Rice conspiracy explained.

Ok, it's not exactly explained.  However, Rachel Maddow has proffered as reasonable an explanation as any--indeed, it may look like a conspiracy theory, but it's far less crazy than the Susan Rice conspiracy theory.  What happens if Susan Rice is not nominated?  The GOP is suggesting that they'd confirm John Kerry for Secretary of State with no fuss.  If Kerry is nominated, his senate seat opens up and Scott Brown can run for the Massachusetts seat.  Worth a gander here.

McCain's World.

John McCain seems to have lost touch with reality.  Last week he called for hearings on the Benghazi fiasco, which hearings he then missed because he has several more television appearances scheduled so that he could call for hearings on Benghazi.  His questions about Rice have been answered (including the question as to who changed the talking points).  His suggestion that Rice should have used some of the knowledge she gained from the intelligence community to bolster her report to the American people stretches the bounds of good logic--what she knew apart from what she said was classified; this has been the issue all along.  Now he is comparing Benghazi to the death of Bin Laden.  Indeed, he actually called for the release of a photo of POTUS in the situation room watching the Benghazi affair go down just as we saw a photo of POTUS watching the Bin Laden raid go down.  Of course, the former does not exist because the Benghazi attack was not orchestrated by the US.  Were it the case that that photo existed, then we'd have a real conspiracy on our hands.

[READ MORE]

Why is Glenn Beck no longer on Fox?

Here's just one reason.

Dr. Seuss was a douche!

I often use this political ad by Dr. Seuss to demonstrate bad logic to students.  Dr. Seuss lived in a different time, and so I can give him a pass.  Fox News, on the other hand, presented this headline this morning:

Unless your backyard happens to be a prison yard, this seems like an empty threat.

"Fair share" revisited.

Robert Reich makes an interesting case for raising taxes on the wealthy.  Nevertheless, he includes that terribly vacuous argument that the rich should "pay their fair share".  This is indeed true (true of all citizens, in fact).  However, you cannot make such an argument without defining what you mean by "fair share"--Quantity?  Percentage?  Capacity?  Otherwise, this argument has no meaning whatsoever.

Backwards logic.

While the accusations against Susan Rice are beginning to simmer down, one would expect the opposition to her nomination (which has not been made yet) would take a calmer tone.  Rep. Jeff Duncan has decided to double down, instead, claiming that Rice has been "tainted" by this whole Benghazi affair.  Of course she has, because your party tainted her.  It's a little like throwing a pile of shit at someone and then complaining that he stinks of shit.

This is a brilliant tactic--1. Question the credibility of your opponent; 2. Once her credibility has been restored, argue that it doesn't matter because her reputation has been smeared (with no recognition that you are the one who smeared her). 

(This is not an endorsement of Susan Rice for Secretary of State).

Marginal Tax Rates Explained (in part).

Small businesses and those on the lower end of the wealthy (those making around $250,000) seem to have found a way to make it through the fiscal cliff and Obamacare.  If the cliff is avoided by raising taxes on those who make over $250,000, these top earners and small businesses will simply make sure they do not earn more than $249,000 in a year.  After all, after you pass the magic number, your tax rate goes up, right?  Sort of.  A marginal tax rate doesn't quite work that way.  After an earner passes $250,000, his or her tax rate goes up, but only on what he or she has earned beyond $250,000.  That is, if you make $260,000 in a year, only $10,000 of that will be taxed at a higher rate.  Thus, if you try and keep your income below that magic number, you're only screwing yourself.  If you're going to invite a small business expert on your show, this is one of the things he should know--and if you are going to play the journalist on your show, you should call him out if he doesn't know this basic fact.

More info here, and here.

(This is not an endorsement for raising taxes).

RedState.com is seeing red.

Erick Erickson over at RedState.com objects to the recent CNN.com article which includes RedState and Erickson personally on its list of arch-conservatives who are in denial over Obama's reelection.  Indeed, Erickson shows clearly that he and his blog have not only not denied the reelection, but that he has explicitly claimed there was no fraud, and that Obama won the election "fair and square".  Nevertheless, Erickson's reading of the CNN article is superficial at best.  The CNN article does discuss actual deniers (those who claim the election was rigged, unfair, unconstitutional, etc.).  But there is a deeper sense of denial--denial not merely of the fact of Obama's reelection, but denial as to the reason for his reelection.

