experiences include an infatuation with a young intifada leader who first supports the Al Fatah (PLO) position, then runs afoul of them and is killed as an accused traitor; she is taken by the Israeli authorities, interrogated, then blindfolded, bound, and beaten; her Israeli citizenship saved her from more prolonged imprisonment. Still, her experiences are not nearly as harsh as those the film recounts of her mother, who was abused and degraded, falsely imprisoned by the Israelis, and afterwards could not live with herself. Miral's "father" (the parentage was shown not to be biological) is one of the few positive male characters, a complicated character who was a devout Muslim, loyal to Miral's mother despite her infidelity, and a loving father, yet one who gives up custody of his daughter to the orphanage.

Beyond the range of the movie's story, Rula Jebreal became a journalist in Italy (as she said, "the first 'black' TV presenter there"). She spoke passionately at the Q&A session of her desire to raise awareness in the world of the plight of the Palestinians, though affirming her love of the area and acknowledging that she loves Israel as well. One thing she does not accept, and of which her life is testimony, is the Zionist notion that Israel is a Jewish state; though she came to have Jewish friends and appreciate their culture (some of which is shown in the movie), she wants a unitary state for all who live there.

The film is deeply affecting, though perhaps not as much as Schnabel's "Diving Bell". Frieda Pinto, the female lead of the smash 2009 movie "Slumdog Millionaire", is a bit of a controversial choice for the difficult role of Miral, but I will say that she brings to it something like the limpid beauty which I witnessed that evening from Rula herself. Her father was played by an actor, Alexander Siddig, who seemed very familiar but I could not place: turns out he was a regular, Dr. Bashir, on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" (not a great recommendation, I know). The other two key roles, both very challenging to portray, were those of Hind Hussein and of Miral's mother Nadia, played by more conventional Palestinian actresses, Hiam Abbass and Yasmine El Masri, respectively. Willem Dafoe and Vanessa Redgrave both lent their presence to the movie, though their roles are relatively small and peripheral to the story.

Schnabel spoke of the difficulty in getting official permissions to film in many locations, but also of the cooperation and passionate support for his effort that he sometimes found, and of the beauty of the region. (There is an extensive listing in the credits of each of the scenes and where it was shot.) He is known primarily as a painter, and is the son of prominent Jewish leaders, but has taken a courageous, independent political stance with this effort. He has run into some resistance from the Hollywood community, not too surprising considering the subject matter; he didn't need their help to make the film, but he will need it (and will not get it) to get broad enough distribution for him and Rula to accomplish their aim of raising political awareness. They may have to settle for the satisfaction of telling a compelling story beautifully, as both their political aims and commercial success will no doubt lie beyond their capability.

P.S. I have to mention the scene when Miral and her cousin's Jewish girlfriend are hanging out in an apartment in Jaffa, listening to Pete Townshend's spoken introduction to the first cut in his album of demos and rarities, "Scoop" (a personal favorite). It provides the occasion for Miral to be informed of the existence of something called "The Who". Not too critical, except to illustrate the degree that Miral's upbringing in her school was both sheltered and deprived of exposure to the outside world.

The Obama Plan

2011-04-13T15:43:00.003-06:00

I watched most of President Obama's speech on deficit reduction today and later read the text of it. I have no problems with any of it, including the political positioning, which is clearly front and center, and I disagree with those who want or expect more specifics at this point.

Obama seeks to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next 12 years as compared to current projections--these projections include considerable improvement in the economy, which, if true, will reduce the cumulative deficit, through reductions in social-net expenditures and improvements in tax receipts from individuals and businesses, just as much as all of this effort. That is one area--the need to continue the recovery--is one that Obama perhaps should have stressed more. His proposal is one that has $2 trillion of spending cuts (roughly 40% from areas agreed in the recent battles, 40% from defense, and 20% from Medicare/Medicaid), $1 trillion of revenue enhancement, and $1 trillion in reductions in interest on the debt (which result from the other reductions).

Of course his proposal is not the final form of what will happen. Congressman Ryan's proposal is just as far away, and the proposals of the Bowles-Simpson Commission are also far from being approvable by Congress in their current forms. What they all have in common, though, provides the basis of something important that can be done--now--to prevent a near-miss, slow-motion, high-kinetic-energy train encounter such as the one we had last week.

There can be agreement on a trajectory of deficit reduction--through a combination of recovery benchmarks, revenue increases, and spending reductions--over time, and on some agreed mid-course corrections if the rate of improvement in the budget deficit misses targets beyond certain margins of error. For example, if the economy improves on schedule but revenues do not, there should be automatic increases in tax rates or reductions in tax deductions; if the unemployment rate remains higher-than-projected, spending reductions--and the departments which would suffer them--should be specified; if interest rates rise, either these would be reflected in faster growth or both spending and revenue adjustments would be required to stay on track. Finally, these targets need to have teeth, such that a veto-level supermajority of both houses would be required to change them. This would allow for something like a declared major war which would have to change the picture dramatically.

Agreeing on these measures would not be easy, and that agreement would leave huge issues unsettled and fair game for the 2012 election, like what to do with health care entitlements, the level of defense spending, the type of "tax expenditure reforms" (changes in loopholes and deductions), corporate taxes, and marginal rates for the wealthy. But agreement on the trajectory--something that's comparable in all three framework proposals--would provide a basis to simplify annual budget battles (like the one expected for the 2012 budget), provide the needed reassurance to world markets, and give the public the impression that the government is no longer out of control.

Trump's Birther Baloney

2011-04-10T08:02:00.004-06:00

It is shameful that Donald Trump has seized on the question of President Obama's birth certificate as a means of pandering to the right wing of the Republican party. Like most things he does, it's a publicity stunt, but it is one that is part of a plan that aims at a thought almost too terrible to consider, the first stage of which is to get enough support among Republicans that he can win primaries and delegates.

I believe that Obama was born in Hawaii, and that Hawaii was part of U.S. territory at the time (one would have to go back to the legality of the resolution in 1895 that made it so, and it was truly an abuse of power, but not illegal under U.S. law). His father seems to have been a Kenyan who had some Muslims among his forebears, but it is ridiculous to think that religion is specified on a birth certificate, so what is it they are looking for?

The whole "investigation", to dignify it overly, is wrong-headed. It actually doesn't matter, for Obama's legal qualification to be President, where he was born. He was born of a native-born (white) American mother, so he's a native citizen and eligible for the Presidency, no matter where the birth occurred. In order to question his status, one would have to establish he was not borne by his mother.

End of story.

Intrade Odds

2011-04-08T13:38:00.003-06:00

...of this moment (Friday, April 8, at 3:39 p.m. EDT)

Odds of a government shutdown (by June 30, 2011, but essentially now): 57.8%

Odds of Muammar Qaddafi leaving his position at head of Libya's government by end of year: 65%

Of the Democratic party winning the Presidential election in 2012: 62.7%

Of the Republicans holding control of the House in the 2012 elections: 55%

Of the Republicans winning control of the Senate in 2012 (51 seats, or 50 if they win the Presidency, not counting Independents): 66%

Chances of selected individuals to win the Republican nomination in 2012: Mitt Romney 27.4%, Tim Pawlenty 16.5, Mitch Daniels 8.5, Michele Bachmann 7.3, Donald Trump 5.9, Mike Huckabee 5.5, Sarah Palin 4.9, Haley Barbour 4.8, Jon Huntsman 4.7, Newt Gingrich 3.9, Chris Christie 2.3, Ron Paul 1.7, Gary Johnson 1.5, Paul Ryan 1.3, Rudy Giuliani 1.0. Many others listed, all below 1.0%.

My take on these odds: bet against Qaddhafi, and Republicans winning the Senate; in favor of Obama, Romney, Daniels, Huckabee, and Paul Ryan, and against all the other Republicans. I think the odds on Republicans' holding the House are about right. I'm surprised by Pawlenty's number, but on the other hand, I read that Obama does worst against an anonymous Republican opponent than against any named one. In that case, Pawlenty would be a good choice for them, and the odds may be right in line. I think Romney's chances are closer to 40% on the nomination.

Intrade has a new look to their web site--more friendly, less geeky. I think they're looking to make it less an investment site, more a game site. Got to get the dumb money in there if it's going to predict events well over the long haul, I think.

The odds on the shutdown have risen rapidly, but now are stabilizing. As it may go down to the last hour, it's hard to be sure, but I think it will be solved--at least for this week!

It's Shutdown Friday!

2011-04-08T09:21:00.009-06:00

Actually, it will be Shutdown Saturday tomorrow; today is Brinkmanship Friday, as Senate Democrats and Congressional Republicans posture about the nature of the disagreement: Speaker of the House of Orange John Boehner claims it's because Democrats won't agree to enough cuts in the budget, while Senate Majority Leader Reid says it's because the Republicans insist on a policy of defunding Planned Parenthood. For his part, President Obama, trying to preserve a role of impartiality to help get a deal done, is staying silent about which of the two is lying (and it could be both).

The nastiest turn involves the paychecks for our military, which have been made hostage to a deal: the Administration has determined that under current law there is no provision to pay them in the case of a shutdown, the Republicans cynically proposed a bill to fund the military for the rest of the fiscal year, but added some of their dreaded policy riders. Obama said he'd veto it, and the Senate won't take it up; neither House of Congress has put forward a "clean" military funding bill that pays the military's personnel costs without a bunch of political statements, something both sides claim to want.

Splitting the Difference
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, the head of the Tea Party Caucus, has been able to take a surprisingly objective view of the dispute. She's not going to vote for any budget agreement, because the negotiations were not aggressive enough for her, particularly in de-funding the provisions of the health care insurance reform act passed last year. This allows her some perspective: she argues for a clean military funding bill if general agreement can't be achieved in time, but she believes the problems can be resolved, and she believes the issue of policy riders (new provisions of law added to the budget) has been resolved.

