kurt's nightmare

Hiatus

2009-11-22T07:24:00.002-05:00

Well, gentle reader, as you know, I haven't been doing much here.

Various time constraints—teaching, writing, Chinese, etc.—leave
me little opportunity to write anything here.

I hope to come back in January. Until then, enjoy what, if any,
holidays you celebrate.

Coffee

2009-10-27T10:40:00.002-04:00

As you might imagine, someone who gets a Ph.D in philosophy—in addition to various other psychopathologies and deep maladjustments—drinks (or has drunk) a lot of coffee.

I know I have: from the coffee shop in the basement of the Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago, as well as the late The Flying Lox Box ("Now Serving Nobel Laureates!"), Morry's, and the coffee shop at the Divinity School, and even vending machines, I drank a lot at UC.

I actually think the availability of coffee at a University is an important sign of its academic seriousness (that, and good graffiti in the bathrooms); it should be decent (not necessarily great), and available at least from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m.. Chicago had this, but I'll be honest and recognize that the best graffiti I've ever seen were (yes, it is plural) at the Stanford Undergraduate Library.

At the University of Dayton, coffee is often unavailable all weekend (except from vending machines, which doesn't count under the "decent" criterion), and certainly late at night or very early in the morning. As much as I love the Philosophy Department here, I do believe it has the worst coffee I've ever had (thus, I prefer stealing it from the English Department, enduring steely glares and hostility, even though one Barb Farrelly told me I could until I retired). Draw your own conclusions about academic seriousness.

But I am also willing to drink a fair amount of instant coffee: it's decent, and definitely fast. (I haven't tried the Steven Wright trick of putting instant coffee in the microwave to see if I go back in time).

Thus I recently tried "Via," the new instant coffee offered by Starbuck's. (When my wife Robyn and I hung out at the local Starbucks, and became friends with the baristi, they came to one of of our parties and made fun of the fact that I had instant coffee; I now savor the ironies like a good Kenyan Peaberry.) Ten packs for ten dollars: extensive calculations indicated that a cup of their instant coffee is $1/cup. Maxwell House--as Preston Sturges might put it, "good to the last gulp"--is approximately a nickel a cup. And having sampled a fair amount of both, I'm confident that Via is better, marginally; but that margin is hardly 20 times better. I'd say about twice as good? So I say "adio" to Via.

My friend Richard, who now teaches at a campus that prohibits coffee (you can make your own in your office; draw your own conclusions, again, about the academic seriousness of that place), and I once went to an Afghan restaurant in Chicago. The food was okay, and then we ordered coffee. Absolutely out of this world, and easily the best cup of coffee I'd ever had (and then had about thirty). Sadly, the Helmand went out of business in 1987.

It was the reigning champ all these years, until Robyn took me to the Strip in Pittsburgh. While she shopped, the kids and I went to a coffee shop and I ordered a cup. The barista fussed and fumed, and it took what seemed like a very long time, and it all seemed rather pretentious. Then I tasted it. Knocked me out, blew me away: the new champ.

21st StreetCoffee and Tea

Turns out that a good bit of their excellence comes from the coffee they use (what a surprise!), a brand called "Intelligentsia." Admittedly, there is a lot of pretense and silliness in all of this, and when you hear about licorice leading to a mango and charcoal laced after-finish, well, I sometimes think maybe I'll just go back and talk to my wine snob friends, who sound even sillier.

But the bottom line is that the best coffee I've ever had in my life was at this place in Pittsburgh. And that, my friends, is an important thing to know.

A challenge

2009-10-21T08:14:00.004-04:00

After last night's snoozefest, Game 4 of the ALCS, courtesy of the well-paid (and worth it) C.C. Sabathia, a blogger writing for Yahoo Sports wrote the following:

Just when you thought the 2009 postseason umpiring couldn't get any worse, Tim McClelland goes ahead and makes what ends up as the worst call — or non-call — of all time.
Yes, you read that right. The worst call of all time. Not just this postseason. Not this entire season. Not this decade. Not this century. I challenge you to think of one that was worse.
At this point, not even Kanye West could interrupt to suggest something worse after McClelland left the entire baseball universe shaking its head at his work during the Yankees' 10-1 victory over the Angels in Game 4 of the ALCS.

I accept the challenge.

Don Denkinger. Game 6 of the 1985 World Series, St. Louis against Kansas City.

Bad call. Very bad call. Obvious when it was seen live. More obvious when seen on a replay. Was it technically as bad as McLelland's? Perhaps not; not as complicated, certainly.

But it would have been the first out of the ninth inning of game 6. Had the call--an easy call, mind you--been made correctly, the Cardinals would have only needed two more outs to win the Series.

Denkinger missed a call Helen Keller could have made. The Cardinals proceeded to lose their minds, lose the game, then get blown out in Game 7.

I claim that is a worse call.

I welcome other candidates. I should add that Denkinger doesn't deserve getting death threats (which he was still getting, just a few years ago). Those should probably stop now.

I hate baseball

2009-10-08T22:28:00.002-04:00

For those of you who know me, I'm somewhat of a Cardinals' fan.

They had what might be their most agonizing loss I can remember; the only competitor is Game 6 of the 1985 Series. That had more significance, being in the World Serious and all.

But tonight reminds me of what a great game it is, that can produce such exquisite torture.

And the preemptive comment for my Cubs fan reader(s): I'd rather lose in embarrassing fashion in the post season than not be there. And I remember my team winning a World Series. Perhaps--if you're old--your greatgreatgrandparents remember the Cubs doing so. So shut up.

Oinkment

2009-09-29T09:32:00.002-04:00

The local city "alternative" (right) paper solicited articles for new columnists. I tried. The guy at the paper couldn't open one attachment, then a different kind of attachment, or (apparently) didn't like the version I sent as an e-mail. Indeed, he never really even responded. So here was my audition, for what it is worth.

*******************

The debate over Swine Flu/AH1N1 brings with it what may well be three ideas essential to American political history. Oddly enough, it isn't entirely clear that those three ideas can be reconciled. But it is always fun to see people try.

First of all, Americans don't like to be pushed around. Americans especially don't like to get pushed around by their own government. From Christopher Gadsen's iconic "Don't Tread on Me" flag, all the way to Ron Paul's quixotic Presidential campaign, there is a strong libertarian streak running through American history. We don't want to be told what to do, where we can do it, or (with some exceptions) who we can do it with.

Second, there is the legitimate expectation that some things will be taken care of. We expect an ambulance to come when we need it, or someone to show up to help out if we discover that our house is on fire. Even most libertarians recognize that some kind of apparatus needs to be in place to ensure that contracts are enforced, citizens are protected against fraud and violence, and that national boundaries remain sacrosanct.

Third, we expect—or hope—that whatever decisions we feel comfortable with the government making, they will be made by experts. In short, important policy decisions should be made by those with the best training and the best information, coming to conclusions that lead to the best possible results for all involved.

So the government wants Americans to get themselves vaccinated against this current strain of flu. The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology has offered a number of policy recommendations, including increasing the availability of the supply of vaccine. They've also recommend people wash their hands more, and that employers adopt an approach to absenteeism that will make their workers more likely to stay home if they exhibit flu symptoms.

This hasn't prevented some of the teabaggers, and those who live in the alternate reality sometimes known as "GlennBeckistan," from warning of "Mandatory Swine Flu Vaccinations This Fall." Internationalists (Socialists), in league with the World Health Organization (Socialists), abetted by the Executive Branch (Socialists), are putting in place their program to force Americans to endure risky and untested vaccines, as part of a program either to control their minds, or bodies, or perhaps just to distract us from recognizing the imminent Socialist takeover. At least for those unable to distinguish between Kim Jong-Il and Barack (Hussein) Obama.

The government announcing, on the basis of "experts," a policy of mandatory vaccinations, would indeed be pushing us around. That this isn't the case might be a factor to consider. We also confront here an idea already mentioned: sometimes we do want government to take care of us. Minimizing the amount of rat excrement in our hamburger rarely evokes panicky cries of an impending Nanny State.

As usual in such debates, it often depends on who, or what, is being pushed. The state, determining that you may not marry your life partner, is for some being pushed around by an intrusive government, while for others it is the sacred duty of the state to maintain a specific "tradition" of marriage. The state, being able to identify, arrest, try, convict, and imprison or execute even its own citizens is for some a legitimate responsibility of the government, while others might make (ineffectual) gestures of the violations of both civil and common law involved.

Fundamentally, what we should expect of the government in its response to the flu pandemic (as declared by the WHO) is to determine the threat involved, and if the response is proportional. While some talk as if AH1N1 is indistinguishable from Ebola, others seem to regard it as no threat whatsoever; unsurprisingly, the truth seems to lie somewhere in between. As of September 5, there were 593 deaths attributed to H1N1 in the U.S., 2,837 in the world. Given its contagion vector, these numbers will go up, although how far seems to be a matter of conjecture. As one might expect, those at risk of succumbing to this virus are the very young, the very old, and those with compromised immune systems.

In Ohio, students are required to be inoculated against a variety of diseases, including diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, measles, and the scary-sounding Haemophilus influenzae; exemptions based on religious or other grounds are available.

Rather than scurrying to find "experts" who confirm our hopes (or fears), perhaps it makes more sense to see what the threat is, and with the best information available, respond accordingly. AH1N1 isn't polio, but is a threat sufficient to recommend vigilance. Offering some degree of limited liability, encouraging practices that minimize its spread, and avoiding exaggerating or minimizing the dangers, is precisely the kind of sensible approach the Obama Administration is encouraging. But that's a difficult position around which to energize knee-jerk reactions.

A Productive Summer? Maybe

2009-09-23T14:18:00.005-04:00

Ok, I was supposed to read Hegel. Or was it Middlemarch? I can't remember: both too long to capture my attention. So I watched some movies, I read a bunch. Some of both have been forgotten, but I'd love to hear my reader's (or readers') thought (or thoughts) about anything below that sounds familiar.

Films

Eastern Promises
The Last Seduction
The Aristocrats
M. Butterfly
Killer's Kiss
The Departed
Mongol
The Contract
Blood Simple
Leningrad Cowboys: Total Balalaika Show
The Man Without a Past
The Last King of Scotland
The Devil and Daniel Johnston
Not One Less
Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior
Hester Street
The Yakuza Papers: Disc 1
Milk
Singin' in the Rain
Freaks
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
Walk the Line
Once Upon a Time in America
GoodFellas: Special Edition
Miller's Crossing
The Freshman
The Godfather: Part II
The Godfather
White Heat
Scarface
The Public Enemy
Little Caesar

Books

Good ol' Kurt Wallander. I'm hoping the remaining two books (in
Swedish) get translated soon!

The Pyramid Kurt Wallander 1999
Faceless Killers Kurt Wallander 1991
The Dogs of Riga Kurt Wallander 1992
The White Lioness Kurt Wallander 1993
The Man Who Smiled Kurt Wallander 1994
Sidetracked Kurt Wallander 1995
The Fifth Woman Kurt Wallander 1996
One Step Behind Kurt Wallander 1997
Firewall Kurt Wallander 1998
The Return of the Dancing Master Stefan Lindman 2000
Before the Frost Linda Wallander 2002

Some politics, lots o' baseball

Dexter Filkins, The Forever War
Charles Alexander, John McGraw
Harold Seymour, Baseball: The Early Years
Harold Seymour, Baseball: The Golden Age
Lawrence Ritter, The Glory of Their Times
Mike Sowell, The Pitch That Killed
David L. Fleitz , Shoeless: The Life and Times of Joe Jackson
John Heidenry, The Gas House Gang
Al Stump, Cobb
Fred Leib, Baseball As I Have Known It
Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights In August
Peter Golenbeck, The Spirit of St. Louis
Honus Wagner, On His Life and Baseball (ed. W. Cobb)

One shout-out: most of these were pretty great, I thought. But Ritter's The Glory of Their Times is still, for my money (and the money of many others!) the single best baseball book ever written. Cannot possibly recommend it too highly.

Guns. Queers. And Both.

2009-09-21T16:37:00.005-04:00

In contrast to what a number of conservatives believe, liberals (or "liberals") aren't out to get your guns. There will be murmurs about fully automatic weapons in the hands of junior high students being a bad idea without a waiting period, or "cop killer" ammunition being available in vending machines in bars also being, well, not a great idea. But for the most part, the "liberals" (and especially the Democrats) have given up on this issue. Repeat after me: they really don't want my gun(s).

They might make it somewhat more difficult to check out of an insane asylum and buy an AK-47 at a drive-thru on the way home (or to the victim's home), but that's about the only obstacle you'll see from the "liberal" party.

Indeed, we really never seem to hear much about murder, guns, violence and other things, as if they pose a problem we might want to solve, or at least address. Odd: was it Eldridge Cleaver who said that violence is as American as apple pie? The conservative wings of both parties respond, well, that's right and that's the way we are going to keep it. There are no solutions to violence in America, except to make sure you are better armed--in church, at school, wherever--than your potential adversary.

So the Democrats seem to have given up on guns as an issue.

Is it possible the Republicans may give up on gay marriage as an issue? A couple of recent news items, one a poll (from the "Values Voters" [which means, for me, "people who don't have your values," not that they have values and I don't]) that indicates gay marriage is way way behind abortion rights as an issue; it came in third. A second, polling (I think) Iowa Republicans, indicates that >90% said gay marriage changed nothing in their lives.

Wow. A truism that comes true.

I suggest the first question every minister, priest, rabbi, imam, lawyer, and psychotherapist ask a couple (a heterosexual couple) whose marriage is in trouble is this: is it because of gay marriage?

Then we can get some good, hard data.

I'm coming back . . . .

2009-09-15T21:30:00.002-04:00

In spite of rumors, and all of those prayers, I am returning soon.

With blogs on summer reading, brain death, AH1N1, and, as usual,

whatever pops into my little brain.

This is all contingent upon Obama not successfully instituting his

Socialist Revolution before I get the chance. It could be tight!

Thanks, BBC!

2009-07-20T17:06:00.002-04:00

This morning I was listening to the BBC World News. It's nice to hear what the rest of the world thinks about: a lot less about Michael Jackson and "Jon and Kate Plus Eight," a lot more about India, China, and, for that matter, Afghanistan.

Imagine how pleased I was that they picked Mark Muller to represent not just Missouri (where I lived a good part of my life) but the United States (where I've lived virtually all of my life, so far.) Mark is offering an AK-47 with every pickup he sells. I understand his desire to sell trucks, and this market can't be the best.

I was even more overjoyed that a broadcast that is heard from LA to Beijing, seems to be the best news available in virtually the entire continent of Africa, and a couple of other places, also took time to offer some of Mark's more trenchant analyses, not just in political theory, but in the very nature of human beings, at least the good ones. (It seemed clear from Mark's insights that "good ones" refers to a proper subset of Americans.)

In just a couple of minutes, the entire planet got these views, which no doubt are regarded as representative of all ("good") Americans. Or maybe just all Americans.

These are more or less direct quotes, but they are from memory so I eschewed quotation marks.

a) All Americans like guns. Period. "Except the commies."

b) Americans did not get their rights from men, but from God.

c) Americans can and will do anything they want.

I think, actually, Mark may well represent a not unpopular view. But there may be some interesting implications. For instance

a') God does not give rights to Commies.

b') God thinks it is a right to have an AK-47

c') Americans, when doing whatever they want, know their behavior is endorsed by God.

Mark only had a couple of minutes of airtime, but I don't wonder why people around the world are happy to wonder about Americans, given this is what we think. I can't decide whether the BBC owes equal time to those who might quibble with some of Mark's views, or whether some bright American TV producer should snap up the rights to the reality show starring Mark.

A little bit more from La Coultera

2009-07-11T12:35:00.003-04:00

Popping by La Coultera's column, I see that this week she is mining one of her richest veins, and working the trope she uses with some frequency, contrasting "Liberals" with "Normal people." Normal people don't care about Sarah Palin, Liberals do. Normal people don't worry that someone who seems to be intellectually and ethically challenged, among other things, is frequently discussed as a serious candidate to become the most powerful person in the world.

I think it would be nice to ignore her, and focus on more important things, as La Coultera suggests, such as Michael Jackson.

But it is worth noting that La Coultera, hard-working researcher that she is, introduces a new fallacy this week, the argumentum ad verecundiam, or the appeal to authority. This fallacy infers from Person X being an expert and saying y that y must be true. (Its complement is the argumentum ad hominem.)

Sarah Palin says y. Therefore y is true. This strategy saves time and effort, allowing La Coultera to focus on more important things (like a normal person).

Thus her column takes at face value Palin's claim and simply repeats it. (Paraphrasing others is a good way to fill one's column without thinking too much.)

