All Intensive Purposes

There is certainly a domino effect at work. Supporters of the US’s democracy campaign have been quick to cast Kyrgyzstan as the latest state to join “the global march of freedom led by President Bush”, as the conservative Wall Street Journal said on Friday, praising Washington’s policies in Afghanistan and Iraq.

However, of more relevance to Kyrgyzstan have been the peaceful revolts against authoritarian leaders in the former Soviet Union, in Georgia and Ukraine. Television and the internet has spread the message. The common element has been a drive to get rid of self-serving corrupt cliques which have often been in power, as in Kyrgyzstan, since Soviet times. These cliques have generally been supported by Moscow, but the revolts against them have not been principally anti-Russian or pro-western. Domestic issues have mattered most.

Crooked Timber adds:

The FT article identifies two effects at work in Central Asia. First, there’s a geographic contagion effect – countries are more likely to move towards democracy if other countries nearby are established democracies (or have recently moved towards democracy). This was a key causal variable in the last wave of democratization – Jeff Kopstein and David Reilly have a nice paper providing statistical evidence in favour of geographic proximity as a key factor explaining the degree of democratization in Central and Eastern Europe. Here indeed, US policy has had some indirect effects – the US support for regime change in Georgia has probably had unanticipated consequences as Georgia became an example of change for other countries in the post-Soviet space.

Second, there’s a particular institution that has played a vital role – the OSCE. The FT anticipates that the OSCE has been important in Kyrgyzstan, and could help push for change in forthcoming elections in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan

As in Georgia, Ukraine and, now, Kyrgyzstan, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which organises election monitors, could play a key role. Its criticisms of polls have given anti-government forces vital ammunition.

// posted by t.s. @ 9:41 PM 0 Comments

The church is a major attraction for both pilgrims and tourists. A vast warren of chapels, tunnels and caves, with architectural remnants that date back to the 4th century, it spans a broad range of traditions, from the westernized cathedral of the Catholics to the icons of the Orthodox churches. It houses the final stations on the Via Dolorosa -- the last journey of Jesus to the crucifixion.

The church is jealously managed by five competing and often disputatious Christian denominations -- Roman Catholic (also called Latin here), Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Coptic and Syrian Orthodox (sometimes called Jacobite). There also is a small Ethiopian Orthodox chapel on the roof. Sometimes the tensions over the right to clean or to pray in a particular area of the church spill over into violence.

For his hereditary labor, Nuseibeh receives $15 every month, an income he supplements by giving tours of the church. But the ancient honor is worth more to him than the token payment. When tensions boil over between the denominations, Nuseibeh is the one who calms the waters.

"Like all brothers, they sometimes have problems. We help them settle their disputes. We are the neutral people in the church. We are the United Nations. We help preserve peace in this holy place," he said.

// posted by t.s. @ 4:43 PM 0 Comments

But now, the truth of those affidavits is being called into question. According to his court testimony, Mr. Kosmak recently admitted that his sworn statements misrepresented - unintentionally, he says - what he knew about those crossings. He repeated that admission in an interview last week.

* * * * *

In the Enriquez case, Mr. Kosmak, who is the railroad section director in the Texas Department of Transportation, signed an affidavit saying that all of Union Pacific's crossings in Texas protected by crossbucks had "received the benefit of federal funds between approximately 1977 and 1981." He said he based his assertion on either "personal knowledge" or records of a federal program that operated for those years.

But last October, Mr. Kosmak admitted that he had no proof that those federal funds were used at any Texas rail crossing.

"We don't have specific records that exist any longer of any specific location," Mr. Kosmak said in an interview.

Mr. Crow said the federal program was intended only to bring all crossbucks up to certain standards; those already meeting standards were left alone, he said.

Nancy J. Stone, a lawyer in Amarillo, Tex., said important claims in a lawsuit she filed arising from the death of a father and two children at a Texas grade crossing were dismissed on the eve of trial in late 2002 because of Mr. Kosmak's testimony. "It's an unbelievable injustice," Ms. Stone said, adding that the ruling left her no choice but to settle the case.

// posted by t.s. @ 9:24 PM 0 Comments

WAR ON TERROR, MEET WAR ON DRUGS. The U.S. military is going to start getting more involved in the efforts of the Afghan government to crack down on the cultivation of poppies and the production of opium and heroin. There's no question that the burgeoning drug trade is the single biggest threat to Afghanistan's stability and possible emergence as a democracy. Concentrating vast wealth (by Afghan standards) in the hands of the leaders of criminal enterprises can only prevent the emergence of a real state infrastructure and a meaningful politics.

