The Bonassus

SCOTUS vs. Protectionism

2005-05-16T13:00:00.000-04:00

Wine lovers, free traders, and Federal Express rejoice: the Supreme Court has finally done away with one of the last vestiges of interstate protectionism, bans on direct-to-consumer wine shipments. I've been meaning to blog about this for some time, and somehow never manage to get anything posted. So if you're interested, read Stone Court and the Volokh Conspiracy's superior coverage.

Panda Bear or Trojan Horse?

2005-05-05T10:53:00.000-04:00

The curious series of symbolic, detente-ish gestures between the government of the People's Republic of China and the opposition Nationalist Party (yes, that Nationalist Party) of Taiwan bears watching. The process has culminated in the recent offer of a gift of Pandas from the Mainland to the breakaway province. The result? As the BBC reports, common cause between pro-Taiwanese sovereignty hardliners and animal rights groups:

A Chinese offer to give Taiwan two giant pandas has caused as much controversy as excitement on the island. The offer was made as opposition leader Lien Chan of Taiwan's Nationalist party ended a historic visit to China.

But politicians from Taiwan's ruling party, as well as pro-independence groups, have criticised the gesture. They placed newspaper adverts calling the gift a Trojan Horse to trick people and undermine Taiwan's sovereignty. Others have pointed out the high cost of caring for the pandas, saying the money would be better spent on protecting endangered species of birds that migrate to Taiwan every year.

Animal welfare groups have called on the government to reject the political gift. They said Beijing's offer to send the pandas to Taiwan was an act of animal abuse on an endangered species. There are only about 1,000 pandas living in the wild, all of which are in China. While the controversy rages, rival zoos in Taiwan are competing with each other to house the cuddly pandas, which would undeniably attract huge crowds of visitors.

The government says it will decide whether or not to accept the offer based on international law and a professional, not political, assessment as to whether Taiwan would be able to properly care for the animals.

The Devil Went Down to... Michigan?

2005-05-05T10:01:00.000-04:00

Sorry, wrong number: apparently, the number of the beast is actually 616.

New biblical scholarship renders an Iron Maiden song (and associated lunchboxes) meaningless and paints the residents of Grand Rapids, Michigan in an unflattering light. Is this a Canadian plot to discredit the good people of the Wolverine State? Or should we be casting a careful eye on the history of President Gerald Ford, who hails from the epicenter of the debatably-accursed area code? And was Damien's scalp birthmark in "The Omen" a typo?

Stay tuned to the Bonassus, where updates are unlikely, but less unlikely than at other sites!

When H.G. Wells Met Thomas Schelling

2005-05-02T12:06:00.000-04:00

Why haven't you ever met a time traveler? There are a number of possible explanations, but one you may not have considered before is that you've just never been in the right place at the right time. Oh, sure, you may have been at a historical event which one would expect to draw time travelers by the time-machine-version-of-a-tour-busful, but you were presumably too transfixed by the event in question to notice the visitors' strange and delightful fashions and hairstyles.

Thankfully, though, the good folks (or a good folk) at MIT have developed a solution for this problem: a widely-publicized Time Travelers' Convention to be held on May 7. Drawing (implicitly, and probably unconsciously) on the work of Thomas Schelling, the organizers of the conference are trying to create a "focal point" for time travelers and their would-be groupies by heavily publicizing the location (in four dimensions) of the conference.

Bloggers, newshounds, and printing press owners, you know what to do: get publicizin'! I'm going to be too busy to make it to the conference myself, but if it turns out to have been a good time, I'll just travel back in time at some later date.

[Via Slashdot]

Accidental Poetry

2005-04-28T13:04:00.000-04:00

Headline from today's NY Times: "Fire and Fresh Legs Fuel Heat's Mourning."

A boring story about a sport of little interest to me, but ignore the fact that "Heat" and "Mourning" are proper nouns, and you have an intriguing first line for a poem. There are probably a lot of cases like this, and I'll bet someone has already figured this out, put together a great list, and had it digested by Harper's where the effect was ruined by its juxtaposition with puerile, simple-minded political essays and pathetic, rage-inducing lamentations about modern society. Ah, forget it.

Blugging

2005-04-27T19:37:00.000-04:00

Uh oh. This is becoming a trend: I'm plugging another family member's foray into the blogosphere. My mother-in-law is a guest essayist at The Happy Booker. Take a look!

Important New Blogs

2005-04-27T15:54:00.000-04:00

Looking for some good reads? Here are my suggestions:

1) The new blog Plunk Biggio is "dedicated to Craig Biggio and his (probably unintentional) quest to break the all time major league career record for getting hit by pitches." Somehow the blog's editor has managed to turn this unlikely statistic into six posts and a 1.000 OBP. Here's a sample (from probably the least interesting post):

Friday, April 22, was the 16th anniversary of Biggio's first hit-by-pitch. He celebrated by getting hit by a pitch.

[Via Charles Kuffner]

2) My sister-in-law is cooler than your sister-in-law. Actually, all my many sisters-in-law are probably cooler than anyone in your extended family. Sorry, but it's true. And even in that rarified subset of humanity, Nicole Eisenman (artist, DJ, and humanitarian) has made a splash by becoming the first Bonassus-in-law to start her own blog. Check out A Blog Called Nowhere for the latest on art and music.

Australia vs. East Timor: Round II

2005-04-26T15:30:00.000-04:00

Remember how Australia has gone from being praised as East Timor's savior to being accused of stealing its oil revenues? No? I mentioned it once about a year ago: haven't you been paying attention?

In any case, the issue hasn't gone away. The BBC reports today that:

An advertising campaign has been launched in Australia, criticising the government for its handling of oil and gas negotiations with East Timor. The tiny country has argued that Australia's hardline stance over disputed maritime boundaries could cost Dili billions of badly needed dollars.

The private TV campaign is aimed at embarrassing Canberra into allowing a change in the boundary line. But Australia says its stance has been fair, considerate and decent.

The government in Dili wants the maritime border it shares with Canberra to be in the middle of the 600 km (370 miles) of sea that separates the two countries. But Australia wants to stick with the same boundary it agreed in 1972 with Indonesia, East Timor's former colonial master. In some places, that frontier is less than 150 km ( 93 miles) off the coast of this tiny cash-strapped nation. Where the line is eventually drawn will be critical. At stake are oil and gas reserves worth $30bn, under the seabed in the Greater Sunrise Field.

Now a private television advertising campaign has been launched, aimed at embarrassing the Australian government into accepting East Timor's demands. War veterans appearing in these advertisements fought in East Timor during World War II, and insist they owe it to the people there to fight for their rights.

The (strangely unaffecting) TV ads are being run by the Timor Sea Justice Campaign. I don't know much about the group, but they've persuaded many of the US Congress's human rights caucus to support their cause, along with the big peak union council of Australia and others.

Will the ads work? Is there an interests-based reason for the unions to throw resources into this fight? Would Australian opposition parties supporting the Timorese side really be willing to forgo the oil revenues if they managed to form a government? I don't know. I also don't know if and when a multilateral body will consider the case. But I'm glad to see that just in case, at least people in East Timor and Australia are thinking about how to keep oil revenue from subjecting East Timor to the resource curse [which I've discussed here and here.]

More soon.

Literary Map of NYC

2005-04-26T12:15:00.000-04:00

Since the Internet allows us to see into the future, I've come across this interesting proposal from the May 1, 2005 edition of the New York Times:

I [Randy Cohen] propose to create, with the help of the Book Review's readers, a literary map of Manhattan -- not of its authors' haunts but those of their characters, a map of the literary stars' homes...

I began thinking about this map years ago while reading Don DeLillo's ''Great Jones Street.'' Bucky Wunderlick gazes out the window of his ''small crowded room'' at the firehouse across the street. I realized: there's only one firehouse on that street and few buildings that contain tiny apartments rather than commercial lofts. I know where Bucky Wunderlick lives. Or would live if he existed. He's got to be at No. 35. Knowing this made walking around the neighborhood like walking through the novel. But I walked without a map. Shouldn't there be a map of imaginary New Yorkers?

This first map will display fiction set in Manhattan (in the future, I can imagine maps of Brooklyn, Chicago, London and more). It could include novels, poems and stories from all eras (from Hart Crane to James Baldwin to Michael Chabon to William Gibson) and all genres -- literary fiction (Truman Capote, the Roths, Henry and Philip), pop fiction (Bertice Berry and Sophie Kinsella), Ed McBain mysteries, Ira Levin thrillers, children's books (Faith Ringgold's ''Tar Beach,'' E. B. White's ''Stuart Little''). It will be a kind of Global Positioning System for the characters of Dawn Powell, Han Ong, Meg Wolitzer, Mario Puzo, Colson Whitehead, Tom Wolfe and Thomas Pynchon (from ''V.'' -- ''This alligator was pinto: pale white, seaweed black.'' Where is that alligator? Where is the sewer where Benny Profane hunted it down?)

Since nobody is widely enough read -- I'm not widely enough read -- to know the haunts and houses, the offices and bars and subway stops of so diverse a population, I appeal to Book Review readers to send in their favorites. The graphic artist Nigel Holmes and I will put them on the map and credit the first person to submit a site we use.

Sounds like a really interesting project. I encourage Bonassus readers to participate by sending suggestions to bookmap@nytimes.com

That Book Thingy

2005-04-21T13:36:00.000-04:00

Ereshkigal asked me to do this some time ago, and I live to serve. So here are my answers to that "pick a book and pass the buck" business that's going around:

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
I had a good answer lined up for this one, but Ted Barlow at Crooked Timber beat me to it and did a better job than I would have:

I would be Fahrenheit 451. I’d run around telling everyone that they were fictional. It would turn the dystopian nightmare into a Borgesian mindwarp, which would be a trip.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Nope.

The last book you bought was:
Honest answer: The Complete Photo Guide to Home Repair. I'll let you know if it succeeds in transforming me into a toilet-fixin', radiator-drainin' man-about-townhouse once I've taken it for a test spin. The book I bought before that, sadly, is of even less literary merit (but a must-read if you're a comparative political economist): Democracy & Redistribution by Carles Boix.

The last book you read was:
Aside from the Boix book, the last book I read was Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. Levitt's ideas are entertaining, fascinating, and thought-provoking. Plus, the sheer volume of hagiographizing by Dubner (the journalist tagging along with the economist) makes you loathe him from the core of your heart, which is a nice bonus.

What are you currently reading?
I am currently reading Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson, and not enjoying it very much. I am also reading A Perfect Stranger by Roxana Robinson, which I recommend wholeheartedly. Not only is it a good read, but the book is dedicated to my daughter (the author is my mother-in-law). And lest you think my review is biased, no less a figure than Joyce Carol Oates says its "beautifully rendered prose captures moments of domestic drama -- sometimes painful, sometimes ecstatic, always heartrending and illuminating." Go buy it.

Five books you would take to a desert island:
Book number one would be the Bible. I figure if I'm stuck on a desert island, I might want to do some serious Pascal's Wager-style thinking about my long-term future. Plus I can always read the Book of Job if I need some good schadenfreude to keep my spirits up.

I guess I'd bring at least one very long book which I feel I ought to have read but have never been able to bring myself to start. Remembrance of Things Past is one element of that enormous set. Shockingly, so is War & Peace, so let's add that one as well.

I don't think I'd last too long in the desert island environment, Boy Scout training notwithstanding, so I think I'd want my last two selections to be good distraction-from-starvation material, particularly as I'm unlikely to crack open the Proust even if there's practically nothing else to do. The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem was the best book I read in 2004, so I guess I'd take his newest opus along. I'd also bring one of Richard Russo's books on the same principle (I loved Empire Falls).

Who are you going to pass the baton to (three persons), and why?
I am selfish and refuse to pass batons unless asked repeatedly. If readers want to volunteer, they can knock themselves out in the comments.

Does the Filibuster Systematically Benefit Conservatives?

2005-04-21T11:27:00.000-04:00

Are the "kill the filibuster" rumblings from Capitol Hill really a blessing for Democrats and their supporters? The estimable Scott Lemieux of Lawyers, Guns and Money puts a fine point on an argument heard 'round the leftish blogosphere:

It seems to me that the American system is plagued far more by the inability of the federal government to react and experiment with policy solutions to social problems than by the risk of passing unwise legislation. The Madisonian system already has a large number of veto points; the last thing we need is to create more... The way I would look at it is this: comparable liberal democratic systems with fewer veto points, such as the UK and Canada, have much better policy outcomes (health care being the most striking example) without any noticeable sacrifice of minority rights. For progressives, I think, the evidence makes it clear that the costs of the filibuster will always outweigh the benefits in the long run. But, of course, it all depends on how one makes a variety of theoretical tradeoffs.

I'm with Scott: comparative analysis is a great way of sussing out how getting rid of the filibuster would affect the direction of US policy. I think he's also right to point out that the filibuster is but one kind of veto point, and that not all veto points are created equal.

But I disagree with him on what the evidence shows us. I'd argue that in many cases, left and center-left policy outcomes are more likely where there are more, not fewer veto points. Bear with me.

First, let's widen the search a little. Instead of just looking at the UK and Canada, as Scott suggests, why not extend our analysis to the other Westminster-style (and thus veto-player-impaired) states, Australia and pre-1996 New Zealand? Or how about looking at all the wealthy democracies, most of which regularly have coalitions governments (and thus veto players up the wazoo)? What do we see?

This is a tough question, but let me take a stab at answering it. First, as the veto players literature would suggest, systems with a healthy dose of veto points are less nimble, policy-wise. This is just what Scott suggests. Of course, since (because of "globalization" or the spread of ideas or your-pet-theory-here) much of the policy action since the 1970s has been in the realm of dismantling the welfare state, we see that for the past 30 years or so, having more veto points usually means more leftish policy.

OK, but let's say the world is changing, and we believe that the near future holds out the promise of, well, progressing, i.e. enacting positive legislation in a left or center-left vein. Shouldn't the filibuster make this more difficult?

The answer: yep, it sure should. This is exactly the point people are making when they point to the Civil Rights Act battle, and it's a damn good point. But there's a second, important point to be made here: it's one thing to pass progressive legislation, and another thing entirely to get firms, workers and interest groups to play along with the new rules in such a way that left policy actually works. Generally speaking (and obviously some entitlements like Social Security are exceptions) the social democratic policies that folks on the left tend to hope get passed require a certain amount of trust, cooperation and coordination to actually work. When they do work, it's because the various actors involved believe that the system enabling this kind of coordination is around to stay and thus worth investing in. This point has been ably made recently by scholars like Pepper Culpepper and Stewart Wood, who've shown that states like the UK with few veto points often pass left-friendly legislation but with disastrous results. Since the next right-leaning government can and will dismantle the new policies with ease, no-one takes them seriously enough to invest in.

More on this later, but let me just sum things up: the filibuster isn't just a tool for preserving the status quo. It can also, conceivably at least, be a tool for building progressive institutions.

Pope Coverage Inanity

2005-04-19T14:33:00.000-04:00

From CNN.com's "Pope Benedict XVI" page, one of the stupidest headlines I've seen in some time: "Benedict a Popular Pontiff Name"

Really? Huh. I wonder how many there have been. I guess we'll never know.

Monkeys in Law Enforcement

2005-04-18T13:21:00.000-04:00

Given the growing body of evidence supporting the notion that our simian cousins are plotting to usurp our position atop the primate hierarchy, is this really such a good idea? From the AP:

MESA, Ariz. - The Mesa Police Department is looking to add some primal instinct to its SWAT team. And to do that, it's looking to a monkey.

"Everybody laughs about it until they really start thinking about it," said Mesa Officer Sean Truelove, who builds and operates tactical robots for the suburban Phoenix SWAT team. "It would change the way we do business."

Truelove is spearheading the department's request to purchase and train a capuchin monkey, considered the second smartest primate to the chimpanzee. The department is seeking about $100,000 in federal grant money to put the idea to use in Mesa SWAT operations.

The monkey, which costs $15,000, is what Truelove envisions as the ultimate SWAT reconnaissance tool.

I'm concerned about the trans-species technology transfer, to be honest. But even such a confirmed monkey-phobe as I must blanch at this alternative employment of our tree-dwelling relatives:

RABAT, D.C., Morocco, March 24 (UPI) -- A Moroccan publication accused the government Monday of providing unusual assistance to U.S. troops fighting in Iraq by offering them 2,000 monkeys trained in detonating land mines.

