Antidotal

2004-05-04T15:15:00.000-04:00

The Senate Armed Forces Committee wants Rumsfeld to drag his butt up to the Capitol to explain how the alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners could have happened. And it's not just Daschle's idea; John Warner (R-VA) and John McCain (R-AZ) are also calling for it.

So long do you thing it will take the warbloggers to claim that McCain exaggerated his POW injuries?

2004-04-09T02:13:00.000-04:00

COINCIDENCE? Even in my current state of blog neglect, I couldn't miss the following amazing alignment of numbers. First from the Washington Post:

This is Bush's 33rd visit to his ranch since becoming president. He has spent all or part of 233 days on his Texas ranch since taking office, according to a tally by CBS News. Adding his 78 visits to Camp David and his five visits to Kennebunkport, Maine, Bush has spent all or part of 500 days in office at one of his three retreats, or more than 40 percent of his presidency.

Hey, haven't we seen one of those numbers somewhere else? Oh, right:

"U.S. intelligence services simply knew too little about al Qaeda's plans, [Rice] lamented. And the inability of the FBI and CIA to work together on terrorism had been a chronic problem, left unfixed for years.

"We were there 233 days" before the attacks, she said.

I wonder how many of those days Bush actually spent at work?

Max Weber wrote a famous essay on the ethos of responsibility that the grave obligations of public office require, which he titled, "Politics as a Vocation". The Bush Administration's understanding of responsibility is a lot closer to "Politics as a Vacation."

2004-03-19T11:00:00.000-05:00

ONE: Well, count Spanish PM-elect Zapatero as one foreign leader who thinks Kerry has to win this thing. Not that this will help Kerry much (indeed, it might conceivably hurt him), but you'd have to be utterly obtuse if you didn't think that there's many more--including leaders who have felt compelled to join the Coalition of the Willing against the wishes of their own people.

And can I say that the right-wing response to the Spanish people's decision to vote in the Socialists because the Madrid terrorist attacks brought to light anger over what they saw as deception over both the decision to go to war as well as the attacks' investigation--that the general narrative that the Spanish people are "giving in" to the terrorists is the most disgusting and stupid idea I have heard thrown up in the mainstream press in a long time.

2004-03-07T23:02:00.000-05:00

THUMP! is the sound I imagine that the subpoena list for the Plame investigation made when the Federal Grand Jury investigating the matter dropped it on to the public. Here, courtesy of Newsday, is an at least partial list:

Robert Novak, "Crossfire," "Capital Gang" and the Chicago Sun-Times

Knut Royce and Timothy M. Phelps, Newsday

Walter Pincus, Richard Leiby, Mike Allen, Dana Priest and Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post

Matthew Cooper, John Dickerson, Massimo Calabresi, Michael Duffy and James Carney, Time magazine

Evan Thomas, Newsweek

Andrea Mitchell, "Meet the Press," NBC

Chris Matthews, "Hardball," MSNBC

Tim Russert, Campbell Brown, NBC

Nicholas D. Kristof, David E. Sanger and Judith Miller, The New York Times

Greg Hitt and Paul Gigot, The Wall Street Journal

John Solomon, The Associated Press

Jeff Gannon, Talon News

2004-02-29T16:39:00.000-05:00

CHAOS IN PORT-AU-PRINCE: I know all of the big papers have already been reporting it today, but for Franco-enabled folks out there, this report from Le Monde provides an interesting alternative perspective.

For one, it mentions that Canadian special forces have taken control of the airport (the Globe and Mail reported that Canada had sent 3 Hercules aircraft to evacuate nationals from capital, so presumably, we'd need some security on the other end too). Hey, if we go for the radio station too, maybe we can just take the place over and get into the friendly dictator installation business, just like the Americans. Or not.

Seriously, it's interesting that the report indicates that Colin Powell is in "close contact" with both the French and Canadian Foreign Ministers--because Canada is rarely important enough to rate in these sorts of affairs. So when did Canada become such a playa in Haiti? OK, maybe I'm overemphasizing this, as we've always had some interest in helping out there and a couple thousand folks with Canadian citizenship line on the island. But there may also be another answer, especially considering the role France is taking: Iraq has tied up so much of the Bush Admin's foreign affairs time and resources, that it's having a tough time showing initiative in places outside of the Middle East. Hegemony has its limits, too.

2004-02-27T13:12:00.000-05:00

FIRST KERRY MEETUP REPORT: I got there a bit late, accidentally going to a venue of the same name first but in the wrong town (oops). When I finally got the correct venue, though, did I ever get a warm fuzzy feeling from seeing a gaggle of my local Clarkie friends there, making up nearly half the remaining crowd! One of them was even sort of running the show--this was only the second Meetup the Kerry people had managed to organize in the area (the first one drew 7 people), and so they didn't really know what they were doing. So our old ex-Clarkie friend, who we hadn't seen in a while, was collecting everyone's names so we could start up an email list. Apparently, the "indigenous" Kerry people had been pretty much outnumbered by new refugees all night, because just before I had gotten there, a bunch of Greens who had wanted to sign on with Kerry had just left.

The indigenous Kerry people there were really friendly, but completely wide-eyed about this whole Meetup deal. I mean, pretty much like the draft movement 8 months ago--they were waiting for people to contact them, and a lot of them sort of assumed we wouldn't have much to do, because "everything is done by party insiders anyway." Wow, did we ever have a lot to share with them!

I think this is going to be neat--it was telling that the last 4 people to leave were all ex-Clarkistas. I'm a bit tired of campaigning, but I'm kind of thinking that if you're an ex-Clarkie (or ex-Deanie) and would consider signing on with Kerry, you could easily take a big leadership role in your local Kerry Meetup, since we have so much more experience. I don’t know if the Kerry staffers are really ready to handle us, but I’m hoping they’re smart enough not to turn down the kind of fundraising and volunteer capacity that Dean and Clark had if offered to them on a silver platter.

2004-02-20T19:38:00.000-05:00

CHEAP TALK, CHEAPER NUMBERS: Kos and the highly underrated CampaignDesk.org (the Columbia School of Journalism's election coverage blog) got into a little flap last week over the ethics of blogs publicizing exit polls, with CJR slamming the practice as "irresponsible" and Kos arguing that the concept of journalistic does not apply to blogs. I guess my aspiring moral philospher side pushes me to side with the "moral cowboys" at CJR.

I have two reasons for seriously objecting to the exit polls that Drudge and The National Review have been releasing. The first is the standard objection that exit polls might distort the outcome of elections by discouraging voters who haven't turned out at the polls or otherwise affecting their behavior. Unlike Slate's Jack Shafer, I do think that journalists have a distinct responsibility to the liberal democratic ideals that allow them to exist in the first place. Journalists should realize that it's the "democracy racket" (as Shafer so respectfully puts it) that provides the free press with its raison d'etre, and start acting accordingly. And as political bloggers aim to fill a social role that is at least somewhat similar to that of part-time or amateur journalists, they have a similar ethical responsibility that constrains their activities.

My second objection relates to the specific nature of the exit polls that have been released during this primary season. Although I think that all states should just enact laws banning exit polls completely and that blogs should refrain from publishing them for the above reason, liberal blogs such as Kos and TPM should have been especially reticent to publish the suspect results that Drudge and The Corner have been offering. I note that the Drudged up numbers came with no determinate source (besides some fuzzy reference to "insider media sources"), no sample size, no margin of error, no details on methodology--all in all, no internals of any kind. I don't need to draw on the extensive statistical training I received as a theorist to tell you that those numbers are the statistical equivalent of compost. And to make things worse, when the election is over, the folks who released them don't fill in any of the missing information above; they instead act as though the polls never existed in the first place. And the blogs don't spend any time asking for answers.

In short, not only are these exit poll numbers statistically meaningless, they also come without an ounce of retrospective accountability, which means that Drudge and The Corner--hardly sources with great reputations for accuracy or fairness--could have just made up whatever numbers they wanted, for whatever purposes they chose. I'm not sure if Drudge or the National Review have been up to anything, but given our lack of assurence that they didn't just pull their numbers from the same place they got Troopergate, I don't think liberal blogs should run the risk of being complicit in facilitating whatever shady business they might be up to.

2004-02-18T18:29:00.000-05:00

SLOW DEATH OVERTIME !!

That is the highly probably outcome of the Wisconsin results. Yes, Edwards had a good evening yesterday - almost as good as it gets without, well, winning. That still leaves Kerry as having gone 15 for 17, while Edwards has gone 1 for 17.

For this reason, the idea that WI will lead to some huge momentum shift, like Dean's collapse after Iowa, is fanciful. Dean, after all, was "prohibitive frontrunner" before any votes had been cast - and when votes were cast, Dean washed out with a weak 3rd. Kerry's frontrunner status is based on actual votes, and he still won WI. If Edwards had actually trounced him, it might be another story, but it isn't.

Kerry also has a lead of about 400 delegates, about 3 times Edwards' total. Even if they ran neck and neck from now on, Kerry would still be heavily favored to win. Moreover, while Edwards will certainly get a mo wave, it is unlikely that they will run neck and neck on March 2. Too many states are in play for the sort of personal campaigning that shows Edwards at his best. He apparently intends to cherry-pick two or three states - GA, OH, and MN - effectively ceding the rest to Kerry. Even if Edwards won all three, Kerry would still get pretty close to the magic number needed to clinch the nomination.

My guess is that Edwards will at most win one or two on Super Tuesday, one or two more on Southern Tuesday a week later, then fade out as Kerry approaches the finish line. If Edwards washes out on Super Tuesday, it's over.

Of course, the other question to ask is should Edwards win, whether he's likely to or not? Would he be a tougher opponent against Bush in the fall? He is certainly a good retail campaigner, much better than the somewhat wooden John Kerry. Edwards' Two Americas theme is the best presentation of populism in modern times, perhaps ever - if you make less than about $200,000 a year you clearly are in Edwards' America, not George Bush's. Kerry has no such vivid or concise encapsulation of his basic argument.

Moreover, while Kerry trounced Edwards among Dems in WI, Edwards made it close with votes from independents and crossover Republicans. This leads to an argument, pitched by Will Saletan in Slate, that Edwards would pull better with swing voters in the fall.

If this were peacetime, Edwards would be our strongest candidate against Bush. It is not peacetime.

The tiger in the grass in this election is national security. That tiger has been sleeping like a lazy housecat during the Dem primaries, but it will be stalking in the fall. We all know that Bush's strategy is to run as a War President. His message will be something like "Strong, decisive leadership in a time of crisis," against a backdrop of all 9/11 all the time.

This message may or may not work with swing voters this fall - but we need to assume that it might. Historically, national security was the GOP's strong suit during the Cold War years. The end of the Cold War took it away, and made Clinton possible - but Osama brought it back.

John Edwards has nothing going for him on national security. He has no background to speak of in it, and it is nowhere in his Two Americas theme - where the rest of the world exists only as a place where lost jobs go. Moreover, his whole Johnny Sunshine persona works against him. I don't doubt that Edwards can stick a knife into Bush even as he smiles, but how does he get through Bush's national-security armor.

As a poster at Daily Kos put it, can you really picture Edwards in the Situation Room?

It is easy to picture John Kerry in the Situation Room. He faced war first-hand, and came back to protest it. His focus in the Senate has been largely on foreign policy (one reason he has few bills to his name). In this campaign he has shown his readiness to take it directly to Bush on national security.

Even Kerry's appearance and manner work well for him on this issue. Wooden, perhaps, but so is an oak tree. Kerry projects solidity and gravitas, qualities associated with steadiness in a crisis - and just the qualities that Edwards, for all his charm, does not project.

If we can force Bush out of his Fortress of Terra, to fight the campaign on bread-and-butter domestic issues, we will win. Kerry can do that. It is far more doubtful that Edwards can.

Which is why we should support Kerry as our nominee.

-- Rick Robinson

2004-02-18T16:17:00.000-05:00

WAS I right or was I right?

(A reply by Rick will quickly stop my gloating...and for the record, Dan was even more right than I was...)

I not sure if I'm that happy about it. I do agree that more competition and extending the primary process until March is not a bad thing: that means more free (mostly) positive media about the frontrunner and more buzz for the Dems. But I am now convinced that whatever merits Edwards may have as a person and even a candidate, an Edwards presidency would be exactly what the Dems and the international community don't need at the current time.

2004-02-17T17:52:00.000-05:00

TWO WAY "INSIDE BASEBALL" VIEWS on this year's compressed primary schedule--former Clark communications director Matt Bennett (very smart cookie) and Lieberman campaign director Craig Smith are having a civil and erudite exchange over on this topic at TNR.

I agree mostly with Bennett, although he downplays the nexus that occurred in the week between Iowa and New Hampshire: the media, who wanted to further the Iowa momentum storyline, exploded a couple of stumbles Clark made that week (and served him up possibly the most hostile and non-substantive gotcha debate questions I've ever seen) into a week of blanket negative coverage, continuous with their massive assault Yeeaarrgh-led assault on Dean, and in contrast to the backlit glow they were giving to Kerry and Edwards.

Yes, Clark honestly made those stumbles, but it was that it fit so nicely into the media narrative (certainly more nicely than the unprecedented 2,000-person rally we had two days before Iowa) that the Iowa losers' campaigns were "losing momentum." Note that while the whole world knows about Clark's testy "I'm a General, he's a Lieutenant" retort to Dole (usually without the context of Dole baiting Clark by saying he'd been demoted to a Colonel and Kerry promoted to a General), no one in the Feb. 3 states knew about Kerry saying that the Democrats should just forget about competing in the South. It's about selection and framing, and this race was framed completely in terms of two aspects of that horrid and talking-head created neologism "electability" (yech!): (1) the media's judgment of a candidate's "presidentialness"; and (2) "momentum."

By the way, to term what the media reported as "momentum coverage," as Bennett does, is I suppose accurate, except that it commits the sin of significant understatement. I would have liked very much if Bennett had a bit more explicitly called the media's use of the word "momentum" for the BS it is: as it's 90% media-driven buzz, the word is completely self-referential whenever it comes out of the mouth of a journalist or media talking head, and no responsible journalist who is directly involved in election coverage should ever use the word in the objective mood. As it is precisely the media who create "momentum," it is an automatic conflict of interest for them to claim to report on it from an objective prespective, unless they pledge themselves to doing only meta-analysis of the election coverage, rather than the election itself.

Oh, and also note the reference to a fellow Canadian for Clark in Bennet's Tuesday arguments: who knew we had Mike Myers on board?

OK, so I promise I'll talk about something else besides the primaries, someday.

(via Drew from the WCW)

2004-02-16T20:56:00.000-05:00

A REAL INTRODUCTION: I wanted to give more of a formal welcome to Rick, who wasn't just a co-blogger at the unofficial Wesley Clark Weblog--he was a fantastic (or "fabulous," in what seems to be the suddenly Queer Eye-ified current political lingo) political analyst and I'm sure he'll be introducing some very sharp race coverage in the days to come.

And, of course, a real welcome means that I'm going to disagree with him right off the bat. I for one do not think that Kerry has the nomination completely locked up. The American media seems to be bound to a number of standard narrative conventions, and one that it cannot seem to resist is the mano-a-mano contest, in which the underdog always has some shot of landing a knockout blow. And the one-on-one contest it seems to have wanted since a couple days after Iowa--when they prejudged Dean too unhinged and Clark too gaffe-prone to be serious candidates--is Kerry versus Edwards.

And what the pundits want, they get, especially in the context of a seriously compressed primary, when the network and cable news channels have amazing weight (for anyone who doubts, I invite you to examine the growth of Kerry's and Edwards' support in the February 3 states between the New Hampshire primary and 2/3; run a regression between that line and the proportion of positive news coverage and I'll bet you a ton of money that you'd get some sweet significance). So Kerry may still have to fight hard to keep Edwards from getting air in Wisconsin and from developing a Super Tuesday surge.