Unfortunately, there's every reason to think that mere military crackdowns and eradication campaigns will do little to improve the situation. These sorts of efforts may well reduce poppy cultivation (and hence improve the heroin problem in drug-consuming countries) but they'll do little to make things better for Afghans (indeed, they'll make things much worse) unless the inhabitants of that country are given non-poppy economic opportunities. Afghan farmers need to be able to sell something for export in order to earn money. The problem here is, in part, one of inadequate development aid. But the terms of trade are also important -- if the rich world is serious about bringing stability to Afghanistan, we need to make sure that legitimate agricultural products can be brought to market at prices that the people who have money will pay.

// posted by t.s. @ 12:21 PM 0 Comments

Rum Sodomy and the Lash by The Pogues (Stiff) 1985
Sometimes when things are real flat, you want to hear something flat, other times you just want to project onto it, something more like.... you might want to hear the Pogues. Because they love the West. They love all those old movies. The thing about Ireland, the idea that you can get into a car and point it towards California and drive it for the next five days is like Euphoria, because in Ireland you just keep going around in circles, those tiny little roads. 'Dirty Old Town', 'The Old Main Drag'. Shane has the gift. I believe him. He knows how to tell a story. They are a roaring, stumbling band. These are the dead end kids for real. Shane's voice conveys so much. They play like soldiers on leave. The songs are epic. It's whimsical and blasphemous, seasick and sacrilegious, wear it out and then get another one.

(As I type, it occurs to me that this is not going to be so belly-achingly hilarious in the re-telling. But wait! Don't go! I have more! While out for drinks last night to celebrate Charles' birthday, we were trying, as good friends do, to think of the most disgusting drink combinations that would induce maximum turmoil in his stomach. Grand Prize goes to Tommy, who came up with a trio of three drinks entitled "Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash." Although nobody has yet been drunk or masochistic enough to try this concoction, it consists of: one shot of Rum, followed by one shot of chocolate liquer (that's right), followed by the Lash, which can only be tequila. Rum, chocolate, tequila, and undoubtedly, puke. Happy Birthday Charles!)

// posted by t.s. @ 11:22 PM 1 Comments

Since both economic and political freedoms are highly valued, it is essential to understand how they interact as nations evolve. The history of different countries during the past century strongly indicates that economic freedoms over time typically push societies toward political freedoms. To take a few examples, South Korea, Taiwan, and Chile all started their economic development under military regimes. Korea and Taiwan both began freeing their economies around 1960 after centralized direction of their economies failed to produce economic growth. Chile began opening its economy under General Pinochet in 1981, also after his centralized approach to the Chilean economy failed. Within two decades, all three nations had achieved, or were moving rapidly toward, political democracies, with vibrant competition for elections among competing parties, and a mainly free press.

The path from political to economic freedom, by contrast, is slower and more uncertain. It took India over four decades to begin to loosen its extensive controls over private companies, labor markets, start-ups, imports from abroad, and numerous other activities. It still has a long way to go. Mexico has had a free press and considerable political freedom for a century or so, but economic freedoms did not begin to evolve until the latter part of the 1980’s. Israel has fierce competition among political parties, but continues to have an overly controlled economy.

// posted by t.s. @ 11:10 AM 0 Comments

The legislation, which congressional leaders said they plan to pass today or tomorrow, would allow a federal court to review the case. Lawmakers said Schiavo's feeding tube will have to be restored while that review is underway.

President Bush said he will return early from his ranch in Crawford, Tex., to sign the bill. The legislation would prolong a medical and legal drama that has pitted the incapacitated Florida woman's husband against her parents.

Republican officials declared, in a memo that was supposed to be seen only by senators, that they believe the Schiavo case "is a great political issue" that could pay dividends with Christian conservatives, whose support is essential in midterm elections such as those coming up in 2006.

// posted by t.s. @ 12:12 AM 3 Comments

In an effort to increase pressure on North Korea, the Bush administration told its Asian allies in briefings earlier this year that Pyongyang had exported nuclear material to Libya. That was a significant new charge, the first allegation that North Korea was helping to create a new nuclear weapons state.