The problem is that Erickson, though he accepts the reelection itself, denies the reason for Obama's reelection.  Claiming that conservatives did not communicate their principles clearly is not supported by the evidence: ask Todd Akin.

Wild and unsubstantiated accusations.

The non-scandal of Susan Rice's involvement with the Benghazi attack has been unraveling in the last days.  John McCain and Lindsey Graham have been leading the charge against Rice, claiming that she must have lied to protect the Obama administration just before the election.  As it turns out, not only was there no evidence when McCain and Graham began making these accusations; there is now evidence to the contrary--the CIA gave her certain talking points she was allowed to cover, and redacted certain others (including any mention of al Qaeda).  The Washington Post editorial board just published a column calling the GOP attacks bizarre, and pointing out why they are so bizarre.  Nevertheless, the article, which reveals the stupidity of wild, unsubstantiated accusation, ends with one of its own.

The WP editorial board may be correct, but simply indicating the skin color of a certain percentage of the signatories does not make this speculation any less wild than the bizarre GOP attacks they've just described.

McCain's pathetic apology.

I was a fan of John McCain during most of the 2008 election.  I admit, I liked him as the lesser of several evils, but he represented a more moderate Republican (for most of his campaign).  Lately, however, he's been more and more extreme, some say in order to avoid becoming obsolete.  Last Sunday he was pounding the media pavement to get his point across--indeed, we was so busy calling for hearings on Benghazi that he missed the first hearing on Benghazi.  His most relevant statements had to do with Susan Rice and the speculation as to whether she may be nominated to replace Hillary Clinton.  McCain drew a line in the sand, claiming not only that he would filibuster her nomination for Secretary of State, but that he would oppose any and all of President Obama's nominees.  His problem with Rice had to do with her report after the 9/11 attack in Benghazi.  He claimed that she was either incompetent or a liar for not having included references to al Qaeda in the report.  As it turns out, the al Qaeda references were redacted by the CIA, as everyone had been telling McCain.  McCain has finally conceded the point, but while he is big enough to call Rice a liar on national television, his apology has appeared on his web site only. 

The deficit is shrinking.

The deficit is shrinking at a really fast pace.  In the last three years the deficit has gone from 10% of GDP to 7%.  Here are the various charts that are floating around. (Continued below).

This is good news, certainly.  But it doesn't mean that all our problems are solved.  As Slate's Matthew Yglesias points out, the deficit reduction is not a matter of successful economic policy by the Obama administration, but is, at least in part, "the flipside of the huge increases in the deficit that were associated with the recession."  And Mother Jones points out that a deficit that is too small can be just as dangerous as a deficit which is too big.  So, the upshot is that the conversation about the fiscal cliff need not include the question of the size of the deficit. 

Now that's hard hitting journalism.

If you try hard enough (or not at all) you can turn any story into a potential scandal.  America has questions, Channel 5 News has answers.

Ever wonder...?

Do you ever wonder how these incredibly busy pundits and politicos turn out so many books while doing their radio shows, interviews, attending fund-raisers and speaking events?  Simple: they don't.

Just because it's new, doesn't mean it's News!

In the past days many bloggers, pundits, journos and commentators have been discussing the Marco Rubio interview in GQ.  In my own blog I pointed to some of the more interesting comments on Rubio's evasion of the question in Paul Krugman's blog over at the New York Times.  More recently, several news organizations and blogs have struck back, defending Rubio and/or attacking media coverage of the story by pointing out that then Senator Obama made almost identical statements at a conference in 2008.