If this is true, that would be a major step toward resolution: in particular, the riders seeking to prevent the E.P.A. from enforcing the Clean Air act and water protections were unacceptable, to me and to President Obama, and would have put blame for a shutdown squarely on an indefensible will to prevent enforcement of the law. The tipoff that the EPA policy rider has indeed been taken off the table was a series of votes in the Senate to restrict the EPA that failed, despite the support from a few Democrats in coal-mining states.

The issue to de-fund Planned Parenthood is a little different, not just a matter of a policy rider, and I'm somewhat sympathetic to the Republican view. Not that the government should refuse to fund the women's health services Planned Parenthood provides, but I understand an objection to the way it is done. Funds for services such as these should be grants provided on a competitive application basis to the organization(s) that can do them most effectively, not an entitlement--the same goes for the funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's assistance to rural radio, an issue which also seems to have dropped off the table. Planned Parenthood does not use the money provided to pay for abortions--that is already prohibited by law--but if it can count on the Federal government for 30% of its funding every year, that affects its general funding strategy. I liken this to the battles the higher education institutions have to get money from the US government: those are for specific purposes, loss of grants have consequences on their general funding, and there is competition for them.

Bachmann said that Boehner told his caucus there is a $6.5 billion gap in the cuts agreed. To her, that was a minor amount, a couple of tenths of a percent of the budget, but with so many areas off the table, it sounds like a pretty large portion of a small number of agencies' funding. What I have read is that there is a disagreement about certain agencies which get their appropriations over a multi-year plan: the Democrats have agreed to cut some of the money from this year's portion, while the Republicans don't trust that money would not be spent later. There would seem to be a fairly easy solution: reduce the multi-year budget by the agreed amounts.

Deficits: Don't Worry!
For a completely different perspective, I recommend reading this article in The Nation (April 4 issue) by Australian economist William Mitchell; his argument is that both sides are wrong, and the budget deficits do not matter (particularly in this economy). Essentially, because governments like the US issue their own currency, there is no need to balance budgets, and inflation results from deficit spending only when the economy is at full capacity (which we are currently nowhere near). One point in particular struck me--his argument that the deficit does not have to be converted into debt through sale of bonds.

An interesting argument, one that deserves to be heard, but certainly one going against a strong public opinion in favor of deficit reduction, and one that seems disingenuous in a couple of ways: 1) tell it to the bond markets!--regardless of economic reality, they would likely react quite harshly, in terms of effective interest rates for bonds and Treasury bills, to a decision not to move against deficits or monetize them in bond sales; and 2) I think his argument would be stronger if he addressed the looming demographic issue in some way.

Paul Ryan Contra "Stoner"

A noble man...can endure no other enemy than one in whom there is nothing to despise and very much to honor.
---Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

We agree with those who say this shutdown skirmish is a waste of ammunition; the real issues are larger ones of long-term military investment strategy, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Wisconsin Republican Representative Paul Ryan tried to inject long-term issues into this mess of small-ball this week; he has drawn praise from "adults" of all political persuasions for his effort.

Representative Ryan is a serious man, and an honorable one; however, his specific proposal on Medicare is a declaration of war on...me, among others, and so I have no choice but to declare him my enemy.

He proposes to convert Medicare from a defined-benefit, fully-paid Government health care insurance program for the elderly (OK, except for co-pays) to one in which the government will provide a specific amount of money to beneficiaries for them to get private insurance. He would propose to convert the program starting for those turning 65 in 2122, and thereafter. There is no doubt: this conversion would be made to save money for the Federal government and would be a reduction in the value of benefits for those currently more than 10 years away from receiving them--I suppose 10 years being exactly the amount of time those people need to make other plans for payment of their healthcare costs for their lives as seniors.

I am one of those who will be 65 in 2122, and while I don't know the fine-print detail of which side of the line I'll be on, I resent the line-drawing in either case: either I will be drawing a much larger benefit than my comrades a few months younger, or I will be hugely penalized for not being born a few months sooner. What's he got against people my age?

(I remember a similar line drawn on the draft when I was 19: I was in the last cohort subjected to the draft lottery; my birthdate got #13 of 366 that year, though they didn't actually call people up, so in a similar way I was both lucky and unlucky, for no good reason).

Politically, I can only view Ryan's ploy as an attempt to split the Boomers (already a hugely politically-cloven group)right down the middle (coincidentally, or not, that is right at the peak of number of annual births at the height of the postwar Baby Boom), or to placate the seniors at the expense of the young. Mostly, though, it's yet another Republican sop to the rich: the real solution, the one that is certain to be adopted in the end, is to make those who can afford it pay more for their Medicare benefits.

What I would support is an approach that broadens Medicare eligibility by age, identifying the value of the benefit (X=cost of the program annually/number of recipients), and having recipients report that value as income and paying tax, if they are required to do so. The elderly and poor would thus be protected from the remedy to the cost problem, thus preserving the original intent of Medicare. I would also offer up this bone to the wealthy: they could deduct X as a cost the Federal government does not need to spend if they decline their Medicare coverage and get private coverage (to the standards of the Affordable Care Act) instead--since they can already deduct health insurance if they itemize, this would be a substantial double benefit, might make private healthcare for the elderly more competitive (which it surely is not now, and would not be affordable under the Ryan plan).

I've got an alternate to the Ryan plan, one just as likely or unlikely to become law, one that is no more or no less unfair than his, and which would do just as good a job of saving Federal expense: if these healthcare subsidy payments are such a good substitute for Medicare benefits, let's put all his constituents, those privatizing, union-busting Wisconsinites who elected him, on those vouchers right now, and use the savings to pay for Medicare/Medicaid benefits for all the constituents of my Congressional district (NM-3) who need them.

(Almost) No Apologies Necessary

2011-04-07T13:24:00.009-06:00

Whether the US is a "confessional" society might make for a good debate. The term refers usually to a nation's being organized around religion, and on that point one could argue both for the prominence of religion in the expressions of our social life, including its politics, and on the other hand for its secular nature and the strong wall usually existing between state and formal religious groups.

In the terms of the classic dilemma for those about to get involved in transgressive behavior, America, compared to most countries, is much more a "beg forgiveness" country than an "ask permission" one. This is really one of our great strengths, a key source of our history of innovation, and one of the clearest expressions of the sense of liberty that Americans feel in their daily lives.

The "confessional" is that little closet where believers go to confess their sins in the Catholic church and in some of the others. A "confessional society" contains a paradox: beliefs fundamentally revolving around those private, secret admissions emerge into direct influence on public policy. American society is confessional in a different way: it is the public confessional which is important. In our legal system, the degree of punishment is very much affected if the guilty admit to their crimes; so it is in our trials of public opinion of the famous. It is not enough that our celebrity face up to his/her sins privately, in the confessional, the A.A. group meeting, or face-to-face with those wronged--we expect a public apology as the first step in rehabilitation.

There are countless examples, from Tiger Woods to Eliot Spitzer to Larry Craig. If the mea culpa is deemed sufficiently sincere, the American people will forgive almost anything; if not, they will punish endlessly and ostracize ruthlessly. Think of O.J. Simpson, of Roman Polanski.

Still, there are those whose behavior is publicly criticized who, I would argue, have no need to apologize. For example, Charlie Sheen may be wrong about his level of talent, the demand for it, and his popularity--I would say probably he is wrong--but he is not wrong in his "arrogant" posture that he does not owe the public an apology. His show, "Two and a Half Men", may have been simple-minded entertainment, but it was entertaining, and his lifestyle probably contributed to its success (by adding authenticity to his portrayal of an amoral, womanizing rake) more than it detracted from it. He certainly does not need to apologize for it, in the face of dozens of shows of much more embarrassing quality.

The Libya Thing
I don't see that President Obama has anything to apologize for in the case of the US' involvement in establishing--by force--the "no fly zone". Neither to us, nor to Congress, nor to the world community. Regardless of what he said while campaigning, prior approval for hostilities is not required by US law. There are dozens of precedents, including several in recent decades. I would argue that Obama should get Congressional approval before putting any troops, or military advisers, on the ground in Libya (and I think he will not choose to take that further step, anyway).

In terms of lack of clarity on objectives, exit strategy, and all those other criticisms, those reflect a desire to over-simplify a complex situation, rather than a defect on strategy or execution. Obama's decisions were careful to go up to the line of what the U.N. resolution authorized, but not beyond. Once the no-fly zone had been established, he moved quickly to end US direction and leadership of military action, passing the responsibility to NATO, which was more eager for the role than our own military chiefs.

Will the mission succeed? This is very much in doubt, though the immediate aims of the U.N. resolution and US military action--protecting civilian populations in the east of the country from being overrun by Qadhafi forces, and the expected reprisals--were largely accomplished. Eastern Libya is still not out of danger, though, Qadhafi lives and continues to repress Libyans in most of the west of the country, and it is unclear whether the emerging stalemate will cost more innocent lives than a cathartic bloodletting would. Probably not, but the preferred outcome remains Qadhafi dead, his sons disinherited and exiled, and letting Libya be governed--for good or ill--by different Libyans. Obama has been clear enough about this (except for the part about Qadhafi's mortal expiration), and again has no reason to apologize.

Perhaps I need to apologize, though, for calling for the bad Colonel's assassination by willing agents of the Libyans. After all, the one major American political figure who I've seen espouse "my" policy is John Bolton, the never-confirmed former US Ambassador to the U.N. Generally, one can count on Bolton's undiplomatic pronouncements to be 100% in error. In this case, he's no more than 5% off, though; I would differ with him only in that the assassination should not be a product of US policy, but something done by Libyans, with private encouragement as necessary (OK, maybe a little "persuasion" in the form of attacks on Qadhafi's hometown base). The fact Qadhafi still breathes is not a deficiency of the Obama Administration's policy, then, just an incomplete development of events to date.