The problem? Palin's claim is apparently false. And, oddly enough, it doesn't become true when La Coultera repeats it.

The claim?

"That huge waste that we have seen with the countless, countless hours that state staff is spending on these frivolous ethics violations and the millions of dollars that Alaskans are spending, that money not going to things that are very important, like troopers and roads and teachers and fish research," Palin said this week.

La Coultera's incisive commentary on this claim?

With the left frenetically filing ethics complaint after ethics complaint against Palin, costing her state millions of dollars and her personally half a million dollars, citizens of Alaska must be asking, "Can we please have our state back?"

I'm not sure where La Coultera gets the half a million dollar figure from (although I can guess).

But, according to a number of Alaskan bloggers who looked at the figures, the number is vastly inflated due to double counting, astronomical billing rates, and counting fees that would be paid to government attorneys anyway. Picked up by the Anchorage Daily News, the claim should be rejected. Rather than taken at face value and then repeated. (It also turns out that the vast majority of the ethics charges came before Palin was chosen to be McCain's running mate, a time when most normal people, liberals, and "the left" outside of Alaska hadn't heard of her.)

Palin administration officials provided the Daily News with a breakdown of what it says are $1.9 million in costs. Most of it is a per-hour accounting of the time state employees, such as state attorneys, have spent working on public records requests, lawsuits, ethics complaints, and issues surrounding the Legislature's "Troopergate" investigation last summer of Palin.

"Is it a check that we wrote, no, but is it staff hours, yes," Sharon Leighow, spokeswoman for Palin, said of the expenses related to state employee work.

Those state employees would have been paid regardless.

I don't know if it is a Liberal thing or a normal person thing to worry about Presidential candidates who are unqualified. If Ann represents the normal person, though, I guess it is a normal person kind of thing either to lie, or to be too lazy to even consider checking some facts.

La Coultera

2009-06-29T17:46:00.003-04:00

I haven't posted anything here in awhile; summer, new smoker, learning about Twitter, reading, avoiding grading, watching Pujols, catching up with a long-lost friend: many distractions.

But I popped over to Ann Coulter's page the other day. I don't have TV any more, and I miss her insights.

I have a sneaking suspicion that there are some really good lawyers (my long-lost friend is probably one of them). I also think there are some that are evil, liars, stupid, drunk, asleep, and/or some combination of those qualities. At the same time, looking at the recent display of logic on the part of La Coultera, I think I'm starting to understand why she went into writing columns:

1) It avoids the long hours and hard work involved in doing the law correctly: you know, reasons, and evidence, and inferences, and arguments. Icky.

2) It avoids the long hours and hard work involved in doing journalism correctly: you know, reasons, and evidence, and inferences, and arguments. Also icky.

So you scream and rant and rave, say the most ludicrous things, dare people to put you on TV (aren't there videos you can already get, "Brains Gone Wild," or something?); complain if they don't, and complain if they do. It's a fabulous approach for a rich spoiled kid desiring to remain rich and spoiled. Wish I'd thought of it.

But let's examine a single claim of La Coultera's June 24 column, and see what, if any implications one can draw from it (using traditional logic, say that of Aristotle, or Frege; not her own, for, as we shall see, one of her axioms is "If P, then any fucking thing I want follows.")

The money quote:

Liberals hate America, so they assume everyone else does, too.

So when a beautiful Iranian woman, Neda Agha Soltan, was shot dead in the streets of Iran during a protest on Saturday and a video of her death ricocheted around the World Wide Web, Obama valiantly responded by ... going out for an ice cream cone. (Masterful!)

Let's ignore the fact that La Coultera probably doesn't know much about Neda—famously supported by liberal bloggers all over the planet—and that much of the ricocheting that La Coultera mentions was the fault of liberals who hate America—and was, of all things, a philosophy student.

Let's just focus on the logic here.

X happens. Y does Z after X occurs. Therefore Z is a response, by Y, to X.
(There's a first-order predicate version of this, but I'll spare you.)

Feel free to fill in the variables. Let's try a few.

800, 000 Tutsis are massacred in Rwanda. La Coultera responds by going to the beach.
In 1984, some 15,000 people die in 72 hours in Bhopal India. La Coultera responds by going on a date and having a second martini and half a pack of cigarettes.
In 2001, some 3,000 people (not just Americans, people from 83 different countries) die in a coordinated attack by Muslim extremists. La Coultera responds by watching TV.
In 2002, Daniel Pearl, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, is beheaded. La Coultera responds by walking her dog and then taking a shower.

Need I add "masterful!"?

C'mon, it's fun! Add your own. While some law schools no doubt teach "post hoc ergo propter hoc" as a traditional fallacy (well, it is about 2,500 years old, at least), maybe La Coultera missed that day.

How did you respond to Neda's tragic killing?
La Coultera didn't offer us information on her response. I'm sure it was pious and devoted.

Slam Dunks and Predictibility

2009-05-26T16:49:00.003-04:00

A good political blogger, BarbinMD, who is linked at the DailyKos, had the following title to her entry on the Sotomayor nomination

Predictable Attacks Against Sotomayor Begin

After which she (?) listed a number of standard comments, disturbingly predictable, about Sotomayor. You can find it yourself if you want to read this dreariness.

I had been thinking exactly the same thing. A couple of weeks ago, on the NPR syndicated radio show (one of those that actually allows guests, and callers, with different perspectives on the show, and doesn't involve "dittoes" [or "megadittoes"], caller abortions, the term "Feminzazis," or the expressed desire for the current President to fail), there was a discussion about the upcoming nomination.

For the conservatives, Richard Viguerie spoke. A standard-bearer of the conservatives, and "King of Direct Mail" (hey, if it works, fine, but it's kind of an embarrassing way for a grown man to make a living), said various things, none of which were surprising: this will be an ideological battle—which conservatives always win [apparently distinct, then, from electoral battles]—a teaching opportunity for conservatives, wants a judge who will be a strict constructionist, etc., etc..

This was, of course, before anyone (including Obama) knew who the nominee would be.

Today, Vigurie was back on the same show, to discuss the same topic.

He offered, virtually word-for-word, the same critique: this will be an ideological battle—which conservatives always win, a teaching opportunity for conservatives, wants a judge who will be a strict constructionist, etc., etc.. He did take the time to note that Sotomayor was a "leftist extremist."

It made me think it really wouldn't have mattered who Obama had nominated; Vigurie could (literally) have phoned in his remarks. Unless, perhaps, Obama had nominated Frank Easterbrook (aka Easterbunny, and unlikely). As one caller noted, elections have consequences. I think you should take it like a man, Dick.

Some day I may write here about what I think is all-too-often taken as uncontroversial: namely, some kind of coherent distinction between "strict constructionism" and "judicial activism/interpretation." I doubt if that distinction can be made in any kind of consistent way that wouldn't make a judge who sticks to some version of "strict constructionism" sound like a madman.

I will note that years ago I read a piece by H. Jefferson Powell (I think that's the name; I'm doing this from memory) in the Stanford Law Review (again, I think that's right), on what the Founding Fathers thought of "strict constructionism."

Turned out, if we are to abide by their views and use the narrowest of interpretations, we better be prepared to be confused. For a strict interpretation of their view of strict interpretation seems to be that such strict interpretation was nonsense. Go figure.

The last administration had its slam dunk: George Tenet declaring that was the way to characterize the many WMD in Iraq.

This administration has its first (maybe the last, maybe not) slam dunk: Sotomayor being confirmed as the next Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

Nice contrast, don't you think?

My novel

2009-05-19T14:12:00.002-04:00

As some of you know, I wrote a novel when I was in China. It's sort of about a guy who is pretty good at things—languages, computers, music—and really, really bad at finding a girlfriend.

It's easy to read, my guess is that some of you might find it amusing, and I had more fun writing it than I thought I would. There's some music, some sex, some art, some intrigue, some practical jokes, and a few other things thrown in for good measure. It is, by the way, fiction.

I didn't have much luck placing it with a publisher, however.

But a new service —SCRIBD—has come on-line, where people can offer their books for sale (usually quite cheap). If it gets a little "buzz," it might sell some copies; the authors receive 80% of the proceeds. Mine only costs $2.50, which seems at least righteous to me.

So I put my novel ("Everybody Wins") on SCRIBD. An old roommate bought it. I'd be interested in what others think about it, and even more interested in their buying it. (You know, building up that snowball effect that lands me on Oprah.)

If you're interested, here's the link:

Everybody Wins: A Nicholas Bradley Story

Baseball's Greatest Team

2009-04-15T18:34:00.007-04:00

OK, this is a little dorky; "inside baseball," as it were, in the most literal sense.

Ask most people to name the greatest team in the history of baseball, and the vast majority will say the 1927 Yankees. A great team, no doubt. (Others might mention the '75 Reds, the '88 Yankees, the '02 Pirates, among others, but the '27 Yankees always gets mentioned.)

A couple of examples:

1. The 1927 New York Yankees

That season, Babe Ruth hit 60 Home Runs. Lou Gehrig had 47 HR and 175 RBI. Tony Lazzeri hit .309 with 102 RBI. Bob Meusel hit .337 with 109 RBI. Earl Combs hit .356 with 231 hits and 137 Runs scored. They also had great pitchers in Waite Hoyt, Urban Shocker, and Herb Pennock. These Yankees outscored their opponents by almost 400 runs and finished with a 110-44 record. Then they swept the Pirates in the World Series. You can't get better than that!

2. A more statistical approach

The four greatest teams in Major League baseball history. Trying to separate them is difficult. What’s interesting to note is that 1902 Pirates had the best winning percentage of the four, the 1939 Yankees had the greatest run differential of the four, and the 1998 Yankees had the greatest number of Hall of Fame caliber players.

The 1927 Murders Row New York Yankees of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig did not lead in any of the categories but were second in each one.

The other night, after a couple of beers, I pulled out the Baseball Encyclopedia (and then had a couple of more after spending some time amazed by Walter Johnson's pitching records). I thought it might be of interest to compare the '27 Yankees to the 1926 Yankees.

Here's the respective starting nine, from the BE's World Series pages:

1926
Gehrig
Lazzeri
Koenig
Dugan
Ruth
Combs
Meusel
Collins

1927
Gehrig
Lazzeri
Koenig
Dugan
Ruth
Combs
Meusel
Collins

The pitchers who pitched significant innings in '26:
Pennock, Shocker, Hoyt, Jones (als Ruether and Shawkey).

The pitchers who pitched significant innings in '27:
Pennock, Shocker, Hoyt, Moore, Ruether Pipgras, and Thomas.

So the starting nine is identical between the two teams, and while
there is a bit of a shake-up of the pitching staff (I'm not sure what
happened to Jones, who pitched well in '26), I don't think anyone
is suggesting that this team was the greatest in the history of
baseball because of adding Moore and Pipgras.

Thus the question: the 1926 Cardinals beat the Yankees in the
World Series. (In seven, Babe Ruth famously making the last
out in Game 7 by being caught stealing.)

If the 1927 Yankees aren't all that much different than the 1926
Yankees, and the '27 Yankees are the greatest team in baseball,
then is there some argument that the Cardinals beat what, 12
months later, was the greatest team in the history of baseball?

Just wonderin' . . . .

Basketball's Life Lessons

2009-04-05T08:59:00.008-04:00

I don't have cable, but a little black and white TV my friend Bob gave me. It gets FOX--so we have the Simpsons--and CBS. That's about it. And we only have this until June 12.

I love college basketball, so I just finished watching all but the championship as of this writing. My brackets look like vermicelli that has been microwaved, on high, for about 3 days. These things happen. But I have learned much from watching these games, all of which, depressingly, seem to be covered by the same ad buy. Hence I have seen certain ads way too much, and from the whole tournament experience, drawn certain conclusions.

If Howie Long advertises something, I will never purchase it.

People who think they might lose their job in the next nine months probably should not be buying a Cadillac, in spite of GM's suggestions otherwise.

"Calipari" is Sicilian slang for the Yiddish "mishegoss."

Drinking "Coke Zero" makes you stupid, annoying, and apparently expresses an otherwise latent obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Sheraton Inns are chock full of sports fans; UNC fans object to being touched, while Georgetown and Syracuse fans see the whole homoeroticism thing in a much different light.

There can never be sufficient mention of the beat-down Kansas gave UNC in last year's semi-final.

I would like to find the very young kid who does the E-trade commercials annoying, but I seem unable to.

The Big East may be the best conference by far, powerful and unstoppable, overwhelming in its excellence and the conference to whom all others should bow down; but I don't see any of its teams in the final.

Tom Izzo is a great coach, and if he wins Monday night (which as of this writing seems unlikely, but so have their last two wins against Louisville and Connecticut) he will have beaten the overall #1 seed (L'ville), another #1 seed (C'cut) and a third #1 seed (UNC).

Right now I'm pulling for MSU to beat UNC, and beat them bad. This would mean that the team that gave the Spartans the best game was, of course, Kansas.

Self takes Arizona Job!!!

2009-04-01T18:44:00.004-04:00

I just read this off a chatboard that linked the story to an Arizona chatroom that, eventually, offered a link, to a Kansas City Star chatroom.

Calipari leaving Memphis clearly meant that recruiting was a mess, at Memphis, at Kentucky, and, ultimately, at Kansas. Lance Stephenson was supposed to announce today (the odds were that he was coming to Kansas), and then postponed it. At one point, rumors were that John Wall, or Xavier Henry, or both, or neither, were going to Kansas.

Evidently, the Stephenson recruiting generated a bunch of hard feelings between Self and the KU Athletic Director Lew Perkins. Even though Self had a long-term contract and was, supposedly, very happy at Kansas, the AD told him he had screwed up, and that losing out on Stephenson was unacceptable. This all on top of both Cole Aldrich and Sherron Collins having told Self they were declaring for the draft. (Perkins, rumor also has it, wasn't all that thrilled with Self as the choice to replace Roy Williams.)

Self seemed to have gone from having a very good recruiting class, for 48 hours a terrific recruiting class, then no recruiting class except for one power forward and an untested guard. With the AD on his back, his Sweet 16 team not coming back, a bare cupboard, and Arizona promising to match Calipari's contract at Kentucky, Self--known for his quick temper and even quicker decision-making--said "fuck it" and is off for Phoenix.

This really bites. I had hoped KU had another coach for years and years, with lots of skill and, more important, lots of class. Money talks, after all.

Hoops Du Jour

2009-03-18T14:19:00.003-04:00

Ok, a quickie on March Madness. I didn't do all that bad last year:

Kansas over North Carolina (take that, Roy)
Texas over not-UCLA

Kansas over Texas

I screwed up with Texas, but KU did beat North Carolina (and how! Let's not forget that it was, at one point, 40-13). I didn't—and don't—respect Memphis, so I probably underestimate them again this year. (Although looking at my brackets, I seem to be wrong about this, as well!)

I'm not too much bigger on Louisville.

I won't bore with the details, but I've got two different brackets filled out. While this may be seen as hedging my bets, the one in bold is the one I'm going with:

Michigan State over Memphis
Oklahoma over Minnesota

Michigan State

This is the "Tubby gets his revenge" bracket, where all those losers in Kentucky realize he's a pretty damn good coach. Since I think the Big Ten is pretty useless in basketball, I went out on a limb here.

Memphis over Louisville
Pitt over North Carolina

Memphis over Pitt

This is the "safe bracket" pick. Boring. Since both are almost certainly wrong, well . . . .

My surprise teams, other than Minnesota going much farther than folks expect, are:

Missouri, Texas A & M, Florida State, and Butler.

While I wish the Jayhawks the best, and still have time to fill out another bracket that has them winning (beating, say, Michigan State and Louisville), I shan't be too greedy. I'll be satisfied by last year's Championship for awhile.

Enjoy the games, folks!

Previews of Coming Attractions

2009-03-02T16:01:00.003-05:00

Baseball season is soon upon us, thank you Jesus. I told my friend Tim—one of the many who makes the term "long-suffering Cubs fan" redundant—that I would be blogging soon on the national pastime. "Soon" probably means next week.

In fact, I have a couple in mind. One, what's wrong with baseball, and, two, the more traditonal predictions.

Before those, I will have to address the burning issue of our time: the NCAA Basketball Tournament, and whether the Kansas Jayhawks are really cool, or, as my daughter says, "übercool."

In the meantime, I recently saw Rachel Ray was discussing "racy" pictures. I guess spoon-licking while smiling is "racy" for the Food Network. I guess, as well, that it's a slow news day—or so determined by the watchdogs of the press—when Rachel Ray is news. It reminded me of an earlier contretemps, so I thought I'd post this groovy picture.

I'll be back soon, and with content!

