Grade-One Gadfly

Favorite story of the day

2006-11-27T14:27:00.000-05:00

"Doctors in trouble for not giving man cervical smear"

(Hat tip: Hot Air)

India bound

2006-11-27T13:08:00.000-05:00

I'm heading to India in a couple of weeks for a friend's wedding. It's my first time in the country, and am really looking forward to it.

The ceremony itself is near Delhi, where I'll be spending the first week or so. While there, I'll be doing a day trip to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and other sites. After that, I'm heading to Rajasthan for about a week and a half. The itinerary I've laid out takes me to Udaipur, Chittorgarh, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Jaipur and Amber.

Have you been to any of these places? If yes, shoot me an email and share some advice. Tell me about the best restaurant you ate in, the terrific shop you found off the beaten path, or the thing you wished you had known before you'd gone. If not, don't worry - I'll bring you back some pictures.

I'm a "BLURB"

2006-11-26T21:21:00.000-05:00

Alex Constantine has taken offense to an earlier post of mine, and left a comment to it outlining his concerns. Figured I'd do my response to him as a new post, to make sure that what he has to say gets a full hearing. To his comment:

"I HAVE NEVER WRITTEN THAT THERE WAS MIND CONTROL IN THE SIMPSON CASE. THAT WAS IN A BLURB THAT YOU READ, AND IT WAS MISTAKEN. BUT YOU ARE NO DEEPER THAN A BLURB YOURSELF, AND DIDN'T BOTHER TO READ THE ARTICLE."

Thank you, but I did read the article. Here is what I actually said in the post in question: "His work includes, among other things, arguments . . . that there are mafia and CIA mind control aspects to the O.J. Simpson case."

My comments did not come from a "blurb." Constantine wrote a book entitled Virtual Government - CIA Mind Control Operations in America. The title of the excerpt from that book on his website is "The Florida/Hollywood Mob Connection, the CIA and O.J. Simpson." Section 4 of that excerpt is entitled "A Killer's Brain Frequencies and a Few Words About CIA/Mafia Clean-Up Operations." In that section, Constantine writes:

"Twenty-one years later, a mythic Heiseman Trophy winner was manipulated into a reprise of the Gold case. Like Murray Gold, he cut his finger at the time of the killings, possibly the result of a post-hypnotic or, more likely these days, remote telemetric signal.

'Simpson,' says a clinical psychologist in Encino, California who specializes in treating mind control victims, 'is a multiple personality – I suspect he’s a pro-- grammed multiple.' She arrived at this conclusion after interviewing a psychologist who’d counseled Nicole Simpson.

The hidden presence of CIA mind control in the case would explain the break-in at the office of Dr. Ameli and other therapists retained to temper the emotional aches of the Simpson crowd.

A chilling indication that the CIA’s mind control fraternity exercised a hidden influence on the trial was the breakdown of juror Tracy Hampton in early May, 1995.. Before she was released by Judge Ito, Ms. Hampton had been observed sitting motionless in the jury box, staring into space, Other jurors reported that she had taken to gaping for long periods at a blank television screen. apparently comatose. Hampton was removed from the jury on May 3, after complaining to Judge Ito, 'I can’t take it anymore.'" [emphasis added; typos in the original]

I said he wrote about "mind control aspects" of the case. In the above quote, he writes about mind control aspects of the case. You are welcome to read his entire excerpt, as I have, and draw your own conclusions as to whether I was fair to him or not.

Back to Constantine's comments:

"I DON'T BELIEVE IN THE ILLUMNATI, LIAR."

I never said he believed in the Illuminati. If he had bothered to click the link that has the word "Illuminati" in it from that post, he would have seen that I was referencing an earlier entry on this blog in which I discussed conspiracy theorists who did think there was potential Illuminati involvement in the Cory Lidle crash. Nice evidence of his research skills, however.

"AND HENDRIX WAS MURDERED. I HAVE SAID SO ON BBC AND NO ONE OBJECTED. ON THE SAME PROGRAM, SO DID THE PEOPLE WHO WERE CLOSEST TO HIM.

SO WHO ARE YOU? GIVE ME A REAL ARGUMENT, TAKE A POSTION – YOU'VE ALREADY DEMONSTRATED THAT YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THE DEATH OF HENDRIX AND THAT YOU ARE A LIAR."

Let's see. The sum total of what I have written about this issue was that, "His work includes, among other things, arguments that the government was (is?) killing rock stars . . ." Reading his comment, I don't think that Constantine disagrees with that description of his work, so it is unclear to me what his beef is.

As an aside, I will note that it is generally not enough to say something on a TV show and not have anyone object in order to prove that thing to be true. If that were the standard, then no conspiracy theories could ever be true, could they? A discussion for another day, perhaps.

"ANY MORE BS TO CRANK OUT FOR ANYONE IDIOTIC ENOUGH TO BELIEVE YOU?

LIAR. THAT'S THE REPUTATION YOU'VE JUST EARNED FOR YOURSELF. WEAR IT WELL.

- ALEX CONSTANTINE"

No, no more "BS" for now. I would like an apology, though, since he's repeatedly called me a liar, yet I fail to see where I have lied. I'll let you know if I get one.

Oh, one more comment. Love the all caps. It makes him look quite balanced.

You'll like it better than "Cats"

2006-11-21T11:24:00.000-05:00

Inspired parody from "If I did it! The Musical":

"Whatever I just did, I didn't do it.
And if I did, I didn't. That's denial.
Does it bother me?
Sure, it does, a little.
But I'll see you at the trial —
Or maybe I should say at the acquittal."

Coming in Act II - Rupert Murdoch gives Judith Regan resume advice.

Is abortion losing its political power?

2006-11-20T13:56:00.000-05:00

Michael Barone thinks so:

"Prolifers should learn from South Dakota that they aren't going to be able to ban abortion entirely, at least not in any but a few small places. Prochoicers should be noticing that the restrictions that legislatures have been placing on abortion do not prevent abortions from being generally and widely available. Voters even in South Dakota have shown themselves unwilling to agree with prolifers that abortion is morally entirely unacceptable. But voters who have supported restrictions on abortion have shown themselves unwilling to agree with those prochoicers who consider the provision of abortion an unalloyed moral good. The status quo is not acceptable to the rigorous purists among us, and is probably not entirely congenial to most of us. But it seems to be acceptable to the great majority. And so it may be that the abortion issue will be less of a motive force, on both sides, in our politics."

Interesting take, with potential implications for the '08 nomination races, especially on the Republican side.

Well put

2006-11-20T13:09:00.000-05:00

"There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government. And that’s close to 40% of our national income."

Milton Friedman, via Long or Short Capital

Searching their way here

2006-11-19T13:28:00.000-05:00

One of the more interesting time wasters anyone who has a blog can employ is to peruse the traffic you're getting on your site, and specifically the searches that people enter which sometimes cause them to click their way over. Two visitors from this weekend deserve special mention.

The first was a person who came to this site via Blogger's blog search function. After he entered his search, I - out of all the blogs out there - was the first result that came up. What was the search, you may wonder?

"my place" san francisco gay sex bar

Um, OK. The reason Gadfly came up first was because of this post. I can't help but think that the reader was really disappointed when he clicked through and saw what this site was actually about. Sorry, buddy - hope you found what you were looking for elsewhere. For the record, the number #4 result on that blog search was "being a 'Bear.'"

On a more serious note, a couple of hours later someone came to the site via a search for "Tyler Stanger." For those who don't know or don't remember, Mr. Stanger was the flight instructor and other passenger that died in the Cory Lidle plane crash last month, which I have written about extensively. The person searching, though, wasn't just a fan of Lidle's or maybe someone who knew Tyler.

How do I know? Well, the same person left a comment to this post; it's Alex Constantine, who writes the Political Conspiracy Research Bin. Judging from his comment, Alex is not very impressed by my screed against conspiracy theorists. Fair enough. I wouldn't expect anything different, since (from his blog header) . . .

"Alex Constantine's books are tour-de-force incursions into the secret world of American Fascisti, the classified government agencies that act as their Templars and the conspiracies they spawn. Fascism, says Constantine, is inherently conspiratorial."

His work includes, among other things, arguments that the government was (is?) killing rock stars, and that there are mafia and CIA mind control aspects to the O.J. Simpson case. Just in case you were wondering.

Does this mean that, despite my thinking that they had sheepishly moved on, the great conspiracy minds among us are actually taking a deeper look at the Lidle crash? I mean, could Christmas come this early? Please, pretty please, try to convince us that the Lidle crash was part of an effort to take out a safe house, or a distraction from a martial law bill signing, or a numerology message from the Illuminati, or whatever else you come up with.

I beg you. Please. I'll have new material for a month.

Prudish notes for a Friday afternoon

2006-11-17T17:07:00.000-05:00

Like Megan McCardle, I've also decided not to see the Borat movie:

"Humiliation doesn't entertain me. I don't like any form of entertainment that uses gullible people as props."

This was actually a topic of conversation over dinner last night with some of the readers of this blog (i.e. my friends), and I think I wound up being in the minority. Frankly, I just find the whole process rude and mean. It isn't just Borat; I had the same reaction to the few clips of the Ali G Show that I've seen, and have always hated those "crank calling" shows as well, be they on TV or the radio.

I would see a movie that had fictionalized violence in it, but that's not the same thing as seeing a movie which depicts actual violence that only occurred because of the film. Likewise, I might enjoy a fictional movie about a character like Borat that goes around and preys on random people's politeness to comic effect, but find one that uses such a character against real people who are not "in" on the joke cheap and a bit offensive.

As long as we're on bad manners, let me point out a posting over at Urban Elephants late last night, which was kind enough to inform us that George Pataki's daughter failed her bar exam on the first try. Urban Elephants is a group blog that "aim[s] to bring together the best bloggers, writers, commentators and activists on the Right in the greater New York City area." How in the world sniping about a non-politician's bar exam results aids in that mission escapes me. This isn't Gawker, after all. Again, maybe I'm a prude, but the post struck me as petty and implicitly mean as well. If your allies are going to do stuff like this, no wonder lots of qualified people don't want to get involved in public life.

Maybe this makes me sound like your grandmother, but I just think that we should be better than these cheap shots. I know lots of people aren't - heck, at word of the great Milton Friedman's passing yesterday, some were calling for driving a stake through the man's heart - but that doesn't keep me from hoping.

Just to make sure you don't think I've fallen off of the Miss Manners deep end, let me draw your attention to a conversation that Kathryn Jean Lopez started this morning at the Corner:

"Does Anyone Really Disagree with This?

A Bush administration HHS nominee is getting grief for his involvement with a pregnancy center that believes: 'that the crass commercialization and distribution of birth control is demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness.'

Passing out contraception without any deeper context or conversation is degrading and disrespectful — to men and women. Tell me I'm crazy."

Well, some of her colleagues disagreed, which you can see by reading other posts there during the course of the day. As did Andrew Sullivan, whom I feel compelled to link to since there have been so few things we've agreed on since - well, it feels like since about mid 2004 or so.

As for me, Gadfly is pro-birth control. Time to book my ticket to hell.

Additional Iraq perspectives

2006-11-16T18:40:00.000-05:00

That last posting I did on Iraq sat in my draft folder for a number of days, and kept growing as a result. There were a couple of articles I wanted to link to in it, but I didn't want them to get lost in the longer text. All are worth your time.

Mark Steyn on "the first superpower with ADHD":

"What does it mean when the world's hyperpower, responsible for 40 percent of the planet's military spending, decides that it cannot withstand a guerrilla war with historically low casualties against a ragbag of local insurgents and imported terrorists? You can call it 'redeployment' or 'exit strategy' or 'peace with honor' but, by the time it's announced on al-Jazeera, you can pretty much bet that whatever official euphemism was agreed on back in Washington will have been lost in translation."

William Stuntz on why the marginalism of economics and business is not the right approach for military matters:

"Warfare is not like investment banking. At precisely the moment an economist might say to stop throwing good money after bad, a wise military strategist might say to double the bet.

Why might that be so? For one thing, willingness to raise the stakes often wins the game. Why do insurgent gangs, who have vastly smaller resources and manpower than the American soldiers they fight, continue to try to kill those soldiers? The answer is, because they believe they only have to kill a few more, and the soldiers will leave. They need not inflict a military defeat (which would be impossible, given the strength of the American military)--all they need to do is survive until American voters decide to throw in the towel, which might happen at any moment. . .

War is not poker; the stakes in Iraq are much higher than a little money or a few chips. But war's psychology bears some resemblance to a well-played game of cards. The only way Americans lose this war is to fold. That seems likely to be the next move, but it is the last thing we should do. Far better to call and raise. Our cards are better than theirs, if only we have the nerve to play them."

And finally, Fred Kagan on the folly of basing quick reaction forces (QRFs) out of country:

"The bottom line is that the QRFs will have virtually none of the advantages our troops now enjoy, while facing far greater risks. Those who claim to care about our troops cannot possibly support such a proposal.

We face a stark choice now. We can either maintain bases and large forces in Iraq, or we can withdraw. If we withdraw, the Iraqi Army will collapse, and we will not be able to help it except by re-entering the country in large numbers and in a much worse situation. Attempts to mask this reality with militarily nonsensical solutions are dangerous. They will lead to higher U.S. casualties or to defeat-and quite possibly to both."

Things to think about.

If a problem is intractable, make it bigger

2006-11-15T21:00:00.000-05:00

I forget where I first heard that sentiment, of which I am certainly not the source. Regardless, it is one that I like to follow, and one that President Bush should invoke now. Democrats want the troops pulled, and he says they need to stay. What to do?

First, some background. In 1998, Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act, which stated the following:

"It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime."

In the House, the bill passed on a roll call vote of 360-38; among the Democrats, the vote was 157 in favor and 29 against. In the Senate the bill was passed by unanimous consent.

In 2002, Congress specifically authorized the use of military force against Iraq. The bill passed the House 296-133 (with 81 Democrats voting in favor) and the Senate 77-23 (29 Democrats voting in favor). Neither vote was close, and nearly 60% of Democrats in the Senate and 40% of Democrats in the House supported passage. It should be noted that the authorization for use of force in that bill was unambiguous and not time-constrained; check the text yourself.

If the Democrats no longer support these laws, then they should say so on the record. Not in a campaign, but through a binding vote in Congress. More on that below.

Now we find ourselves coming off an election where the Democrats captured the majority in both sides of Congress. I take no pleasure in pointing the following out, but the fact is that enemies of the United States are rejoicing at those election results. You can see some links here, here and here; Iraq al-Qaeda "welcomed" the results, while Iran thought the election was a victory for, well, Iran.

At a certain level I really don't care what they say. At another level, however, the effects of opinions like these are all too real. From a purely military standpoint, there is no chance that the US will be defeated in Iraq; for all the talk of casualties, in three and a half years we have lost well under half the number of soldiers that we did in little over a month on Iwo Jima. The real military strategy of our adversaries is simply to wait us out. Inflict enough casualties (increasing on the Iraqis themselves) and watch the attention and patience of the American people (or their government) wane.

The reaction of our enemies may be unfair to the Democrats. I don't think they sit up at night thinking of ways to help our adversaries (at least on purpose (note, that was a joke)). Unfair or not, though, it is the way the election is being perceived in many quarters. Consequently, the Democrats have a special responsibility to keep those perceptions in mind when they act.

What does it appear they will do? Well, Pelosi has called for a summit, and at the same time worked to sideline hawks in her own conference. Many want to withdraw troops, despite people in the military, Iraq, and even Iran thinking that would be a mistake. Some want to cut off funding, and the candidate that their leader endorsed for the number two position in the House is the same guy that thinks we should redeploy our troops to Okinawa. Bush has resisted calls for a forced timetable thus far, but many Democrats seem clearly inclined to ratchet up the pressure.

So, the question is, what should the President do? Here is what I suggest: by all means, sit down with the new leadership; listen to their ideas, talk about yours, ask questions of each other, etc. Then, go on prime time, national television and demand that the first substantive legislation considered by the new Congress in January be a reauthorization of our action in Iraq. Not one with a specific timeline for drawdown of troops, not one mincing words, and not one that will be construed as the US preparing to cut and run.

That's right, make them reauthorize the war, with an unapologetic endorsement of our mission and those who are working to carry it out. Maybe a mention of the Iraq Study Group if we must, and about how we need to work towards enabling Iraqis to take over their own security, etc. But that's it.

At this point, you probably think I'm crazy, but hear me out. From a military and policy perspective, the entire world currently sits waiting to hear that we are going to begin pulling out. As I mentioned above, that is exactly what the barbarians killing innocent Iraqis want, and by doing so we will be handing them a victory (and abetting in the slaughter of even more innocent Iraqis). Rightly or wrongly, those same people believe that the Democratic victory makes their cause more likely to succeed, and therefore encourages them in their carnage. We - and specifically the Democrats - need to send a clear signal that such a strategy is not going to work.

Now lets talk about the politics of it, first from Bush's perspective. He would immediately move from defense to offense, changing the tenor of the debate. The truth is that Democrats do not actually have an alternative vision for what to do about Iraq, and this is where Bush can step into the void. He could count on near universal Republican support (they've already paid their price at the polls, and want Iraq to succeed), and certainly enough Democratic support to have it pass. If Pelosi or Reid refused to even bring up the resolution for a vote, then they will have given the President (and the Republicans) one heck of an issue to take to the country. How could the Congressional leadership countenance, in a time of war, not even bringing to a vote a measure that the President says is integral to the war's prosecution? That is, I would argue, a politically (never mind morally) untenable position for the Democrats to hold. Bush can signal his intention for bipartisanship in other ways (minimum wage, etc.) but argue that this issue is too important and his responsibility to the soldiers too grave to compromise here.

From the Democratic perspective, they shouldn't have as much trouble with such a resolution as you might think. By controlling Congress, they could introduce an updated version at their leisure, debate nuances of strategy during funding hearings, etc. That is why there is no need - even from their side - to talk about timelines or the like in this resolution itself. It does absolutely nothing to prevent them from introducing a different, contradictory resolution later in the same Congress.

What it does do, though, is the following: 1) send the right message to the rest of the world about the commitment of America, 2) let the men and women serving in Iraq and elsewhere know that the country remains behind them, and 3) show that the new Congressional majority takes its responsibilities seriously. While the activist base of the Left won't be happy, I actually don't think it hurts the Democratic party at all. If anything, it would raise their stature and probably make the country more comfortable about having them running the legislative table.

What if the Democrats went along, and the President lost the vote? From a policy perspective, I think that would be a disaster. We would be confirming the worst instincts of the world and specifically our enemies regarding our willingness to wait out and defeat those who oppose us and to protect those whom we support. But if that is in fact the case, better we know it then naively pretend otherwise. We have nearly 150,000 troops in country now, risking their lives every day. If the country, or more specifically the country's elected representatives, no longer thinks their mission worthy, then they have a right to know that and to expect to be brought home. We as a society will have to face the consequences of such an unwise decision for a long time to come, but such is the perils of democracy.

So, President Bush, it's time to double down. Most Presidents at this point start to worry about their legacy, and - make no mistake - the war in Iraq will be yours. The best, and only, way to secure it is to make sure that the mission in Iraq succeeds. The leadership of the new majority is in effect saying that will never happen. If you believe otherwise, it is time to call their bluff. Take the case to the American people, and I think they - and then Congress - will be behind you. If they won't be, then the war has already been lost.

Don't forget about Jeb

2006-11-15T17:58:00.000-05:00

This article should really have appeared in The Onion, but instead it's from CBS News. OK, maybe I'm actually not that surprised.

Think you are almost done with Bush? Think again:

"So, who do they plan on running for President in 2008? Let's see. Who's comfortable with all these friends and advisors of the first George Bush? Who has experience in waging war against Iraq? And who could become president without saying one negative word about the current president? There's only one man who fits this bill. That's right — George Herbert Walker Bush."

I'll grant that most of this article is supposed to be a joke, just not a very funny one. (Hat tip: Moonbattery)

Quote of the day

2006-11-14T01:16:00.000-05:00

"It must be, in any free society, OK to be as open as you want to be about your dislike of a set of ideas. Otherwise it becomes impossible to think, it becomes impossible to have any kind of interchange of thought in a society, if you are told that there are ideas which are off limits. Nothing is off limits."

Salman Rushdie, 10/11/06, New York City (hat tip: LGF). His part of the recording starts with an introduction around minute 16, and he actually starts speaking a little before minute 21. The quote above is just after minute 27.

The total recording (including a shorter segment in the beginning with Ibn Warraq, which is also good) runs a bit over an hour. If you have the time, though, it is certainly worth it. He touches on a number of aspects of religious tolerance, and along the way covers the Danish cartoons, veils in the UK, and the lack of Muslim outrage about genocide in Africa (among other things).

He also takes a shot at many intellectuals of the Left (with whom I suspect he would normally find himself in more comfortable company) regarding their reluctance to criticize certain groups (about minute 43):

"And for the Left to refuse to understand the nature of the people that they're refusing to criticize is a historical mistake as great as those who were the fellow travelers of Stalinist communism in an earlier age."

I'll write another time about how important Rushdie was to me growing up. For now, I'll just leave you to listen to his words for yourself.

What exactly would it take to be dissatisfied?

2006-11-13T17:58:00.000-05:00

I'm happy to announce that Senator Elizabeth Dole, chair of the NRSC, is pleased with her performance:

"As the chairwoman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, it was Sen. Elizabeth Dole's job to keep the Senate in GOP hands. She couldn't.

So after two years in the Senate Republican leadership, Dole tumbles into the minority - back to her status as the freshman senator from North Carolina and, perhaps, out of favor among Republican activists frustrated by Tuesday's election results.

Dole said she's satisfied with her performance.

'I can sleep well at night knowing we did everything possible to hold the Senate,' she said in a telephone interview Thursday. 'All I know is I worked my head off, and that's all you can do.'"