The weekly al-Usbu' al-Siyassi reported that Morocco offered the U.S. forces a large number of monkeys, some from Morocco's Atlas Mountains and others imported, to use them for detonating land mines planted by the Iraqis.

The publication quoted a highly-informed source as saying, "that is not a scientific illusion but a well-known military tactic."

When is an Idiom not an Idiom?

2005-04-18T12:57:00.000-04:00

The Toronto Blue Jays are losing badly to the Red Sox this Patriot's Day morning, probably because the pitching is strictly bush league.

I'm being completely literal here: The Toronto starter, Dave Bush, was lifted for a righty reliever, Brandon League, after giving up seven runs in 2+ innings. I guess sometimes bullpen rosters are destiny, and sometimes an idiom is not just an idiom.

Incidentally, if you're not from New England or Wisconsin, nor a SportsCenter addict, you may not know that Patriot's Day is the annual commemoration of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. It's observed in three states, and celebrated in Boston by a bizarre endurance contest and the only Major League Baseball game started before Noon.

Is Google Crazy?

2005-04-13T19:33:00.000-04:00

More on filibusters later. Right now, go play with this. Post your favorites in the comments section.

Here are a few to get things started:

two times two is four, three times three is nine. and Three times two is six. and three quarters inches in diameter) and inches high and comes with a Certificate of Authenticity.
If you filibuster this nominee, because of his Love that is, the question of the Day is over The Decision to use the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; by The Manhattan Project. and the National Library of Medicine, s Office of Operations is a matter of Fact an actual child.
The pythagorean theorem is one of the most popular Names for boys and Girls Club of Burlington, Central High SCHOOL. Home of the Open source community
Most international relations theorists and international lawyers have been slow to adopt the new technology and the End of the world as We know It is the moon. that shines so bright.
Non-tariff barriers can be made to the site: we may also use the information for the traveling salesman Problem, TSP) This is a relatively new concept in Finding love and romance www. weddinggoddess. com) Also check out the new updated version of the Holy Qur AN. by the Qur an the Word of the Day is over The Edge

Don't Go Nuclear on the Nuclear Option

2005-04-11T15:18:00.000-04:00

Wow. Mickey Kaus actually makes some good points for once, joining Hendrik Hertzberg in rejecting the kind of knee-jerk, puerile contrarianism that gives rise to anti-filibuster rants like this one. Read Kaus's post if you have a chance.

Here's another point I'd like to make, however poorly: it's time for all good bloggers to quit pointing to the filibustering of civil rights legislation in the 1960s and claiming that this constitutes, by itself, a valid anti-filibuster point. Filibusters have been used for all sorts of purposes. During the same period as the fight over the Civil Rights Act, liberal Democrats used the filibuster in a near-succesful attempt to stop what they saw as a giveaway of publicly-financed technology to a private corporation. [There's surprisingly little info on the internet about Sen. Kefauver's fight against the "Communications Satellite Act of 1962" (a fight so bitter it gave him a heart attack). Here's what a quick Google scan turned up.]

Another major function of the filibuster that bloggers (other than the absolute must-read Mark Schmitt) seem happy to overlook is that in non-judicial-appointment contexts, it offers a parliamentary method for forcing a majority to accept floor consideration of non-germane amendments. One might well argue that this function actually makes the filibuster a means for reducing, not increasing, the Senate's built-in anti-democratic character.

Finally, the filibuster tends to be used most often under certain very specific conditions: there has to be a majority with an activist bent (the filibuster protects the status quo) with too few members to reliably achieve cloture. Those conditions are met right now. Liberals endorsing the "nuclear option" (especially outside the narrow judicial context) are basing their arguments on an expectation that a small-but-activist-liberal Democratic majority will be in place in the Senate at sometime in the future, contemporaneous with a Democratic House and Presidency. It's quite likely to happen...someday. But in every other context their preferred institutional change is anti-democratic and possibly anti-Democratic as well. More on this last point soon.

Can You Hug a Judiciary with "Nuclear" Arms?

2005-04-06T15:04:00.000-04:00

[My apologies for the post title. I don't know what I was thinking.]

In an op-ed in yesterday's issue of Roll Call, Douglas Kendall and Jennifer Bradley argue that Democrats should embrace the "nuclear option":

[C]hanging the filibuster rule would not end the debate on judicial nominations. In fact, it would put this debate on new terms more favorable to Democrats, as the fissures between Republicans in the Senate would be shown in a harsh spotlight.

The argument that Democratic filibusters are all that stands between Bush's nominees and judges' robes only holds up if one assumes that Republican Senators, who have voted lock-step to oppose Democratic filibusters, would similarly support all of Bush's judicial nominations. Yet if one takes even a cursory look at the views of blue-state Republican Senators such as Lincoln Chafee (R.I.), Olympia Snowe (Maine) and Susan Collins (Maine) - not to mention the views of the constituents they represent - that assumption evaporates.

The oft-overlooked reality of the nuclear option is that it would shift the decision-making pressure and the public attention away from moderate Democrats, who are needed to sustain a nominations filibuster, to moderate Republicans, who are needed to confirm Bush's appointees. Democrats, one could argue, have been doing these Republicans a huge favor all this time, allowing them to toe the party line by voting to break a filibuster while letting them dodge an actual vote on the president's most radical nominees. Notably, moderate Republicans have been extremely reluctant to support the nuclear option. Could it be that going nuclear would force them to choose between the views of their party and the views of their constituents?

It's an interesting argument, and one that Noam Scheiber takes a bit farther in a blog post today:

eliminating judicial filibusters actually puts additional pressure on the White House. I agree with Will Saletan's argument that the White House has bought into the current "conservative pro-choice" consensus on abortion--i.e., it favors restrictions on abortion and abortion funding, doesn't favor overturning the basic right to an abortion. Today the White House can credibly argue that any conservative activist bent on overturning Roe v. Wade would be filibustered, so there's no point in nominating one. (Just as Bush recently pleaded to conservative evangelical leaders that there's no point in pushing an anti-gay marriage amendment since the votes in the Senate aren't there.) Absent the filibuster excuse, Bush would have a much harder time resisting demands from his base that he nominate that kind of candidate. The flaw in this logic--at least, what made me discard the idea--is that there are plenty of what my colleague Jeff Rosen calls "principled conservative judges" for the White House to choose from. These are people who personally oppose abortion but have sufficient respect for precedent that they're unlikely to support overturning Roe. I suspect people like this--a Michael McConnell or a J. Michael Luttig--would be agreeable to social conservatives, which would allow Bush to thread the needle on abortion.

Here's what I think: putting pressure on Republicans is great, as far as it goes, but there's every reason to think President Bush and the Senate Judiciary Committee would embark on a pedal-to-the-metal program of confirming judges drawn from the wackiest fringes of conservative jurisprudence in a post-"nuclear" Senate. Even barring this result, "veto player" theories give us every reason to expect a steady rightward trend in the beliefs of confirmed judges in a filibuster-free Senate, at least until the inauguration of a new President (and no matter the partisan make-up of the post-2006 Senate). My next post will have a nice little diagram showing why, but I imagine the logic is pretty obvious.

If the proponents of this line of thinking could offer more concrete examples of electoral benefit to be drawn from enactment of the "nuclear option," no matter how fanciful, at least we could think in terms of probabilites and expected benefits. But the Kendall/Bradley/Scheiber approach is blessedly free of such subtleties, and I'm not inclined to take it seriously.

Setting the Table

2005-04-05T10:49:00.000-04:00

Let's say liberal megablogger Atrios gets his way:

Frankly, I'm basically hoping that the Republicans go ahead with their "nuclear option" threat and that the Democrats follow up by making good on their signalled intent to make it a nightmare to actually get anything done. I'd be more than happy for the Republicans to stop actually passing new legislation and, oddly, this kind of showdown might actually force Republicans to engage in the lost art of compromise.

Is this really such a great idea, even from the standpoint of partisan politics? On the policy merits, as I'll discuss in a post later today, there's every reason to think that this scenario, if actually played out, would be disastrous on a host of fronts. But assuming away collateral policy damage, could a shutdown of the legislative branch redound to the electoral benefit of one party or the other?

Sure. Of course. And there's some history to get all analogical with too. Of course, as I've argued before, reasoning from historical analogy can be a big mistake.

I'm certain most of my readers remember the ill-fated 1995 GOP "government shutdown." The conventional wisdom on that one was that Newt Gingrich and his footsoldiers drastically overplayed their hand and ended up strengthening President Clinton and congressional Democrats. The conventional wisdom, moreover, is correct on this one. But lest we forget, that dogfight didn't happen in a vacuum. Gingrich was presenting himself as a revolutionary and a radical. At more or less the same time as the shutdown fight came to a boil, Gingrich made an ass of himself by throwing a temper tantrum over seating arrangements on a flight to the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin. Without the popular image of Gingrich as prone to bratty tactics and his agenda as in some ways extreme, the GOP strategy might well have worked.

Are we in an analogous situation here? The most obvious difference is that instead of a powerful, popular president carrying the Democrats' banner, we have an array of poorly-known, charisma-challenged opposition leaders in the House and (more cogently) the Senate. Furthermore, in the 1995 case, the battle for the electorate's support boiled down to the question "are all government services bad things?" whereas in the potential showdown to come, the question is not so clear. Is it a fight over judicial appointments? The nature of government? Democratic norms? Who wins will be determined by who gets to set the terms of the debate. As it stands today, I think a shutdown would so clearly bite Senate Dems in the tuchus that GOP leaders are probably as gleeful as Atrios when they picture the results.

In short, Democrats and their allies need to work very, very hard right now to set the table, at the least in order to make their shutdown threats credible. Right now, I'd think the Democrats at the very least need to make preparations in case the national narrative makes this a story about judicial appointments. One way is to make Senatorial Republicans look like froth-mouthed judge-haters. This Matthew Yglesias take on the Cornyn tempest-in-a-teapot is a good start.

OK I'm Back

2005-04-05T10:48:00.000-04:00

Yep, I'm back.

[tap, tap]

Is this thing on?

HIATUS

2005-03-10T11:11:00.000-05:00

Might as well make it official: this blog is on hiatus 'til April 1. I'm too busy to post.

More Fallout from Hariri Bombing

2005-02-21T17:53:00.000-05:00

Jonathan Edelstein has an update on the consequences of the bombing that killed former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri last week:

As public and international pressure mounts in the wake of the assassination of Rafik Hariri, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has reportedly informed the Arab League's secretary-general that Syria is ready to quit Lebanon...

If Assad in fact said this, he is reacting to a rapidly unfolding succession of events. Today, the tens of thousands of demonstrators gathering daily in central Beirut were joined by a rare public protest from 35 Syrian human rights activists. In the meantime, responding to opposition threats of a parliamentary boycott, the Lebanese government has invited the opposition to talks without preconditions and has acquiesced to an international probe of Hariri's killing. Yet another development, and possibly the most significant of all, is the changing stance of the traditionally pro-Syrian Hizbullah, whose leader addressed popular demonstrators and urged a national dialogue to "discuss, calmly and rationally, the implementation of Resolution 1559 and the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon."

The combination of these events, driven by Lebanese public anger over the assassination, creates very nearly a perfect storm for Syria. If the removal of Syrian troops has become such a central nationalist issue that even Hizbullah must pay lip service to it, then Damascus' options - particularly those that involve working through Lebanese allies - are more limited.

These are fascinating events. Keep your eye on this story.

UPDATE: University of Oklahoma professor Joshua Landis is blogging from Syria. Interesting (and optimistic) stuff.

Friday Primate Blogging

2005-02-18T15:39:00.000-05:00

Monkey menace worsens? "Monkey Thinks Robotic Arm into Action"

Koko kinky? "Gorilla Foundation Rocked By Breast Display Lawsuit"

Finally, as long as we're on the theme of man vs. nature, consider this key paragraph from Slate's review of the new Jose Canseco tell-all:

Canseco was grief-stricken. He walked to his bedroom closet and pulled out a Street Sweeper machine gun. Canseco says he used the gun to shoot sharks when he went deep-sea fishing—an image so comic that we'll put it aside for now. Anyway, Canseco had the Street Sweeper and was ready to do himself in when a tiny noise called him forth from despair. "Something had decided that it wasn't my time yet," he writes. Maybe it was his infant daughter. Maybe God. Or maybe—and this is just a hunch—it was the steroids, calling to save their champion.

Nothing to See Here

2005-02-17T12:59:00.000-05:00

Move along, folks, nothing to see here. Some suggestions:

* Alex at Detached Observer has an amusing post on the airplane-sighting theory of disaster prediction and its implications for the debate over "Intelligent Design."

* Bonassus reader jds has directed my attention to the inconsistent but worth-watching Squidblog.

* Kevin Drum has some new thoughts on wedge issues for Democrats. Noam Scheiber also comments admiringly on Sen. Clinton's "let's reduce the number of abortions" attempt at culture war jujitsu. I'll post more on this if I have some time, but let me just point out that this tactic is not only not new, but has been a key part of talking about the issue for as long as I've been observing politics carefully (about 15 years now).

* Jonathan "Head Heeb" Edelstein has a round-up on the Hariri bombing which is definitely worth your time. Daniel Drezner has a good but not great post on the bombing's implications for Syria.

When Wu-Tang Meets WTO

2005-02-10T09:27:00.000-05:00

Here's one unexpected result of China's accession to the WTO [via the New York Times]:

For the monks who run Shaolin, the explosive popularity of Shaolin kung fu has not been without problems. For one, anyone vaguely familiar with Chinese martial arts and with a little bit of business sense, here or abroad, can hang up a shingle claiming to run a Shaolin kung fu school.

The temple's leaders say they have had enough of this debasement, and have persuaded the Chinese government to declare the name a recognized brand, protecting it under the rules of the World Trade Organization.

I'm uncertain whether this is the same sort of geographical branding I discussed here, but it would appear that, no matter what the Wu-Tang Clan might have us believe, fraudsters unafraid to face a phalanx of fighting monks may be cowed by the rulings of trade tribunals. Maybe those protestors were right, after all...

Gmail Out of Beta?

2005-02-09T22:21:00.000-05:00

So, I suddenly have 50 (fifty) invites to Gmail, up from my usual quota of 4-8. I'm guessing this means they're going to open Gmail up to everybody soon. I've generally had a positive experience with the service, and I definitely think it's the best free web-based e-mail product I've used.

That being said, the advertisement selection algorithm Gmail uses could stand some improvement in the tact department. An e-mail I got this evening about a family member's house catching on fire due to carelessness by a plumber came with ads for drywall and "calorie burners" and a link to a news story about a UCLA student who has experienced problems with bugs, flooding and dust at his apartment.

UPDATE: Sorry to have alarmed people. The house in question is damaged, but nobody was injured.

Environmentalism as a Moral Value?

2005-02-09T17:04:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned in this previous post, Steve Soto feels that the time may be ripe for an evangelical/environmentalist alliance, and sees evidence that framing green issues in moral values terms (rather than focusing on the underlying science) could prove a winning strategy.

One of the sources for Soto's musings was this document, which apparently electrified the environmentalist community. I finally got around to reading it, and I have to say I'm terribly unimpressed. As far as I can tell, the main thrust of the piece is that "environmentalism" as a single issue leads to political failure, and that the only way to save the world from global climate disaster is to forge a brave new progressive coalition uniting US business, labor and greenies behind a massive R&D project. Call it the "Fellowship of the Ring" strategy, I guess.

Some of the ideas expressed, such as the notion of looking for grand bargains, are quite good (if hardly as earth-shattering as the New York Times's coverage might lead one to believe). Other portions of the paper, particularly those about the current state of Japanese industry and the history of industrial policy, are wildly factually inaccurate. And some of the more messianic language reminds me of nothing so much as the "Project for a New American Century" so widely (and convincingly) criticized by so many on the left. Ultimately, though, I'm not sure there's anything surprising or new here. Too bad.

