Sick Transit

A tourist finds out how to get results in the City.

Spencer Ackerman, in a short but interesting post, turns a story about a CIA agent who left the agency in ‘02 into a comment on the Iraq war.

It made me think about how large the Iraq war looms in the consciousness of the rising generation of bloggers–writers who are in their mid-20s, like Yglesias and Ackerman (incidentally, also my age). For politically attuned liberals of our age group, Iraq was our Vietnam–not for how it affected our lives (there is no draft, after all) or our political engagement (the economy, cultural issues, and the blatant incompetence of the Bush administration seem to have done more to engage young voters in the last few years than the war), but for its effect on trust.

Vietnam taught millions of Baby Boomers that they couldn’t trust their government. Lies, broken promises, and a callous indifference to American and Vietnamese life proved that Washington was incompetent at best, and conspiratorially evil at worst. Ronald Reagan’s claim that “governent is the problem” was mainly targeted at domestic policy, but undoubtedly drew additional strength from the blatantly obvious failure of the US government to project power abroad.

Those of us who grew up in the Clinton years, however, had a more complacently cynical view of government. Sure the Democratic leadership were liars, and sleazy, and didn’t get much done; but in a pinch, they could be counted on to do the right thing: to defeat the Republican assault on enitlements, to be measured in the military response to terrorism, to engage in at least some humanitarian missions abroad.

Iraq changed that. The liberal establishment–from the Clintons to Tom Daschle to the NYT editorial page–became the patsies of George Bush. People who trusted them–like Yglesias, like me–were played for fools. And so we lost our belief that the media could maintain its fundamental interest in informing, and politicians their fundamental interest in governing, against the incentives of career, sensation, and self-promotion.

So far, this has resulted in a rebirth of progressive politics, a flowering of new media, and a deeper critical self-awareness of the vectors of manipulation (as evidenced in Spencer’s post). All that’s missing is the new Ronald Reagan to come along and pick off the disappointed, recynicized 30-somethings in 8 years.

Let’s hope we have a good run before then.

Mark Kleiman notes that the media has turned against the gas tax holiday proposal, and asks:

Is it possible — just barely possible — that McClinton has finally manged to underestimate the intelligence of the American voter and overestimate the gulliblity of the political news media?

No. At least, I don’t think so. After all, you didn’t see the media explaining what a silly idea this was when John McCain first proposed it. It wasn’t until Hillary Clinton got behind it that the opposition got legs. I can think of three possible explanations, from least to most paranoid:

1. No one in the MSM wanted to take sides by criticizing McCain’s plan. However, once the plan was bipartisan, they could criticize it without violating the canons of objectivity.

2. ”Republican proposes silly tax plan” is dog-bites-man; it’s not news. Or, to put a more bias-ey spin on it, the media doesn’t fact-check Republican tax plans.

3. Debunking the plan didn’t fit the John-MCain-is-a-straight-shooter narrative, but it does fit the Hillary-is-a-desperate-panderer storyline.

So, false objectivity or outright bias? Take your pick, but I’ll choose either one over the notion that Good Morning America suddenly got the wonkery religion.

I agree with the argument (don’t ban Playboy from army PX’s) of this Corner post, but I’ve got to say that the closing line is priceless:

Whatever Judeo-Christian values we choose to practice and live among here at home, in peace, we are better off not feminizing or Christianizing the military any more than we can avoid.

Because the real reason for being realistic about soliders’ sexuality is not that they have human needs just like the rest of us… it’s that the anti-sex values of Christianity can’t be allowed to trump the patriarchal values of the military.

(Via Drum)

From PZ:

The Second Law of Thermodynamics argument is one of the hoariest, silliest claims in the creationist collection. It’s self-refuting. Point to the creationist: ask whether he was a baby once. Has he grown? Has he become larger and more complex? Isn’t he standing there in violation of the second law himself? Demand that he immediately regress to a slimy puddle of mingled menses and semen.

The 2nd Law argument is so hoary that it’s a real challenge to find a creative and memorable way of shooting it down, but I believe PZ has suceeded.

In all fairness, people who are mad at Muslims burn down our embassies too.

Jonathan Kulick is of course correct that Putin is an asshole and it would be nice if he would stop bullying Eastern Europe.