Slate.com's approach to the allegedly unbalanced way the media has treated the story was to note that "willful ignorance of science is a bipartisan value".  Michelle Malkin's approach is characteristic, relying heavily on tone and question-begging epithets:

In general, people love to point out hypocrisy; and one could claim that that is what is going on here.  Nevertheless, while pointing out hypocrisy may be somehow satisfying, it is logically irrelevant, and certainly has no bearing on what makes the news.  If I were to critique Rubio's position while maintaining the same position myself, I would be a hypocrite.  However, that would not invalidate my critique, nor would it make my position newsworthy, because I do not have the same standing as Senator Rubio.  Of course the president is newsworthy in this sense.  Nevertheless, "the president said it too" is not newsworthy either.  Why?  Because the issue is not who believes in creationism and who believes in evolution in Washington.  The issue is that certain politicians, and especially politicians on the right, use their religious belief to make policy.  In that sense, their beliefs are relevant and newsworthy.  And, in that same sense, what the president believes regarding creation is about as newsworthy as whether he prefers Tolstoy or Dostoevsky.

Rubio's ruin?

The online world has been all a-Twitter about Marco Rubio's comments regarding the age of the Earth in a recent GC article. Some are defending him--after all, he wisely did not answer the question. Others are ridiculing him--after all, this is a rather basic piece of knowledge about the physical universe.  Paul Krugman has presented one of the more interesting and intelligent analyses I've seen so far (except for his last conclusion, which is a hasty generalization and should have been omitted). Rubio, in his response to the question, claimed, "the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow." Krugman astutely points out that the growth of the economy (certainly in the long term) is connected to education. Rubio's silence on the issue seems to imply that there are two good answers to the question: a) the Bible says the world (not merely the earth) is around 6000 years old; b) physics and geology say that the Earth (and, indeed, the whole solar system) is around five billion years old.  I think it is important to teach the Bible in our schools (and, in fact, I do)--we are speaking of one of the most influential books in the Western Canon. Nevertheless, the Bible should not be taught as if it were physics (I resent having to make this point). Physics should be taught as physics. There is room for disagreement as to the age of the universe, even among physicists.  However, the options are somewhere between 13.5 billion and 15 billion years--6000 is not on the list. The future of all economies is in technology (energy, sustainability, personal computing, etc.). If the US economy is to advance in the long term, science must be a central and strong feature of our education system. By the way, this does not change the status nor the importance of the Bible (virtually none of the church fathers, for example, believed that Genesis should be interpreted literally--nevertheless, none of them are thought to have betrayed the faith). Indeed, it opens up the beauty of what its authors were trying to convey.

There's bad journalism and then there's bad journalism.

I've made this case before, but it keeps popping up--so, I'll give it one more go and then try to let it rest.  Pew Research has released another very interesting report on coverage of the 2012 presidential race.  Among its recent findings it turns out that in the last week before the general election MSNBC presented no positive political coverage of Romney and no negative coverage of Obama.  They compare this to Fox News' coverage in the following graph:

The differences are indeed striking, but not at all conclusive of anything but the facts (viz., MSNBC presented no positive Romney stories and no negative Obama stories).  Notice that what is striking is not the positive to negative gap on the Obama side--the gap is precisely the inverse on the Fox side (51 points)--but the fact that there were no negative reports on Obama, and no positive on Romney.  However, this is not philosophically impossible.  One might run similar research on reports regarding Donald Trump (on any station at any time of the year).  Were you to find a network that ran an equal number of positive and negative stories on Trump, I'd suggest you watch a different channel.  Nevertheless, News Busters today posted a blog regarding this research.  Their conclusion was that this is "disgraceful".  Notice there is absolutely no analysis, just a presentation of the numbers.
At the same time, Media Matters just posted this blog regarding Walmart's handling of unions and strikers.  I hate to have to say it, but to be sure--I am not arguing in favor of unions, nor am I arguing in favor of Walmart, I am arguing in favor of reasonable and proper journalism.  Notice that, regardless of what you think of the story and the actors in it, this is a conflict of interest, and should have been avoided, or declared as such.

I wonder...

...if these models know how their stock photos are being used.

Blogger boggles the mind.