Dr. Anonymous

2009-02-11T12:54:00.002-05:00

As promised, I'm letting a guest blog here for this entry. His or her name is "Dr. Anonymous," which is sort of like the book that has the title "What is the Name of this Book?"

I posted Dr. A's comments, then followed up with a couple of my own.

I'm happy to let others take advantage of this almost-universally ignored space. And tell your friend!

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I was reading Frank Rich's Saturday column in the Times

Slumdogs Unite!

and was struck by the following sentence.

Most ordinary Americans still don’t understand why banks got billions while nothing was done (and still isn’t being done) to bail out those who lost their homes, jobs and retirement savings.

So how do we force the powers that be to help the little people? How do we place our demands front and center? Here's a thought:

Let's organize a grass roots Home-Owner's Bonus movement. The idea is to get millions of homeowners who have mortgages to organize across the country and withhold payment on their mortgage for one month, say, logically, next December. (We could also extend it to, for example, student loan payments and other such obligations).

If 50 homeowners do it, they'll get sued by the banks and incur penalties, etc. But if five million do it, then it becomes a movement, and there's nothing the banks can do about it, particularly if (when) the story gets national press coverage. The banks would not dare complain about low and middle income families saving $1000 or $1500 for their Christmas bonus in light of their $18 billion fiasco. Columnists and pundits (like Frank Rich) would come to our defense, and the administration would have no choice but to back us.

The banks might turn around and recoup their losses from the TARP or stimulus package, but that's the point. It would redistribute the aid to all strata of society, not just reward the very wealthy who screwed up the economy.

We have ten months to organize this. Any thoughts?

Dr. Anonymous

************************************************************************************

Thanks, Dr. A. Rather than making snide remarks about Arlo Guthrie's account of conspiracy in Alice's Restaurant, I thought I'd post the following article about French students protesting, doing much the same as you propose. Perhaps this tells us something about the different political traditions that inform the U.S. and France?

Protests in France

AFP - Protesting French students joined forces with teachers Tuesday to force President Nicolas Sarkozy to abandon contested reforms, amid fears the movement could touch off wider social unrest.

Lecturers on both the political left and right have been staging sporadic strikes for several weeks in faculties and research labs across the country, in protest at government plans to overhaul their working conditions.

Seven teachers' unions were to lead marches on Tuesday in Paris and other cities, from Marseille to Strasbourg, for the second time in a week, backed by four of France's powerful student unions.

Ten days after massive crowds marched to demand state help on jobs and wages, and with a three-week-old general strike in the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, the government is desperate to keep a lid on the student protests.

"The air smells of gunpowder," the left-wing daily Liberation warned in an editorial. "The movement gripping France's universities could well be the spark that sets off the explosion."

France's Higher Education Minister Valerie Pecresse on Monday appointed a mediator to defuse the situation, and has offered to "rework" the contested reform decree, which is set to come into force in September.

But commentators suggest Sarkozy may shelve the reform to prevent the conflict escalating, as he did with a planned high-school reform last year.

"Retreat is in the air," wrote Liberation.

Battered by economic crisis, Sarkozy's approval rating has collapsed to 36 percent, its lowest since he came to power 21 months ago, a poll showed Monday.

The president is already facing a tense few weeks as he prepares for talks with unions on February 18 on helping working families through the economic crisis -- hoping to defuse the threat of further strikes and protests.

The French university row centres on a decree that would transform academics' work conditions.

Chief among the bones of contention, it would force academics to submit their research for assessment by university officials every four years, in addition to the normal process of peer review.

Experts estimate that up to a fifth of French academics, whose time is officially split between teaching duties and research, are no longer productive, but say this goes undetected unless they apply for a promotion.

While accepting the current system needs to change, academics deeply object to being assessed by officials from outside their field, and worry that university bosses will gain huge powers to promote or demote staff at will.

The row has brought to a head wider resentment of Sarkozy's drive to shake up the state university system.

Students are fired up over changes to the syllabus for trainee schoolteachers, as well as planned job cutbacks in education and reforms boosting the financial independence of French universities from the state.

Many researchers meanwhile feel they are being made scapegoats by a government intent on trimming down the public sector, and were stung when Sarkozy described French academe as "mediocre".

On Monday, a dozen of France's 85 universities including the Paris Sorbonne formally asked the government to scrap the reform and relaunch talks with the profession.

αἰσχρὸν

2009-02-01T11:39:00.005-05:00

The new Prez recently introduced, or reminded us of, a word that seems not to be much in current parlance: shame. The Greeks were all over this (see, among other places, Plato's Republic); the word we translate as "shame" is "αἰσχρὸν [aischron]." As usual, with a technical term in the Greek moral/philosophical vocabulary, it can't be readily translated by a single word.

Since this is a blog, not an article, I shall not even pretend to have done much worrying about what the facts are here, since—in both cases—I tend to just make shit up anyway.

Obama referred to the recent granting of bonuses (boni? bona?) on the part of Merrill-Lynch et al. (to the tune of $18b) as "shameful." I wonder if this will catch on? Some of us parents still use the cliché (and often rhetorical) "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

The basic idea seems to be that if S does some act x that is shameful, S should a) recognize it as shameful b) feel substantial regret without being forced to do so by others and c) make some sort of amends (financial, moral, political, religious, whatever).

So here S is some guy (yeah, we'll make it a guy) who receives, say, a $5 million year end bonus. (The apologists will say "but this bonus is like tips for a server: regarded as part of one's expected income!" The response is "wow! Cool job!") At the same time, S's bank was provided with some substantial funds to avoid bankruptcy and to increase liquidity, generating more economic activity and, ideally, helping people avoid foreclosure in their houses.

Now if someone is giving me a bunch of money, because I've been pissin' it away at the track, and then I take her money and go put it on a horse, that person may well be annoyed. Indeed, that person might well think either I'm a jerk, stupid, not paying attention, or irresponsible to the point of, well, shame.

But note that "shame" is an attitude that, theoretically, one must adopt oneself, not have it forced upon one by another. We may point it out, sort of as a moral hint, but if the person doesn't recognize the behavior as shameful . . . well, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him a moral agent or something. And one needs to recognize the problem before making amends for it.

There are a number of people in the last 30 years or so who have behaved abominably, from Nixon to Osama bin Laden to Kenneth Lay. (Add your own names, or just find a fourth for this bridge club.) It seems rare to see any of these feel ashamed. Jimmy Swaggart seemed pretty ashamed, but like so many others, he seemed mostly to regret having been caught. What is missing is the self's procedure of moral evaluation, and the recognition of moral failure sufficient enough for a person to recognize that he has acted, yes, shamefully.

I'm all for reintroducing this notion back into our ordinary moral/political vocabulary, by which I do not advocate a bunch of people standing outside some theatre showing a controversial movie shouting "For shame! For shame!" First of all, that sounds too much like Grandpa Simpson; second of all, at least in my case, I invariably go see movies that people tell me I shouldn't see, especially if they are picketing (and even more if, as is frequently the case, they haven't seen the movie).

Short of forcing everyone to read the Republic, do I hear a) any votes for reinvigorating a sense of shame among those who act shamefully and b) a method for doing so?

Why Monotheism Fails

2009-01-30T11:05:00.001-05:00

Miracles

2009-01-26T13:46:00.003-05:00

An update from the science wars—well, actually the war is between those who get to claim they are doing science and those who, while claiming to do so, aren't.

The money quote?

Public opinion surveys consistently have shown that Americans are deeply divided over evolution. The most recent Gallup poll on the issue, in June 2007 , found that 49 percent of those surveyed said they believed in evolution and 48 percent said they didn't. Those percentages have stayed almost even for at least 25 years.

News story from Yahoo!

I'd like to say this is hard to believe, but it is all too easy to believe. This, to my mind, is a scathing indictment—as if we need another—of our educational system.

It's been awhile since this there has been much doubt about the basic outlines of evolution—descent with modification—and talking to actual biologists (with the exception of Michael Behe) indicate that it functions as an assumption of doing biology. All kinds of biology. One might as well have a poll about trigonometry; if 48% of Americans said they "didn't believe" in it, would anyone think that working mathemeticians and their views would be relevant?

I love it when someone who rejects evolutionary theory, yet flies 1000 miles, drives to a hotel, flips on the lights and the TV, then hooks up a laptop to write up more objections to evolution, because it isn't a science.

Anyone reading this probably thinks I'm wasting my time on this issue. I probably agree with them.

66% of Republicans, according the poll cited, don't "believe" in evolution. (Imagine someone asking "Do you believe in gravity?" [The opposing view, my wife Robyn would say, is the ever-popular theory, not taught enough in public schools, of "intelligent falling."])

Yet Obama got 52% of the vote.

Hence, the miracle.

Gaza

2009-01-05T16:24:00.005-05:00

Anyone who dares to speak about what is currently going on in Gaza is bound to be attacked. As a Zionist, or "ultra-Zionist," defending Israeli state-terrorism, or as in favor of Islamic terrorism and attacking innocent Israeli citizens. Perhaps that's the reason that the "main stream media" (and most of the rest of the media, as well as our brave politicians) simply say things like "it's a tragedy." "Damn." "Wish there was something we could do."

The current knucklehead-in-chief, who expressed very little interest in furthering a Middle East peace settlement for most of his two terms, now simply says "It's Hamas's fault." Now there's political insight, backed up with rigorous historical and political analysis.

To say that the invasion of Gaza might be immoral—if not illegal (see below)—is not to say "I think more Jewish kindergartens should be bombed." To say that Hamas shouldn't be sending rockets into areas populated by civilians is not to say "There are no Palestinians, and if there were, they aren't really human beings."

It's easier to ignore, caricature, or simply adopt the status quo ante (which, I fear, is the track Obama has adopted). The status quo ante might look like a democracy surrounded by terrorist-loving Muslims who hate Jews and hate peace. Or the status quo ante might look like a country that receives annually huge sums, public and private, from the US, and pits one group of people using tunnels to get fuel against another group that has F-16s and nuclear weapons.

I won't make any calls here, because a) such calls are pointless b) I'm no expert and c) I don't like getting called a Judeophobe racist or a Judeophile racist any more than the next person.

However, for those who are interested, I've given some links below that provide a perspective that is rarely seen in the "mainstream media" and will be virtually unmentioned on any "respectable" television or radio outlet (and I'll stretch the notion of "respectable" to the extent of including the FOX News Channel).

From CounterPunch, reliably predictible in its perspective, but valuable, in its own way, as a critique of the Likudniks and their approach:

Paul Craig Roberts
A Palestinian perspective (also from CounterPunch)

*****

An interesting discussion (including useful responses) on the
legal issues involved in the invasion of Gaza

Middle East Online

An earlier essay from Harper's

Michael Lerner's perspective

A Debate on the Invasion from "Democracy Now!"

I'll be interested in your comments.

As a pre-emptive strategy, I'm guessing I might get some that say

1) "Why do you hate Israel?" (I don't, and hasten to add that I distinguish the activities of a state from that state's religious affiliation, even when the two are, for historical reasons that are profoundly distressing, as closely connected as they are in Israel. That is, criticizing Israel is not, ipso facto, anti-Semitic. Really.)

and

2) "Where are the articles providing the perspective defending Israel's right to self-defense?" (No one I know of denies that right—except the lunatic fringe, in whom I'm not interested —but to interpret what is going on as simply a sudden, isolated event, responding to unprovoked rocket attacks from Hamas, is a) a bit naïve and b) precisely what is stated in many articles one can find much more easily in the US media.)

A Conversation Remembered

2008-12-30T09:57:00.003-05:00

I read in today's New York Times of the passing of Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, a prominent Chicago Rabbi who I once met, if only briefly, but it reminded me of both the power of ideas and the power of conversation.

For those interested in the details, the obit can be found here (registration required):

Rabbi Wolf's obituary

I worked for several years at the faculty club (The "Quadrangle Club") at the University of Chicago. There are, indeed, several stories about this place, from meeting famous people (Nadine Gordimer, John Kenneth Galbraith, Angela Davis, Arnaldo Momigliano, Elmo Zumwalt, among others), kids at a bar mitzvah entertaining themselves by throwing rocks at passing cars, walking into the club one morning when it seemed to be hosting every African-American woman in Illinois (and possibly Indiana) over 6'3", and many others, some amusing, some disturbing.

I worked weekends, and mostly tried to ignore people and read. Mostly I read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, and sometimes I got on a roll, really getting into the text (sometimes in the German, sometimes not) and thinking about stuff really hard. I was trying to write a dissertation on this thing, and I had a good job that paid me (minimally), allowed me to read a lot, fed me lunch, and gave me an opportunity to flirt with the waitresses and the occasional faculty wife. (To no avail, in all cases, except one: another story.)

One early afternoon, I was poring over the Transcendental Aesthetic, where Kant discusses his ideas about space and time (or, these days, space-time). Hard stuff, and some of the material I find most (the following is a pun for Kantians and Kantian hangers-on) counterintuitive.

At the counter, a guy yells at me "What are you reading?" I tell him, figuring he's some clown (in spite of the fact that this club really didn't really attract many clowns). He nods, and then says "Ask me any question, any question at all; I can answer it."

So I took him up on it, and asked him how the thinking self, which imposes temporal conditions for sensible impressions to be received (the form of intuition of time), discovers that it is in time, and how it situates itself within that time. (The beauty of the University of Chicago is that one can say such things without feeling self-conscious, the only fear being whether the question is well-posed or not.)

He nodded again, said it was a hard question, and couldn't answer it. (The latter being a fairly unusual answer to hear at the University.) But—and it was clear this was important—he told me to write his friend Steven Schwarzschild, a philosopher at Washington University (St. Louis) and send him both the guy's regards and my question.

We chatted a bit more, and he left. He told me his name was Jack Wolf, and that he was a Rabbi on the North side. We had a very pleasant conversation, and I took his advice and wrote Schwarzschild, who quickly replied with a very long and detailed letter, very helpful, and which also helped me discover the whole exciting world of Marburg neo-Kantians, specifically Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp. (Soon after Schwarzschild wrote, I wrote him back, he responded, and then died, relatively young. A couple of years later, I began a correspondence with another outstanding scholar, J. Michael Young, who wrote back and then, within weeks, died. also at a relatively young age. I started to think I had certain epistolary powers that I should only use for good.)

Rabbi Wolf invited me to come talk with him sometime, and, of course, I didn't. In spite of his friendliness (and what I discovered our compatible politics and, maybe, philosophical orientations), I was a bit intimidated and, naturally, a bit lazy. I regret very much not having done so; I've thought back many times about our encounter, and realize that this was someone I could learn a great deal from, both in terms of pure intellectual engagement, but also in terms of the mysterious region where ideas and reality interact.

Off and on, I've read a good bit by and about the Marburg neo-Kantians. Hermann Cohen is, to my mind, underrated, while his student Ernst Cassirer (no slouch, to be sure) is much better known. I've thought about pursuing that material in a more systematic, rigorous and scholarly way, but the Germans, French and Italians are all over it, and the whole laziness factor interferes. But I've learned much from them, and I owe it all to a ten minute conversation with Jack Wolf.

I learned one other thing, from that conversation and from the many times I've reflected upon it: the meaning, and importance, of one of the great words English has borrowed from Yiddish:

Mensch.

Rabbi Wolf was a Mensch.

Requiescat in pace.

Cynicism

2008-12-12T18:10:00.003-05:00

As I watch the bail-0ut debate over Ford, GM, and Chrysler (particularly the last two), the various news (and lack thereof) about the specifics of the TARP, mostly I just have a sneaking suspicion that a number of corporations are using the current financial crisis to dump payroll. I expect them also to use it as leverage to screw around with health-care plans and pensions, to introduce, wherever possible, two-level wage schemes, and, of course, to bust a (relatively) strong union.

I think everyone should have access to health care. I think everyone should have the opportunity to join a union, that workers should have some degree of leverage comparable to that of management, and that rather than workers being told that tenure is a quaint doctrine held onto by bitter and obsolete professors, everyone should get some degree of job security when he or she has shown sufficient ability at doing a given job.

Health care, a voice in determining one's working conditions, and job security. Ha ha ha!

That's why they call me "Dr. Pollyanna."

My Friends

2008-12-05T12:29:00.003-05:00

John McCain, in 2000, was a serious challenger to George W. Bush. He was attacked from the right, for all sorts of things, including some incredibly nasty push-polling in Michigan and South Carolina. He lost.

There is nothing new below, but after ruminating a bit, here’s the concession speech the John McCain of 2000 could have offered in November of 2008. That he didn’t is just one more indication of why he lost on his second go-around.