So who am I cheering for? Despite my natural attraction to underdogs, and the benefits of extra media attention the Dems would have gotten from an extended primary season, I’m guess I've been left hoping that Kerry squishes Edwards easily by March 2. It’s mainly because I’ve decided that Edwards, even more so than Kerry, is over-leveraged by the media and is really the wrong man right now.

My biggest criticism of Edwards is that he is so light in so many ways. He has an even thinner resume than the one Dubya had before 2000. Some call him Bill Clinton reborn--almost as much charisma, none of the bimbos. But a Clinton isn’t what we need right now, in this time of Bush-led continual war. Clark’s defeat doesn’t at all prove that voters don’t vote on foreign policy--it just proves that Democratic voters don’t, especially when there’s no one pushing them to do so. But the 2002 midterms clearly showed that the Republicans can push very hard and win on national security alone.

And even if Edwards' bright smile and "Two Americas" ("Revenge of 'It's the Economy, Stupid!'"--which I'll admit is a well-developed message) were enough to beat Bush, America and the world would still be in a dangerous muddle. When it came to foreign policy, Clinton had good intentions, but for a mix of reasons, was never able to consistently execute a coherent grand strategy for America and the West in the post-Cold War era (on this point, at least, I’ll agree with Prof. Gaddis). And it's precisely this lack of coherence that allowed Bush’s cadre of neocons to so easily fill the conceptual vacuum with their radical foreign policy.

The bottom line is that the Democrats need to a presidential nominee who is committed to turning them into a party that takes foreign affairs seriously--a nominee who can be the architect of a coherent, constructive, and progressive vision of America's place in the world. I don't think that the Democrats could win without such a vision, and even if they did, I think that a win without such a vision would be harmful to both the prospects for re-election in 2008 as well as the prospects for world security in general.

So that’s why the nomination of the seemingly safe and saccharine Edwards may scare me most at all: not because of any hidden agenda he might have, but because making the world safe from both the fundamentalisms of the religious fanatics as well as the neocons requires an agenda that Edwards is really completely lacking. And that's why I'm willing to settle for the sometimes underwhelming liberal Senator from Massachusetts--with luck, Clark and Edwards (and maybe even Dean) will have a significant role to play in the upcoming campaign, and they’ll bring enough energy to win this thing in November.

2004-02-15T15:54:00.000-05:00

Eric has invited me to co-blog here, following on, so to speak, from my tour of duty over at WesleyClarkWeblog. Some of you who are blog junkies may recognize me from my too-numerous posts over at Daily Kos.

The Dem primary race is now effectively over, so the focus moves to the general election campaign - which looks to be one long knife fight from now till November. I expect to have a good deal to say about it here, but for now I'll settle for a quick hello, and a hearty thanks to Eric.

-- Rick Robinson

2004-02-10T16:38:00.000-05:00

HELLO? A little dusty in here...I think I'm going to try bringing this site back sometime soon. Sorry for the long absence, if anyone has actually been poking their head in--I've been busy.

I've got a great Dido song called White Flag running in my head over and over--for me it's always the lyrics and the whole time and place thing:

Well I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be...

2003-11-08T07:58:00.000-05:00

This article is pretty amusing...but also exposes the case against Moussaoui for a public-relations exercise.

I'm finally living in Vienna. It's nice here, but as they say in that-movie-by-the-guy-who-waited-five-years-to-make-a-new-movie-about-chicks-slaughtering-each-other-with-swords, "A lotta the same shit we got here, they got there, but there they're a little different".

And funny enough, the German friend of one of my roomates asked me the other day what a Royale with Cheese is called in North America. I shit you not.

2003-11-02T09:46:00.000-05:00

PREDICTABLE NIGHTMARE: It happened. A portable anti-aircraft missile brought down a helicopter about to land in Baghdad, killing 15 U.S. soldiers.

The only surprising (and I suppose good, if one can call it that) about this situation is that this is the first time this has happened. For the Americans' sake, I hope their fortune returns to what it was previously until they can get things settled there.

One thing that confuses me is the report that the Army is paying a $500 bounty per shoulder-fired missile Iraqis turn in. This seems me a step in the right direction, but as the Washington Times story linked to points out, the going black market price for them is 10 times that amount. Respectfully, it seems to me like it would be a worthwhile investment for the troops' sake to match the market price per missile with this program.

2003-10-30T15:01:00.000-05:00

MILD IRONY: McMaster University hosts world’s largest bullying seminar

World's largest seminar later reported to wedgie, steal lunch money of punier, less-popular bullying seminars

2003-10-30T10:23:00.000-05:00

RE-EMERGING to show my support for Atrios. If you've been living in the world outside blogdom for the past two days, then you may not know that he just got threatened with a libel suit by Moron, First Class Donald Luskin. The main charge: calling the self-admitted Krugman stalker, uh, a stalker.

I should add, however, that it's completely Atrios' own damned fault that he doesn't have a book available on Amazon right now.

P.S.: So my computer's all fixed, but between my work on a certain General's campaign and the first chapter of my diss I should really try to kinda finish this weekend, I haven't had a lot of time to update this thing. Will try to do better.

2003-10-02T00:58:00.000-04:00

WELL THAT DIDN'T LAST LONG: ESPN announced that a certain big, fat, idiotic, and wholly unqualified sports commentator that it just hired has announced his resignation, effective immediately, as a result of controversy over some big, fat, idiotic, and racist comments he made the other day about black QB Donovan McNabb.

I wonder what the over/under on his resignation was? Probably a lot of winners out there...

2003-10-01T23:29:00.000-04:00

SOME BASIC ARITHMETIC FOR CONSERVATIVE APOLOGISTS: The Valerie Plame Affair had some more kerosene thrown on it yesterday, when an ex-CIA agent named Larry Johnson explained on Newshour with an appropriate amount outrage that he is certain that Valerie Plame was an undercover agent because they were in the same CIA training class together. Besides providing the always heartwarming feeling of listening to someone lament that they felt "sicken[ed] to be a Republican to see this" (and rightly so), Johnson's interview should also be sufficient evidence to silence the right-wing's attempt to pooh-pooh the issue by claiming that "we're not sure if she was an undercover agent or a secretary," right?

But wait, Matt Drudge notes that The Washington Post reported in this profile that Valerie Plame is exactly 40 years old. But since Johnson claimed in his interview that Plame "has been undercover for three decades," he must be mistaken, or lying, or a body snatched tool of the Democrats, unless Plame joined the CIA when she was 10 years old.*

There's a very easy explanation--when Johnson said "three decades," he meant "since the '80s". And, no, you don't even have to ask him to explain his comments, as Andrew Sullivan suggests (Tucker Carlson also repeated this piece of spin on Crossfire this afternoon. You just have to look at Johnson's online resume, which notes--consistent with what he said in his interview--that he started at the CIA in 1985 and worked there for 4 years. If he and Plame began training at the same time, that means Plame started her CIA career at the age of 22, quite plausible if she signed up with the agency immediately after college.

So to Mr. Drudge and all of the other conservatives hoping that this isn't as bad as it looks: there's no contradiction here. And yes, it's as bad as it looks, so you're all probably better off spending time getting your "Joe Lieberman non-partisan integrity" faces ready.

*For people who follow my TV habits: shades of Project Christmas? Nah--although when Ambassador Wilson wonders "who would play his wife in the movie," I have to say that I have someone perfect who's already pretty good at playing a spy in mind...

2003-09-30T10:09:00.000-04:00

SOME NOT SO NICE STUFF IS ABOUT TO HIT THE FAN for the Bush Administration in a big way. I had been wondering when we were going to revisit this, and now that the CIA has officially asked the Department of Justice to investigate Valerie Plame's outing by an as yet unnamed "top White House official," things are going to get very hot.

Thank The Washington Post's Mike Allen and Dana Priest for adding some needed fuel to the sleepy Saturday rollout of the CIA's request, by discovering a "senior administration official" who was willing to provide more specifics about the leakers.

So let me reiterate that this is no small time scandal that has been artificially created or inflated by a bored media, or cooked up by the White House's political or partisan enemies. The Valerie Plame affair is a flat-out crime almost entirely been created and disclosed by the administration or its natural political allies.

It would never have happened if Dick Cheney hadn't asked Wilson to look into the Niger uranium claim to assemble a better case on Iraq.

It would never have happened if the White House operatives in question hadn't chosen to go out of their way to try to intimidate Wilson by burning Plame with a media leak.

It would never have seen the light of day if the oh-so-left Robert Novak hadn't chosen to carry the leakers' water

It would never have gotten this far if the oh-so-left CIA had declined to ask the Department of Justice to investigate this probable Federal crime.

This is no Filegate, Travelgate, or Monicagate. It's not the Condit affair or Bush's sketchy service record. It's not about lying or splitting hairs over any number of words. It's about outing a covert intelligence agent, which is, as H.W. Bush put it succinctly, an act of treason.

Object lesson:

When those White House operatives were trying to smear Wilson by releasing Plame's name, they told a number of journalists that "the real story isn't the 16 words. The real story is Wilson and his wife."

Those bagmen probably didn't know how true those words would be. They brought it completely on themselves by willfully endangering an official servant of the United States' security interests for political gain and now they are going to pay.

Wouldn't it be Alannis-level ironic if, in the end, it turned out that we were presented with real, in living color proof, that the side guilty of committing honest-to-goodness indictable treason in the months immediately after 11/01 wasn't the left but the establishment American right?

And the left-blogosphere has rightly run this story hard. The crucial links:

-Talking Points Memo (the link is to a very handy memo by the White House's head counsel that indicates that Plame was indeed a covert agent)
-Atrios
-Jeff Cooper
-Calpundit
-Mark Kleiman at Open Source Politics.

Keep it up, folks. They really deserve to be put into the stocks for this one.

2003-09-30T10:04:00.000-04:00

EXCUSES, EXCUSES: So the computer once again fell comatose into a horrible malady--it started coughing up horrible fluids and fell into a coma around 2 weeks ago and is still in the shop. Thank goodness for external hard disks and relatively well-appointed school computer labs. But it still makes posting a pain in the butt, and between my computer issues and my obligations at the (unofficial) Wesley Clark Weblog posting hasn't been so easy. But I may be getting a new partner soon, and I have something today...

2003-09-22T15:06:00.000-04:00

Al Gore may or may not have invented the Internet...but does it comes as a surprise that Ahnold invented the Hummer?

[via Kausfiles, Sept 21 (12:01 PM)]

2003-09-15T12:59:00.000-04:00

CLARK AND PRISTINA AIRFIELD: I'm disappointed to note that Katrina vanden Heuvel decided to introduce her Nation audience to the hyperbolic allegation that Wesley Clark advocated a dangerous assault on a small group of Russian forces who broke an agreement with NATO by unilaterally occupying Pristina Airfield just after the conclusion of the Kosovo conflict. With all due respect to vanden Heuvel (and I have a lot--there's a reason she's on the blogroll), she seems to be missing crucial elements of the context and as a result has gotten the timeline of the incident wrong. I don't blame Ms. vanden Heuvel personally, as the version of the story she presents in her article has been repeated by many respectable journalists who should also know better. This reason this version gets more play not because it fits the facts, but because it fits Gen. Jackson's infamous quote in his confrontation with Clark, which is evocative mainly because it contains the phrase "World War III."

Unfortunately, this more dramatic account mixes up the order of the events and can only be plausible to people who are largely unaware of the context. Although the West was indeed shocked that the Russians occupied Pristina Airfield, the Russians could not have simply dashed into the airport out of nowhere on June 12. Instead, NATO noticed early on June 11 that something might be up when a Russian battalion with the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia had left its positions on June 10 and was headed toward Serbia. As NATO's political leadership had already been well aware that the Russians were unhappy with how the political negotiations were happening and that some members of their military were advocating moving unilaterally into Kosovo, these movements prompted NATO to began considering a variety of responses to the Russians' troop movements.

As such, Clark received authorization from NATO chief Javier Solana as well as U.S. Joint Chiefs Vice-Chair Joe Ralston to devise a plan to occupy the airfield in advance of the Russians' arrival. However, the planning was shelved because the politicians ended up believing Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov's assurances that the battalion would stop at the Serbian border--including a promise he had personally given Madeleine Albright that morning. It remains unclear to this day as to whether Ivanov was lying or outside of the loop. Meanwhile, Russia's diplomatic struggle to obtain overflight rights from Hungary and the Ukrane had already begun and they ended up losing to NATO. So the Hungarians' denial of overflight rights was already in effect before the Russians were in place at the airfield (see The Kosovo Conflict: A Diplomatic History Through Documents for Albright's June 11 statement about Ivanov's promise and other official pronouncements).

When the Russians actually occupied the airfield on June 12, NATO initially wanted to place troops and armored carriers on part of it to block it--not to storm it--because there was a relatively low risk of a confrontation at the airfield--which was large and occupied by only a token force--whereas there might be a very serious risk if the Russians decided to force their way through Hungarian airspace. Then the Hungarians and NATO would be faced with deciding whether to shoot down Russian transports. Much better, Solana and U.S. leaders had reasoned, to avert such a grave situation by making it impossible to land Russian reinforcements in Kosovo. As SACEUR, Clark's job was to develop and implement this plan. However, because NATO is an alliance that work on consensus, every nation possesses a de facto veto over how its troops can be used (also known as a "red card"). In this case, the bulk of the available forces were British, and Jackson decided that he disagreed strongly enough with the policy that he wanted to exercise London's veto. When the two generals consulted their political masters, Washington reversed course--probably more as a result of a desire to placate London and the rest of NATO than out of a fear of provoking Moscow.

Who was ultimately correct here? You might argue that Jackson was correct because they ended up resolving the situation diplomatically without needing the particular operation Clark had ordered. But we have empirical evidence that nothing close to a serious confrontation would have occurred had Clark's orders gone through: several days later, with the situation at Pristina still pretty much the same, both Clark and Jackson authorized French and British units to take positions at the airport. The troops got there. The Russians denied them access. Everyone stood around and radioed back to their commanders for further instruction. Then the NATO units left. Lo and behold, no one got shot. No massive diplomatic crisis. No World Wars began.

Whether the Pristina Airfield story repeated by right-wing Clinton/Clark haters, extreme leftists who still insist that Milosevic was a just and democratic leader, or mainstream journalists eager to present a dramatic story but unwilling to do the legwork to check the facts, it's clear that the only reason it has any legs is because of Jackson's pithy but entirely hyperbolic quote. I was heartened to see that Ms. vanden Heuvel at least made reference to Clark's side of the story, but given what we know about the actual history of situation, her choice to give the dramatic but implausible alternative top billing is surely incorrect. Furthermore, I am perplexed that she would use this incident to characterize Clark as someone who needs learn how to build alliances rather than risk showdowns. Considering that Clark's well-known support for NATO and international institutions have grounded his consistent and thoroughgoing critique of the Bush Administration's foreign policy, and have made him a target for conservatives, vanden Heuvel's angle of attack seems very odd indeed.

I can only assume that vanden Heuvel hasn't been following Clark closely and isn't aware of his foreign affairs positions, and is simply running with a meme that The Nation picked up along with its general opposition to the Kosovo intervention. The Nation is a publication that has an honorable history, and I have confidence that it and its normally very capable editor will have the integrity to investigate both Clark and this story a little deeper and to develop positions that have a better grounding in the facts.

2003-09-10T14:46:00.000-04:00

I haven't much followed the musings of Christopher Hitchens in the past, but has he always been such a pompous shit?