Anyway, to whom would I apologize? Colonel Qaddafi? No way.

Talking about the Men's NCAA Tournament
Next on the list of criticized entities that need no apologies are the four teams of the Final Four. Though the semifinal and championship games may not have met the artistic standards some desired (particularly in offensive execution), these teams reached their stations in the traditional way, winning at least five games in a row in single elimination.

Yes, they had some dicey moments: Butler's win over Pittsburgh came after two highly improbable mental error fouls, but the highly-favored Panthers had their chance and failed. Kentucky needed a last-second basket to beat Princeton in the first round; Butler should have lost to Florida, and VCU to Florida State, had those teams executed their offenses properly in their final offensive plays in regulation time. This was a tournament of close games and fateful accidents, but also of some surprising one-sided defeats of higher-seeded teams, like VCU's destruction of regional #2 and #1 seeds Notre Dame and Kansas.

Certainly the Connecticut Huskies have nothing for which to apologize. They followed up a fantastic series of wins in the Big East conference tourney with similar successes all the way through the NCAA tourney. The only thing to wonder about is what happened in the regular-season conference play, when they could only win half their games, but they came from nowhere early in the season to establish their credentials, then put it together again "when it counted" at the end.

VCU's run troubled me, though: this was a team which did very little to earn its bid in the tournament. They did not win their conference, or their conference tourney, or beat any powerful teams in non-conference games, or even put up an impressive overall won-lost record (19-11 going into the tournament, I believe). Their selection was justifiably highly criticized, but they had the last laugh; they were strong enough to win through to the semis, including a decisive win against the team considered second-best in the country going into the tournament (if not the best), Kansas. What all this means is some demeaning of the importance of quality of performance in the regular season: just do enough to get in, don't show your methods of competing against the best, and prep your athletes for a surprise run. Of course, it isn't that simple, but the game is already too close to a semi-pro league, and coasting through the regular season to get into "the playoffs" is not the behavior the college game needs.

Finally, my picks: neither the dream Kentucky-Louisville final nor the chalky varieties of Kansas and Ohio State made it to the final, so I didn't win any money. I did have one of my ESPN picks with Connecticut winning the tourney (and some other good picks along the way; I had only one of the Final Four, but I had all four of the regional finalist losers making it that far), and that one made it above 99 percent of entries. So, no need to apologize for lack of prognostication excellence.

I do have to apologize to my wife, though: I meant to make one of my ESPN entries (they allow 10, I did eight) be her picks, but I made a key mistake or two in entering them, which caused her some de-motivation in watching the games. Sorry, dear!

'Cats Hyperbole

2011-03-26T10:41:00.004-06:00

It's probably just me, but the game last night between Kentucky and Ohio State has to rate as one of the best NCAA basketball games I've seen in the last ten years.

It had the feel of a championship game--high tension, close scores, furiously contested--though it was just the Round of 16. Both teams had breadth in the quality of their starting fives and top reserves, though not a lot of bench depth. Each had a good mix of freshman talent (now, getting seasoned) and veteran mental toughness.

The defense was excellent--particularly from Kentucky, and from Ohio St.'s freshman point guard Aaron Craft--but there were not a lot of turnovers, a credit to good ball-handling from both teams. Fouls were a big factor, but Kentucky showed a great deal of poise in playing solid defense without fouling through the second half, when most of their players were in some foul trouble.

Finally, a great finish, and the right team won, from my point of view. I will of course pat myself on the back for identifying this game in my tournament preview as a pivotal one (let's not talk about the other one, the never-to-be Louisville-Kansas showdown that should've been happening last night, too).

Kentucky eliminated the #1 team in the tournament, in a game reminiscent of the one in the quarterfinals last year in which it was eliminated, but the Wildcats' work is far from done. Their regional final will be a difficult matchup with a team with some similarities (the height, the freshman talent) which they played early in the year: Kentucky's narrow loss at North Carolina proved a turning point in the Tar heels' second turnaround, from overrated to under-regarded, then to a truly powerful, dangerous squad. I hesitate to predict another Kentucky win: this one took huge mental energy, and they will have little time to recharge, while North Carolina coasted to an easy win over Marquette.

To Liberate Libya?

2011-03-20T10:31:00.003-06:00

Although it is not acknowledged, it is hard to credit any other outcome as the ultimate objective of the U.N. Security Council resolution to authorize "all necessary steps" to protect civilians, and of the beginning of military activities by a coalition, led by France, the U.S., and the U.K., to establish a "no-fly zone" for Qadhafi's air force over Libya.

The actions were defensible and just barely in time to prevent the routing of the rebel forces from their stronghold in Benghazi and a massacre which surely would have followed. Perhaps, not even in time: the immediate response of the Qadhafi regime to the U.N. resolution was to declare a cease-fire, a ruse designed to give his forces time to invest Benghazi in a siege.

It is likely that the initiation of air attacks on Qadhafi's forces may give the rebels a chance to regroup and protect some of their strongholds, maybe even to re-emerge in some of the Western Libyan towns from which they had been brutally driven. It does not seem likely to achieve either a negotiated peace or a comprehensive defeat of Qadhafi forces.

It still falls on the rebels to do most of the work if the country is to be freed of Qadhafi's rule by force of arms, and, barring a new round of defections by loyalist forces, unclear whether they will have the capacity to do so. It is extremely important that the US keep to its pledge not to involve any ground forces (except possibly for rescue operations if any of our planes are shot down); the American public will not support a new, third ground war in a Muslim country, one which has little connection with Al-Qaeda or its allied movements (as with Iraq's Saddam, Libya's Qadhafi and Al-Qaeda have been sworn enemies), and from which the oil production, though significant, is not critical. There are too many parallels with Iraq--both the first and second conflicts there--to feel very comfortable with the initiation of foreign involvement in the hostilities. They include the very vexing problem of what would be done, if there were some sort of national liberation, with Qadhafi's minority of tribal supporters, who are not going to accept defeat and loss of privilege with good grace.

I do support the limited aims announced and intended from the short-term actions, but if reducing civilian casualties is indeed the goal, a standoff and prolonged civil conflict are not going to achieve it. Reducing the degree of intensity of conflict may be achievable in a week or so, then we might redouble our efforts (which I hope have started) to induce some of Qadhafi's protectors to turn on him and kill him in his sleep--followed by a 24-hour notice to his sons to get out of Dodge. This remains the best outcome for this challenging, somewhat ill-considered rebellion.

Bracketing My Thoughts

2011-03-16T23:00:00.003-06:00

And Then There Were 64
Tomorrow the NCAA men's basketball tournament will properly begin. I don't mind the four warm-up games that were played Tuesday and Wednesday, an expansion of just three teams. This was supposed to make go away the "bubble" problem--the one the BCS has such a problem with in college football--though it just pushed it from the 34th at-large team to the 37th, or something like that. The problem being, what about the best team not included? and the answer clearly not being "the NIT".

I would've liked to have seen Harvard and St. Mary's as the two, creative inclusions for the extra spots in the play-in at-large games for 11th and 12th seeds somewhere, instead of the roundly criticized VCU and UAB. Really, though, this is not as important as it's been made out--the real problems were in the seedings and the scheduling of the solid teams that would be in any conceivable bracket.

There is a bias in the selection committee, which I would describe as "somewhat Eastern, somewhat Southern, somewhat Big 10, definitely not Kentucky, though". This was also evidenced by the teams getting early-round home-court advantages in Cleveland (Xavier and Ohio St.), Chicago (Notre Dame and Purdue), and Charlotte (most egregiously, Duke and U. of North Carolina), and the "awarding" to U. of Kentucky and U. of Louisville each 4th-seeds (a bit too low, given Kentucky's win of the SEC tournament after a very challenging season schedule, and U. of L.'s fine runner-up performance in the Big East tournament, with the same notation on its schedule difficulty); worse, those #4 seedings line them up to play the tournament's two favorite teams, Ohio St. (for U. of K.) and Kansas (for U. of L.) Those two games, for me, are the pivotal ones in the whole tournament: there aren't too many teams that have legitimate chances against Ohio St. and Kansas, and a win by either Kentucky or Louisville (or better, by both) would throw the tournament wide open.

So, I'm making two classes of picks: one in which one or both of my faves pull the big upset, and "the others" in which chalk rules (I'm going with Kansas in the final between the two tourney favorites, as my experiences watching Ohio St.--especially their game against Northwestern in the Big 10 tourney--have disappointed me somewhat).

Successful NCAA tournament teams are of two kinds, really: the team game with strong defense, good point guards, and clutch foul shooting, and the one which adds to that mix (more or less on the FT's) big men who can score and guards who can get the ball to them. The ordinary class of successful NCAA team is the first kind, and there are several of them in the tournament, and Kansas and Ohio St. seem to be the candidates for the latter (which prevails over the former).

Pittsburgh, Duke, North Carolina, and Florida also (along with Kentucky, Louisville) fit the second class, more or less, and they will be the ones to contest the championship if we can get the big guys--Ohio St.'s Jared Sullinger, Kansas' Morris twins--out of there. There is one other interesting team--perhaps a bit of a throwback to the UNLV Runnin' Rebels of the '80's--from San Diego State, which lost two games all year (both to the Cougars of Jimmer Fredette's BYU), and reminds me of a lower-level NBA team for their athletic, fast, similar-sized, mature players. They are definitely an interesting choice to make the Final Four, which would require beating Duke (which has the easiest schedule to the Elite Eight and seems a sure bet to go that far, and likely farther if their talented, injured player, Kyrie Irving, makes it all the way back).