You may know of Pamela Geller, author of the Atlas Shrugs blog, and, more notably, the woman responsible for this ad running in several states:

She has exercised her right to free speech, having paid to place this ad in subways and buses.  I respect that right.  She has a hard time understanding why people may find the use of the word savage offensive.  After all, the word simply means uncivilized, does it not?  Well, sort of.  Its primary meaning is untamed or wild, indeed.  But it tended to imply beast rather than beastly when used to refer to African or American natives during colonization.  In this sense, the word was used to imply that such persons were not human, and therefore did not have souls--today, you might use neanderthal as a synonym to imply one is not a homo sapiens sapiens.  But that is a different point.  Rather, today she wants to argue against a gentleman (apparently he has been less than gentlemanly in other contexts, but that is, again, a different issue).  Instead, she has decided to take on a religious point: the meaning of the word jihad.  In her most recent post, she includes an interview with Ahmed Rehab, a spokesman for Hamas-CAIR.  Quite apart from the question of the intentions of this group, Rehab claims that jihad means spiritual struggle, and that it does not have to indicate a violent struggle or war.  In response to Rehab (whose intentions may be nefarious), Geller decides to wax theological (not to say philological).

I am no fan of violent jihad, nor of religious war of any sort.  Nevertheless, Geller should stick to what she is good at: making up funny question-begging epithets (I particularly like 'enemedia').  There is a long history (over 1000 years) of interpreting jihad to mean inner struggle in a spiritual sense.  Many followers of Mohamed (certainly not all) have tried to steer away from certain violent aspects of the Qur'an, just as many Christians and Jews have reinterpreted parts of the Old Testament to find meaning in aspects of our past with which we no longer agree.  The Qur'an often uses the word jihad to mean the struggle or cause (generally of Allah, it would appear).  Different sects interpret this in different ways, some placing emphasis on holy war.  But for Geller to call this a lie is factually incorrect.  Rehab may be disingenuous, but that is another matter; though I would have  more respect for Geller--read: any--had she simply said that.

Her criticisms of Dan Ponce, the journalist (read: enemedia) who interviewed Rehab, are likewise incomprehensible.  She wants to know why Ponce did not ask Rehab certain questions about his alleged crack-pot positions on terrorism (see the bottom of her blog entry).  The simple answer is: because it is a report about how the Muslim community (and the broader local communities) are reacting to her ads.  Those questions seem interesting to me, and I might like to hear the answer.  But here they would be entirely irrelevant.  Ponce may have chosen his interviewee poorly.  Once again, that would have been an intelligent point on Geller's part.  Too bad she did make it.

You're not making the compelling case you think you are.

Free speech is a double edged sword--what is mean is not that there are good aspects and bad--all aspects are good, in principle.  However, the same freedom of speech which defends your right to say stupid shit also defends my right to call what you say "stupid shit".  You may not like it, you may disagree, but you cannot claim that I am violating your freedom of speech without rejecting your own (that is how these rights work).  Nevertheless, when the president of Fordham chided the campus Republicans for inviting Ann Coulter to speak, Fox and WSJ descried this as a kind of censorship.  The result was that the campus Republicans rescinded their invitation.  This seems to me a free speech success--the university's president criticized Coulter as intentionally inflicting pain on others race, sex, sexual orientation, or creed.  Whether or not you agree with his assessment, he made an argument rather than a proscription--he did not censor the campus Republicans, he shared his opinion with them.  They agreed and changed their minds.  How can this be anything but a free speech victory?

Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/free-speech-campus/2012/11/18/wsj-how-free-speech-died-campus#ixzz2CbNe4ScX

intentionally inflict pain on another human being because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or creed

Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/free-speech-campus/2012/11/18/wsj-how-free-speech-died-campus#ixzz2CbNe4ScX

Maverick McCain?

I remember when John McCain was a moderate, calling himself a maverick for breaking rank with GOP talking points.  Recently he seems to have been tacking to the other extreme, suggesting he would filibuster Susan Rice's nomination as Secretary of State.  Now he is saying he will support no nominee for Secretary of State.  Regardless of how one feels about Rice, the position needs to be filled.  How is this a reasonable (much less moderate) stance? [ARTICLE]

Lack of evidence is evidence of nothing.

The Petraeus scandal and the Benghazi affair are both still unraveling.  They are both extremely important stories, no doubt, having foreign policy as well as national security implications.  It may turn out that the White House mishandled one or both.  Nevertheless, there is no evidence of such malfeasance or incompetence as yet.  This does not prevent the GOP from creating certain conspiracy theories prior to the presentation of any evidence.  At first, they presented arguments from coincidence, not realizing that that is a self-defeating argument--if it were a coincidence, it cannot have been an orchestrated conspiracy (look up the definition of coincidence).  But it seems certain commentators are taking it down a notch.  Why look for evidence when a lack of evidence will work just as well. 