***************************************

My Friends:

I used to talk the talk, and walk the walk. I have tried to reach across the aisle, and working with a serious liberal, got McCain-Feingold passed. At attempt, however feeble, to at least start thinking about campaign finance reform. As a Senator from Arizona, I know a bit about the challenges of immigration and its reform. I have spoken out in favor of that reform. I’ve taken other positions out of step with neo-conservatives and those who claim the mantle of Ronald Reagan.

My friends, the response from Republicans and conservatives was deafening. Indeed, in spite of the fact that I actually won the nomination, they pretty much still hate me. Romney lost because, as Huckabee put it, he looks like the guy who laid you off. He also seems not to believe in anything. Tancredo believed in some things; mostly that saying nothing about anything but the threat of immigrants was a winning platform. He was wrong. Huckabee as probably as nuts as Tancredo, but with a sense of humor and with a sharp sense of self-awareness. Giuliani supported, relatively speaking, gay rights and gun control, had some issues with adultery, and is about as much a Yankee as you can get: not happening. Thompson didn’t seem to want even to run for, let alone be, President. James Gilmore, Sam Brownback, Tommy Thompson? Sure. And Ron Paul, well, the Republicans really don’t want radical fissure between their conservative wing and their libertarian wing exposed so baldly.

My friends, the campaign I ran sucked. Rather than dealing with the evangelical and conservative base of the Republican Party as Democrats traditionally do with their base (liberals and/or African-Americans), and say “Who the hell else are you going to vote for?,” I chose another strategy. I appealed to that base. I embraced those I had once called “agents of intolerance.” (They didn’t change; I did.) I let my proxies call my opponent a Socialist, one who “pals around with terrorists.” I didn’t play the race card so much, but when it got played, I looked the other way. When my campaign went over the top, I once or twice grumbled, but my heart didn’t seem to be in it. Somehow, I decided that the immoral tactics to which I succumbed in 2000 were now appropriate.

My friends, I cemented this strategy by nominating Sarah Palin, a know-nothing with a family that looks like the target of Republican ads, a tendency to ignore questions or, worse, answer them and reveal her profound silliness, and with experience that made Obama look like Henry Clay.

My friends, I also made sure to say, early on in the campaign, that I didn’t know much about the economy, but that I was reading Alan Greenspan’s book. Oops.

My friends, the only way I could have won this election, given the disaster that was in the office I sought, was to appeal to suburban voters, soccer moms, Reagan Democrats, and put together a coalition along with those who had no other place to go. Instead, I chose to insult those potential supporters by thinking Palin would be an asset, and by insisting how proud I was of putting such a person so close to the most powerful political position in the world. I confirmed this kind of strategic foolishness by generally having little to say about health care, the economy, education, or the environment: issues those potential supporters care about.

My friends, I ran a campaign with no ideas, and gave very little indication that the standard rap—Bush’s 3rd term—wasn’t pretty damn accurate. I didn’t do well in the debates, I’m not a good stump speaker, I misspoke on occasion reinforcing worries about my age (compounding the Palin factor). My experience was enormous, relative to Obama’s: but that argument’s wind was taken out of its sails by Obama’s riposte that it was those—Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Phil Gramm, etc.—with vast experience that had gotten us where we are today. And I clearly didn’t think experience was all that important, given that I selected Palin. Yes, the rumors are true that the right wing of the GOP vetoed my preferred choice: Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge. I succumbed to that veto. Perhaps things would have been different had I chosen one of them, or convinced Condoleezza Rice to run with me.

My friends, the Republicans had to come up with someone interesting, who brought new (but good) ideas, and challenged the status quo. Someone who energized people. Someone who really did stand for change. I wasn’t that person. The conventional wisdom was that given the facts on the ground, it would have been hard for any Republican to win this year: the conventional wisdom was right. In fact, I’m surprised I did as well as I did, and I don’t here want to go into the worries I work hard to suppress about why that is.

My friends, if you were someone who might have voted for me but didn’t, perhaps you’re worried about your mortgage. Perhaps you’re worried that we’ve wasted trillions in Iraq. Perhaps you’re worried about a catastrophic illness, or being able to send your kids to college. Perhaps you’re just sufficiently worried about your financial future, and your children’s prospects, that you no longer view Mexicans coming to the US to work, or two lesbians getting married, as the potent threat it somehow used to be.

My friends, I lost because I deserved to. And because I say “my friends” too much.

Flame Out

2008-11-25T11:06:00.006-05:00

As discussed here, on occasion, and in the comments section, I have a little hobby of talking to people at Websites. I find it much more interesting, much more entertaining—and I learn more—by talking to people who disagree with me. In addition to various factoids, I learn what people who might be generously characterized as "political opponents" are thinking about things. Thus I had heard of Sarah Palin a long time ago.

To date, I've been kicked off the Society of Women in Philosophy List, Stormfront, the Ann Coulter Chat Room, and Covert Conservatives. Most recently, I crashed and burned at Outcast Conservatives. The latter two are spin-offs from Ann Coulter's idiotic decision to remove moderators from the chatroom linked from her column. The moderators did an excellent job, ran a responsible joint, and had a lively and generally edifying place. I didn't agree with very many people on anything there, but it was fun. For those who think Ann Coulter's 15 minutes of fame are up, this offers more evidence: she dissed, badly, some of her fans who worked hard, and as volunteers, to get her "ideas" across and discussed. Hey, it's not my fault that her ideas tend to be wholly vacuous, and are entertaining solely because she is clever, mean, and can turn a phrase.

The SWIP moderator kicked me off because I sort of agreed with a poster, who thought academics should replace "blind refereeing" with "anonymous refereeing." Seemed ok to me. She then went on, in a response, to suggest that we should eliminate all sight-based terms from English. I think my response was something like this:

Thanks for your enlightening post. You've helped clarify an important issue, and shed light on it in a way that helped me discover some important points. I now see why bright people can disagree, and obscuring these kinds of issues, and leaving them in the dark, doesn't provide the kind of clear solution bringing them out of the shadows and into the light of day can.

Or something along those lines. The SWIP moderator didn't say why she axed me; she just did.

Stormfront is a scary place, run by serious neo-Nazi white supremacists who think Timothy McVeigh is kinda cool, enjoy reading The Turner Diaries, and have lots and lots of guns. These are the folks who blow up buildings, shoot abortion providers, and, sometimes on a long weekend, frolic under their designer sheets and pointy hoods. I lasted pretty long there, but they didn't like someone talking about their beloved biological theories who knew anything about biology. Can't really blame 'em; fixed delusions are much more enjoyable when they remain unchallenged. Plus, those guys scared me. Scare me.

I got kicked off Covert Conservatives because a poster said some stuff that was clearly code for good ol' fashioned "soft" racism. This was, as I've said before, a remarkably tolerant bunch for putting up with my bullshit. But the emotions about Obama were pretty serious at that point: the standard view was that he was an elitist, a black nationalist, a Socialist, Marxist, Communist, Muslim, a bad Christian, terrorist sympathizer, hated America, and sought to ruin America. Put these altogether with William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright, and add phrases that indicate Obama "acts white," "doesn't know his place," and is, more or less, "uppity." I responded—to a specific poster—more or less "why don't you just call him a 'nigger' and get it over with?" Down comes the ban button, and after some desultory private conversations with the moderator, and some feeble suggestions that I apologize, well: I'm done. Too bad; I had made some nice friends there, both conservative as well as a very amusing liberal rugby fan from New Zealand.

At Outcast Conservatives, tempers ran high just after the election—and some of these folks were convinced over the weekend before it that McCain was still going to win. If I said anything, it was construed as "gloating," which was a little odd given how innocuous my remarks were and how assiduously I tried to avoid gloating. The term "smug" got thrown around a lot, as if I had suddenly become smug. I was always smug.

So the moderator kept asking me why I was supporting Obama. I told him, more than once, that no one on that site would agree with my reasons, but that I had some. They only were supporting McCain because he wasn't Obama. So if I supported Obama because of his view on "choice," they obviously would disagree, and Lord knows they have enough abortion threads over there already. So why go through it?

In any case, he pestered me, so I offered some reasons. Of course, they were all rejected. What a shocker: conservatives (serious conservatives) rejecting reasons for supporting their current most-hated domestic enemy. So the guy asks me for reasons, I tell him he won't like them, he continues to ask, suggesting that if I don't have any then I'm some kind of moron (which is ironic, given how much these people didn't like McCain, admitted it, and refused to say why they were voting for McPalin, beyond, again, he wasn't Obama). So I finally gave up. This board was never very friendly (with a couple of exceptions), had some seriously hostile people with profound superiority complexes, and I never felt all that comfortable. So I decided not to get banned, but flame out. This is what I said, one last time, about why I supported Obama:

He is smart. He recognized what a fool's errand Iraq was a long time ago. He thinks a pregnant woman should be in charge of her body. He thinks the polarity of wealth, manifest particularly by how GAAP has been used, tax policy, derivatives, credit default swaps, etc. needs to be addressed. He recognizes that parents have a responsibility to raise their children, but sometimes need some help in education and with health care.

He wasn't John McCain.

I haven't heard a lot of voters for the latter give many reasons other than "He wasn't Barack Obama."

@$%# you. [They wouldn't let me say "Fuck you" on this board, no matter how I tried.]

'night. Have fun. I thought incestuous slaps on the back, especially after getting your asses kicked because Sarah Palin was--is--such an embarrassment--was odd. Watching Republicans and conservatives go after each other does have its benefits, and forced me to learn how to spell "Schadenfreude."

I won't be back. This is no fun; feel free to say I don't get it, etc.. Whatever works; reasons are almost certainly irrelevant. After all, your guy won the "over 65 white" demographic.

So I'm not on any boards now. I've moved on from that hobby, at least for awhile or until I find a new one that is both educational and entertaining. The cool thing is that I got a good paper out of my hobby, in Teaching Philosophy, have developed an in-class exercise out of it, and have published several other short versions of the classroom exercise.

It was fun while it lasted.

Vote!!!!!!

2008-11-04T10:58:00.002-05:00

Really.

Go do it.

Now.

Vote.

And, for my friends in Chicago: Early. And Often.

I'm off to Nashville tomorrow, to do a sho' nuf academic presentation on Carole King, Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline, and Aretha Franklin. Back next week with a consideration of why John McCain lost. If he wins, maybe I ain't comin' back.

Superstition

2008-10-30T20:27:00.002-04:00

I was tempted to do a proleptic postmortem (yes, I know; I'm rather proud of it as well) on the McCain campaign, but I'm too superstitious to do so.

Instead, I will simply congratulate the Philadelphia Phillies, who now have a glorious second World Championship to add to their first, along with their 10,000+ losses. The Phans, of course, showed their typical propensity to violence, but aren't as good at it as fans from other cities. I really hate the city of Philadelphia; perhaps that is irrational, but it's there. I found the Rays much more likable, and it takes a lot—A LOT—to get me to cheer for an American League team.

I don't really blame Bud Selig for the rain. I do blame him for being an idiot (oh, my, why do I suddenly have the feeling that my loyal critic Dr. Anonymous will somehow tie this in with Hillary Clinton?)

I don't know who is in charge of marketing Major League Baseball, but they seem confused why they don't have younger fans. One possibility is the attention span of the average American—including mine—is about 4.3 seconds. I'm sorry, what? Oh, wait, yeah. But many of us older folks, born during the Cambrian Explosion, remember some Series games being on during the day. Teachers letting us watch it. Running home from school to see the end of the game.

Now, all night games, and most of it on cable. In my area, if there was a football game of any significance—don't ask for ESPN Radio's criteria for "signficance"—then there was no way to see or listen to the game without going to a bar. If I'm too poor to afford cable, I'm supposed to have the money to go to a bar to watch a game, nu?

MLB seems to like to piss in its fans' soup, and then wonder why it loses some fans and fails to attract enough new ones. Geniuses.

The few, the proud, the brave

2008-10-10T10:39:00.006-04:00

I've gotten kicked off a few chatrooms. Mostly conservative (or beyond): Stormfront, Ann Coulter's "official" board, linked from her on-line column, a spin-off of that board when Ms. Coulter decided to dump the moderators (followed by a defection of many of its members), Covert Conservatives (a tolerant bunch, to be sure), and I'm barely hanging on at another spin-off, Outcast Conservatives. (I also got kicked off the chatroom of the Society for Women in Philosophy, which is not all that conservative; I think one of the moderators didn't like the attitude I adopted when I pointed out with an example just how ridiculous one of the posts was. A long story.)

I like going there to see what people think. As at most chatrooms, there are some really smart and/or informed people, some sort of feeling their way through reality, some just there to find others with whom they agree, and some jerks. (Hence, as I've mentioned here, on one of the earlier boards, one guy kept offering to fly to anywhere in the US to fight me at a "dojo or gym" of my choice.)

The current batch of those tolerating me are really, really worried about William Ayres, Jeremiah Wright, and a few others who are less frequently mentioned in the mainstream media (this term seems to be media that these folks disagree with: hence Limbaugh and the WSJ op-ed page seems to be "non" mainstream, while FOX and especially FNC is sometimes mainstream, sometimes not, depending on what is being said.) They are also very concerned that Obama's birth certificate is illegitimate.

Recently I was told that if Obama is elected, America will change from what it was to something completely different. It seems to me that this is a tautology, in that whoever is elected will change America. Their point, however, is that Obama is the greatest threat to America ever posed; that he either embraces terrorists or is himself a terrorist, that he hates America, he especially hates white America (and Americans), that he has accomplished nothing, that he is a Socialist, or a Marxist, or a Communist, or all three (in spite of some conceptual incoherence this may generate.)

This comes from people who I actually respect (although they don't think I do). I don't agree with them on much, and some of them are a bit over-the-top. But I fear that they are being a bit hypocritical, in that some of them were absolutely adamant that Democrats were undermining America by being so critical of the President, and that he (W) deserved a great deal more respect because he was the President. I don't see this respect being afforded Obama if or when he is elected.

I also fear that in spite of both Obama and McCain saying warm fuzzy things about unity, working across ideological divisions, etc., that this group will be even more alienated than they were during the Clinton era, an attitude exacerbated by the relative weakness of those who would carry out their desires (the Bob Barrs, the Henry Hydes), as was done in bringing impeachment charges against Clinton.

I don't know how many Americans my fellow chatters represent. But sometimes I worry about a group of people (many with guns) being so full of vitriol and antipathy toward Obama, and what this tells us about various scenarios (political and otherwise) that may play out in the next few years. I hope I'm wrong. And given how often I am, that's some solace.

For my friends the Cubs' fans

2008-10-06T11:24:00.002-04:00

Sshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

More wisdom from Sarah Palin

2008-10-01T12:22:00.006-04:00

Sometimes Ms. Palin says things that I think are just flat-out correct. I have no problem saying that. I just wonder how much she will be talking about the importance of the idea she states here, in an interview with the neuron-deprived Hugh Hewitt. I've put it in bold, just so my reader can get there quickly. I'm sure this will be a prominent aspect of the campaign, from here on in. Particularly with those donating to the McCain campaign from the South, and those advocating the hilariously-titled "right to work" laws; management will be jumping on this bandwagon with enthusiasm.

HH: Governor, you mentioned the people who are struggling right now. Have you and your husband, Todd, ever faced tough economic times where you had to sit around a kitchen table and make tough choices?

SP: Oh my goodness, yes, Hugh. I know what Americans are going through. Todd and I, heck, we’re going through that right now even as we speak, which may put me again kind of on the outs of those Washington elite who don’t like the idea of just an everyday working class American running for such an office. But yeah, there’s been a lot of times that Todd and I have had to figure out how we were going to pay for health insurance. We’ve gone through periods of our life here with paying out of pocket for health coverage until Todd and I both landed a couple of good union jobs. Early on in our marriage, we didn’t have health insurance, and we had to either make the choice of paying out of pocket for catastrophic coverage or just crossing our fingers, hoping that nobody would get hurt, nobody would get sick. So I know what Americans are going through there. And you know, even today, Todd and I are looking at what’s going on in the stock market, the relatively low number of investments that we have, looking at the hit that we’re taking, probably $20,000 dollars last week in his 401K plan that was hit. I’m thinking geez, the rest of America, they’re facing the exact same thing that we are. We understand what the problems are. It’s why I have all the faith in the world that John McCain is the right top of any ticket at this point to get us through these challenges. It’s a good balanced ticket where he’s got the experience, and he’s got the bipartisan approach that it’s going to take to get us through these challenges. And I have the acknowledgement and the experience of going through what America is going through.

Entire Hewitt interview here.

Minor Slip? Or Precursor?

2008-09-23T09:45:00.003-04:00

Palin defends McCain over comment

Sep 17, 6:58 PM (ET)

WASHINGTON (AP) - Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin said Wednesday that Democrats were out of bounds for criticizing John McCain when he said the fundamentals of the economy are strong.