She did all she could. Or did she? Let's review the fundraising of the key party committees for both sides (through 10/18):

RNC - $208m, DNC - $119m; Republican advantage 75%
NRCC - $152m, DCCC - $108m; Republican advantage 41%
NRSC - $78m, DSCC - $104m; Republican "advantage" -25%

It isn't a stretch to think that even parity with the Democrats (i.e. an additional $26 million) would have saved at least one seat, and hence the majority. Regardless of what headwinds the Republicans faced this year, the NRSC faced the same ones as the other Republican committees. Yet the NRSC performed significantly worse, all while having fewer seats to defend than the Democrats.

Any way you cut it, Dole's leadership was an unmitigated disaster, and she deserves a fair amount of the blame for having lost the majority. I hope her colleagues remember that the next time she runs for a leadership position.

(By the way, I'll update my look at incumbent Republican Senators that were sitting on excess cash after all the spending reports are in for the final few weeks of the election.)

You want to know how crazy it is to live in NY?

2006-11-12T17:16:00.000-05:00

Meet the $38,500 closet.

K-Fed KO'ed

2006-11-10T17:35:00.000-05:00

So, I just got grief from a friend for not having as much up here this week, grief that is well-deserved. Sorry, been running around the past two days and mostly off line during that time.

The same friend, though, sends along this review of Kevin Federline's album. It is a doozie. I could pull almost any line of it for a teaser quote, but I'll let the first line suffice:

"One day, either in this life or the next, Britney Spears will have to atone for unleashing Kevin Federline upon the world."

Is there really anything that she could do that would make it up to us? I think not.

If you are looking for a break from all the politics (and are not K-Fed's mother) click through and entertain yourself for five minutes.

Did you enjoy the time off?

2006-11-09T22:39:00.000-05:00

OK, at least they can't blame us for starting the '08 election cycle already:

Democrat Vilsack launches run for White House

Election potpourri

2006-11-08T21:46:00.000-05:00

So the dust has settled a bit, although there are still about ten house races to be called (and most likely to be recounted). If everything holds as appears likely, the Republicans will have lost 29 seats in the House and 6 in the Senate. By now you've read tons of exhaustive commentary on the voting, so I'm not going to be thorough here. I only want to highlight a couple of issues, briefly, and then move onto two more in depth.

Predictions revisited. Hold on, let me get some tissue for this egg on my face. More seriously, I was obviously off having suggested the losses would be 15 and 3 (good thing I do better at picking stocks). Actually, the House is less surprising to me than the Senate. As soon as the first generic exit polls came out (what issue was important to you, when did you make up your mind, etc?) I knew we were in trouble; if I had revised my guess after reading those, I probably would have said we'd lose 25 seats. The Senate was a lot more unexpected; for the record, the three races I had wrong were Virginia, Missouri, and Maryland (the last of which was probably a little bit of wishful thinking on my part).

How to handle losing an election. With all due respect to my friends on the Left, I think there may be something to learn from the Right here. If you spent a good part of the past day talking with, reading, or listening to various conservatives, you didn't hear sour grapes about "stolen" races, taking to the streets, etc. This even though 22 of the Democratic House gains last night were by 2% or less, 18 by fewer than 5000 votes. Not to point out the obvious, but if the vast right wing conspiracy was bent on staying in power no matter what, don't you think we wouldn't let something like that happen? Or maybe that we would change some votes in Montana or Virginia? We lost, and losing has consequences, which we will live with. There will be spirited debates about why more voters didn't agree with us, not about how they really did but those nefarious Democrats disenfranchised them. Of course, there are still idiots who think Bush - despite apparently not fixing the election - is instead building concentration camps and planning on martial law to stop their effect (Hat tip: Hot Air).

A conservative country. Or, more accurately, a moderately conservative country. Most conservative ballot initiatives passed nationwide, and a lot of the newly elected Democrats are much more conservative than the average Democrat in today's Congress (in fact, a number of them could quite easily pass for Republicans). The biggest hits the Republican caucus took were in its moderate ranks, not in its conservative ones. Most of the losses stem from corruption and the war, not a broad to move to the Left. I'm not saying that couldn't happen in the future, only that it didn't happen yesterday.

2008. Non-political junkies don't want to hear this, but people are going to be talking about 2008 in a meaningful way before you're done returning those Christmas presents you don't like. No incumbent President or Vice President running, leaving the race wide open. Both sides of Congress realistically at play (my early feeling being that the House is more vulnerable than the Senate, but more on that another time). It is going to be the mother of all elections, and both sides are going to be bringing their "A game." Brace yourself.

CNN's blogger party. In case you missed it, CNN gathered a bunch of the big bloggers from both sides of the aisle to all blog from the same place in DC. A number of the blogs I read religiously were there. I didn't watch CNN's TV coverage, but from what I read and saw in pictures it didn't seem very conducive to work, and that there were some pretty big tech issues as well. More importantly to me as a "consumer" of their blogs, I think the work really suffered (at least one participant seems to agree). I'm guessing it was very tough to focus there, flip channels, chase down things on the web, etc. Overall, a lot of the stuff that came out of the room last night was, well, kind of superficial and late. I'm not going to pick out any specific examples - after all, I want them all to link to me in the future (*wink*). The participants might have gotten a lot out of the experience (meeting each other, etc.), but they should know that such benefits came at a cost. They can decide for themselves if the trade off was worth it.

There you go, a couple of random thoughts. I want to delve deeper, though, into two other issues because of the election: what's the next step on Iraq, and some comments about the nature of compromise in electoral coalitions. Those each deserve their own post; expect them sometime tomorrow.

The election

2006-11-08T12:34:00.000-05:00

Cliff May sums it up nicely:

"The Democrats said: 'Had enough?'

The Republicans said: 'It could be worse!'

The voters said: 'Let’s find out.'"

Much more later, as I am still recovering from staying up way too late trying to figure out how in the heck it takes so long to count votes in Montana.

I am really worried about the Senate . . .

2006-11-07T12:17:00.000-05:00

. . . in 2008. Republicans have 21 seats to defend, while the Democrats have only 12. This year the GOP actually had fewer seats than the Democrats to defend. Plus, there are a number of potential retirements in that list . . .

What, too early to start talking about 2008? OK, I promise not to mention it again until . . . tomorrow.

Just trying to lighten the mood a little today . . .

Gadfly's crystal ball

2006-11-07T01:25:00.000-05:00

Well, it's finally here. Months of vitriol behind us, billions of dollars spent. The polls open in a few short hours, and by this time tomorrow we should - aside from potential recounts and litigation - know roughly how it will all turn out.

Are you ready? Have you read what some of the experts predict? Do you know how you're going to track the results as they come in? Have you filled out your bracket? Do you know what the fallout is going to be depending on the results?

Well, for what it is worth (which isn't much), I just went through all the Senate races and the 50 or so most competitive House races to see how I think they will turn out. In the Senate, I see the Republicans losing 3 seats, leaving them at 52. This mean they would both retain the majority, as well as avoid any danger of Chafee pulling a Jeffords and flipping control by switching parties (although I currently have him in my loss category anyway).

In the House, I have the GOP losing 15 seats, putting them at 217. Yikes. I swear, I didn't plan it that way, it was just what the piles added up to after I finished sorting them. By the way, that is with me predicting the Republicans will lose two of their three incumbents in Connecticut. Holding all three (as we discussed here and here) would keep the House GOP. Should the House actually wind up 218-217 Democratic, all bets are off. I'll put off speculating about the consequences of that until we see if that happens. Needless to say, the House could break either way.

If the Republicans do lose 3 and 15, what will that mean? Well, if you look back through history, Presidents in their sixth year average something like 29-35 seats lost in the House. You don't see any mention of that kind of historical context in this article by the Times today, but be sure to keep it mind. A loss of 20 seats, say, would actually mean a historical out performance by the Republicans, not that it will be reported that way should it happen.

There will be plenty of time for analysis later. In the meantime, don't forget to vote.

"You can't get much more concealed than that"

2006-11-06T20:23:00.000-05:00

I could offer a bunch of tasteless jokes, but instead I'll simply link to what has to be one of the funniest stories of the day (Hat tip: Althouse):

Naked man arrested for concealed weapon

What if the GOP retains control?

2006-11-06T13:53:00.000-05:00

Stanley Kurtz has given the topic some thought:

"No doubt, there are those who will dismiss all this as implausible scare-mongering. Profanity at liberal political websites, Democrats rooting for America to lose a war, the end of open and fair exchange on America’s college campuses, efforts to stop military recruitment, suicidal infighting over foreign policy in the party of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman: I admit that it all sounds implausible. It certainly bears little resemblance to the America that once was. Nonetheless, I greatly fear that a last-minute Republican victory could usher in some or all of these consequences. So before you push that lever, think long and hard about the dangers of a Republican win."

On a more serious note, there are some people with real stakes in this election who seem to think it matters quite a bit. Of course, these are the same people that I hear from one of our Senators (as well as some editorial writers) aren't always the brightest bulbs:

"...People in the US who want to support the troops, who believe we are engaged in a war, and who recognize the long term consequences of failure need to look past all other issues and vote Republican. Democrats have no policy and can not be trusted. But, even worse, they display no apparent understanding of the dangers to our western civilization presented by the enemy. Their actions since 2001 indicate they are willing to sacrifice the safety and integrity of the USA in the future for short term political gains today.

Ironically, I say this, not as a Republican - (I am Libertarian) - but as a person who recognizes that islamicist fundamentalism is the single greatest threat to our western society in the modern era. I say this as an atheist. I say this as someone who is apalled by the anti-science bias of the Republican party. I say this as someone who doesn't give 2 shits about abortion, suppressing gay-rights, or activist judges. So, as you can tell, the majority of Republican issues are anathema to me, and I still fervently hope they retain control of the Govt..."

[ADDED: Read this article, too.]

Wait, some people think you should vote for the Republicans even of you disagree with them on some issues? Somebody tell Sullivan, assuming he's not still rereading his book.

Journalism lessons from Ireland

2006-11-06T10:29:00.000-05:00

Another podcast from Glenn and Helen, this time speaking with some Irish journalists who are here to cover the midterm elections. Money quote:

"I think growing up in Europe, or anywhere in the world, the United States is kind of this big, blank, one-dimensional surface on which you can actually project all of your fears and your dreams. And you can create your own United States because you'll always find a United States to reflect the reality that you believe in.
And part of the problem I think as a journalist - I was here for six years as our Washington correspondent - I always found that the kind of dirty secret among Washington correspondents for foreign media was, you know, you could please with the cliches. You'll always get an applause line, you know, if you get a fat, gun-toting, bible-thumping American, that kind of ascribes to what we've always been brought up to believe in.
The purpose of this trip is to show that there is a nuance, and a subtly, sometimes, even in places we don't expect to see it."

Sounds like many US journalists are apparently trained in the classical, European model of journalism. Of course, that may no longer be working out quite as well as it has in the past.

Teflon John

2006-11-06T09:21:00.000-05:00

Save for maybe comptroller, make no mistake about how bad the NY state-wide races are going to be for the GOP. One obvious way to tell? Finger pointing in the New York Times about the losses even before the polls open:

"Anticipating historic political losses in New York tomorrow, state Republican leaders are lashing out at the national party in Washington, saying it has exploited New York donors and blown opportunities against a prime target, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton."

Well, isn't that helpful? There are going to be a lot of Republican operatives in this state looking for jobs pretty soon, and it seems some want to get a head start on "framing the issues." Of course, it's not the locals' fault; it's national's:

"'The national party comes into New York, does significant fund-raising here, and then there’s very little in the way of national support for statewide races,' Mr. Faso said. 'It’s disappointing, and a serious mistake in terms of party building.' . . . While New York Republicans are used to giving more to Washington than they get back, they say they are particularly aggrieved this year."

Apparently, political giving is some sort of model of federal pork barrel spending. Pay a bunch to the center, but make sure some crumbs make it back to the local hacks. As a donor, let me assure you that I want the money given to national committees, organizations, etc. to go to the places it will be most effective, not where people feel put out.

At a more basic level, realize this: New York is a very rich area for political donations to both parties. The article reports that New Yorkers have donated $152 million this cycle. If the people closest to the local races are apparently unmoved to give, why should the national groups do so in what appears to be lost races?

I reserve, though, special disdain for our Senate candidate, John Spencer, with whom you may remember I've already exhibited some displeasure:

"'They blew the Hillary race, and now Hillary has a ton of i.o.u.s from Democrats nationwide for when she runs for president,' said Mr. Spencer, who is trailing Senator Clinton by more than 30 percentage points in most public polls."

Pardon my language, but I've got to say, that takes balls. "They blew the Hillary race." They? Give me a break.

Through September 30th, John Spencer raised $4.7 million for his run. Clinton raised $37.9 million. He has never shown momentum in any of the polls. In, you know, the real world, this type of drubbing might be thought to reflect on the candidate or the race he ran. In this bizzarro world, however, it becomes the fault of others:

"Mrs. Clinton has had nary a worry this fall, thanks to a poorly financed and politically lackluster campaign by Mr. Spencer, who said he was counting on Washington support and money to keep her on the ropes. Now Mrs. Clinton is even more formidably positioned for a possible presidential run in 2008, he said.

'I think national Republicans were afraid that if John Spencer took off as a candidate, it would divert millions of dollars into New York against Senator Clinton, whereas they wanted to spend the money elsewhere,' said John McLaughlin, Mr. Spencer’s senior strategist."

Why should Spencer have been counting on national support? Are there not enough Republican donors around here? Couldn't they tell if he was an investment worth making?

Mr. McLaughlin is right about something. National Republicans did want to spend the money elsewhere, namely where they could win. It was up to Spencer and his campaign to show them that New York was one of those places. They failed quite miserably to do so.

Well done, gentlemen. Well done.

Sunday night hyperbole (non-political)

2006-11-05T21:40:00.000-05:00

Al Michaels just tossed out this gem right before the half of tonight's New England-Indianapolis game, in reference to Peyton Manning and Tom Brady:

"A couple of artists at work. You know, this is kind of like, without over-hyping it, it's sort of like Van Gogh and Michelangelo in a paint off."

Wow, what would "over-hyping" be?

More importantly, my Giants today took care of Houston (although not by a lot), and are set to host Chicago next Sunday night for control of the NFC. Hopefully by then I'll be recovered from the election.

That's the spirit

2006-11-03T12:02:00.000-05:00

The tugboat company that assisted in the immediate aftermath of the Staten Island Ferry crash in 2003 is suing for a $6 million reward:

"They are making their claims under an ancient tradition called 'pure marine salvage,' which holds that boats that take the trouble to help other boats in distress are entitled to a reward."

I don't now anything about the law here (any maritime lawyers in the house?), but let's talk about the principle. I have no problem with paying them for their efforts - damage to their vessel, time lost (the boat was involved for a few days it seems), etc. But a reward far in excess of that, as something they are so entitled to that they can sue? I'm not so sure.

To be clear, they didn't throw their commercial interests over the side and rush into the stormy sea to offer aid:

"On the day of the crash, Oct. 15, 2003, he was on the Dorothy J., reading the paper and waiting for orders to move an oil barge for the city. His captain was resting below, on a regular four-hour rotation.

'I was engrossed in the paper, and something told me to look up,' he said. The Barberi was heading at top speed right to the Staten Island pier where he was moored."

So, let's be brutally honest. The boat was on some down time, and the ferry came right to them. Plus, they were waiting to work for the city at the time anyway.

"The salvage tradition, which is supported by a long history of case law, is meant to encourage mariners to help one another even if they are jeopardizing their own commercial interests."

Except here, the commercial interests weren't quite jeopardized in the way they would be if you abandoned your fishing grounds to answer a mayday call on the open sea. That might not mean anything legally, but it sure feels different.

"'I don’t need to be a hero,' Mr. Seckers, 59, said this week in a telephone interview from Chesapeake Bay, where he is now the mate on another tug. 'But every crew member on that tug was a hero, and they didn’t get any acknowledgment, thank you or anything for it. It wasn’t right. They went far above the call of duty.'"

Of course, in a technical sense he is right - he didn't sign up to be a hero. But who does? Things happen, and - hopefully - those closest to the situation rise to the occasion. One's reaction should be one of concern and compassion, not a quick check of what the expected value of the reward might be. At least isn't that what your parents taught you?

"But the dispute over the Barberi has made him a little wary about helping others in the future. 'Somebody told me, next time you’re reading a newspaper and feel something bad is happening,' Mr. Seckers said, 'just keep your head in the paper and keep reading.'"

I don't want to minimize what they did. They are heroes, and deserve to be treated as such. It just strikes me that suing for a hefty reward for helping someone, is, well, a bit unseemly. And the suggestion that it might not be worth the trouble to help out others in need in the future if he isn't paid off now, is, well, grotesque.

That day might have been one of his proudest moments, but sharing the thoughts he did in this article wasn't.

More CT

2006-11-03T11:55:00.000-05:00

Like I said before, if you set fire to your house, sometimes you wind up burning it down. Who knows if it will come down to this, but oh the joy if it does.

UPDATE: I can't be as dumb as I look if the Economist notes the same thing, can I? Even if it did take them a couple more days . . .

Kerry on Conan

2006-11-03T00:46:00.000-05:00

OK, not the real John Kerry, just one of Conan's still pictures with the lips moving. Still funny:

Kerry: "Until Bush admits he's botched this war, I, John Kerry, vow to continue to tell jokes all the way to victory on election day."

O'Brien: "OK, actually, sir, I don't think that's what your party needs right now. I don't think people want you out there telling jokes."

Kerry: "Get ready to laugh. A guy walks into a bar, and orders a purple knee high."

O'Brien: "Uh huh, yeah."

Kerry: "The bartender says, 'What's a purple knee high?' And the guy says, 'Our soldiers are idiots.' Wait, I botched it. Wait. That's not how it goes. Hold on. Wait a minute."

Something to keep in mind

2006-11-02T12:38:00.000-05:00

A quick break from election politics for a moment. Pfizer may be having trouble with what is supposed to be its next big drug:

"Pfizer said yesterday that clinical trials of torcetrapib — a heart medication that is the most important drug in the company’s pipeline — confirmed that it raises blood pressure, a potentially serious side effect.

Any problems with torcetrapib would be a serious setback for Pfizer, the world’s largest drug company. Pfizer has been counting on the new medicine to eventually replace the $13 billion in annual sales from the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor, which loses patent protection in 2010.

Cardiologists and Wall Street analysts alike have been closely watching the clinical trials of torcetrapib, a medicine intended to raise so-called good cholesterol.

Pfizer’s stock dropped 2 percent after the announcement by the company, which has been researching torcetrapib for a decade and is spending $800 million to develop it."

For every successful drug that makes it to market, and that is "high priced" during its period of patent exclusivity, there are hundreds (if not thousands) that work was done on but that don't make it. The successful drugs have to pay for them as well. In this case, if torcetrapib were to fail, nearly a billion dollars needs to be recouped. The brightest minds at Pfizer have worked on this for a decade and it still might fail. Something to keep in mind in the heat of campaigns when drug costs are invoked and drug companies are villified.

Delicious irony

2006-11-01T15:25:00.000-05:00

Via RealClearPolitics:

"The apparent end of the much-ballyhooed Lamont phenomenon is causing a great deal of soul-searching and recrimination in all corners of the Democratic Party. The bloggers that once championed Mr. Lamont as an awkward but earnest savior now alternately blame Washington’s strategists for hijacking their candidate and Democratic leaders for abandoning him. Beltway consultants fault the Lamont campaign for failing to move the candidate beyond his left-wing celebrity and define him for a greater electorate. . .

'The primary was much more about anger at Bush and the war,' said Josh Isay, a media advisor to Mr. Lieberman and former consultant to Mayor Michael Bloomberg who joined the campaign in August. He stressed that the Lieberman campaign was taking nothing for granted, but argued that the general electorate played much more to his candidate’s favor. 'You have different people going to the voting booth; you have Republicans, independents, unaffiliated—a bigger pie of Democrats.'" (link)

Had they left him alone, Lieberman would have cruised to reelection this year, and they could have devoted their resources elsewhere. Instead, they made a stand in Connecticut, diverting people, money, and media that could have gone to other races (and been deployed against, oh, I don't know, Republicans).

Instead, they targeted their former Vice Presidential nominee - one who agrees with them on almost everything else - simply for his position on the war. Some big tent.

He's been one of the most popular politicians in the state over the past two decades, a state that has more independents than members of either party. They mistakenly thought he would be driven off into the sunset, but were obviously wrong about that.

Now they are paying the price. In a lovely lesson of actions having unintended consequences, their strategy and Lieberman's reaction to it might just save the House for the GOP:

"Sen. Joe Lieberman alienated plenty of Democrats with his independent bid. Just imagine their anger if he costs them control of the House.

The three-term Connecticut senator is aggressively pursuing Republican and independent voters in his race against Democratic nominee Ned Lamont and little-known Republican Alan Schlesinger. That targeted appeal — and the potential for a strong GOP turnout — could save three GOP House incumbents struggling to return to Washington."

It is very possible that the control of the House will literally be by a seat or two. If the Republicans wind up with 218 or 219 seats by means of holding onto their three Connecticut incumbents, can you imagine the reaction of the Left? Oh, the delicious irony. Of course, they will blame Lieberman, rather than their actions which created the situation in the first place.

Republican against capitalism

2006-11-01T11:22:00.000-05:00

If you read this blog, it's should be clear that I'm a Republican, and hence want the GOP to win next week. That said, I'm not the type who thinks you never criticize someone on your own side, as I've shown here and here. This is one of those posts.