But that is not what U.S. intelligence reported, according to two officials with detailed knowledge of the transaction. North Korea, according to the intelligence, had supplied uranium hexafluoride -- which can be enriched to weapons-grade uranium -- to Pakistan. It was Pakistan, a key U.S. ally with its own nuclear arsenal, that sold the material to Libya. The U.S. government had no evidence, the officials said, that North Korea knew of the second transaction.

// posted by t.s. @ 12:08 AM 3 Comments

The problem is that by the next decade, the debt will almost certainly be having substantial negative effects on the economy (primarily through higher interest rates), and will certainly put the government in a poor position to do the borrowing that will be needed to fund the baby boomers retirement (see the Social Security debate here).

On the other hand, as the following chart shows, without the Bush tax cuts these problems would have been non-existent.

// posted by t.s. @ 5:52 PM 0 Comments

I’d like to interpose my Maynard G. Krebs Dog-Whistle Theory of the pop-culture transmission of subversive, sometimes spiritual ideas. The unacknowledged influence of stupid pop-culture icons on the dissident tradition in American life.

You may not recall Maynard G. Krebs, but he was the “beatnik” on the idiot 60’s sitcom Dobie Gillis.

Played by Bob Denver (later, of course, famous for Gilligan’s Island), Maynard G. Krebs was about as inauthentic a representation of Beat culture as you could possibly get. With his beret and goatee signifiers and his unconvincing invocation of Thelonious Monk, he was a travesty.

And yet, it is the mysterious, inexorable power of mass culture in America to have this effect: If just a tiny fraction of those millions who saw Maynard G. Krebs were motivated enough to listen to Thelonious Monk, and only a tiny fraction of those who listened to Monk made the transition, crossed over from the culture of Maynard G. Krebs to the culture of Thelonious Monk, it was enough to sustain an entire alterna-culture. You just needed a few people to hear the siren’s song, the dog’s whistle inaudible to most. I’ve met old Beats who told me they were turned on by reading about Beats in Life magazine when they were kids in Kansas.

// posted by t.s. @ 12:52 PM 0 Comments

To Americans desperate for good news from abroad, the Beirut Spring is the apotheosis of a Middle Eastern perestroika. To the White House, and many American pundits, the crowds in Martyrs' Square have vindicated the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq. The image of Iraqis voting freely, so the narrative goes, struck a chord in other Arabs that finally gave them the courage to reach for the prize. NPR's Daniel Schorr argued that President Bush "may have had it right" when he said, "A liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region." Dennis Ross, writing in the Financial Times, attributed Lebanon's uprising to the "Iraq effect." Washington Post columnist David Ignatius made the same point, citing Lebanese opposition leader Walid Jumblatt, who told Ignatius, "It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. ... When I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world." Jumblatt's quote caromed across the Internet, cropping up on numerous conservative blogs and in other columns. In The New York Times, David Brooks quoted Ignatius quoting Jumblatt and concluded, "People around the Arab world look at voters in Iraq and ask, 'Why not here?'"

There's just one problem. The idea that the Lebanese were inspired by the Iraq war doesn't have much currency in Beirut. "I've never heard it from anybody except Walid Jumblatt," laughs Jamil Mroue, editor-in-chief of Beirut's Daily Star newspaper. "I've heard the Lebanese say, 'What the heck, are [the Syrians] going to take us back to the Stone Age?' They're saying 'Fuck it, we're not going back. And, if it means demonstrating in the streets, and if it means changing the government, then so be it.' But I don't think they thought, 'Oh, the Iraqis voted, so we can, too.'" In actuality, some Lebanese have been struggling for reform for decades, hating their Syrian overlords. "Lebanon has been the only satellite state in the world since the end of the cold war, and no one lifted a finger," says Farid El-Khazen, a political science professor in Beirut. "It was business as usual until 9/11, and U.S.-Syria relations began to deteriorate. Internally, there was a movement all along that pushed for an end to the occupation. ... There is a linkage, if you like, with Iraq, in the sense that American policy has changed toward Syria due to their interference in Iraq. But [the Lebanese opposition] has been going on for a long time."

"If there is a model, they're looking at the Ukrainian model," says [Beirut professor] Kulchitsky. "The people here want to preserve their democracy, not to create one. And they want to do it in a peaceful way. I don't think that the Iraqi situation carries the model of a peaceful situation." ... After the [Harari] funeral procession, Letayf and other campus organizers--now the moving force behind downtown Beirut's peaceful sit-in--came to Kulchitsky and asked him to advise them on how the Ukrainians had pulled it off. The professor told them to try to emulate the Ukrainian youth: Keep it peaceful, ban drinking and fighting, camp down at the square to keep attention on them.