I'll let you know after I finish The Trial of Henry Kissinger.

2003-09-10T00:27:00.000-04:00

A Toronto sports legend retires, his final stint in a Leafs uniform having been cut short by a freak knee injury.

We'll miss you, Killer -- though I wouldn't close the book on Dougie Gilmour quite yet. When March rolls around and the Leafs realize that they won't go very far in the playoffs based on skill alone, it won't surprise me if a city turns its lonely eyes to #93 and his well-storied tenacity.

2003-09-10T00:20:00.000-04:00

Music industry profits must be down way further than any of us believed -- I mean, what else is one to think when the RIAA is busy suing 12-year old girls from the projects?

2003-09-02T18:12:00.000-04:00

TWO THINGS I HAVE LEARNED FROM A U.S. MEDIA DIET:

1) Being a conservative in America means you can say any darn thing bad thing you want about a Democrat without needing to back it up, and other people will repeat it.

2) Being in America means you can say anything you want about Canada without needing to back it up, and other people will repeat it.

Exhibit A:

In this smarmy column, George Will repeats a dishonest smear about Wesley Clark that was originally made by some random conservative thug (RCT) in The Weekly Standard. Following Mr. RCT as per standard conservative media hack protocol, Will claims that Clark lied when he stated that he received a telephone request to link Saddam Hussein with the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 from a person associated with Canadian Middle East think tank. Will’s evidence: there exists "no such Canadian institution."

If Will had conducted some basic research before writing his attack on Clark's honesty, instead of assuming the Standard's partisan tripe to be true, it would have taken him at most a few minutes to discover that a number of institutions fitting General Clark’s description do in fact exist. They include the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, the Canadian-Arab Federation and the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research. The last organization describes itself on the front page of its website (in large font) as follows: "The Canadian Institute for Jewish Research (CIJR) is a unique, independent academic think-tank devoted to bringing objective, up-to-date data on, and analysis of, Israel- and Middle East-related issues"

Will should have checked this fact before using it, especially given the Standard's conception of fair journalism. The entirety of RCT's investigation on this factoid involved calling up one of his Canadian researcher buddies and asking the guy if he could think of a Canadian Middle East think tank off the top of his head. When RCT's buddy said "no"--boom! Incontrovertible Wurlitzer knowledge instantly generated. It as close as you can get to cold fusion.

2003-08-29T18:27:00.000-04:00

JUST SAW DEAN speak at Yale. He swung by somewhat impromptu, on behalf of the striking unions--for me, he gets points just for showing (as did Lieberman on Monday). His speech was a little rambling and not entirely on the topic of the strikes, but he some very good moments as well. He's definitely not unelectable--he estimated that there were about a thousand people there, but I think that has to be an undercount. I would guess close to 2,000--about 1/3 Deanies, 1/3 union members, and 1/3 students (not of course mutually exclusive).

2003-08-27T10:56:00.000-04:00

YALE ON STRIKE AGAIN: Grrr...silly world-class university. I completely expected that they would have been able to figure this out over the summer. This is so short-sighted. Lieberman came yesterday and forcefully explained why Yale is wrong. Dean will come Friday to explain why Yale is wrong.

Jesse Jackson came yesterday (the second to try to mediate with the Yale retirees who had occupied the Yale Investment Office. That the man could free American POWs from Slobodan Milosevic, but couldn't mediate this situation tells you something about the level of intransigence involved here.*

Yeah, they're political appearances, but there's a reason why this is a slam-dunk position--because it is.

*Sarcasm--no direct comparison of Yale excutives with genocidal dictators on the basis of levels of absolute evil was intended. No Yale executives were harmed during the posting of this blog entry.

2003-08-27T10:50:00.000-04:00

A BETTER EXCUSE: I haven't been slacking with my bloggage, really! It's just in a different place right now, and from sort of a partisan perspective. Here's my excuse.

2003-08-22T21:48:00.000-04:00

REASONS TO LEGALIZE SELLING SEX: Heidi Fleiss gives an interview that's also a very coherent argument for legalizing prostitution in Legal Affairs, the Yale Law School's new socio-legal magazine.

This is not H.W.'s Yale anymore, thank goodness.

2003-08-22T21:42:00.000-04:00

I AWARD YOU NO POINTS, AND MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON YOUR SOUL: Fox v. Franken. Two man enter, one man leave.

The verdict:

"There are hard cases and there are easy cases. This is an easy case," said U.S. District Judge Denny Chin. "This case is wholly without merit both factually and legally."

I think he hit that one dead-on.

Oh wait, Judge Chin wasn't talking about Fox's FCC license as a news network? Damn. But this is still a pretty good way to start the weekend. We'll get there, eventually...

2003-08-20T17:12:00.000-04:00

WHY THE GOP'S STRATEGY ON DEFENSE BEATS THE DEMS': According to them, it's because they realize that the American people are morons. I'm not kidding.

Members of both parties speculate about reasons why the Dems trail the GOP by 40 points (!) on foreign affairs and defense issues and what to do about it in this article. Am I only citing this because Wesley Clark shows up prominently? Well, partially. Clark's answer is pretty good, though:

"The country slid into war without facing lots of implications at home and abroad," said the much-decorated Clark, who blames Democrat Lyndon Johnson for bungling the conflict.

Even more significant, Clark said, were broader patterns in American politics as the Democrats captured and embraced "the energy of a wave of social change, and paid a price for the reaction against those changes." He lists "the sexual revolution, civil rights, individual empowerment, greater tolerance -- all of which were accompanied by a certain degree of economic change and posed a threat to much of middle-class America, or was perceived as a threat to middle-class American values."

In a time of "raging patriotism," Clark said, Republican strategists have skillfully exploited these insecurities.

Clark's answer is certainly better than the Republicans', which seems to be: "speak to the American people as if they're 6-year-olds." So says Republican pollster William McInturff:

"Critique of foreign policy is a legitimate and absolutely essential exercise in democracy," Clark said. "The trick is to not criticize the military. They are only doing their duty. That's a vital distinction."

McInturff, the Republican pollster, only laughs. "The public doesn't follow nuance," he said.

Hey, Americans, if you're out there, not that I necessarily want to tell you what to do, but I would humbly suggest that you should make these arrogant bastards pay for thinking that you'll fall for this crap.

2003-08-20T17:05:00.000-04:00

IF YOU'RE WORRIED THAT YOU'RE FEELING OVER-OPTIMISTIC ABOUT HUMANITY you can check out these people's views of yesterday's UN bombing for a reality check on how loathesome some of our species can be.

Also, I'm confused: silly me, I thought that an idiotarian was a misguided creature who issued apologetics for terrorism or who blamed its victims, directly or indirectly. Based on the traditional definition of "anti," this led me to infer that an anti-idiotarian was a member of a valiant breed of blogger who preserved the sanctity of our discourse from the depredations of the foregoing.

Eh, I must be falling behind on the lingo...

ADDENDUM: If you want to make yourself feel better about humanity, and maybe even people of conservative disposition, read Tacitus' response.

2003-08-19T11:23:00.000-04:00

UN HQ IN IRAQ BOMBED: At least 13 killed by a car bomb at 4:30 Baghdad time. The UN's special representative to Iraq is still trapped in the collapsed building.

MORE: Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN's special representative to Iraq and the UN high commisioner for human rights, has died.

A painful reminder that the UN isn't merely a bunch of bureaucrats: they're often in the line of fire, and they bleed too.

2003-08-17T15:45:00.000-04:00

ATTEMPT AT A CLARK MEME--CLARK AS THE KRUGMAN ON DEFENSE: This blog has been labelled and linked to on a whole mess of draft Wesley Clark blogs as "Clark firendly," and I suppose that's quite true. I really do like Clark as a candidate. Although I should add that I'm very impressed by Dean, as well as his efforts and accomplishments on the Internet; I think many people who are trying to draft Clark also appreciate Dean for at least the latter point.

But right now, it's time to live up a bit to the billing I'm getting on those Clark sites. So here's my attempt at a contribution: the reason I like Clark so much, and see so much potential in a candidacy is that however things shake out, he is making a massive contribution to the American progressive scene.

And the correct parallel to describe Clark's contribution just hit me: he is America's Paul Krugman on defense and foreign policy.

Just like Krugman, Clark is a moderate progressive who has a background in a traditionally non-liberal field. Krugman is a neoliberal, proglobalization economist. He is moderately pro-NAFTA and pro-WTO: he thinks that it is a much better idea to work through those institutions to promote global progressive values and he has no time for radicals who naively advocate getting rid of them.

Yet, unlike the Al Froms of the world, Krugman is a moderate progressive who recognizes the real threat: the infinitely more radical and dangerous Bush Administration. So PK uses every bit of his immense analytical skill and economic expertise to directs his fire in the form of scathing critiques at exactly where it should go. Not only that, but Krugman also points out all of the constructive ways the Bush Admin could be doing better, using standard, mainstream economic language and reasoning that is conventionally thought to be the conservatives' domain. And this is why hardline Republicans hate Krugman so much. He is a conventional, mainstream economist who uses largely the same theoretical market frameworks the conservatives use, but every single day, he tells them them that they are dead wrong.

In the same way, Clark has all of the nuts and bolts military experience that give today's conservatives a hard-on. He has a deep practioner's knowledge of logistics, strategy, weapon systems, and diplomacy that Republicans claim as their domain. Although he might respect pacifists' views, he is not one of them, and he must almost certainly believes that they are naive and untenable, for he has ordered people to kill and to risk their lives. He has won a major war, defeated a murdurous dictator, and helped use American military power to produce peace and democracy--his campaign in Kosovo seems like an exemplar of the neocons' mythic history.

Yet Clark also knows where the most proximate problem lies and has focused his fire at the Bush Administration's unjust and incredibly unwise foreign policy. He dismantles it, not using a radical discourse that the conservatives could easily dismiss as un-American or effete, but in the professional military and strategic language that they would claim as their own. He has lived the neocons' wet dream, yet he utterly rejects their vision as foolish, dangerous to world peace, and counterproductive to American security interests: he calls Bush's war "the greatest strategic blunder since the Cold War." He sees through Bush's propaganda and names it for the smokescreen that it is--as he did when he voiced what many veterans were thinking by slamming Bush's "prancing" around in a flight suit. And he pairs with every step of this critique a coherent and constructive alternative that is backed up by sound facts and strategic reasoning.

Right now, progressives don't need to choose between moderate and "deep" progressives. Krugman personifies this, but his views hardly make him an outlier of the left--he is just symbolically unique, the neoliberal economist who complements the policies advocated by more typical Democratic politicians.

So I guess the reason I'm excited about Clark is because I think he will be the next big figure to join this project, which is about to reverse the mess of the last couple of years, and become America's much-needed Krugman on defense.

P.S.: If you're a draft Clark-er and you're reading this, please note that it's just "Antidotal", without the "the." And thanks for the link, keep up the great work, and hang in there--as he said in today's impressive interview with Wolf Blitzer, he'll announce in only 2-3 weeks.

P.P.S.: Man, did Clark ever thrash Tom DeLay in that interview:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. TOM DELAY (R-TX), MAJORITY LEADER: Frankly, what irritates me the most are these blow-dried Napoleons that come on television and, in some cases, have their own agendas.

General Clark is one of them that is running for president, yet he's paid to be an expert on your network. And he's questioning the plan and raising doubts as he becomes this expert.

I think they would serve the nation better if they would just comment on what they see and what they know, rather than putting their own agenda forward as an expert.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Well, pretty strong words from Tom DeLay going after you. What do you say to that criticism?

CLARK: I'd be happy to compare my hair with Tom DeLay's. We'll see who's got the blow-dried hair.

But beyond that, Wolf, he's got it exactly backward. It's upside down. I am saying what I believe. And I'm being drawn into the political process because of what I believe and what I've said about it.

So it's precisely the opposite of a man like Tom DeLay, who is only motivated by politics and says whatever he needs to say to get the political purpose. And so...I couldn't be more opposed than I am to Tom DeLay.

Smack!

Nice.

2003-08-15T17:56:00.000-04:00

So Eric's plea for news from the GWN (consult Strange Brew for meaning of that acronym) did not go unheeded. The lights were on in my part of Toronto (Queens Quay and Spadina), as well as at the hospital, as of the middle of Thursday night.

Can't say that the blackout was too eventful, which is probably a good thing. Outside the hospital windows, we watched the inevitable traffic snarl up University Avenue, with passersby bravely standing in as traffic cops at virtually every intersection.

This being Canada, the bars were still open and the beer was flowing -- might as well sell the stuff before it gets lukewarm. A couple of us looked for food and drink on College Street. We happened upon a to-remain-nameless establishment which drew attention to itself with a cry of "Ice cold beer! To go!". Yes, with Toronto plunged into darkness, the city's finest probably had more pressing matters than handing out public drunkeness citations.

Outside of the downtown core, Toronto is made up of a grid of major arteries -- with residential areas lying right behind them. This point was certainly driven home as we walked past each cross-street to College, looked to our right and stared into absolute pitch blackness. With that in mind, I got my female companions home and walked down Spadina towards the lake. Between Queen and King, a DJ had hooked her gear up to a generator and was spinning to a growing crowd. And with the public drinking and toking, it practically seemed like a Canadian Summer of Love redux.

Probably the oddest sight were the TTC's old streetcars, all of which had ground to a halt as the juice was cut. Each was guarded by its driver, yet looked every bit like a fallen mechanical beast. It was as if, all over the city, the comet had hit and the dinosaurs couldn't do shit. You almost wanted to pet them and feed them water out of a doggie bowl.

And yes, the stars were suddenly much more populous, except down by the water -- where the reflected light from the downtown office towers (all powered by generators) obscured the light show.

There are still areas all over town that don't have power -- as of this morning, I know that the strip between High Park and Ossington, bounded by Bloor and College, was dark, as well as parts of North York -- but they're hoping to get two-thirds of Ontario back on the grid by tonight.

2003-08-15T17:53:00.000-04:00

FAIR.™ BALANCED.™ TRADEMARKED™: So maybe I lied about that trademarked bit. I don't have a big enough legal department to make it worth it. And maybe about that Fair and Balanced™ part too--it takes help to be Balanced™.*

On second thought, perhaps none of us in blogtopia(© skippy 2002) should be so hard on Fox News™. I mean, if my livelihood depended on helping to fluff for an unnecessary war and defecating on the American journalistic tradition, I might be a little oversensitive too.

Happy Fair and Balanced Day!

*Hint, hint Manu. Or anyone else who feels like contributing--seriously, it's tough to be Fair and Balanced™ when you're blogging alone becuase it's so easy to Overbalance and to become sadly Unfair, so if you're interested in contributing or joining forces or some other thing, please email me!

2003-08-15T17:38:00.000-04:00

COMPARE AND CONTRAST--THE RELIGION GAP: If you're looking for reasons as to why the rest of the developed world is scared of America, besides its monstrously ginormous defense spending, think religion. Reporter Nic Kristof (for his regular NYT column) and Canadian polling czar Michael Adams (for The Globe and Mail) each have columns on the split between the U.S. and the rest of the world's developed countries (ROTWDC). So it's well-established in poll after poll that more Americans take their religion more seriously anywhere than in the ROTWDC--there's a double digit gap in the percentages of regular church attendance and whether religion is "important." But Kristof and Adams note that there's other important movements going on as well.

Kristof writes that in America, religious belief is also become more charismatic and less intellectual, leading to a split not only between America and the ROTWDC, but also within America itself between fundies and liberals (whether religious or not):

Americans believe, 58 percent to 40 percent, that it is necessary to believe in God to be moral. In contrast, other developed countries overwhelmingly believe that it is not necessary. In France, only 13 percent agree with the U.S. view. [Kristof's polls are here]

The faith in the Virgin Birth reflects the way American Christianity is becoming less intellectual and more mystical over time. The percentage of Americans who believe in the Virgin Birth actually rose five points in the latest poll.