I just heard an absolutely awful radio ad for Congresswoman Sue Kelly. She was criticizing her opponent John Hall for owning mutual funds that invest in, among other things, Pfizer, Wal-Mart, and oil companies. There was also a charge that one of the companies in one fund shifted something offshore for tax purposes (or something like that, I missed the exact point). I've looked on her campaign site (and elsewhere) for a link to the ad itself, but can't find any. I'll post one if I can track it down.

Now, I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt that this is in response to other things that have been happening in the race. This clip that I just found from a cable TV debate suggests that the issue of Hall's mutual fund holdings has come up before. That said, do Republicans really want to be running ads that disparage opponents because they own mutual funds, especially ones that own such mainstays of the American economy? So much for the "ownership society."

I'm sure there are plenty of Kelly defenders that will say I am missing the "nuance" of the ad, that it is about hypocrisy, etc. Nonsense. If I, as a political junkie and investment professional, am missing the nuance, then I can guarantee you that the average voter will as well. And it will contribute to a culture that will make attacks like this acceptable. In the end such a culture will be much more damaging to Republicans rather than Democrats, never mind society at large.

I know next to nothing about Sue Kelly and the dynamics of this race. But I do know that this ad is just terrible, and if this is the best she can do, we are in real trouble. Maybe her internals are even worse than the published numbers, which show it a toss-up right now. The ad reeks of desperation.

Plus, if poor Larry Kudlow hears this ad he might just have a heart attack, and we can't have that happen.

UPDATE: An anti-Kelly blogger in the comments provides the link that I couldn't find myself; you can listen to the ad here. I actually wound up hearing the ad a few more times today on the radio, and let me tell you that it did not grow on me. At all.

About the only possible (defensible) rationale I could think of for it would be if Hall had made similar accusations about Kelly before. Even then, this is just stupid (and that's the nicest word I can come up with for it). As I said before, I know very little about Rep. Kelly, and even less about her race this year. For all I know, she may be an excellent congresswoman, and I selfishly want her to win this year in order to help preserve the Republican majority. That said, the best thing I can say about this ad is that it is embarrassing (to the side that paid for it, mind you). If saying so gives comfort to her opponents this week, so be it.

Please, take this thing off the air already, and make a real case for why either 1) you deserve to be sent to Washington, or 2) your opponent does not. This ad is not it.

Quote of the day

2006-10-31T17:30:00.000-05:00

Just watched (at 5:12 pm eastern time) an exchange between Wolf Blitzer and Jack Cafferty on CNN. Cafferty went on a rant about Kerry's comments yesterday. Not the comments themselves, of course, but rather their effect:

"Why is John Kerry speaking anywhere about anything? What does he symbolize when it comes to the Democratic Party? Failure. He lost the election in 2004. . .

[Howard Dean should say to Kerry:] 'Go get on your boat. Go fish. Go play soccer. Go out and commune with nature. Sit in the woods until the election is over. Please don't talk. Please don't have your picture taken. Just go away.'

He symbolizes failure. You know, watching the Democrats try to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory is a spectator sport in this country, and here they go, flirting with it again. . . Why is he talking to anybody? . . . Wait till the election is over. It's not helping."

You can almost hear him thinking, "With all the help we're giving you, how can you possibly not win this thing running away? Get out of our way, we'll take care of it." I think he's worried.

I'll look for a video link, and if I can find one will post it.

UPDATE: Welcome Hot Air readers. You might also be interested in GOP senators who are sitting on their cash (here and here), a conspiracy theorist who thinks that the government has a cloaking device, what CBS News thinks of the current Congress, or what Ted Turner had to say about North Koreans being "thin." Enjoy.

UPDATE 2: Here is a link to the transcript. The portion in question is a little less than half way down.

UPDATE 3: Don Imus has advice similar to Jack Cafferty's (via Drudge):

Regarding the contention that this was just a "joke" gone wrong, well, the only person who knows that for sure is Senator Kerry. As for the broader opinions of the military by some on the Left, though, I will direct your attention to some excellent comments by John at Power Line. Money quote:

"Why are liberals so determined to hang on to these discredited stereotypes of the past? I suspect it is because the young men and women who serve in the armed forces are a constant reproach to liberals' facile, politically-motivated pronouncements on foreign policy. Iraq is a disaster (never mind that I voted for it)! But the young men and women who are stationed there don't think so. They re-enlist in remarkable numbers; a large majority believe in their mission; and they are working hard, risking their lives, and making considerable progress on many fronts. So it's helpful for liberals to think: what do they know? They're only soldiers--they must be dumb!"

Obviously there are many people who don't think like that. But I know from my own experiences that such an attitude definitely exists.

UPDATE 4: "Mel Gibson without the booze."

Way, way too much time on their hands

2006-10-31T16:49:00.000-05:00

Happy Halloween!

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Occam & Reynolds

2006-10-31T13:02:00.000-05:00

Occam's Razor, a bedrock of clear thinking:

"Occam's razor states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating, or 'shaving off,' those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. In short, when given two equally valid explanations for a phenomenon, one should embrace the less complicated formulation."

I'm the government. I want you to think terrorists took planes and flew them into the World Trade Center. Therefore, I take planes and fly them into the World Trade Center, right?

Wrong.

What I would actually do is remote control a plane towards the tower. Then, when I was right there, I would "switch to invisibility" at the same time that charges would detonate in the tower to mimic an explosion. Under this government issue cloak of invisibility, the actual plane would then be flown out to the sea, where it would be directed to crash in order to destroy the evidence of the ruse.

Mr. Reynolds used to work for the government. If that isn't proof that the government isn't smart enough to pull stuff like this off, I don't know what is. But wait, he was "a former Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Labor 2001-2002." That means he worked for Bush. He must be a plant! Damn Karl Rove!

To be fair, this paper didn't even make the cut of some of the other conspiracy theorists:

"Therefore, we present our analysis below for your critical review with the product warning that our analysis has failed to achieve the highly sought-after 'Journal of 9/11 Studies' seal of approval."

Highly sought after indeed.

(Hat tip: Screw Loose Change)

This ad brought to you by the DNC

2006-10-30T12:28:00.000-05:00

I had the TV on in the background before while I was on the computer. As you would expect for the week before the election, over the course of an hour there were candidate ads for senate, congress, some state-wide races and some local ones. I wasn't even looking at the screen a few minutes ago when a new ad started with the following voice over:

"Stepping up when the do little congress won't."

OK, must be a Democratic ad for something. It continued:

"On issues like immigration, the minimum wage, stem cell research, and the environment, states are taking the initiative, and California leads the pack."

California? I'm in New York. What candidate thinks they should mention California?

"Tonight, the Golden State's tough new laws, and what they mean for you. When Katie Couric reports from LA on the CBS evening news. See it now."

Wow. And they're surprised that no one trusts them.

Quote of the day

2006-10-29T18:17:00.000-05:00

"Bush hatred is silly and parochial and reductive: History is on the march and the anti-Bush crowd is holding the telescope the wrong way round." - Mark Steyn

There is still time to make a difference

2006-10-27T18:06:00.000-04:00

As a follow-up to my earlier post here, I just spent some time on PoliticalMoneyLine looking at the latest cash on hand figures for the various Republican senators and candidates. First, more bad news about the overall state of the NRSC, from the committee reports:

As I said before, what a disaster. Given the incredible importance and closeness of the election, though, are our existing Republican senators in any position to help out? Here are the latest cash on hand figures for current Republican incumbent senators:

I took the polling data from here. So, we have incumbents who aren't even up for reelection this year sitting on $46 million in cash, and people who are running this year but up by over 30 points sitting on another $19 million. That's $65 million in total.

Think among them they could come up with $10 million or so for the NRSC in about 24 hours? I do.

Think another $10 million or so of ads in two or three key races might be enough to save some seats? I do.

I know that I am ignoring the PACs they run, etc., and that I am also in a way penalizing those who have done a good job raising money. The fact remains, though, that these resources are currently there, and spending down some of them over the next two weeks may be the difference between a majority in the next congress or not.

So, how do we get some pressure on these senators to get their checkbooks out? Dole clearly isn't up to the challenge - the pressure is going to have to come from elsewhere.

[As an aside, I'm sitting here thinking through GOP monetary campaign strategy in a coffee shop in NYC's East Village. If the people around me knew what I was typing away about, they would probably throw me out. Or something worse . . .]

UPDATE: Power Line quotes Charlie Cook on the MD Senate race, which he now thinks is a toss-up:

"One question is whether the national Republican Party will get involved in the race now that polls show a closer-than-expected contest? Advertising in Maryland, particularly in the Washington, DC media market, can be expensive and there are only 11 days left. If the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee or the Republican National Committee does become engaged in the next few days, they could make a difference just by matching what national Democrats have spent and launching some attacks on Cardin."

There's a place for some of that money. NJ would be another good choice. Actually, to hit NJ you need to buy time in NY and Philadelphia. Generic ads in the Philadelphia market would have the added benefit of helping Santorum as well. MO, TN, and VA would seem to be the other candidates for more help.

If you're up by over 30 points, kick in 20% of your cash - you don't need it. If you aren't up for reelection until 2010, kick in 20% of your cash - you'll have plenty of time to get more. If you're up for reelection in 2008, kick in only 10% of your cash in order to be extra cautious. If the existing GOP senators all did that, it would mean an additional $11 million for ads in the coming 10 days.

Don't any of them want to be chairmen next year?

Loose Change/Upper East Side: Part VII - Conclusion

2006-10-27T00:45:00.000-04:00

(Note: This is the seventh (and final) in a series of posts about 9/11 conspiracy theorists and their reaction to the Cory Lidle tragedy on October 11th. Earlier parts: I, II, III, IV, V, and VI.)

Cory Lidle and Tyler Stanger crashed their small plane into a residential building over two weeks ago. In the intervening time, I’ve obviously spent quite a few hours on the event, first reading and monitoring the Loose Change message board that dealt with the tragedy, and then transforming my notes into a series of posts on this website.

Why in the world would I do this?

Actually, that question should be broken up into two parts: why would I decide to spend time challenging the conspiracy theorists at all, and why would I decide to use the Lidle tragedy as a means to do so? Let me answer the second question first.

The Cory Lidle crash was a horrible tragedy. Its exact cause is not known at this time, but – as I mentioned earlier – it appears to have been the result of a failed u-turn attempt by an inexperienced pilot in a narrow flight corridor that left little room for error. If these early indications wind up being borne out, then we will need to seriously look at the flight rules around Manhattan that allow for a situation like this to develop.

The specific findings of the eventual accident report notwithstanding, the Lidle crash was also very simple. A small plane with two civilians in it crashed into an anonymous tower on the eastern edge of Manhattan. It happened in the middle of the day in one of the busiest places on the planet. There were scores of witnesses. Within minutes multiple camera crews were on the scene, broadcasting pictures live. Within an hour or so the fire was out. Within two hours or so we knew the identity of at least one person on the plane. No further events ensued. While those first headlines that a “plane crashed into a building in New York” left all of us (especially in New York) stressed and worried, we also quickly put our worst fears to rest by examining what was going on and the evidence regarding what had happened.

In its combination of tragedy and simplicity, the Lidle crash offers us a test. If you develop a new model, technique, tool, or the like, you test it to make sure it performs as you might expect. The best way to test something is with known data; if it produces the answer you expect and know is right, then the model may be considered validated (at least partially). On the other hand, if it fails to replicate answers that you already know to be true, then you have a problem. In such a case, the model is faulty, and needs to be fixed or replaced before you can hope to get any information from it about things you don’t know yet, or that are more complicated.

As I described above, we know what happened in the case of Lidle, and in fact we knew what happened rather quickly. In that sense, as a “test” of cognitive ability, rationality, and visceral instincts, the Lidle crash is a rather simple challenge. My reason for highlighting it in the context of the Loose Change adherents and other conspiracy theorists is to see how well they performed under such “test” conditions. To put it another way, if they can’t get something as simple as this right, why on earth would we trust what they have to say about the tougher stuff (i.e. 9/11)?

My friends, they failed miserably.

Note that it is not enough for them to say today that they now believe that the Lidle crash was an accident; at this point 16 days later, only someone truly deranged would think that it was a conspiracy of some sort. No, we can still call them out even by focusing only on that first day after the crash. What were their instincts - should we trust them? How was their ability to focus on key issues, to process information, to separate data from noise? Could they recognize honest, conflicting reports from the scene as the mistakes they were? Did they adjust their theories based on the evidence, or attempt to adjust the evidence to fit their theories? Did they effectively police their own members’ sloppy thinking, or were all opinions tolerated in the spirit of there being no such thing as a “bad question”? Did superstition or deduction direct their “analysis”?

You need to learn to walk before you can run. Analyzing the Lidle crash was like learning to crawl, and figuring out the events of September 11th and its aftermath is like running a marathon. If you can’t do the former, you will be utterly useless in tackling the latter. This event was the “control,” and the “control” has shown us that the tool, the model, the movement is not to be trusted.

What are some things that characterize the conspiracy movement? Lazy intellectual standards. Incredibly poor knowledge of mathematics, especially statistical theory. Little accountability. An apparent unfamiliarity with the science of chaos, complex systems, and self-organizing phenomena. Paranoia. An unparalleled ability to data mine themselves to ridiculous conclusions. A disarming tendency to attribute evil and complicity to large swaths of their fellow man. Delusions of grandeur, and other related psychoses. Perhaps most importantly, a rejection of the scientific process, under which there always exists a theoretical set of evidence that would prove your hypothesis wrong. No such evidence exists for the conspiracy monger, for it would only go to further “prove” the conspiracy. Conspiracy isn’t a theory to these people; it is a religion.

Now back to first question: why worry about it? If you are reading this blog, more likely than not you already think that the 9/11 conspiracy movement is nuts. You forget about them if possible, ignore them when necessary, mock them only when you absolutely have to face them in one context or another. In general, you think that they are not worth your time or attention. I know this impulse, and have personally followed it myself for the past few years.

The trouble is, we need to speak up. Too many of our fellow citizens are now taking their gibberish seriously; one survey in the US reports that over a third of the population thinks that the government was somehow complicit in the attacks. Too many of our politicians (mostly on the Left, I observe with no joy) give some of them rhetorical safe harbor. DNC chair Howard Dean thinks there are "interesting" theories raised. Too many entertainers think that it is somehow professionally beneficial to nod approvingly in their direction. Too many of the “cool” and the “hip” think that of course the government was in on it, and too many of their friends think it is enough to change the subject when such garbage is brought up.

Our responsibilities, though, are much greater. Some among us are doing the heavy lifting; sites like Screw Loose Change and 9/11 Myths – to name but two – are doing the yeoman’s work of confronting the conspiracy theorists head on. They’ve earned our appreciation, and deserve our help. And not, I may add, simply in the world of “debunker” websites. Instead, we must move beyond talking just to ourselves, and make the case among the broader public. What the conspiracy theorists charge is intellectually dishonest, but just as important morally reprehensible. Yet they do it with impunity, casting their development of “alternative explanations” as some sort of noble cause, instead of the bankrupt, self-aggrandizing bout of mental masturbation that it is. Such impunity should end.

Challenge them. Confront, don’t coddle. Mock mercilessly. Get angry. Get indignant. Don’t let them get away with skulking in the intellectual shadows, preying on innocent people who would know better if they took the time, but are instead taken in by pseudo science and slick appeals to their worst instincts. Cast light upon these shadowy arguments, and watch them fade away as a result. Sunlight is a wonderful disinfectant, and we’re allowing too much of the conspiracy world to exist in a social twilight – generally dismissed, but still allowed to fester.

Why did I do this? Because it has to be done. I hope that you will help.

But who will speak for the trees?

2006-10-24T19:28:00.000-04:00

Tuesday's Wall Street Journal (sorry, no link - it is actually one of the only things I still read a hard copy of) ran a front page story about a controversy brewing in San Francisco over . . . trees:

"'Wanted' posters went up around the Tenderloin last year, featuring Ms. Abst's photo. Someone circulated pamphlets disparaging her. Residents yelled at her in the street. Ms. Abst's offense: trying to plant 400 trees in the area. 'I had no idea that cleanliness, beauty, and safety could get people so riled up,' the 58-year-old says.

In San Francisco's Tenderloin, residents aren't fighting the usual gentrification battle over displacing low-income families. Instead they are fighting for the neighborhood's gritty ambiance."

I've actually stayed in the Tenderloin a few times over the years. It is a pretty good neighborhood for finding (especially along the periphery) cheaper tourist hotels, and I've hit it when I've been on a particularly tight budget. It is also notoriously crime-ridden, and full of a number of other problems. Definitely not the place for everybody (before all of you run off to book your rooms). And, to be blunt, it could use some trees.

Carolynn Abst opened a business there in 1999, and moved into the neighborhood to live with her husband as well. I mention this to suggest that, having been there a number of years now both professionally and privately, she certainly has earned the right to participate in local politics and issues. Then again, I guess not everyone agrees:

"Ms. Anarchy says she frequently consults with Mr. Sycamore to figure out ways to stop beautification efforts. She attends neighborhood meetings held by the likes of Ms. Abst in order to disrupt the gatherings, loudly seeking to refocus the proceedings on her agenda of rights for sex workers. 'I'm giving voice to the voiceless,' Ms. Anarchy says."

The group that put out the wanted posters is called Gay Shame and refers to itself as "a Virus in the System." Visiting their website is the kind of thing that you do on a slow afternoon is order to get a chuckle. Today was just such a day.

They are actually against gay marriage. Of course, that is because they are against all forms of marriage:

"Don't forget-marriage is the central institution of that misogynist, racist system of domination and oppression known as heterosexuality. Don't get us wrong-we support everyone's right to fuck whomever they want-we're just not in favor of supporting the imperialist, bloodthirsty status quo."

They are also so against pretty much any form of economic prosperity and commerce that they even targeted the business that has been in the neighborhood for over 30 years and gives them free meeting space (despite not being able to make its own rent). Oops:

"Gay Shame frequently encounters hostility for challenging inconsistencies; we consider this risk-taking a measure of our own integrity. Nevertheless, we do have a reputation for making rash decisions, and the stencil outside Modern Times did not improve our (usually undeserved) image. Nor did it help to articulate our politics-- we ended up removing the stencil from the sidewalk with a toxic can of chemicals. Some within the group believed that we were backing down from our politics, but most of us were glad to find a remedy to an uncomfortable situation."

They may be against most businesses, but they certainly know what they are for - sex in public:

"While sex is not legal in bars, My Place has been renowned for decades as a backroom dive. Clearly, the bar is walking a delicate line in order to stay open, but talking about 'getting rid' of the clientele who have kept the bar open and hiring 'sex police' to do the ABC's job is unacceptable, and furthers a reactionary, silencing agenda. . . We will not accept a crackdown on public sex. . ."

They are definitely no fans of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, and are probably the only people in the country who think he is some kind of far right stooge They do have a mayoral platform of their own, though (which I will give them the benefit of the doubt about and assume is satire):

"All members of the SFPD and any other law enforcement agency will be used as nutritious compost to fertilize Golden Gate Park.

Mary supports terrorism in all its forms…as long as the right people get hurt!! . . .

Last year over 169 homeless people dies on the streets of San Francisco. This year 16,900 rich fascist politicians will take their places. . .

Unemployed activists will be given productive employment throwing rocks and boulders through the windows of all live-work loft-style condominiums until all loft owners are forced to take shelter in the bay."

At this point, I'm inclined to sponsor a tree myself, if for no other reason than to piss them off.

Quick Lidle series update

2006-10-24T16:54:00.002-04:00

I know some of you are waiting for the final piece in the Lidle series. Sorry, I meant to have it up already, but other things have gotten in the way. If it isn't up late tonight, it will be up tomorrow.

My apologies.

How many reporters does it take to screw in a light bulb?

2006-10-24T16:54:00.001-04:00

Jack Shafer has a very good piece today on the reaction of many journalists to job cuts in newsrooms. I think it builds nicely on some things I said in an earlier post. Shafer makes an excellent point about the number of journalists working today:

"It's hard to sympathize with the woe-is-us crowd of journalists when you learn that the number of full-timers employed by U.S. news-media organizations today has increased by almost 70 percent compared with 1971, according to The American Journalist in the 21st Century. The book doesn't even include in its census the new jobs in online newsrooms or at the business-wire upstart Bloomberg News."

After I wrote that earlier piece, I saw somewhere a similar figure for the overall growth of journalism jobs over the past few decades. Can't seem to track it down now, though.

Of course, this ignoring of the overall jobs picture is the same mistake that most of the media makes in their general economics coverage - focusing on job losses at specific companies, while ignoring more-than-offsetting job creation at other (typically smaller) firms. In that light, maybe it isn't that surprising that they ignore the journalism job figures, too.

Why does Shafer think that journalists do this?

"Why do so many journalists inflate the importance of their role in our culture? Well, dentists brag about the miracle of dentistry, don't they? I suspect that the egotistical proclamations of journalists really mask the low esteem they hold for the total product they produce. If you fillet the average daily newspaper—cutting out the sports section, the comics, the crossword, the horoscope, the opinion pages, the entertainment coverage, and the special sections devoted to home, dining, medicine, travel, cars, real estate, and TV listings—relatively little of the democracy-enhancing, life-sustaining reportage they boast about actually gets printed."

And that, in the end, has to be what hurts the most.

Mr. President, pick up the phone

2006-10-24T14:26:00.001-04:00

This is just inexcusable. Overall, Elizabeth Dole's leadership of the NRSC has been a disaster - out-recruited, out-fundraised, out-maneuvered. What's past is past, though. As of today, what can be done is that those GOP Senators sitting on ample financial resources can pony up, and fast. If it means you need to run a few more fundraisers next year to refill your account, then that is what you do. If they don't do it on their own, it's time for the President to do some old fashioned arm twisting. In case any of them haven't noticed, the stakes, are, um, kind of high.