The other article Soto cites is far more compelling. I have to admit that I skipped over the article when I first saw the headline in the Washington Post: "The Greening of Evangelicals." I expected yet another non-existent-trend-spotting story about some well-spoken yet little-noted member of the Christian right adopting a counterintuitive cause. But there's more here than I first thought:

"The environment is a values issue," said the Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals. "There are significant and compelling theological reasons why it should be a banner issue for the Christian right." In October, the association's leaders adopted an "Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility" that, for the first time, emphasized every Christian's duty to care for the planet and the role of government in safeguarding a sustainable environment.

"We affirm that God-given dominion is a sacred responsibility to steward the earth and not a license to abuse the creation of which we are a part," said the statement, which has been distributed to 50,000 member churches. "Because clean air, pure water, and adequate resources are crucial to public health and civic order, government has an obligation to protect its citizens from the effects of environmental degradation."

Signatories included highly visible, opinion-swaying evangelical leaders such as Haggard, James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship Ministries. Some of the signatories are to meet in March in Washington to develop a position on global warming, which could place them at odds with the policies of the Bush administration, according to Richard Cizik, the association's vice president for governmental affairs.

While I'm still skeptical about the depth of these leaders' commitment, and even moreso about the rank and file's interest in the issue, it's a hopeful sign, and a fascinating one. The article also touches on some of the concerns about crafting and nurturing wedge issues that I've discussed before:

Green said the evangelicals' deep suspicion about environmentalists has theological roots.

"While evangelicals are open to being good stewards of God's creation, they believe people should only worship God, not creation," Green said. "This may sound like splitting hairs. But evangelicals don't see it that way. Their stereotype of environmentalists would be Druids who worship trees."

Another reason that evangelicals are suspicious of environmental groups is cultural and has its origins in how conservative Christians view themselves in American society, according to the Rev. Jim Ball, executive director of the Evangelical Environmental Network. The group made its name with the "What Would Jesus Drive?" campaign against gas-guzzling cars but recently shifted its focus to reducing global warming.

"Evangelicals feel besieged by the culture at large," Ball said. "They don't know many environmentalists, but they have the idea they are pretty weird -- with strange liberal, pantheist views."

Ball said that the way to bring large numbers of evangelicals on board as political players in environmental issues is to make persuasive arguments that, for instance, tie problems of global warming and mercury pollution to family health and the health of unborn children. He adds that evangelicals themselves -- not such groups as the Sierra Club or Friends of the Earth, with their liberal Democratic baggage -- are the only ones who can do the persuading.

"Environmental groups are always going to be viewed in a wary fashion," Ball said. "They just don't have a good enough feel for the evangelical community. There are landmines from the past, and they will hit them without knowing it."

This strikes me as exactly right. So what can environmentalists do to nurture this potential alliance? I'd suggest that they listen to Ball, come up with facts, figures, and a legislative agenda which mesh with the language he has discussed, and then work with him to find a Congressional champion for a single bill. I'll have some more concrete details when I revisit this story tomorrow.

Pot, Kettle

2005-02-06T23:00:00.000-05:00

My brother e-mails me in perfect blog-post form:

I haven't bothered to read their full paper, but I tend to think these guys are on the right track.

What's really stunning about the NYT article, though, is this quote from the executive director of Greenpeace USA:

"These guys laid out some fascinating data," Mr. Passacantando said, "but they put it in this over-the-top language and did it in this in-your-face way."

Nice catch, eh?

You can read the paper (which presents a case for completely rethinking the environmentalist movement's political approach) here. I plan to read it tomorrow, and I'll let you know what I think. I'm eager to hear Bonassus readers' comments, so if you have something to say and feel too shy to post a comment, at least send me an e-mail.

UPDATE: Steve Soto connects this article to a Washington Post article suggesting the birth of an evangelical Christian environmental movement, and sees an opportunity for Democrats. I'll have something to say on this idea tonight.

More Nerdy Fun

2005-02-05T22:45:00.000-05:00

My wife Roxana stumbled upon the Oxford English Dictionary version of a Googlewhack today. Unlike a proper Googlewhack, where a search for two words yields one and only one search result from Google, an OEDwhack (as I'll call it) exists when two words are both illustrated with the same primary quote in the OED.

The example my wife found was "stultiloquent yarb-monger." Can you beat that?

Monkey Menace Worsens

2005-02-04T09:57:00.000-05:00

The people want it, so here it is: more on the Monkey Menace [you may also wish to think of it as "more cutting-and-pasting from the BBC website"].

The latest news: the monkeys have started targeting major Indian government officials and endangered lions:

Delhi suffers from a serious monkey menace, with scores of animals seen across the city, particularly near top government offices.

The monkeys who have moved into residential areas and official enclaves due to Delhi's shrinking forests, are said to have become a 'security threat'. Last year, the ministry of defence found some of its top secret documents scattered all over the place one morning. It was blamed on the many rhesus monkeys which flock around the colonial-era building.

The prime minister's office, which is situated in the same block, is also within reach. A cabinet minister couldn't enter his official bungalow for months because the monkeys wouldn't let anybody enter the house. The presidential palace too has been targeted and staff their have been forced to employ a dark-faced langur monkey to scare away the rhesus monkeys.

Aha! It's a protection racket! And what has happened to those sinister simians who have been captured and relocated?

Madhya Pradesh had released these monkeys in the forest of Palpur Kuno situated near Gwalior. This forest is being prepared as a habitat for Asiatic lions which the state wants to borrow from Gujarat. The Gir forest of Gujarat is the only area in India where the highly endangered Asiatic lions are found.

Officials in Madhya Pradesh's fear that the monkeys may spread disease in the specially developed forest.

Perhaps we should just throw in the towel now and cut our losses. Monkey menacers, present us with your demands!

Local Boy Makes Good

2005-02-03T14:06:00.000-05:00

I was pleased to read the positive review of the latest Aqueduct album in this week's Onion. Aqueduct is basically David Terry, whose family lived next door to mine when we were both kids, and who served as the scapegoat of choice whenever anything got broken or lost in our house. Rolling Stone (ack) is also on the David Terry bandwagon, but don't let that dissuade you from buying his new opus:

Lo-fi indie outfit Aqueduct had a great 2004. Discovered by Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard in the wilds of Oklahoma, the band picked up and moved to Seattle, signed to indie du jour Barsuk Records and found itself opening for acts such as the Flaming Lips and the Shins. The band's full-length debut, I Sold Gold, hits stores this week...When Gibbard's side project the Postal Service was touring the Midwest, Gibbard picked up a copy of the record. "It sort of came back to me through the grapevine how much he loved it," Terry says.

Around the same time, after years on the not-so-happening Oklahoma music scene, Terry decided it was time to relocate. "I'd been in Tulsa for way too long, and I really liked the bands coming out of the Northwest," he explains. "When we got here, Ben welcomed us with open arms. He's a good guy to know in Seattle." Aqueduct was soon signed to Barsuk, home to Death Cab, Rilo Kiley and Travis Morrison."

If that string of dropped names doesn't get your butt to the record store (or your iTunes Music Store window opened), maybe this will: Aqueduct's I Sold Gold gets the Bonassus seal of approval.

Protection in the Pacific

2005-02-03T13:22:00.000-05:00

Jonathan Edelstein has a fascinating post on the latest post-colonial developments in former French possessions in the Pacific. It's well worth your time to read.

One quote from the post caught my eye for reasons quite different from Edelstein's. In discussing the prospects of a Pacific Island free trade area, New Caledonian trade minister Didier Leroux offers this opinion:

I think that in a globalisation of the trade in the world, Pacific island countries have to adopt a common policy and a common attitude towards bigger countries, because it's obvious that small islands in the Pacific cannot compete with big countries such as Australia or United States or Europe.

We have to define a common way of protecting our own small industries, because they are in several ways the only way we have to create jobs and maintain employment in our islands.

There are lots of good reasons for small countries to coordinate on trade negotiations with larger nations. Regional trade agreements are probably a good way to solve a lot of the underlying coordination problems, and can produce a lot of other benefits as well. But the second part of Leroux's statement suggests that he's not clear on how all this is supposed to work. At first glance, at least, Leroux's talk of common protection reads like Jagdish Bhagwati's nightmare of regional trade agreements serving as stumbling blocks, not stepping stones, on the path to global trade liberalization. It's also worth pointing out that since Leroux is focusing on small industries in small countries, it's tough to justify his idea of integration with any economic theory at all, let alone the mutual-gains-from-trade logic which usually underpins schemes like the proposed PICTA. Presumably the other PICTA trade ministers (and/or his former economics professors) have been frantically trying to reach Leroux to remind him.

Blogging Syzygy/Quasi-Celebrity Sighting

2005-01-27T10:21:00.000-05:00

I hate omphaloskeptical and self-congratulatory blog posts about the act of blogging, but I couldn't resist this: I'm currently in a Starbucks in Dupont Circle checking my e-mail between meetings. Blog Superhero Mark Schmitt just walked by my table and asked if I was drawing "Blogging Energy" from the place, which is apparently the site of much Josh Marshall and Steve Clemons blog-related program activities.

At that moment, I had a brief glimpse of nerd nirvana. It was kind of like that Tex Ritter song "Hillbilly Heaven," but pastier.

A Democratic "Contract with America" Version 1.0

2005-01-25T11:53:00.001-05:00

Via The Left Coaster, news that the Democratic leadership of the Senate is working on an opposition agenda:

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid will do something this morning that an opposition party is supposed to do: Senate Democrats stopped playing defense and will begin playing offense by setting forward an ambitious agenda of their own. In a conference call earlier this morning, Reid’s staff announced their top ten priority bills for the 109th Congress, and they address many of the needs accumulated by this country but ignored by the White House the GOP Congress under Bill Frist and Denny Hastert...

This agenda is not yet a unified agenda with the House, but Reid’s staff feels that a great deal of this will make its way into Pelosi’s agenda for the run up to the midterms. Also, this is a legislative strategy but not necessarily a communications roadmap, and the blogosphere will be moving ahead with discussions on translating these priorities into the Democrats’ version of Gingrich’s Contract with America. Democrats will however be stressing that we intend to keep America’s promise through possibly a Promise To America, whereby the overall agenda is translated into 8-10 themes that can be used to batter the status-quo and corporate-owned GOP entrenched machinery for the next two years. And you can bet that congressional reform and Tom DeLay’s corruption will figure prominently into the overall anti-GOP incumbency message.

Check out the original post for some of the legislative details, or read Senator Reid's statement on the agenda here.

I'm glad to see Reid attempt to take the offensive, but I'm a little concerned to see the legislative strategy released before a communications roadmap is established. There does seem to be an underlying set of ideas. Reid cites the themes of "Security, Opportunity and Responsibility" repeatedly. Sounds good, I guess: This sort of thing always leaves me cold, but I know it's important.

An intriguing element of this early attempt at agenda-setting is the Democrats' focus on grabbing part of the military vote by focusing on the concerns of National Guard and Reservist voters (as well as the traditionally-targeted veterans). This seems smart to me, as my sense is there's significant discontent in this constituency, and it'll be tough for Republicans to match Democratic promises with actual policy changes during what promises to be a long stay in Iraq.

I'll need more time to render a well-considered judgment, and I am a little underwhelmed by the message aspect of the agenda, but I'm glad to see somebody get things moving here.

UPDATE: The blogosphere is sure to be full of posts saying that Reid's strategy is foolish, since its model, Newt Gingrich's 1994 "Contract with America," wasn't actually of any electoral help to the GOP. I've noted the weakness of this claim (and some strong countervailing evidence) here.

Ever Closer Constitutional Union?

2005-01-25T11:45:00.000-05:00

If you're one of the many people plagued by concern about the fate of the EU's proposed constitution, do yourself a favor and check out this Doug Merrill post (and its superb linkage). The punchline:

One of the CAP’s experts told me last week that the only significant problem for the constitution is the UK. Sentiments in France appear to be moving in favor of ratification. The other big and medium countries are also expected to have relatively easy paths toward ratification. And as for the smaller ones, well, it’s not like Malta would be truly missed if it opted to leave the Union.

Opposition Strategies

2005-01-25T10:50:00.000-05:00

[NOTE: I've been meaning to write about this for some time, and a longer version will be posted soon]

Here's a question to get you thinking: what has been, historically, the most successful electoral strategy for US political parties who are out of office? In other words, if the other party just ate your lunch at the polls, and you want to win in the next election, should you:

a) Adjust your policies to be more like the other (more successful) party's?
b) Stick to your guns and maintain the same policy positions (or move farther away from the other party)?
c) Innovate: find a new set of policies to champion?
d) Go out of business?

If you chose "d", you're not paying attention, I guess. The surprising answer, however, is that none of the other options is clearly superior, historically.

Lots of smart people have made the case for the other three options. The cartoon version of the DLC is that it always shouts out "Go right! Take option 'a'!" Option "a" is also endorsed (or at least predicted) by a huge literature in political science, drawing on the work of Anthony Downs, which suggests that in a two party system candidates will tend toward the political center. [Those of you with access to a good library can find an excellent review of this literature, by Bernard Grofman, in the 2004 issue of Annual Review of Political Science. It's worth noting that the newest research on the issue is driven by the empirical observation that even in the US, the two parties and their candidates tend to support and enact very different policies, pace Ralph Nader and most college sophomores.]

The left half of the blogosphere regularly endorses option "b". And the DLC's own version of its history suggests that option "c" has worked in the past (Clinton 1992) and could work again.

So what does history tell us? The most rigorous attempt to answer this question that I'm aware of is a 2001 paper by Kenneth Finegold and Elaine Swift (you can find it here if you have access to the British Journal of Political Science). Their result? Despite the impressive arguments mustered by proponents of each option, none of the strategies stands out as superior, at least in the US presidential context. Each strategy has produced a statistically similar won-lost record. A more sophisticated test (examining the size of deviations from predicted vote totals) returns the same result: even when controlling for the non-policy factors (national economic performance, personal popularity of the incumbent) that typically go into vote-prediction formulas, the out-party hasn't done any better or worse when it has chosen to move toward, away, or in a different direction from its incumbent opponent.

There's an important caveat to be made here: the results presented above don't take into account the policy strategy chosen by the incumbent. I'd suspect this is an important omission.

While we're waiting for further research, though, where does this leave us? I'd draw at least one pretty strong conclusion: reasoning from historical analogy here (e.g. "President X gained election and established a legacy of control for his party by adopting strategy Y") is pretty worthless. Rather than seizing on a narrative based on a single past election, Democratic policy strategists should focus on the here and now.

UPDATE: Mark Schmitt has a terrific post up about the use and misuse of George Lakoff's "framing" ideas, which makes a similar point about extrapolating from individual cases of electoral success.

Blogging Drought

2005-01-19T17:10:00.000-05:00

It's been bad, I know. I'm working very hard on a number of real-job related things. Thanks to all of you for hanging in there: I promise more quality posts soon.

Recognize

2005-01-12T16:07:00.000-05:00

To those of you who are still reading despite my recent spotty posting record, I hope you still like what (little) you see on the Bonassus.

If you do, please avail yourself of the opportunity to spread the Bonassus word: I've been nominated for a "Koufax Award" for "Blog Most Deserving of Wider Recognition," and I'd most appreciate your vote.

Superhero Anxiety at the NY Times

2005-01-06T13:53:00.000-05:00

Something sinister is brewing at the New York Times. First, this sorely-needed correction:

An obituary of the innovative comic-page illustrator Will Eisner yesterday included an imprecise comparison in some copies between his character the Spirit and others, including Batman. Unlike Superman and some other heroes of the comics, Batman relied on intelligence and skill, not supernatural powers.

How could they make that kind of mistake? After all, the paper's cultural critics (or at least Virginia Heffernan) are apparently being browbeaten by oppressive males into reading superhero comics on a daily basis:

"Alias,"... whose fourth season has its two-hour premiere on ABC tonight, is nothing more than a pretentious comic strip: static, allegorical, a pleasure only to addicts, but also headache-inducingly difficult to criticize in these times when American comics have become, through male nostalgia and the canonization of the graphic novel, sacrosanct.

Let's be honest. Many of us don't like comic books and have feigned interest in their jumpy bif-bam fighting scenes and the way they redeem loser guys, only to impress and minister to those loser guys. And now we can admit that while the redemption dynamic - little X-Men boys finding in their eccentricity and loneliness a superpower - is touching, there's nothing duller than listening to someone explain, in all seriousness, the Syndicate and the Shadow Force and the Hard Drive and the Plutonium Lance. And the characters: lame. One is good and the other is evil, and then one is evil pretending to be good, and then one is good pretending to be evil.