I see this tournament as having: two top teams, about 8-10 highly competitive teams of similar skill, and relatively few good upset candidates among seeds 9-16. It won't be too interesting until next week when we're down to 16.

Japan Down, Not Out
My deepest sympathies for the Japanese people, victimized as they have been in the past by earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear radiation. I hope that the Japanese will rise from this tragedy in due course; we should be giving them our fullest aid. I would also challenge the peoples of China and Korea--both still harboring grudges, perhaps deservedly, from Japan's aggression in World War II--but both thriving nations in the area (I'm excluding the Pyongyang joke regime in North Korea) which could show unprecedented goodwill and help all the peoples of East Asia rise above the waves of anger, tragedy, and disaster.

What I Said

2011-03-13T12:44:00.009-06:00

(The self-contradictory statements in much of this are intentional, self-deprecatory irony, and nobody does it better. Whatever it is.)

I've posted it before, quoting the Talking Heads' "Psycho-Killer":

Said something once; Why say it again?

So, as I don't want to repeat myself, I refer you to my prior commments, without further elaboration, on the following topics: What should be done about Libya; my comments on the 2010 movies, before nominations and after the awards; the New Mexico gas crisis--I'm glad to see there is a class action suit now being formed up for those, like us, who did not have pipes break or have to close our business, but were just tremendously inconvenienced; my comments about "The Lightning Revolution" in the Middle East, especially which countries are not good sites for People Power uprisings (Libya among them); and the opinions expressed in my last Political Update.

I'd just add to my prior comments on Wisconsin's mess that the way it ended--with the Republicans ramming the limitations on the public unions through--was the way it had to end, given the Governor's stubborn insistence on refusing to negotiate on that issue, regardless of the falsely argued connection or lack to their budget issue. And, while I hope Walker and his legislative cronies are recalled, I can't see that it is a national issue to which I should contribute: it's up to the residents of Wisconsin to determine whether they want to become one of the states-wrongs "right-to-work" places like most of the South, or not.

...Modified Just Slightly
I must call attention to my last blog posting of the 2001-2010 decade entitled "Best of a Bad Decade", sadly hidden by the chronological scheme this blog uses to organize its archives. I have to underline my praise for David Mitchell (his "Cloud Atlas" is being made into a movie for release this year--I can't imagine how, really, except possibly to focus on the pivotal futuristic episodes in a deteriorating Hawaii Big Island), for the Coen Brothers (I have since expounded a lot more on the quality of "True Grit"), and for Bright Eyes (his new album deserves a proper critique, which I'll do after a few more listens). Let me just add that I might've mentioned some good 2010 musical products from Arcade Fire and the Black Keys in my update from the 2009 9/10 decade review.

In terms of my initial SPBLORG in January, I neglected to give sufficient attention to the emerging big stories: the owner-player battles in the NFL and NBA. I will summarize my views by saying the owners are not to be trusted, that their problems lie in their inability to restrain themselves from offering great contracts to mediocre players and to share revenue properly among themselves, and that I stand prepared to offer extraordinary assistance to either players' union should they strike out on their own and leave these unsympathetic oligarchs behind.

I will close with some transitional comments on college basketball, elaborating on that SPBLORG and anticipating some future posting on the NCAA tournament. As I write, the final tournament championship game is being played and the bracket announcements are due in a couple of hours. I think this is a great time to speculate on what will be, though I am limited in my guesses of something like the Final Four because I don't know which seeds will go to which regions--it's becoming more random all the time. In my previous comments, I rated too highly Texas--a team with great talent but difficulty in recent weeks playing their game--and neglected completely Ohio State, the team which has come through all this as #1 (though they were no more immune to the #1 jinx than all the others, they disappointed the poll participants less frequently, losing only twice and late, to good teams, on the road).

Bracket pickers, and especially bracket contest organizers, will have less time to think and prepare this year because of the added four teams--the so-called bracket busters--which will be playing on Tuesday and Wednesday (there's also, less significantly, another play-in game). A few comments on faves and the opposite of those: Three teams that were "hot" in the late season got comeuppance in the tournaments--North Carolina, which proved that you can come back against some teams all the time, but not all teams all the time; Notre Dame, which narrowly lost to Louisville in the Big East semis just when they seemed to have won a #1 seed; and Florida, decisively handled by Kentucky (which seems to have overcome their tendency to late-game jitters). All three are dangerous, but I'd tend to discount their chances of going all the way. I don't like BYU, which despite the superb play of Jimmer (who eliminated local fave UNM in the MWC semifinals with a 52-point effort), showed themselves far too weak up the middle since they dropped their center for dubious moralistic reasons--they will find a team in the middle rounds strong enough to eliminate them (Ohio St., or practically any Big East or Big 10 or Big 12 team, for that matter, would be examples). On the other hand, I love MWC tourney champion SDSU as a dark-horse pick to win it all, along with Kansas, Pittsburgh, Duke (hate to admit it), and either Kentucky or Louisville (but not both--I see they are likely to be in the same region according to ESPN's "bracketologist").

The conference tournament week is one of the purest events in sports; some of it is desperate bids to make the tournament for teams on the bubble, or completely outside the bubble in smaller conferences; some of it is the simple love of the game, the urge to play, as shown by the eight final teams in the Big East tournament, all of which were pretty much guaranteed tourney spots, but who played their butts off (possibly to the detriment of their future tournament chances)--I'm thinking particularly of Louisville, which looked totally exhausted at the end of their Big East final game, and Connecticut, which somehow did not after winning five games in five days. I was thrilled by the performance of Kemba Walker, my Player of the Year, who re-emerged after superior early-season performance for the week of his life. Good luck in the NBA, Kemba!

Two Modest Proposals

2011-03-04T17:59:00.004-07:00

1) Death to Qadhafi
Spell it any way you want, Muammar's lifespan does not bear prolungation. It's time for him to meet his maker. He deserves death, no doubt about it.

The question is, how? American policy prohibits assassination as an officially-approved action. The CIA has been accused of sponsoring attempts on Castro's life in Cuba, and in return there is some suggestion that Oswald's successful assassination of John F. Kennedy followed...and there's the rub. All kings oppose regicide of all other kings, for very logical reasons.

Ghedafi, though, is a bit different, and there is a way to proceed. This is a man who is ordering airstrikes on his political opponents, who is bringing in foreign mercenaries to fire indiscriminately on his citizens. My recommendation is that one of the human rights agencies--one with balls, if such exist--should offer a reward of $1 million to the person or persons who knocks him off (and can prove it), in the interests of saving many more lives. The CIA has infinite slush funds, and one of their front organizations can make a semi-legitimate "charitable contribution" to the organization in their own sweet time. When Khadafi is knocked off, his sons should be given 24 hours to leave Libya, or else get the same treatment (the citizenry would likely do the job anyway, a la Mussolini or Ceaucescu). Also, the euthanists putting down this rabid dog should be guaranteed safety, or asylum, if they want it.

Barring the quick route, we are looking at a protracted civil battle; the insurgents have enough arms that Gadafi will not be able to re-impose rule over the country, and that is a very, very good thing. The up-and-up route involves the African Union meeting, deciding that Qadafi is endangering security in the continent due to the refugees, the chemical weapons, the genocide, and requesting assistance from the U.N. Security Council. Only then would there be a decent chance that Russia and China--nations opposed on principle to the idea that a government cannot do whatever it wants to its own people--might agree to let the U.N. do something like create a no-fly zone in the liberated east, or a blockade of Tripoli, or authorize Ghedafi's arrest.

2) Death to Khamenei
One of the few things that has given me reason to thank Wiki-Leaks is the report that Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei has terminal cancer. This is good to know, and gives all the world hope that, given the swelling of popular will for liberation in the region, there may yet be hope of ending the regime of clerical-sponsored kleptocracy in Iran.

The key is for Khamenei to disappear before a religious succession plan is put into place, and Khamenei probably has improved that plan's chances for success by suspecting everyone around him. I think we can take our chances with Ahmadinejad; once his religious cover is gone, his political foes will take care of him.

The route to success here is through Khamenei's doctors. All we ask is to relieve his pain, make sure there aren't any heroic efforts to keep prolong his life--no "Generalissimo Franco--still not dead" headlines. There are plenty of ways to reward the doctors who help make it happen.

BYU: Don't Lets U Be U

2011-03-03T21:09:00.004-07:00

B Yu?
The sports world is a-buzz with the "premarital sex scandal" which seems likely to deprive Brigham Young Univ. of its shot at a wide-open NCAA basketball championship.

The facts are pretty simple:
1) BYU's center Brandon Davies was dismissed from the team yesterday for admitting to a violation of the Honor Code that all BYU students are required to sign and observe;
2) BYU then went out and lost a home game to Univ. of New Mexico, 82-64 (and the game wasn't even that close).

Davies has subsequently admitted that his violation was having premarital sex with his girlfriend, though tobacco, alcohol, caffeine, growing facial hair, getting a tattoo, or not going to church regularly would also have been code violations.

I am somewhat conflicted about the "scandal". First, unambiguously, I have to cheer UNM's crushing of BYU; Davies is the second-best player on his team (after probable Player of the Year Jimmer Fredette), but he was the only one providing the team with some legitimate size and strength up front; without him, the Lobos went right at BYU, and the shaken Cougars folded up. UNM needed the win badly, and I don't want it devalued by Davies' departure--this was the #3 team in the country, even if they'd had a stunning player loss.

Second, BYU has announced it's cutting ties with the Mountain West Conference and going to join the West Coast Conference (Gonzaga, Pepperdine, St. Mary's, etc.) for all sports except football (in which it will try to be "the Notre Dame of the West"). Good luck with that last one: after this, all prospects will be fully warned off from the requirements of Control Freak U. Good riddance!