For what it's worth, I've thought for a while (say the last two months or so) that the Republicans were going to lose three seats this election, leaving them with 52. I guess I should stick with that, although if I was going to update it today, I might drop down to 51. 52 will probably require winning either Montana or New Jersey; either is possible, but both are looking tougher.

UPDATE: Blogs on the left are getting the right idea, and pushing their flush candidates to shift resources for the common good. When are the blogs on the right going to do the same? The clock is ticking. . .

North Korea & hunger

2006-10-24T12:30:00.000-04:00

In the comments to this post of mine on Ted Turner and North Korea, Safe-Keeper suggests checking out the film "Children of the Secret State." It is a 45 minute film produced a few years ago for the Discovery Times channel, although I had missed it at the time. You can watch it here. Well worth your time.

If you watch, think again about Turner's "thin" quip.

Lest you think that the hunger in the film is a thing of the past, check out this story from the BBC (hat tip: Captain Ed).

Training for the revolution

2006-10-23T14:01:00.000-04:00

I remember while in school myself hearing stories about the type of - well, to be blunt - indoctrination that occurs in the top education schools in the country. The New York Sun recently had a piece on the very issue, in the context of Columbia:

"The problem extends beyond that issue, however, in New York and beyond. Every new instructor minted by Teachers College who uses these ideas in our schools will rob New York students of opportunities for a better future. The flap over indoctrination at Teachers College comes the same day as the news that fewer than half the eighth graders in the city's public schools passed a state math test. It's a juxtaposition as jarring as that of the Nobel prize and the derision of merit. How are the city's schools to produce the next Nobel laureate if their teachers are taught that merit is an 'ideology' that exists to justify discrimination? Truth is, no one would mind so much about teachers' views about the 'legitimacy of the social order,' or lack of it, if the teachers were producing students who can pass the math test."

I would be willing to guess that many (most?) graduates of these programs would not find the material in question particularly controversial. In not doing so, though, they would inadvertently demonstrate how isolated the academy is from those it purports to think for and lead.

As for me, I guess you'd call me a bit of an educational traditionalist. Diagram sentences, drill algebra - learn the foundations until they are second nature. Teach people the skills of communication and the rigor of mathematical thinking, and then you'll be well on your way to educational success.

Loose Change/Upper East Side: Part VI - Names, Names, & More Names

2006-10-21T14:42:00.001-04:00

(Note: This is the sixth in a series of posts about 9/11 conspiracy theorists and their reaction to the Cory Lidle tragedy last week. Earlier parts: I, II, III, IV and V.)

So let’s play along for a bit. Let’s say that the Cory Lidle crash was, in fact, some type of conspiracy. What would the purpose of it be? We’ve talked already about a couple of general possibilities, but I find them rather unsatisfying. No, there must be some goal behind this that is a bit more concrete. But what? Luckily, the posters at the Loose Change message board stepped into this vacuum. They were quick to start thinking through the key issue: who or what was the real target? Someone in the plane? The building itself? Maybe even someone inside the building?

You would think that we should be thankful, in a morbid way, that it was an athlete in the plane. Imagine, for example, if the person in the plane had been some government worker, etc. Then the story in conspiracy land would have been all about how a key figure in the 9/11 cover up was being silenced. Surely there’s no way that someone would think that Cory Lidle was specifically targeted in some devious plot.

Oh, guess again, my friends. Guess again. From the message board:

"or maybe cuz the mob lost a lotta money on the yanks in the playoffs. but yea .. i dunno ... kinda far fetched .. but i would be open to the idea with a lil evidence"

Not to be too blunt, but as a Yankees fan I can assure you that, if there were to be retribution for their disappointing performance this postseason, Mr. Lidle would not be on the top of anyone’s list.

Another poster also thought that Lidle was the target, but for a reason much more related to 9/11:

"what if today's event was an old mafia tactic. the victim being a celebrity...in this case the new york yankees' own cory lidle, someone who is dear to the city. what if this is the elite's way of saying to the NYPD, 9/11 rescue workers, new york in general...anyone thinking about going public: 'SHUT UP. WE CAN REMOTELY GUIDE PLANES INTO BUILDINGS ANYTIME. WE CAN KILL YOUR HEROS AND WORSE. SHUT UP.'"

This is one of my favorite quotes from the message board, because it is a beautiful twofer. On the one hand, it supports the idea of the original conspiracy (with the added passive reference to guided planes). On the other hand, it helps explain why there isn’t more evidence of the conspiracy, since everyone who knows is under this ongoing death threat. Brilliant. Here’s the thing, though: how are all the cops, rescue workers, etc. – tens of thousands of people – supposed to know that this was a message to them? Presumably most people (unlike the enlightened conspiracy theorists) think that the crash was an accident. If that is the case, how are they dissuaded from coming forward? Did they send out a memo or something? If any NYPD officers are reading this, did you get the memo? Could I see it?

No, I’m sorry, it seems rather unlikely that Lidle was the target himself. But what about the real estate? In this space-constrained, real estate-obsessed town, maybe the real victim was the building itself? Truthers certainly were concerned, and sprang into action:

"someone find out who owns this building
i'm looking into who was housed there."

As they furiously clicked away on the internet, they tried to coordinate real time research with each other:

"someone look into jack resnick and sons, 110 east 59th street.
i can't research 3 things at once "

Right away, though, they knew the real name they were looking for:

"Anybody have the exact address for this building? I've heard East 70th and York street, NYC but I'd like to check address with ownership, if possible. Larry Silverstein for example owns more property in NYC than just the WTC site. Don't know if I'd be able to find ownership but I'd like to try."

This quote came early on, obviously; it didn’t take long for the exact address of the building to come out. But the fact that it came so quickly illustrates an important point: the conspiracy theorists don’t observe events, eventually find something lacking in their logic or presentation, and then look for alternate explanations. They start, from the very first moment, looking for angles. They don’t adjust their theory to fit the world; they adjust the world to fit their theory.

It is sort of like you handing me a watch (without a second hand), and me immediately saying, "This watch is stopped! This watch is stopped!" Then, a few seconds later the minute hand moves, and I simply ask for another watch. At which point I scream again. Every so often, it might turn out that you actually hand me a watch that has stopped. That has nothing to do, however, with my obvious inability to diagnosis problems with timepieces.

The Silverstein angle didn’t pan out, but the conspiracy theorists finally found something else they liked:

"another point to note is that the part owners of the belaire is none other than the cantor group. yes, the same cantor group that's building the new freedom tower.

http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=113807"

By all means, go to the website the poster provided. Go to the bottom of the page, and see the link for the Cantor Seinuk Group under "Companies involved in this Building." Click on the link. You’ll see that they are involved in the Freedom Tower (gasp!). You’ll also see, however: 1) they are a structural engineering firm, not an "owner;" 2) they have "worked on more that 60% of the major NYC buildings in the last decade;" and 3) there is an enormous list of buildings right there that they have been involved with (and the vast majority of them appear to be in New York City).

So, what is this observation supposed to mean then? I mean, really, on this one I’m having trouble even figuring out what the conspiracy angle is. That since they helped build this building back in 1988, they will know how to bring it down with a small plane? That somehow they are testing something to put to work on the Freedom Tower? Really, I am at a loss.

On the other hand, look at that list of buildings again – there are a lot of them. What are the chances that a random tall building in New York has involved this firm in some way? Not that high, but not trivial. Remember, though, what we said in Part V about statistics and probability. Think about all the different firms that are involved in the World Trade Center or the site’s reconstruction – owners, architects, engineering firms, construction firms, etc. Think about all the different buildings across the city that each of these firms has been involved in. What are the chances that a randomly selected tall building in New York has some connection to one of those World Trade Center players? Virtually a lock, which means it proves nothing.

Let me make two other observations about the idea that the building itself was a target. First, some posters were very interested in who had the insurance policies on the building. Um, sorry to break this to you guys, but the cost of real estate in New York is already through the roof. You don’t need to torch a modern high rise on the Upper East Side in order to make money; you just have to open the front door. This isn’t some abandoned warehouse district in a shady part of town. Second, if you were going to crash a plane on NY’s east side in order to steal the election/increase terrorism worries/rally people around the flag, etc., you have a much better target. All the plane would have to do would be to head another 30 blocks south, and it could have plowed into the headquarters of the United Nations, right along the water. In fact, the plane passed the building as it was originally heading up the river. Now there would be a target with some pizzazz, if that is what a conspirator was looking for.

So, it seems that the building itself wasn’t the target. There is, however, one aspect we haven’t looked at yet. What about someone in the building? Before I turn to the message board, let’s just acknowledge how stupid it would be to try to kill someone this way. You’re going well over 100 miles per hour, yet supposedly you are counting floors, etc. to try to aim for a specific apartment. There have got to be easier ways to get to someone. But I digress.

The posters weren’t as dismissive as I am, however. One thought that it could have been a kindred spirit:

"what would be if there was an 'important' person inside the building? Maybe a truther? Who's the owner of that apartment?"

Let me blunt. If the government was really in the midst of a great conspiracy, and thought that some of those truthers were getting a little too close, don’t you think they might find a little less conspicuous (and more effective) way to take them out? Remember, these are the guys responsible for the greatest conspiracy in the history of the world. Regardless, I think I smell delusions of grandeur among the conspiracy movement.

Someone else is getting ready for the new James Bond movie that is coming out next month:

"follow the links, and you'll find that indeed this was probably a mi6/cia safehouse of some sort.
apartments 46d/e are held in trust by the u.s. state department, and the plane hit the 40th floor.
the state department routinely holds in trust apartments for "friendly" agents.
did they miss their intended target?
was it just an "accident", that they happened to fly into the building across the street from where the u.n. envoy from north korea lives?
was he the intended target?
who was at the controls of the plane?
was it lidle or was it the 'flight instructor'?"

First off, which is it: targeting a safe house, or the North Korean ambassador? Oh, it doesn’t matter – just keep throwing everything you can come up with at the wall until something sticks. By the way, for people who are unfamiliar with New York, that area of the city is absolutely filled with diplomats, UN workers, etc. The UN is only 1.5 miles away. Once again, think about what I said regarding probability theory - probably every block has someone of signficance on it.

One more poster, if any of you are still with me:

"so what we have at this moment is something that needs to be delved into further.
accident? maybe.
attempt to get rid of an agent that had outlived his usefulness? possibly.
suicide by lidle? doubtful
was the doctor who lived in the apartment the intended target? good question.
there's a game afoot here, but i can't yet point my finger directly on it. i'm dancing all around it, with a lot of you sending me tantalizing bits here and there, that add a piece to the puzzle.
i won't say any more on this subject until we can piece the puzzle completely together......................................"

There is a great choice of words in the midst of that mind-blowing quote: "piece the puzzle." See, to many of these guys that’s what the world is, a giant game. They are like kids playing dress up and concocting a fantasy world of the imagination. The problem is, too many of the adults among us are taking them way too seriously. So in that vein, let me answer one thing this poster raised: was it a "good question" to ask if some poor doctor in that apartment was targeted? No, it was an asinine question. Your teachers lied to you. There are such things as "stupid" questions. You’ve just asked one. Please stop.

I find sifting through conspiracy theorists’ websites disheartening, alarming, depressing, and infuriating. I feel dirty afterwards. I am not a masochist. Why then, you may ask, have I been spending this time over the past week bringing you highlights of their reaction to the Lidle crash. For that answer, you’ll have to read the final part of this series, on why all of this matters, coming on Monday.

Note: I’ve left quotes from the message board as they appeared, and haven’t corrected spelling, etc. Also, Loose Change has upgraded their site over the past few days, and the old message boards no longer appear available. I've left the link to the old message board up, although it isn't working now. If I find a new link to the old threads, I will post it.

Bush channeling Bono

2006-10-20T12:19:00.000-04:00

This is quite funny, and really well done. A nice break from conspiracy theories. (Hat tip: the Corner)

Loose Change/Upper East Side: Part V - Statistics, Numerology, & Other Things to Do with Numbers

2006-10-20T01:05:00.000-04:00

(Note: This is the fifth in a series of posts about 9/11 conspiracy theorists and their reaction to the Cory Lidle tragedy last week. Earlier parts: I, II, III and IV.)

On October 11th, 2006, Cory Lidle’s plane crashed into 524 East 74th Street in New York City.

Do you get it? Can you believe how diabolical the government is? We need to get the truth out.

What, you don’t see it yet? The Loose Change posters did. Come on. OK, I’ll help:

524 East 72nd Street
5 + 2 + 4 =11
7 + 2 = 9

9 and 11 – 9/11! Get it?

Oh, and don’t forget the date: 10/11/06. A number of posters were quick to point out that if you flip the numbers upside down, you get 9/11/01. Those bastards . . .

Um, but wait. Actually, if you flip the date upside down, you get 90/11/01. No, no, no, they reply; you drop the zero before the single digit year (i.e. 10/11/6). Oh, OK. But, if that is the case, why don’t we drop the extra zero in the 9/11 date, too (i.e. 9/11/1). Well, then it won’t match up with the “10” representing October in the date of the crash. But . . .

Boy, this is getting a little convoluted. And it is also one of the most unmitigated piles of utter crap you are ever going to encounter. I’m actually embarrassed that I am taking time out of your life to tell you about it. But if this is the way many of the conspiracy theorists think, it’s important to realize just what they are talking about.

Had enough? I’ll spare you the pain of too many cuts of this type from the message board. Here is just a little sample:

"This is really weird and the day is Number 11."

Well, that’s not too bad. People always like to point out little coincidences like that. If they had stopped there, I would have rolled my eyes and moved on. But no:

"the illuminati are very big into numerology ... this could perhaps mean something"

The Illuminati? That’s a little more out there, don’t you think? Raising the question certainly meant something, though – just no where near what he intended.

Others used the mystical power of numbers to shoot down the idea that someone specifically was targeted for death by the plane (more on that gem of an idea, by the way, tomorrow):

"While it might be important to know who lived in this building, I just dont see how it can transend the numerology. I believe the plane was ment to hit this paticular building strictly because the perps like to play with numbers, and want to remind the public to vote repulican before elections. Not saying your wrong, but the numbers to me seems like no coincidence, so that puts me in doubt if someone was an intended target."

All this talk about significant numbers reminds me of a story. It was a year or two after 9/11, and I was walking past Ground Zero. There was a conspiracy theorist set up there, equipped with placards and the like. His version, though, went back further than most. In fact, he thought that the conspiracy had started back in the Nixon administration. How did we know this? Well, Nixon had been President when the 9-1-1 emergency phone system had been put into place (or so he claimed – this chronology suggests Johnson was President at the time). The selection of 9-1-1 as the number to call had been done as part of a 30+ year process of training the population to mentally associate those digits with tragedy, in preparation for the 9/11 “attacks.”

You just can’t make this stuff up.

Had enough yet? I thought so. Since I have your attention, though, allow me a brief sidetrack into statistics. In a lot of what you read in the conspiracy world, there is a pretty basic misunderstanding of probability theory. This poster unintentionally highlights the problem:

"This is covering up old things or part of the becoming ones. It seeems like part of a bigger plan to me. They need this I cant put it together but think about it.. What happened here?? A baseball players plane hits a building. How many of you have hit building with an airplane?? Or do you know anyone? And not just that.. look around."

The problem with this and other observations is that they confuse two different probabilities: on the one hand, the chance, ahead of time, of a specific, fairly rare "coincidence" happening; and, on the other hand, the chance of any of a wide variety of "coincidences" happening. The chance of the first is quite low, while that of the second is a lot higher.

An example might help. Here is one that is used in lots of statistics classes. Say you are one of 50 students in a lecture hall. What is the chance that someone else in the room shares your birthday? What is the chance that any two people in the room share a birthday? Here’s a graph I put together with the answers to those questions for class sizes up to 50:

The calculation is fairly simple. I can detail it if you want, but I figured I’d spare most of you the pain.

You can see that while the chance of someone else having your birthday is quite low, the chance of two people in the room having the same birthday is almost a lock. This is an important result, and not intuitive to most people who have never taken statistics.

It is this phenomenon at the core of many conspiracy claims. To tie it back to our last post, what is the chance of a specific piece of paper selected ahead of time surviving a fire? Low. What is the chance of a number of random pieces of paper surviving the fire? Very high.

I’m not sure if you found that statistics detour useful, but it is a mistake that people make all the time, and conspiracy people make more than most. It is sort of like saying, "What is the chance that I will win the lottery this week?" (very low), versus, "What is the chance that someone will win the lottery this week?" (a heck of a lot higher). Lots of times when conspiracy theorists start something with, "What are the chances," it is a good idea to keep this distinction in mind.

Next time, we’ll watch as the research tools of the conspiracy movement are focused on finding out who was affected by the Lidle crash. I promise you, I haven't used up all the good quotes yet.

Note: I’ve left quotes from the message board as they appeared, and haven’t corrected spelling, etc. Also, Loose Change has upgraded their site over the past few days, and the old message boards no longer appear available. I've left the link to the old message board up, although it isn't working now. If I find a new link to the old threads, I will post it.

Brave, very brave

2006-10-19T16:10:00.000-04:00

Other bloggers have already made similar points, but I just had to briefly chime in: under what rationale does CNN decide to show videos of snipers shooting American troops, but not images of cartoons mocking Mohammed?

"CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons out of respect for Islam."

Does it follow then that showing the video displays a lack of respect for the military? A few days later they offered a more detailed explanation:

"CNN is not showing the negative caricatures of the likeness of the Prophet Mohammed because the network believes its role is to cover the events surrounding the publication of the cartoons while not unnecessarily adding fuel to the controversy itself."

I guess they have no concern that showing sniper attacks on troops might, oh, I don't know, "add fuel" to any controversy about the war?

The point I want to make is not whether or not they should have shown the video today. Rather, I wanted to highlight that decision in the context of the earlier cartoon call.

CNN - they will speak truth to power. Unless, of course, the power threatens to kill them.

Loose Change/Upper East Side: Part IV - Burning Passports & Other Questions of Physics

2006-10-19T09:33:00.000-04:00

(Note: This is the fourth in a series of posts about 9/11 conspiracy theorists and their reaction to the Cory Lidle tragedy last week. Earlier parts: I, II, and III.)

If you follow any of the 9/11 conspiracy talk, you will note that the discussions frequently involve physics or the other sciences. You’ll be treated to arguments about steel melting points, debris patterns, controlled demolitions, and hole sizes. Frequently there is just enough marginal scientific commentary to make it sound as if they are just “raising questions,” when the real story is that they ignore the available resources and answers in order to keep their conspiratorial ruse afloat.

A simple example is the oft-heard complaint that the World Trade Center came down as if it were a controlled demolition, resembling the video records of such instances that we’ve all seen on TV over the years. Their lack of comfort in the appearance of the collapse, however, begs the question: what should it look like when a building that size fails? By what fact base do they believe it should look differently than it did? You get the sense that many people think a building falling is like a tree being chopped down, and that they believe the towers should have tipped over from their bases, eventually falling to the ground on their sides, stretching out for many city blocks.

Of course, that is preposterous. A tree is solid, while the vast majority of the towers’ volumes were empty air. When structural integrity fails, gravity takes over, pulling everything down. To think otherwise is to ignore the most basic laws of physics and engineering, all because the visual manifestations of a building collapsing in on itself appear similar, whether the proximate cause was a controlled demolition or airliners plowing into its side.

Many of the arguments conspiracy theorists make originate from assertions regarding physical realities that simply aren’t true. Returning to Cory Lidle’s accident, look at this poster from the message board:

"the plane didnt pentrate through the building, it was only going 150-200MPH max... you would expect the plane to be intact just like a normal car in a crash would be. What kind of plane debri was found on the ground?"

Why, exactly, should a plane traveling that fast, 40 stories up, and flying into a massive building resemble the wreckage that a car would produce during an accident at, say, 50 miles per hour? Well, because they say it should, that’s why. This is obviously nonsense, even before taking into account the different materials used and the split of the plane wreckage between the affected apartments and the street below.

The most indignation, however, regarding the physical evidence is saved for the fact that Lidle’s passport was found among the wreckage on the street below. As one poster demanded:

"passports should never be found damet!"

You might wonder why this is such a big deal for the conspiracy world. Well, one of their pet peeves about the “official” 9/11 explanation is that a hijacker’s passport was found among the wreckage. In their mind, it should have been incinerated. In fact, this belief is so deeply ingrained in the conspiracy mindset that the recovery of Lidle’s passport incensed the masses.

Some reactions were just a little shock:

"They found his passport in the street in all the rubble.
That sounds so wildly familiar to the stuff they told us about 9/11 hijacker's passport (as if to say -- see such a thing is possible). Absolutely amazing."

And this:

"Odd how that passport of the pilot ended up in the street. That was quite a blaze coming from that building. Wonder what else from the airplane was in the street?"

Well, let’s see, there were the bodies and a good part of the wreckage for a start. No matter, suspicions were raised:

"the passport thing alone is enough to say 'where have we heard that one before?'
i want to know more....................."

At least this poster is honest enough to say he is using his imagination:

"my imagination says that the passport today was to PROVE the possibiliity of a passport on 9/11."

This poster, on the other hand, is sure it’s not his imagination at work:

"its bullshit and its to support the finding of the terrorists passport from 911"

The ongoing discussion among the conspiracy theorists wound up focusing on two issues: 1) why would Lidle have his passport, and 2) why didn’t the passport burn in the crash. With regards to the first point, people thought it was awfully fishy:

"I wonder why an American citizen is flying around inside the United States with a passport in the first place. Those are for overseas use."

They are also an excellent form of general identification, establishing both citizenship and identity. I generally use mine when opening a bank account, starting a new job, etc. Another poster:

"I have a passport, the only times I ever use it is when I go overseas. Never had anyone ask for one here inside the United States. Most people don't even recognize one when they see it."