My grandfather was fairly typical of his generation: A devout and active Presbyterian elder, he nonetheless believed firmly in evolution and regarded the Virgin Birth as a pious legend. Those kinds of mainline Christians are vanishing, replaced by evangelicals. Since 1960, the number of Pentecostalists has increased fourfold, while the number of Episcopalians has dropped almost in half.

The result is a gulf not only between America and the rest of the industrialized world, but a growing split at home as well. One of the most poisonous divides is the one between intellectual and religious America.

Adams points to another trend that I had thought was mostly a stereotype: American patriarchalism, as compared to Canadian and European* gender egalitarianism. Stunning comparative stat of the day:

Canadians have brought their questioning of traditional authority right into the home and are far less likely than Americans to agree with the statement: "The father of the family must be master in his own home." A 1992 Environics poll found that 26 per cent of Canadians believed that "father must be master" (down from 42 per cent in 1983). That same year, 42 per cent of Americans told us dad should be on top.

Since then, the gap has widened: down to 18 per cent in Canada in 2000, and up to 49 per cent in the U.S. in that year. As Canadians become ever less deferential to patriarchal authority, Americans are becoming more and more willing to see if dad says it's okay to watch The Simpsons.

Quebeckers are the North Americans least likely to think that father should be master (15 per cent). In more conservative Alberta, the figure is 21 per cent, the highest in Canada. In the United States, the proportion supporting traditional patriarchy ranges from a low of 29 per cent in liberal New England, to a high of 71 per cent in the Deep South[!]. Religiosity and deference to patriarchal authority reinforce each other.

Mapping that last geographical stat onto the now-proverbial red state/blue state divide backs up Kristof's more impressionistic argument about the widening division between fundies and liberals. As far as divisions go, things seems to be getting worse, not better. I've never been a big fan of Sam Huntington's clash-tastic thesis--but wouldn't it be funny if it was right, except the civilizations didn't correspond to the lines separating nations and regime-types, but instead lay within them? (Not really, I guess, except from the purely cosmic "I told you so," point of view)

This probably isn't helping things, but I should note that the patriachy thing is seriously a deal-breaker for me, and probably many other liberals. Maybe not a civil war-type deal breaker, but c'mon now: "The father must be master of his own house"? To me, that's sounds about as enlightened as supporting a penal system that involves drawing and quartering.

*As in the U.S., this no doubt varies regionally. Using my patented technique of stringing together reports and anecdotes I've heard, I'm guessing that this characterization applies better as you move north and west in Europe, with the Scandinavian countries topping the charts in gender equality.

2003-08-14T20:54:00.000-04:00

WHOA! NO LIGHTS IN T.O. Nor a big chunk of the eastern seaboard, or so I've heard. The Globe and Mail was able to keep updating their website during this humongous blackout, though, and their article on the reactions of the citizens of "Toronto the Good" is heartwarming:

With streetlights, crosswalks, subways, streetcars, elevators, computers and office lights immobilized, a mass of humanity took to the overheated streets of the city's downtown core during rush hour yesterday. But they weren't looting and pillaging, as one young woman said, "this is Toronto, after all."

In what could have been a disastrous situation, ordinary Torontonians, some of them still dressed in business suits and ties, got out of their cars or parked their bikes, moved into the centre of intersections, and began directing traffic.

"He's jumped right into the fray and made this corner manageable," said Barbara Lowe, who was visiting Toronto from Dublin, Ireland, and was gaping at a middle-aged man in a mauve shirt and tie directing traffic at the corner of Front and University Streets. "I am absolutely taken with his attitude. Look at this guy, he just got out of his car and got everything moving again."

See, the depths of human nature have a constructive side too: if everyone decided to unleash their inner kid's urge to play policeman instead of "get free stuff," things can work!

Oh, if anyone who's around Toronto (or anywhere else that got nailed by the blackout) is reading this, please say hello in my comments or send me an email to let me know what's going on and that you're OK.

MORE: My parents tell me it's pitch black Toronto and that they saw stars for the first time in tcity ever. And that gas stations were out and people had to abandon cars that were out of fuel and walk home. But it looks like they're already starting to get power back in NYC, and at least Toronto's suburbs. So no extended crisis, which is good.

I didn't previously mention that I was considering a spontaneous trip to NYC this morning, but decided against it. Guess I missed a little adventure or inconvenience, or both...

2003-08-13T23:55:00.000-04:00

QUICK PONTIFICATION on Fairness and Balance™.

When I came into grad school, one of my big interests was the moral/political philosophy of intellectual property rights (warning: you know there's gonna be a mess of [probably loosely used] jargon coming). Economic and legal research on IP is a huge industry now--if they didn't have a rule, you could probably fill up the majority of your courses at Yale Law doing IP. But not a lot of people study it from the airy-fairy moral philosophy standpoint that I wanted to take.

If I actually had done the project that I had originally intended last year, I would have had some harsh philosphical words for those Fox people (I bet they're relieved!). I could spill a lot of pixels on this right now, but suffice it to say that whatever normative grounds we can muster for owning concrete property, they are much harder to bring to bear for intellectual property. Instead of arguing this point in detail, I'll just use an example involving goats. If you own a goat and I steal it, you can no longer do whatever it was you wanted to do with the goat before I stole it. But if I illegally copy a drawing of a goat you've published and then fax it to my business associate in China who reprints them and sells them cheaply to his compatriot goat afficiondoes, it's hard to point to what you've lost, especially if you had no idea that there was a Chinese market for low-cost reproductions of goat drawings. Indeed, on many standard libertarian theories justifying the morality of a free or minimally regulated market, I have in fact earned something with my entrepreneurship by exploiting a market of which you were ignorant. In this case, government intervention would create the kind of obvious deadweight loss that libertarians hate so much.

Anyway, goat hypotheticals aside, perhaps the thing that annoys me most is that Westerners, especially Americans, often make normative claims about IP that seem to assume that their conception of IP is the only morally justifiable one. "Reverse engineering by third world generic drug companies is theft!" they scream. Well, no, not if they didn't sign an agreement with you not to reverse engineer. Maybe they have a different and more efficient regime of promoting innovation.

The truth is that it's almost impossible to justify the nearly "maximalist" conception of intellectual property that the West tends toward (i.e. someone who owns a piece of IP has exclusive control over all of its property incidents, just like for most pieces of real property) on deontological moral grounds. The best shot you would have for this justification is to go to utilitarianism--and, lo and behold, that's the kind of justification that the U.S. Constitution provides for giving Congress the power to issue patents: " To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts..."

And I'd argue that on most conceptions, trademarks wouldn't even be viewed as a form of property at all. Even on the Western conception, the argument for treating trademarks as a piece of property is pretty dodgy, from a normative point of view--they have the shortest terms and their domain is the most restricted. In fact, I think you could make a pretty good argument that the most defensible normative way to view trademark violations is as cases of fraud. If we go back and look at the primary basis for issuing trademarks, it wasn't to give their owners a resource with which they could promote "brand loyalty"--if this were the main justification, then the state's granting and enforcement resembles a pretty pure case of state-empowered rent-seeking (your cue to be outraged, libertarians and social choicers!). The most defensible justification for granting trademarks is to efficiently protect customers from fraud--to make it easy for them to figure out what they're buying and who's selling it to them.

And if there was ever a clearer case of fraud than Fox News labelling itself "Fair and Balanced," then I missed out on that particular Amway Party.

That was a cheap and easy way to end this obscure post, but probably classier than if I had just said "go look up the definition of 'satire' in the dictionary, ya big windbags."

2003-08-12T17:20:00.000-04:00

THE PROBLEM WITH JOURNALISM TODAY is that it lack Fairness and Balance™.

Help Al Franken, Atrios, and Blah3 restore Fairness and Balance™ to blogtopia(© skippy 2002)!

2003-08-11T23:59:00.000-04:00

OBLIGATORY CALIFORNIA RECALL POST: The current weirdness of the crazy coast gets the next couple 100 of words or so and no more. The flake-to-meat ratio is too high for me to bother.

1) As far as its democratic legitimacy goes, the question for me turns on whether Davis actually broke a norm of fairness and honesty during last year's campaign. If it can be reasonably shown that he decieved the electorate on the state's fiscal numbers during the campaign, then it seems in line with the democratic principles to nullify the election. Otherwise, this is a perversion of democracy and the intention of the recall provision. I note that, if the Republicans are wrong on this one, then they will have succeeding in unnecessarily destroying another democratic procedural tool through overpoliticization in the same way in which they destroyed the independent counsel statute, which actually did serve a useful purpose, before Starr got his claws into it. I should add that I have no idea if Davis is actually in the wrong or not; I really don't care enough to investigate. I think some movie actors are pretty cool and I'd consider living in San Francisco, but for the most part, those people out there seem really weird, man. I'm going to keep my distance!

2) I can't think of a more vivid example of a Walzerian "improper boundary crossing"* than a certain "large and in charge" accented "actor" converting his name recognition into a governorship. OK, at least not since Bloomberg won the mayorial election in NYC. I do have to admit that whereas I can't think of a single concrete socially useful thing Gray Davis has done, I can point to at least one definite way in which the big Austrian has concretely contributed to the social good. Namely, he has blessed us all with the ability to enliven any dreary social situation by resolving to communicate as extensively as possible using bad Ah-nuld one-liners:

"Where are you going"
"I'll be baack"

"What happened to Dave?"
"I let him gooo"

"Hey, the toaster's broken"
"Toaster, you are nothing but a boyscout compared to me,"

And so on.

*As argued in Michael Walzer's Spheres of Justice, whereby justice (a.k.a. "complex equality") is defined as a set of arrangements that prevents people who have accumulated goods gained from their advantages in one sphere from infringing on the pattern of distribution of goods proper to another, unrelated sphere (in which people with a different of talents or capacities would be dominant without this infringement). The paradigmatic example is the bribe.

3) My favourite quote on this whole deal is from an AP article confirming that the CA Supreme Court had tossed out all of the challenges to the recall:

Gerald Uelmen, a Santa Clara School of Law scholar who closely follows the court, said the justices were reluctant to impede the rough-and-tumble of democracy.

"They believe the courts should kind of stand back and let the people go at it," Uelmen said. "They're saying they don't want to take any steps that would interfere with this process or delay it."

2003-08-11T15:55:00.000-04:00

ALSO IN THE CATEGORY OF 'NO ONE GIVES A DAMN': Senator Joe Biden declared that he won't be running for president. No offense to all three of you Biden supporters, but while he does some good work, he would have added nothing to the campaign, except for maybe a marginal improvement on Lieberman, and whatever foreign policy respectability he has is more than counter-balanced by his significant negatives. RAVE Act anyone? Ick. Even his home state is pretty useless, and not just in terms of electoral votes--can anyone provide me with definitive proof that Delaware still exists?

Anyway, here's the official declaration:

"At this moment, my instincts tell me that the best way for me to work to enhance America's national security and to fight for economic security for the middle class is to remain in the United States Senate. They also tell me that my presidential chances had all of the potential of dried-out banana slug. I didn't really hear them at first, but this morning my instincts gave up biting the back of my rear end and started working on the flat part of my forehead instead, and I decided that maybe it was time to listen to them," Biden said in a statement.

2003-08-11T15:47:00.000-04:00

I'M SINCERELY TOUCHED by Sisyphus' and Jeff Cooper's inquisitive snark. Yes, I'm alive. Or at least in no more of a torpor than your average summertime grad student. I'm honestly surprised that anyone cared--my habits have been so bad that for awhile there, I didn't even consider myself worthy (such as it is) of the name of a blogger. But I suppose this Monday is as good as any to restart my jottings. That, and the fact that I don't really want to be a just like everyone else and run for governor of California.

And no, Julia, it wasn't the monkfish. Next time I order that, though, I'm bringing a drillbit...

2003-07-24T23:32:00.000-04:00

SORRY for the light posting. Travelling and stuff. Will be back on Monday...

2003-07-23T01:22:00.000-04:00

MEMO TO THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION:

From: George Tenet, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
To: George W. Bush, President of the United States

Re: Alibis and Fall Guys

Dear Mr. President,

With regard to the above, I would like to respectfully and humbly remind you that more is not necessarily better.

Yours in confidence,

George Tenet

2003-07-21T12:38:00.000-04:00

THE DAVID KELLY STORY: Frankly, I've read a lot more "tinfoil hat"-type insinuations on progressive sites than I would have expected. If we're above making unfounded Vincent Foster-type allegations, then we shouldn't do it. Period.

Blair may "have blood on his hands" for sticking with Bush on Iraq, but it's unlikely that any of it is David Kelly's. I respect the BBC (sadly, more than I respect Blair right now--especially if the report that he has capitulated to the Bush Admin over the British prisoners held at Gitmo is true), but this Guardian (definitely not Murdoch-owned) report indicates that it might have been the Beeb, not #10 Downing that pushed Kelly over the edge.

2003-07-18T11:24:00.000-04:00

DON'T TRUST THOSE DURNED COMMIE QUEERS! According to the Washington Post's gossip page, the White House prodded Matt Drudge to breathlessly report that Jeffrey Kofman, an ABC reporter who did a story on the low morale of U.S. troops in Iraq is...wait for it...not only [hysterical all caps]OPENLY GAY BUT ALSO CANADIAN[/hysterical all caps].

David Frum and Mark Steyn had best watch out--Ashcroft is gonna be coming for them next. On a related note, is it worse to be gay and Canadian or an obtuse hack and Canadian?

(via Eschaton)

2003-07-18T11:08:00.000-04:00

MORAL NON-EQUIVALENCE: Sometimes I can't even believe how some people "do" politics in America. The 'Net left has a funny, semi-self-depricating slogan going around: "When Clinton Lied, No One Died." More of a joke than a real rallying cry, since I doubt any Dem would run that as a tagline. And the right, in general, is happy enough to uncomfortably chuckle at it, since they know it's for internal consumption only.

And then there's former GOP congressional leader Dick Armey, who last week actually tried to make the positive argument that stretching the truth (and likely straight out lying) to support a possibly unnecessary war isn't nearly as bad as lying about sex. Katrina vanden Heuvel was around to verbally smack him around for this ridiculousness, but she really needed a taser to give him what he deserved.

2003-07-18T09:40:00.000-04:00

MAKE THAT 0-FOR-2: Remember that Iraqi nuclear scientist who dug out an enrichment-centrifuge from under a Baghdad rose bush last month? A chap by the name of Mahdi Shukur Obeidi. So that part is still true, but what the CIA and the Bush Admin didn't mention is that there was more buried in that story than just the centrifuge. The AP reports that Obeidi also confirmed that a certain claim a certain President made in a certain State of the Union Address about Iraq purchasing aluminum tubes for nuclear production was...drumroll please...false.

But if you were on the sane side blogtopia (all hail king skippy!), you were pretty sure the tubular claim was very sketchy, so no surprise there. Better late than never, I suppose. And it looks like the "official" mendacity count for the State of the Union's going to break the 30-word barrier.

I fully expect that Tapped will be working on a name for this scandal that will rival Yellowcakegate or Urain'tium. I don't have much to contribute myself, although if this thing does really blow up, we may need a more euphonic name for Obeidi. May I suggest the Tubesgate Messiah?

Another note: one has to wonder as to the identity of the "trusted source" who leaked the goods on the scientist to the UN. Considering the limited number of people who had access, a CIA leak is very plausible. Could this be another sign of CIA reprisal (warning: insightful Demosthenes commentary) against the Bush Admin's bullying?