Zzzz.

Thanks for that tiny window onto your personal life, Virginia. I hope that the loser guys you've wasted so much time on all read your review.

In all seriousness, there has been a lot of superhero-glorifying going on in the literary world these days, what with Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem and the contributors to this inconsistent but entertaining book all doing their part. And, honestly speaking, if you go back and read those old "silver age" X-Men comics, they're pretty damn juvenile and simple-minded, just less so then one might have expected given what else was to be found in comic books of the era. And yes, as a host of blogospheric commentaries prove, nerds love to bluster about superheroes. But come on, Virginia: drop the "man bites dog" tone when you're sneering about comic books in the pages of the Times. You're not fooling anyone.

Maple Leaf Rag

2005-01-06T13:16:00.000-05:00

Symbolic rejection of the Canadian flag: as the CP reports, it isn't just for Quebecois anymore:

Premier Danny Williams isn't the first politician to use the Canadian flag as a political tool, but he is unusual because most flag flaps have involved Quebeckers.

The decision by the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador to haul down the flag from provincial buildings to protest Ottawa's handling of the province's resource claims adds a new tactic to federal-provincial squabbling while underlining the flag's potent symbolic value, analysts say.

The flag, born in political controversy 40 years ago, has most often been waved, burned or complained about in Quebec terms.

Having Newfoundland lower the flag has a different impact, says Richard Simeon, a political scientist at the University of Toronto.

"People are saying, 'We kind of expect that from Quebec, but we don't expect that from English Canada'."

During the constitutional wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s, Quebec flags were trampled on publicly in the streets of Ontario cities. The Maple Leaf was occasionally burned in Quebec. It was dragged behind a car through downtown Montreal at least once...

"What's more interesting about this case is that it's happening at a time of heightened Canadian pride and sort of the rah-rah nationalism or patriotism," said Simeon. "A lot of people see it as a slap in the face, even in Newfoundland and Labrador.

"Over the last few decades we've invested a lot in the flag as a national unity thing, as a way to promote a distinct identify from the U.S., so taking it down is seen as a sign of disrespect."

Richard Nimijean, a political scientist from Carleton University in Ottawa, said flags - whether federal or provincial - have become potent symbols in the last decade or so, giving them new value as rallying points.

And since it just wouldn't be a story without some reference to stereotypes about Canadians:

Gerald Baier, a political scientist at the University of British Columbia, said the context is important, because for Newfoundland, the resource issue is the province's big fight.

He also points out that the flags were lowered, not torn down.

"There's no stomping of Canadian flags here . . . there hasn't been any burning or anything like that," he said. "That sort of stuff can really get people upset."

[Hat tip to Alex]

Tsunami Relief and US "Stinginess"

2005-01-06T11:59:00.000-05:00

The Bush administration has, as everyone presumably knows by now, finally done the right thing by massively stepping up its aid to the victims of the tsunami. I'm glad to see it, and willing to give them a lot of credit.

In the meantime, though, a commenter responded to my previous post on the matter by noting a single, somewhat deceptive figure about US development assistance outside the current context. The truth of the matter is neither that the US is an exemplar on foreign aid, nor the complete moral midget it is sometimes made out to be. Daniel Drezner has an excellent post on the matter. Go read it.

A Dangerous Wedge Not to be Exploited

2005-01-06T11:43:00.000-05:00

Andrew Sullivan notes a disturbing division within the ranks of conservative religious Republicans:

EUPHEMISM WATCH: "Mitt Romney is going to have a hard time connecting with the social sonservative base of the party given his Mormon faith--just a fact of life. For what it's worth..." - a GOP insider as reported by Rich Lowry in NRO. Lowry clarified with another less pronounced euphemism: "Yes, the point that insider I cited earlier was making was that a Mormon would have trouble connecting with the evangelical Christian base of the party." It's not a big deal, but it is interesting as an indicator of what the GOP now is: a sectarian base with political outreach. "Trouble connecting ...?" Translation: a Mormon would not be accepted by the evangelical Christian base of the GOP because he's a ... Mormon. When your base is sectarian, it's not surprising they have sectarian preferences. A simple question: will someone not "born again" be able to be a Republican candidate for president in the near future? The answer isn't obvious.

I'm not sure I agree with Sullivan's conclusions, but I do wonder if and when we'll see a fight over precisely what religious conservatism means in the US.

On the Making of Cheap Political Points: A Master Class

2004-12-29T10:11:00.000-05:00

Via Talking Points Memo:

President's latest response to the tsunami tragedy: badmouth Bill Clinton.

From the Post ...

Earlier yesterday, White House spokesman Trent Duffy said the president was confident he could monitor events effectively without returning to Washington or making public statements in Crawford, where he spent part of the day clearing brush and bicycling. Explaining the about-face, a White House official said: "The president wanted to be fully briefed on our efforts. He didn't want to make a symbolic statement about 'We feel your pain.' "

Many Bush aides believe Clinton was too quick to head for the cameras to hold forth on tragedies with his trademark empathy. "Actions speak louder than words," a top Bush aide said, describing the president's view of his appropriate role.

Actions speak louder than words? Actions?

For those of you who want links with your moral outrage, here's one from the New York Times. The article explains that the Bush administration required public shaming (a UN official accused the US of being "stingy") before it would pledge aid at levels around those pledged by Japan and the UK.

Al-Jazeera, predictably, is attempting to make anti-American hay with this story (but oddly seems to be giving France, whose pledged aid so far is only 100,000 Euros (!), a pass).

Tsunami Relief

2004-12-29T10:03:00.000-05:00

Via the Head Heeb and his commenters, a list of ways to donate to relief efforts.

Saint Nick or Old Nick?

2004-12-19T08:14:00.000-05:00

In the mood for some holiday cheer? Check out these photographs of children terrified by Santa Claus [link via MetaFilter].

I don't have a picture of this, but when my brother Ben was a very little kid, Ayatollah Khomeini was regularly on the news. My brother would point at the TV and ask "Who dat?" to which my parents would respond, "That's a bad man."

That December, on a trip to the mall, Ben delighted me and mortified my mother by pointing at the mall Santa, with his long grey beard and unusual headwear, and shrieking "Bad man! Bad man!" Good times.

It's No "Carnivore," But Still...

2004-12-19T07:55:00.000-05:00

The New York Attorney General is looking into the possibility that the ACLU has violated its own members' privacy rights:

The American Civil Liberties Union is using sophisticated technology to collect a wide variety of information about its members and donors in a fund-raising effort that has ignited a bitter debate over its leaders' commitment to privacy rights.

Some board members say the extensive data collection makes a mockery of the organization's frequent criticism of banks, corporations and government agencies for their practice of accumulating data on people for marketing and other purposes.

Daniel S. Lowman, vice president for analytical services at Grenzebach Glier & Associates, the data firm hired by the A.C.L.U., said the software the organization is using, Prospect Explorer, combs a broad range of publicly available data to compile a file with information like an individual's wealth, holdings in public corporations, other assets and philanthropic interests.

The issue has attracted the attention of the New York attorney general, who is looking into whether the group violated its promises to protect the privacy of its donors and members.

"It is part of the A.C.L.U.'s mandate, part of its mission, to protect consumer privacy," said Wendy Kaminer, a writer and A.C.L.U. board member. "It goes against A.C.L.U. values to engage in data-mining on people without informing them. It's not illegal, but it is a violation of our values. It is hypocrisy."

The organization has been shaken by infighting since May, when the board learned that Anthony D. Romero, its executive director, had registered the A.C.L.U. for a federal charity drive that required it to certify that it would not knowingly employ people whose names were on government terrorism watch lists.

A day after The New York Times disclosed its participation in late July, the organization withdrew from the charity drive and has since filed a lawsuit with other charities to contest the watch list requirement.

The group's new data collection practices were implemented without the board's approval or knowledge, and were in violation of the A.C.L.U.'s privacy policy at the time, said Michael Meyers, vice president of the organization and a frequent and strident internal critic. Mr. Meyers said he learned about the new research by accident Nov. 7 in a meeting of the committee that is organizing the group's Biennial Conference in July.

Either this is the first stage in a brilliant counter-intuitive media strategy, or somebody just handed Rush Limbaugh enough fodder for a year's worth of unfunny jokes. I'd also like to wonder out loud how many organizations on the right have someone identifiable to the media as a "frequent and strident internal critic."

Darfur Reminder

2004-12-19T07:48:00.000-05:00

Horrible things are still happening in Sudan, and now it looks like they're getting worse. Those seeking to reaquaint themselves with the issue might start here.

Canada and Gay Marriage

2004-12-19T07:41:00.000-05:00

Even when you examine the electoral and partisan politics, Canada is way ahead of the US on gay marriage, as this fascinating New York Times article explains. I'd love to get my readers' thoughts on why.

[Note: "Bowling for Columbine" is a bad model for thinking about Canada/US distinctions, as are "Canadian Bacon," "South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut" and the collected works of Bryan Adams.]

Outsourcing the Judiciary

2004-12-19T07:24:00.000-05:00

Via the Head Heeb, I see that discussions about establishing a regional constitutional court for the Pacific Islands continue.

The idea, basically, is that small nations like Fiji, Samoa and the Solomon Islands simply do not have the resources to run constitutional courts like the US Supreme Court or the British Commonwealth's Privy Council. One solution is to outsource the job to a multinational organization. As the linked article points out, there's an additional complication: some of the countries in question have a common law heritage, while others derive their legal structures from French civil law. Presumably, countries jointly establishing any new court would want it to match their existing legal institutions as closely as possible, to avoid messy, expensive and confusing transitions, and this desire would be reflected in some pre-establishment bickering and complex negotiations over the court's ground rules. That we haven't seen even the establishment of a regular forum for such wheedling suggests that a new transnational court isn't likely to open for business any time soon.

A final point of interest (perhaps), is that to my limited knowledge, the only other such multinational constitutional court established in the post-colonial era is the European Court of Justice. If I recall correctly, that institution, much like the US Supreme Court, had to assert, under controversial circumstances, its right to pass judgment on the constitutionality of statute. I'd think it's a testament to the success of the ECJ that other regions are considering similar institutions.

Peace Promotion?

2004-12-16T17:54:00.000-05:00

The New York Times reports today that a long-time foreign policy goal of the US has finally come to fruition:

When Egypt, Israel and the United States signed a trade agreement this week, it represented the most tangible step in a monthlong thaw in chilly relations between the Egyptians and Israelis.

The agreement, signed Tuesday, allows for the duty-free import of certain Egyptian goods by American buyers as long as the items contain some Israeli input...

The mere fact that Egypt and Israel, with American backing, were finally able to hammer out a trade agreement that had first been broached in 1996 is telling. Robert B. Zoellick, the United States trade representative, who signed for the United States, issued a statement calling it "the most important economic agreement between Egypt and Israel in two decades."

Rashid Mohamed Rashid, the Egyptian foreign trade and industry minister, and Ehud Olmert, his Israeli counterpart, pointed out that the agreement was not merely about economics.

"It goes far beyond the economics and the business and the trade between the two countries," Mr. Olmert said. "This is another statement of two major forces in the Middle East: that they are looking forward toward greater cooperation."

The agreement stipulates that all Egyptian goods produced initially within seven specific "qualified industrial zones" will be exempt from American import tariffs as long as they contain at least 11.7 percent Israeli content. Given that much of the trade is expected to be in clothing, this would mean that the buttons or zippers or patterns would come from Israel, for example, while the actual manufacturing would depend on inexpensive Egyptian laborers.

The textile industry in Egypt employs a million people and accounts for more than one quarter of all industrial production, according to official figures. The United States takes half of Egypt's textile exports, or $470 million in 2003, which Mr. Rashid predicts could triple under the agreement. Jordan, the first to establish such zones, is expected to export $900 million to the United States this year, according to the American Embassy in Amman, up from virtually nothing five years ago.

Still, the pact was a tough public sell in Egypt, where bitterness and anger against the United States and Israel run deep. The professional unions in particular oppose any normalization with Israel, despite a 25-year-old peace treaty. Critics fret the agreement will not produce the anticipated job bonanza and will give Israel undue influence over some Egyptian exports.

The prevailing sentiment was that the agreement was yet another attempt by the United States to make Israel more palatable to the Arab world. Economic issues here often come secondary to the emotional desire to see some sort of overall settlement that will return occupied lands, particularly the holy mosque in Jerusalem, and find some solution for millions of Palestinian refugees stuck for generations in camps.

"I think the United States often reverts to very complicated methods to avoid facing the essential problems," said Hassan Nafaa, a political science professor at Cairo University.

To overcome the opposition, Mr. Rashid underscored the idea that the agreement would bring economic benefits, including increasing exports to the United States and desperately needed job growth. Indeed, factory workers outside the designated zones demonstrated to be included out of fear their jobs were in jeopardy.

The expiration of a longstanding international quota system for textiles on Jan. 1 is likely to set off worldwide price competition for clothes, so getting Egyptian exports into the huge American market duty-free will protect jobs here, Mr. Rashid noted

Why has the US invested so much time and energy on this issue? I suspect the answer stems from the idea of "Commercial Liberalism," which is a fancy academic term for the idea that increased economic interactions between two countries reduces the likelihood that they will go to war.

Great! I think we'd all agree that reducing the likelihood of another Egypt-Israel war is an unalloyed good thing. So we should regard the new trade agreement as a step in the right direction. Right?

Well, yes and no. There are a couple of problems with this analysis. [Warning: the following analysis contains references to papers unavailable online.]

First, in general terms, political scientists aren't perfectly certain that increased trade always means less conflict. One group of papers, typified by Oneal, Russett and Berbaum's 2003 article in International Studies Quarterly, points out that for any two countries, holding all else constant, increasing trade between them as a share of GDP reduces the likelihood they'll go to war. That suggests that the new trade agreement represents a small but real improvement in the chances for sustained mideast peace.

Another group of papers, typified by Katherine Barbieri's work, shows that for any two countries, holding all else constant, increasing the bilateral proportion of the countries' total trade activities actually leads to a greater chance of conflict. To the extent that we expect Egypt-Israel trade to expand in proportion to Egypt and Israel's total trade as a result of the agreement, then, maybe the new treaty isn't such a good thing.

A recent paper by Erik Garzke and Quan Li does a good job of explaining the distinction made above, and points out a number of other holes in our knowledge of the links between trade and conflict, including the fact that we don't have a good theoretical or empirical understanding of whether imports and exports work differently to influence conflict likelihood, an issue that has obvious application when looking at the structure of the Israel-USA-Egypt agreement.

A second point, raised obliquely by the newly-ABD Paul at Explananda, is that while increasing bilateral trade probably does decrease the chance of conflict, democratization appears to do a better job of doing so. To the extent that this new agreement was forged at the cost of diplomatic efforts to improve Egypt's, uh, democracy problems, it's probably a pretty inefficient use of US influence. I'd also point out that creating a system whereby immense political pressure is exerted on firms to use particular suppliers isn't all that consonant with the idea of "free trade."

Ultimately, though, I'm not ready to decry the new agreement. Frankly, any progress, no matter how inefficient, in improving government-to-government (and, probably, plutocrat-to-plutocrat) relations in the region has to be included in the "positives" column.

President Clinton's Legacy

2004-12-16T10:52:00.000-05:00

Kash at Angry Bear has made an interesting observation: the Business Roundtable, a group generally identified with Republicans, has started a new campaign to make the case for free trade. No great surprise there. There is a noteworthy aspect to the Roundtable's ad, though: it features a great big image of President Clinton's smiling mug, and sings praises of his trade policy victories.