In logic, we call this an appeal to ignorance--the attempt to use lack of evidence as evidence. 

God wants you to vote!

The separation of church and state does not mean that the individual voter should not consider his religious belief(s) in how he will vote.  Nevertheless, one should make sure his conscience is not self-contradictory, before he uses it as a measuring stick by which he chooses a candidate.

Rev. Franklin Graham says, in one and the same sentence, that God is in control and that evangelicals have no one to blame but themselves.  Not only are Graham's facts off, but the sentence is self-contradictory.

News Busted, like Jon Stewart, but neither funny, relevant nor accurate.

And incredibly classless to boot.  I like political satire, and I do not have to agree with the comments to appreciate the humor.  Nevertheless, News Busted just posted their latest episode providing the following exhortation to watch:

I shall not provide a link to the video for obvious reasons.  Nevertheless, I do recommend you go to their Twitter page (@newsbusters) and tell them what you think.

All I want for Christmas...

Is systematic extermination of homosexuals in Uganda.  This is apparently how Ugandan clerics expressed their desire for the passage of Uganda's so-called "kill the gays bill".  'Some Christian clerics at the meeting in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, asked the speaker to pass the law as 'a Christmas gift.'"  To a certain degree, the story is old news.  Rachel Maddow has been reporting on the bill and the involvement of US legislators in encouraging its passage for some time:

Nevertheless, last Monday it seems the bill was passed and will take effect in the new year (Merry Christmas AND Happy New Year!) [ARTICLE]  What I find disturbing today, is that it is not being reported more broadly in the news.  Here's what you get if you search "Uganda" over at CNN:

And Fox:

And if you search at MSNBC, you'll find it last:

Geraldo is the voice of moderation at Fox News

I remember when Geraldo Rivera was not considered a reliable journalist, and perhaps he is still not.  Nevertheless, by comparison to his Fox colleagues on the issue of the connection between the Petraeus scandal and Benghazi, he provides a voice of moderation--suggesting one may be skeptical without drawing conclusions not supported by available evidence--if not of reason.  VIDEO

Klingons need saving too!

I've noted previously that several economic and political analysts suggest that 'fiscal cliff' is a misnomer.  Some are now suggesting that we should be talking, instead, about an 'austerity bomb'.  What is intended by this is that, if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire, then the budget will simply be too small to pay for all the programs currently in place.  As I understand it, if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire, there will  be an automatic series of cuts, including significant cuts to the defense budget.  Defense hawks are worried that this could cripple national security.  Not necessarily:

(Full article).

McCain wants answers...

But not as much as he wants to be on television.

Notice, by the way, that skipping the meeting hasn't prevented McCain from drawing conclusions (full article):

NB: Although I hate having to do this, I must point out what is not implied by this post.  I am not implying that Benghazi was not a total disaster.  I am not implying that the White House is not to blame.  I am simply suggesting that, if McCain wants information, perhaps he should show up to the meeting.  And if he is going to skip the meeting, he might consider living by the rule: "It is better to keep silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and prove the point".

A terrible argument with a true conclusion.

I try to be logically consistent--which is to say that I try not to contradict myself.  Nevertheless, I am sure I do some times.  At times it is because my opinion has changed on an issue (in this sense, I am not embarrassed in the least by my contradictions, which are a sign of growth and learning).  Other times I have not fully understood an issue from all angles.  But I try not to contradict myself within the course of one and the same argument.  Jennifer Rubin, WP blogger, has an interesting article today on the problems with the primary process (at least on the GOP side).  Her conclusions (as ideas, not as conclusions) are quite interesting.

Nevertheless, good logic is not a matter of good conclusions (only), but of strong premises.  In the course of her argument, Rubin claims that the test of a GOP candidate has become to narrow:

The problem is the second half of this part of the argument:

You cannot claim both that the strainer is incredibly fine and that Romney somehow made it through.  Romney conformed to almost none of the conditions Rubin has described in the second paragraph above--he's not a life-long conservative by most standards; his position on immigration included the insane notion of "self-deportation"; he had little blue-collar appeal (47% remark did not endear him to this demographic); and he did little to wow conservatives with his rhetoric.  So, if you read her article today, just skip to the end:

What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO?