// posted by t.s. @ 12:42 PM 0 Comments

[1] Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. [2] Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. [3] For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: [4] For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. [5] Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.

These are dogmas, not proofs. Scalia simply asserts them and moves on to incredulity and indignation. But how does he know these things? Does he hold these opinions, all venerable ones, by the authority of his reason or by the authority of his tradition? If by the former, then he should do my reason the honor of giving an account of his reason, so that I might be able in good conscience to assent; and if by the latter, well, his tradition is not my tradition, and so his assurances do not compel me. Certainty, as Maimonides warned his student, must not come by accident. It is an insult to democratic discussion to introduce these doctrines without an accompanying sense of the obligation to argue for them. But Scalia dispenses with argument, he lives after argument; and in its happy sensation of its own rightness, life after argument is very much like life before argument. Scalia's undisturbed experience of obvious truth is a kind of mental decadence.

// posted by t.s. @ 11:47 AM 0 Comments

Mallaby insists, contrary to all the evidence, that Democrats will pay a price for opposing the president's grossly unpopular plan and that this price could be lowered by proposing tax hikes and benefit cuts. This is almost too silly to be worth responding to. It does, however, raise the time-honored question of why the Washington press corps hates Social Security so much. Why, in particular, they hate it so very much that they dogmatically believe the American people to hate it, too, even when they evidently don't. It has something to do, I suppose, with the fact that journalism is a profession that's almost uniquely sheltered from the risks Social Security is supposed to guard against. You can keep working as a pundit at a very old age. Even severe physical disabilities of the sort that Social Security offers protection from need be no major impediment. If I lost my left leg tomorrow, that would suck in a whole bunch of ways. But I could keep on working much more easily than could most people. And I could keep on doing it at the age of 67 or 77 or even 87 should I be so lucky as to live that long.

// posted by t.s. @ 12:56 PM 0 Comments

The case for responsive government that provides services to the people and keeps the market functioning in a healthy way springs from the liberal belief in justice, equality and liberty. The bill of rights is the founding document of American liberalism.

We believe that while property rights are fundamental to American law, liberty means more than property rights only. There is a reason that Thomas Jefferson wrote "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" instead of the more familiar (at the time) "life liberty and property" in the declaration. Even then, America was about more than this cramped view that freedom is nothing more than freedom from taxes. Freedom is also the inherant right of each individual to dominion over his or her identity, body and mind.

We believe in free speech and freedom of religion with almost no exceptions because no individual can be trusted to make such distinctions without prejudice. We believe in the right to a fair trial and we believe that those who represent the government must be held to a very high standard due to the natural temptations the government's awesome judicial and police power can present. We cannot have a free society where government does not adhere to the rule of law.

We have fought for universal suffrage, labor laws, civil rights and the right to privacy among many other things because we believe in fairness, equality and social justice. We believe those principles require a society such as ours to ensure that all people can live a decent and dignified life. We think that democratic government, being directly accountable to the people, is the best institution through which those pinciples can be successfully translated into action. We are always on the side of progress, looking forward, stepping into the future.

The founding fathers were liberals. Our tradition is as American as apple pie.

// posted by t.s. @ 10:03 PM 1 Comments

A better solution for such states might be to appoint a commission that was mandated to gerrymander in accordance with some objective criteria. You could come up with an operational definition of a "competetive district" and then mandate that the commission draw up the maximum feasible number of competetive districts. That would mean states would include a few super-safe districts in the hands of the local majority party but would still mostly be competitive. The resulting boundary lines might well look very odd, but most members of congress would need to face contested races every two years. On the other hand, leadership autority in both parties would naturally pass to people holding super-safe seats who would rack up seniority. But the House's legendary party discipline might well break down -- thus rendering the seniority issue less pressing -- if most members had to live in constant fear of getting booted from office.

// posted by t.s. @ 9:19 PM 0 Comments

"I don't need an investigation to tell me that there was no comprehensive or systematic use of inhumane tactics by the American military, because those guys and gals just wouldn't do it," said Senator Jim Talent, a Republican from Missouri. "Everything about the culture and the training in the military and at home works against that. That's why the terrorists are attacking us -- because we're not the kind of society that would do that."