What's going on here? I suspect that the campaign is aimed at centrist Democrats like me, whom CEOs may fear are abandoning their principled support of free trade in their eagerness to hand Republicans political defeats. Maybe I'm just being an egomaniac, though. Kash comes up with a number of other plausible explanations in his post, including the possibility that this is a warning to the White House that its recent protectionist moves are costing Bush political support with a key constituency. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Managing Your Monkey Problem

2004-12-16T10:42:00.000-05:00

According to my referrer logs, some lucky Googler found his way to the Bonassus while searching for "how to stop monkey menace." While my blog has generally offered more in the way of monkey-menace documenting than monkey-menace solutions, this article from the Chandigarh Newsline provides some hints at managing, if not stopping, the lower-primate threat:

* Do not make direct eye contact with monkeys.
* Never cross the path between a monkey and its infant.
* While passing through a group of monkeys, be light-footed. Running disturbs the serenity of their environment and agitates them.
* Do not go near a wounded or dead monkey.
* Food must not be available to monkeys near your house.
* If a monkey collides with your vehicle, do not stop. The monkey group could attack you in retaliation.
* If a monkey makes a ‘kho-kho’ noise, do not get scared as normally, it is a bluff. Just walk away calmly.
* To make monkeys leave your garden, keep hitting the ground with a stick.
* Presence of big dogs like Doberman or bigger primates like langurs will make monkeys leave the premises.
* Loud, heavy noise, bursting of crackers or their sound track will also make monkeys leave.
* Monkeys are scared of snakes. So, real looking, wriggling plastic snakes also do the trick.

Sage words. Go buy a plastic snake before your next visit to the supermarket.

Red Meat for Secularists.

2004-12-15T15:20:00.000-05:00

I've been too busy to post lately. I've also been working on my little self-education project about Christian tropes and memes relevant to economic policy.

Other Democratic blogs, however, are taking a different approach, continuing the "mock religious wackos" trend. If you're lookin' to get your blood pressure raised, here are some suggestions:

* Pandagon has been documenting a series of Religious Right outrages. I'm too distracted to get my hackles too far up, but maybe you're not.

* Kos has found a little slice of scripture that doesn't accord too well with the administration's current military personnel policies. As articles like this one make clear, however, this line of reasoning, which reduces to "The Bible says bats are birds, ergo your whole worldview is ridiculous," probably won't alter the outcome of policy battles.

Funds and Fundamentalists

2004-12-06T10:15:00.000-05:00

Digby has a thought-provoking (if perhaps a tad overblown) post up on a possible left response to the Christian Right. After reviewing an evolutionary-historical unified theory of fundamentalism (which has the usual "just-so story" quality of the genre), Digby suggests that those on the left side of the political spectrum should also be playing in-group/out-group games, using the word "fundamentalist" to link Bin Laden and Falwell.

In a related vein, I've been thinking more about ways to drive wedges between the Christian Right and the Economic Right. The more Republican Wall Streeters I talk to, the more achievable I think this goal is. I just don't know exactly how it can be done.

One germ of an idea that occurred to me over the weekend was the question of usury. Let me explain. My extremely limited knowledge of the subject's history has the following elements:

The Hebrew Bible, like many religious scriptures, condemns usury under specific circumstances.

This scriptural fact at one point led the Catholic Church to forbid all forms of money-lending at interest.

At some point these rules were relaxed.

Here's my question: do any contemporary Christian groups or leaders talk about usury? To the extent that scripture directly condemns the practice, I'd think that it should be very easy for left-leaning economic populists to get Christianity-driven voters to side with them against mean-and-scary banks. I'd also think one could craft a Christianity/scripture-driven message with lots of personal anecdotes ("They took the farm, they took my car, they took my small paper-supply corporation.") really easily here.

Obviously, Creflo Dollar and other "prosperity theologians" must have some stock response allowing them to swat away the issue, but it may well be possible to out-argue them here. I'd love to know more about the subject. If any Bonassus readers can point me in the general direction of a good article,I'd be much obliged.

A final note: much care is needed on this issue. Not only are there historical links to anti-semitism in the usury question, but left-leaning populism doesn't necessarily lead to good public policy (to put it mildly). I'm thinking here in terms of electoral politics, not policymaking.

UPDATE: Links to some good source material (and another wedge issue idea) in the comments, courtesy of jds.

UPDATE 2: So, after some communication with a faculty member from a Baptist University (the author of a book on the history of the usury prohibition in Protestant thought), I've come to a conclusion: this wasn't actually a good idea. Apparently, usury is just a dead issue except at the fringe. As I'll explain in my next post, simply finding a juicy quote in the Bible isn't sufficient for appealing to Christians who might be willing to vote with Democrats against other members of the GOP coalition.

Problems Fixed?

2004-12-06T10:12:00.000-05:00

A number of readers have e-mailed me (or in the case of my parents, phoned me) to let me know that the blog hasn't been rendering properly. After monkeying a bit with the template, I failed to resolve the problem. Blogspot.com seems to have taken care of things overnight, though.

If the blog still looks screwy to you, please let me know.

What it Takes

2004-11-30T15:53:00.000-05:00

Being back in my parents' house with my wife and daughter was a wonderful experience. Everyone was happy and in good spirits, and it was a truly relaxing holiday.

But what cheered me most of all was the stratospheric level of pedantry required for every conversation, a trend which reached its apex on Saturday night. My brother, in an effort to rebut arguments against his claim that "hair" was a "mass noun" and that "hairs" was not a "well-formed" word, complained that the rest of us were guilty of the greatest sin of the sophist, "splitting strands of hair."

The only thing that bugs me is that there is some chance that my brother was somehow technically correct. [I've suggested, incidentally, that "Technically, He Was Correct" should be carved on my brother's gravestone. For the record, I fully admit that it could just as accurately be engraved on mine: I have been readying my argument based on the term "crosshairs" for the inevitable second round of the conversation.]

Resumption of Service

2004-11-30T15:32:00.000-05:00

I'm back from Thanksgiving and have reduced the work backlog far enough to offer this tidbit from my trip to Oklahoma to visit my parents:

While I was there, I spotted the legendary BikerFox. It was only a glimpse of some flashing bicycle reflectors out a bar window, but I knew it was BikerFox when I heard other bar patrons say things like "oh, that's that stupid BikerFox guy again."

If you aren't part of the BikerFox bandwagon, well, it can only be because you haven't carefully perused his awe-inspiring website or have better things to do with your time.

Thanksgiving => Light Blogging

2004-11-23T09:58:00.000-05:00

Traveling today, so no more posts. Expect light blogging until Monday.

Goodbye to "Sparkling Wine?"

2004-11-19T17:22:00.000-05:00

That " California sparkling wine" you're tippling? It may be plonk, but soon enough it may also be labeled "champagne."

According to the Washington Post:

The United States and Australia prevailed in an interim ruling by the World Trade Organization in a dispute over protection given by the European Union to its regional goods such as Champagne wine and Feta cheese, trade officials said Thursday.

The ruling is not binding, but it indicates that the final report -- due in about a year -- will likely also go against the E.U., said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

If the final ruling goes in favor of the United States and Australia, producers around the world will be able to continue using specialist regional names for their own products -- such as calling a product champagne, even though it is not produced in the Champagne region of France.

Speaking in Brussels, trade spokeswoman Arancha Gonzalez confirmed that the E.U. received the confidential report Wednesday, but she declined to go into details.

Gonzalez said it was "a little bit too early" for the United States and Australia to claim victory and stressed that the E.U. was still "very certain" its arguments were sufficient to allow the WTO to find its system in compliance with global trade rules.

The WTO said it was unable to comment, as the findings of a preliminary ruling are distributed only to the parties involved.

Brussels last year published a list of 41 wines, cheeses and other regional products that it wants to protect under WTO rules. The United States and Australia then complained to the WTO -- the body that sets the rules on international trade -- that the E.U. isn't giving enough protection to their products.

The two countries claim the E.U. is breaching WTO rules by not protecting imported goods that have so-called geographical indications -- high-quality products known by the region or city where they are produced.

They say the E.U. gives better protection to its member states than to other countries on the issue, breaching WTO rules that say all trading partners must be treated equally.

"National treatment" is indeed one of the central norms underlying the WTO, and while I've read very little about this case (here are all the documents made public by the WTO, and here is the most comprehensive document on the subject from the US Trade Representative), my understanding is that the EU's case actually rests on one of the other pillars of the WTO: reciprocity. Basically, the EU says that countries such as the US which don't accept the EU's full list of protected place-name designations can't ask the EU to protect their own geographic "brands." If I recall correctly, the US, while accepting the sacredness of the "Champagne" designation, ignores certain other similar products like Parma ham (check this). To Europeans, then, "reciprocity" is taken to mean "If you accede to all my demands, I'll accept a similar list that you draw up."

The US points out that the EU actually signed treaties guaranteeing "national treatment" before presenting other countries with this list. [National treatment simply means that if you allow regions within your sovereign domain to get protection for their "brands," then refusing identical protection to foreign geographical "brands" like "Idaho potatoes," "Florida oranges" or "New York minutes" entails giving your national products a leg up in contravention of your treaty obligations.] If the US's case is accepted, it would appear to mean that the sequence of events dictated which WTO norm determined proper action here.

It's an interesting case. I'm looking forward to seeing the WTO's decision. In the meantime, I think I'll enjoy some good ol' American Champagne.

Wedgin' It

2004-11-19T13:26:00.000-05:00

Jonathan Chait, brother of Bonassus reader Daniel Chait, is also a Los Angeles Times columnist. In today's piece, Chait suggests that Democrats seek to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts as a first step in reconfiguring the party to appeal to "moral issues" voters.

Setting aside whether this is a good idea, policy-wise (I'm married to an artist, so I'll recuse myself on this issue), there's a bigger question worth asking: Will this possibly do any good?

The answer: no frickin' way. Not only (as Kevin Drum argues here) will Republicans gleefully join Democrats in voting to remove NEA funding (or even its existence), but they'll make certain that they get full credit for the move. A Republican member of the Appropriations Committee will get to be the one who offers a showy floor amendment to remove the funding. That's what the power of holding a committee chair buys you.

Drum points out that an effective Kulturkampf strategy forces the opposition to make a difficult choice, which Chait's proposal will not accomplish. It's a good point, and one that I've struggled with a bit. Most of the good "wedge" issues I've been able to come up with require a Republican to overreach, something that's pretty tough for Democrats to accomplish without a mind control device or incriminating photos. I've half-jokingly endorsed a "Save Halloween" strategy, but even this proposal, which might actually meet the "tough choice" and "requires no miraculous GOP missteps" criteria, would be tough to force into the public consciousness without control of either chamber of Congress or the Presidency.

To reiterate, then, a good wedge strategy must:

1) Force Republicans to choose between two groups of voters in the coalition that supported them, e.g. the Christian Right and libertarians.

2) Not require any specific action by Republicans except the taking of a position on an issue.

3) Appeal strongly enough to the media or to specific interest groups that Democrats can force Republicans to take a public stance on the issue without being able to force floor votes in either chamber of Congress.

Note that there is nothing here about feasibility of enactment into law, nor anything about the quality of resultant public policy.

Am I missing anything here?

UPDATE: Jason Barnosky argues that pork barrel politics make Republicans leery of cutting the NEA. Fair enough, but as I've argued in the comments to this post, that hasn't stopped them from making grand gestures in this direction in the past. On the other hand, Republicans did put caps on the per-state allocation of NEA grants a couple of years ago, suggesting that Red-Staters are making a concerted effort to push some NEA pork their constituents' way.

Friday Monkey Blogging

2004-11-19T11:54:00.000-05:00

Please stop me before I post another story about monkeys.

Too late!

Despite strong evidence of a simian plot to destabilize the world grocery system, governments have taken little action to date. But when a nation's public works are threatened by apes or monkeys (imperiling toll collection?), leaders jump into action. I, for one, applaud the brave officials of Himachal Pradesh state in India, who are finally taking steps to take back man's highways.

The BBC reports that up to 2,035 of the state's 378,860 monkeys have taken up the lives of highwaymen. (Somebody else made up those numbers, by the way. Don't blame me for the suspiciously-precise count) Mankind's defenders?

Monkey-catching experts have been brought in from other states and the national capital Delhi to help the wildlife department in their task.

The move followed an order of the high court after complaints that the monkeys were becoming a menace.

Officials say the monkeys attacked anyone carrying food, rummaged through dustbins and littered the place while people looked on helplessly.

There have also been growing cases of monkey bites in the state capital, Simla, which is a popular tourist resort...

Some people believe that a more effective way of dealing with the menace would be to sterilise the monkeys instead of moving them from place to place.

But wildlife officials are nervous about taking that step since such a large-scale sterilisation of monkeys has never been carried out so far.

"The final decision regarding sterilisation of monkeys would be taken after an in-depth study of similar operations elsewhere," said Mr Gulati.

Presumably the sterilization experiment will take place in or near a grocery store.

A New "New Trade Issue"

2004-11-18T10:11:00.000-05:00

"International trade" and "assassination" aren't usually words that are found in the same sentence outside the most fevered dreams of anti-globalization protestors. But take a look at today's NY Times:

Assassination Is an Issue in Trade Talks

As union activists have fallen by the hundreds here, making Colombia the world's most dangerous country for union organizers, their families and those who have dodged assassins' bullets have had little recourse. Practically all killings of union leaders have gone unsolved.

Now, labor rights groups and some members of the United States Congress have promised to do something about the violence and the impunity, using free trade negotiations between Colombia and the Bush administration to prod the government of President Álvaro Uribe to do more to protect union activists and prosecute the killers.

The idea, say labor activists from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and senior Congressional aides, is to make the issue of violence and impunity as important a component in trade talks as the struggle over agriculture tariffs and intellectual property rights. Its failure to protect union members, the argument goes, gives Colombia an unfair edge over countries that do, like the United States.

"A country should not achieve an unfair comparative advantage by willful omission or noncompliance of labor standards," said Stan Gacek, assistant director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s international affairs department, which works with unions in other countries. "The issue of rights is not an obstruction to trade, it is absolutely essential to the success of trade."

An American trade official, who spoke on condition that he remain anonymous, says that Colombia is obligated to enforce its own labor laws, which guarantee freedom of association and other labor standards.

"And how do I know someone is denied freedom of association?" he said. The murder of trade unionists, the official said, is a violation of freedom of association. "So clearly violence against trade unionists or impunity for killers is an issue with Colombia, and we've told them that."

The pressure is already having an effect...

Five lawsuits have been filed in American courts accusing companies like Drummond, a coal producer based in Birmingham, Ala., and two bottlers affiliated with Coca-Cola of using paramilitary gunmen to eliminate union organizers. The companies strenuously deny the allegations.

But the lawsuits, filed in American courts under a 215-year-old statute, have put an unwanted spotlight on Colombia's problems and irritated the Bush administration, which argues that they interfere with foreign policy and open multinational companies to sometimes frivolous grievances.

It is just the kind of pressure that union advocates in the United States want to increase, using the trade talks as a way of further prodding the two governments.

"They're looking for levers of pressure," said Michael Shifter, a senior policy analyst who closely follows Colombia for the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington group. "And it's not surprising as the United States begins negotiations with Colombia on a free trade deal that they're going to explore the possibility of using this as a way of increasing pressure."

This is an interesting development. When NAFTA was being negotiated, labor and environmental groups had enough clout in the US Congress to force the question of "side agreements" on these issues to the table, but not enough pull to get them written into the text of NAFTA itself. Presumably the power of labor groups is at a serious low tide right now, so it's tough to believe that there will be any ongoing enforcement mechanism written into a US-Colombia FTA. But what's going on in Colombia is obviously very extreme. It'll be worth watching to see what happens.

Save Halloween!

2004-11-17T13:15:00.001-05:00

Via Pandagon, I see that Christian Right folks have scored another victory: banning a "Sadie Hawkins Day"-type tradition in an east Texas town on the grounds that it "promotes homosexuality."

Maybe most Americans would just laugh this one off. But if the radical clerics have their way, Sadie Hawkins is just first on the list. Halloween is next.

Seriously. Check out these randomly-selected pages:

God hates trick-or-treaters.

Satan egged your house.

Here's a whole bibliography on the subject.

"Sure," you might say, "but none of these sites actually advocates government action to ban Halloween."

And you'd be right. But that line of thinking hasn't stopped GOP candidates and their backers from making claims about a "homosexual agenda." And maybe it shouldn't stop Democrats from introducing some wedge issue bills.

Here's my suggestion: "The American Traditions Protection Act of 2005", which will protect American holidays like Thanksgiving and Halloween from efforts to ban them by dangerous activists promoting the "intolerance agenda."

Yes it's stupid. Maybe even dangerous. But is it, on balance, a bad idea?