In an interview with Fox News Channel, Palin said: "It was an unfair attack on the verbiage that Sen. McCain chose to use because the fundamentals, as he was having to explain afterwards, he means our work force, he means the ingenuity of the American people. And of course, that is strong and that is the foundation of our economy."

Source

Verbiage

noun [U] FORMAL DISAPPROVING

Language which is very complicated and which contains a lot of unnecessary words:

“His explanation was wrapped up in so much technical verbiage that I simply couldn't understand it.”

Cambridge OnLine Dictionary

My guess is that her quote speaks for itself. I'm not sure I'm ready for four years of this. On the other hand, Ms. Palin is often lauded for her candor. I assume that includes her recent reference to the "Palin-McCain" ticket, and the above insight about "verbiage."

***************
For my anonymous Clinton supporter and reader: I'm not sure if this qualifies as "criticism," "bashing," both, or neither.

The Book

2008-09-18T09:04:00.003-04:00

Yes, indeed, the book is now out. Given how lazy I am (confirmed on a regular basis by my children), this thing looks like it took a lot of work.

While all my readers will no doubt rush to the stores to snap up any remaining copies, before the real deluge after my upcoming appearance on Oprah, I would recommend, rather, asking your local library to buy it. Most will if asked; a lot of academic libraries will buy it anyway, but it doesn't hurt to ask. Many public libraries will, again if asked. So ask.

The info they would want?

ISBN 978-0-8132-1532-7
Catholic University of America Press

Sometimes they will want to know how you heard of it. Creative lying, while my usual strategy, might not be called for. You can tell them you know the author.

Of course, I wouldn't dissuade anyone from buying his or her own copy. Most authors are willing to sign, personally, such copies. I'm more likely to hug you and/or buy you a beer. Chances are much better finding it on the Internet ("use the Google!") than in any bookstore I've ever been in.

As far as its content, it is a philosophy book. Harder than some, easier than many. For those with an interest in Kant, and who have some familiarity with the approach and results of the Critique of Pure Reason, this is a walk in the park. Others might have to read it more slowly than, say, the most recent Tom Clancy novel or Zippy the Pinhead comic strip.

If anyone buys it, or reads somebody else's copy, or checks it out from the library, and then actually reads the thing? I'd love to hear from you.

Mencken Lives?

2008-09-09T09:12:00.009-04:00

I've been thinking a lot recently about Sarah Palin, the McCain campaign, and such things. I find myself mostly confused, not a condition to which I'm unaccustomed, but it does seem to generate a certain reaction.

McCain cannot win, supposedly, by just winning "the base." Democratic registrations outnumber those of Republicans, and many of those in "the base" are a bit lukewarm about him to begin with. I understand the idea of getting "the base" enthusiastic about the McCain ticket by naming someone "the base" loves—for reasons to be considered—but it seems that the others McCain needs should tend to be turned off by Palin.

Imagine I'm an Independent. From what I understand, I may believe in a lot of things, but some things are fairly clear. The economy is facing some substantial issues, in terms of the housing market, debt and deficit, looming health care costs, and other structural costs that shall arise with the increasing pace of retiring baby boomers. I want to be able to build equity in my house, send my kids to college after receiving as good an education as I can provide for them, not be devastated by illness, and retire at a reasonable age. I want those same kids to live in a sustainable environment, and have their constitutional rights protected. This doesn't seem to be a lot to ask.

McCain used to appeal to me. He was, after all, a "maverick." He had experience with immigration, and thus developed an approach to immigration reform that was comprehensive, nuanced, and actually seemed to regard undocumented workers as human beings. He saw promise in embryonic stem cell research. He was certainly against abortion rights, but saw that reasonable people could—do—disagree, and adopted the view that included some legitimate exceptions to a "no abortions" rule. He recognized that the role of money in politics often resulted in a situation that those with the most money, or access to those with the most money, had significant advantages in elections, and thus sponsored an attempt to respond to this situation, seeming to think that the best ideas aren't necessarily held by those with the most dough. This was the 2000 McCain. This was the McCain who lost to George W. Bush, for, among other reasons, some extraordinarily nasty campaigning, including racist push-polling in the crucial South Carolina primary.

We now have 2008 McCain. He rarely mentions immigration reform, campaign finance reform, any responsibility corporations—including oil companies—have to anyone other than stockholders (if any), abortion, stem cell research, health care, torture, warrantless wiretapping, extreme rendition, or countless other things. Indeed, at the recent Republican convention, his speech was remarkably lacking in content, and certainly didn't refer to anything that actually provided support for his credentials as a maverick. He is now giving this speech, abridged my friends, on the campaign trail. It has even less content, and thus even less support for his insistence that he is a reformer, that he wants "change," or that he is a maverick.

His speech can be summarized pretty easily. "My friends, I fought in Viet Nam and was taken prisoner. 40 years ago I showed great courage. I'm for change. I'm for reform. I'm a maverick."

What has me scratching my head is that this, currently, seems to be working. Palin has generated, additionally, great enthusiasm. I've heard her described as a "model candidate" and as a politician with an "outstanding record of legislation." Republicans, particularly those at the convention, seem absolutely to adore her; I would really like to have heard those who were so enthusiastic about her nomination be interviewed in terms of what she stands for. I can't spend too much time thinking about an audience absolutely enraptured by a speaker, hanging on her every word and breaking into frequent frenzies of applause, making fun of another candidate for having audiences hang on every word who break into frequent frenzies of applause.

Sarah Palin has lied about the "Bridge to Nowhere." She thinks schools should "teach the controversy" about creationism, which is standard language for the "wedge" strategy to treat evolutionary theory as genuinely in serious scientific competition with creationism and intelligent design. She believes that no exceptions should be made for prohibiting abortions. She garnered a vast amount of earmarks, as a mentee of Ted Stevens, for her small town in a state that is already the most subsidized of the 50 states. I don't know a whole lot more about her positions, although I believe she is against civil unions—a fortiori marriage—for gays and lesbians and seems to think that the war in Iraq is almost won. I imagine she has most of the kinds of views held by those who love her the most: evangelical conservative Christians who believe the market solves all problems, we are all on a level playing field, and that our culture is going to hell in a handbasket, mostly because of the "liberal media." I'm happy to plead ignorance about many of her positions. I'm confused by those who love her with such remarkable passion, because I don't think they are much more familiar with her positions than I am.

Imagine, again, that I'm an Independent. I'm told that the candidate designed to convince me to vote for John McCain believes that a woman who has been raped by her father must carry that child to term, even if her physician has reason to believe it will kill her. This candidate believes that the solution to the energy problems facing the US have nothing to do with its consumption of 25% of the world's energy, and everything to do with an unwillingness to drill for oil, regardless of where that oil might be. The candidate believes that Genesis provides a plausible scenario upon which one can teach biology. The candidate is willing to lie, and even when those lies are exposed, repeatedly, she continues to lie. She thinks that gays and lesbians don't deserve civil rights, rights evidently reserved for heterosexuals. She believes that the war in Iraq is close to being won, and, from what I've heard, that this means the war on terror is at least closer to being won, in spite of the fact that the latter is probably not something that can be won, and certainly neither McCain nor Palin has indicated what criteria are being satisfied if it can be.

If I'm that Independent, the only thing I can think is that McCain 2008 has lost virtually all of the features that once attracted people like me. He is willing to abandon, or at least ignore, all of his principles in his desire to become President. He is willing also to ignore simple actuarial statistics, and as a 72 year old who has had cancer, nominate as Vice President someone who is at best a cipher, and at worst an ideologue who shows little respect for either honesty or information, and is happy to repeat talking points and insults, regardless of their merit.

I guess if I were that Independent, I would be insulted. Mencken is famous for having said "no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." I don't think this has as much to do with intelligence as self-respect. If we have the problems—in economics, in foreign policy, in education, in health care, in culture—I think we do, McCain has offered nothing in response. He has added insult to injury by nominating someone who is divisive, inexperienced, and at best disingenuous. If I have any self-respect, should I vote for someone who thinks I'm willing to vote on the basis of a 40-year old biographical event and a set of slogans?

***********************

CORRECTION: I seem to have misstated Ms. Palin’s views on abortion. She indicates that the “only exception for abortion is if mother's life would end.”

On the Issues

I don’t know if she would distinguish, as I would, and more importantly as a physician would [might?], between “would end” and “might end.”

Maybe someone will ask her during one of her many, many interviews.

I surrender

2008-08-29T08:47:00.003-04:00

A short one, just to keep myself in the blogging game. I was going to write about what Clinton's supporters would have expected of Obama's, had she won the nomination. Would they be understanding and empathetic if some of Obama's backers (the complement of "PUMA," I suppose), said they were going to be voting for McCain?

Then I was thinking about the fact that everybody, Democrats and Republicans, both say that education is a really good thing. (I agree.) But it is an odd thing: the more educated a person is, the more likely he or she is to be a Democrat (and, specifically, to be an Obama supporter). So are Republicans who argue for a better-educated citizenry really suggesting that they want more and more people to reject them? Odd. Probably it needs to be the right kind of education.

In any case, I have chosen today to officially surrender and announce that the Cubs are the best team in the National League, and they deserve all their success. Congratulations.

This does not mean that they won't fold like a cheap suit in the NLDS or NLCS. However, they may well make it to the World Series. At which point, they will collapse, preferably in some excruciating, agonizing way, à la the Red Sox in '86. That will be enough for me to look forward to the postseason.

The other day someone e-mailed me to ask about the meaning of "Schadenfreude." I didn't realize, at the time, that in addition to the lexical meaning of the term, that there would be a lab.

Inductive Logic

2008-08-13T07:04:00.002-04:00

This story is frequently attributed to Bertrand Russell.

A young turkey was brought into a farm and was fed regularly every morning at the same time with a fresh supply of grass. Like any other being interested in the future, he wanted to convincingly predict the future and not use the first few days of his life as an indicator of things to come. Having an erudite lineage, he figured he should not commit the fallacy of jumping the gun to reach a conclusion and instead would gather a large data set for his observation.

After 364 days, drawing from the specific instances, he concluded the obvious generalization - he would be well fed every morning until he grew old and died. Unfortunately, the very next day was Thanksgiving and the turkey was slaughtered and became the star meal of the day at the farmer's house.

While the comparison between the Chicago Cubs and a turkey is appropriate for many reasons, let us examine the argument that the Cubs will win the World Series in 2008. Inductively, we have the following 99 premises. I'll leave it to you to determine if the conclusion is strongly supported, or not:

The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 2007.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 2006.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 2005.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 2004.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 2003.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 2002.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 2001.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 2000.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1999.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1998.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1997.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1996.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1995.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1994.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1993.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1992.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1991.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1990.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1989.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1988.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1987.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1986.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1985.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1984.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1983.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1982.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1981.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1980.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1979.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1978.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1977.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1976.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1975.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1974.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1973.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1972.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1971.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1970.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1969.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1968.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1967.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1966.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1965.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1964.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1963.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1962.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1961.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1960.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1959.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1958.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1957.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1956.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1955.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1954.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1953.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1952.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1951.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1950.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1949.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1948.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1947.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1946.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1945.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1944.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1943.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1942.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1941.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1940
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1939.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1938.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1937.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1936.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1935.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1934.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1933.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1932.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1931.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1930.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1929.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1928.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1927.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1926.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1929.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1925.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1924.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1923.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1922.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1921.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1920.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1919.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1918.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1917.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1916.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1915.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1914.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1913.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1912.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1911.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1910.
The Cubs didn’t win the World Series in 1909.

Ergo . . .

John McCain is too white

2008-08-04T12:48:00.003-04:00

I think it's time we pointed out the obvious.

John McCain is too white to be the next President. Clearly, this makes him out of the mainstream, too risky, too untested. Add the various other issues involved with him—anger management, carcinoma management, spousal management, consistency management, age management—I have to ask: can we really be willing to roll the dice with this man?

I shall not mention where he graduated in his class at the Naval Academy, that his wife stole drugs from a charity to support her habit, Charles Keating, or his now-laughable intent to run an honorable and respectful campaign.

That would be too much, don't you think?

Hiatus

2008-07-07T16:26:00.002-04:00

It's summer, I'm lazy, and so are you. So I'll be off blogging for awhile.

Those of happier thoughts may think this is an opportunity to read, reflect, and hang with wife and kids.

Those more cynical might suggest that I've run out of things to say.

Perhaps both are right, but I will be back. Probably August.

And, for those who are in the know: EmmaFest--August 9. You know where.

Oh No!!!

2008-06-17T16:10:00.005-04:00

Yes. Another song. (Two warnings: one bathroom word, and one word in Yiddish. Perhaps you're like me, you think country music doesn't have enough Yiddish, nu?)

This Time I'm Going to Take It Lyin' Down

I've felt worse, and I've felt better,
But I can't stand this goddamn weather.
This time I'm gonna take it lyin' down.

I've been richer, I've been poorer,
You treat me like some kind of schnorrer,
This time I'm gonna take it lyin' down.

This time I'm gonna take it lyin' down,
Gonna chase every skirt I find in this here ol' town.
Juke joints and back seats of cars,
Honky-tonks, 4 a.m. bars,
This time I'm gonna take it lyin' down.

When I'm outta town you find a man,
It's my turn now, thank you ma'am,
This time I'm gonna take it lyin' down.

You took me from grapes to raisins,
Plums to prunes, but now I'm chasin'.
This time I'm gonna take it lyin down.

This time I'm gonna take it lyin' down,
Gonna chase every skirt I find in this here ol' town.
Juke joints and back seats of cars,
Honky-tonks, 4 a.m. bars,
This time I'm gonna take it lyin' down.

When you come home I might not be there,
Out havin' fun, at least my share,
This time I'm gonna take it lyin' down.

I hope you miss me, I hope you cry,
I can cheat too, so now you know why,
This time I'm gonna take it lyin' down.

This time I'm gonna take it lyin' down,
Gonna chase every skirt I find in this here ol' town.
Juke joints and back seats of cars,
Honky-tonks, 4 a.m. bars,
This time I'm gonna take it lyin' down.

Free Aung San Suu Kyi

2008-05-27T09:42:00.008-04:00

To all my friends who wish to see a free Tibet: spend a little of that energy for a free Burma.

Tibet is a complicated story, and the cynic within me recognizes that it is very likely that China will always maintain some degree of control over it. Often Tibet is seen in the West as some sort of land of innocence, a Shangri-La ruined by the meanies in the PRC. The folks running the PRC (somebody named Hu Jin Tao is one of my Facebook friends, but I don't think it's the one in charge of China; after all, Jesus is also one of my Facebook friends) may well be meanies, but it might help were we to get a better picture of what conditions for most Tibetans were before 1959. This isn't a simple story of all good vs. all evil; it should at least be noted that a "Free Tibet" isn't necessarily "Tibet Like it was Before 1959."

On the other hand, China could put an enormous amount of pressure on the Burmese junta, if only in terms of economics. The PRC likes to say such issues are "internal affairs," so we can't say anything about their own "internal affairs." But Burma's is a brutal dictatorship, violating the most basic human rights, overturning elections, jailing political prisoners, and, as we've seen in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, not giving much of a damn about its own citizens.

I think we should be hearing more about Burma, and everytime you hear someone complain about Tibet, add a complaint about Burma. If you want to put your energy into a good political cause, and one that might actually effect some change, Burma may be a better bet than Tibet.

For those interested, you can find pretty easily the PRC's view, as well as the view of the "Tibet Government in Exile," associated with the Dalai Lama. I think it useful to see both sides (and to see just how ancient the ties are between the Tibetans and the Han Chinese).

For a (lefty) view on some of this, critical of some of the views popularly put forth about the history of Tibet, you could go here:

Parenti on Tibet's Feudal Past

Toast

2008-05-23T16:42:00.004-04:00

I think Hillary Clinton has a justified objection to the fact that she has been treated with a considerable degree of sexism; I think more—much more—from the media than from the Obama campaign, but others may differ.

I also think she made some strategic mistakes along the way: as others have pointed out, campaigning as if she were, indeed, the inevitable nominee; not paying sufficient attention to caucuses; Mark Penn and all he brought; the little Bosnia flap. I'll take Bill Clinton to have been, ultimately, a wash: helpful in many ways, not helpful in certain important ways. After Obama won 11 elections in a row, Clinton started to appear more and more desparate, exaggerating differences that may have been real but not enormous, possibly using some race-coded language, particularly in Appalachian states (PA, WVa, KY), and then coming up with more and more tenuous arguments about Michigan and Florida delegates. As someone said on TV last night, given the recent polling, she's really beating Obama in just one demographic: Women over 50. If, as this commentator continued, Obama was leading in national polls in just that one demographic--along with the other numbers--would Clinton be suggesting that it not be about time for him to drop out?