That seems a little hard to believe. Finally, a simple question:

"You need your passport to fly around in the U.S., even as an ID?"

Why did Cory Lidle have his passport with him that day? I didn’t know the man, so I can’t be sure. But here’s a thought: he was leaving the next day to fly to his off-season home in California. Given that, he certainly had packed most of his things already. Is it that hard to fathom that he would have all his “important papers” together in one place, such as a brief case or back pack? Things like passports, pilot licenses, etc. He certainly would have had his passport with him in NY, since he needs to travel to Canada for games during the season. In fact, I find the idea of keeping things like passports and pilots licenses together with other important stuff rather unremarkable, especially when you are about to hit the road. I’ve certainly done things like that in the past (albeit minus the pilot’s license).

If he did have the passport with him, why wasn’t it destroyed? As one poster asks:

"Seriously, are those things made of indestructible titanium alloys, or paper?"

Someone else goes into a bit more detail:

"What I find amazing in this passport story is that IT was found in the street below; it obviously had to get there from the airplane after it had crashed into the building. We saw the fire coming from the building, it was pretty intense. I'm holding my passport right now and it's paper, I won't try but I am pretty sure I could set fire to it with a simple match. Just oddly curious in the sense also that it was alleged that a 9/11 hijacker's passport was found in the street after the towers collapsed. I maintain the same odd curosity about that as well."

First of all, an observation about what happened last week. Plane hits building. Parts of plane (especially the heaviest part, i.e. the engine) continue into the building. Other parts of the plane, however, do not penetrate, and proceed to slide down the face of the building and crash down below. This isn’t tough to figure out; you can see the giant black mark on the side of the building where the plane slid down. So, right off the bat, it is not the case that the passport had to somehow leap out of the building after the crash. Nor is it necessary to think, as this poster did, that pilot training includes the following:

"There must be a 'what-to-do-when-I-fly-my-plane-into-a-building-in-10-steps' booklet in every aircraft.

1. Get axe
2. Break window
3. Open your coat
4. Reach for your inside pocket
5. Grab passport
6. Lift passport out of inside pocket
7. Get hand out of your coat while holding passport
8. Get ready for throwing
9. Aim to broken window
10. Throw passport out of aircraft."

More importantly, all this talk about the passport (or any other specific piece of flammable material) being unable to survive a crash in nonsense. As the most obvious example, remember the sky of lower Manhattan being filled with paper floating to the ground on 9/11? I do, despite the fact that there was an inferno going on inside.

Let’s try a thought experiment (actually try this at your own risk, I accept no liability). Imagine taking a large glass bowl or baking dish. Fill it up with small pieces of things flammable – pieces of paper, cardboard, wood chips, etc. Treat some (or even all) of them before hand with lighter fluid or something similar. Go outside and stand ten feet or so from a brick wall. Light the contents of the bowl on fire, and then with all your might hurl the bowl at the wall. Of course, make sure no one is around, and that you are wearing appropriate protection.

You will notice two things, among others: firstly, debris from the bowl – especially small pieces – will be all over the place, and not in some simple little pile at the base of the impact site. Secondly, many pieces of the flammable “debris” will have not burned. Sure, under ideal circumstances all or most of it would have – say in a furnace. But in the real world, the force of the impact will knock much of it away, and some of that will wind up not burning.

This is, of course, only a metaphor for what actually happens in a crash or other tragedy, and you can tweak the experiment as you like. Two takeaways will remain, though: small pieces of debris will be remarkably scattered, and much otherwise flammable, remarkably scattered debris will wind up not being destroyed. Just because conspiracy theorists claim this shouldn’t happen doesn’t make it true.

Why are the posters so hung up on this? Because the Cory Lidle crash provides a “control” for some of their claims about 9/11. If a passport survives this crash, then is it unthinkable that it could survive others? Of course not. Instead of facing this fact, conspiracy theorists would have you believe that someone got their hands on Lidle’s passport before the crash, and then planted it among the wreckage right after to substantiate some of the 9/11 evidence from five years before. What is more likely – that, or the fact that not everything burns in a crash?

Next, we look at the numerology of the Lidle crash, as well as some other observations about mathematics.

(Note: I’ve left quotes from the message board as they appeared, and haven’t corrected spelling, etc. Also, Loose Change has upgraded their site over the past few days, and the message boards appear to be down as a result. I’ve left the link to the original board intact, assuming it will be back up at some point.)

UPDATE: Loose Change now has a new forum (registration required) that doesn't seem to contain the old threads. I've left the link to the old message board up, although it isn't working now. If I find a new link to the old threads, I will post it.

Loose Change/Upper East Side: Part III - Suspicious Timing

2006-10-17T15:35:00.000-04:00

(Note: This is the third in a series of posts about 9/11 conspiracy theorists and their reaction to the Cory Lidle tragedy last week. Earlier parts can be found here and here.)

A bang. A screech. A crash. A roar.

Sounds like that cause the average person to turn towards the source to see what is happening. A special few, however, turn the other way, thinking the action is a distraction from what must really be going on. After watching too many Hollywood movies, they are convinced things never just happen.

Can there ever be just a car crash, just an accident, just a coincidence? If not, when do actual accidents happen? You know, where someone is going too fast and skids, slips on ice and falls, over estimates his own abilities and crashes. Are they all hidden away someplace else in another conspiracy, leaving the public’s “capacity for accidents” left to be filled by the nefarious plots of the powers that be?

With regards to the Cory Lidle crash, there was a significant period of time before it was known who was on the plane. Before then, talk about head fakes and the like, while silly, was slightly more tolerable. After it was known, however, to think that this was still some secret government mission is, well, a bit batty.

Let’s turn again to the message board. Right in the beginning, moments after the news hit, people were awfully sure of themselves:

"this is deliberate, mark my words.
it takes attention away from the real issues."

Consider your words marked. Another poster had an even more dire prediction:

"The Martial Law bill will be signed right now."

Of course, when none of these things came to pass, there were certainly no apologies being offered. Other people are to be held accountable, not necessarily these guys.

Well after it was clear that it was Cory Lidle on the plane, board posters were still claiming devious plans:

"Kansas City Shuffle, my friend. Look the other way, see what has been obscured by this smoke screen. Maybe there's something behind this."

Oh, and don’t forget about the President:

"Bush sabotaged the plane so you would all get side tracked to the real matter at hand."

The great part about all of these, of course, is that there is no way to disprove them, and those who offer such predictions don’t even pretend to try to provide evidence themselves. It’s similar to many of the tactics used by conspiracy aficionados: all they are doing is “raising questions” - who can be against that?

For the record, I haven’t found anything that happened on Wednesday, October 11th that received inadequate attention because two individuals crashed a plane in New York. With all the conspiracy guys right on top of it, you’d think they would have found out what the real story was by now.

Up next, a look at some of the physics of the conspiracy claims, and specifically the issue of finding passports at crash sites.

(Note: I’ve left quotes from the message board as they appeared, and haven’t corrected spelling, etc. Also, Loose Change has upgraded their site over the past few days, and the message boards appear to be down as a result. I’ve left the link to them intact, assuming they will be back up at some point.)

UPDATE: Loose Change now has a new forum (registration required) that doesn't seem to contain the old threads. I've left the link to the old message board up, although it isn't working now. If I find a new link to the old threads, I will post it.

I'd be in more trouble if they asked for capitals

2006-10-17T11:18:00.000-04:00

Can you pass the third grade? I wish there was a bonus for speed.

John in Wonderland

2006-10-16T14:53:00.000-04:00

I'm sorry, but if John Spencer thought the NRSC was going to pour money into the NY Senate race, he's delusional (via the Note):

"He said National Republican Senatorial Committee head Elizabeth Dole promised him millions last year. But the political weather has darkened for Republicans, now worried about saving endangered seats. When Spencer went to Washington last week for the money, Dole sent him home empty handed.

'I'm deeply disappointed in their lack of courage,' he said. 'To actually give me nothing is an outrage.'"

In case he hasn't noticed, the party actually has a couple of other races that it is keeping its eyes on, maybe ones a tad bit closer than Mr. Spencer's bid.

If you run for Senate, it is your responsibility to raise money for your campaign, not to claim "outrage" that the national party is choosing to devote resources to races where, you know, their candidate is maybe within 20 points.

The NY GOP disaster looks as likely as ever.

UPDATE: And Bruno positions to take as little heat as possible, although what he is saying is true.

Loose Change/Upper East Side: Part II - Chaos and Its Consequences

2006-10-15T23:11:00.000-04:00

(Note: This is the second in a series of posts about 9/11 conspiracy theorists and their reaction to the Cory Lidle tragedy last week. Part I can be found here.)

If one looks at some of the conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11, many of them include and/or are prompted by some bit of eyewitness testimony. Usually that testimony conflicts with other people at the scene, or even with the complete recollections of the same people being cited. Nevertheless, if a single person claims to have seen something that doesn’t fit with the “official” version of events, this is taken as an indication that a conspiracy is afoot.

Last week, when Cory Lidle’s plane hit a building in New York City, I already happened to have the television on. I switched to the coverage of the accident about 10-15 minutes after it occurred, and then had on a variety of stations covering the situation for the next few hours. If you were watching the coverage – and especially if you were following the coverage across a few different stations – you couldn’t help but notice discrepancies in many initial accounts. There were differences between what different stations were saying (presumably because of differences amongst their sources), and even differences among the accounts on the same station.

One of the most obvious discrepancies was whether the craft in question was a helicopter or a fixed wing airplane; it was this discrepancy, incidentally, that originally led me to want to write about this, in order to illustrate how well-meaning people can get facts wrong. And, quite frankly, some of them were wrong. This was a fairly simple, knowable fact. There is but one correct answer (unless you maintain that there were two aircraft involved). There is no gray area here, no room for interpretation.

In case you are wondering, let me say that it is abundantly clear now that it was a single, fixed wing plane that hit the building. If you don’t think that’s the case, well, I guess we can talk about it. But given all the evidence that suggests otherwise, the onus will be on you to show why that is not correct.

If it is true that that is the case, why did some people say they saw a helicopter? Simply put, they were mistaken. Remember, things happen quickly, circumstances are scary, chaos abounds, and situations are confusing. This is incredibly important to realize: people make mistakes, including about what they see, and especially under stressful situations. They don’t do this because they are necessarily evil or conniving; they do it because they are human. Someone hears something, turns, and looks. Maybe they turn in time to take in the situation, maybe they turn in time to see a blur, maybe they turn in time to see the immediate aftermath. The mind tends to fill in the details in circumstances like these, especially when the situation is traumatic and someone wants to have seen the whole thing. Our minds are actually incredibly good at filling in details to augment limited information sets and make sense of a situation. For example, think about being on a phone call with bad reception; your mind is filling in lots of blanks (word and parts of words missed) based on context and other clues, making (or trying to make) a sensible whole out of fragmented parts.

There is also a natural human impulse to want to be important, and no one is more important in the aftermath of a tragedy than an “eyewitness.” Concurrently, there is a subconscious desire to make what you saw newsworthy, to subtly fill in blanks, or say things with more certainty than you probably should. Someone who says they really didn’t see much gets interviewed quietly and quickly; someone who says they saw the whole thing gets to have their family watch their interview on the news that night played time and again. Hence, our bias to matter.

Back to the conspiracy theorists and their message board. One of the posters actually almost had his hands on the answer and didn’t even realize it:

"Lot's of conflicting reports coming out right now about the crash. Reports of odd things from eye-witnesses. It's as if nobody is 100% sure what's going on so soon after a tragedy. What does it all mean? I don't know."

As I said above, it means that people make mistakes. Some are confused, some are mistaken, and some are even right. You find out who’s who by looking at the totality of the accounts and the evidence, not by hanging the conspiracy shingle on a single conflicting, contradictory account.

In addition to the plane/helicopter discrepancy, there was also initial confusion about the path that the flight had taken. The correct path was later identified by radar records and other means, but early on it wasn’t clear which way it had come. Different channels were offering contradictory accounts:

“cnn showed the fight path coming from teterboro, going up to 1500 ft. as it reached the west side of manhattan. it flew straight across manhattan island, turned south upon reaching the east river, then turned right after dropping down to 400 ft., flying directly into the building.

mayor bloomberg just said that the plane came up the east river after circling the staue of liberty twice.

the plane can't be in 2 places at once.”

That’s right, the plane can’t be; another case of some witnesses being wrong. Here’s another poster:

"why is there 2 different versions of the direction the plane came in from? one version is that it corcled the statue of lberty 2x before heading north along the east river, then turning into the building. that would make it a left turn into the building not a right turn.
the other version has the plane flying across manhattan island, coming from west to east, across restricted airspace, and turning south along the east river before turning right into the building.
the video of the plane hitting the building suggests that the plane was on a beeline course for this building, not from the river but coming in directly across from the southwest."

Regarding this last quote, one further point. I watched that video the poster is talking about. It doesn’t show the plane coming in from the southwest; in fact, it shows exactly the opposite, looking at the north face of the building as the plane hits it, traveling towards the southwest. The poster made a mistake about what they saw. Not unlike some people on the ground.

The funny thing is, many conspiracy types want it both ways. On the one hand they will jump on any discrepancy in accounts as a sign that something is wrong, and at the same time they will point to any too-quick consensus as, well, a sign that something is wrong. To put it another way, there is never a set of circumstances that tells them there is not a conspiracy. To wit:

"Well this was not a terror attack. It must be true because its in the news! No but really they covered the whole thing very fast and now things are suddenly so clear about it. People what else is happening Right Now as we are blinded listening to the news and concentrating only on this?"

And another poster:

"Talk about drills btw. Oh yes they are bragging about how they have learned from all the drills. They ansver everything so knowingly, like this happened already a month ago!"

So for some there simply is no set of information or evidence that suggests they can be wrong; any information provided will always indicate a conspiracy among us. That’s not logic or reason at work; that’s fanaticism.

Coming up next, a discussion of the “Kansas City Shuffle.”

(Note: I’ve left quotes from the message board as they appeared, and haven’t corrected spelling, etc.)

UPDATE: Over the past few days, the Loose Change website has had a revamp. The old forum appears down, and they now have a new forum (registration required) that doesn't seem to contain the old threads. I've left the link to the old message board up, although it isn't working now. If I find a new link to the old threads, I will post it.

There are mistakes, and then there are mistakes

2006-10-13T16:25:00.000-04:00

Posted by a lawyer friend of mine. I think the woman has a good case.

UPDATE: I realized after I posted this that I probably should have also included a warning. The link is really disgusting; click through at your own risk.

UPDATE 2: A doctor friend of mine writes:

"Just wanted to let you know that I've seen those surgeries, and connecting the colon to the vagina is not all that hard to do. In fact, its one of those things that surgeons 'double check' to make sure they haven't done."

I had no idea. Regardless, if you are a surgeon, for the love of god, please double check.

Loose Change on the Upper East Side: Part I - Introduction

2006-10-13T16:10:00.000-04:00

Two days ago, Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle and a flight instructor named Tyler Stanger crashed a small, single engine plane into an apartment building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. Both perished in the accident, although miraculously no other lives were lost. The investigation into the tragedy continues, although initial indications are that the accident may have been the result of a botched u-turn attempt over the East River.

Watching the events unfold on television, I was struck by how confused many of the eye witness accounts were in the initial chaotic moments. Hmm, I thought, this might make an interesting blog post. While I was thinking about it, I stumbled across this posting at Screw Loose Change, which then led me to this message board at the Loose Change website. For those who are unfamiliar, the guys behind Loose Change are among the more prominent of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

My oh my, did I ever hit the mother lode of material for mocking. My plan then was to put together a posting on some of the wackier things people were saying about this accident. A funny thing happened on my way through the loony bin, though: I had way too much material. Cutting and pasting from what I thought were the best quotes and points, I quickly had six full pages of excerpts, way too much material for a typical blog post of reasonable length. So, I am going to try a little experiment, and put together a miniseries, if you will, on a single topic. There will be six posts to come after this one:

• Part II – Chaos and Its Consequences
• Part III – Suspicious Timing
• Part IV – Burning Passports and Other Questions of Physics
• Part V – Statistics, Numerology, and Other Things to Do with Numbers
• Part VI – Names, Names, and More Names
• Part VII – Conclusion: Why This Matters

All the postings will come over the next few days. If this experiment works out well, I might use it on occasion for other topics that are best dealt with in longer form. We’ll see how it goes.

Right off the bat, though, let me fess up to an unusual coincidence, and let the conspiracy mongers among us get their research tools out. I live about 50 blocks south of the plane crash this week, and on September 11th, 2001 I lived about 30 blocks north of the World Trade Center (different apartment, obviously). I know there are forces in the conspiracy movement that will undoubtedly determine I’m some how in on it. In my defense, however, I will point out that in the intervening time I lived in Philadelphia a few years for grad school, and to the best of my knowledge there were no serious aeronautical events down there during my presence. Of course, I probably just moved down there for a bit to knock everyone off the scent . . .

So sit back and enjoy. Part II will follow later today. In the meantime, if you missed it, check out the South Park from this past week on the 9/11 conspiracy theorists (part 1, part 2, part 3). As Cartman sings in the episode:

“Is it wrong for me to ask questions?
Is it wrong to seek the truth?
I can’t just blindly accept their version.
I can’t base my logic on proof.”

Hopefully we’ll be doing a bit better than that. More to come.

UPDATE: Over the past few days, the Loose Change website has had a revamp. The old forum appears down, and they now have a new forum (registration required) that doesn't seem to contain the old threads. I've left the link to the old message board up, although it isn't working now. If I find a new link to the old threads, I will post it.

Ted's excellent North Korean adventure

2006-10-10T16:40:00.000-04:00

Fresh from a trip to North Korea, Ted Turner was interviewed on CNN by Wolf Blitzer a few weeks ago (hat tip: Megan McCormack). It was - especially in light of their recent (attempted?) nuclear test - quite an extraordinary performance. Let's get right to Ted:

"But I had a great time. I am absolutely convinced that the North Koreans are absolutely sincere. There's really no reason -- no reason for them to cheat or do anything to violate this very forward agreement. I mean, I think we can put the North Korea and East Asia problems behind us and concentrate on Iran and Iraq, where, where we still have some ongoing difficulties."

So far not a lot of surprises. Probably about what you've come to expect from the guy. You can disagree with him on the substance (which I certainly do), but no showstoppers so far. Continuing, what does Ted think of the North Korean leader?

"Well, I didn't get, I didn't get to meet him, but he didn't look, in the pictures that I've seen of him on CNN, he didn't look too much different than most other people."

Well, that makes me feel better. What cutting edge, insightful analysis. Glad he seems to think that, if you don't see horns or something coming out of the guy's head on TV, everything is hunky-dory. Still, at this point I generally just think that Ted's an idiot, as opposed to evil.

But wait, it was just a matter of time. What about the issues of starvation and economic desperation? Ted's on it:

"Well, hey, listen. I saw a lot of people over there. They were thin and they were riding bicycles instead of driving in cars."

Disgusting. Millions of people starve to death, millions continue to suffer from malnutrition - never mind the other human rights abuses - and Ted Turner offers quips about people being "thin." I am literally at a loss for words. Maybe he thinks keeping people thin is a smart move for when guards "spear" them to drag them back across the border (hat tip Austin Bay). (By the way, that article link is not for the squeamish, but turning a blind eye to the actions it describes is also not for the humane.)

Well, maybe Ted (or you) doesn't care about human rights, or the domestic situation in North Korea. What about the threat they pose to the US or regional peace?

"And North Korea never posed any significant threat to the United States. I mean, the whole economy of North Korea's only $30 billion a year. It's less than the city of Detroit. It's a small place, and we do not have to worry about them attacking us."

Is that right? Here is what their "unofficial spokesman" said just the other day:

"Kim is unique in that he is the first to equip Korea with sufficient military capability to take the war all the way to the continental US. Under his leadership the DPRK has become a nuclear-weapons state with intercontinental means of delivery. . . Unlike all the previous wars Korea fought, a next war will be better called the American War or the DPRK-US War because the main theater will be the continental US, with major cities transformed into towering infernos."

Hyperbole aside, I guess we aren't supposed to listen to what people actually say. Back to Ted - what does he think we should do? Is North Korea really a threat?

Turner: "Let's give 'em a break. Give 'em a break And besides, even if they do -- even if they do threaten us again, the threat is non-existent to the United States. They can't threaten us. I mean, it's like a flea attacking an elephant." [typo corrected]

Blitzer: "What about those ground to ground missiles that they have, and the CIA-"

Turner: "They can't reach us."

Blitzer: "Well, they can reach Japan. They can reach South Korea. They can reach a lot of our allies-"

Turner: "They can't reach the USA, and we can pound them into, into oblivion in 24 hours."

Blitzer: "But, you don't want to get, you don't want to get to that. There are some estimates, by the way, that could reach Alaska."

Turner: "Well, what, the Aleutian Islands? There's nothing up there but a few sea lions."

This is Ted Turner's world. Nuclear threat against our troops overseas? Acceptable. Nuclear threat against our allies South Korea and Japan (whom we are obligated by treaty to defend)? Acceptable. Nuclear threat to the US itself? Acceptable, since it's only some islands in Alaska (wait till his environmentalist friends hear about this). Of course, you have to trust that we know exactly how far those missiles can go, and that North Korea doesn't develop (or already have) the means to deliver them further, and that there is no possibility of them passing them along to another hostile group or regime. Come to think of it, such knowledge probably wouldn't cause Turner to shift his world view at all. I mean, he seems unconcerned with a nuclear threat to Tokyo; why should San Francisco get him up in arms?

Has Turner been denounced on the Left? If not, when did the Left come to this? When did it become OK to ignore the starvation of a people by callously noting that they looked "thin"? When did it become OK to not worry about nuclear weapons held by a mad regime when they can only hit your soldiers, allies, and outlying territory? Is Ted Turner simply psychotic? What depravity.