2003-07-17T17:21:00.000-04:00

TONY BLAIR'S speech before congress today provided some pretty good evidence of why more Americans trust him to do the right thing than Bush.

UPON FURTHER REVIEW: Applause watching was especially interesting, considering the PM's decidedly internationalist line clashes with the Bush Admin's on more than a few small details. For example, only polite applause instead of a standing O when he said, "let us start preferring a coalition and acting alone if we have to, not the other way round. True, winning wars is not easier that way, but winning the peace is." Note the locution start preferring. Also no standing O for "I believe any alliance must start with America and Europe," nor, if I recall correctly, for his remarks on Africa. He eventually got a standing O for his comments on the environment and sustainable development, although I have to wonder how hard it was for Cheney to keep from swallowing his tongue when Blair asserted that "frankly, we need to go beyond even Kyoto."

2003-07-17T09:48:00.000-04:00

BACK IN AFGHANISTAN: Canadian troops hoist the flag for their second tour in Afghanistan, this time under ISAF. I'm actually more comfortable with this, since doing it under the UN banner is really more in line with the Canadian character. And, with luck, the other UN forces will avoid bombing our troops during the mission.

2003-07-17T09:43:00.000-04:00

CAROL SHIELDS passes away.

Very sad, not least because, as her daughter puts it, "she had many books left to write."

2003-07-16T19:19:00.000-04:00

RESOURCE SHARING: As opposed to that last post, these links are actually funny:

--TBogg makes a graphic observation about recent U.S. deficit history.

--Go to the bathroom before reading this annotated list of sublimely bad baby names. A sample:

"The girls names dh and i have decided on...Malaijah (malaya) Jayne For boys dh and I have no clue, what do you think for first names? ~ Kamden ~ Raiden...We like these for middle names........ ~ Clor" Comment: I just spent 45 minutes under my desk shivering because of this one. I hope you're happy, little Malalalalaijah Raiden Clortrimiton! (Side note: My boyfriend has just informed me Raiden is a Japanese thunder god, but is more commonly known in the west as a character from the Mortal Kombat games. Malalalalaijah Raiden Clortrimiton wins! FATALITY!!!!) [Dorky Ed--This is inadvertently made even funnier, if it's possible, if you've actually played the MK games and are familiar with the sound Raiden makes when he does his...oh, never mind...]

(via Sisyphus)

--Recent VRWC convert Dennis Miller gets knocked down a peg by the only guy qualified to do the job--the young Dennis Miller. Oh Dennis, we hardly knew ye... (actually a pitch perfect Rick Chandler in disguise; via Mad Kane)

--Last week's Best Yellowcake Affair quote, IMHO:

SECRETARY POWELL: I did not use [the Saddam is trying to purchase uranium from Africa claim] in the formal presentation I made on the 5th of February because by then there was such controversy about it, and as we looked at all that we knew about it, it did not seem to be the kind of claim that I should take into the UN. [emphasis added]

What are we, the United States of Chopped Liver? Can't we get the non-bogus intel briefing too?

--the normally judicious Joshua Micah Marshall

2003-07-16T18:51:00.000-04:00

WINNING POKER STRATEGERY If the 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq can't go home, then perhaps the Pentagon will at least give them some new playing cards?

The sergeant at the 2nd Battle Combat Team Headquarters pulled me aside in the corridor. "I've got my own 'Most Wanted' list," he told me.

He was referring to the deck of cards the U.S. government published, featuring Saddam Hussein, his sons and other wanted members of the former Iraqi regime.

"The aces in my deck are Paul Bremer, Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush and Paul Wolfowitz," he said.

I don't know if granting this request is such a good idea, since it might decrease morale even further by making it easy to cheat:

"Hey, you've got a Dick Cheney up your sleeve!"
"Calm down, I have no idea how he got into that undisclosed location..."

2003-07-14T11:52:00.000-04:00

PATRIOTISM, REDUX: Ampersand and Andrew Northrup got into a sharp exchange over patriotism--given my recent post, I can't lay off this one. Although Ampersand does a better job of keeping his cool in saying "whatever" to patriotism, I unsurprisingly think that Andrew is correct in arguing that patriotism is a crucial part of establishing the solidaristic ties necessary for promoting social justice. As Andrew seems to have become frustrated, I will try to pick up the torch and respond to Ampersand's latest set of arguments:

"All my life, in mostly quiet and invisible ways, I've benefited from advantages I shouldn't have and don't deserve. This is why I support affirmative action, and reparations, and almost every reasonable measure I’ve come across for fighting racism, sexism and homophobia (and classism, and imperialism, etc etc)....

'There's a lot that's wonderful in our history (read Howard Zinn), but also a lot that's shameful, and you know what? I can't take pride or shame in any of it, because I wasn't around then, and I'm not the author of the good or the bad things those folks did.' (from Ampersand's original post)

I phrased that sentence with care, and I stick by it. I’m not ashamed because of all the wrongs that have been done to women, to minorities, to gays in the USA. I didn't do these things, and if I could I'd reverse them; so why should I feel guilt or shame?"

The reason you should feel shame (but not guilt), Ampersand, is because until you tear up your passport and renounce your right to vote in American elections, you are an American; even after that, you would still probably be American. You, Ampersand, were (I presume) born in America and you live in America. This doesn't make you guilty of or personally responsible for causing America's past acts, but it does mean that they symbolize you, just as, say, the way you dress, the complexion of your skin, or your family name might be considered a reflection of who you are. The difference is that your nationality goes a little deeper--unlike your clothes, your nationality makes up, or one would expect it to make up, a constitutive part of your identity that you can't just remove. If it doesn't, other people would immediately assume it did as soon as they heard your accent or read your driver's license, and that means something; namely, it means something symbolic.

"As for the Poor Man's linkage of responsibility and patriotism, I just don't see it. Some of the most patriotic people I've met seem to feel no responsibility at all for trying to fight bigotry and prejudice. Maybe The Poor Man sees a connection there, but I don’t."

How are responsibility and patriotism connected? Assume (for the sake of argument) that the average German and Germany itself today bear no personal responsibility for causing the holocaust, nor retain any material advantage from the horrors they inflicted upon Europe's Jews and Roma.

Yet if you travel to Germany, you will find many people who quite rationally feel responsible for what their ancestors did to the Jews. Why? Because they feel ashamed of what their country and their ancestors did to the Jews. I would argue that this is a perfectly reasonable sentiment--unless they are willing to move to another country and renounce their citizenship, they would like to be able to say that they are German with some degree of dignity, and, yes, pride.

They still feel a special responsibility toward Jews and Roma, a responsibility that one wouldn't expect, say, a Chinese national to feel out of "basic human decency. They feel this special responsibility because they were born as Germans and therefore born with the mark of belonging to a certain country with a certain history, a country whose name and common identity they want to do something to rehabilitate. The responsibility such a German would bear to try to expediate such a rehabilitation clearly goes beyond the basic love one feels for humanity in general, just as the responsibility one might feel for helping, say, a hard on his luck uncle with whom one has only recently become acquainted exceeds any responsibility one would be expected to feel to help a down on his luck stranger who shared no ties of blood.

And we are all born, not as atomistic individuals (as libertarians might think), or as merely as human beings qua human beings (as extreme Kantians might think), but rather as the nationals of a certain country with a certain history, and, yes, certain obligations, and these attributes become automatically attached to us and can only be renounced with a good degree of effort. Yeah, using the "L"-word might have a bit of a low blow, but I'm a bit surprised Ampersand doesn't recognize this, considering the contribution that feminists and other identity theorists have made in highlighting the importance of the "always already" existing nature of attributes like race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. Maybe running a blog in libertarian-dominated cyberspace has had more of an effect on Ampersand's politics than he'd realizes...

ADDENDUM: Stephen Bates, always a more than worthy interlocutor, finds a concrete and current illustration of the distinction between guilt and shame.

2003-07-12T09:05:00.000-04:00

THINGS TO DO IN NEW HAVEN WHEN YOU'RE REALLY TIRED and when you've left the key to your apartment on your desk and the doorman's off duty and your flatmate and fiancee are who-knows-where or sleeping like bricks (for around the first 8 hours after midnight):

-Knock a lot. Leave message on flatmate's cellphone
-Have a very late dinner at the late night pizza/kabob joint.
-Knock some more
-Eat the remainder of your pita whilst staring whistfully at your balcony window only 14 ft. off of the ground (and probably unlocked sliding doors)
-Check out local dive bar for a barmaid you know. Convince doorman to let you in free and that backpack doesn't have weapons. Watch a couple songs by the tribute band with the last 2 dozen hardcore fans.
-Check out graduate school bar. Peer at bar's very last patron. Use bathroom.
-Knock even more. Kick. A bit. Bang head against terrible, terrible door. Curse at flatmate's immediate call waiting message for 35236th time.
-Try to talk to and befriend some post-bar undergrads at the local 24-hour convenience store, but fail because of you're second too slow-witted to catch an entry cue.
-Watch in despair as barmaid above pulls up to curb to drop off friends and looks through you without hint of recognition.
-Wander. Check out the fountain on cross-campus.
-Wander back to the 24-hour convenience store and convince counter guy to let you work in their upstairs seating area even though it's supposed to be closed for cleaning.
-Edit a paper you're trying to publish.
-Buy and consume some Red Bull-like energy drink.
-Start a short story and an op-ed.
-Practice your kata between the tables of the upstairs area.
-Edit some more and buy some ginseng/plum iced tea.
-Gaze at 6:15AM sunlight in wonder.
-Wander over to Starbucks. Try to convince opening shift ladies to let you in 10 minutes before they're supposed to open so you can use the bathroom.
-Search out early breakfast place to use the bathroom.
-Return to Starbucks slightly annoyed; buy cheap tea without tipping.
-Open up laptop, stare at it, realize it's too late to do anymore work, close it up.
-Chat up one nice Starbucks gal who would have let you in early, but was told not to by the other workers. Give her advice on grad school and the GREs.
-Go back to apartment and bang some more.
-Give up and find the morning doorman who's just arrived. Suck down paying $20 to let you into your apartment. Stare at roommate's closed door and wonder. Plug in Internet connection and blog in a daze.

2003-07-11T10:55:00.000-04:00

DOESN'T THE SECRET SERVICE ALREADY HAVE ENOUGH TO DO? Condoleeza Rice dumps the dodgy Niger uranium claim made in Bush's State of the Union address all over the lap of George Tenet and the CIA:

"If CIA Director George Tenet had any misgivings about that sentence in the president's speech, 'he did not make them known' to Mr. Bush or his staff, said national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Her comments to reporters aboard Air Force One came a day after other senior U.S. officials said that before and after Mr. Bush's Jan. 28 speech, American intelligence officials expressed doubts about a British intelligence report that the president cited to back up his allegations.

But Ms. Rice said Friday that 'the CIA cleared the speech in its entirety.'"

If I were Dr. Rice, I'd be very cautious when I start my car tomorrow morning...

2003-07-11T00:15:00.000-04:00

THE PERVERSITY OF THE UNIVERSE will be on full display if Blair loses his job but Bush doesn't for the no WMDs in Iraq mess. As Nic Kristof points out, Blair has been far more credible and reasonable in selling the war, but that may not save him because the British people and media are much less credulous, it seems, than their American counterparts.

Yeah, Blair might have earned what he gets for siding with the Bush gang, but it would still be a pity--and if there is a higher power, surely It wouldn't dump Blair and let Bush win '04, right?

2003-07-10T23:33:00.000-04:00

I WOULD HAVE BROUGHT SHOE POLISH: Mrs. Clinton's extreme grciousness in helping Tucker Carlson weasel out of his boastful bet to eat his shoes if her book sold well by presenting him with a cake in the shape of shoe on Crossfire would be really heartwarming, if I could set aside the amount of damage that people of Carlson's ilk has done to American political discourse.

2003-07-10T10:26:00.000-04:00

An addendum to Eric's post on proper patriotism. There's an article in the Utne Reader that makes a compelling argument for why the Left should embrace patriotism. The upshot of the article is that the Left has to remind people what America truly stands for -- democracy, liberty, a haven for the down-trodden etc. The article also contains interesting historical tid-bits about some of America's patriotic touchstones, including the Oath of Allegiance and songs like "America the Beautiful" and "This Land is your Land". It turns out they weren't exactly written by Republicans....

2003-07-09T18:35:00.000-04:00

MOST PEOPLE who read blogs probably already know about this, but here's the key Niger uranium links that have appeared over the past few days:

-"The Former Ambassador" Joseph Wilson's NYT article.
-Ari Fleischer's largely incoherent attempt to explain why the Bush Admin shouldn't be excoriated for this--rough last week on the job, huh, Ari? (posted by public-minded Josh Marshall)
-The NYT story on the White House's sort of mea culpa.

What really surprises me about all this is that it took the mainstream media this long to make a stink about it. I thought everyone was pretty sure that the reports were bogus months ago.

2003-07-09T18:20:00.000-04:00

BEN FOLDS was amazing. Should have been quicker in mentioning the concert I went to on the 4th, but it's not like I've got a reputation for being timely. It was a bit odd, because when Toad's Place (New Haven's famous Yale-embedded dive bar) meant all ages, they really meant ALL ages. I'm talking a few grandmoms, as well as a bunch o' kids who were seriously pre-pre-teen. Like 11-years-old all ages. But he was amazing--not only did he make us sing the parts to many of his songs, but he made us actually almost sing well. And "Song for the Dumped" is still pretty funny in Japanese. Very cool.

2003-07-09T18:15:00.000-04:00

NOT THAT IT MATTERS really, since I can't even vote or legally donate money to this cause, but I really, really, really like the idea of a Wesley Clark run. And Esquire's excellent profile didn't hurt one bit (via The Wesley Clark weblog). Parts of it almost moved me to tears, like this account of personal courage in Bosnia:

In August 1995, the general—three stars, working as J-5 for the Joint Chiefs—went to Bosnia as part of the negotiating team Ambassador Richard Holbrooke had put together to end the civil war that had resulted in the massacre of as many as eight thousand Muslim men and boys at the town of Srebrenica the month before. In Belgrade, Clark had met for the first time Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, who was sponsoring the Bosnian Serbs. Now the team had to travel to Sarajevo. Told that the airport in Sarajevo was too dangerous to fly into, the team decided to drive and asked Milosevic to guarantee its safety on a road held by Bosnian Serbs. Milosevic did not, and so the team wound up taking a fortified Humvee and an armored personnel carrier on a pitched, narrow, winding mountain road notoriously vulnerable to Serb machine-gun fire. Clark and Holbrooke went in the Humvee, the rest in the APC. In his book, the general describes what happened this way: "At the end of the first week we had a tragic accident on Mount Igman, near Sarajevo. [Three members of the team] were killed when the French armored personnel carrier in which they were riding broke through the shoulder of the road and tumbled several hundred meters down a steep hillside."

It is not until one reads Holbrooke's book, To End a War, that one finds out that after the APC went off the road, Clark grabbed a rope, anchored it to a tree stump, and rappelled down the mountainside after it, despite the gunfire that the explosion of the APC set off, despite the warnings that the mountainside was heavily mined, despite the rain and the mud, and despite Holbrooke yelling that he couldn't go. It is not until one brings the incident up to the general that one finds out that the burning APC had turned into a kiln, and that Clark stayed with it and aided in the extraction of the bodies...

Clark-Dean is beginning to sound amazing. Dean-Clark would be great too. Heck, Clark-Kerry, Kerry-Clark, throw Graham in there somewhere, I don't care. All of those men (and a bunch of Democrat women, if they're interested) have better souls than Bush. I think about 98% of the world knows that. You Americans try to have the decency of recognizing that when you vote in 18 months, OK?