// posted by t.s. @ 2:53 PM 0 Comments

Some bankruptcy economists theorize that there's an inverse relationship between strong consumer-protection laws and bankruptcy filings. In states where it's harder for lenders to get judgments against consumers, bankruptcies might be lower because lenders are pickier about who gets credit. In states that make it easy for creditors to repossess property, bankruptcies might be higher because more consumers are extended credit.

That, the economists say, might explain why many Southern states--known for the creditor-friendly laws--have higher bankruptcy rates. Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee provide a wide range of prejudgments, creditor remedies, attachments, garnishments and wage assignments with limited or no litigation, Mr. Gerdano says.

// posted by t.s. @ 12:26 PM 1 Comments

In Montgomery County, two precincts recorded a combined undervote of almost 6,000. This is to say that that many people waited to vote but, when their turn came, had no opinion on who should be the president, voting only for lesser offices. In these two precincts alone, that number represents an undervote of 25 percent, in a county where undervoting averages out at just 2 percent. Democratic precincts had 75 percent more under- votes than Republican ones.

In Precinct lB of Gahanna, in Franklin County, a computerized voting machine recorded a total of 4,258 votes for Bush and 260 votes for Kerry. In that precinct, however, there are only 800 registered voters, of whom 638 showed up. Once the “glitch” had been identified, the president had to be content with 3,893 fewer votes than the computer had awarded him.

In Miami County, a Saddam Hussein-type turnout was recorded in the Concord Southwest and Concord South precincts, which boasted 98.5 percent and 94.27 percent turnouts, respectively, both of them registering overwhelming majorities for Bush. Miami County also managed to report 19,000 additional votes for Bush after 100 percent of the precincts had reported on Election Day.

// posted by t.s. @ 1:17 PM 1 Comments

Liberation at Gunpoint: Now More Than Ever

Freedom has been on the crawl of late. From the reforms of Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestine to the upheavals in Lebanon to Hosni Mubarak’s promise of a slightly less rigged election in Egypt’s near future, the Mideast is taking confident baby-steps toward a more democratic future – and mostly as a response simply to civil demonstrations and diplomatic pressure. One might draw the conclusion that it is therefore possible to nudge corrupt and tyrannical regimes in the direction of freedom and democracy without massive preventive invasions, enormous loss of life, and inaccurate, bad-faith presentations of casus belli. But one would be wrong – oh, so terribly wrong. For had the United States not bludgeoned Iraq into a quasi-democratic shape, the Muslim world would never have thought to try democracy on its own. Indeed, before the Iraq war, Arabs scarcely knew that democracy existed.

News travels slowly in the Mideast, where messages are still passed from place to place by antique methods such as carrier pigeon and satellite television. As a result, most Arabs knew little of the existence or nature of the world beyond them, or of "the West" and its fabled "democracy." In a prewar poll exclusively conducted by researchers at the Medium Lobster Institute of International Studies, 43% of Middle East respondents believed that "democracy" was "a spicy dish made from ground lamb and cinnamon," while 28% believed it was one of several methods for removing female body parts deemed offensive by the Koran. Even more troubling, when asked about "freedom," 68% of Muslims either "disapproved" or "strongly disapproved" of the concept, while 16% were undecided. Nearly two-thirds of all respondents agreed with the statement "If you're Muslim, or perhaps brown-skinned, you can't be self-governing and free."

But all this changed with the January elections in Iraq. Suddenly the Muslim world became aware of a new concept – “freedom” – began to investigate it, and think to itself, “Is this right for me?” The more Lebanese, Egyptians and Palestinians considered their options, the safe, old military dictatorship and permanent foreign occupations just didn’t seem to satisfy them anymore.

One might argue that the progress in Palestine and Lebanon would never have taken place without the death of Yasser Arafat and the assassination of Rafik al Hariri, but why didn’t Palestinians and Lebanese simply say, “Let’s give old corrupt tyranny another go, it’s worth one more shot” when given the opportunity? Because this time they were aware of an alternative: an alternative called freedom. And that alternative would not have been there for them had the American military not been there to invade, occupy, and torture a neighboring country.