It is said that youth is wasted on the young. If this interview is to be believed, freedom may be wasted on Ted Turner.

City #1, meet city #2

2006-10-10T10:35:00.000-04:00

"I'm not physically capable of driving anywhere near Chicago without driving into it. I just can't bring myself to depress the accelerator and keep going past, even if the city is 500 miles to the north. Those of you on the coasts who have never been there have no idea. Unless you live in New York, Chicago is better than your city. Sorry, that's just how it is." (link)

As someone who has lived in both Chicago and New York, that sounds about right. No offense intended to the rest of the country, of course.

A tale of two protests (or three)

2006-10-09T12:40:00.000-04:00

You've probably seen the story already, but last week there was a lovely display of what passes for freedom of speech (or lack thereof) up at Columbia University. Here is the initial story from the Columbia Spectator, and here is an update talking about the use of Facebook in trying to identify the protesters. There's been lots of blog commentary about this already, for example here, here, and here. What I always find depressing about stuff like this are the "yes, but" free speech advocates. As in (from the first article):

"'I don't feel like we need to apologize or anything. [YES] It was fundamentally a part of free speech. ... [BUT] The Minutemen are not a legitimate part of the debate on immigration.'"

Sounds remarkably like lots of people who don't like anyone disagreeing with them. Like I said the other day in a slightly different context, there is no right not to be offended. It shouldn't need to be said, but freedom of speech actually means freedom for those with whom you disagree as well. Inconvenient, I know, but that's the way it is (or at least is supposed to be).

As far as I'm concerned, this is much more my type of campus protest these days, courtesy of my graduate school alma mater.

All this talk of college protests, though, had me reminiscing about some of the protests from my undergrad days here. One story in particular stood out. Back when I was in college, California passed Proposition 187. For those who don't remember, it was a ballot measure that eliminated certain benefits for illegal immigrants in California. Quite controversial at the time, it passed with 59% of the vote, though it was never enacted due to judicial review.

Anyway, one day on campus (in Connecticut, obviously) about a month after the election, I was walking with a friend in the campus center. There was a table set up (as was quite typical), in this case to sign petitions, "Against Prop 187." Known for always getting a kick out of engaging with the protesters of the day (my favorites were the guys from the Workers Vanguard, but that's for another time), I approached to find out more.

So, I walk up, and one of the woman manning the operation asks me to sign. I ask her what the petition is for, and she starts telling me about the evils of the measure. Stepping in when her need for breath made her (thankfully) stop talking for a second, I said: "That may all be true, but those arguments were for before the election. The election has come, the measure passed, and now it's going to be stuck in the courts thanks to challenges, etc. What's the point of a petition regarding a pending court case involving a duly passed statute?"

"It's important that people know how we feel," she offered, also starting to look a little uncomfortable at having to answer a question at all. Doesn't this guy know he's just supposed to sign?

After a few more equally unenlightening exchanges, the conversation was getting tedious. About to leave, I did inquire as to what they were going to do with the petitions themselves.

"Oh, we're bringing them to the Governor," she said.

I will tell you, I was taken aback, and a little impressed. Maybe I had sold her short. True, a petition trying to influence a court about a case in front of it struck me as inappropriate and obtuse, but on the other hand at least they were making the effort to get these things all the way out to California, and in the hands of the person who would be responsible to enforce the law itself.

"Wow," I offered, "you're bringing these out to Gov. Wilson?"

"Oh, no," was the quick and sort of confused reply, "Gov. Weicker." For those of you who don't know, Lowell Weicker was the governor of Connecticut at the time. And, even better, he hadn't run for reelection that year, and so was a lame duck in the midst of the transition out of office.

So, it seems that the great plan was to convince the governor of Connecticut to mount some form of protest against the great state of California for the law. All options were to be on the table - public condemnations, sanctions, retaliatory measures. Alas, thanks to judicial intervention, the full force of Connecticut's retaliatory powers never were brought to bear. But I'm sure California was quaking in its boots.

At this point, realizing I had nothing left to add, I headed off for my lunch, secure in the knowledge that passionate people were letting the powers that be know how they felt. Never mind that they were the wrong powers.

And that my friends was my witness to the great Connecticut-California Embargo of 1994. Never heard of it? Why am I not surprised . . .

If you are going to write an article, have someone explain the industry to you first

2006-10-05T23:45:00.000-04:00

For something that gets a lot of press, there is a basic misunderstanding about the nature and purpose of hedge funds. The New York Times makes a quite common mistake today in this article:

"Returns for many hedge funds, which are supposed to be the market beaters, have paled in comparison with stocks. Hedge Fund Research’s weighted composite index is up 7.23 percent through September, according to a preliminary estimate, compared with the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, which, with dividends, has a total return of 12.4 percent over the same period."

First of all, hedge funds come in all shapes and sizes. There are ones that invest simply in common stocks, ones that invest strictly in the bonds of distressed companies, and ones that invest strictly in energy derivatives. There are ones that use borrowed money ("leverage") to enhance returns, ones that use options, and ones that do neither. And there are ones that use combinations of these and numerous other approaches.

What there are relatively few of, though, are funds that are simply looking to be "market beaters" no matter what. Instead, what most of them offer is a a "risk-adjusted" return that beats the market, or a return profile that has other desirable characteristics. Some hedge funds specialize in creating moderate but consistent returns, for example, thereby lowering expected volatility. Others try specifically to be very uncorrelated to the overall equity markets, realizing that the vast majority of their investors have significant exposure there already which they are trying to balance. Others specifically want to avoid negative returns, and will accept less upside as a result.

What I am trying to get at with all of this is that, except in very rare circumstances, it is not the goal of a hedge fund to simply beat the market in any specific period (and certainly not over a time period as short as less than a year). They have usually promised something else to their investors, and that is what they need to be judged against.

In the aggregate, you would probably expect hedge funds to outperform the broader indices in down markets and then under perform them in significantly up markets. Why under perform? Well, the ability to do well in down markets (through options, shorting stocks, etc.) comes at a price in up markets, just like buying insurance comes at a price in those periods you don't winding up using it. That doesn't mean, though, that you shouldn't buy insurance.

The funny part is, right in the Times own article there is evidence that things are not all amiss. Take a look at the graphic they show depicting investment performance of hedge funds versus the S&P since 2000:

If you are invested in the broad market starting in 2000, you lose money for the first three years, and only get even after another three. The hedge funds, however, preserve capital and earn modest returns during those three bad years. Since then, they look (at least by eyeballing the chart) to slightly under perform the market each year. But remember the insurance. By avoiding the pain of the down years, they wind up giving the long term investor vastly superior returns. The inability of the Times to mention (or perhaps even to notice) the significance of this graph is striking. Of course it would be great to invest in the hedge funds in the down periods and then in the market for the up periods, but unfortunately things don't work that way; we only know afterwards what the market is going to do.

The theme of the article is even more striking because of the additional information they offer. If hedge funds were overall disappointing, you would think people would stop putting as much money into them. Instead they tell us:

"And yet investors have hardly blinked. Eager for the rich, if not always predictable, returns that hedge funds promise, they continue to pour money into them and hope the next fund with a big problem will not be one of theirs. . .

Hedge funds are Darwinian by nature: when returns are good, money flows in and when they are bad, investors scramble to get their money out as soon as possible.

So the spigot of new money into hedge funds has run hot and cold. After tapering off in 2005, with $46.9 billion flowing in, there has been a revival this year, with more than $66 billion poured into hedge funds in the first half of 2006 alone. That flood of money is not likely to end even amid the recent stumbles by hedge funds. . .

Pension funds, seeking to make up for years of being underfunded, have increasingly turned to hedge funds. Many funds that cater to such institutions boast they can deliver consistent medium-range returns — 8 to 12 percent — that permit institutions to better manage their liabilities."

Huh? They tell us: 1) when things are bad, money gets pulled out, 2) 2006 has been bad, and 3) money into funds is surging in 2006 and "that flood" is not likely to end. And the point about pension funds and what they are looking for is exactly what I was talking about above, and very different from the "market beaters" they said everyone was looking for. Is there such a thing as a logic proofreader over there?

There are lots of issues with hedge funds, and certainly problems with specific ones. But work this shoddy from the paper of record isn't shedding any light on them.

A modest proposal

2006-10-03T14:57:00.000-04:00

"Hastert told CNN Monday that he does not recall being told by Reynolds about the e-mails between Foley and the Louisiana teen, although he did not dispute that the conversation may have happened.

'If he did, he brought it in with a whole stack of things,' the speaker said." (link)

I have an idea. If you are a member of Congress, carry around an index card in your jacket pocket. If anyone suggests to you that there may be an inappropriate situation involving a colleague and a minor, calmly take out the the card, note the date and information, and then decide how to proceed. I know you are all busy, and I'm sure that it is tough to keep straight all the information coming at you. I want to humbly suggest, though, that this is something that is pretty important to keep track of.

Oh, and by the way, if you think this is impractical because such an index card would fill up too quickly, let us know. We'd appreciate hearing that, too.

No need to thank me. Glad to help.

Totten off to Algeria

2006-10-03T03:49:00.001-04:00

Michael Totten is a remarkably interesting individual, and a real creature of the new journalism that the internet is making possible. Michael has traveled throughout the Middle East, and filed first person reports from some of the most consequential places on the planet right now. If you are not familiar with him, his archives offer fascinating reading and contain some great insights. He funds this on-the-ground reporting through the generosity of his readers, so if you do get something out of his work, be sure to keep that in mind.

Anyway, Michael was recently passing through Tennessee, where he took the time to stop by and chat with Instapundit and Dr. Helen. The whole podcast runs a little under 40 minutes, and is certainly worth your time. I wanted to call special attention, though, to the discussion of Algeria that starts around the 26th minute or so. Algeria is the next new place Michael is planning on heading to, and he had some interesting preliminary observations to share. I will admit to having been quite remiss in following what is going on there lately, but, if what Michael says is true, it is very interesting and important.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to seeing what he finds out on his trip.

Health care - are we getting what we pay for?

2006-10-03T03:12:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to get to it for a few days, but there was an an excellent article about health care spending in the New York Times last week. The article makes the essential point that while, yes, we are spending much more than we used to on health care, we are also getting much more for what we spend:

"To understand why, it helps to look back to a time when Americans didn’t worry much about health care costs. In 1950, the country spent less than $100 a year — or $500 in today’s dollars — on the average person’s medical care, compared with almost $6,000 now . . . Most families in the 1950’s paid their medical bills with ease, but they also didn’t expect much in return. After a century of basic health improvements like indoor plumbing and penicillin, many experts thought that human beings were approaching the limits of longevity. 'Modern medicine has little to offer for the prevention or treatment of chronic and degenerative diseases,' the biologist René Dubos wrote in the 1960’s."

Let me interject here a brief observation that the accepted medical wisdom at any given time frequently turns out to be remarkably incorrect, and not always that far into the future. This is a topic I've done a lot of thinking about and want to explore more in future posts. But I digress.

"But then doctors figured out that high blood pressure and high cholesterol caused heart attacks, and they developed new treatments. Oncologists learned how to attack leukemia, enabling most children who receive a diagnosis of it today to triumph over a disease that was almost inevitably fatal a half-century ago. In the last few years, orphan drugs that combat rare diseases and medical devices like the implantable defibrillator have extended lives. Human longevity still hasn’t hit the wall that was feared 50 years ago.

Instead, a baby born in the United States this year will live to age 78 on average, a decade longer than the average baby born in 1950. People who have already made it to their 40’s can now expect to reach age 80. These gains are probably bigger than the ones the British experienced in the entire millennium leading up to 1800. If you think about this as the return on the investments in medicine, the payoff has been fabulous: Would you prefer spending an extra $5,500 on health care every year — or losing 10 years off your lifespan?"

In fact, there are economists that do exactly this type of research, trying to decide what the "value" of extra years is, for example. Morbid stuff, and we'll skip those details for now. But you get the idea. Ignoring the exact amounts, we can all agree that increased health and longevity have value, and things that have value usually cost money. No surprise there.

"Yet we often imagine that the costs and benefits are unrelated, that we can somehow have 2006 health care at 1950 (or even 1999) prices. . .

Somehow, going to the mall to buy clothes has come to be seen as a vaguely patriotic way to keep the economy humming, and taking out a risky mortgage is considered to be an investment in one’s future. But medical care? That’s just a cost.

It’s easy to be against high costs, and it will no doubt be hard to come up with a broad health care solution. But the way to start is by acknowledging that an affluent society should devote an ever-growing share of its resources to the health of its citizens. 'We have enough of the basics in life,' Mr. Cutler, the economist and author, points out. 'What we really want are the time and the quality of life to enjoy them.'"

There are a lot of complex issues here, many of which deserve to be dealt with separately. We'll get to each of them eventually, just not all today. Instead, the message I want to leave you with now is two fold:

First, the health care that we "buy" today (in aggregate) is quite different and vastly superior to what we have bought in the past. In other words, it is important to remember that we are getting something very different from what we did, say, 40 years ago. We are so used to amazing new medical technologies, that it is easy to forget how revolutionary, not even evolutionary, so many of them are.

Second, there is no specific level of health care spending that is the "right" amount to spend. Go back 100 years, and a much greater share of our national income needed to be consumed to keep everyone fed than we need to spend today. Take that change, and many others, and one consequence is that as a society we have a greater ability to devote resources to health care than we have had in the past. To say this another way, there is nothing per se wrong with a modern, prosperous society deciding (implicitly or explicitly) to spend a greater share of GDP on health care, compared to what was spent historically. In many ways, this is a benefit of having to spend a lot lower share of GDP on, for example, food.

Of course, we want to make sure we are happy with what we are getting for that money, and that we prefer consuming this amount of health care as opposed to other potential uses for the money. Also, questions of access, waste in the system, costs of specific treatments, etc. - all of these are important, but none alter the basic conclusion. You can be concerned about all of those things and others, but that is different from being alarmed that overall health care has reached some specific level or share of expenses. There is nothing wrong with investing increasing amounts in our own health, and likely a whole lot right about it.

Welcome to some new readers

2006-10-02T23:00:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to point out two recent links to this site that deserve a special note:

Matt fights the good fight in what must sometimes feel like an intellectual Alamo, being The Only Republican in San Francisco. Living in Manhattan, I can empathize with his plight. His most recent post is a comparison between Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan, much of which I agree with; if you read them, check it out. I've been thinking of doing a Sullivan-related piece myself at some point.
Karol over at Alarming News gave a mention as well. She also runs Right Events, an event listing site that is a must read if you are a conservative in the NY area. And while I'm at it a hearty congratulations to Karol for just getting her one millionth hit. Well done!

If you've come here by means of Matt or Karol, welcome. If you have come here another way, be sure to check them out.

Don't do this

2006-10-01T21:25:00.000-04:00

By now you will have heard that Mark Foley has resigned from Congress under a cloud of inappropriate email and instant messaging exchanges he had with former House pages. Here's the latest CNN piece if you are playing catch up.

Smart, fair-minded people are raising issues about motivations and timing. People are debating the nuances of age of consent laws versus online predatory statutes. Some try to minimize the issue pending more information, and in the light of historical precedents. I know, this is the instinct of people deeply involved in politics. I understand why they do it.

And still I say stop. Please, just stop.

I think one of the worst instincts we have as people is to marginalize or dismiss things that are said because of who says them, rather than based on the strength of the evidence and logic of the argument. Both parties do this, all the time. I don't care who released this now, so long as it's true. I do care why certain memos are leaked at certain times, or why books come out when they do. But this is different. I don't care that this came out now; I just care that it did.

That's naive, I know. I don't care. A little more naivety might make us a little more human and a little less jaded. You wonder why most people can't stand politics or politicians? You've found it. Do you think constituents, Republican or Democrat, want to watch the usual suspects jostle for advantage over this? No, they want the truth, now, and absent the usual spin. Both sides should come together to see that they get it.

There is no "winning" here. Don't circle the wagons, leave them exposed. Called for a Justice Department investigation? Good. Now do more. Everyone tell everything they know. Under oath, if people want. Now. Don't wait, don't obfuscate, don't squirm. If there is nothing to hide, then get everything out. Now. If there is something to hide, then the powers that be will deserve everything they are about to get, and dragging it out won't change a thing. Get everything out. Now.

This isn't some shady earmark, a sketchy tax break, or dead-of-the-night regulatory loophole. This is at best citizens of this country entrusting their most precious gift to their leaders, and one of those leaders using the opportunity to prey on children. At its worst (I hope) it involves either a party in power that turned a blind eye, or a party out of power that waited for the "right" time to let the shoe drop. Or both.

With stuff like this, the normal rules don't apply. Dennis, Nancy - sit down tonight, agree on a plan, and issue a joint statement outlining it. This may rob the majority of some of its prerogatives - so what? This may rob the minority of some near term political points - so what? Come together and make us proud of you.

Come out of this looking like statesman, not unindicted co-conspirators or blind, shrill partisans. Shine the light of day on this sordid episode, and disinfect the institution in the process. Do it now.

Prohibition in a taxi

2006-10-01T07:05:00.000-04:00

So it turns out that an increasing (and non-trivial) number of cab drivers in Minneapolis refuse to accept passengers that are carrying alcohol (original hat tip: Little Green Footballs). Not drunk. Not drinking. Not carrying open bottles. No, we're talking about people in possession of sealed, legal bottles of alcoholic beverages.

I don't want to talk about the legal question of whether or not this is allowed. My quick perusal of NY taxi regulations (see section 2-50) suggests that it wouldn't be permitted out here, but I know that there are plenty of lawyers in the country that could shed more light on this than I. Instead, I want to talk about the principle involved, and how that fits within an open society.

The argument by the drivers is that it conflicts with and/or offends their religious beliefs to have to accept fares that carry alcohol. If this is the operative principal - namely that one can refuse service (in a regulated, licensed industry, no less) because of personal offense or beliefs - then under what rationale could we proscribe a driver from refusing service to:

someone carrying certain types of foods (non-kosher, for example)?
a member of the military (could be a pacifist driver)?
an African-American (if the driver was a white supremacist)?
an unmarried, unrelated man and woman traveling together?

We could keep coming up with other examples all day, but you get the point. Again, I don't want to hear "legalese" about protected versus non-protected classes, etc. - that is a different issue. I want to hear about the principle involved.

People are welcome to their beliefs. Yet it is simply not true that at every point where an individual's personal belief clashes against societal norms, that the personal belief has to triumph over the rest. Actually, very close to the opposite is true, at least insofar as the public sphere is concerned. To live in a society such as ours is to implicitly accept an affirmative responsibility to work/live/peacefully coexist with people very different from you. And that includes people with whom you disagree. If you don't like that deal, then maybe this isn't the place for you. Don't worry - it's a big world, and you have other options.

If you hold certain beliefs so strongly, you inevitably preclude yourself from certain professions. Just like the Amish shouldn't expect to be electricians, nor most vegans butchers, people who want to pick and choose passengers based on their perceived purity shouldn't be cab drivers. Think that's unfair? Tough.

I'm curious: if they do install these special lights atop taxis out there, showing drivers that refuse to accept passengers with alcohol, am I allowed to refuse to let them take me somewhere even if it is their turn? Can I get to the front of the taxi line, look down it, and demand to be taken by the first "all inclusive" cab available, even if it is ten cabs down? Can I do that since I find "offensive" the policy that led to the lights being installed in the first place? If I do this, what will the reaction of the affected drivers be? Of the dispatcher? Of the public?

It is time to state something so central to the modern experience of a free people that we should never need reminding. Alas, it seems that we do, and so I now offer it here for the first - but I'm sure not the last - time on this blog:

There is no right not to be offended.

You read past that too quickly. Slow down. Try it again, and really let it sink in this time:

There is no right not to be offended.

Your rights stop right when they run into mine, and I've been known to be offensive from time to time. Democracy, freedom, and the market place of ideas - there is nothing in there that says you can't be offended. The great ideas, the strong ideas, the true ideas - those survive quite nicely in an environment that permits and encourages dissent, even mockery. The best among them even thrive.

Those ideas or people that can't handle the heat, that need special protection from competition like an antiquated industry of a bygone era, that are so unsure of their own veracity that they must not set eyes upon the opposition - well, you probably know how I feel about those.

Oh, and the next time I am in Minneapolis, I'm getting into a cab that takes me regardless of what I'm carrying. I'll call it a Freedom Cab, and I'll be getting in it whether there's a bottle of wine in my suitcase or not. I hope you do the same.

Better than counting sheep

2006-09-28T19:11:00.001-04:00

You'd hope that if they were having so much trouble sleeping (hat tip: Michelle Malkin), they would at least find something to do to occupy the time.

Not what the doctor ordered

2006-09-28T17:45:00.000-04:00

I'm usually not the biggest Dick Morris fan, but I think his column today on Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is pretty spot on:

"Frist performed about as well as a heart surgeon with mittens on. He failed utterly to provide the leadership necessary and managed to so mangle the reputation of the legislative wing of the Republican Party in the process that it may take several elections, and perhaps a Hillary Clinton presidency, to recover. . .

He managed, despite a compliant House, a supportive president, and 55 votes, to pass very little and achieve almost nothing."

OK, maybe that is a little tough. But it is especially damning how much trouble Frist had getting things done with 55 votes. The last time the Republicans had more Senators was when they had 56 between 1929 and 1931 (note they also had 55 in the late 1990s, but that was when there was a Democratic president). If you are going to have trouble getting things done with that number of seats and a President and House of the same party, when exactly are you going to get stuff done? And before I hear that I'm not being fair from some proponent of Frist's quixotic presidential ambitions, I realize how tough the job is. He decided to take it on, however, and therefore we are right to analyze his performance. Are we only to expect effective leadership when the majority has 60+ votes? Of course not. Which brings us to how to improve things going forward:

"So what is the lesson for the future? A majority leader must not just be from the Senate. He must be of the Senate. He or she need not only sit in the body, but they must ooze its traditions, savor its tempo, grasp its inhibitions, and challenge its institutional lethargy. A good leader needs to grasp that each Senator is really more like a head of a country than a legislator. House members travel in groups. Senators walk alone and above it all. He needs to grasp what their political needs are and figure out how to appease them while, at the same time, leading them."