UPDATE: I was wrong: "they" do want to ban Halloween, after all (at least when it falls on Sunday). A diligent Bonassus reader has dredged up links to news stories about an official move to ban the holiday in a Louisiana town (but see a half-hearted debunking here) and a church-led move to change the date of Halloween in Newfoundland, Canada.

I should note that I still have no idea what "banning" Halloween would actually entail.

The Plot Thickens

2004-11-17T11:22:00.000-05:00

More posting on politics soon, I swear it. But first, since I'm really busy, let's revisit a terribly important story that I've somehow let drop: THE MONKEYS.

Yes, squid are taking over our seas. But as I've described, in manner both tireless and tiresome, monkeys are taking over our supermarkets.

And the plot thickens: the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection , apparently a front group for the monkey invasion, has duped Paul McCartney into shilling for an effort to sponsor a new macaque outpost in Thailand. I haven't checked, but I'm fairly certain that the new "habitat" isn't too far from a supermarket.

Oh, the humanity.

Squid Update

2004-11-16T06:49:00.000-05:00

Yes, as I mentioned earlier, squid are still getting bigger, and still taking over the ocean.

Further research confirms my initial hypothesis that these super-squid are delicious. But there's more: they (or at least the type of squid mentioned in the ABC News article) are also dangerous to swimmers and surfers, and appear to be involved in drug smuggling.

The drug smuggling case is a little hard to understand, as according to the CNN story it involves "giant squid" being transported across borders. My understanding is that giant squid are mysterious creatures that no one has ever seen alive, and that only a few, partial carcasses have ever been found. In other words, smuggling cocaine in a giant squid would be a little like smuggling cocaine in an Australopithecus. This NY Times story suggests that it was just a lot of squid fillets, rather than a single giant squid, in which the cocaine was being smuggled. Let's hope that the Times has it wrong.

Finally, those Bonassus readers interested in following the story a little further (and who have access to LA Times archives) might wish to read the February 10 article on the Sea of Cortez, which describes the squid invasion in frightening (and fascinating) detail.

Making Land a Mobile Factor?

2004-11-10T13:59:00.000-05:00

Well, not really, but Canada's borders do seem shockingly mobile these days.

As I've mentioned innumerable times before, Denmark is trying to claim territory Canada regards as its own. But now comes news that Canada is considering annexing some territory to the south: The Turks & Caicos Islands.

This 40-island archipelago is surrounded by the aqua-blue waters of the Caribbean, but some leaders here and in Canada see a brighter future as part of the Great White North.

In pursuit of a winter escape, Canadians have been eyeing this sun-drenched diving paradise for decades. Some politicians looking for new markets think the Turks & Caicos would make a fine regional springboard.

Never mind that the world's most powerful country stands between Canada and the Caribbean or that with no direct flights from Ottawa to Grand Turk, the island chain's capital, the journey can take the better part of a day. Year-round sunshine for the frozen northerners and First World government services for the far-flung islanders have both sides warming to the notion of a federation.

No polls have been taken nor any referendum held, but talk about becoming an outpost of Canada, an idea that dates to 1917, has become more animated since a new government took power here a year ago.

"It certainly is still an issue we are interested in pursuing with the Canadians," says Chief Minister Michael Misick, leader of this colony, one of the British Empire's last footholds in the Caribbean. He planned to travel to Ottawa during the parliamentary session to discuss the possibility of merging the islands with Canada.

While the Canadian government has rejected the idea in the past, there is now an organized effort by some Canadian lawmakers to sell the idea to a skeptical public.

No word yet on whether the International Cartographers Union has started a lobbying effort in Ottawa...

Filibuster as "Moral Issue?"

2004-11-09T14:28:00.000-05:00

At Crooked Timber, Henry Farrell is arguing that the GOP attack on Senate "obstructionists" is an opportunity to paint the ruling party as anti-Founding Fathers:

The current administration claims to be both conservative and strict constructionist; it’s neither. In fact, it’s trying to short-circuit the basic constitutional checks and balances of the US political system in order to ram through its agenda. The US apart, presidential democracies are extremely fragile, in large part because presidents tend to grab all power to themselves. This is exactly what the Bush administration is doing, both in its sweeping constitutional arguments about the extent of presidential privilege, and in its efforts to impose strict discipline on the Senate. This is something that shouldn’t only be worrying to lefties - it’s something that should be of deep concern both to serious conservatives, and to libertarians who are worth their salt.

I'm all for keeping Rule 22 intact, and I think the Senate's role of making radical policy shifts more difficult is well worth defending.

Of course, there's another values-based argument that Republicans will make: obstructing the political agenda of a party with a pretty good claim to an electoral mandate might be considered anti-democratic. And Democrats have a recent history of opposing supermajority rules for tax increases, so a sudden love of procedures and rules allowing a Senator or two to thwart the will of the majority could look a little disingenous.

But I think Farrell is on to something here: it's abundantly clear that the Founders intended the Senate to be an obstructionist institution. This page from the Senate's own website has a number of (real or apocryphal) quotes by Founding Fathers supporting this contention.

The question remains, though: how do Democrats turn this rhetorical raw material into effective communication? Who's the audience?

Back to Basics

2004-11-08T18:29:00.000-05:00

For those of you not paying attention, election season is over.

That means it's back to basics here at the Bonassus: obsessive coverage of ludicrous international conflicts like this one and this one.

The newest item on the agenda? Alex at Detached Observer purports to have discovered Russo-Estonian conflict over the letter "n."

[I say purports because the article he links to is written in a language I don't speak, in an alphabet I don't read. Anyone (Ben) care to translate it for us?]

More on the "Moral Values" Vote

2004-11-08T08:13:00.000-05:00

Obviously I didn't get around to posting much this weekend: the weather was beautiful and my wife and I spent a lot of time at the park with our baby daughter, enjoying the warm days.

That doesn't mean I wasn't obsessively mulling over the election results, though. I spent some time thinking about (and discussing) possible wedge issues for Democrats. Dems have had success in the past with bills, such as the assault weapons ban, designed to separate extremists from mainstream voters. But there hasn't been much of this for a while, at least in part because it's tough to launch initiatives like this from the minority. So far, the ideas I've come up with have been flawed and unusable, either because they're somehow kind of ethically unpleasant, or, in most cases, because they rely on getting GOP politicians to do what I want them to. Thoughts on good wedge issues are welcomed here at the Bonassus.

I also spent some time thinking about the latest line on what won Bush the election: as Paul Freedman has argued in Slate (and Andrew Sullivan has also suggested), the role that "God guns and gays" moral issues played in the election may have been overstated by the press. This may well be the case. But I don't think we can say so with any confidence based on the data and analysis presented so far. Freedman's article, as far as I can tell, is methodologically unsound, relying on aggregate, state level data to make claims about individual voter behavior. His conclusions may well be correct, but we can't tell using his data. We'll have better individual level data soon enough, but until then the regression methods implied by his reporting are inappropriate.

Freedman also, in my view, makes some mistaken assumptions about the relevant counterfactuals. Sounds technical, doesn't it? Let me be more concrete so I can (hopefully) be more clear. Look at this claim of Freedman's:

More to the point, the morality gap didn't decide the election. Voters who cited moral issues as most important did give their votes overwhelmingly to Bush (80 percent to 18 percent), and states where voters saw moral issues as important were more likely to be red ones. But these differences were no greater in 2004 than in 2000. If you're trying to explain why the president's vote share in 2004 is bigger than his vote share in 2000, values don't help.

This is all fine as long as we assume that there wasn't a strong bloc of new voters motivated to come to the polls in 2004 by the desire to throw Bush out of office. Bush's vote share, and the share of his voters motivated by "moral values" may not have changed, but the underlying dynamic, and more cogently the total number of votes cast, did. Taking into account the current environment, with talk of Iraq and national security dominating the news and campaign rhetoric, getting out an additional however-many-million voters it took to balance the Dem's voter surge is all the more impressive, and even Freedman's analysis doesn't suggest that the anti-gay initiatives didn't play a significant role here. Finally, let's not forget the "moral values" aspect of the 2000 election, when , at least according to press accounts, morals-driven "Clinton fatigue" weighed heavily against Gore and motivated Christian Right voters to come out in droves. Anything that increased this sort of voting frenzy is worthy of attention in its own right.

Another one of Freedman's claims is kind of disconcerting:

Why did states with gay-marriage ballot measures vote so heavily for Bush? Because such measures don't appear on state ballots randomly. Opponents of gay marriage concentrate their efforts in states that are most hospitable to a ban and are most likely to vote for Bush even without such a ballot measure. A state's history of voting for Bush is more likely to lead to an anti-gay-marriage measure on that state's ballot than the other way around.

This claim may be partially true, but it sits uncomfortably alongside the fact that both Oregon and Ohio, a "leans Dem" and a "leans GOP" state, both passed anti-gay marriage initiatives, Ohio's so strongly worded that it will limit the rights of unmarried heterosexual couples. Furthermore, to the extent that Karl Rove hoped to maximize Bush's popular vote (in order to make claims of a mandate more plausible), this was an apparently costless way to drive up Bush votes in states that both campaigns were otherwise ignoring.

Stuff to Read

2004-11-05T15:54:00.000-05:00

No time for a substantive post today. Here, though, is what you should be reading:

The Head Heeb on life after Arafat.

Everything Mark Schmitt has had to say over the past few days.

That's it for now. I'll post liberally this weekend, I hope. I have a lot to say.

So Now What? Part IV

2004-11-04T13:58:00.000-05:00

The "Moral Issues" Problem
Wrapping up today's ruminations (1,2,3) on Tuesday's electoral fiasco, here's some slightly more developed thinking on the "Moral Issues" problem I started discussing yesterday.

Mark Kleiman reprints an e-mail from a moderate Republican reader who suggests that Democrats need to aggressively point out that many of the "moral values" arguments offered by the GOP are just plain old bigotry. I agree completely.

Matthew Yglesias has a gazillion ideas (some of them better than others) but he starts with these three observations:

1. Shouldn't at least part of coping with the "moral values" problem involve some effort to do a better job of convincing people that more liberal positions than the ones they currently have are actually the correct ones?

2. More broadly, you've got to have a strategy for convincing people that at least some of your currently-unpopular ideas are ideas that they should like, not just a strategy for trying to figure out which ideas will be popular.

3. (1) and (2) above are less the task of campaigns than they are something other people need to be doing out in society when a campaign isn't happening.

What's the difference between the Kleiman and Yglesias approaches? One tries to convince voters that existing Democratic values are important. The other tries to convince voters that existing GOP values, which these voters may have thought they held, are actually BAD. The potential audience is perhaps slightly different, too. Both approaches, in my view, are absolutely necessary. More on this tomorrow.

Now to some bad ideas about how to fight the ongoing kulturkampf:
Robert Wright, writing in Slate, argues for a return to Tipper Gore/Joe Lieberman style schoolmarmery by the Democrats. Look: I'm a parent myself now, and when I think of my little girl growing up in a toxic culture, Tipper Gore and Joe Lieberman scare me as much as Hollywood and MTV. I'm willing to listen to arguments that I'm being irrational and taking my eyes off the prize here, but I find Wright's argument utterly unconvincing.

Jerome at MyDD argues that Democrats should be putting forth their own moral manifesto. He thinks perhaps we should borrow the Greens'. Here are the first five:

1. Humankind depends on the diversity of the natural world for its existence. We do not believe that other species are expendable.

2. The Earth's physical resources are finite. We threaten our future if we try to live beyond those means, so we must build a sustainable society that guarantees our long-term future.

3. Every person should be entitled to basic material security as of right.

4. Our actions should take account of the well-being of other nations, other species, and future generations. We should not pursue our well-being to the detriment of theirs.

5. A healthy society is based on voluntary co-operation between empowered individuals in a democratic society, free from discrimination whether based on race, colour, gender, sexual orientation, religion, social origin or any other prejudice.

Seriously. This isn't going to work. Yes, it's true that the Democrats have not actually tried to win a presidential election with this appeal. Yes, it's true that it would draw some nonvoters or Green or Nader voters to vote Democratic. But this kind of talk will scare off at least as many Democrats as it fires up, and most people won't even bother to listen. It's not scare talk ("the gays are coming to git ya!") and it's not buzzwordy ("Marriage. Life. Faith"). Go back and try again. Also, "colour?" What are you, Canadian?

So Now What? Part III

2004-11-04T13:55:00.000-05:00

Things to Keep in Mind
I've been thinking about the election (1,2). So have other bloggers. Here are some more blogospheric postmortems, these in the category of "yes, but":

Mindles H. Dreck and Jon Kay point out that not all Bush voters are redneck homophobe troglodytes.

Fair enough. I don't think anyone has ever suggested that they are. It's just that there are a lot of redneck homophobe troglodytes out there, and the current administration has won reelection by successfully getting them to vote. Thus focusing on this fact isn't necessarily a sign of lazy stereotyping: it can also be plain old realistic strategic thinking.

Mark Kleiman makes the case for Democrats to put on their obstructin' shoes:

Unite behind the President? Help him dig himself out?

Are you kidding?

Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser.

Show me a Democrat who's helped George W. Bush, and I'll show you someone with Karl Rove's knife in his back. And if we unite behind him, he will claim to be vindicated in his role as a uniter.

We should give our duly re-elected President the same loyalty the Republicans gave Bill Clinton.

Our goal should be to have Bush leave office with the popularity level of a Nixon (or a Truman) and be a long-term albatross around the neck of his party, as Carter and Clinton are around our necks. No lying is required to accomplish this; we just have to figure out a way of telling the truth persuasively.

I'm a bit torn here: I worry that the longterm stakes may be too high for this extremely attractive philosophy to guide us well in every issue area.

There's also the problem of actually turning this call to action into action: we don't have any institutions of party discipline in this country, unlike in Westminster democracies such as the UK. The "loyal opposition" role adopted by British parties when they're out of power is in large part made possible by the discipline rules, and without them it's tough to imagine how we can herd Democrats in the House, Senate and state legislatures and governors' mansions into presenting a united front. The GOP under Clinton had the enormous institutional advantage of controlling Congress from 1994 on: in Clinton's first two years in office, the president and House leadership basically did the GOP's public affairs work for them.

That being said, I do think that some of the GOP's tactics (calling for hearings on every teensy possible misstep by the White House, overdramatizing the extremeness of minor administration policy proposals, etc.) can be effectively adopted by a minority party. It's worth thinking about tactics.

So Now What? Part II

2004-11-04T13:18:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I offered some initial thoughts on lessons learned from Tuesday's electoral debacle. I was hardly alone: the blogosphere is awash in postmortems and protostrategies. Today I'll review a little of what I've seen suggested and offer some reactions.

Thinking Outside the Box
Let's start with some of the wilder suggestions:

Angry Bear endorses a "starve the Red beast" strategy whereby Blue states adopt policies to staunch the net outflow of tax dollars to the Red regions. Gets the blood goin' doesn't it? But think about the likely collateral damage...

Atrios (building on a Nick Confessore idea) suggests that Democrats need to start adopting one of the Republicans' serially-successful strategies: offering stupid red meat ideas as central campaign issues. Confessore focuses on state ballot initiatives, which is an interesting idea: obviously, since Republicans control the entire federal government at this point, it's awfully tough for Democrats to get items on the agenda in any way other than plebiscites. The other institutional mechanism that the GOP has repeatedly used for this purpose is the constitutional amendment process (which has the virtue of gaining a lot of publicity for bad, red meat ideas, with a low risk of actual adoption); the problem here, even if we dismiss the fundamental drawbacks of using the constitution to extract short-term partisan gain, is that it's tough to see how Congressional Democrats, especially in the House, could get floor consideration for their mischievous ideas.

My brother has started coming up with some concrete proposals: obviously, to the extent that these are supposed to be red herring issues, it's a bad idea to discuss them on the internet where anybody can see them. Still, I'd love to get readers' thoughts.

UPDATE: Talk about synergy. Atrios is now proposing a combination of the two ideas discussed above, in the form of a "Tax Fairness Act" requiring the some kind of proportionality between the federal funds flowing to and from each individual state. This is a terrible idea policy-wise, both because it would be likely to exacerbate regional economic downturns and because the likely victims would be (as always) the poor and defenseless. Does it make for good, harmless (except to GOP electoral hopes) political theater? I don't know.