I will give BYU some credit for failing to exhibit the usual hypocrisy shown by colleges when their athletes violate the rules. At the same time, I'd say they showed a lack of proportionality in their punishment of Davies, the team, and ultimately, themselves. I'm going to pretend that the fact Davies is an African-American, and the ugly history BYU's sponsoring religion, the Church of Latter Day Saints (a/k/a the Mormons) has had with the darker-skinned members of our society, have absolutely nothing to do with the harsh punishment given to Davies. I will acknowledge that Davies chose freely to go to BYU and sign the Honor Code and the strictures imposed on matriculants by the religion (is he really a Mormon? Hard to believe...)

I do have to say something about the Mormon religion, though. It may come up again next year when there may well be two Republican Presidential candidates of that persuasion. Respectable journalists are required to "respect" the beliefs of the Mormons; I am not bound by that. The fundamental beliefs of the Mormon religion include things like: angels came to Joseph Smith, showed him hidden gold tablets and "inspired" him to translate them, then took the tablets back, they're all about a lost race of Jews in North America whom Jesus visited after his crucifixion, that divine inspiration (and a relative excess of women) gave inspiration to the Mormon leaders to permit polygamy, then later, when it was necessary to co-exist with the USA, the same divine inspiration told them to end it, that Negroes were shunned and considered an inferior race until the 1970's, and so on. I know what I'm talking about--I've sat through the interminable Mormon pageant presented annually in Palmyra, New York (site of the Joseph Smith miracle) where they act out the whole story. The beliefs basically require credulity of the highest (or lowest) order.

As a design for living, a "business plan", on the other hand, the Mormons have a very workable model. Clean living, lots of fertility (after marriage only, please), and aggressive proselytizing worldwide has allowed the membership of the church to skyrocket. BYU brings that program to its college, and the church subsidizes tuition heavilyl, in return for which they require all their students to stay with the program (though I think they are allowed to attend other churches of their "choice").

Is it a good deal? I'd go with no; I'm all in favor of students choosing to give up various vices, in order to allow them to focus better on their studies, but I'd also argue that "education" means learning about the world they are going to be dumped into after graduation, and that the commitments students make should be revocable, as they live and learn. Dismissal from the university is too much, I've heard far too much about a "snitch" culture that exists at BYU after the "scandal" broke, and dismissal from the team for consensual sex with another adult also seems too much to me. I wish them a high seeding in the tournament, combined with an early exit, and a similar result in the Mountain West Conference's postseason tournament next week.

Post-Oscar Quickie

2011-02-27T21:56:00.005-07:00

The Oscars program was a good one; entertaining and less boring than usual. I thought Anne Hathaway's performance was livening, in particular, and I enjoyed the opening and the fake-musical sequences prepared for the show.

In terms of the awards themselves, there were few surprises. We got 16 out of 24 right, a creditable performance, but not an outstanding one. We took chances on Hallie Steinfeld for Supporting Actress and Geoffrey Rush as Supporting Actor and went with the favorite for director, David Fincher of Social Network, and got burned a bit on those. Some will have gotten those right (it was considered very close between Fincher and the winner, Tom Hooper of The King's Speech--as was the race for Best Picture), so I'm not expecting to win any prizes in the award-winner picking pools, but a decent result, still.

We have to give some credit to Gold Derby, which compiled the picks of 28 notable critics; their consensus got 19 or 20 out of 24 (one was tied, at least when we consulted the site); I didn't see a single critic's picks that were particularly accurate, but the group of them produced a Delphi group that was near-perfect. Their picks helped us navigate relatively successfully through the impossible categories of documentaries and short films. The only one we got right going strongly against the consensus was "Alice in Wonderland" for Art Direction (I could see both sides of that argument); the only big upset was for Cinematography ("Inception" over "True Grit"--definitely not right).

So, if you want to win your pool next year, go there--and not to Nate Silver's blog, which claimed to tell you how to win your pool, and which had picks for only six categories, all pretty obvious.

Postscript: That the award winners' identities became identifiable does not excuse the choices. How is that "True Grit", the year's best movie, in the sense of quality of form and content, the best story told the best way, was good enough for 10 nominations but failed to win a single award? One can go through most of the categories--but not all--and find reasons for other movies to take the awards--as I argued before, recent awards for Bridges and the Coens providing a good reason not to reward them again. Still, one is left with the conclusion, so tediously and unconvincingly repeated during the acceptance speeches and elsewhere, that the nomination itself is the honor. So, why not give an award to all the nominees?

Here's one more suggestion: most of the movies that I indicated previously that "I might have liked, if I had seen them" are now available in DVD, and I've had a chance to see most (including "127 Hours", "Get Low", and "Never Let You Go"), and the same is true of the feature-length documentaries (managed to catch the Banksy one). At this point in the year, the first-run (or even return-run) of the contenders is over and the box-office 99% complete; what we're talking about now is the film rentals/DVD sales/Netflix receipts. So, do the "show" about the nominations--a bit earlier, when the nominations do come out--and let a combination of votes--the Academy, and yes, the viewers--determine winners in a separate "People's" event (and just invite the winners, jazz it up as they do now).

Political Update

2011-02-19T13:29:00.003-07:00

I find myself having to hit the political trail again a little sooner than I thought I would, as the budget/debt ceiling process has gone off the rails even faster than it should have, the '012 Presidential and Senate races are worthy of comment, and there is a new major issue rising: the struggles of states to deal with revenue shortfalls from above (Federal funds disappearing) and below, along with huge unfunded pension liabilities. We will start with the latter topic.

So Far, It's On Wisconsin!
The emerging debt crisis of the states is partly the product of the aging population, partly a reckoning deferred through various tricks of financial engineering, and largely a result of the Great Crater, which sharply diminished the value of the states' pension funds. There were already large, under-funded pension obligations to state workers across the nation (though concentrated in some states), but the funds set aside to help pay for them were decimated. The 2009 Federal stimulus program provided funds to the states in various forms which delayed the crisis, but now those programs are ending and, with the new Congress, it is clear they will not be renewed.

The more aggressive state fund managers have invested wisely in equities and other rising assets in the past couple of years and recovered much of the ground lost, though "getting back to even" (as CNBC's "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer calls getting out of the Crater) would still mean a loss of precious time for growth of their money. Some were probably obligated to take more conservative investment strategies, which would leave them further behind (and in position for it to get worse). Many--or most--states are in a position where they will have to make major changes to prevent insolvency--soon, or in the foreseeable future.

Give Wall Street some credit: the danger of defaults in municipal bonds has been a hot topic there for months--the consensus there is that municipalities may be allowed to fail, but states will not. If states fail to take measures to address their issues, though, the cost of borrowing will rise sharply, exacerbating their problems, and there will eventually be a specter of a new despised bailout.

The new governor of California, Jerry Brown, and 2009-elected New Jersey Governor Chris Christie have dared to speak this truth to their states' voters and have survived politically. This has emboldened the new Republican governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, to take a more provocative stance. He has pushed forward legislation to require larger pension and healthcare contributions from state workers. Even more, the legislation would take away the state workers' right to collective bargaining. Democrats in the legislature, unable to vote the legislation down but in sufficient numbers to deny a quorum, took to the hills.

The rallying cry has been sounded by the journals of the left and union organizations across the country to support Wisconsin's public workers, who have taken to the streets. They are right to do so, though their arguments--to the effect that "balancing the budget on the back of the workers is wrong!"--only recognize one side. Concessions will have to be made by public workers, sacrifice will need to be shared, revenues will need to be raised, and--in some cases--states will appeal to the Federal government for assistance. The statement made on the right that public workers are paid more than private ones is a canard (a bald lie), but they have enjoyed greater job security, better benefits, and their defined-benefit pension plans (usually after only 20 years' service) are a bit rich. A compromise could be found--precisely through the collective bargaining process Walker wants to eliminate (with the unions a bit hampered in the negotiations by the law's prohibition of strikes by public workers).

Taking away their right to collective bargaining is the political red meat in the battle--a measure probably exceeding states' authority under Federal labor legislation, but surely a sop to Republicans and fighting words to Democrats and their base. The public unions make up a numerous, well-funded part of that base, easily the best-organized one. President Obama has been forced to take a stand against the Wisconsin Governor, identifying the legislation as "an assault on unions" and putting his Organizing for America political machinery into action on behalf of the public employee unions.

Governor Walker is motivated by ideology and may find this issue to be a political catapult into the front ranks of his party, but his is not the solution to the larger issue--it will end up making his state even harder to govern, and it may ultimately backfire for him. If he is successful, though, there are many other states that will jump on the bandwagon, so this is a battle with implications that go beyond Wisconsin.

Frankly, I need to study the labor history and labor law more to be expert on this topic, but this has blown the political lid off the month or so of relative peace and civility which followed the Tucson murders.

The Slow-Motion Train Wreck To Beat All
The 19th-century version of Radical Republicans went to extreme lengths--several Constitutional amendments, impeachment of President Andrew Johnson--to punish the Southern states for their secession, the Civil War, and the postwar denial of rights to the freed slaves. In the 20th century, Republicans started by heading the Progresive movement, but quickly moved to the forefront of reaction and resistance to liberal ideas of political equality and broadened economic opportunity; their defeat by the New Deal eventually forced them into an uneasy cooperation with progress. Now, there is a new breed of Radical Republicans for the 21st-century, and Walker's Wisconsin and the Republican-led House of Representatives are the new battlegrounds.