I think this is partly wrong. I'm of the mind that there is actually too much respect for the "traditions" of the Senate, and that what it needs is a little more shaking up. You might not like everything that a Tom Coburn does, for example, but at least he's trying to clear some of the cobwebs from the place. We somehow have slipped into this habit of thinking that things the Senate has done for a long time have some constitutional basis. Instead most of them simply fall under its ability to make its own rules. A party (or movement) confident about its positions and purpose should not be shy about advocating for changing such rules when needed. Remember, their constituency should not be incumbent Republican senators, but rather the people who put them there.

This lack of respect for Senate traditions on my part may raise hackles among conservative readers. Some will quickly remind me to be wary, for example, of curtailing the right to stop legislation (anonymous holds anyone?), lest we need to use such tools ourselves in the minority. I say the way to avoid that problem is to win elections, and the way to do that is to deliver on the campaign promises you make to get elected.

In the meantime, treating senators a bit more like "legislators" wouldn't hurt, either.

UPDATE: For the record, the flurry of legislation that came out of the Senate the past few days doesn't alter my feelings about Frist's leadership. I think a look at the whole tenure still supports what I said above.

Something lighter, part II

2006-09-28T11:11:00.000-04:00

Turns out he did have a "plan."

UPDATE: The originally linked video was taken down by YouTube, so I've updated the link to a similar copy.

UPDATE 2: The embed seems to have trouble loading sometimes, so here is a direct link.

Tough love

2006-09-28T11:02:00.000-04:00

This place is getting too serious - war, hedge fund implosions, etc.

So, to show people that I do more than sift over budget figures and news feds all day, here is a great smack down of Clay Aiken by Simon Cowell. Gadfly is a big fan of tough love, and this may be the first in a series. Just play the video.

Oratorical envy

2006-09-27T17:32:00.000-04:00

I know very little about domestic British politics, and the little I do know suggests that I wouldn't be a fan of Labour if I lived there. That said, there should be no doubt about my continued admiration for Tony Blair's ability to clearly explain the importance and severity of the problem that the West now faces. I will also admit a little envy at his talents, as there are few among even President Bush's most ardent supporters who don't find his locution lacking at times.

The latest example of Blair's skill was seen yesterday at a Labour Party conference, a clip of which can be found here. Listening to that excerpt reminded me how much I enjoyed his address to Congress a few years ago. I went and found the transcript online, and it lived up to my recollection:

"There is a myth that though we love freedom, others don't; that our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture; that freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law are American values, or Western values; that Afghan women were content under the lash of the Taliban; that Saddam was somehow beloved by his people; that Milosevic was Serbia's savior.

Members of Congress, ours are not Western values, they are the universal values of the human spirit. And anywhere...

Anywhere, anytime ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police.

The spread of freedom is the best security for the free. It is our last line of defense and our first line of attack. And just as the terrorist seeks to divide humanity in hate, so we have to unify it around an idea. And that idea is liberty."

The part of the speech that I liked the best at the time, though, and again today was the end:

"And I know it's hard on America, and in some small corner of this vast country, out in Nevada or Idaho or these places I've never been to, but always wanted to go...

I know out there there's a guy getting on with his life, perfectly happily, minding his own business, saying to you, the political leaders of this country, 'Why me? And why us? And why America?'

And the only answer is, 'Because destiny put you in this place in history, in this moment in time, and the task is yours to do.'

And our job, my nation that watched you grow, that you fought alongside and now fights alongside you, that takes enormous pride in our alliance and great affection in our common bond, our job is to be there with you.

You are not going to be alone. We will be with you in this fight for liberty.

We will be with you in this fight for liberty. And if our spirit is right and our courage firm, the world will be with us." (emphasis added)

I like that part so much because it correctly captures and then addresses the American reluctance to engagement that characterizes many of us and much of our history. I know my friends from Europe and elsewhere find that tough to believe, but I also think that many of them have spent little time with the great bulk of America that lives outside New York and Washington. America correctly feels burdened, and struggles to understand why others don't see that.

And the answer is that such is the hand we were dealt. Life is unfair, its burdens falling unevenly, its calls to leadership going out to certain peoples at certain times. Tony Blair gets it. I hope that the next leader that Britain chooses does so as well.

Excellent, excellent questions

2006-09-27T13:39:00.000-04:00

"But the real problem is within the intelligence community. Selective CIA leaks are the equivalent of intelligence officials running information operations on the American public. John Negroponte and Pat Kennedy, how long are you going to allow these leaks to continue? Do you really think it healthy in a democracy for the CIA and DIA to stray from intelligence collection and analysis into politics? How many investigations have you launched? How many have concluded?" (link)

Don't hold your breath for any answers.

UPDATE: Related thoughts well worth your time can be found here.

Clinton's poor judgment

2006-09-26T15:23:00.000-04:00

Obviously, the 9/11 attacks changed many things. For me, like many others, one of the consequences of them is that people, regardless of party affiliation or ideology, are given a bit of a pass for not realizing beforehand the seriousness of the threat that we faced. The benefit of 20/20 hindsight after an event like that will make lots of people look bad in ways that can be pretty unfair.

So I, similar to others, had hoped that we could put these questions behind us. They serve no useful purpose, and distract us from the important issue of focusing on what we are going to do moving forward. Alas, some are not content to let sleeping dogs lie. The latest chapter is the interview President Clinton did with Chris Wallace over the weekend. Wallace asked why he didn't "connect the dots" and do more to deal with Al Qaeda when he was President.

What Clinton should have done was say that we did what we thought was right at the time, but now in the post-9/11 world we realize that some of our operating assumptions were wrong, and that a different approach is needed. That would have been gracious, and let the issue pass. Instead, he attacked.

The problem with attacking is that it reopens the issue. Now, predictably, people are going to start paying attention to what he actually did and said. Was there really a plan to invade Afghanistan? Did we really need the FBI/CIA to "certify" Bin Laden's guilt? Was there a "comprehensive strategy" in place? What did Richard Clarke actually say in his book? All of this could have been avoided with a "we were all wrong" mea culpa, but that apparently was not to be.

This is a terrible fight to have as a nation, and I'm pretty sure it is a lousy political fight for the Democrats to pick as well. Anyone who thinks that the gathering storm, if you will, wasn't gathering well back in the 1990s (as opposed to somehow emerging with a vengeance in Bush's first eight months in office) is either disingenuous or nuts.

If it is true that the Democrats generally do poorly politically when elections are focused on security concerns, does it really do the party much good with the great middle of American politics to remind them how poorly they did operationally when last they ran things. I think not.

UPDATE: David Frum reviews some of the 9/11 Commission Report, while Captain Ed publishes an update to his earlier post and concludes with this:

"We have now had a week of this debate. Does anyone feel any safer because of it?"

Also check out this article by Richard Miniter.

Wal-Mart and drugs, revisited

2006-09-26T00:45:00.000-04:00

Walgreen, while announcing their quarterly results, commented on Wal-Mart's plan to reduce the price of some generic drugs:

"Rick Hans, Walgreen's director of finance, said during the call that he believed Wal-Mart's low-price plan for some generic drugs 'won't significantly impact [Walgreen's] business.'

The Wal-Mart plan covers 291 drugs, while Walgreen pharmacies stock about 1,800 generic drugs, he said.

'About 95 percent of our pharmacy patients have prescription insurance coverage and they are only responsible for a small co-pay,' Hans said.

He added that for the drugs that Wal-Mart will sell for $4, the initial average co-pay at Walgreen is $5.30, and $3.18 for Medicare Part D prescription coverage."

This nicely - although unintentionally - demonstrates a key part of what is wrong with the way we pay for a lot of our health care. Hans is comparing the total cost that Wal-Mart is charging with the portion of Walgreen's price that consumers have to pay (i.e. the co-pay). What he is obviously ignoring is the additional amount, above the co-pay, that the insurance company or the government is paying to Walgreen as well.

Separate those who make the decision from those who pay for the decision, and you shouldn't be surprised that costs tend to rise. The interesting thing to watch here will be if insurance companies start to either require or encourage (perhaps through the waiving of co-pays?) their members to use Wal-Mart where the program is available. Given that type of development, will Walgreen then drop its prices as well? It certainly hopes not:

"'Our convenience, locations and services have proven to be bigger factors for our patients than a few dollars in price difference,' he said."

That is a reasonable and - in my mind - rather optimistic hypothesis. It is also one that seems about to be tested.

The long haul

2006-09-25T22:31:00.000-04:00

Jay Nordlinger has an interview up with Donald Rumsfeld, where the Secretary of Defense offers some interesting thoughts about our current situation in the context of the Cold War:

"I remind Rumsfeld that, when we last talked — three years ago — I asked him whether the American people would stick with the War on Terror. And he replied, on that occasion, 'They stuck with the Cold War.'

'Yeah,' Rumsfeld says now. 'Long time. Lot of wavering. A lot of cold feet at the various points along the way. I remember being in Spain and getting a phone call saying I had to come back to testify against the Mansfield Amendment,' which proposed to pull U.S. troops out of Europe. 'I was ambassador to NATO at the time — early ’70s. And here you are: The Cold War’s in full flower, and the Soviet Union’s making mischief in Central America and Africa and subjugating Eastern Europe . . .' Yet the proposal was made all the same. . .

So, continues the SecDef, 'you look back on it now and say, ‘Oh, my goodness, it was a good, straight, upward path. We all knew all along the Cold War would last a long time. We knew all along it would be tough, but we never wavered and never doubted.’ And we did waver and doubt, and there were plenty of people who got cold feet as they went along.' . . .

The Terror War, says Rumsfeld, is 'going to be long, much more like the Cold War than World War I or II in terms of length.' And it’s going to be won, 'as much as by anything,' by 'people within that faith,' Islam, 'who don’t want to see their religion hijacked and who are not violent extremists and who do not get up in the morning and think that beheading people and forcing everyone else to be exactly like they want them to be is the preferred way of life.'"

We have a tendency to romanticize things that have come before - to think that people were more united than they were, that the eventually successful strategy was obvious to all (or any) at the time, that there weren't people thought to be right in the moment who were proven to be wrong in the end. It is useful to remember that history is always messy, especially when it is being made.

Oh and by the way, I'm pretty sure Rumsfeld wasn't talking about this guy when he was discussing who needs to step up within Islam:

"Sheikh Abu Saqer, leader of Gaza's Jihadia Salafiya Islamic outreach movement, which seeks to make secular Muslims more religious, called for holy war against the Pope.

He said Christian leaders such as Benedict XVI are 'afraid' because they realize Islam is Allah's favorite religion and that they are going to hell unless they convert. The Gaza preacher declared the 'green flag of Muhammad' would soon be raised over the Vatican. . .

Abu Saqer claimed he did not condone violence. He blamed the pope for recent anti-Christian attacks in the Palestinian territories.

'We are deeply sorry for these acts that we condemn. But I am sorry that this little racist did not think of the consequences upon the Christians in the Arab world when he insulted our Prophet. It is an open war - the Muslims against all the others.'"

Be careful of opening that door

2006-09-25T21:49:00.000-04:00

"'Those who habitually accuse us of 'not doing enough' in the war on terror should simply ask the CIA how much prize money it has paid to the government of Pakistan,' he [Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf] says, without specifying where the money came from." (link; via Drudge)

Or maybe we should ask what type of ally would have us pay it "prize money," or what those nearly 700 Al-Qaeda suspects were doing in Pakistan to begin with, or how this "truce" is going to work. I'm just saying . . .

UPDATE: File this under unbelievable (hat tip: Alarming News):

"'Pakistan's military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, says he contemplated war with the United States in 2001 but opted instead to forsake the Taliban and become President George W. Bush's ally,' the Globe and Mail reports."

The article goes on to describe how Pakistan "war-gamed" conflict with the US and, after discovering it would lose, then decided to support US efforts. It follows, then, that if they thought they could resist US military pressure, they would have fought on the side of the Taliban?

Nice to know who our friends are.

Oh, and not for nothing, but maybe all that unified, global sympathy that I keep hearing we squandered after 9/11 didn't run quite as deep as some would have you believe, if in the aftermath Pakistan was trying to figure out if it should take us on in battle.

Whither the newspaper?

2006-09-25T16:54:00.000-04:00

Michael Kinsley tackles the state of the newspaper industry in Time:

"It seems hopeless. How can the newspaper industry survive the Internet? On the one hand, newspapers are expected to supply their content free on the Web. On the other hand, their most profitable advertising--classifieds--is being lost to sites like Craigslist. And display advertising is close behind. Meanwhile, there is the blog terror: people are getting their understanding of the world from random lunatics riffing in their underwear, rather than professional journalists with standards and passports."

For the record, I rarely riff in my underwear. What I want to concentrate on, though, is the economic situation newspapers find themselves in.

To me, the interesting thing here is that through historical accident and the nature of print distribution, the classified business and the news business became tied. There is no reason that they have to be, and - more to the point - no reason to think they ever will be again. The part of the newspaper that Kinsley wants to keep (the original reporting) has never paid for itself. It has always been supported by the fairly profitable business of classified advertising. This accidental relationship has allowed professionals in the business to delude themselves regarding what people were actually paying for.

Here's the truth that hurts: people don't apparently value the journalism that many papers produce as much as the journalists think that they should. This fact was able to be obscured for quite a while by the fact that people did value something else the newspaper provided (classified advertising) quite a bit, and tolerated the cross subsidization as a result. That subsidy relationship has now been broken, and how much most people are actually willing to pay for the news is becoming clear - not that much. That smarts if you are a reporter or editor, but then again I'm sure it also smarts if you work at GM and watch people not want to spend money on your product either. Complaining about the fact that it hurts, though, is not a strategy for future success.

Options? Assuming that the classified business is for all intents and purposes lost, one option would be to try to tie news reporting to something else that people value. Nothing likely to work comes to mind. They might also become trophy properties (as Kinsley alludes to), where rich people buy them for the ego boost and then proceed to subsidize them from their existing wealth (similar to many sports teams). Alternatively, they will have to "right-size" themselves to a level that can be supported by the people who want to read them.

On this last point, though, I am curious about what a completely "e-paper" might look like. There certainly is a market for "serious" news; the problem is that that market is a lot smaller than traditional newspapers have let themselves believe. The good news, though, is that those "serious news" consumers are a lot more technologically literate than the average population, and probably have higher average incomes as well (making them a potentially attractive online advertising demographic). Move completely online, and your eliminated costs include paper, printing plants, and a lot of the layout work. Would that be enough to support a smaller operation, but one more focused on the actual news? I don't know, but I do know that there are a lot of people around the country right now that better start thinking about it.

By the way, if you are interested in another take on Kinsley check out Ace of Spades, who has thoughts more from the journalistic aspects of the issue.

Amaranth - that didn't take long

2006-09-23T18:23:00.001-04:00

I wrote here about the large losses at hedge fund firm Amaranth, and wondered when we would get some pretty poor articles that missed the real issues. Less than a day later - and from BusinessWeek, no less - this article came in an email:

"Randall Dodd, president of the Washington-based Financial Policy Forum, said Amaranth's collapse highlights cracks in the nation's capital structure and, because of the unregulated nature of both energy derivatives and hedge funds, policymakers have no idea how deep those cracks are.

'We don't know how many more Amaranths are out there,' Dodd said. 'Several falling is a problem for the whole financial system.'"

How exactly has this affair highlighted any "cracks" in the nation's financial system? A specific fund made a (stupidly large, for the fund's size) bet that the spread between March and April 2007 gas futures would behave a certain way. They were wrong, and they rightly lost a lot of money. (I should note that, given the nature of derivatives contracts, the money they lost was actually made by others, but that is a subject for a different post.)

The most important part to realize is how well the overall system worked here. Notice that the positions which caused the problem were contracts that are due in March and April of next year. As those positions moved against Amaranth, banks and counter parties presumably required increased collateral to make up for the paper losses (as opposed to waiting to see if the firm could pay up next year). By requiring increased funds now to keep the positions open (basically, a margin call), these market participants forced the issue when Amaranth still had enough capital to get out of their commitments (albeit at steep losses to the firm). The nightmare for the rest of us isn't that Amaranth lost a ton of their money; the nightmare would be if when those futures contracts expired the firm couldn't make good on their commitments. And that is a scenario that seems to have been nicely avoided.

But don't worry, the politicians are on it:

"The political fallout from Amaranth's troubles had reached Capitol Hill by the afternoon of Sept. 19. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who has a bill before the Senate to require OTC energy traders to report their positions daily, reiterated her call for more regulation.'This is a graphic and very expensive example of the need for legislation that would increase transparency and accountability in the energy markets so the federal government could determine if speculation or manipulation is occurring,' Feinstein told Platts."

"Speculation" is now illegal? Please.

Listen, it sucks right now to be an investor in Amaranth. It may even turn out that they have a cause of action, if - as I suggested earlier - the firm violated the terms of their agreements. If Amaranth didn't violate the terms of their agreements, however, then it will suck even more to be an investor in Amaranth. Because in that case they will only have themselves to blame.

Gadfly takes requests, part II - Wal-Mart and drug prices

2006-09-23T17:25:00.000-04:00

The second request involved this article about Wal-Mart's plan to charge $4 for about 300 generic drugs. Again, a hearty "Bravo." This is basically a case of Wal-Mart doing what it does best:

"Even company critics have praised the plan, conceding that it represents a case of the giant retailer using its size and ability to wring out costs to improve the lives of regular Americans. . .

As it has for dozens of consumer products, Wal-Mart reduced prices of generic prescription drugs by attacking the few remaining pockets of inefficiency in its operations. For example, it cut out third-party distributors that stood between the chain and drug manufacturers. . .

The company also introduced rapid, automated machines into its pharmacy distribution centers that had long relied on workers to fill orders. In doing so, Wal-Mart reduced the amount of time that costly drugs sat in warehouses, rather than on store shelves where they could create revenue. 'It is not glamorous,' said Bill Simon, an executive vice president at Wal-Mart. 'It’s pennies at a time.'"

The generic drug market is already incredibly competitive at the manufacturing level; it's great to see Wal-Mart bring some old fashioned market pressures to bear at the distribution end of the market. Hmm, how long will it be before we hear calls of "unfair competition," since smaller pharmacies likely wouldn't be able to benefit from (and then pass along) similar economies of scale? Maybe the company's critics will skip this one. . .

Let me take the opportunity, by the way, to draw a distinction between these generic medicines and newer ones that are still under patent protection. Basically, we have to be willing to stomach high drug prices for the first 10 years or so that treatments are on the market. That's the price we as a society pay for the remarkable amount of money that is spent on medical research and development each year. These investments have no guarantee of return, and very often wind up amounting to no benefit for the companies involved. Limit the ability to earn economic rents during patent protection periods, and the level of resources devoted to new treatment development will drop.

As for those drugs whose patents have expired, however, let competition drive down the prices as far as possible.

Gadfly takes requests, part I - HIV testing changes

2006-09-23T16:22:00.000-04:00

One of my earliest and most loyal readers has requested comments on two recent pieces in the New York Times. As I try to be as customer-friendly as possible, I am only too happy to oblige.

The government has recommended HIV tests as part of routine medical care, a change from their historical position. Bravo. We're 25 years into this thing, AIDS is a disease with existing but imperfect treatment options, and it is time we regularly treated it as such.

Not everyone agrees, however:

"Rose A. Saxe, a staff lawyer with the AIDS Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, said her group opposed the recommendation because it would remove the requirement for signed consent forms and pretest counseling. In settings like emergency rooms where doctors are strapped for time, Ms. Saxe said, 'we’re concerned that what the C.D.C. calls routine testing will become mandatory testing.'

Patients, particularly teenagers, she said, 'will be tested without an opportunity for understanding the magnitude of having a positive result.'"

I think this type of testing should follow the model of blood work, which gets screened for lots of things (doctors in the audience, help me out with other examples of things blood is normally tested for). If I ran the world, someone who consents to blood work consents to the rest of the medical tests that would normally go with it (unless they specifically ask to opt out, I guess) What could a rational, intelligent, defensible position be for not knowing one's HIV status, especially in 2006? I don't sign a special consent to find out my cholesterol levels, and I see no need to do so for an AIDS test.

As for the idea of the need for deep, pretest counseling? Nonsense. What other diseases do we require this type of approach for? I go in for a check-up, and might wind up having a prostate exam. The doctor doesn't spend time with me beforehand to explain that - even if he feels something and even if it eventually turns out to be prostate cancer - in general prostate cancer grows very slowly, and if we catch it early there are a variety of courses of treatment available, etc. No, that is not done; instead we cross that bridge when we come to it. Of course it would be terrific if we all had lots of pretest counseling, became perfectly-informed patients, etc. But to stipulate it as a requirement, and by extension prevent testing when it does not occur, is in my mind wrong.

Once again, AIDS is a disease. We all benefit - those who are or will be sick most of all - from people knowing when they are infected/sick with a disease. Attempts to continue to treat AIDS as in a "special" category are wrong-headed, and a long time past their prime.

Disaster at Amaranth

2006-09-21T18:25:00.000-04:00

As of this writing, it's not clear if the story of the staggering losses at hedge fund firm Amaranth will simply fade away, or if it will spark a new series of "those terrible hedge funds, we need more government regulation to find out what they are up to" stories in the general press. If those stories do come, I'll spend a lot more time on the issue. In the meantime, however, keep this in mind:

"'What type of regulation would prevent a hedge fund from following a particular investment strategy, or the loss incurred in the pursuit of an investment strategy that simply did not work,' said Perrie Weiner, a partner who helps manage law firm DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary's securities litigation practice and often deals with hedge funds."