In any case, I think we thought some of these were "Hail Mary" passes, but I think we hadn't seen the real Roger Staubach version until today. My guess is that the reaction to this among Democrats and the media (if there is a difference) will result in the zesty brown product of my title. I couldn't find a good picture of a nail, being hammered into a coffin.

ASSASSINATION ISSUE

DEFENDS LONG-RUNNING CAMPAIGN

By GEOFF EARLE

May 23, 2008 --
Hillary Clinton today brought up the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy while defending her decision to stay in the race against Barack Obama.

"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it," she said, dismissing calls to drop out.

Full story/video link here

Redbirds

2008-05-15T15:27:00.002-04:00

If the Cardinals had listened to me, they would have gotten rid of Edmonds a couple of years ago, and probably decided that if LaRussa was going to stay, Rolen would have to go. This, of course, would probably have meant that a) they would have freed up money to get some players, including a number 3 or 4 starter, b) Rolen would have been worth more on the market, and c) Walt Jocketty might still be in St. Louis.

Of course, since the Cardinals—especially Walt Jocketty—never listens to me (I don't blame him), he has to live in Cincinatti, we have a number 4 hitter who may hit 15 home runs this year with a .250 OPS, and are using starters like Lohse.

It's OK. The Cards win a World Series most decades (20s, 30s, 40s, 60s, 80s, 00s; no one but the Yankees seemed to win one in the 50s, so that doesn't count, plus the 1926 and 1964 ones came against the Yankees), and they've got theirs already. I can wait patiently, but I would like to see them going in the right direction. If Mulder can pitch when he gets back, and Carpenter gets back, then things might look a little brighter.

But seeing Edmonds in a Cubs uniform is a little weird, I have to admit. Maybe he can start hanging out with Jason Marquis, and they can discuss how they seemed to start to go downhill as Cardinals, but—just to make sure—they became Cubs.

I wish them both well, except, of course, when playing their superior, i.e. the St. Louis National Baseball Club, inc..

Media Coverage

2008-05-10T13:13:00.007-04:00

Wow. Thanks to some new folks, I got a new record number of comments. That some seem not to think too highly of my cognitive abilities is irrelevant. Most of my real work focuses on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason--particularly the so-called Metaphysical Deduction--so if you really want to get after my "arguments," my book should be out (late Summer? early Fall?). Of course everyone should a) buy several copies b) tell every library he or she visits physically or electronically to buy several copies and c) tell every bookstore he or she visits physically or electronically to offer it. Personally, I think I should get on Oprah; should I hold my breath for her to put me on her show, discussing Necessity and Possibility: The Logical Structure of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason?

I use the word "tortuous" in it, by the way.

In any case, the stuff I write here is simply amateur hour. I'm not up to the rigorous standards of some of my readers, but they haven't taken me up on my invitation to guest blog.

The latest entry, which was about Ryan Lizza, Rush Limbaugh, and Jeremiah Wright's commitment to Islam, didn't seem to draw much reaction. Wright himself did, however, so I thought I'd bring out from the comments an issue, and hear what folks have to say.

At the Project for Excellence in Journalism (not to be confused with the "Excellence in Broadcasting Network"), an empirical media study found that the Wright-Obama story received in the week examined 42% of the coverage, relative to Clinton's 41%. These numbers sound more precise than they probably deserve to, so I'm willing to call it a tie at 40%.

A bit of the piece summarizes the coverage this way:

As the primary voting has slowed, the media have focused on a number of Democratic campaign controversies—from Clinton’s erroneous recollection about dodging snipers in Bosnia to Obama’s remarks about economically disadvantaged Americans being “bitter.” But none have had the staying power of the Wright flap. In the period from March 17 through May 4, the Wright-Obama story line made up 17%, or one out of six, of all the campaign stories studied. And last week saw the biggest spike yet in that coverage.
There were significant policy issues at play in last week’s Democratic campaign leading up to the May 6 primaries in North Carolina and Indiana. Clinton and Obama sparred over how to handle Iran and the proposed gas-tax holiday. The issue of gas prices accounted for the second-biggest category of campaign stories last week at 7%. And the next biggest chunk of campaign coverage, at 5%, was Indiana superdelegate and former Democratic National Committee chair Joe Andrew switching his support from Clinton to Obama.

But even after combining the gas and the Andrew coverage, that is less than one-third of the attention paid last week to Wright.

This sounds a bit weird to me. I'm willing to grant that the connections between Wright and Obama deserve to be looked at, and I'm willing to listen to the criticisms of Wright that have been put forth, as well as the analysis of what this implies about Obama. That's fair: Obama himself agreed that this was a legitimate political issue.

But is it the only issue? Clinton is running for President, as is Obama. Are there other things to examine than the Wright-Obama connection? Admittedly, the policy differences between the two are pretty minor, but there are distinctions.

Apparently, others view it differently. I think there's lots to talk about other than Wright, without that implying that the Wright issue not be examined. (It would be nice, as well, if a bit more of what had been said in those scary awful sermons was brought into the discussion; this was one of the advantages of Bill Moyers's interview with Wright, but wasn't the model generally followed. The simple question is this: given either the views found in Ezekiel in the Hebrew Bible, or Luke in the sequel, consider some of the actions of the United States and its citizens. Does God bless all of them? None of them? Some of them?)

So I'll leave it as an open question: is this an appropriate way to proportion the media coverage of Wright, of Obama, of Wright and Obama, and of Clinton? (And for those who are so inspired, the invitation to guest blog remains open.)

An invitation

2008-05-02T11:58:00.007-04:00

I have plenty to write about here, including Jeremiah "1% Wrong Trumps 99% Right" Wright, Barack "Hello, Grandma?" Obama, Hillary "God Bless the Rich" Clinton, John "You Wanna See Flip Flopping? I'll Show You Flip Flopping!" McCain, and many others.

Such as an old Ryan Lizza piece in The New Republic, referring to Jeremiah Wright as a "former Muslim." That was all that was said, but of course it was picked up by some folks on the Web, and is proudly on display at Rush Limbaugh's Website. Rush claims to have done a great deal of research on all of this, but there is very little evidence—actually there are two words—to support this claim, which is then extensively discussed by the EIB Genius. It almost goes without saying that in this context, "Muslim" is used, more or less, as a synonym for either "terrorist" or "terrorist sympathizer." Sad; no one seems interested in challenging El Rushbo on the evident falsehood of the claim or the smearing of Muslims in general. Perhaps we're feeling sympathy for Oxycontin withdrawal.

I believe this is the kind of thing that causes Keith Olbermann to refer to this man as "comedian Rush Limbaugh": to wit

I ran across something last night. I've not seen this anywhere else. I did as much as I could to verify this. Ryan Lizza in the New Republic, a year ago, long story at the New Republic on their website. If you print it out, it's nine pages long.

Both parts of his brain tied behind his back

It might be worth noting that while the article is nine pages long, in spite of Rush's implication, exactly two words have anything to do with the Muslim remark. It would be most entertaining to determine what the Cape Girardeau Crapola Factory means by "I did as much as I could to verify this." I think it means "I did bupkus." And it seems not to be anywhere else, in that Lizza evidently just made it up, and in that the claim seems to be, well, goshdarnit, false.

The sad thing is that either Lizza doesn't know about this, or doesn't care. I couldn't find his e-mail address at his current employer, The New Yorker, and that's about where I lost the will.

*********************************

In any case, I thought if someone (my reader) would be interested in chiming in here on whatever topic he or she wishes to, I'd open this up to a guest blogger or two. You don't have to write about baseball, but you should know that as I write this—and it may be the last time I can do so in 2008—the magnificent National League Baseball Club of St. Louis, incorporated is in first place in the National League Central Division.

If interested and you know my address, e-mail me. If interested and you don't know my address, leave a comment. If not interested, what in the hell are you doing still reading this?

A song

2008-04-20T17:10:00.002-04:00

Here's a switch: a lovely country song about philosophy. Generally, people hate it if they haven't had a decent course in the philosophy of language. Those who have may still hate it, but then they know why.

I play it in A with a little break. Not to be sung to the tune of Glen Campbell's fabulously execrable "By the Time I Get to Phoenix."

For those many country music fans out there who enjoy quantified modal semantics, etc..

By the Time I Get to Kripke

I promised to pay Smith five dollars
I think you ought to do what is right
She said she believed she'd love me always
That attitude lasted just one night

Chorus:

De re her, de re me
She's as oblique as she could be
Her modal semantics you've just got to see
De re her, de re me
De re her, de re me

She said she thought love was an entity
Over which you can't quantify
I guess it lacked more than identity
Had no truth conditions to satisfy

She said she had to have a full-blown semantics
More austere but modulo Quine
One that could govern all possible worlds
With the sole necessary exception of mine

Chorus

Now she's living on the golden mountain
Riding on Pegasus, gettin' her kicks
Dreamin' 'bout barbers who shave each other
Prime numbers divisible by six

Chorus and Repeat

Champs

2008-04-08T09:49:00.006-04:00

A short one, for once. (And my thanks to Frodo for sending me the second pic.)

The college basketball season is over, quite possibly the most exhilarating I've ever experienced. For us Kansas fans, winning over UNC was kind of sweet. Winning over Memphis exceeded all expectations. A great game to watch, and, for me at least, a great outcome.

Kansas has as rich a basketball tradition as any school in the country. As some are already tired of hearing, the only coach in KU history with a losing record is James Naismith, who invented the game. Great fans, great building, great tradition, great teams. Oddly enough, my favorite player (among many candidates) is the virtually unknown and unremembered Delby Lewis. When I was pretty young, he always brought the ball up court to start the offense. For some reason, that image sticks with me, and that was when I began to love KU basketball.

It will be difficult for Bill Self to turn down Oklahoma State. I would think it would be hard for anyone to turn down $40 million. OSU will never be as cool as KU, but the cost-benefit analysis in weighing cool vs. $40 million is tricky. If he leaves, I think he will be making a mistake, but that much money can soften many an error. But one thing is quite clear: Lawrence is a great town. Stillwater is not.

Of course, Mario Chalmers's shot was the talk of today, as it should be. Given the history of Kansas basketball, it is amazing to me that his 3 pointer is almost without doubt the single biggest shot in the history of KU basketball.

Great season. Thanks. Go Hawks!

****

And now for something completely different. I was listening to "Morning Edition" yesterday, and in the story about the Texas polygamist compound, the announcer said something that made me realize, once again, the difference between reading the news and hearing someone else read it to you. Say this one out loud, and you'll see what I mean.

Officers met some resistance when they entered the sect's temple.

News from Lake Coulterville

2008-04-04T08:14:00.002-04:00

La Coultera, who by dint of her brains, hard work, and pluck managed, somehow, to rise above the overwhelming obstacles placed in her path to go to Cornell and then the University of Michigan Law School, has—perhaps unintentionally—put herself into a trap.

To maintain her presence in the media, while decrying how she is ignored, she has to raise the ante. Just as Howard Stern or Jerry Springer have to keep pushing the envelope to avoid becoming tedious, so La Coultera can't rest on her well-established credentials as the Shock Jock of commentary. She has to increase the volume, the shrillness, the outrageousness. It isn't enough, now, to say the kinds of things that get one fired at National Review. It isn't enough to mock some of the widows of 9.11 (the ones who don't act as La Coultera demands). Ratchet up the animosity, the vitriol, and fire away, Gridley.

Evidently based on a reading of his autobiography that shows the same insight, sensitivity, understanding, and care she brought to reading Charles Darwin's works, La Coultera has pronounced her verdict on Obama and his first book Dreams from my Father. (The book has been out for awhile, but evidently she has just caught on that reading his book(s) might provide material for a column.)

Her conclusions? Obama is a two-bit Hitler. Dreams from my Father is best compared to Mein Kampf. Obama is a "lunatic" and "bonkers." He makes Jeremiah Wright look like Booker T. Washington.

These are valuable insights. Her quotes from the book are invaluable. When Obama expresses views that are remarkably similar to those of Clarence Thomas, Obama becomes Hitler, while Thomas is, of course, the poster child of the righteous. Perhaps this has little to do with, say, minor issues—e.g. the content of the statement—and a great deal to do with who states it.

I bet even at the University of Michigan Law School they introduced La Coultera to the argumentum ad hominem. Perhaps she was out getting a bikini wax the day that her professor added that it is a fallacy.

It is, finally, of interest to note that La Coultera frequently complains that "liberals"—i.e. everyone who disagrees with her—fail to read her books carefully or correctly. It is pretty clear that she hasn't read much pop psychology with equal care, as she might consider this "projecting." Today's trivia question: which book did she understand least? On the Origin of Species? Mein Kampf? Dreams of My Father? Or, in her analysis of Jeremiah Wright's remarkable claim that God does not, in fact, bless the intentional murder of thousands of people, perhaps it was the Book of Ezekiel she kinda sorta skimmed, rather than seeing that there, God does, in fact, damn a nation that carries out such an act.

I thank the good folks at FOX for providing the fair and balanced treatment that can, with a straight face, continue to promote La Coultera. To be fair (and balanced), she doesn't equate Obama with Hitler, but only because he is a "two bit" Hitler. Perhaps she would like him better if he were better at it? Say, a six-bit (75 cents) Hitler?

Perhaps we can start seeing a couple of those Christians who constantly worry about employees at Target being forced to say "Merry Christmas" come out and discuss the content of Wright's sermons—not just the sound bites—and the justice of comparing Obama to Hitler, and the value of this kind of approach as a model of Christian love.

Or is that too much to ask?

Final Four

2008-04-01T09:08:00.002-04:00

OK, I got one half of the bracket correct (UNC vs. KU); I also picked a couple of upsets (Western Kentucky, Villanova). In general, my brackets look like they've gone through a Cuisinart. UCLA suprised me, although they came awfully close to losing to A & M, and there are some folks in College Station (or, as my Dad likes to call it, Malfunction Junction) none too happy about how that game concluded. Memphis also played extremely well, with surprising discipline; they clearly were underrated by me. I think I'm guilty of not liking the program there, a prejudice shared with many I hear and read on this topic (the same was true of Huggins at Cincy and KSU): the programs recruit incredibly talented athletes, but they can be a bit thuggish at times (this Memphis team not as much as in the past, or Cincy's team) and, well, as at many programs, academics might take a back seat. Details. If Memphis plays like it did against Michigan State, I don't see how they lose.

In any case, before my picks, I will add that I think I get stupider listening to Billy Packer. Given the three options of listening to him, ignoring him, or always believing the contrary of what he says, I'm confident the first option kills brain cells. I'm not sure about the other two, but imagine if one got more intelligent simply by negating a given source of information. This would be useful.

Digression: I know, it sounds like a strategy to use with Bill O'Reilly. Last night O'Reilly said in consecutive sentences that the US has never done x, and that the US did x but it was ancient history. This was in the context of the claim that the US government would introduce a disease to unsuspecting citizens. They have never done that; they did that, but the Tuskegee experiments were ancient history. End of digression.

UNC vs. Kansas

Soap opera city, babeee! The KU fans--me included--probably need to get over Roy Williams going to Chapel Hill. Self is a great coach, Williams is an honorable man and put KU back on the map after it had been floundering (in spite of Larry Brown's visit). I know that UNC has Hansborough, although he should have gone to Kansas, much closer to his home (beautiful Poplar Bluff). I know they have tons of great athletes, and I'm not sure if anyone other than maybe Collins can stay up with Lawson. But I'm going out on an irrational limb, and picking Kansas. If they play as tight as they did against Davidson, they may get run out of the gym. Sometimes you just have to see which Kansas team shows up. I'm hoping for the one that beat Texas for the Big 12 Championship. But this will be a game time discovery. I can see them being within 5 points at half, and going on to win, especially if they can stop some perimeter shooters or getting one or two Tar Heels into foul trouble. I can also see Arthur with 3 fouls in the first 12 minutes, and the entire second half devoted to making the score less horrifying. Again, we'll just have to see. Go Hawks.

Memphis vs. UCLA

A lot of folks are picking UCLA here. I've consistently picked against UCLA, and consistently been wrong. I see no reason to stop now. The standard claim is that UCLA and Ben Howland's defensive genius can stop Memphis from doing what it wants. I think that may well be false. I don't see UCLA scoring much, and I don't see them stopping a lot of transitional baskets. They may also have trouble if Memphis does some pressing to speed up the game. UCLA could win if Memphis can't figure out how to deal with Love, or at least minimize the damage he can do, and if it hits a good number of outside shots. But the latter has been problematic, and the sheer athleticism of Memphis may pose serious problems for UCLA. I'm very much looking forward to this game; an interesting clash of basketball philosophies, as it were. I pick Memphis.