In Congress, the House of Orangeman Speaker John Boehner has commenced war against the Obama Administration with its version of the continuing resolution needed by March 4 to keep the Federal government operating. The cuts they passed this week, without a single Democratic vote--$61 billion for the remaining two-thirds of the current fiscal year--are only part of the assault; more radical still are amendments included in it to prevent the EPA from enforcing the Clean Air Act against large-scale greenhouse gas emitters and to block funding for measures required by the health insurance reform bill approved last year. The Senate, backed by President Obama's certain veto, will not pass the House's resolution in any recognizable form, so it is unlikely there will be any agreement by March 4 to continue normal operations of the Federal government. The Senate Democrats have suggested the presence of a door in the form of a short-term resolution, but the RR of the House of Orange have not yet acknowledged the presence of any door nor any need for one.

President Obama's budget proposal--considered too austere by many on the left--had about half as many cuts in Federal programs, but it was not seriously considered by the House (which, constitutionally, is required to begin the budget process). Neither side has yet taken up the elephants in the room--Medicare, or Social Security, or growth in Defense spending--so the posturing on both sides is limited to a few percent of the projected $1.5 trillion deficit for the year, and neither side is proposing significant assistance to states or much in the way of job creation.

A train wreck which has been developing for years and which takes 30 days to happen is pretty slow, but the trains are clearly on the same track, going in opposite directions, and braking hasn't even started.

'012 Electoral Drumroll Begins Softly, Slowly
The importance of state political battles has been underlined by their financial problems, as it will by the coming fights over House redistricting, but the main event in 2012 will be the battle for control of the Federal government: in the House, in the Senate, and for the Presidency itself.

House: The big breaker waves have gone in both directions in recent years, and at this point the next big wave has not yet formed. If the budget/deficit train wreck happens, though, for more than a couple of days anyway, blame is likely to settle on the Radical Republicans and the House of Orange may have a very short dynasty.

Without a major breaker, the numbers would suggest a reduced Republican majority coming out of 2012. Voters in the general election are likely to lean more Democratic than in the midyear election, and there are a number of seats the Republicans won last time that will be tough to hang onto (just as there were many won by the Democrats in '08 that were successfully targeted in '010). The target increase for the Democrats is 25, which is likely to be made harder by five or so net seats that redistricting in the states will design in the Republicans' favor.

The Intrade betting currently gives the Democrats a 45% chance of regaining control, up from 25% last month and from 35% last November. I think that quote is a bit high.

Senate: Defense of the Democrats' narrow Senate majority will be a major, expensive challenge. The Democrats have to defend 23 seats (including both of the Independents allied with them), the Republicans only 10. If the incumbent party holds 80% of seats on each side, the Democrats would hold on by 51-49; if they hold 60%, the Republicans would lead 52-48. So, along with swings in popular opinion toward one side or the other, the perception of the Senate's effectiveness will be important, especially for the Democrats.

The biggest development so far has been the announcement by six of the incumbent Senators that they will not run for re-election. The latest one is very significant: five-term Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, who would have been a heavy favorite to win again. Of the other retirements, the Democrats are strong favorites to hold Joe Lieberman's seat, and the Republicans Kay Bailey Hutchinson's, while Kent Conrad's North Dakota seat is likely to go Republican, and Jon Kyl's in Arizona will favor a Republican hold (unless, of course, Gabrielle Giffords can ride her so-far miraculous recovery all the way to the upper house). Finally, Jim Webb's Virginia seat will certainly be vigorously contested, though I like the Democrats' chances if they can unite behind a candidate, such as former Governor Tim Kaine, and face "macaca" George Allen.

Bingaman's surprise announcement creates a wide-open race here, just as Pete Domenici did in 2008. Some of the same names are likely for the Republicans: newly-restored Representative Steve Pearce from the Republican-leaning Southern part of the state, and Heather Wilson, who gave up her Albuquerque seat in a losing bid for the seat won by Tom Udall. A Republican wild card might be former Governor Gary Johnson, who might give up his quixotic Presidential campaign and has unusually high crossover appeal. The Democrats might field former Lt. Gov. Diane Denish, loser in the 2010 gubernatorial race, or current representatives Martin Heinrich (Albuquerque) or our Ben Ray Lujan, each of whom just won their second terms in the House. With New Mexico polling quite strongly in favor of President Obama, I like the Democrats' chances to hold the seat.

Apart from the seats being vacated, there will be a lot of difficult contests for incumbents whatever the political climate. Several of the Democratic seats will be relatively easy holds, but Montana's Jon Tester will surely be tested, Ben Nelson in Nebraska will be favored to lose, and three difficult holds will also be critical Presidential battlegrounds: Claire McCaskill in Missouri, Debbie Stabenow in Michigan, and Bill Nelson in Florida. The Republicans may face more Tea Party primary challenges in Tennessee (Bob Corker) and Maine (Olympia Snowe) which could either weaken the incumbent or bring forward a relatively weak insurgent. Two seats that the Republicans could easily lose are scandal-weakened John Ensign in Nevada (currently favored to lose a primary) and Scott Brown in Ted Kennedy's old Massachusetts seat. One of the more interesting initiatives I saw recently was a movement to draft Elizabeth Warren--a key Obama adviser on financial reform--to run against him.

The Intrade betting on Senate control after 2012 has been light; the current quote for the Republican side is 69%, which seems way too high. I see the contest as a 50-50 proposition, and that result itself is far from unlikely--which would put control of the Senate in the hands of the party winning the Presidential election.

The Big Ticket:
The battle for the White House will be monstrous, ugly, and expensive, so it's a welcome, small blessing that it hasn't really started yet. President Obama has been able to stake out some advantageous, high-ground positions in domestic battles--brokering the tax cut deal, proposing moderate cuts on spending--which have earned him some points with independents and improved his ratings. His foreign policy, though hardly brilliant, has dealt with the Mideast crisis well enough that his critics have been few, even among Republicans. His left flank, though grumbling, should not mutiny as long as he sticks to the plan to complete withdrawal from Iraq and begin it in Afghanistan before 2012.

So, it's perhaps not surprising that, at least until the train wreck occurs, Republicans have not been springing forward to announce their challenges to the titleholder. There are some who I consider nearly certain to run: Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich (and lesser contenders Herman Cain, John Bolton, Rick Santorum). It's now looking likely that Mitch Daniels will run, also (and, so far, only positive signals from Gary Johnson, Michele Bachmann, Haley Barbour, Jon Huntsman, and the ridiculous Donald Trump). But it also is starting to appear that neither of the right-wing's favorites, Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee, will make the decision to run (and Sen. John Thune may opt to continue his current gig, as well). Equally important, the odds on any of the big-time decliners (Marco Rubio, Christie, Jeb Bush, Rick Perry) choosing to run continue to lengthen.

If Palin or Huckabee runs, he/she will be a rallying point for primary voters seeking to avoid Romney's nomination. If neither runs, it should help the viability of Ron Paul, who's a favorite among the libertarian portion of the Tea Party, and it will allow any of the other Republicans to pander to the more conventional party right-wing. Romney will certainly be among them, and he can pander more effectively than most. He is starting to look like 2012's version of 2004's John Kerry.

One interesting recent poll result showed Obama with a narrower lead over a generic Republican than for any named opponent (except Huckabee). Obviously, this reflects the perceived absence of any specific individual as a strong opponent, but I would say it is also due to Republican poll subjects imagining "their" preferred candidate as the opponent. Once it is clear that their candidate will not be the nominee, it will be up to the party winner to impress upon the rank-and-file that he/she is "close enough" to their ideal. That means, above all, gaining unity in the party.

The Democratic party's Intrade quote for winning the 2012 election is holding at about 60%, as is Obama's personal quote (though the combined percentages on the name-the-winner bet for Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton are another 4% in that market). I find that likelihood considerably too low, train wreck or no, unless there is some sort of foreign policy disaster.

Humanity in Jeopardy!?

2011-02-15T22:12:00.003-07:00

I've been watching the game show Jeopardy! since the early days of Art Fleming hosting it, something like 40 years! I would immodestly claim to be pretty good at its particular brand of diverse trivia, word association, and punning punditry (though my recall is not as instantaneous as it was once), and I've always wanted the chance to get on there.

So, the special program this week, in which two of the greatest champions ever are taking on an IBM-programmed computer called "Watson", has a great deal of interest for me. The contest has completed two of three half-hour segments, and Watson is mopping the floor with the two humans.

I watched the PBS Nova program in which the development of Watson's Jeopardy prowess was investigated in more depth, and the programming is remarkable for its subtlety, its breadth, and its rapidity. It is that last factor which seems to account for the computer's overwhelming performance.

Its accuracy, particularly in coming up with fact-based answers (OK, questions), has been impressive, though not perfect. The problem the humans are having is getting beat to the buzzer. I have a bit of complaint here: the mechanics of who buzzes first has always been mostly hidden from the viewer. Supposedly, the buzzers are suppressed until our intrepid host Alex Trebek has finished reading the question, to avoid interrupting the flow of the show; I suspect that Watson has not been inhibited in that way (as it would be too hard to implement). There's also the mechanics of how the computer is fed the "answer", which is not going to be the same way that a human contestant would do it (visually, while hearing it).

In terms of accuracy, I wouldn't rate the computer higher than the humans--at least these two humans, who rarely get one wrong. In the final questions of the first day's Single Jeopardy!, and in today's first-round Final Jeopardy!, Watson made glaring errors (I notice that one flaw remains uncorrected--after Ken Jennings missed one clue, the computer gave the same erroneous response). It almost seemed as if Watson was tanking on a few to keep the match close and the ratings from doing the same, but that would be anthropmorphizing--giving the computer motivations which it would be unlikely their programmers could include.

Very interesting has been the graphic provided by Watson showing the top three possible answers considered by the computer and their evaluated probabilities of being correct. It's a well-designed entertainment, but not a fair contest, and the human contestants should not feel compelled to burst their hearts (or brains), John Henry fashion, in what will surely be a failed attempt to beat the machine.