UPDATE: Wesley Clark's son popped up in The Daily Kos' comments (identity verified by Kos) and provided some valuable answers about his dad's intentions (scroll down, as he posted more than once). Cool.

2003-07-07T22:27:00.000-04:00

SAVING GRACES: Sisyphus' 4th of July post almost makes me want to be an American:

"So you're here. Unless you're a cave sloth or a TRex, somebody with a lot of guts went to an awful lot of trouble to make that possible. They walked here from Asia, or they came over in a wooden boat or they survived being kidnapped and enslaved or they crammed the hold of a ship without any lifeboats or escaped any one of a few centuries of wars and privation in the rest of the world or maybe they studied as if their lives depended on it and stepped on a plane.

As Bill Murray said in Stripes, we're here because every decent country on earth threw us out, because they didn't want us or because they stopped growing and someone down the trunk of your family tree wanted to be in the land of the really big pie - a pie that wasn't all carved up and handed out centuries before. A pie with some pieces left.

You may be one of those ancestors yourself.

Anyway, if you're here, somewhere in your blood is the blood of someone with a lot of guts."
--Sisyphus

Can't you Yanks elect more people who sincerely speak like this? Please?

Actually, some such similar stuff applies to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and is starting to become much more true of many other countries (my lame anecdotal empirics: I used to play cards with Eduardo, a half-Japanese kid from Brazil; and roomed in college with Azim, an Indian Muslim from Kenya; Manu is from some unknown planet [just kidding, pardner!]; and so on...). But the U.S. was there first, with the modern day liberal democracy thing, even if it's often been a rough ride that hasn't lived up to all of its ideals, and I will give it props for that.

ALSO, SOME THOUGHTS ON 'PROPER PATRIOTISM': if you scroll down from the original post, note the obstinate folks who insist that Sisyphus was wrong to post her message citing the good aspects of America's tradition without also citing the evil aspects:

"You might also remember that [Sisyphus'] country was built on the slaughter and deprivation of the native peoples, plus the slavery of millions of black people.

America has many fine attributes and has done good things in he world, but it has also committed many acts of evil, and rather than spouting such nonsensical jingoistic garbage, you might care to ponder the bad as well as the good....

Every American is guilty of the atrocities you inflict on the rest of the world, you might care to ponder that too."
--Some anonymous tool commenting on Sisyphus' site

People who believe something like the above (usually thoughtless radicals and fanatics) have overlooked the following:

(1) There is almost no country in the world about which some similar statement is untrue. The political history of humans society reveals a nearly unbroken chain of bloodshed and there is no moment where this violence is prominent and at the same time more hidden than at the moment of a society's founding. A history of the founding and world-historical events of the Earth's peoples would be in great part a history of genocide, fratricide, ethnic cleansing, and mass coercive dislocation.

(2) But making amends for the terrible history of one's nation doesn't mean--can't mean--constantly self-flagellating oneself and fellow citizens for the sins of their forefathers. This doesn't mean that we can forget--the critical 20th Century lesson contained in the words never forget will never be outdated. But it would be impossible to motivate moral and political progress in most average people if they were denied any opportunity to take some pride in who they are. Sisyphus' critic is just wrong when he(?) states that "every American is guilty of the atrocities that [their country] inflicts [or has inflicted] on the rest of the world." Such an assignment of collective guilt disrespects the individuality of persons that provides any viable concept of freedom with coherence. Individuals can never be guilty (merely) because of their unchosen affiliation with a collectivity. They can, however, be responsible for what a collectivity with which they're affiliated has done or is doing. It is wrong to tar all Americans with the guilt created by the Bush Administration's actions, just as it is wrong to tar all Catholics with the guilt of the child molestation of some of the religion's priests, or Germans for the incomparable crimes of their forefathers. One can, however, attach to members of all of those groups the responsibility of trying to reverse or repair the actions of their compatriots or forefathers. Doing so recognizes that we are both distinct individuals and always already born into this world as members of groups.

(3) People cannot be motivated to care about doing something about their country if they are convinced that it is irredeemable and that it possesses no immanent values worth struggling for. An honest patriotic pride isn’t employed to gloss over the memory of a nation’s historical evils and leaves more than enough space to recreate their memory and to learn from them. But to flourish, a vital and progressive population must also have spaces and moments during which they can celebrate their sustaining ideals and the aspects of their history of which they can sincerely be proud.

(4) And if you can't differentiate Sisyphus' plea to her compatriots to do a better job of realizing the ideals of hope and tolerance on which the United States were founded from "jingoistic nonsense," then you, sirs, are of no help whatsoever in making things better.

So that's my bit in trying to be part of (ugh--Walzer, you're mostly great, but I despise this phrase, mainly because it contains such a lie) "the decent left." Have a happy post-Canada Day/Independence Day week, everyone.

(via Brett Marston)

2003-07-06T11:50:00.000-04:00

JUST WONDERING: Is there a German compound word for "the justified indignation one feels when involuntarily exposed to a public display of affection by an objectively unattractive couple in a coffee shop"? There should be. Brett, any help here?

UPDATE: Brett suggests something like Anstossendeleutekaffeekuschelnekel. Nice.

2003-07-05T19:32:00.000-04:00

ROOT CAUSES OF TERRORISM, ANYONE? How about from softie Condi Rice? Hey look, the Bush Admin is still making distinctly progressive noises with regard to Liberia, as the last graf of this Washington Post article demonstrates:

Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, said a stable Liberia is important to U.S. interests, citing concerns that "failed states" create conditions of chaos that provide a breeding ground for terrorism.

This might actually work out OK, if someone can just keep Don Rumsfeld locked up in a closet for a few months.

2003-07-03T11:58:00.000-04:00

ON THE OTHER HAND, maybe one very good thing that will come out of the Iraq invasion is that the U.S. and the Bush Admin will have to start putting its money (and its troops) into peacekeeping so as to stop grievous humanitarian disasters, like the one that's been unfolding in Liberia.

A suggestion to fellow lefties and anti-Bushies: U.S. troops in this case would be a good thing. Chalk it up to your critical pressure and Bush's desire to avoid looking like a hypocrite, not to some long-term conspiracy. The thing to do here is to make sure that the Bush Admin actually bears its responsibility in Liberia, and makes its role there more than just a photo op to cover up for its missteps in the Middle East.

2003-07-03T11:50:00.000-04:00

RESPECT MY AUTHORI-TAY! The leader of the free world displayed his wisdom and gravitas in addressing the security situation in Iraq yesterday:

"There are some who feel that the conditions are such that they can attack us there," Bush said. Extending his right hand for emphasis, he added: "My answer is: Bring 'em on. We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."

There are also some (like WWII vet Sen. Frank Lautenberg) who feel Bush's statement was supremely callous, but I think it's totally appropriate, given that Bush bravely risked his own life in Iraq by personally leading U.S. troops into battle.

2003-07-02T17:08:00.000-04:00

A few belated birthday gifts for Canada...

Vancouver wins the right to host the 2010 Winter Olympics,

and Toronto is removed from the WHO SARS list.

2003-07-01T12:03:00.000-04:00

GO CANADA, IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY!

Happy Canada Day, everyone!

In celebration:

The Governor General's and Prime Minister's messages

A not-so-easy quiz (I got 20/36...feh, not even a 'B')

A charming The Washington Post article speculating on how "Peace, Order, and Good Government" Canada became more hip and less patriarchal than the supposedly libertarian U.S.--it's all about decriminalized pot and gay marriage, baby! Psst: It may have something to do with the entire country really and truly coming to terms with modern secularism...

Joyous links to my Canadian blogging compatriots: Jane Finch, Demosthenes, Invisible Adjunct, Alex Avila, and Andrew Ma.

(Wishing I could be at a party up there, somewhere)

2003-06-25T15:31:00.000-04:00

IF WE CAN MAKE THERE, WE CAN MAKE IT ANYWHERE: Hey everyone, The Gray Lady quoted some of the lyrics to left-Blogistan's "If You're Happy and You Know It, Bomb Iraq" project in its Sunday Times Arts section article on antiwar music:

One current antiwar song, which has been growing by accretion as various contributors pass it along on the Internet, is the sarcastic "Bomb Iraq." It aims for singalongs by going back to kindergarten, borrowing the tune of the children's song "Clap Your Hands."

Specific lyrics are only available in the print ediction of the NYT, since its in a sidebar. Also, they credit "Various Internet Authors" instead of anyone specific, which is a bit of a rip-off, since I think Atrios started this and the people who wrote the various verses are clearly named in his comments.

You should totally check to see if a verse you wrote made it in--mass media glory (even if somewhat anonymous) is always a great natural high.

Anyway, yay us!

ADDENDUM: Michael Johnson informs me via email that the "Bomb Iraq" song was started by Tom Tomorrow. Thanks Michael; and good work, Tom!

2003-06-24T01:59:00.000-04:00

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE YALE COLLEGE KIND: About 20 minutes ago, I clicked over to C-SPAN (which I've finally realized is infinitely more worth watching than most of the garbage on the major cable news nets) to be greeted by a replay of Howard Dean announcing his candidacy. I figured that I should watch it for a bit, given that his positions sound fairly promising and so many Dem Netizens lurve him.

So I'm watching Dean and he seems solidly inspiring while hitting those progressive notes that I'm always happy to hear and I'm thinking to myself "You know, I could like this Dean guy. Maybe America could too...hey, that young woman sitting on stage behind him looks really familiar. Where do I know her from? She looks an awful lot like an undergrad in a section I taught first semester--what was her name...Anne...Dean."

Right.

(Eric will be away for a few days mentally reviewing his conduct in teaching a certain section last semester)

2003-06-24T01:44:00.000-04:00

PROMISES: Yay, my computer's repaired! OK, so it's been repaired for about a week now and I've been trying to catch up on my reading. I'm also going away on a trip Wednesday, so I promise, if there's still anyone out there, that I'll be back Sunday.

2003-06-13T23:51:00.000-04:00

The narcissism of petty differences....

Tacitus and Little Green Fascists are engaged in a bitch fight over car swarmings, or something. Tee-hee.

2003-06-04T13:08:00.000-04:00

VERY BELATED THANKS to Oxblog and my momentary former classmate Josh Chafetz for not just maintaining my candyassed liberal and irregularly updated blog on their roll, but placing it under the category "Franklin Roosevelt," which is about a bazillion times more praise than it deserves.

Oxblog just might be the best hawkish blog out there, because it's tried darned hard to keep its promise to doggedly watch what the Bush Admin is doing after the bigger bombs stopped dropping. I especially like the blogger who has proposed that it should be renamed "Even the Conservative Oxblog."

And there's also Josh's contest for Best Political Theory pick-up lines, in honour of his exams. Characteristically, there's a bias against Rawls because he makes things too easy.

Back to hibernating, maybe...

2003-06-04T12:58:00.000-04:00

OH HEY, did I say I'd be taking a break? Maybe I really meant that I would be blogging sporadically. Maybe.

In the meantime, I just couldn't resist commenting on the Canadian political imbroglio that was the federal Progressive Conservative leadership convention.

It turns out that not-so-Golden-Boy Peter MacKay had to cut a 4th ballot deal with "interloper" David Orchard to take the leadership, because even though MacKay had entered as the frontrunner, the rest of the party seemed to be mounting an "anyone-but-Mackay" campaign to keep him from winning the necessary majority.

Orchard is an organic farmer from the Prairies who entered the last leadership race as an independent candidate by using the federal PCs' new rule that anyone could buy a party membership and potentially be a delegate for $10. Because he ran on a nationalist/Greenish platform opposing free trade and supporting environmentalism and more assertive Canadian sovereignty, people dismissed him as a nut. And then he came second to Joe Clark.

Orchard managed to come 3rd this time and leveraged himself into a position in which he could play kingmaker and get MacKay to make a number of promises, including a review of NAFTA and a pledge not to make a deal with the Canadian Alliance.

Mainstream media pundits, especially rightish columnists, have been quick to label the pact "a deal with the devil," calling Orchard's movement "cult-like." Ooh, tradionalist environmentalism and soft-nationalism--so obviously antithetical to conservative principles.

Frankly, I think the amount of abuse the mainstream media has been heaping on this Orchard fellow as a completely alien force is really disturbing and testament of the degree to which the National Post/Canadian Alliance axis has taken over the predominant media storyline. Yeah, the backroom nature of MacKay's deal stunk, especially since the neophyte leader had previously portrayed himself as a bulwark against Orchard.

But maybe someone should actually try to take Orchard's ideas seriously instead of labelling it a "cult" without roots in populist conservatism. Consider that the Prairie provinces, from which Orchard draws his support, have consistently defied the standard neo-con/socialist dichotomy by swinging between giving large amounts of support to both the NDP and Alliance (or Alliance-like "Liberals"). Is there no room left in Canadian conservatism for a conception that views itself in terms of preserving inherited goods, interrogating rapid change (whether, social, technical, or economic), and national sovereignty? (There's a reason we still call it Toryism, remember?) Or have we become convinced that the right can't stand for anything other than free markets, big business, and hooray for America?

Soft-nationalist conservatism did work, after all, for the right wing parties in in France (not that the rest of the world should be happy about that).

2003-06-04T12:37:00.000-04:00

IT'S ALL THE RAGE: The Yale Diva follows the latest right wing undergrad fashion and tosses the anti-semite label on a Yale prof.

Let me make sure I have my terms right: I assume that when an Arab intellectual says it, it's anti-semitism, but when a regular Ha'aretz journalist says it, it's...what, self-hate?

(via the smartest bunch of young and thoughtful kinda conservatives around, Oxblog [mainly because they're only kinda conservative])

2003-06-03T20:52:00.000-04:00

QUASI-FORCED BLOGGING BREAK: I think I'm going to take a break. For starters, it has nothing to do with the slightly worrying phone message I got from the FBI over the weekend (note to you G-Men out there--I'm sure there must be a less scary way to start off your phone messages with "this is Special Agent X from the FBI").

It might have a little bit to do with the amount of stuff that I want to get done this summer...but mostly it has to do with my laptop, which is now shifted from semi-functional to non-responsive hunk of plastic and heavy metals. Be back soon, maybe...

2003-06-02T09:31:00.000-04:00

REASONS FOR BEING MISSING: I've been burrowing even further away from the real world and deeper into the amniotic fluid of academia at the annual Canadian Political Science Association conference, which is part of the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. The Congress is a mega-conference-of-conferences of every major fuzzy discipline academic association in Canada. So there's a lot of social awkwardness going on in Halifax right now.

I should be back in New Haven today, along with my semi-functioning laptop, now that Air Canada has decided not to collapse before my flight.

Also related: the leaders of the Coalition of the Whatever seem to be in serious need of some reasons for those alleged WMD being missing (remember them?). U.S. media, do your bloody job and wake up and care, damnit.

2003-05-28T10:26:00.000-04:00

YOUR MOTHER WAS A HAMSTER...Everyone knew there would be an upside to a lame duck Chrétien: the ol' bastid is going to spit out some real gems over the next 10 months. Like yesterday, when he just went off during an in-flight press conference about all of the ways he thinks Bush sucks.

Jean was all, "My economy can beat up your lame economy because you don't have any game beyond cutting taxes and growing a deficit of ludicrous proportions. Your social views make Hammurabi look progressive, and, oh yeah, your baseball team is weak":

"The Americans will have a deficit of $500-billion [U.S.] this year, and it is a right-wing government," Mr. Chrétien told reporters travelling on the plane with him to Europe. "If we were to equal that, it would be a $75-billion [Canadian] deficit because we're 10 times smaller. Imagine!"
...
While insisting he gets on well personally with Mr. Bush, to whom he spoke this week, the Prime Minister listed a number of differences with the Republican President.