UPDATE 2: djw makes the case against a blue state retreat of the kind suggested by Angry Bear and Atrios quite eloquently:

I support gay rights for all who are gay. But I'm alot less worried about the rights of a 35 year old computer programmer in San Francisco than I am about a teenager in rural redland. I want good teachers, good textbooks, and a sound, reality-based curriculum in all schools, but it's a lot more important for children in the households of those with less education, who have precious few other ways to learn that the worldview of their parents and community isn't the only option in the world. The malnutrition that accompanies extreme poverty is most damaging to children. The forms of pollution that would almost certainly return to redland have a much more substantial negative impact on the health of children.

Is It That I'm So Pretty?

2004-11-03T13:20:00.000-05:00

I would have expected most readers of the Bonassus, who I assume are generally Democrats or Democrat-sympathizing foreigners, to have averted their eyes from the blogosphere this morning in order to devote as much attention as possible to licking their wounds and getting back to regular life.

But traffic seems to be running about normal, even for my RSS feed.

Can't stay away, huh?

So Now What? Part I

2004-11-03T13:19:00.000-05:00

Some initial thoughts, the day after:

On Bunkum and its Removal
Hopefully we can now lay to rest the idea that Prester John and his army of progressive young people is out there, lying latent among the American electorate, waiting for someone other than Al Gore to lead them to victory.

The American electorate is just what years of opinion polling have told us: split nearly down the middle on a range of issues. Previous elections' non-voters are either not systematically different from voters in their policy preferences, or progressive non-voters (especially young people) are simply not persuadable to vote.

A more solidly leftist Democratic party or presidential nominee will not bring out the missing progressive vote, because that vote isn't "missing" in the sense of untapped, but "missing" in the sense of being non-existent. This is the left's version of the Laffer curve, and hopefully now it is thoroughly debunked.

I'm not saying that some things aren't worth standing for on principle. But I am saying that Nader's argument circa 2000 (the non-Leninist argument), that establishing a Green Party to drag the Democrats leftward would lead to progressive heaven, was complete and utter bullshit, and now even he and Peter Camejo should know it.

The contrary argument is, as always, that Kerry, by reaching out to independents instead of motivating his base, just didn't manage to wake the slumbering progressive behemoth. I challenge anyone to tell me with a straight face that George W Bush has not motivated the Democratic base as effectively as any leftist standard bearer ever could.

The same Genie of Debunkment will hopefully also be visiting Roy Teixeira and others who purport to see between the lines in the work of more established pollsters. Once again, most of the pollsters turned out to be pretty accurate in their (other than last-minute) predictions. No Copernican revolution in public opinion measurement appears necessary.

On "Moral Values," Gay Rights and Abortion
Early analysis has pegged social issues, particularly gay marriage, as bringing out the Christian Right vote, and costing Kerry the election. My guess is that this is probably a pretty accurate read. Underestimating heartland hostility to gays, especially among older age cohorts, is easy to do: overestimating it is nearly impossible.

Sure, the long-term trends on this look better: younger people across demographic groups are more tolerant than their parents on this issue. But that doesn't mean that clever manipulation of the symbols in this realm won't keep gay rights a winner for rightists for many years to come. This issue needs to be defused, somehow. I don't think that capitulating to bigotry is the right answer. I also don't think that the problem will go away on its own. I don't know how to win this fight though. You?

The "God, gays and guns" formula works over and over again to turn out the Christian Right vote. And that vote, apparently, is at least as large as the lefty vote turned out in reaction to Republican invocations of the unholy trinity, and sufficient to win close elections at the national level and in many states. In the long run, Democrats must alter peoples' preferences on these issues. That's going to be tough work, and it'll take a long time to do, if it is indeed possible. In the short to medium-term, however, what are the alternatives? Suppressing the rightwing vote with tactics like those the GOP uses to suppress minority voting (NOTE: I DO NOT ENDORSE THIS IDEA)? Giving up and adopting the GOP's positions on these issues at a national level (individual Democrats like Brad Carson and Stephanie Herseth who tried to do so in the absence of partywide movement on these issues have seen mixed results, obviously)? There are some obvious reasons to dismiss these strategies out of hand. What's left? I'll have more thoughts tomorrow.

UPDATE: Scott Lemieux has a good post in a similar vein up on his blog.

UDPATE 2: William Saletan has a piece up at Slate with some suggestions for how Democrats can win by talking about values. I agree with him as far as he goes, but my fear is that "God, gays and guns" will consistently beat out the kind of "personal responsiblity" talk Saletan (and jds in the comments to this post) are calling for. A successful Democratic strategy will have to directly address gay rights and abortion somehow.

Oof

2004-11-03T08:18:00.000-05:00

Well, that was ugly.

Not to mention depressing.

Dizzy Dan

2004-11-02T19:48:00.000-05:00

I promise no more liveblogging, but I'm watching CBS and Dan Rather has ALREADY STARTED with the bizarre commentary. It's only 10 'til 8! What's he going to be like by midnight?

Election Night II: Poll Closing Times

2004-11-02T18:44:00.000-05:00

You can see when polls close here. There is some possibility that polls will be held open late again this year in some places. This is a regular (albeit contentious) feature of election nights in the US.

UPDATE: The TV nets are reporting that polls in Ohio may be held open an additional five hours to allow people who joined lines at polling places by the official closing times to vote. This isn't the same thing as holding a polling place open late (as in the link above, or as in the case of St. Louis in the 2000 election)

UPDATE 2: CNN is reporting (in a somewhat confused manner) that polls in Allegheny County, PA are being held open. Judy Woodruff suggested this could benefit either candidate. Jeff Greenfield pointed out that this was a bizarre reading. Josh Marshall, though, has a different take: it's only provisional balloting that's being held open for an additional thirty minutes.

Election Night I: Non-Presidential News

2004-11-02T18:33:00.000-05:00

So, there are a few other races of interest this evening. I don't have any data that I'm confident in right now (although it looks bad for Sen. Daschle). Readers interested in a knowledgeable local perspective on some of the more interesting House races should head to Burnt Orange Report or Off the Kuff for info on what's happenin' down in Texas.

I'll post more on Congressional/Gubernatorial races later tonight and tomorrow.

Election Day IV: 2PM VNS Numbers

2004-11-02T14:20:00.000-05:00

Jerome at MyDD has 'em. Suffice it to say, they look good for Kerry so far. But as I said before, there are many reasons not to trust these numbers.

UPDATE: New reasons not to trust those numbers: now Drudge claims they're screwy 'cause they heavily oversampled women. This statement, on its own, is completely uninterpretable, as it doesn't tell us whether the entire national sample is strange like this, or if it is a factor in some specific states.

Also, Wonkette has just posted another set of alleged exit poll data, which is slightly less favorable to Kerry, although still showing him as leading in Ohio and Florida.

UPDATE 2: Lots of sites all over the political spectrum seem to have failed. There is speculation that it is a DoS attack, but it seems just as likely that freaked-out blog addicts are swamping the servers.

In any case, here's the latest rumor, via MyDD:

FL: 50/49 - KERRY
OH: 52/47 - KERRY
MI: 51/48 - KERRY
PA: 58/42 - KERRY
IA: 50/48 - KERRY
WI: 53/47 - KERRY
MN: 57/42 - KERRY
NH: 58/41 - KERRY
ME: 55/44 - KERRY
NM: 49/49 - TIE
NV: 48/49 - BUSH
CO: 49/50 - BUSH
AR: 45/54 - BUSH
NC: 47/53 - BUSH

Election Day III: My Visit to the Polls

2004-11-02T13:24:00.000-05:00

Mrs. Bonassus and I went to vote early this morning, but there were literally hundreds of people waiting in line. Calvin Trillin rode up on a bike, looking super-mega-nerdy, and started asking the toothless (literally, not figuratively) pollworker whether he had to wait in line if he always voted here. I think he was deadpanning.

We decided to come back later.

At around noon, we ventured back to P.S. 3 to find that the line was down to a more manageable 25 or so people. We had some entertainment while we waited: Someone had constructed a kind of robot out of army boots and camouflage fabric. The boots formed two wheels (radiating from a hub with the soles at the outer edge), and the robot rolled back and forth in an amusing manner. Somebody (presumably the sculptor) was manipulating the robot via remote control, but I didn't see who it was, as I was too busy laughing at the reactions of passing dogs. Attention comedians: dogs + robots = hilarious.

Once inside the polling place, we had to stand in another line to actually use the machine for our specific electoral subdivision. A couple of the people ahead of us weren't on the voter list, and had to fill out provisional ballots. We got a little nervous about election board incompetency, but luckily, the Bonassus family was still on the list.

Incidentally, in case you were wondering, we don't get no fancy-pants electronic touch screen voting booths here in Greenwich Village. We're still using machines which appear to have been built in the 1950s, basically one step up from scrawling our votes on ostrakons and tossing them into a jar.

Mission accomplished!

We headed back outside, but the robot was gone. We saw a couple of policemen standing around, and jumped to the conclusion that they had asked the roboticist to move his creation for some reason having to do with electioneering near a polling place, but this was just a guess.

The End.

I Hit Reload So You Don't Have To?

2004-11-02T13:18:00.000-05:00

It may well be a long night of waiting for web pages of dubious quality to load so that I can see the latest, worthless exit poll numbers. Here's my pledge to you: should I get any good info, I'll post it right away.

If you get any good data, please feel free to post it in the comments section.

Election Day I

2004-11-02T13:09:00.000-05:00

Oh, those early exit polls. Everybody loves 'em. But here's why you shouldn't take them too seriously.

Non-Election News

2004-11-01T09:20:00.000-05:00

ATTENTION ENVIRONMENTALIST-FEAR-PORN ADDICTS

Here's another horror for your list: global climate change is filling our oceans with oversized sea monsters. Delicious, delicious oversized monsters.

Osama on the Air

2004-10-29T16:54:00.000-04:00

So Osama bin Laden is back on the air, finally admitting to being behind 9/11 and addressing US voters. The full translated text isn't yet available, so I may have to update this post, but that's the gist of what's being reported right now.

From early reports it appears that he has a sort of nuanced message: as far as I can tell he's trying to scare US voters without appearing to endorse either candidate.

My guess is that Kerry's camp will use this as an opportunity to point out that the Bush administration has failed to catch the guy, while the Bush campaign will claim that Osama has endorsed Kerry. Either way, I don't see this videotape having a major effect on voters. While we've had an abundance of "October Surprise" candidates, this, by my guess, is another dud.

I, for one, am no more or less scared of Al Qaeda attacks than I was before I saw the tape. You?

UPDATE: Blogger reaction, for what it's worth, is starting to pour in. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the main focus is on electoral politics and/or partisan finger-pointing. Far be it from me to criticize an obsession with the upcoming election; on the other hand, I wonder how much to read into the fact that no commenters seem to be frightened for their personal safety. I for one, as a new father and Lower Manhattan resident (and thus as someone with some pretty significant reasons to pay attention), am no more scared than I was before the tape was played. Anyway, on to the roundup:

Ezra from Pandagon sees the electoral effect of the OBL tape as being determined wholly by media conventional wisdom.

Daily Kos journal-keeper DHinMI thinks this is a non-event, electoral politics-wise, despite some panic among that site's commenters.

The Poor Man notes that his working hypothesis, that Bin Laden has been dead for months, appears to have been invalidated.

The Talent Show compares OBL to Cobra Commander (the second blogospheric reference to G.I. Joe that I've come across today).

Chris of Explananda wonders just how old the tape is.

INDC Journal, a conservative blog which has gone from surprisingly reasonable to surprisingly rabid in just a few short months, first sees the OBL announcement as drawn from the Kerry campaign playbook and then finds a way to link Kerry to Bin Laden via boogyman Michael Moore (look, man, we all think he's an ass: it unites America).

One of the many Volokh Conspirators hopes that Bin Laden's claim of responsibility for 9/11 will finally convince Palestinians (and, one supposes, Amiri Baraka) that it was Al Qaeda, and not the Mossad, who was to blame for the attacks.

Billmon breaks his silence to speculate that this is a very effective "October Surprise," that Bush will reap the benefits, and that OBL wants it that way. Jonathan "Head Heeb" Edelstein makes a similar comment here on the Bonassus. Follow his lead: let me know what you think.

UPDATE 2: Juan Cole has some excellent analysis, and points out just how bizarre it is that Bin Laden is adopting the quasi-Wilsonian rhetoric of the Bush administration.

I find myself slightly more convinced than I initially was that this will end up helping Bush. But my own less-than-overwhelmed reaction to the story makes me think that news junkies may be blowing the new tape's electoral effect out of proportion. I also note that for such an alleged media master, it's a bit odd that Bin Laden would choose Friday afternoon as the best time to maximize his message.

UPDATE 3: More commenters.

TalkLeft has another comment round-up and has started collecting conspiracy theories. [Note: I see no reason to believe the tape is faked.]

Joe Gandelman has a typically thorough analysis on his blog, and is assembling a link round-up. Go! Go!

MY BLOGG IZ POSTEDE ON YAY

2004-10-26T18:44:00.000-04:00

Too busy to post much. This Steve Silver post has many lowbrow pleasures to offer, if that is what you seek.

Update on Shofar Man

2004-10-21T10:26:00.000-04:00

Unsurprisingly, the shofar-blowing Yankees fan who I addressed in this open letter failed to make an appearance last night.

On the other hand, the revelers at the Riviera Cafe, a bar down the street from my apartment which is unaccountably dominated by loud Red Sox fans, provided many other (and far more welcome) sound bites long into the early hours of this morning.

While "Let's Go Red Sox", "Who's Your Papi" and "$#@! You, A-Rod" are all wonderful songs sharing the same tune, last night's winner for lyrics to that chant were as follows:

DRUNKEN RED SOX FAN OUTSIDE MY WINDOW:
I'm gonna barf now.
All over my shoes

CROWD:
Do it!
DO IT!
DOOOOO ITTTT!!
(cheers)

UPDATE: Bonassus reader RSPa sends a link to a Boston Herald story explaining why the Riviera is a Red Sox bar, and making me glad I didn't venture down there last night.

BREAKING NEWS

2004-10-21T01:17:00.000-04:00

This just in:

Yankees suck!

Links

2004-10-18T16:18:00.000-04:00

Too busy to post much today, but here are some good reads:

Daniel Drezner gives some well-considered thought to arguments for and against Bush and Kerry.

Charles Kuffner explains why the Supreme Court's rejection of the DeLay Texas redistricting isn't as great as it might initially appear.

Paul from Explananda neatly sums up some arguments against Bush's economic policies.

Phil Carter finds some disturbing evidence of US military overstretch.

Kvelling

2004-10-14T13:46:00.000-04:00

I'm bustin' here.

Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, one of my wife's oldest and closest friends and an all-around wonderful human being, is one of five finalists for this year's fiction National Book Award. Go out and buy a copy of Madeleine is Sleeping right now!

Who Will Win the Debate? When Will We Know?

2004-10-14T09:49:00.000-04:00

Alex at Detached Observer observes:

[I]t seems fairly obvious that conservative bloggers as a group have become little more than spinsters for the Bush/Cheney campaign.

Right after writing the post, I did in fact go to instapundit and saw a deluge of links to bloggers all arguing that Bush had won.

Now when we all debate who won, we are arguing about a falsifiable claim. We are not discussing who had better arguments. We are discussing whose performance will help his campaign more. And we can observe the boost/drop in the polls to see who was right.

Now if you make 3 predictions in a row (Bush won, Cheney won, Bush won) and each one gets falsified by subsequent polls, don't you think it makes sense for you to reconsider the way you made those predictions?

Apparently not. The unanimous opinion among the conservative bloggers is that this was a solid win for Bush. Which explains why I find reading them no more appealing than reading the Bush Cheney official blog.

He's got a point here, no?

There's a little more to the story, though, in my opinion. Alex is, of course, basically correct in his debate-judging criterion. We ought to make a few refinements, though: The candidate who "won" the debate is ultimately he who increased his share of the vote on November 2 by the greatest amount. While it's impossible at this point (and perhaps ever) to crunch the relevant numbers to come up with good estimates of whose vote share changed and how, we do have these snap polls, particularly of undecided voters, to help us guess at who ultimately won each debate. Alex is correct: all have shown Kerry/Edwards victories (hurrah!). In fact, as you can see here and here, the electorate's initial response to last night's debate seems to have been strongly pro-Kerry.