The Lightning Revolution

2011-02-11T19:02:00.009-07:00

Whoa! Just 24 hours ago, the day of deliverance was postponed, and though it seemed the form of the finale was likely, I was not sure just how soon it would come. Though President Mubarak rained on the sunny hopes yesterday, the postponement was less than a day; today's events were a double-header's worth.

The whole thing took 17 days from the first protests, on Egypt's Police Day January 25, to Mubarak's resignation and departure (from his Presidential Palace to his beach house in Sharm al Sheikh, at least so far). Given the determination and persistence of the protest movement, the outcome lay in the hands of the army, and their signal, fairly early on, that they would not fire on the protesters meant that Mubarak's days as President were numbered. Just how small that number ended up being was certainly a surprise.

Where Do They Go From Here?
One claim I made earlier in this crisis was that prospective leaders lay hidden among the crowds at Tahrir Square. I still believe that is true, though none of the reports so far have identified those opposition leaders. On the one hand, analysts praise the well-developed civil society (unions, lawyers' guilds, professionals, academics, social organizations), on the other hand, there is a complete absence of credible political organizations--other than the long-standing, previously-banned, fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.

The M.B. was not a leader of this nearly-spontaneous uprising, but they are probably the best poised to move forward. Their perspective (as outlined in a Times editorial published three days ago) is a combination of peaceful opposition, from a orthodox Muslim perspective. to the old fallen regime, and opposition to a new secular democracy. Their support is estimated at 20-30% of the population.

The vacuum of popular leaders untainted by involvement with Mubarak's party, or the phony opposition parties he ginned up, will be filled quickly. What type of leaders they will be is hard to read at this point, but I would expect that young professionals will become the equivalent of the "Young Turk" military officers of Turkey's revolution of the 1920's, the symbols of the new Egypt. There will be, in some form, a split over whether Egypt should be a "Muslim democracy" or a "secular democracy", something Turkey has struggled with for eight decades. The Turkish military was the guarantor of secular, modern governance--not of democracy--and it has taken this long for the military to allow a moderate Islamic party to take political control.

I expect that the Egyptian military may similarly block an Iranian-style takeover by any fundamentalist Muslim movement. There may be a triangle of forces, with a moderate Islamic party taking a lead role, the M.B. supporting their rise but not entering the government, and the military giving moral and physical support to ensure the survival of one or more secular opposition parties. Such a government would allow the headscarves and religious instruction that have been controversial in some predominantly Muslim countries (as well as some countries with significant Muslim minorities), but probably not go so far as Saudi Arabia's prohibitions on alcohol or women driving. There may be other cleavages that form over time (for example, how much tourism is optimal? To what degree will the Coptic Christian minority be tolerated, or protected?), but I expect all major parties to be nationalistic, supporting centralized authority: Egypt settled that question in their country about 5000 years ago with the unification of the kingdoms of the Upper and Lower Nile.

The old Constitution seems doomed, and a Constitutional convention will probably be necessary, but formation of a new government and a framework for elections can not wait so long. The work that needs to be done is comparable to that completed to go from the end of the American Revolution to the beginning of government under our Constitution--that took about eight years! I think it may be more of a top-down, fast-forward affair, with a Presidential election (with candidates vetted by the military) in six months, and new Parliamentary elections within a year. The military seems likely to want to ensure peace, get something started, then step out of the political battle (though they may reserve the right, Turkey-style, to re-enter the fray if it endangers the minimally acceptable conditions).

Contrary to what some say, I think the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohammed el-Baradei (a Nobel prize-winner) would be a great choice to be the first elected President of the new Egypt, their George Washington. He is a bit above it all, but as a respected national figure of international stature, that's not so bad for the time being.

And What About The Rest Of Us?
This is not about the US--our President's balancing act was classic American foreign policy, with equal measures of standing up for our values, of backing the realpolitik objectives of our selfish interest and those of our allies, and of hypocrisy. As with other such episodes in American foreign policy history, it got bipartisan--nearly universal--support. What we did or didn't do had little effect on the outcome, which as I say was basically determined by the Egyptian military and their consideration of the moral force of the uprising. Our strongest potential threat was to cut off our $1 billion or so of annual military aid (about $12 per Egyptian); this might have had a significant effect on the quantity of governmental graft in the system, but was not determinative. We may be able to provide some economic assistance in the transition period, but I think the Egyptians will decline--either politely or not so politely--our political guidance, so we shouldn't even try.

This is not about Israel, either. I don't expect the military council, or the first elected government, to reject unilaterally the peace treaty Anwar Sadat (Mubarak's one-party predecessor) signed with Menachim Begin in the Carter Administration. I do think that there will be a lot more questioning of the relationship, strong support for the Palestinians in neighboring Gaza (and possibly the West Bank), and a higher level of tension with Israel if that government doesn't move to reduce Israeli-Palestinian tensions.

There may be an interesting phase in which Israel and Egypt compete for their shares of a shrinking American foreign aid pie. I see one possible repercussion being a fall of the current Israeli governing coalition, with the right-wing Avigdor Lieberman party leaving the governing coalition and the Kadima party (Ariel Sharon's creation, designed to fill the middle between Likud and Labour) going in--that would not require a change in leadership from Netanyahu, but would require him to show a bit more flexibility on issues such as Israeli settlement in the West Bank.

To a secondary extent, Egypt's change IS about the other Arab states, and about Iran's government. Taking the latter first, we saw two years ago that the difference there was the Iranian military's willingness to take on the insurgents and suppress them violently--at the crunch, there was no space between the Iranian military leadership and the internal police forces, whereas in Egypt that gap showed up very quickly. The best hope for change in Iran is probably generational change when the Supreme Leader dies and his successor boots Ahmadinejad (hardly a sure thing, but something to hope for).

As we saw with Iran, there are some states that should not try Egyptian-style uprisings, as they would simply precipitate massacres. Syria would be one of those, Libya probably another. In other states, we should fear such an uprising because what would follow would be worse than the present: Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian West Bank, Yemen. Jordan's King Abdullah saw the threat early and made timely concessions which may preserve his rule for a few more years (though the mix in that country is very unstable); Iraq's political classes have been tempered by years of intense flame and are probably not too susceptible to the popular fervent; Algeria's recent brutal history may provide them some insulation against explosive protest. Some of the other Arabian peninsula states may find their internal contradictions overwhelming (though they have more resources to placate their underclass). I wouldn't be too surprised to see major issues arise in Morocco. Lebanon, as always, is a powder keg that was already blowing up before Tunisia's uprising started this thing.

A World-Historical Event
In terms of global significance, these events probably rate as more important than the movement toward democracy in South America in recent decades, or even than the hugely inspirational victory over apartheid in South Africa. This is more comparable in its potential to the breaching and destruction of the Berlin Wall in Germany, followed by the collapse of the other Eastern European Communist nations and finally the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Do not forget that the latter event was preceded by an attempted military coup, which was successfully resisted by Boris Yeltsin and his supporters in the Russian state (which led to their replacing the Soviet Union as the dominant force in the region), and those events were contemporaneous with the disastrous student sit-in, the massacre in Tienanmen Square, and the subsequent repression of dissidents in China, so the events were not all in one direction.

Although I would agree with President Obama that "Egypt will never be the same," we should not expect the international sequence to ripple--or better, rip--in the same pattern as occurred at the end of the Cold War. The economic problems of the region are deeper still than the former Second World had in 1991 (and not all of those states have turned out so well); the Mideast populations lack such things as political sophistication, literacy, McDonald's. The potential for outside interference--whether Iran, Israel, the US, or other countries--is very strong; the prizes in Mideast oil may be very tempting.

There are also dangers that autocracy may re-establish itself in Egypt, as that has been the prevailing theme there for more generations than the number of years Mubarak has lived. I think of the Egyptian reign of Akhenaton (1380-1362 B.C.), who suddenly unified all their deities into a monotheistic sun worship. He unified the old order's priests against him, and they had him killed, then put his teenage son Tutankamun on the throne and put things back the way they were--and convinced whoever needed to be convinced that was the way they were supposed to be. There may be a very strong reaction at some point against the rise of the Young Egyptians, though Egypt--the oldest of countries--does have one of the youngest populations in the world. If the Egyptian military--the new high priests--do not like the trends, they may feel forced to find and install a new pharaoh.

Toast for Giffords

2011-02-10T17:09:00.002-07:00

Word came out yesterday that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Tucson had spoken for the first time, asking for toast. I certainly hope she got her burnt bread, but here's an additional toast, unsubtly influenced by the news today (coincidentally?) that Republican Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona has decided not to run for re-election in 2012:

"Here's to you, Representative Giffords! Thanks for your courageous public service and the good grace with which you've addressed all your challenges, both before the cruel assault and afterwards. May you have a speedy, full recovery, and, if it's possible and if it's what you want, May you be our next U.S. Senator from Arizona!"

Not Just Yet

2011-02-10T16:17:00.003-07:00

There is an old saw in the legal industry that "Justice delayed is justice denied." As I watched Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's non-resignation speech and the reaction of the disappointed protesters in Cairo's Tahfir Square, that statement--which usually refers to the issue of a speedy trial--seems to apply. As long as Mubarak and his deputies are delaying their departure, there remains the threat that the prevarications and temporizing could threaten the ultimate outcome. If the protesters can be made to back off their pressure, the whole insurgency could dissipate and business as usual could resume, and that's clearly what they are seeking. The insurgents' maximalist demands show full awareness of that threat and, though they are worryingly vague about exactly how things might proceed after a Mubarak departure, they are justified on that score.

I posted recently on some of the parallels to recent decades' "People Power" movements in Asia and how their country's armies have suppressed them, or not. It occurs to me that there is something of an American parallel, a crisis of legitimacy, and some of that experience may guide our expectations. I'm referring to the last days of the Nixon Administration in 1973-74.