If you're a news organization with almost 500,000 followers on Twitter, what do you do with that powerful voice?  Apparently this:

Simpson Bowles vs. Tax Hikes.

In the interest of keeping informed, I am trying to follow all the important news on the so-called fiscal cliff.  Among other things, it is important to note that there is not a chance the US will fall off the fiscal cliff--if the US finds itself crushed at the bottom of it in January of 2013, it is because the Congress willfully drove over that cliff.  All Congress needs to do to avoid such an eventuality is come to an agreement on the Bush Tax Cuts--that is, do their job.  Some are arguing that the Bush cuts should be allowed to expire for the top bracket earners (over $250,000), while others are in favor of the Simpson-Bowles tax reform.  Today, Ezra Klein says, "letting the Bush tax cuts for income over $250,000 expire is Simpson-Bowles style tax reform."  Worth a read.

Sometimes, where there's smoke there is just smoke.

President Obama won 100% of the vote in 59 precincts in Philadelphia.  This sounds an awful lot like the kind of percentage one expects in a dictatorship.  After all, isn't it statistically impossible to win by such a margin?  In a country (with a diverse population), yes.  But not in a precinct with homogeneous demographics.

(Full article).
Certain watchers cried, "foul!" regarding what appeared to be %150 voter turnout in certain parts of south Florida.  As it turns out, sometimes, where there is smoke there is just smoke.  The county simply counted each page of the ballot rather than each ballot: turnout was half of what was reported (two pages per ballot).  There may have been some serious glitches in this election, but Philly and south Florida provide no evidence of systematic fraud (yet, in any case).

Long live the Planet of Alderaan.

Governor Rick Perry has dismissed talk of Texas' secession from the Union.  I wonder how he feels about these other petitions.

Obama tax hike will kill small businesses.

I begin with a clarification: this post does not imply that I support a tax hike on those making more than $250,000/year.  Nevertheless, I find it incomprehensible that politicians could lie so brazenly when technology provides the public with ways of uncovering their tall tales. 

There are good arguments against such tax hikes.  There are also bad arguments.  And then there are simple falsehoods.  Here is the full report from factcheck.org.

Senators who stare at goats.

Dear citizens of Georgia,

This is what your GOP state senators are doing with your tax dollars.

Sincerely,

The Idiot Whisperer.

Neologism alert!

to fivethirtyeight--v.t., to accurately predict the outcome of a political event, especially one which involves voting, using Nate Silver's 'special sauce'; 

to be broadwelled--v.p., to have your dirty laundry, especially of the digital sort, publicly aired, especially by someone you were f@cking and who ultimately f@cked you.

These were in my Twitter feed this morning--one right after the other.  Which do you think will last?

How do you measure a politician's intelligence?

Not, one would hope, by whether or no he or she can count.  As I've recently posted, certain politicos are arguing that Paul Ryan should replace John Boehner as Speaker of the House.  I agree with both Redstate.com and Rachel Maddow that Boehner is bad at his job.  Boehner is far too weak a leader to be effective as Speaker (say what you want about Pelosi's positions, she was certainly not weak).  However, Paul Ryan would not be a suitable Speaker in the least.  He is certainly not weak--the man simply cannot count.

(Full article)
I continue to reject the notion of a 'mandate', but it remains the case that Romney/Ryan got walloped no matter how you look at it.

(NB, Romney and Ryan lost the EC by 333-206, not 232-206).

Boehner vs. Ryan for Speaker

Both RedState.com and Twitchy.com are pushing the "replace Boehner with Ryan as Speaker of the House" narrative today.  The Red State article is absolutely brilliant.

I'm not a huge fan of Boehner, but that is beside the point.  Notice that his offenses include compromise and recognizing the Supreme Court's decision on the Affordable Care Act.  But the suggestion that Ryan would make a good replacement is laughable.  Here's a list of his qualifications:

Montreal, ne demissione pas!