"I'm a Canadian Liberal; he is a southern conservative," Mr. Chrétien said, adding that he is pro-choice on abortion, while Mr. Bush is not; he supports gun control, while Mr. Bush does not, and he opposes capital punishment, which Mr. Bush supports.

"But that has nothing to do [with relations] with him personally," Mr. Chrétien said. He said he has "good personal rapport" with his American counterpart, and he is one of the few world leaders who can talk baseball with Mr. Bush, a onetime part owner of the Texas Rangers.

He commiserated with Mr. Bush, he said, that Texas has three of the top hitters in the American League but are cellar-dwellers in the Western Division. "It's their pitching," he said.

Word, Jean.

The old guy might be a few steak knives short of a fabulous TV offer, but he's right about the economy, you know. An' dose Blue Jays, dey be kicking some serious derriere, récemment, non? (An' dose 'Spos be playing some pretty good ball, non plus!)

2003-05-28T09:32:00.000-04:00

JUST IN CASE YOU WERE THINKING TO YOURSELF "You know, what America needs right now is an even more hagiographic, soft-light view of President Bush at War," worry not!

Dubya: The Movie* is on its way, courtesy of a writer-producer who's a personal friend of Karl Rove.

Another reason you left-leaning Yanks have to whip the Democratic Party in shape for 2004: if you're skeptical about this first movie, think about how much the sequel is going to suck!

*Filmed in Toronto, with the assistance of subsidies financed by Canadian taxpayers.

2003-05-26T11:48:00.000-04:00

WHY NORMATIVE THEORY CAUSES DEPRESSION: Because people in the real world tend to be hypocritical bastids, not universalizing Kantians, as Brett Marston's sense of idealism seems to have discovered of the Bush Admin yesterday for the 26375384848th time.

Sometimes it's just nicer to stay curled up in my theory books, where everyone obeys their rational, noumenal, autonomous selves...

2003-05-26T11:29:00.000-04:00

SACRIFICES FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE: An air crash in Turkey this morning killed more than 70 people, including 62 Spanish soldiers returning from their tour of duty in ISAF, the international stabilization and peacekeeping force in Afghanistan.

Something to think about on Memorial Day: the soldiers of liberal democratic nations over the past century sacrificed their bodies and lives not just for the rights and freedoms of their own peoples and nations, but for those of all humankind.

2003-05-24T22:54:00.000-04:00

PHILOSOPHERS IN THE NEWS:

-Martha Nussbaum writes in Newsday that what the world needs now is a little more cosmopolitanism, Grotius-style.

-Michael Walzer discusses just war, Iraq, and the necessity of supporting a "little Israel" in an interview with Ha'aretz. His position on Iraq is a significantly more critical than is commonly known:

"It was an unnecessary war, because the legitimate "It was an unnecessary war, because the legitimate purposes for which it was declared could have been advanced in other, much less destructive, ways. But once it began, I would not have marched to stop it. Because ending it while Saddam was still in power would have been a victory for him, and his war was even less just than ours."

...

Walzer is fearful about the nature of the American administration in Iraq, in light of American behavior after the war in Afghanistan.

"Our policy there was shameful. We fought in a just war, which I supported, but if you fight such a war, you have a responsibility to create a minimum of law and order in the country which you have invaded."

Indeed, I'm pleased to note that Walzer's position to a significant degree resembles mine. (via Junius)

-John Judis writes a bit of a fluffy piece on international order and Iraq. They're employed in a rather unsophisticated way, but, hey, it's not often that both Kant and Mill make a current affairs headline.

2003-05-24T06:03:00.000-04:00

THE PROBLEM WITH POLITICAL THEORY is that it has such low perceived barriers to entry. At least, that's one of the problems that has crept into my mind, as I enter the Twilight Zone years of grad school.

Take for example, economist John Quiggan, who casually noted that "utilitarianism lacks serious competitors [as a public philosophy]."

I know this post is going to sound a little testy, but let me explain my irritation in terms that may produce a measure of empathy from economists like Prof. Quiggan: what he wrote is analogous to the statement that "dependency theory lacks serious competitors as a descriptive theory of international economics."

As far the domain of political theory/philosophy goes, utilitarianism has much more serious competition than it can handle: liberalism (64 flavours or so worth--my preference at the moment being a hybrid discourse theory), libertarianism, identity theory (gender/cultural/etc.), communitarianism/republicanism, various forms of Marxism, democratic theory, and so on. In terms of prestige, utilitarianism has dropped a long way since Rawls dealt it a telling blow in A Theory of Justice, both through his critique that utilitarianism "doesn't respect the separateness of persons," as well as through his ability to offer a plausible alternative (contra Quiggan, things are very different in the realm of [Anglo-American] ethics, where consequentialism is still a force to be reckoned with).

Substantively, Quiggan's statements about what utilitarianism entails have a number of problems:

1) Where is does the implication that utilitarianism entails the principle of equality of individuals come from? It sure doesn't come from Bentham's view that a "measure of government may be said to be conformable to the principle of utility...when...the tendency it has to augment the happiness of the community is greater than any which it has to diminish it." Without some additional postulate, maximizing the utility of a group respects only the equality of persons' units of capacity for utility, not the equality of the individuals. That's why all of the annoying dilemmas like the utility monster, organ harvest, and so on arise.

2) Why must a utilitarian hold that "what matters is each individual's happiness as they choose to pursue it"? Why would a utilitarian in the Benthamite mold, whose focus of ethical interest is on beings' capacities for pain and pleasure think that choice and happiness necessarily have anything to do with each other? Note that the denial of this linkage explains why Singerian utilitarianism lends itself easily to promoting the welfare of non-human animals. As the Putnam/Nozick/Wachowski brain-in-a-vat/Experience Machine/Matrix examples demonstrate, this is a serious problem for basic forms of utilitarianism. As with the notion of equality of individuals, the value of individual choice is not obviously implied by utilitarian philosophy and must be introduced by an outside postulate or some conception of "utility" that goes well beyond the basic intuition of preference satistfaction.

Both of these problems can be mitigated by clever utilitarians (e.g. J.S. Mill), but they are hardly entirely successful. Their proffered solutions (i.e. loading the concept of human utility so that freedom, virtue, justice, truth, and so on are constitutive of it) tend to have the distinct feel of "jerry rigging," to use Quiggan's phrase.

And the following thought is also inaccurate:

utilitarianism only makes sense for a basically democratic society, in which everyone is equal in some formal sense. Obviously in an absolute monarchy, public philosophy is just individual ethics for the monarch, and something analogous is true for aristocracies, theocracies and so on.

First, Hobbes and Burke have plausibly argued that in a monarchy (absolute or not), public philosophy consists of significantly more than individual ethics for the monarch. This is practically true the moment the monarch feels the need to argue the regime's legitimacy before his or her subjects. Second, strictly speaking, utilitarianism is a political theory about the legitimacy of the outcomes of political decision-making and such a theory is orthogonal to theories about the legitimacy of the procedures of political decision-making. Yes, we can whip up many flavours of utilitarianism that would prefer democracy, or that might even entail it, but I could whip up many more that have serious anti-democratic implications.

This second point is clear enough: if an enlightened monarch had a device that allowed him to precisely measure all of subject's utility preferences (if we followed Bentham, such a device would measure cardinally, interpersonally comparable utilities; but we can drop both assumptions and still get the same result) and if he had benevolent inclinations and decided to structure public policy so as to maximize the satisfaction of utilities, there would be nothing about his regime that wouldn't fully satisfy the constraints of utilitarian justice (the challenge to utilitarianism in this hypo becomes more serious if we assume that only the monarch is capable of employing the device and therefore maximizing utility, and/or must use it in secret to carry out the utility maximizing policies).

(via Lawrence Solum)

A BIT MORE: Quiggan has a follow up post, in which he explains his position more carefully: "as an economist, I think of public philosophy as being concerned with the activities of politicians (and bureaucrats) rather than, say, those of judges or teachers."

But even considered in this light, utilitarianism is still not the dominant public philosophy. Any time a politician or an advocacy group utters words like "rights," "values," and "dignity," we enter a realm of policy discourse and contestation that cannot be resolved by solving a social welfare function. Both Canada and Australia share a large cluster of such issues: immigration, multiculturalism, aborginal self-determination, republicanism vs. monarchy (a much bigger issue Down Under; but we have to deal with Quebec nationalists instead). Even disagreements on distributive issues are often cast in this light: arguments about taxation and social spending are just as often based on competing theories of justice, liberty, or desert as they are based on competing theories of economic efficiency.

When people contest such issues, they enter the political domain with the assumption that they might be able to change other citizen's preferences not only through providing more information, but also through making arguments and sharing perspectives. And this of course touches on the big problem that will always stymie economics and those scholars of politics who view their discipline as a positive science: the (almost entirely) necessary assumption of fixed preferences completely misses a crucial aspect at the deliberative core of politics.

Finally, Quiggan misinterprets Rawls. Rawls argues that representative agents within a heuristic device of representation would employ the maximin criterion as a decision rule for selecting principles of justice for structuring the basic structures of society. Maximin is there part of Rawls' justification for his principles of justice, two of the three (if we treat the two parts of the second principle as separable) of which dictate equal rather than maximin distribution of primary goods. Clearly, the principle of maximum equal basic liberty and fair equality of opportunity (both lexically prior to the difference principles, which is an analogue to maximin) have no necessarily connection to fulfilling a maximin distribution of either liberty or opportunity (nevermind the maximin satisfaction of utility). Note also that the equal liberty and fair equality of opportunity principles cannot be properly expressed by social welfare functions, simply because they track values other than welfare (namely, the rightness of a different distributions of the primary goods of liberties and opportunities).

This last point is emphasized by John Roemer--an economist with a good deal of knowledge about political theory--in Theories of Distributive Justice. This book, by the way, is one that Prof. Quiggan and anyone else who is impatient with the verbal fluffiness of political theory may want to use to introduce themselves to normative issues of distributive justice.

2003-05-22T20:57:00.000-04:00

MOST PROGRESSIVES AGREE that Christie Whitman wasn't such a bad EPA head, given the alternatives, especially now that she's decided to resign. The American Prospect has a good Kreminology-type piece on possibly reasons for her departure, which includes the left-consensus thought that she has been "humiliated" by the Bush Admin's tendentious line on the environment--"poor Christie!" seems to be the not very subtle progressive storyline.

Although I wouldn't let Whiman off the hook completely for the EPA's actions over the past 2 years (she did take the job in the first place), I'm inclined to fall in with this analysis, given her record as a moderate Republican with a conservationist bent--lately, it seems, an endangered species. It's too bad, though, that she couldn't have confirmed it by doing her resignation with a bit more of a splash.

2003-05-22T20:35:00.000-04:00

AND SO IT BEGINS: I am now a proud owner of a dossier at the FBI, as I voluntarily submitted to an FBI interview so that I could get permission to enter the law school and get my laptop and my accompanying life back. Looks like my days of flying under the radar as a subversive foreign communist element in the U.S. are over.

Although it took more time than I would have liked, I have to admit I found the process interesting--there was something highly aesthetic about the way in which they turned a neo-gothic reading room in Sterling Memorial Library into their data collection/interview center. I bet the agents got a big kick out of doing their interviews in high-backed padded chairs; must have figured that if they were at an ivy college, they might as well do it right.

My interviewer was an affable and very relaxed guy. Would have fit right in with Mulder & Scully et al. And I learned a bit about what constitutes "suspicious" behaviour--if you want to get away with doing something evil like setting off a small bomb in the nation's best law school, you should stop and stare a bit so as to blend in with the rest of the bewildered crowd before making your escape (not that you should think about doing anything like that, you sick puppy!).

Seriously, I'm very relieved that no one got hurt. The law school is home to some of the most interesting and bright people I know here at Yale--including the folks at The Kitchen Cabinet who have a good summary and links on all of this craziness.

I don't have much more to add, besides the observation that they're taking the incident very seriously, even though it didn't do much damage and appears "unconnected to international terrorism" (in the words of a Yale official). The New Haven PD officer who escorted me to get my stuff said that along with the FBI and ATF guys (who I saw wearing their neato explosives handling/evidence collection suits [?]--from a distance, they looked like all-white, full-body fabric jumpsuits), they also had visits from the State Department and (more) Secret Service (presumably for young Barbara).

2003-05-21T18:00:00.000-04:00

QUICK UPDATE--EXPLOSION AT YALE: There was an explosion in an auditorium at the Yale Law School today, at around 4:40 PM. It doesn't look like it was that big, since I've spoken to people who saw the doors of the auditorium blown out. A couple students I spoke to said they saw debris, blown out doors, and debris and smoke. Other students said that the explosion was loud and that the building shook when it occurred. I was in the law school at the time, but I didn't hear anything as I wasn't that close to the auditorium; the alarms didn't even go off where I was, so I didn't leave until my friend saw people across the street waving at us to get out.

UPDATE: As of 6:55, some of the firecrews look like they're wrapping up, but the whole area is still cordoned off. And there's FBI agents on the scene, taking notes

No word on injuries, but I didn't see any ambulances. They sent lots of firetrucks and police, including a bomb disposal unit. They've cordoned off around 4 square blocks around the law school.

Some students speculated that it was a gas leak, because a similar, small explosion occurred as a result of such a leak last year--there's lots of other rumours floating around as well, of course. This should be up on the AP wire very soon, as there was a reporter who got onto the scene pretty quickly.

2003-05-18T13:04:00.000-04:00

THOUGHTS ON STRAUSS AND HIS FOLLOWERS: As usual, I'm a little late with my comments on influence of political theorist Leo Strauss on a bunch of high-ranking neo-cons. But here's a quick recap:

1. Recent Sources:

-The rather lightweight NYT piece that got everyone's attention.
-A characteristically arrogant but mostly accurate email response from philosopher (and academic scorekeeper) Brian Leiter.
-English version of a more substantive Le Monde article.
-The growing force that is The Invisible Adjunct has a nice set of posts on the subject.

2. Thoughts on Strauss: I lean toward the people critical of Strauss. From what I've seen of his writings, he was more of a scholarly polemicist than a serious thinker. It's difficult to rationally contest his much-vaunted interpretions of classic political thinkers as he and his followers claim that their conclusions--which often have only a tenuous connection to the text's plain meaning--are derived from esoteric meanings in the texts unavailable to those who haven't engaged in the Straussian method of "close reading." But an examination of the substance of this method of close reading reveals it to be close to a form of mysticism. Roughly, the skilled interpreter, if he or she is well-educated enough in the language of the small number of geniuses throughout history who have grasped the Truths at the heart of philosophy, will eventually "get it" after repeated readings. Strauss' Persecution and the Art of Writing does offer some concrete interpretive tips for decoding these secret meanings, but how seriously should we take an interpretive method that includes numerology (based on page and chapter numbers) as one of its components? His substantive political philosophy is even less rigourous--as a would-be political philosopher, it is nice to think that theory has the concrete impact that Strauss claims it does, but I don't think that anyone who takes history seriously could view his "three waves of history" thesis as anything more than a wildly speculative caricature.

If we assume that there are people in power who take Strauss' stuff seriously, though, it does feature a number of worrying elements. Strauss' political theory, like his interpretive theory, is unapologetically elitist and infused with esotoricism. He roughly proposes that rights are best protected when an elite class of "liberal gentlemen" are ascendant and that there are truths that the masses are simply not equipped to handle. As such, the impulses of those regular folks should be tamed by the bromides of religion...stop me if any of this sounds applicable to the current situation...