Championship Game

Somehow, I can imagine KU beating UNC, but UNC playing Memphis in the Final. I think I've been reading too much Walt Whitman.

As Jay Bilas has correctly pointed out, the way teams play at this stage of the tournament can vary widely from week to week. UCLA played great last week, and not so great the week before. This makes the Final Four and Championship game tricky to predict. In spite of all reasoning, evidence, logic, and sanity, I'm going with my Jayhawks. (For those betting, this means put it all on the Bruins to take the whole thing.) KU over Memphis.

Important Things

2008-03-19T09:38:00.002-04:00

Wow. I got a few comments about Ferraro and Obama. Thanks; I like reading (and responding to) those reactions, even though it does make me a bit nervous about my solipsistic universe here, invaded only on a semi-regular basis by that old cliché, the Swedish nihilist.

Anyway, on to more important things: my picks for the Final Four. This will be mercifully brief, and almost certainly wrong. A pick for each region, with some comments.

East: North Carolina.

North Carolina will play in front of supportive home crowds until they reach the Final Four. I think Tennessee is a bit too streaky and inconsistent, and the only other team that could beat UNC in this bracket is Louisville. And they won't. UNC beats UT to move on. (Upset picks here: Winthrop beats Washington State, Saint Joseph's beats Oklahoma.)

Midwest: Kansas

A lot of experts are picking Georgetown to come out of this bracket. They might well be right. Kansas sometimes has an off-night, which can certainly be a bad idea in a single-elimination tournament. But I think if they are playing their usual game, they can neutralize, or minimize, Hibbert, and their depth will drag down Georgetown in the second half. If they play like they did against Texas in the Big 12 Final, no one beats this team. Plus, my heart is with the Jayhawks. (Upset picks here: Villanova beats Vanderbilt, USC beats Wisconsin.)

South: Texas

I think this is the hardest bracket for any #1 seed. As noted above, I glanced (albeit briefly) at some of the "experts'" picks on this; in this case, I agree with most of them. I couldn't figure a way that Texas doesn't come out of this region. Along with a lot of people, I think Memphis pays the price for not playing in a very tough conference, and not being able to make free throws. I could see Pitt going far, but unless Augustine and Abrams have off nights, I just don't see anyone beating Texas in this region. (Upset picks here: Kentucky beats Marquette, Kentucky beats Stanford, Michigan State beats Memphis.)

West: not-UCLA

Everyone, and I mean everyone, is picking UCLA. I hate UCLA. I also think they are overrated, and had some pretty good luck in winning the Pac 10 Tournament. I think one good thing about the NCAA tournament is that a team's luck will run out. Maybe they are that good, and certainly Love presents problems for all teams. I did three brackets and ended up with three different teams. All, obviously, are upset picks. Western Kentucky (that would be historically shocking), Connecticut (also a huge upset), and Duke. I hate Duke, so I just thought it wouldn't be that unusual for the agony of watching them do well to continue awhile. This whole bracket comes with upsets, obviously, with the three teams just mentioned knocking of the Bruins.

Kansas over North Carolina (take that, Roy)
Texas over not-UCLA

Kansas over Texas

A thrilling repeat of the Big 12 final, with lots of comparisons to the 1988 Danny Manning-led Jayhawks improbable national championship, over a team also from the same conference, Oklahoma. (Does anyone remember Stacey King?)

The only caveat I might mention here is that this is almost all certainly wrong. If I were betting, I would take my picks and bet against them, given my record. So look for that UCLA-Tennessee final.

Tolerance

2008-03-12T11:29:00.002-04:00

Geraldine Ferraro has gotten in the news recently for some comments about Barack Obama. I can't really remember the last time I heard her name, although I'm sure her contributions to society have been vast, important, and possibly monumental. She no doubt was nominated for Vice President due to her outstanding career as a legislator and statesperson.

I think we need to be tolerant, and start giving people a bit more of a break. When Hillary Clinton was asked if she thought Barack Obama was a Muslim, rather than responding "no," she said "I have no reason to think so." As Keith Olbermann pointed out, perhaps that should have Obama's response when asked about Samantha Power's characterization of Clinton as a "monster."

I call for fewer apologies. Let people say what they think, and let the voters decide. Rather than censuring Ferraro, let's allow her to explain more fully her views. No more cries of "sexism" or "racism" without arguments or justification for the charge. Let a thousand flowers bloom.

And let's not excoriate Ms. Ferraro as a racist for saying this:

Ferraro, the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 1984 and the only woman ever nominated by a major party for either of the top two U.S. political offices, ignited a flap by telling a California newspaper that "if Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position."

"And if he was a woman he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept," Ferraro said.

Rather, let's consider than the genuine possibility that the pedigree of this comment may have even more years on it than one of racism and sexism, if such a thing is possible.

Let's consider that she is this:

An idiot.

The book

2008-02-14T09:32:00.006-05:00

As my reader probably remembers, I have a book coming out in the Summer, from the good folks at Catholic University of America Press. All praise is due to Allah for this press; it was hard to find someone to publish it.

They asked me to write the back copy recently. It's difficult, because lots of people, I think, might actually buy a book on the basis of what is on its back. So I had to write something that was zippy and provocative, but it was a book about logic, Kant, and the Critique of Pure Reason. I have pretty minimal expectations that anyone is going to be able to pick this thing up in a bookstore to begin with, but just in case, I wanted something, well, zippy and provocative.

I've given below the one I wrote, and the one I considered. Let me know which one I should use.

A

Combining the effervescent prose of Ken Kesey, the incandescent ledgerdemain of Borges, and the depth of Aristotle, Kurt Mosser has produced a book that answers—correctly—all questions about the philosophy of Kant. It also provides, in an appendix, handy instructions for how best to insulate one's house, and an outstanding recipe for Crawfish Etoufée.

Kant's reputation for difficulty is shown to be overstated, and following Mosser's simple advice, the reader will, in no time, be an expert not just on Kant' s Transcendental Philosophy, the history of logic, postmodernism, and epistemology, but also on German Idealism, Delta Blues, Sudoku, linear algebra, and how to get chocolate stains out of wool. After reading this book, the reader can stride confidently into any English, German, French or Italian bar, confident of the expectation that before the night is over, he or she will have not bought a single drink after having amazed, astounded, and baffled the crowd with insights and bons mots hitherto unavailable to homo sapiens. There is also a two-for-one coupon for Applebee's.

An underground classic.

B

If logic provides rules for thought, can there be similar rules for human experience? Kurt Mosser argues that reading Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason as an argument for such a logic of experience makes more defensible many of Kant’s most controversial claims, and makes more accessible Kant’s notoriously difficult text. By pursuing this strategic hint, Kant’s philosophical claims about human experience are seen as extraordinarily strong—as universal and necessary—but only as providing the conditions for experience to be possible. Thus just as logic doesn’t determine what thoughts are about, such a logic of experience doesn’t determine the content of experience.

Drawing on Kant’s published and unpublished texts and a wide range of texts from the history of logic and philosophical inquiries into language, Mosser provides an interpretation of some of Kant’s most difficult arguments, such as the Metaphysical Deduction. He demonstrates that, in spite of appearances, Kant appeals to common sense to reveal both the scope and limits of human knowledge. Engaging a wide range of writers, including W.V. Quine, Donald Davidson, Richard Rorty, and Michel Foucault, Kant’s arguments are also shown to retain considerable relevance to contemporary issues in epistemology, the philosophy of language, and current debates over postmodernism.

Electile Dysfunction

2008-02-03T12:01:00.000-05:00

One of the reasons—there are a few more substantive ones—that I'm supporting Obama for the Democratic nomination for President is that I simply can't bear to imagine what her Administration will look like.

All Administrations have pretty large screw-ups.

Kennedy: Bay of Pigs; Viet Nam.
Johnson: Viet Nam.
Nixon: well, he was the screw-up.
Carter: Iran.
Reagan: Iran. Nicaragua. Opening his 2nd campaign in Philadelphia MS. Many.
Bush: Economy.
Clinton: Monica.

One can argue about these screw-ups, whether they were fairly treated by opponents, by the media, etc.. That's fodder for extensive and useful debates. But that's not the point here.

Rather, imagine the Republicans without the Executive branch, as minorities in both the Senate and the House, as minorities in Governorships, and with two or three Supreme Court seats coming up before the next Presidential election in 2011. At the same time, many of these Republicans are truly annoyed with George W. Bush, who began a war that was not only disastrous economically, but politically (perhaps globally, certainly domestically). They are further miffed that a weak group of candidates left them with a choice of Romney—rejected by a substantial portion of evangelical Christians as not "really" a Christian—or McCain. The profound hatred of McCain on the far right (which overlaps with the Republican base) is palpable. Led by entertainers such as Limbaugh and Coulter, those who consider themselves "genuine conservatives" either stay home, or vote for a candidate simply because he is not Hillary Clinton. This is not a winning strategy. Ask Bob Dole. The right didn't hate Dole with anything like the passion they do McCain (plus Dole was funnier).

This leads to a situation of a lot of well-organized and well-funded conservatives sitting around with little to do but complain about the government, and attack it as best they can. They have an excellent example to follow, their own: the Arkansas Project, with such folks as Richard Mellon Scaife ponying up the dough, the American Spectator and its "journalists" pushing various tales poisoning the atmosphere and making governance that much more difficult to do. This is a result, of course, that they don't mind: imagine Clinton not distracted by the Starr investigation, imagine us not having to pay for the Starr investigation, as well as what followed. It's rather hard to imagine that other things would not have received some more attention.

The hatred this group has for Hillary Clinton has been developed and polished to a remarkable white-hot ferocity. It is easy to find pictures of her dressed as Hitler, and she is frequently referred to by the right (at least among themselves) as "Shrillery Hitlerbeast" and "Hildabeast." This is well before she even has the nomination. Imagine these angry, well-funded, and otherwise unoccupied folks who so hate her when they hear a modest proposal about health care or revision of the tax structure.

All administrations have their screw ups. If (when) Clinton has one, I fear all hell will break loose, and we will have a repeat of her husband's impeachment, with her opponents having the advantage of experience. Thus one can already find bumperstickers as the one at the top of this entry, provided by by those patriots at AIM (Accuracy in Media).

I don't want to spend four years going through that, or imagining what things won't get their due attention because of it.

That is enough to look elsewhere, so I'm supporting Obama. I think there are plenty of other reasons to embrace his candidacy, and plenty of other reasons to reject Clinton's.

But simply to avoid moving the political debate from noxious to toxic is enough of a reason for me.

China blog to ignore

2008-01-17T17:29:00.000-05:00

Some folks--okay, one drunk guy who had to choose between looking at his shoes or pretending to be interested enough to talk to me, and he spent some time determining his preference--have asked me to post some stuff about China.

This blog is devoted to things that people don't read about politics, sex, old girlfriends, baseball, and other things.

I've decided to get another blog, devoted to things that people don't read about China.

Chinese Love Affair

Check it out. Tell your friends. You, too, could be a winner.

Back soon here with some discussion of this question: is Mitt Romney black enough?

Chic

2008-01-02T15:44:00.001-05:00

The other day, listening to John Powers, the critic at large for NPR's Fresh Air, I heard him refer to "atheist chic" as one of the ten "cultural trends" of the 2007.

"Atheist chic," naturally, is a reference to Tom Wolfe's old insult "radical chic," his (perhaps justifiable) dismissal of various trendy types who embraced radical politics, and radicals, without necessarily fully understanding what those radicals represented. Thus Leonard Bernstein might have a cocktail party for some Black Panthers, implying his support for them, and in turn being responsible for not just the activities of those he invited, and not just the activities of the Black Panthers, but all the activities of all the Black Panthers and anyone who claimed to be associated with them. This used to be considered "guilt by association," but such a strategy is such an easy tool to use against one's ideological opponents, the temptation has become much too great to eschew it.

More troubling, however, was the idea that the popularity of such books as Dawkins' The God Delusion, Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as Natural Phenomenon, and even Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great could be, again, easily dismissed as "chic": a passing fancy among intellectuals and those seeking to be trendy (assuming that a) intellectuals could ever be trendy and b) this is the bandwagon on which to hop).

Powers is an interesting guy, albeit a bit obsessed about a show I've never seen, The Wire. I think he knows quite a lot about television. But I'm not so sure we should be quite as reductive of the fact that atheism—and, I think, in the American context, agnosticism—has become a teeny bit less radical as something to admit to.

Polling consistently shows that Americans admit to being more likely to vote for someone who is gay, black, or Hispanic—among the other candidates for being in groups you really couldn't be in and hope to be President—than who is an atheist. A lot of people I talk to believe that one simply cannot have a systematic and coherent set of ethical principles if they are not grounded in a theistic worldview. As Dawkins—I think—pointed out (although on reflection it sounds more like Hitchens), the percentage of atheists is sufficiently large enough that simply on mathematical grounds there have to be some of them in Congress and in other political positions. But to announce such a thing would be the death knell for anyone seeking political office in the US, in spite of the Constitution's explicit statement that no religious test shall ever be required for holding public office.

But, with that said, it has become a bit safer for ordinary people to admit that they don't believe in God. This takes a small amount of courage, depending on your peer group, your family, your job, your location, among other variables.

I take that to be progress. Mr. Powers wishes to regard it as a trend. Lord knows the theists of the world, from Mike "the Christian Candidate" Huckabee to George W. Bush to various Muslims advocating jihad to the world of the Punjab and Kashmir to Osama bin Laden to the denial of Palestinian human rights, have enough issues to deal with. I personally am starting to enjoy a great deal hearing Republicans argue about whether this is a Christian nation, and, since they think it is (it isn't), what the correct kind of Christianity is.

I'd like to think that if there were a God, she would be much more pleased with sincere atheists who, like LaPlace, simply have no need for such a hypothesis, rather than with theists who spend far too much time worrying about other folks worshipping the wrong God, or the right God in the wrong way, or the myriad other details that seem to divide the world's theists from one another.

Let's hypothesize a loving God. I show up at the Pearly Gates.

"Hey, St. Peter. Damn. I was wrong. But I lived, more or less, a moral life, much of which was in accordance with a long history of generally acceptable moral principles. Can I come in?"

Is a loving God more hip to that approach, or to that epitomized by Christian evangelicals, and the various other people I encounter who not only know the right answer, but are willing to go ahead and judge on the basis of that answer?

In any case, to dismiss atheism as chic, or as some sort of trend, does a great disservice. Looking at much of the developed, and developing world, it spends considerably less time than the US worrying about these issues, indoctrinating its children, and going to worship services. Perhaps Dennett is right, and religion is something whose time has come and gone, or taking that line along with Marx, perhaps in the future people are going to be less willing to be exploited economically, and go fight ideologically-based wars, on the basis of a supernatural hypothesis that quite possibly does more harm than good.

If it weren't such a trendy thing to say, I'd even consider it the possible harbinger of a new paradigm.

R.I.P, Oscar Peterson

2007-12-24T14:23:00.000-05:00

OK; I stole this from the A.P.

If you haven't heard Peterson's music, it's never too late to start.

Jazz great Oscar Peterson dies

By ROB GILLIES, Associated Press Writer

Oscar Peterson, whose early talent and speedy fingers made him one of the world's best known jazz pianists, died at age 82.

His death was confirmed by Hazel McCallion, mayor of Mississauga, Ontario, the Toronto suburb where Peterson lived. McCallion told The Associated Press that he died of kidney failure but that she did not know when. The hospital and police refused to comment.

"He's been going downhill in the last few months, slowing up," McCallion said, calling Peterson a "very close friend."

During an illustrious career spanning seven decades, Peterson played with some of the biggest names in jazz, including Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie. He is also remembered for touring in a trio with Ray Brown on bass and Herb Ellis on guitar in the 1950s.

Peterson's impressive collection of awards include all of Canada's highest honors, such as the Order of Canada, as well as a Lifetime Grammy (1997) and a spot in the International Jazz Hall of Fame.

His growing stature was reflected in the admiration of his peers. Duke Ellington referred to him as "Maharajah of the keyboard," while Count Basie once said "Oscar Peterson plays the best ivory box I've ever heard."

"The world has lost an important jazz player," said McCallion. "It isn't just a loss for Canada, he was world famous."

Born on Aug. 15, 1925, in a poor neighborhood southwest of Montreal, Peterson obtained a passion for music from his father. Daniel Peterson, a railway porter and self-taught musician, bestowed his love of music to his five children, offering them a means to escape from poverty.

Oscar Peterson learned to play trumpet and piano at a young age, but after a bout with tuberculosis had to concentrate on the latter.