An article in today's Montreal Gazette addresses Montreal's "image problem".  Apparently Torontonians are poking fun at our fair city, largely because of the current myriad of corruption scandals as well as the student protests over the Summer.  As a result, Mario Daigle and his advertising firm Kbs+p have begun a campaign to polish our city's reputation (complete with Facebook page, where you can 'like' Montreal).  The name of the page is Montreal, ne demissionne pas (Montreal, don't quit!).  The name is a "play on the recent resignation of Mayor Gerald Tremblay".  There is no doubt that the extreme corruption, which is still being uncovered, is a tarnish on Montreal's reputation.  However, the ad firm has failed to understand the true import of of their slogan. The key point is that Tremblay resigned, indeed, was forced by the citizens to resign.  As for the protests, regardless of how you feel about tuition hikes, Montrealers took to the streets to fight an injustice (bill 78, police abuse, STM complicity).  This is not a tarnish--this is what makes Montreal a great city.  Notice, Tremblay is not the only politician Montrealers forced out of office recently (yoohoo, Charest!).  If you want Montreal to renew its reputation as the funnest city in Canada, with the best nightlife and whatnot, you've got no idea what makes a city great.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

After Rove's poor performance on Fox News last week, he's looking forward to speaking at the Kansas Livestock Association (nothing against cows, Kansas or associations).  On the other hand...

Watching the Detectives.

Here's an interesting take on the Petraeus scandal.  Many are upset about Petraeus' betrayal, others are annoyed that the public (and the FBI) would be concerned about Petraeus' personal business.  But apparently the whole investigation began as a favor for Jill Kelley by an unnamed FBI agent.  Kelley had received some strange (and, it would seem, not really threatening--"what do you think you are doing", "take it down a notch") emails, and asked her friend, an FBI agent, to look into it.  The result was an investigation of, first, General Petraeus, and now General Allen (the FBI has uncovered between 20,000 and 30,000 email communications between Allen and Kelley).  Nevertheless, such an investigation was only possible because of the Patriot Act/Warrantless Wire-tap culture of the US national security system.  Normally, such an investigation can only be conducted if there is evidence of a crime committed (or that a crime is about to be committed).  I am not fully aware of the differences between a legal investigation and an intelligence investigation--the analogue of habeas corpus among the intelligence community may be a bit more flexible.  But allowing the investigation of two of the top generals in the US based on a personal favor (with no evidence of a threat, much less a crime) is not flexible.  That's yoga on steroids.

Citizens United vindicated?

This week, James Bopp, the lawyer who successfully defended the Citizens United case before the Supreme Court, claimed that Obama's victory has vindicated Bopp's position.  "The lesson here is all the hype over independent spending was just completely overblown...  Nobody can buy an election."  (Full article at Mother Jones).  Bopp seems to be referring to the fact that Sheldon Adelson, Karl Rove and Linda McMahon all spent enormous amounts of money on campaigns that lost miserably.  Bopp takes this as an indication that he was right to defend the pouring of unlimited and undeclared money into campaigns.  The problem is that the Citizens United case was about constitutionality, not the affects of such a policy.  The question is rather more philosophical than practical--just because one can inject enormous sums of so-called dark money into an election without influencing the outcome of said election doesn't mean you should be permitted to do so, or to use Jeff Goldblum's words from Jurassic Park, Bopp was "so preoccupied with whether or not they could, [he] didn't stop to think if they should."

That's Democracy! (or not).

When I talk to students about democracy (the history of the institution in ancient Greece), I like to remind them that the word does not mean, as we are always taught, power to the people.  Deme is a Greek word which originally referred to the smallest geo-political unit within a polis (think: municipality).  In this sense, democracy means power to the municipalities (the word eventually comes to refer to the people living in those municipalities, and then simply people).  Kleisthenes saw that self governance was more easily accomplished on the local level--after all, who knows the local issues and problems better than those immediately affected?  For this reason, I've always been sympathetic to the notion of secession (at least in principle).  However, I cannot help but laugh at this:

Here is the full story.

The issue is not that secession is bad in principle, but that the petitioners seem to be driven by the fact of Obama's reelection.  In other words, this is a slightly different version of the classic, "if Obama/Bush/Gore wins, I'm moving to Canada".  The possibility that your candidate may lose is a part of any democracy which relies on voting.  Seceding from the union will not change that--unless your intention is to secede so that you can establish a dictatorship.