The answer is none. There are two important issues in this specific situation:

One, did the firm in fact do what it told its investors it was going to do, most importantly in its offering documents, but also in other communications? A simple example would be a firm that said it was going to buy common stocks, and instead speculated in energy futures (not the case here, but you get the idea).

Two, should investors demand more specificity in such documents about what firms are allowed to do in a particular fund? The most striking thing about the Amaranth situation is that they allowed the firm to be so incredibly exposed to a move against them in a single market (i.e. natural gas). Investors might, quite rightly, begin demanding more specific, quantitative risk control guidelines be included in offering documents. These might include limiting individual (or related) positions to a certain percentage of fund capital, formalized stop-loss guidelines, etc.

Come to think of it, there actually is another big issue, and the fact that it hasn't really come up shows you that the system works. Was there any chance of a broader market breakdown or disruption because of this individual failure? You may recall that it was just this type of fear (whether or not it was justified) that caused the NY Fed to help orchestrate a private bailout of Long Term Capital Management back in 1998. In this case, despite what would appear to be a very concentrated portfolio exposure to natural gas, I haven't seen worries about derivative contracts not being honored, or other systemic concerns. In fact, it seems that non-energy parts of the portfolio were being liquidated in order to meet the collateral requirements of the gas positions. If that's the case, then the banks and others involved did the job they were supposed to do, and limited the damage to Amaranth.

Remember, when dealing with sophisticated funds and investors, regulators aren't around to stop them from losing money by making bad bets. Instead, they are around to stop those bad bets from hurting others. It seems in this case that system worked fine.

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

2006-09-21T16:57:00.000-04:00

"Where women used to watch Sex and the City and ask themselves, 'Which one am I most like?', men watch this show and ask themselves, 'Who the hell is my Vince?'"

Michael Weiss discusses the genius of Entourage at Slate.

So, who the hell is my Vince?

"Sorry, you're confusing me with the other Senator from Massachusetts"

2006-09-21T14:04:00.000-04:00

That's the fake caption that popped into my mind when I saw this photo:

Photo is by Rodney White, The Des Moines Register. Here is a link to the story.

Sorry, I just couldn't resist. Any better caption ideas? Leave them in the comments.

The media must hate the internet

2006-09-21T12:47:00.000-04:00

Here are two modest examples, but the more you pay attention to this kind of stuff, the more things like this you find:

Here the AP is caught changing titles pretty significantly in an article about some poll numbers. Ah, wishful thinking.
Here is a different sort of problem, with CNN tailoring headlines by geography.

Listen, these two aren't the biggest deals in the world, and we'll spend time (maybe lots of time) in the future on what I think are much more serious examples of media bias, etc. That said, you just know that the new level of accountability that the internet and other resources demand drives the traditional media outlets nuts.

Best line by a smart person I've read all day

2006-09-20T18:55:00.000-04:00

"In conclusion, if you think that the things the Bush administration is doing could, in the future, help less benign governments to seize horrifying power--well, I'll agree with you, but only if you also acknowledge that the same could be said for every president since Hoover, and that in fact FDR takes the gold prize for Doing Things That Could Be Used to Install a Dictator. Indeed, FDR is probably the closest thing this country ever came to having a dictator, and we can thank a lot of fast tap-dancing by the Supreme Court and the Senate for not getting us closer still. If FDR doesn't terrify you, then you will have a very stiff uphill battle explaining to me why Bush does." (emphasis added; link)

If you don't regularly read Asymmetrical Information, you should. Some great, accessible economics blogging.

As an aside, I also think Megan says some interesting things about torture in the post, some of which are similar to thoughts I've had. I'm planning on doing a longer post about them at some point, especially given all the attention Andrew Sullivan has been paying to the subject.

Man, that Karl Rove is smart

2006-09-20T17:58:00.000-04:00

"When are we going to hear that the Pope's comments were intended to help the GOP in the midterms? It just seems so obvious. White ethnic Catholics are reminded of the war on terror when they hear people calling for suicide attacks on the Vatican. That can only help the GOP. Where is Gore Vidal to fill in the details?"

I was in the process of writing a quick post - and laughing out loud - about this joking note by Jonah Goldberg, when I then saw he posted an update. Apparently, to some this is no joke - look here and here.

Come on folks, why stop there? What makes you think all those pictures of protesters are real? As 9/11 conspiracy theorist Morgan Reynolds says, in discussing the fact that he doesn't think any planes hit the World Trade Center:

"But what about all those New Yorkers who saw airplanes hitting the twin towers? A chuckle rumbles down the phone line. 'I don't believe anyone in Lower Manhattan,' [Reynolds] says. 'You hire three dozen Actors' Equity dudes and they'll say anything.'"

So maybe a lot of previously unemployed actors have recently been sent on a road gig?

Doesn't it just amaze you how nuts some people are?

Keep your hands off my secrets

2006-09-20T12:07:00.000-04:00

I'm embarrassed to say that, despite working in the industry, I never really thought about this issue before. In short, are a hedge fund's holdings a trade secret, and - if so - is their periodic required disclosure actually justified?

First of all, some background on what we are talking about here for people not familiar with the business. Firms that hold more than $100m in stocks have to disclose their positions in a quarterly filing. This filing is only a snap shot (like a partial balance sheet), and there is a lot that it will not tell you about the fund. You'll never know about any trading within a quarter, only the net effect at the end. It doesn't disclose short positions, nor any information about options (either long or short). Finally, there is no information about the amount of leverage used (or cash held in reserve).

So, how strong is the case? Well, all the details of a firm's investment activity taken together are certainly a trade secret, and potentially incredibly valuable. These details are the transcript and blueprint of the "product" produced by money managers, namely a series of time-sensitive buy and sell decisions involving a number of different securities (and potentially asset classes). Investors (especially in hedge funds) pay enormous sums to acquire this product; to be forced to disclose all would be to de facto steal from the managers, and also have the investors in the fund subsidize those in the public who would use the disclosures to their own benefit.

So, if disclosing all the investment program details would be so bad, what about the partial disclosure required in a 13F? They are partially bad, and the amount of useful information disclosed varies greatly depending upon the type of fund involved. The most affected are long-term, long-only shops - a careful following of their 13Fs would allow you to almost completely mimic their investment program for free (albeit with a significant lag).

It would seem that, absent some compelling public interest, disclosure should not be required. What, then, is the interest?

Remember that certain other types of disclosure would not be affected if 13Fs were done away with. For example, buying more than 5% of a company's stock would still trigger a reporting requirement. Also, investors in a fund itself could demand certain disclosures, and - if they were not satisfied - refuse to invest and take their money elsewhere. And access to investor lists for things like proxy fights would likewise be unaffected.

In the end, it seems the current disclosures do little other than to feed a need for voyeurism (of which I have been guilty) among professional investors and to satisfy the inertial wants of the regulatory bureaucracy at the SEC. Neither of these reasons strike me as compelling, certainly not enough to appropriate part of the investment program that others are paying so dearly for.

I agree with Goldstein. Am I missing something?

Bush at the UN

2006-09-20T10:55:00.000-04:00

Two parts of the President's speech at the UN yesterday that I wanted to draw attention to. The first I just happened to like:

"Some have argued that the democratic changes we're seeing in the Middle East are destabilizing the region. This argument rests on a false assumption: that the Middle East was stable to begin with. The reality is that the stability we thought we saw in the Middle East was a mirage.

For decades, millions of men and women in the region had been trapped in oppression and hopelessness. And these conditions left a generation disillusioned and made this region a breeding ground for extremism.

Imagine what it's like to be a young person living in a country that is not moving toward reform. You're 21 years old, and while your peers in other parts of the world are casting their ballots for the first time, you are powerless to change the course of your government. While your peers in other parts of the world have received educations that prepare them for the opportunities of a global economy, you have been fed propaganda and conspiracy theories that blame others for your country's shortcomings. And everywhere you turn, you hear extremists who tell you that you can escape your misery and regain your dignity through violence and terror and martyrdom.

For many across the broader Middle East this is the dismal choice presented every day. Every civilized nation, including those in the Muslim world, must support those in the region who are offering a more hopeful alternative."

The second one was a nice little dig at his hosts:

"To the people of Darfur, you have suffered unspeakable violence. And my nation has called these atrocities what they are: genocide."

If you are unaware, the comment was a reference to this. Take a look - doesn't it almost seem like a spoof of what you thought a competent authority would do, more concerned with scoring law review rhetorical points than stopping the homicide in question? It makes me more and more inclined to agree with this type of thinking (which is quite good, and worth your time to check out).

Depressing, but predictable

2006-09-19T18:14:00.001-04:00

What do you can get when you combine 1) an industry with incredibly long development cycles, complex products and high investment costs with 2) an inefficient political process that couples bureaucracy with a lack of real understanding of the industry in question.

This is what you get.

Drug development is incredibly long, costly, and unpredictable. Even worse, there are rarely clear cut home runs. Almost any treatment has side effects of some sort, the question is always whether or not the benefits outweigh the costs. There are reasons that biotech and pharmaceutical companies get it wrong so often, and that billions and billions of investor dollars are spent each year on programs that eventually wind up failing (many miserably). In short, this stuff is really, really hard to do, even for the smartest people out there.

This is not a "point the fingers" post. This is a "this is scary for all of us" post, perhaps even more so for those of us who live in Manhattan or other likely targets. And a large part of the scariness is how little can really be done about it.

Depressing, but predictable. Or maybe predictably depressing.

Show them the respect of believing what they say

2006-09-19T12:30:00.000-04:00

There is a must-read piece (registration required) in the Los Angeles Times by Sam Harris (hat tip: Instapundit) about the reality of the threat to the West from Islamic extremism. What Harris focuses on is the inability of many liberals to accept the nature and seriousness of the problem. Here is a lengthy quote, but be sure to read the whole thing:

"A cult of death is forming in the Muslim world — for reasons that are perfectly explicable in terms of the Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad. The truth is that we are not fighting a 'war on terror.' We are fighting a pestilential theology and a longing for paradise.

This is not to say that we are at war with all Muslims. But we are absolutely at war with those who believe that death in defense of the faith is the highest possible good, that cartoonists should be killed for caricaturing the prophet and that any Muslim who loses his faith should be butchered for apostasy. . .

At its most extreme, liberal denial has found expression in a growing subculture of conspiracy theorists who believe that the atrocities of 9/11 were orchestrated by our own government. . .

Such an astonishing eruption of masochistic unreason could well mark the decline of liberalism, if not the decline of Western civilization. There are books, films and conferences organized around this phantasmagoria, and they offer an unusually clear view of the debilitating dogma that lurks at the heart of liberalism: Western power is utterly malevolent, while the powerless people of the Earth can be counted on to embrace reason and tolerance, if only given sufficient economic opportunities."

I don't agree with him on everything, but what is clear is that a lot of people don't understand what we are up against. I can understand their reluctance; knowing that many impassioned, irrational people want you dead is, well, at the least disquieting. Ignoring this problem won't work, though. These issues are all too real, rather than some figment of an overly self-indulgent imagination. Don't believe me? How about this, this, this, and this? (all via Drudge) And that for reading a quote.

Do we think these or other such threats are hollow? If yes, then why are we worried about trying to stem such reactions? If no, then when are we going to unite at least in the fundamental understanding of the scope of the problem we face?

I told my parents it wasn't important

2006-09-18T13:18:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure I agree with this (actually, I'm pretty sure that I don't), and I haven't looked at any of the source material cited to form my own conclusions. That being said . . .

Homework is counterproductive and bad. I claim victory for all my procrastination at last. From third grade when I remember sheepishly mentioning to my mother a dinosaur report I needed to do for school (and her recoiling when I then let it slip that the multi-week assignment was due in about 12 hours), to the all-nighter I pulled to finish my last paper in grad school about managing technological change in the medical device industry. All those lost nights, grief, angst, stress, extensions, missed deadlines, etc. - all were done in a feeble attempt to worship at the feet of a false god.

Alas, if only I believed that. Instead, I know that way too much of my education, regardless of how well I eventually did, was spent in a tragic dance with a lack of personal discipline.

Just for today, though, I'm claiming vindication.

What if we needed 100,000 more troops?

2006-09-18T00:14:00.000-04:00

There has been a lot of discussion about the stretching of our armed forces, and - if Iran heats up as I suggest below - there undoubtedly will be more. Last week, the issue came up again because of this article by Bill Kristol and Rich Lowry calling for more US troops in Iraq. That spurred a number of related posts over at The Corner. Search the archives for the past week or so if you want to get a feel.

There are lots of issues raised here, and touching on all of them would be a lengthy task. My style, however, with topics such as this will be to deconstruct them, focusing a single post on one aspect of the issue (with future posts to potentially hit on other parts). This isn't because the other parts aren't important, but because few people want to read chapter-length disquisitions on a blog.

In that vein, I want to look at one statement that is made at the end of this email to Rich Lowry: "You simply can't say 'we need more troops' without reinitiating the draft. That will never happen." Put aside for a moment whether or not we need more troops. If we do, can we get them short of reinstituting the draft?

It's generally recognized that the military has slimmed down since the Cold War. I don't think, though, that the extent of this is completely appreciated. Take a look at this chart that I put together:

The figures for active duty personnel come from here (alas, only through 2002), while the population figures come from here (Table 2). What this tells us is that the "military participation rate," if you will, has dropped from ~0.9% in the 1980's to ~0.5% today. With a population nearing 300 million, each 0.01% equals almost 30,000 troops.

There are other forces at play, obviously; more detailed work would need to account for the portion of the population of appropriate age, the higher level of female participation in the military now versus in the 1980's, etc. However, the directional conclusion remains the same: a participation rate nearly twice today's was sustained throughout the 1980's without the use of a draft.

Today is, of course, different: we are at war, unemployment is lower, more people choose to go to college, etc. Yet the scale of change in the participation rate necessary to bring in, say, an additional 100,000 soldiers (and I don't hear anyone saying we need another 1 million) is so modest in a historical context, that it begs the question: what would we need to do to recruit those incremental soldiers in a non-compulsory manner?

And so here is an initial, humble suggestion: if we do decide that we need more soldiers, be they 100,000 or some other figure, let's try to recruit the very best we can and do that the same way a business might look to attract additional (qualified) employees. If we can't fill the positions as they are, then let's pay more, or make other changes which would, at the margin, change the number of people who choose to volunteer. People join the military for much more important reasons than pay or benefits, but to suggest that those things play no role in the decision of many is simply untrue. I don't know how sensitive the marginal propensity to enlist is to changes in salary, but I do know it would be easy enough (albeit potentially expensive) to find out if necessary.

We may have too few troops, we may have the wrong mix of troops, we may have troops that we are deploying poorly, and we may be having trouble finding people who meet our current criteria. All that could be true (although I don't agree with it all), but it still tells us almost nothing about whether or not we need to reinstitute a draft.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers. This blog is about 2/3 politics and 1/3 finance/economics. Feel free to check out some of the other posts if you enjoyed this one.

Hopefully they're at least practicing

2006-09-17T18:06:00.000-04:00

How long before someone proposes an "excess child" tax (say for more than two children) to level the demographic playing field between the parties? (Hat tip: RealClearPolitics)

Oh, and since this blog is new, and readers are still getting to know my sense of humor, let me say that my comment above is meant as a joke. I think.

Wonder how much they could get for About.com?

2006-09-17T17:09:00.000-04:00

"The housing boom would never have lasted as long as it did if mortgage lenders had to worry about being paid back in full. But instead of relying on borrowers to repay, most lenders quickly sell the loans, generating cash to make more mortgages." - New York Times editorial

Not to point out the obvious, but don't you think that the people buying the loans, are, well, you know, interested in being paid back? And therefore would be unwilling to buy pools of mortgages that they thought would have higher than acceptable default rates. I'm just saying . . .

Closer than we think?

2006-09-17T12:31:00.000-04:00

I had planned to blog about this piece by Charles Krauthammer on the likelihood and consequences of military action against Iran. This issue has been simmering for a long time, and because of that and the focus on Iraq I don't think as many (non wonky/political-junky type) people are paying serious attention.

Then, before I get to it, I see the cover of this week's Time. Maybe I was wrong about attention being paid. Or, at least, the word is going out that this issue is likely to escalate in the near future.

For the record, I think Krauthammer is too pessimistic about the economic impact of a strike against Iran. What markets hate more than anything else is uncertainty (for reasons we'll spend lots of time on in future posts). In a perverse sense, then, the kind of military action that most recent pieces seem to suggest (air campaign of limited duration, perhaps coupled with some more defensive naval activity) would actually relieve some of that uncertainty by taking other options off the table (e.g. a near-term nuclear-armed Iran, a US ground action). Assuming, of course, that such a limited military action actually works, meaning that it at least sets back Iran's nuclear efforts for a number of years (a point on which I'm still not fully convinced it would).

Are the costs, whatever they are, worth it? Krauthammer sums it up nicely:

"Then there is the larger danger of permitting nuclear weapons to be acquired by religious fanatics seized with an eschatological belief in the imminent apocalypse and in their own divine duty to hasten the End of Days. The mullahs are infinitely more likely to use these weapons than anyone in the history of the nuclear age. Every city in the civilized world will live under the specter of instant annihilation delivered either by missile or by terrorist. This from a country that has an official Death to America Day and has declared since Ayatollah Khomeini's ascension that Israel must be wiped off the map.

Against millenarian fanaticism glorying in a cult of death, deterrence is a mere wish. Is the West prepared to wager its cities with their millions of inhabitants on that feeble gamble?"

Although I wish the question was whether the "West" was willing to do that, unfortunately I fear the real question is whether America will be.

Not the most unified of tickets

2006-09-17T01:32:00.000-04:00

Here's a sign that there is trouble with your political party. Jeanine Pirro is running for Attorney General of New York as a Republican, after earlier abandoning what even I would have to say was a pretty uninspiring campaign for the US Senate nomination. Despite moving over to what was supposed to be a better race for her, she remains far back in the polls and is struggling to build momentum in the race:

"Her campaign tried to change the subject yesterday, rebroadcasting a 30-second television advertisement that stressed Ms. Pirro’s record as a former district attorney of Westchester County. . . The ad ran upstate this summer, but a Pirro aide said the campaign would now 'saturate' New York City television markets with it."

Here's the ad (click on the first video). The problem? The first three words out of Pirro's mouth are, "Like Eliot Spitzer . . ." For non-New Yorkers, Eliot Spitzer is the current Attorney General, but also the Democratic candidate for NY Governor.

Now, I suppose some would argue that Pirro mentions Spitzer since he is the sitting Attorney General, and wants to show that she has a similar background, etc. Of course, a gadfly might suggest that her invoking of his name is a desperate attempt to associate herself with the guy who's leading the Republican nominee by 46% in the above linked poll, regardless of the effect on the rest of the ticket or the party itself.

So, who bears responsibility for the situation the NY GOP finds itself in, where it looks likely to get swept in all statewide races come November? Well, here is at least a place to start.

About the name

2006-09-15T18:45:00.001-04:00

So what is "Grade-One Gadfly?" supposed to mean?

Taking the second part first, a "gadfly" is simple enough - "a person who persistently annoys or provokes others with criticism, schemes, ideas, demands, requests, etc." Those who know me will probably agree with that description, especially if I've already had an adult beverage or two. But, to be fair, I always try to do it with a smile.

As for "grade-one," that's a reference to an essay I read when I was 13 by William Golding called "Thinking as a Hobby." He lays out what he sees as the three types of thinkers in the world: grade-three ("feeling, rather than thought"), grade-two ("the detection of contradictions"), and grade-one ("which says, 'What is truth?' and sets out to find it"). This blog is aiming for One, undoubtedly will stumble about in Two, but will have a lot of fun at the expense of those in Three.

Take them together, and what I hope to create is a gadfly with a purpose, an irritant with a goal. Point out things that don't make sense? Most definitely. Hopefully, though, at the same time we can move the collective conversation forward ever so slightly.

And, if not, I'm pretty sure "Grade-Two Gadfly" is still available.

Welcome

2006-09-15T15:04:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the Grade-One Gadfly.

We're going to touch on politics, finance, economics, current events and other stuff. I say "we" because I've left the comments option on, and I hope that over time there will be some good dialogue that goes on here (what else could a gadfly hope for?). But I'm sure it will take a while to get that up and going, so for a bit I will just have to opine myself.

The approach is going to be serious, but hopefully fun. I believe in data, evidence, and analysis, and I'll do my best to use all three as the need arises. The tone will be opinionated, but above all sane and civil (and that goes for the comments, too - this is my little corner of the web, and you are warned). People who disagree are encouraged and welcome; people who can't discuss things like adults are not.

One thing that will separate this from some of my other favorite political blogs is that many of them (say here and here) are written by lawyers. I'm a finance professional, which will inform (some) of my choices of topics, as well as the approaches I take. It also means that we may do a little number crunching around here; probably nothing too crazy, but just enough to see if things other people are saying pass the "smell test." Hopefully it will make for a fresh approach; if not, no harm done.

Oh, and conspiracy theorists aren't going to like this site. Just to warn you.

Bear with me the first couple of weeks, as I work through things like playing with the format a bit, getting links up and running, finding a sustainable pacing that works, etc. As for what to expect, I think that initially there will be a bit more about politics and foreign policy given the upcoming election and ongoing war, with financial stuff lagging but eventually picking up as well (my vision is that these posts will be more original and less "linky" than the politics ones, but we'll see how it goes). And of course, there will also be a random sampling of other things that catch my interest as time goes on.

Thanks for stopping by, and don't be shy about letting me know what you think.