But I can’t fathom the naivete of thinking that Russia is so impotent that they’ll accept American bases in their backyard without fighting back. There were a couple of windows when we could get away with that: after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Russia was weak; and after 9/11, when world opinion was on our side. But why would a resurgently militaristic Russia, bulked up on oil revenues, meekly submit to American hegemony?

With very high odds that the next President of the United States will be either female or black, liberals have good reason–on top of the already wonderful fact that the winner will not be named Bush–to look forward to the presidential election, no matter who wins the Democratic nomination.

However, if the nomination is not decided on Super Tuesday, then on Saturday I plan to caucus for Barack Obama. The reason is stated succinctly by Chris Hayes:

The war is the most obvious and powerful distinction between the two: Hillary Clinton voted for and supported the most disastrous American foreign policy decision since Vietnam, and Barack Obama (at a time when it was deeply courageous to do so) spoke out against it. In this campaign, their proposals are relatively similar, but in rhetoric and posture Clinton has played hawk to Obama’s dove, attacking from the right on everything from the use of first-strike nuclear weapons to negotiating with Iran’s president. Her hawkishness relative to Obama’s is mirrored in her circle of advisers. As my colleague Ari Berman has reported in these pages, it’s a circle dominated by people who believed and believe that waging pre-emptive war on Iraq was the right thing to do. Obama’s circle is made up overwhelmingly of people who thought the Iraq War was a mistake.

The starkest area of difference between the candidates is also the most important issue facing the nation. Their domestic policies are similar. Electability, experience, and political acumen can all be argued either way. But to me, Iraq makes the choice a no-brainer.

(Via Ackerman)

Alex Tabarrok presents evidence that “the rich pay for the Federal Government.”
While he makes no explicit claim of unfairness based on these figures, he does consider them to be “remarkable”, and is undoubtedly aware that these statistics are often used by the anti-tax crowd to clain that the rich pay an unfairly high amount of taxes. A commenter named Colin makes the point explicitly:

So the bottom 40% pay about 5% of all federal taxes paid. Of course this is in large part due to the fact that so many people have no tax liability at all. No wonder there isn’t an outcry for tax relief in this country.

So I thought it would be interesting to add a couple of columns (highlighted) that Tabarrok did not include, but that can be easily calculated based on the data provided:

The fact that the top 20% pay 68% of total Federal taxes doesn’t seem so unfair once you realize that they take in 54% of total national income. Colin’s point could easily be turned around: given that the bottom 40% only make about 12% of total income, it’s surprising that there’s not more outcry for income redistribution.

The last column, the ratio of tax share to income share, is a measure of the ‘flatness’ of our tax system; or if you will, the “soak-the-rich ratio”. With a perfectly flat tax and constant revenue, the value would be 100% for the entire column.

So how badly are the rich getting squeezed? The long-suffering top 20%, who on average make nearly five times as much as the rest of the nation, only pay 27% more than they would under a flat tax. And the truly rich, with an average income of one and a half million dollars a year, only pay 50% more than they would under a flat tax.

Doesn’t sound unreasonably progressive to me at all.

P.S. Tabarrok only included the Federal Government in his analysis, so I did the same, but of course state revenue generally includes regressive sales taxes, so a complete picture would be even flatter than above.

Who is the only person ever to win both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar?

(answer after the jump)

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Haven’t we all been in debates where we’d like to say this?

We therefore give Barringer 14 days to show cause why he should not be fined $10,000 for his frivolous arguments.

This is the captcha that Facebook just gave me:

Considering that this guy barely held on to his House seat last year, I sure as hell hope he’s not headed for the Governor’s mansion.

As a new project by the owners of the ever-popular Le Pichet, Cafe Presse already has plenty of buzz and doesn’t really need a plug, but I can’t help plugging it. We had brunch there this morning, and will definitely be back again. I had the Oufes Plats–broiled eggs with ham and gruyere. I thought I’d eaten eggs cooked every possible way, but I don’t think I’ve ever had them broiled before; they were soft and the yolks were perfect. The coffee was Cafe Vita (of course), and we finished by sharing a Pain au Chocolat, which was heavenly.

Cafe Presse makes excellent use of their space by being both a coffee shop and a bar (as well as a casual sit-down restaurant, although it doesn’t look like one from the outside). It also fills a major hole in pre-theatre dining: the dearth of affordable food near the Lee Center for the Arts. And to top it all off, it serves its full menu from 7am to 2am, making it an excellent place to stop for Chicken Liver Terrine or Croque Monsieur after (or while) drinking on First Hill. (I haven’t tried the terrine yet, since we’ve only been there for breakfast; but even the most grudging reviewers at The Stranger admit that it’s good.)