Make no mistake: the Iraq war has brought us significant progress. In a poll conducted just days after the Iraqi election, Mideast residents overwhelmingly described their feelings toward freedom and democracy as “positive,” and 66% correctly identified it as “a system of government in which power is vested in the people, who rule either directly or through freely elected representatives”; only 12% described it as “an abomination of ghosts and worms.” Sadly, being only aware of Iraqi democracy, the entire Middle East currently believes that democracy only functions with sporadic elections for anonymous Islamist candidates in the midst of a massive terrorist campaign. What is needed is a better role model: another, more violent invasion of a bigger, more responsive country ought to do the trick. The Medium Lobster is open to suggestions.

// posted by t.s. @ 6:19 PM 0 Comments

There is a certain irony in the debate over installing the Ten Commandments in public buildings. The Second Commandment in the King James edition of the Bible states quite clearly: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the Earth below, or that is in the water under the Earth." Few people take this as a prohibition against images of stars and fishes. Rather it cautions against endowing a physical object, be it a golden calf or a two-ton slab of granite, with spiritual power.

// posted by t.s. @ 11:49 AM 0 Comments

The humor in “Get Shorty” was broad but not too broad, and, cynical as that movie was, it couldn’t disguise its adoration of a corrupt milieu in which everyone wants to make a movie, be in a movie, live like a movie star. According to “Be Cool,” however, the music business is about nothing but money; no one could love it in the same way that people love the movies. Linda Moon may be a sweet kid, and Chili and Edie certainly want her to succeed, but they want a big chunk of her, too, and the jokes turn rancid. The love has dropped out of the satire, and the comedy falls to clowning burlesque.

Considered as a sequel, “Be Cool” is not an insult, but it’s a lazy, rhythmless, and redundant piece of moviemaking. The story of Linda becoming a star is of very little interest. We know she will make it, and the way she does so is more a business narrative than a heart-stopping series of breakthroughs. And Travolta and Thurman don’t do much for each other. Watching Thurman, who ducks her head and makes eyes at Travolta and can’t seem to find a character to play, I missed Rene Russo’s insolent stare from “Get Shorty.” This movie is soft and slack in all the places that “Get Shorty” was hard and direct. Gray holds scenes a beat or two too long (he leaves Cedric the Entertainer stranded a few times); and he flubs a reprise of the Travolta-Thurman dance sequence from “Pulp Fiction.” The pair go to a club where the Black Eyed Peas are playing “Sexy,” but when they hit the dance floor Gray doesn’t shoot the bodies from top to bottom, as Quentin Tarantino did. He cuts from feet to shoulders, and then back again, and all you see is two cutoff halves moving together.

“Be Cool” is too slovenly to be cool. The movie is an expensive descendant of the miscellaneous, throw-everything-into-the-pot pictures that Hollywood made seventy years ago—jamborees like “The Big Broadcast of 1936,” in which a barely functioning plot served as a clothesline for a variety of musical and comedy turns, some good, some terrible. “Be Cool” feels like a spangled tour of Los Angeles show business.

// posted by t.s. @ 10:20 PM 2 Comments

I'm one of those who could waste his entire day in front of the TV without even knowing it. It goes by in an instant - and while it's happening I'd feel guilty about it, tell myself that I should be doing something else, complain that there's nothing to watch, and yet not actually turn it off.

// posted by t.s. @ 9:18 PM 0 Comments

One of Luntz's most serious pieces of advice for Republicans--I am not making this up--is to use the American flag, the bald eagle, and the Statue of Liberty in campaign commercials. He insists upon this, and dwells on the strategy at length. (Presumably, the days when Republicans foolishly used the hammer and sickle are over.)

// posted by t.s. @ 10:11 AM 5 Comments

Not too long ago, I had a conversation with one of the top terrorist/Al Qaeda trackers in Scotland Yard. I asked if in his view any of the five or so British citizens who had been detained and later released from Guantanamo were a serious threat. These individuals had become darlings of the British press, talking about how they had been innocent victims and had no relationships to al Qaeda. They spoke openly about the abuse they suffered.

The response from this Scotland Yard guy was important. He said that he had no doubt at all that each of the five (maybe six) detainees was guilty and a serious threat. However, he said that Americans had extracted information from these people in extra-legal circumstances and that none of the discovered information could be used in British courts to charge these alleged criminals.

He said he was bothered by Guantanamo on many grounds -- but the chief reason being that it undermined British security by pursuing a course with these detainees that put them beyond British law when he saw no reason why these people could not have been tried and convicted with the evidence that Scotland Yard had been assembling.