WTF is a mandate?

Now that the election is over, you're going to hear the word mandate--a lot.  But what is a mandate?  In its basic usage, mandate simply refers to a term--in this sense, Obama has just won is second mandate.  But that is not the way the pundits and commentators are using the term.  Instead, they use the term to refer to a political carte blanche.  Hence, to say that Obama has a mandate by virtue of having been reelected means that he has the voters' permission to do whatever he wants.  This kind of mandate does not exist (cannot exist) in a democracy.  As Obama has noted after both of his elections, he is the president of all citizens, not just those who voted for him.  This means that his job is to defend everyone (as much as possible--there are necessarily losers in any election--but more on that in a follow up post), and that will mean compromise (that dirty word) on his policies.  One might rightly say that he has a mandate to move ahead with the ACA (that is because the bill has been passed and defended as constitutional by SCOTUS), but that doesn't mean he can steamroll the congress in the process (any more than that congress can steamroll POTUS on tax policy).  Let's stop using this word.

Grover Norquist is a "poopy head"!

Never trust a man who is afraid to use the word shit.

Actually, that is the least of my problems with Norquist.  The real problem is that Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax Reform and mastermind behind the Republican anti-tax pledge, is engaged in a priori politics.  There are two kinds of intellectual disciplines, theoretical (think math) and practical (think physics or biology).  The former disciplines require no experience of the physical world (if you take away all apples and oranges, two plus two still equals four).  A priori politics begins with certain definitions and axia which require no experience of the physical world--the world of people, money, businesses, exchange, war.  From the initial definitions and axia of Euclid's Elements, one can construct a dodecahedron without any need to leave his mind.  This cannot work in politics because people, money and power are not ideas.  The great thing about ideas is that they do not change, they are stable--this makes them easy to work with.  People, on the other hand, change, move, break the rules and act stupidly.  Applying inflexible axia (such as the anti-tax pledge) to humans cannot work because it is blind to the possibility of new necessities.  In other words, it suggests that there are no conditions under which taxes would need to be increased.  This is ostrich politics.

What exactly is a "fair share"?

With the looming fiscal bump, I've been waiting for this argument to reappear.  The most significant part of the fiscal cliff is the expiration of the Bush tax cuts.  It is clear to anyone with a pulse that some form of renewal of these cuts will have to be made--it is not likely to be bald renewal without significant change, but they will be renewed in one form or another.  Beohner and Obama will have to negotiate the details of which rates will remain the same and which rates will change, which loopholes will be closed and which left open.  Ultimately the argument will only concern the rich (in whatever way you'd like to define 'rich').  POTUS will ask that the rate for individuals making more than $250,000 be increased, and Boehner will have to determine how (actual rate increase, closing loopholes and deductions, raising rates on capital gains).  Even Bill Kristol, of the Weekly Standard, has argued that the GOP should give in here.  What drives me crazy is the vacuous use of the term (not to say concept--since I am claiming it is vacuous) "fair".  The rich must pay their "fair share" it will be argued by the left.  As it turns out, some on the right will make this claim as well.  And it is no doubt true.  The problem is that everyone assumes we all agree as to the meaning of fair, but no one actually defines it.  Some will claim that the rich should pay more because they have more.  Nevertheless, we'd never make the same claim about the cost of an iPad (I'm going to keep hammering away at Apple).  Apple cannot charge a different price depending on how much money you earn--that would be decidedly unfair.  Elizabeth Warren has argued that nobody has become rich on his or her own, that entrepreneurs are dependent on the state and federal highway systems for example.  This is no doubt true--but the rich are paying for these roads just as much as the poor (more even, one might argue).  And those who are paying more do not receive more for their money (the rich don't get to hog the road by virtue of having paid more in taxes).  In the article from which I have taken the paragraph at the beginning of this post, Wick Allison of the American Conservative can only find a meaning for the word fair in a Judeo-Christian morality which seems to be based largely on gut instinct.  But this has no more meaning than Warren's argument.  I am not suggesting that there is no way to make an argument based on fairness--but that argument has not been made yet.  I'd like to hear a solid argument of this sort, or I'd like a different argument altogether--perhaps one based not on fairness but on necessity.