But the lockstep Bush-praising that Instapundit and his ilk are engaged in is less an attempt at impartial judging and more an attempt at revising the conventional wisdom on the debaters' performance. It's the same motivation underlying Kos and Atrios's urging their readers to vote in huge numbers in those silly online polls just after the debates. Get a loud enough chorus of partisans saying their man won, and waverers on the sidelines can be convinced in the face of all other evidence, including their own initial opinions. It sounds stupid, but it seems to work.

I wish I understood the phenomenon better, and I'm no political psychologist, but it does happen: I've seen countless references to the fact that Al Gore was initially thought to have won his debates with GWB four years ago, yet is now remembered as having lost the election on those nights. Instapundit (and Kos) may look ridiculous now, but if their clownish antics result in helping their candidate win the election, they won't seem such asses on November 3.

A Local Note

2004-10-12T15:04:00.000-04:00

Dear Yankees Fan on my Block Who Blows Some Kind of Shofar-Sounding Horn When the Yankees Take a Series:

Thank you for confirming all my prejudices against Yankees fans. Should the Yankees again defeat the Red Sox in the ALCS this year, I plan to rush to my roof to try to spot you so that I may direct baleful glances and muttered curses in your direction at every opportunity for the remainder of my natural life, and possibly from beyond the grave. Should the Red Sox win, my family and I extend our fondest wishes that you will go out onto the street to weep, where we hope to find you and laugh at you.

Until then, I remain

Your Unfriendly Neighbor

Experts From All Sides Agree: Bush Foreign Policy a Disaster

2004-10-12T09:39:00.000-04:00

Oof. "Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy," an ad hoc assemblage of over 650 international relations professors, has released an open letter slamming the Bush administration's "foreign policy":

We judge that the current American policy centered around the war in Iraq is the most misguided one since the Vietnam period, one which harms the cause of the struggle against extreme Islamist terrorists. One result has been a great distortion in the terms of public debate on foreign and national security policy—an emphasis on speculation instead of facts, on mythology instead of calculation, and on misplaced moralizing over considerations of national interest.

There are some important points to be made about this letter. First, this ain't no namby-pamby pabulum-pukin' bunch of liberals (although there are a few signatories meeting this description, perhaps). Many of the most hawkish members of the IR community are signatories, as are some of the field's most prominent names. Kenneth Waltz, founder of "neorealism" and the single most important figure in IR in the past 30 years, has signed. So has John Mearsheimer, known for aggressive, hawkish positions, including advocating a severe reduction in US trade with (and democracy-promotion efforts in) China in order to strangle that country's budding military power. So has Robert Pape, the leading expert on suicide terrorism. So has Jessica Stern, who literally wrote the book on Al Qaeda. The list goes on.

Second, let me offer some (fairly weak) caveats about claiming the letter indicates monolithic IR-scholar opposition to the Bush administration. There are some conspicuously-absent names. Many of the most prominent signatories also signed this earlier open letter (including the legendary Thomas Schelling, who appears not to have signed the SSSFP document), so perhaps the new letter isn't all that surprising. And the footnote-per-paragraph style of the letter probably won't help convince readers that this letter comes from hard-headed analysts rather than tweedy absent-minded ivory tower dwellers.

But after attending seminars and panel discussions with IR scholars from across the political spectrum, after hearing from analysts ranging from reflexive anti-military types to those who see themselves as hard-headed hawks, I can say that there are only a very few security experts who think the Bush administration's foreign policy has been anything but a botched, poorly-thought-out, truly pathetic misadventure. Hopefully the media will report this without pretending that academic opinion, even from hawkish, conservative, Republican-voting security scholars (of whom there are more than a few) is more-or-less balanced: trust me folks, it ain't.

Debate II

2004-10-08T22:28:00.000-04:00

OK, due to a fit of irrational exuberance after watching David Ortiz's walk-off home run, I decided to watch some of the debate. As I've said before, I don't believe that scoring the debate on the merits or on my (admittedly partisan) opinion of the candidates' style is a realistic way of judging the winner of the debate, or of estimating how voters will be swayed by their relative performance.

That being said, here are some quick impressions:

* The President invoked the Dred Scott decision? I guess it was the only one he could think of. Truly bizarre.

* Some of the President's verbal tics remind me of no one so much as David Brent from The Office, particularly when he smiles, nods, and says a questionably-relevant one-buzzword sentence like "morality" or "strength."

* Everybody's going to be talking about Kerry's poorly-explained reference to GWB's "timber company", and Bush's equally weird response. Bizarre.

Proud to Be from Oklahoma, But Sometimes...

2004-10-06T17:50:00.000-04:00

My home state of Oklahoma made the news twice today. First, the state government agency charged with promoting Oklahoma has proven itself inept:

OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma (Reuters) -- Oklahoma tourism officials have recalled about 200,000 brochures with images of activities that may have seemed uninviting to some travelers, such as cow manure tossing and re-enacting Confederate battles, officials said Wednesday.

The pamphlet, called 2005 Annual Events Guide, featured events and activities throughout Oklahoma. It was also riddled with spelling, grammatical and factual mistakes.

"We discovered the material in the event guide was culturally insensitive and contained errors," said state tourism director Rob Gray.

Look, I grew up there, and while we certainly spent most of our time throwing around excrement and saying "uh...do whaaahhtt?" once in a big while we'd do something more appealing to tourists, like watch a hawk making lazy circles in the sky or something. Surely the state tourism bureau could have found some pictures of that.

Now from the ridiculous to the absolutely appalling: while the state government was busy living up to stereotypes of public sector incompetence and Oklahoman yokeldom, the national Republican Party was finding ways to pander to the racists they bank on for electoral support. The NRSC has produced a new ad attacking Oklahoma's Democratic candidate for Senator, Rep. Brad Carson, for his stance on immigration policy. The ad bears more than a passing resemblance to the infamous "White Hands" Jesse Helms ad from 1990, and the national Democratic party is trying to draw attention to this nasty little tactic. If you're as disgusted by the commercial as I am, head on over to Brad Carson's website and supply some countervailing resources.

As bad as all this might make the state look, at least it's not Texas, further proof of which will be found this Saturday when the University of Oklahoma soundly defeats the University of Texas. Patrick at Ducks and Drakes is sounding the drumbeat...

UPDATE: Take three elements from the above post {aspects of Oklahoma culture that outsiders may find unattractive, Brad Carson's Senatorial campaign, and OU football}, and mix gently. The result: Former OU football coach Barry Switzer, a folk hero in the Sooner State despite an occasional ethical misstep, is now appearing in TV ads praising Carson as a bona fide conservative and "the only candidate in this race who we can trust to fight for Oklahoma." This is a massive coup for the Carson campaign: short of a televised message from Jesus himself, I can't imagine a more powerful endorser than Switzer. Seriously.

Incidentally, Switzer is often cited as the coiner of the jape about "being born on third base and thinking he hit a triple." He wasn't referring to a member of the Bush family, but I believe he's the original source of the phrase. Also, perhaps surprisingly, Switzer has done a lot of campaigning for Democrats during this election cycle, publicly endorsing John Edwards during the primary season. I'm not overly happy about the fact that sports figures are accorded such respect by Oklahoma voters (it got Steve Largent elected to Congress, after all), but given that it's a fact, I'm happy to see Switzer moving the ball for the Democrats.

Race for the Pole

2004-10-05T15:20:00.000-04:00

As regular readers of this site are well aware, conflict is brewing up north. I've ridiculed Canada-Denmark tensions over uninhabited Hans Island on numerous occasions, but there are two deadly serious stories underlying this saga.

First, as reported today by the BBC, Denmark has announced that it is making a concerted effort to strengthen its claims to the North Pole for the explicit purpose of developing oil and natural gas fields.

Danish scientists hope to prove through hi-tech measurements that Greenland's continental socket is attached to a huge ridge beneath the floating Arctic ice, the Associated Press reports.

The country has allocated 150 million kroner ($25m) for the project on the Lomonosov Ridge and four other potential claim areas around Greenland, reports say.

Science Minister Helge Sander said last week that success would give Denmark access to "new resources such as oil and natural gas".

The Danish bid also rests on a UN convention that allows coastal nations to claim rights to offshore seabed resources.

Countries that ratify it have 10 years to prove they have a fair claim to the offshore territory and its resources.

"First, we have to make the scientific claim. After that, there will be a political process with the other countries," science ministry official Thorkild Meedom said.

But experts have warned that it could take years to sort out the overlapping potential claims in the Arctic.

Canada and Russia are making similar investigations around the North Pole, the Associated Press reports.

I'll have more on the Danish initiative within the next week.

The second story, which I've alluded to a few times before, is Canada's difficulty in making an effective claim to its northern reaches. Today's submarine accident involving a Canadian vessel, which I hope is resolved without loss of life, is another sign of Canada's military weakness. As long as Denmark is relying on treaties to back up its territorial claims, this isn't an issue. But Denmark's maneuvers around Hans Island do appear to be an indicator that it is willing to mobilize other resources to back up its territorial rights.

Canada's sparse population and poor power-projection capability have left it in a very odd position vis-a-vis its northern hinterlands. The inhospitable climate and low-enough energy prices have so far kept oil-seeking marauders away (unless one counts the occasional US icebreaker or great power submarine), but this situation may no longer hold. I'm unaware of recent analagous situations where a wealthy, highly-developed country faces pressure to defend its boundaries against treaty partners. I'm also unaware of studies focusing on one of the relevant pieces of the story: Canada's sparse northern population. The only book I know of making use of poor central control over hinterlands as an explanatory variable is Jeffrey Herbst's superbStates and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (2000). Do Bonassusites have any ideas for books I should be reading?

Debate I

2004-10-03T13:29:00.000-04:00

I've gotten a number of e-mails asking me my thoughts about the first presidential debate. I actually didn't watch it. But that won't stop me from commenting on it. 'Cause the debate itself is meaningless. It's the conventional wisdom about who won the debate that actually matters, electorally. And of course, the debate has absolutely no importance when it comes to actual policymaking, now or in the future.

The conventional wisdom, at this early date (three days after the debate), appears to be that John Kerry won handily. But the debate is still occurring, or rather its importance is still being determined. As far as I can tell, the dominant impression that the debate engendered was that Bush looked unprepared, foolish, and tired. I'm not sure this is the best of all possible worlds for the Kerry campaign, but it'll have to do.

In order to do my part to help spread the "Bush is incompetent" meme (which, oddly, still needs doing), I hereby present this link to a video of Bush's debate performance, which shows him repeatedly failing to make a coherent point and looking anything but presidential. I urge all my rabidly-partisan readers to e-mail it around as widely as they can.

Mt. St. Helens

2004-10-01T16:45:00.000-04:00

Now Mt. St. Helens is erupting. This is the 5th natural disaster to befall a swing state in the past few weeks (the first four were hurricanes hitting Florida, for those of you who were asleep). Is this evidence that Halliburton is bidding to take over the Red Cross, or that John Kerry will flip-flop on FEMA funding? Discuss.

(Who the hell was St. Helens, you ask?

Mount St. Helens was named by explorer George Vancouver to honor his friend, Alleyne Fitzherbert. Apparently "Mount Fitzherbert" sounded stupid to Vancouver, so he chose to go with his friend's title, Baron St. Helens, instead. As far as I can tell, the title comes from the English borough of St. Helens, itself being named for a church found there which is dedicated to Saint Helen. Either the apostrophe was lost at some point(probably by the Baron or some other dumbass aristocrat) or the church's founders wanted to honor the many St. Helens described on this page in equal measure.

I hope this teaches you to ask questions.

Also, this information is based on no more than 4.5 minutes of Googling, and is therefore likely incorrect in at least two ways).

Register to Vote: Deadlines Start Tomorrow

2004-10-01T14:47:00.000-04:00

I didn't watch the damn debate. So I have nothing to say on the matter.

I do have this to say, though: if you're eligible to vote in the US and you haven't yet registered, you're running out of time. In many states the registration window closes this weekend.

Don't know whether you're legally eligible? Don't know what your state's deadline is? Don't know where to go to register? Registered but not sure where to vote? Check this site for all the info you need.

Saved By Hazing

2004-09-30T13:11:00.000-04:00

Sometimes the conventions of serious journalism stand in the way of telling the TRUTH. Other bloggers have pointed out how misplaced notions of "telling both sides of the story" create mistaken impressions (that global climate change may be a myth, for example).

But this isn't the whole story. There are other problematic journalistic conventions which must be addressed as well.

As an example, check out this AP story:

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Cleveland Indians pitcher Kyle Denney was shot in the right calf while riding on the team bus as it was traveling to Kansas City International Airport late Wednesday night.

Denney was not seriously injured. The bullet did not go very deep and was immediately removed by Indians trainers. The rookie right-hander was taken to a hospital, and although team spokesman Bart Swain had said he was expected to spend the night, a police spokesman said Denney was treated and released.

So there's the who what where and when. And why?

Another police spokesman, Sgt. Tony Sanders, said people on the bus reported hearing "what sounded like a firecracker" and then realized that it was a gunshot. He said the investigation was hampered a bit by the fact that the bus continued on to the airport before police were called.

He appealed for calls from anyone who was in the area at the time.

"We are doing out best to find out what happened, and we think somebody might have seen something," Sanders said.

Sanders said later that a tip had led to identification of a possible suspect, who was not in custody.

OK, so no one knows why. That's fine.

But why oh why does one have to read the whole story to get to this detail?

As part of a rookie hazing ritual, Denney was wearing a USC cheerleader's outfit, including high white boots, on the trip to the airport.

"Our trainers said the boots may have saved Kyle from further injury," Swain said.

Hey, AP! THIS is what people want (and need!) to know! The NY Post has many faults, but trust me, missing this kind of story is not one of them. Shame, shame on the Associated Press.

Canadian Malaise

2004-09-29T13:54:00.000-04:00

The New York Times has an article today on the malaise afflicting Canadians engaged in nationalist omphaloskepsis:

As one of Canada's pre-eminent historians, David Bercuson of the University of Calgary is not your average couch potato. But with beer in hand and feet up on the sofa, he watched the Olympics on television last month to cheer on the world champion hurdler Perdita Félicien to win a gold medal for Canada.

When Ms. Félicien inexplicably stumbled into the very first hurdle like a rank amateur, Mr. Bercuson dashed straight to his computer. He knocked out a screed declaring that her sad performance, and that of the entire Canadian Olympic team, was just another symptom of "the national malaise'' that is making Canada a second-rate, uncompetitive nation.

"It's not the individual performers whose shortcomings are on display for all the world to see,'' he wrote in an op-ed article for The Calgary Herald. "It is the very spirit of the nation and the sickness that now has hold of it that is at fault.''

His acidic commentary is characteristic of the view of a growing number of historians, foreign policy thinkers and columnists from some of the nation's top newspapers. Many see themselves as part of an informal school that has no name or single mentor, but all are writing the same assessment: Canada is in decline, or at the very least, has fallen short of their aspirations.

For these thinkers, Canada is adrift at home and wilting as a player on the world stage. It is dogged by not only uninspired leaders but also by a lack of national purpose, stunted imagination and befuddled priorities even as its economy prospers.

"I'm in almost total despair,'' Michael Bliss, a University of Toronto historian, said in an interview. "You have a country, but what is it for and what is it doing?''

The article goes on to discuss the travails of Canadian health care and hockey, but strangely omits mention of the fact that Canada finally lost one of its only two Major League Baseball franchises today.

I'm not sure what to suggest. Personally, I think that ratcheting up Canada's fiery-hot conflict with Denmark is not the way to go to pull our neighbors to the north out of their collective funk.

Another option seemingly on the table is beating Americans at their own game: creating horrible, loathsome TV shows. There may be some who believe that this appalling cultural invasion of the US airwaves will do the trick, but I can't imagine (and indeed pray against) this show's being a success. [Side question: Why are Canadian pop musicians (except A.C. Newman and Neil Young) generally so awful? Check out this list for proof that this is the case. Note that I am not saying anything negative about Canadian jazz vocalists.)]

What should Canada do? This descendent of Alberta's tiny Jewish cattle-ranching community wants to know...