3. Strauss and Neo-Cons: I'm guessing that claims about the influence of Straussianism on neo-cons is a little overblown and draws the causal arrow incorrectly. Yeah, you might think that the paternalistic esotoricism that I've just described is pretty on-point considering the neo-cons' arrogant and elitist attitude toward "lesser" allies and cultures, as well as the mendaciousness of their justifications for attacking Iraq (did I mention the growing evidence that everything they said about WMD might just be a load of bunk?). But I suspect that the type of people who are neo-cons weren't influenced by Strauss' political into taking the political positions they have now, so much as drawn to it because it supports the impulses they already possessed. I suppose that the relationship between people and political theories frequently works in fashion, but it's probably even more likely to be true in this case. Consider that neo-conservatism is a piecemeal ideology that grew out of think tank scholars, not out of academic philosophy. Indeed, actual practicing academic Straussians aren't much of a force when it comes to debates over contemporary theory, as they prefer to make their impact in the sphere of intellectual history and interpretation.

4. Straussian Conspiracy Theorists and Anti-Semitism: Some people on the 'Net--as well as a colleague of mine-- have bristled at the recent speculations about a Straussian (or neo-con) cabal near the top of Bush's foreign policy team, arguing that it seems worryingly close to anti-semitic rumblings about a "Zionist conspiracy." I probably shouldn't "go here," but this general topic has bothered me for awhile. I don't want to dismiss offhand these people as simply trigger-happy folks who have recently been ready to slap the label "anti-semitism" on their political opponents, because I think they are correct in asserting that everyone has an obligation to be sensitive about the way in which the conspiracy smear has been used in the past and the horrors to which it has led. But at the same time, we have to have enough practical judgment to meet this obligation without falling into willful blindness (paleo-cons might have just used the epithet "PC" here).

There is no Zionist conspiracy, but there are a bunch of folks who currently near the top rungs of the Bush Admin who are more friendly to Israel's interests than 98% of the rest of the world. The reasons for this tendency I think can at least partially be attributed to both internal and external aspects of neoconservative ideology. Some of these people are Jewish and some aren't, but clearly, one shouldn't be too surprised to find that an ideology that involves strong support for Israel has a disproportionately high number of Jewish adherents.

The thing is, we should be able to talk about issues of group identity politics, whatever the group, in a mature manner--just as we can maturely talk about why African-Americans regularly turn out 4 to 1 in favour of the party that is perceived as giving more attention to issues that affect them as a group. For a great column on this sticky issue, check out this very necessary Eric Alterman piece.

So although I think the speculations about Straussian ideology are a bit misguided, they're understandable without imputing anti-semitism, given the facial similarities between this ideology and the current neo-con agenda, as well as the conspiratorial and esoteric elements of Straussian interpretive and political theory. And, more importantly, I also think we should be able to talk about all of this stuff in a reasonable manner.

2003-05-15T21:13:00.000-04:00

BACK WITH A THUNK: Got bonked on the side of the head head by my roommate playing squash today and had to spend a couple hours getting stitches (lucky 7, if you're wondering). Totally random. But that doesn't mean that I won't use it as an excuse for any incoherence that might appear in this post.

Poker skill/luck has not been with me recently. Ah, well. I shouldn't complain; cards have usually been good to me, but maybe I should just accept that my time has passed.

Yeah, I know, if I had a cat, I'd probably start blogging about it right now. But political news is depressing, in a numbing, shouldn't have mixed-those-Tylenol-IIIs-with-Nyquil sort of way. I think the following developments capture the reasons for my bleh-ness pretty well:

1) The main U.S. military group directing the search for WMD is wrapping up its work without having found a damned thing (via the currently solo Jane Finch). I'm not sure what makes me more disgusted: (a) that it's quite evident now that the Bush Admin was being highly dishonest, if not blatantly lying through its teeth; (b) that so much of the U.S. public and media bought it (those two phenomena obviously go together); or (c) that so few people in the U.S. public or media seem to give a damn, even if the evidence is starting to become quite obvious.

2) Ariel Sharon is about as much a Man of Peace as I'm the Man of Steel. As usual, the settlements are going to stay and keep the blood flowing, Road Map, Abu Mazen, or Colin Powell be damned. Yet in the words of some random (and not even particularly wide-eyed) yay-for-Likud poster I read on another blog, Sharon's been "wonderful."

I'D RATHER BE DOING WIRE FU

That numbing feeling might be the reason I've turned my attention away from current events and toward sweet, sweet escapism. I finally saw The Matrix on a TV that was bigger than 8" (yeah, a travesty, but not as bad as my roommate who hadn't seen at all before). Who knew what I'd been missing? Everyone but Eric Alterman, probably--love his blog, but, dude, bashing the coolest movie of the last 5 years is not a way to win more friends anywhere on the political spectrum.

I'm not sure if I buy the claims that the first movie has a ton of philosophical depth, as opposed to posturing, though. I wonder, for example, if the Wachowski brothers realize that their Baudrillard references actually cut against the main point of the movie? If I understand Baudrillard correctly, his thesis--like that of other Po-Mos and Po-Mo sympathizers--roughly asserts that any notion of objective reality is vastly overrated; we have now entered a phase of experience in which the symbol and the signifier has rendered the reality of that which is being symbolized and signified obsolete. In other words, they'd side with Cypher, which seems like a rather problematic position.

But I suppose if eminences like Slavoj Zizek took it seriously, who am I to disagree? And even if we couldn't find metaphysical common ground, I'm sure Slavoj and I and many others could build an overlapping consensus on the fact of Carrie-Anne Moss' astonishing presence and grace as Trinity--Reason 135162762 to be proud of Canada. Best. Use. Of. Leather. Ever. ("My name is Eric and I think I have an, ahem, heroine addiction").

OK, I'll just briefly leave you with a funny clip from a hoity-toity New Yorker review of the second installment. It's negative--I've only read the bad reviews, since I don't want to build up expectations. Although I'm getting a little worried, since the little snatches I glimpsed of the movie's many positive reviews have been a bit tepid. Anyway, if you're wondering as to my motives for getting my PhD, it's so that I can become a famous pop academic and then slip my no-dramatic-talent butt into cool movies:

The only thing setting Zion apart from the good-guy planets in "The Phantom Menace" or "Star Trek" is that it seems to have been redlined at some moment in the mythic past and is heavily populated by people of color. They are all, like Morpheus, grave, orotund, and articulate to the point of prosiness, so that official exchanges in Zion put one in mind of what it must have been like at a meeting at the Afro-American Studies department at Harvard before Larry Summers got to it. (And no sooner has this thought crossed one’s mind when—lo! there is Professor Cornel West himself, playing one of the Councillors.)

2003-05-09T10:14:00.000-04:00

WHERE I'VE BEEN: Technically, here as always. But I've been working at a fairly non-stop pace at grading, keeping my students from freaking out over their exam, and obsessive finishing up a conference paper on the concept of desert and Rawls. This last thing may be a bit Quixotic, since it's a piece of leftover business that I've sort of wanted to do something with for past few years and not at all related to my dissertation.

I've also been continuously checking on the development of crazy theories on the emotionally draining Alias finale at Television Without Pity, as well as taking Norah Jones' Come Away With Me through an IV. She may go into the "thanks" section of my paper, if it goes anywhere...

Anyway, I'll have more of my usual slightly snarky centre-left commentary up in the next day or two...

2003-05-04T15:39:00.000-04:00

TWO. HOURS. OF. ALIAS! Eric's weekend should get a lot happier tonight, with enough Jennifer Garner spyfun in the season finale to last him for the summer (in theory). Eric also humbly requests that you yourself watch the 120-minutes worth of goodness, tonight at 9PM on ABC.

ADDENDUM:

Oh.

My.

Dear.

Heavens.

It was enough...

2003-05-04T10:12:00.000-04:00

SLOUCHING TOWARD LAS VEGAS: Hey, Mr. Bill "I'm Virtuous and You're Not" Bennett! skippy has a message for you: take your moral posturing and bite me and my assemblage of news pieces regarding your delicious hypocrisy/blind spot! "mr. morality"'s apparent mega-expensive gambling addiction* would be like skippy excoriating someone in all caps.

*Having tried last night, unsuccessfully, to drown my miseries by indulging a bit more heavily than usual in my one current active vice--occasional forays into small stakes poker--at a rather big stakes campus table, I should note that I don't find gambing in moderation an unreasonable thing (although I'm not sure if I understand people who continuously play games that have a negative expected value--I hate losing too much). Like just about everyone else on the 'Net--including the very incisive Dr. J.M. Marshall--I have a problem with Bennett's very active attempts to sanctimoniously impose his conception of personal virtue on American public life and discourse. And I'm not terribly impressed by his use of his reputation as a moralist to slam the character of opposing politicians by inveighing on the degenerate nature of their private lives.

SOMEWHAT EXPENSIVE ASIDE: OK, OK, my war story: I was playing incredibly well, even though I knew my opponents outclassed me, channeling my bitterness into a fine-tuned aggression, and I was so up on those kids when I chose to make a terrible call. I'm not sure what happened to my usual very sound dishonourable morality of leaving when I'm ahead...but you haven't lived until you've made a US$285 call that you were pretty sure you'd lose (KK vs. AA pre-flop, for those of you who know the lingo...I totally knew he had The Rockets...sigh). And I know (at least, I should know) that it's no excuse to say that almost all of that amount would have been profit, had I just laid down my cards and left the table. Actually, I take some of that back--now that I've done it, I've concluded that you can live just fine without ever making that kind of call...

ADDENDUM: THE CHILDREN'S BOOK OF VIRTUES (BELLAGIO EDITION)
Presented by Tom Burka, of course.

2003-05-04T09:39:00.000-04:00

AMERICANS ARE FROM MARS, THE REST OF THE WORLD IS FROM...some place that's significantly less full of hubris. This latter group includes Coalition ally Britain and its New Labour government, in whom I have significantly more faith than your average lefty. Even if, it may have been better for everyone involved if Blair hadn't been so gung ho about Iraq. Here's the latest tidbit supporting my "moderating force" thesis, from the The Financial Times (via the perceptive Tacitus):

Ole Wohlers Olsen, Denmark's ambassador to Syria, will head the effort to establish a civilian administration in the Basra district, one of the four administrative regions into which postwar Iraq has been divided by the US, writes Clare McCarthy in Copenhagen.

Mr Wohlers Olsen, 61, a fluent Arabic speaker, is married to an Algerian doctor and is the only serving Danish ambassador to have converted to Islam.

It's amazing that relatively few people on either the left or the right find it significant that Blair and Bush really are coming at this from practically different bloody planets. There's just no comparison between this pick and Bremer and Garner. And it's part of a continuing theme. The British press has been doing an incomparably better job has than the U.S. media at presenting Coalition missteps, but even with this heightened scrutiny, it seem evident that the Brits have done a far better job at not offending local sensibilities, and perhaps more importantly, not massacring civilians.

I'm thinking that the American left should just forget about drafting Clark; they should instead try to get Blair to run against Bush--on either ticket. yeah, Blair would need to really turn on his charm to win the Republican primary, but I think could do it. He'd probably win the general elections in a landslide, and the whole world would be much better off.

2003-05-02T11:17:00.000-04:00

IN PRAISE OF NAIVETE: Brett Marston on the virtue of taking a romantically integrative attitude in academia. Plus, lots of links to smart people carrying out the debate in the blogosphere.

I think I pretty much agree. Although I also think that a sense of institutional incentives is important. Both for encouraging this integrative attitude of which Brett and I approve (admittedly, most self-respecting romantics would probably puke upon hearing the word "institutional"), as well as for promoting practices within the social sciences and humanities that will constitute a pragmatic and concrete advance in knowledge. No I don't disagree with the sentiment that most academic pursuits have intrinsic value, but some have much more than others. Call me a overly faithful son of the Enlightenment, but I think concrete progress is possible in the soft sciences; and that maybe something analogous to progress (cumulative transcendance?) is possible in the humanities too. The trick is to give more people reasons to do research that's structured in a way that promotes cumulative, directional synthesis.

JUST WONDERING: I'm blogging right after delivering my first conference paper ever. Not nearly as bad as I thought, although maybe someone who's an old hand at this conference deal could tell me--exactly how bad of a faux pas is it if you have to excuse yourself in the middle of the panel while another panelist is taking a question to go to the restroom? Sigh. Sometimes I can be such a tool. I swear I meant to go beforehand...

2003-04-30T03:08:00.000-04:00

TAKING OVER IRAQ, THE GOOD: I will certainly grant the following to the pro-invasionists: this announcement that the U.S. is going to pull its troops out of Saudi Arabia is pretty good news.

Even if, I suppose, it's to set up the neo-cons eventual plans to "do" that country as well. We can always hope that this will make it much easier for the next president to keep U.S. troops completely out of provocative Middle East countries.

On the other hand...

TAKING OVER IRAQ, THE VERY BAD: This is very, very bad.

By "this," I mean U.S. troops firing on a crowd of Iraqi protesters and killing 13 of them.

The American troops claim they responded to automatic weapons fire from the crowd, and I'm sure there will be apologists who will be ready to give them every benefit of the doubt.

But here's the thing: none of the U.S. soliders were injured.

Yet to "control" the crowd, armed or not, the Americans--clad in kevlar and with the advantages of night-vision goggles and an elevated and protected position (a school secured for use as a post)--had to kill THIRTEEN people. At the very, very minimum, giving the U.S. soldiers every benefit of the doubt, that's extreme incompetence. I'm talking something close to navigating-the-Titanic or blowing-up-Columbia level incompetence. The following justification by the commander of the involved battalion doesn't exactly fill me with confidence:

"How do you tell the difference between a rock and a grenade? How do we know which it is?"

Quick answer: a rock doesn't have a pin and it doesn't explode. What exactly were they teaching you at West Point, Colonel?

Longer answer: So does this mean that the U.S. forces' rules of engagement allow troops to shoot anyone who looks like they're about to throw a grenade-sized object? I guess we should tell those Iraqi mothers not to let their sons pick up any rocks. Some liberation.

Bush was right after all: the U.S. armed forces clearly aren't meant to be used for nation-building. Because they seem to suck at it. This occupation of Iraq will go very hard indeed if this doesn't turn around, stat.

2003-04-29T15:31:00.000-04:00

SEE, WE WUZ, RIGHT! The WHO announced that it will lift its SARS travel advisory on Toronto, effective Wednesday.

Phew!

I'm going to hold off saying "I told you so" until the whole SARS thing blows over completely, but I feel pretty good that the Canadian health people were vindicated on this one. One wonders, though, if some pretty substantial economic and reputational damage hasn't already been done by the WHO's hasty decision.

2003-04-29T15:07:00.000-04:00

NOTHING EARNS YOU LEFTY STREET CRED like being chastised by your Big Media bosses for criticizing their abdication of their responsibilities or getting called a slut by the egregious Michael Savage (technically, he reaffirmed his comment), which is what happened to Ashleigh Banfield. At least, that seems to be true if the comments at Eschaton (which is providing pretty good coverage of this) are any indication.

Could NBC's integrity as a news broadcaster sink any lower? I really hope Banfield stands tall on this one--and that those of you who share my and Atrios' general sympathies should consider doing something to criticize MSNBC and/or to support her. The last bloody thing both America and the world need right now is an even more complicit media.

MSNBC: viewerservices@msnbc.com
NBC Nightly news: Nightly@NBC.com

The very first link in this post also has more good quotes from Banfield's lecture, which seemed to be even more pointed than first reported; you can hear the actual lecture here, which I'm going to do myself when I have some more time.

UPDATE: Atrios points out that The Boston Phoenix's Dan Kennedy has a perfect pitch post on the topic.