The British had no choice but to immediately release these Guantanamo detainees. That said, he told me that they are all being carefully watched and monitored.

// posted by t.s. @ 4:18 PM 2 Comments

Here is the Highest Law in Iraq today: Thou shalt not frighten an American soldier. Not “kill,” not “attack.” Put in fear of his (or her) life. This is a capital crime subject to immediate arraignment, instantaneous investigation and summary execution of sentence. If your most important goal is to safeguard the lives of American troops, this law makes perfect sense. It was not propounded by Iraqis, though, who were not even consulted about it and have, still, no veto power over it. It was not adopted with the consent of the governed. How did that come about? We decided. No country where such a law obtains is “free” in the sense that the US is free, or, well, Italy is free. No Iraqi jury, nor even Iraqi bureaucrat will pass judgment on the actions of the soldiers at that checkpoint. Americans will.

It is dangerous for a people to arrogate that much power to themselves, even, or especially, when they see themselves as Doing Good. When we still had conservatives in this country, they knew that.

// posted by t.s. @ 3:07 PM 0 Comments

Richard Haass, who served in the administrations of both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush and is currently president of the Council on Foreign Relations, recalls that Cheney had “three bites at the apple. He has his staff at every meeting. He would then come to principals’ meetings. And then he’d have his one-on-ones with the president. And given the views that came out of the vice president’s office, it introduced a certain bias to the system…. As a result, I felt that at just about every meeting, the State Department began behind two and a half to one.”

// posted by t.s. @ 9:48 PM 0 Comments

The book tries to prove that your instant, gut reactions are actually more intelligent than your considered analyses. The problem, however, is that my instant, gut reaction is that the thesis is clever bullshit, which means that actually reading the book would be a wholehearted repudiation of its argument. We'll see if he can prove himself wrong and convince me to ignore my quicker instincts tonight.

// posted by t.s. @ 5:06 PM 0 Comments

A picaresque novel about a dreamily disturbed screenwriter, Force Majeure leaned heavily on Wagner’s own experience as a down-and-out limo driver to the stars. Inspired by Don Quixote and Fitzgerald’s "Pat Hobby" stories, the book feels unique and almost unclassifiable, presented in a style so deadpan it’s as if the characters are locked behind a wall of bulletproof glass. Alternately poetic and vicious (it ends with the hero molesting a 10-year-old girl), the book demonstrated Wagner’s ability to write about Los Angeles in a genuinely original and lyrical way, and parts of it are very funny. Like the work of his friend (and fellow lover of De Mornay) Leonard Cohen, it is full of mock grandiosity — not art so much as a reverence for the idea of art, the literary masterpiece as spiritual quest. Bud Wiggins, a "lucid dreamer," is a screenwriter, after all, which is to say a near-writer, and his depression is buffered by Vicodin and fantasy.

// posted by t.s. @ 4:21 PM 0 Comments

[I]t has 7.9 million people, dwarfing even Manhattan in population. With that population, I expected skyscrapers. Not so. It is more like an endless expanse of dusty five story buildings, villages, going on and on....

Today, we went to the New World department store, with Max Mara, Burberry, etc. At this most new world of Wuhan's offerings, they still have the way of paying for merchandise familiar to those who visited the former Soviet Union back during Communist times: the three line system, whereby you identify the item you want to purchase, the sales person writes you up a receipt, you go to a cashier's desk and pay for item, and then return with a stamped receipt to the original salesperson to receive item. And they have one cashier for the entire floor. It takes a bit longer than at Lord and Taylor in Friendship Heights.

// posted by t.s. @ 1:38 PM 0 Comments

Once, when he was pressed into the back seat of my car with three other people, he tried to escape to a nearby bar when I slowed for a red light in heavy traffic. Foiled by the baby lock that had been inadvertently clicked on, he raged at me: "Get me out of this evil contraption before I start killing."

// posted by t.s. @ 12:35 PM 0 Comments

This, I think, is a key characteristic of bullshit: not just that the bullshitter knows he's bullshitting, but that the bullshittee also knows it. He may know it for sure, or he may just suspect it deep in his heart, but part of the essence of bullshit is that both sides implictly recognize that the statement in question is, in fact, bullshit. In this way it acts like a compact between spewer and receiver, a shared secret that brings them closer together. Thus the piquancy of bullshit, as well as its popularity.