Highly recommended for any Seattlites who haven’t run across it yet.

The government of India wants to dredge a shipping canal through shoals which, according to Hindu myth, were built by the God Rama. Howard Friedman picks up the story:

Defending the project in the court challenge against it, ASI’s affidavit said that the shoals were the result of “several millennia of wave action and sedimentation” and “the issue cannot be viewed solely relying on the contents of mythological text.” It added that there is no historical evidence to prove the “existence of the characters or occurrence of events” in Ramayana (the epic tale of Rama). Quickly, a leader of the Hindu BJP party charged that the language in the affidavit was “an insult to millions of Hindus all over the world.”

By Saturday the government had agreed to withdraw the controversial parts of the ASI affidavit. Culture Minister Ambika Soni suspended two officials over the matter and offered her own resignation. Meanwhile BJP leader L.K. Advani said the affidavit amounts to blasphemy that is punishable under Sec. 295 of the Indian Penal Code as a defilement that insults the Hindu religion.

We may have attempts to mix religion into our educational system here in the US, but at least statements of basic science aren’t a criminal offense.

Meia and I got back on Saturday from a cruise to Alaska on the Diamond Princess. I’ve written up a couple of notes which might be of interest to anyone planning a similar vacation.

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For some reason it never occurred to me that the solution could be this simple:

The “National Popular Vote” plan, which is on the table in 47 states, has been signed into law in Maryland and had actually passed both houses in California in 2006 before it was vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. It simply calls for an interstate compact among all states to agree to cast their electoral votes for the winner of the national popular vote. It becomes effective and binding when states representing at least 270 electors enter the compact.

I did a quick Google for opposing views and the only one listed in the Wikipedia article is this laughable WSJ op-ed (a redundancy, I know) complaining that “rural states like Maine, with its 740,000 votes in 2004, wouldn’t matter much compared with New York’s 7.4 million or California’s 12.4 million votes” (if the author thinks that’s a problem, he obviously doesn’t fully grasp the concept of a popular vote) and worrying about the prospect of voter fraud in “urban” (read: minority) districts. In the best laugh line of the piece, it concludes that “presidential campaigns would become… about political advocacy instead of presidential substance.” A similarily partisan editorial in a local California paper is concerned that candidates would “pander to the interests and eccentricities of Los Angelenos and New Yorkers.”

So I’m open to hearing about downsides to this plan, but I’m going to have preliminarily say that this is a great idea. More info at http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/.

A little tidbit from a larger–and well worth reading–AP article about reprisals against Iraq reconstruction whistleblowers, linked to by Yglesias:

He and his co-plaintiff, William Baldwin, a former employee fired by the firm, doggedly pursued the suit for two years, gathering evidence on their own and flying overseas to obtain more information from witnesses. Eventually, a federal jury agreed with them and awarded a $10 million judgment against the now-defunct firm, which had denied all wrongdoing.

It was the first civil verdict for Iraq reconstruction fraud.

But in 2006, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III overturned the jury award. He said Isakson and Baldwin failed to prove that the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-backed occupier of Iraq for 14 months, was part of the U.S. government.

Technically speaking, the judge may well be correct. But the upshot, if this decision is upheld, is that the billions of dollars that have been poured down the sinkhole of Iraqi reconstruction are simply not subject to any accountability.

I haven’t read Eckhart Tolle, but isn’t he supposed to have discovered the secret of enlightenment and been perfectly content living on a park bench? If so, why does he need to charge $100-200 a seat for his lecture?

I just called Napster to cancel my membership (I decided to try them because Rhapsody doesn’t support Vista x64, but I don’t like their UI and their selection was limited) and I have to say, the experience was unexpectedly good.

First I went to my account management screen to cancel. They make you call a phone number to cancel, and I figured “oh no, here we go, they’re going to try and make this a PITA for me.” But it actually took me only two prompts through a menu to get in the queue for a CSR; less then two minutes on hold to actually talk to someone; and the guy briefly asked me why I was cancelling, offered me a free month of service if I stayed, and then gave me a reference number. Completely easy and painless.

I wish I could actually be more positive about the msuic service, but at least I’ll leave with a positive impression of Napster because of this.

And the result is, well, classic.