A couple things that are similar are that Nixon seemed securely in power after his 1972 landslide election (as Mubarak may have seemed secure just months ago in Egypt's rigged parliamentary election). Out of nowhere, almost, came the movement which undermined his regime (in that case, the Watergate hearings and the discovery of the tapes which fatally undercut his cover-up). What was really noticeably similar was how Nixon would go on national TV every couple of months through the crisis, telling his side of the story, gradually giving up some of his underlings when he couldn't protect them, but insisting that he would tough it out. Waiting for the last shoe to drop, we would all watch each time but come away disappointed, as Nixon tried to rally his shrinking base of supporters. Then, finally, once he'd played all his cards and calculating that he had no more room to maneuver, he suddenly resigned, and his unelected Vice President moved quickly to pardon him. Vice President Ford did his constitutional duty, but when it came time to face the electorate, he was shown the door, too.

That's pretty much the way I expect the Mubarak drama to end, with his appointed Vice President Omar Suleiman covering his tracks to ensure Mubarak's successful retreat and retirement, with whatever dignity can be preserved. That's probably the most important thing from his perspective. The difference here is the crowd of hundreds of thousands of protesters demanding immediate justice.

Got Gas?

2011-02-07T19:21:00.003-07:00

No, not indigestion.
The title has been a frequent greeting here in Taos over the last 5 days.

It's a bit of a long story, and the story is far from clear, but here are some of the facts:
o) Taos had -24 degrees F Thursday morning, the most severe of a cold snap that affected all of New Mexico and Texas;
o) By midday Thursday, we found out that Taos and a few other communities in New Mexico were having their natural gas shut off by the local company, now called New Mexico Gas;
o) The company's line is more or less this: in West Texas, the cold caused overuse of electricity and gas--gas is used for some of the electricity production there--and the system (which gets gas both from Texas and New Mexico) was losing pressure fast;
o) So, the company made some strategic decisions about cutting off gas to some of the places at the end of their pipeline system: Taos, Espanola (30 mi. south of here), some of the pueblos around here, Bernalillo (a small city near Albuquerque) the rest of our county, and some places in the south of the state (Silver City, Alamogordo);
o) Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Texas (where they had the Super Bowl on Sunday, giant heated stadium) didn't get cut off;
o) They've been restoring the gas since Saturday--first they have to cut it off at each house or business, then once the area's all shut off, they turn it back on, first for the area, then for each house or business;
o) By yesterday, most of the areas except Taos, Espanola, and some pueblos had their gas back.

Today, the Gas Company's people came to Taos, and they've been turning the gas back on--we got ours about 4 p.m. They're not quite finished, and may not finish for another 24 or 48 hours.

So, we were without heat, hot water, or cooking gas for five days. Nearly every business and restaurant in town was closed, along with the schools on Friday and today. It was especially frustrating because the gas company has been very vague about when the gas would be turned back on, yet people had to stay at their houses for when they showed up.

People have helped each other out a lot here, and there were few or no casualties--for example, we had dinner at a friend's house (who had a propane tank), the kids stayed there, people loaned us electric space heaters, etc. However, there is a lot of anger at the gas company, who clearly chose to cut us off (they say, to avoid greater system failures)--coincidentally, or not, they were poorer communities, not the local money or power centers, and at our new Republican governor, who's been less than helpful (she got slaughtered in both Taos and Espanola).

People here are looking for revenge, but I think the material damages--apart from businesses having to close for some days because of no gas--will be fairly small. The Gas Company has had to spend a lot of money bringing in plumbers, pipe fitters, etc. from all over to help restore service. There is always a lot of resentment of Texas here (Governor Martinez was born in El Paso and was derisively referred to as "Susana la Tejana" in the election campaign), so that's part of the mix; also, there is an area near here called Valle Vidal with great natural beauty which was blocked for gas development a couple of years ago by Gov. Richardson after a major public campaign, so there is also the theory that the gas company is getting back to us for that.

So far, though there has been some talk of it, the Taosenos have not "gone all Egyptian" on the gas company--yet. I think it will be a long time before Gov. Martinez shows her face up here.

All systems are go here, which is good because they're calling for another snowstorm tonight! I've laid up a lot of firewood, and haven't returned our electric heaters to our friends just yet.

The SPBLORG, Pt. 2

2011-02-06T09:32:00.002-07:00

Tennis: Dawn of the New Decade
The Australian Open just finished marked the start of this decade's Grand Slam tournaments, and there were definite signs of change at the top of the pyramid for both the men's and women's singles competition.

The profile of the pyramid for the women's game is sleeker, though there's considerable doubt who occupies the capstone. Technically, the #1 player in the world is Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark; she occupies the top spot on the merit of consistent play over the last 52 weeks, but she has never won a Grand Slam and didn't seem particularly close to winning the Aussie. She fell to the #9-seeded player, Li Na of China, in the semifinals, and Ms. Li lost to #3 Kim Clijsters of Belgium in three sets.

Clijsters was the only one of the dominant women's players of the last decade to make a decent showing in this year's Australian, and she is apparently considering retiring after this year. Justine Henin lost fairly early and announced she was going back into retirement; Venus Williams showed up out of shape and got hurt at the end of her second-round match; Serena--who, regardless of the point system, is considered Queen of the Hill still if she plays--has not yet recovered from a deep cut in her foot that she suffered in a freakish accident last summer (and then she'll probably have to work for a month or two to get in shape). Big-serving Aussie Sam Stosur went out surprisingly early. The ground-game princesses like Ana Ivanovic and Jelena Jankovic have faded, and new Eastern European duchesses with big serves like Petkevich, Wozniacki herself, and Kvitova have not yet emerged, or, in the case of Maria Sharapova, have not yet fully re-emerged.

It is clear that the field for the next Slam event, the French Open, will be a wide-open one (though Clijsters will again probably be the favorite), and the same will be true for Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, unless Serena proves herself fully fit by then. Two to watch for in the French will be Svetlana Kuznetzova and Francesca Schiavone; Schiavone is the defending French champ, and Kuznetzova ("Svettie") showed up in Melbourne in her best shape ever. They cancelled each other out, though, in their matchup in the round of 16, the longest women's Grand Slam match ever; Schiavone outlasted Svettie 16-14 in the final set and played gamely but couldn't stay with Wozniacki in the next round.

Men's Game: The Australian Open favors men who cover the court well, and by that token the finals matchup of Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray--two of the fittest, fleetest court-coverers around--was no surprise. What was a surprise was the absence in the final, for the first time in years, of both Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Federer lost to Djokovic in straight sets in the semifinals--possibly a match of historic significance, though we'll have to see if the Fed is able to revenge himself at Wimbledon before we demote him to the second tier--while Nadal looked very strong until he suffered a hamstring injury in his quarterfinal match against countryman David Ferrer and went down to him in three painful sets. For Nadal, the first test in the future will be whether he is able to get fit enough to restore his dominance on clay in the French Open.

In the longer run, I think it is likely that the Federer-Nadal exclusivity at the top of the game is near its end (though not necessarily over just yet). Djokovic has shown that he can battle the duo on even terms when his game is at its best; Murray has a good record against them, as well, though he still seems a bit psyched out when it comes to Grand Slam finals; then there is Juan Martin Del Potro of Argentina. Del Potro may have the most intimidating all-round power game ever, and his sweep through the top tier of tennis to win the U.S. Open was no fluke. The problem has been his health (his shoulder, I believe) ever since. Del Potro could become the top player in the world within two years if he can come back healthy.

Stupor Bowl XLV--
Today is Super Bowl Sunday and all red-blooded American males (and those females somehow drawn in, or shackled in) will be watching impatiently for the endless pregame show to end and the event finally to begin. Then, if it is like the majority of Super Bowls, one hour later the game will be all but over (with 2 hours left in the game's telecast, not to mention the postgame) and we'll be looking for something else to do.

The matchup is a very good one in football terms. It is not the ratings dream (especially for the network executivees) matchup of the two largest markets with NFL teams which could have come out of the Conference championships, but rather two rather dinky, aging markets in the economically dreary Rust Bowl. Still, the sales of advertisements (at $2 million a minute) don't seem to be flagging. The Packers and Steelers are two original NFL teams, still in their original locations, each with rich traditions and a history of success in Super Bowls. Their teams are old school, rugged outfits, but with high-quality quarterbacks heading their offenses.

I would predict a slow start, as each team tries to establish a running game to help protect their QB's from all-out blitz defensive strategies. If there are no big errors (defenders will be looking to force fumbles, for example), a low score at halftime, then both teams will come out swinging for the fences (baseball metaphor) by throwing long bombs (more appropriately, war metaphor). I'd predict a wild second half, and a moderately close game. The Steelers have a lot more recent success in Super Bowls, so I would make them the favorite, and I'd predict a final score of 34-24.

Jet Stream Vagaries

2011-02-03T21:43:00.003-07:00

Our little high plains town was treated to -24F this morning. The New Mexico Gas Company found that its supplies from West Texas were insufficient, though the pipeline is intact, so they made some strategic decisions about which communities would get gas, and which would get shut off. The money-and-power locus of Santa Fe and Albuquerque was spared; somehow Taos, Espanola, a couple of towns in the south and several of the pueblos have been cut off.

The good news is that the sun came out today and the temperature rose as high as 20F during the day. Also, the rolling blackouts from Kit Carson electric are largely over. The bad news: it got colder again, there's no gas on the horizon for tomorrow, and everyone will have to re-light their pilot flames once they get word the gas is back.

Our mayor got on the phone with new Governor Susana Martinez to see if NM Gas would extend its work efforts through the night. The answer was no.