// posted by t.s. @ 9:43 AM 0 Comments

Full of excerpts from Mr. Fleischer's often contentious exchanges with members of the press, it is essentially a collection of talking points hastily pasted together with large slatherings of the vitriol and exasperation the author seems to have accumulated during his years as a "piñata," his word for how he sometimes felt in the White House briefing room. In short, it's an extended exercise in Mr. Fleischer's spinning his own earlier spin.

// posted by t.s. @ 8:01 PM 0 Comments

"Americans seem to have a problem," writes a reviewer in Publishers Weekly, "with the austere qualities of his prose and his heroes, and the rather bleak atmosphere that pervades much of his work."

"Are you a pessimist?" someone asks.

"We live in a terrible world," Mankell says, grimacing.

He also writes children's books. In one, he says, a cat disappears and never comes back. The book differs from most children's books about vanishing cats. Ordinarily, the pets return and there is a happy ending.

Not in Mankell's dark, out-of-the-ordinary story. When the book was published in Sweden, he says, "it created a scandal." Some critics thought Mankell's view of this planet as an uncertain vessel, full of loneliness and loss, may have crept into the tale a little too much.

None of his children's books, it turns out, have been translated for Americans.

// posted by t.s. @ 7:50 PM 1 Comments

Gerrymandering is a controversial form of redistricting in which electoral district or constituency boundaries are manipulated for electoral advantage, usually of incumbents or a specific political party, mainly in two party first past the post systems. Gerrymandering is most effective in electoral systems with districts that elect a single representative, which include first-past-the-post, or single-member district and plurality, electoral systems, and majority run-off, or single-member district and majority, electoral systems.

One form of gerrymandering occurs when the boundaries of a constituency are changed in order to eliminate some area with a high concentration of people who vote in a similar way (e.g., for a certain political party). Another form occurs when an area with a high concentration of similar voters is split among several districts, ensuring that the party has a small majority in several districts rather than a large majority in one. A converse method is to draw boundaries so that a group opposing those manipulating the boundaries are concentrated in as few areas as possible, so as to minimise their representation and influence. Often, such gerrymandering is held to redress a long-overlooked imbalance, as when creating a black majority district.

In the United States, gerrymandering has been used to cut minority populations in half to keep all minorities in the minority, in as many districts as possible. This led to a major civil rights conflict; gerrymandering for the purpose of reducing the political influence of a racial or ethnic minority group is illegal in the United States under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but redistricting for political gain is constitutional.

The carving of territories into US states was also subject to gerrymandering, where before the American Civil War states were admitted on a formula of "one free state for each slave state". This nearly prevented Maine from seceding from Massachusetts until the Missouri Compromise was agreed upon, and it was decided that Texas and California would both enter as single - but large - states. During the late 19th century, the territories of the Rocky Mountains were split up into relatively small states to help the Republican Party maintain control of the White House — each new state brought in three electoral votes (Compare a map of the United States in 1860 with a map from 1870).

As for state-internal gerrymandering, there have been attempts to create "majority minority" districts, also called "affirmative gerrymandering" or "racial gerrymandering", to ensure higher ethnic minority representation in government. However, gerrymandering based solely on race has been ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court, under the Fourteenth Amendment first by Shaw v. Reno (1993) and by subsequent cases, including Miller v. Johnson (1995) and Hunt v. Cromartie (1999).

The possibility of gerrymandering makes the process of redistricting extremely politically contentious within the United States. Under U.S. law, districts for members of the House of Representatives are redrawn every ten years following each census and it is common practice for state legislative boundaries to be redrawn at the same time. Battles over contentious redistricting take place within state legislatures, which are responsible for creating the electoral maps in most states, as well as federal courts. Sometimes this process creates strange bedfellows; in some states, Republicans have cut deals with African American Democratic state legislators to create majority black districts. These districts essentially ensure the election of an African American Congressman, but due to voting patterns, end up concentrating the Democratic vote in such a way that surrounding districts are more likely to vote Republican.

The introduction of computers has made redistricting a more precise science, but the incentives for certain groups to create maps that increase their delegation in Congress remain. Many political analysts have argued that the United States House of Representatives has been gerrymandered to the point that there are now very few contested seats, and have also argued that this has a number of detrimental effects, among which is that the lack of contested seats makes it unnecessary for candidates to attract middle voters and to compromise across party lines.

// posted by t.s. @ 11:19 PM 0 Comments