He became a teen sensation in his native Canada, playing in dance bands and recording in the late 1930s and early 1940s. But he got his real break as a surprise guest at Carnegie Hall in 1949, after which he began touring the United States and Europe.

He quickly made a name for himself as a jazz virtuoso, often compared to piano great Art Tatum, his childhood idol, for his speed and technical skill.

He was also influenced by Nat King Cole, whose Nat King Cole Trio album he considered "a complete musical thesaurus for any aspiring Jazz pianist."

Peterson never stopped calling Canada home despite his growing international reputation. But at times he felt slighted here, where he was occasionally mistaken for a football player, standing at 6 foot 3 and more than 250 pounds.

In 2005 he became the first living person other than a reigning monarch to obtain a commemorative stamp in Canada, where he is jazz royalty, with streets, squares, concert halls and schools named after him.

Peterson suffered a stroke in 1993 that weakened his left hand, but not his passion or drive for music. Within a year he was back on tour, recording "Side By Side" with Itzhak Perlman.

As he grew older, Peterson kept playing and touring, despite worsening arthritis and difficulties walking.

"A jazz player is an instant composer," Peterson once said in a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. interview, while conceding jazz did not have the mass appeal of other musical genres. "You have to think about it, it's an intellectual form," he said.

Hey You!

2007-12-21T11:45:00.000-05:00

Too busy to write anything of substance, and anything about politics or baseball would be filled with too much invective for this time of year. China stories are on their way; in the meantime, if you want to see pictures, here's a public link to my facebook gallery of images.

China pictures with stupid captions

Some people get mad if I say one thing or another around the 3rd week of December; others get mad if I don't. Christmas, Hanukah, Festivus, Kwanzaa, Divali, Ramadan, Solstice: sometimes they all seem like pleasant enough things, grounded in a long history of tradition and superstition. Not really the best of grounds to get apoplectic about someone doing it wrong.

I'm tempted to stick with "Hey You!"

I hope it's okay, but for those of you who don't have to work a couple of days next week, for whatever reason: good. Have fun.

Bill O'Reilly Gets It Absolutely Right

2007-12-05T09:46:00.001-05:00

Some of my reader(s) may think I'm a biased, left-leaning dogmatic ideologue—and they may be right—but I think it is only just and fair (or fair and balanced) to point out when someone with whom I disagree gets something right. Especially if it is someone with whom I disagree with as often and as consistently as the good Bill O'Reilly. I offer this quote from his show on Monday, without comment: it seems to me to be as accurate as anything he has ever said, and as accurate as anything he ever will say. Fair is fair.

There are few journalistic standards left these days as we have proven on this broadcast again and again.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,314923,00.html

Wo Wei Lei Le

2007-11-22T08:13:00.000-05:00

About the only thing worse than my characters is my pinyin; although, ironically, I know the characters for "pinyin." The title is supposed to say "I'm back," more or less. Zou you, you know.

Look, I'm back. It's 8:17 a.m., Thanksgiving morning. I was trying to finish a paper--well, actually, I did finish it--and got down to the old office at 2:45 a.m.. I think I'm still on Shanghai time. Which means, I think, that my body is convinced it's next Wednesday or something.

Lots of stories forthcoming from my trip to China, and I know my reader is looking forward to that.

But until then, Happy Thanksgiving. R.I.P., Joe Nuxhall; the ol' lefthander really is rounding third and heading home.

Book Release

2007-10-04T10:08:00.001-04:00

Apparently, La Coultera's evil twin Enna has written a new book: If Republicans Had Souls, They Would Be Democrats. Perhaps you've seen Enna promoting her book on television show after television show after television show, in print, on the Web, on the radio, consistently complaining how the media ignores her?

The book starts with this arresting claim, before going on to provide some insightful analysis, based (evidently) on a quick--if not random--perusal of a couple of databases, and a substantial commitment to an alternative reality:

When I see the hot spittle flying from their mouths and the veins bulging and pulsing above their eyes, well, that’s when I feel truly alive.

Of course, Enna is quite good at generating that kind of reaction. Some object to her approach, based on a dearth of information, misinformation, made-up information, lies, caricatures, a remarkable ability to avoid arguments, rhetorical excess, and a marvelous inability to recognize self-reference. (For instance, the other day she complained about conservatives paying too much attention to language, while apparently not noticing that she makes her substantial living using language and objecting to those who don't use it correctly--that is, paying quite a lot of attention to it.)

She puts conservatives into a bit of a bind, however: those liberals who like their red meat--or tofu--love her stuff. Those conservatives who denounce her end up providing her just that much more support among the true believers--yet ignoring her (which is hard, given the level of media exposure she receives while bewailing her lack of media exposure) seems to be capitulating to her more egregious claims. Quite the dilemma.

In any case, those liberal true believers have come to rely on her acerbic tongue to make points that aren't otherwise allowed in polite society, so I thought I'd provide some of Enna's lines here, for those who worry about supporting such views publically, while holding them privately:

Men with small penises like to play dress-up. Especially on aircraft carriers dressed up as fighter pilots, and in Texas dressed up as cowboys.

I see that Jenna Bush is getting married. Hope the fiancé likes re-treads--party girls in Austin have usually been around the block a couple of times.

It takes a great deal of courage to send young men and women to their deaths for no obvious reason, and then suggest that if one of them criticizes such a policy that they are traitors. While honoring their service, of course. Their service as cannon fodder.

Spending money on preventative health care, and early health care, is cheaper than other approaches, not to mention more moral. Conservatives call it "socialism," while they call funnelling billions of dollars to political contributors' corporations "capitalism." They no doubt can't see that invisible hand while it is in the pocket of those who don't have access to political power. They also apparently fell asleep reading Smith's On the Wealth of Nations, or were too hungover to understand his argument.

When running against someone with three purple hearts who was actually in combat, make fun of those decorations and hope no one notices that the greatest danger you faced during Viet Nam was getting a DUI in Alabama while avoiding the National Guard service that allowed you to avoid Viet Nam.

Drunken frat-boys who find Jesus may be redeemed, but should they really be allowed access to nuclear weapons?

Conservatives hate affirmative action. Except maybe in those cases where the kid's dad is President, Grandpa was a Senator, and the kid himself isn't really good at much except driving businesses into the ground. In that case, giving him a hand up really isn't giving him a hand-out.

The combination of Clarence Thomas's affection for pornography and the willingness of the Administration to spy on American citizens sets up some intriguing possibilities. Do you think Thomas will be interested in viewing "The Larry Craig Tapes"?

Apparently, when a science problem gets really tough to solve, or explain, conservatives expect God to snap his--definitely his--fingers to provide the solution, or explanation. This way God will reward those who object to the icky kinds of science done since, say, 1860.

Conservatives like black and brown people as long as they don't vote, don't talk, and bring the wine to the table on time.

Clearly these kinds of things are beyond the pale; it is understandable why conservatives object to such attacks based on little but innuendo and character assassination. One wonders why the author of these things is allowed such access to the media, and is so lionized--and so defended--by liberals. Have they no shame?

The Road to Mandalay

2007-09-27T09:54:00.000-04:00

In one country, a hundred thousand people march against an oppressive regime; twenty years ago, when the same thing happened, that regime shot them down, in the thousands. This country has virtually no free speech, is closed for all practical purposes to journalists, and even most tourists can't enter or stay very long if they do. The notion of human rights is unrecognized by the military junta that runs it; the opposition leader has been under house arrest for a decade, and even prevented from being with her husband at his deathbed. She won the Nobel Peace Prize, but is barely mentioned in the American media. Let's call it "Burma" (and let's not call it "Myanmar").

In another country, an oppressive regime invades a neighbor over disputed oil fields. The US invades, destroys its military, and imposes economic sanctions that directly or indirectly lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands. The US also maintains its rights to that country's air space. Later, this country is invaded again, its tyrannical leader deposed then executed, a dysfunctional government imposed; anywhere from 75,000 to 500,ooo citizens are killed, as well as 4,000 American troops. The monetary cost of this invasion is now most easily stated in the hundreds of billions of dollars, approaching a trillion; hidden costs have led some economists to suggest two to three trillion dollars is a more accurate sum. The invasion also led not just to increased instability in an entire region, it opened up a power vaccuum into which one of our "sworn enemies" has entered. Let's call it "Iraq."

While Harding, Grant, and Nixon may give him a run for his money, George W. Bush has worked quite hard to get on the list of worst US Presidents. But to his credit, he has imposed and increased sanctions against the first country, although clearly the second country has received a bit more of his attention.

More disturbing, still, is that much of the American media feels content simply to mention the first country, as if it is having a bit of a tussle; indeed, the other night, Chris "Tweetie" Matthews treated the entire thing as a joke. Noting that Bush may have overstated things a bit by claiming that the political fight in Burma is on all Americans' minds, he then went on to indicate that this was, more or less, not worth thinking about, given that Americans really just think of Burma Shave in this context. More disgusting was that the three "journalists" discussing the topic laughed and agreed. Odd one might hope that such time could be devoted to discussing what was actually going on, but somehow watching the mainstream media, I know much more about OJ's recent escapades, Michael Vick's recent escapades, Lindsey Lohan's recent escapades, Britney Spears's recent escapades, and, no doubt, some equally important escapade will be the hot topic on such shows. If I were to rely on such shows--beyond a perfunctory headline and mention of the issue, I would think maybe Bob, Bing and Dorothy had done another road movie, "The Road to Mandalay."

One of the few readily-accessible discussions of this comes at Truthout.com, from J. Sri Raman, who makes an important point about lip service to sanctions vs. companies whose business maintains the status quo and, by increasing the wealth and power of the reigning junta, exacerbates the problem:

President George Bush himself has decided to take a hand in the matter and take on the junta. On September 24, US National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley proclaimed that the president was to "unveil new steps" against the junta and "try and force the regime into a change." The new steps, however, did not seem to include any sanctions against US or other foreign big-money operations aimed at profiteering at the expense of the Burmese people.

Hadley told the media: "He (President Bush) is going to announce that there will be additional sanctions directed at key members of the regime, and those that provide financial support to them." But Hadley, however, acted coy about further details, pleading that he needed to preserve "a little element of surprise" so that those targeted "don't, quite frankly, hide their assets before the sanctions come into force.... So we're going to be a little bit - intentionally a little vague on what is intended, so that they will have their intended effect." The statements of Bush and his administration on the subject are even more intentionally vague about the most important source of the ill-gotten wealth of the members of the junta. The pro-democracy movement in Burma has repeatedly pointed out that the military rulers have allowed ruthless exploitation of the country's coveted oil and gas resources by multinational corporations and, in the process, enriched themselves.

The offshore activities of these corporations have made no difference to the grinding poverty of the people. Ironically, in fact, they have led to a situation where the junta ordered a 500 percent hike in fuel prices, triggering a revolt in August 2007.

The contribution of a giant US corporation to the situation has been conspicuous, according to the anti-junta camp. Prominent among the multinationals included in a "Dirty List" of such companies, brought out by the camp in December 2005, was Chevron, formally Unocal. Authors of the list noted that Chevron was one of the joint venture partners developing the Yadana offshore gas field in Burma, which earns the military regime millions of dollars. (Chevron also owns Texaco.)

The Unocal Corporation figured earlier in internationally backed Burmese campaigns against forced labor, land appropriation and similar other gross human-rights violations in the gas and oil projects initiated by the junta behind the people's backs. The affected villagers came together in 1996 and sued Unocal and France's Total for complicity in the abuses. The villagers charged that the companies knew about and benefited from the Burmese army's use of torture, rape and unlawful land seizures to uproot people from areas slated for "development." The lawsuits were settled after the companies agreed to make due compensation only eight years later, in 2004.

The Bush regime has not cared all these years to persuade either its old or newfound allies to discipline their own corporate giants in the cause of Burmese democracy.

Appearances, of course, were kept up. In December 2005, Britain's former prime minister and fervent Bush backer Tony Blair called on companies not to trade with Burma. A survey released then, however, showed that, since Labor came to power, imports from Burma had quadrupled, rising from 17.3 million pounds in 1998 to 74 million pounds in 2004.

It was also found that Britain ranked as the second-largest investor in Burma, as it allowed foreign companies to use the British Virgin Islands to channel investment. The Blair government remained deaf to repeated demands from Burma's democracy movement and the British trade unions for discontinuing this investment. No one expects any improvement in the official British attitude in this regard during the Gordon Brown regime, despite its lip service to the cause of democracy in Burma.

I think it is a sad commentary that Aung San Suu Kyi is virtually unknown and unmentioned in the US media. I think it is an equally sad commentary that I even have to note this, and that anyone reading this knows just how sad it is. I saw over 30 minutes on three different news channels discussing the phenomenon that Bill O'Reilly said some things about black people in restaurants being surprisingly like white people in restaurants. Do we really need this kind of proportionality?

For those interested in the apparently peripheral issue of people marching in the streets, risking and losing their lives to challenge a 20 year old regime as oppressive as virtually any--including those nasties on the Axis of Evil--here's a place to start:

US Campaign for Burma

Our friends at Move On

2007-09-19T09:11:00.000-04:00

Here's the story: Petraeus testifies before Congress, supporting the surge and indicating that the Bush strategy for Iraq is a good one. Move On runs an ad with Petraeus's picture, captioned "General Petraeus/Or General Betray Us?" Immediately, Move On is said to call Petraeus a liar, all sorts of things are said about the group and its ad, and nowhere does anyone seem to note that underneath the question--which is a question, although perhaps to be interpreted as a rhetorical question--is text. For those interested in what the ad actually said (this seems to eliminate virtually every media outlet, print and electronic, that I have encountered), I thought I would quote it here, in full.

General Petraeus is a military man constantly at war with the facts. In 2004, just before the election, he said there was “tangible progress” in Iraq and that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward.” And last week Petraeus, the architect of the escalation of troops in Iraq, said, “We say we have achieved progress, and we are obviously going to do everything we can to build on that progress.”

Every independent report on the ground situation in Iraq shows that the surge strategy has failed. Yet the General claims a reduction in violence. That’s because, according to the New York Times, the Pentagon has adopted a bizarre formula for keeping tabs on violence. For example, deaths by car bombs don’t count. The Washington Post reported that assassinations only count if you’re shot in the back of the head — not the front. According to the Associatedwill not admit what everyone knows: Iraq is mired in an Press, there have been more civilian deaths and more American soldier deaths in the past three months than in any other summer we’ve been there. We’ll hear of neighborhoods where violence has decreased. But we won’t hear that those neighborhoods have been ethnically cleansed. Most importantly, General Petraeusunwinnable religious civil war. We may hear of a plan to withdraw a few thousand American troops. But we won’t hear what Americans are desperate to hear: a timetable for withdrawing all our troops. General Petraeus has actually said American troopswill need to stay in Iraq for as long as ten years.

Today, before Congress and before the American people, General Petraeus is likely to become General Betray Us.

Thus, the accusation is really that Petraeus, to use the overused term, "cherry picked" (and massaged like an enormous piece of Kobe beef) the data from Iraq to support the Administration's strategy. To omit various things and to interpret various things in a misleading way is to lie, at least by omission. Did Petraeus do this? Is it fair to ask?

A couple of questions:

What if Petraeus's "independent" report came out and said "The US is in an intractable spot, making it more difficult to fight terrorism, is exacerbating the violence in Iraq, and is making Iran stronger and much more dangerous"?

What would the Bush administration's response have been?

Why has the considerably more nuanced report from the Pentagon received so little attention, relative to the Petraeus report? One story on it from the Washington Post summarizes the Pentagon report this way:

Security Took 'Turn for Worse' In Southern Iraq, Report Says

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 18, 2007; A14

Security is deteriorating in southern Iraq as rival Shiite militias vying for power have stepped up their attacks after moving out of Baghdad to avoid U.S.-led military operations, according to the latest quarterly Pentagon report on Iraq released yesterday.

"The security environment in southern Iraq took a notable turn for the worse in August" with the assassination of two governors, said the report, which covers June through August. "There may be retaliation and an increase in intra-Shi'a violence throughout the South," it said, whereas previously the violence was centered in the main southern city of Basra.

Iran has intensified its training and funding of the Shiite militia, and Iranian-influenced militias are believed to be responsible for killing the two governors, as well as for a nearly 40 percent increase in attacks using lethal weapons known as explosively formed projectiles, compared with the mid-February to mid-May period, the report said.

The growing violence in the south is one factor making it unlikely that Iraq's leaders -- hampered by a "zero sum" mentality -- will make headway in the fall on key political resolutions, the report concluded. "In the short term, Iraqi political leaders will likely be less concerned about reconciliation than with consolidating power and posturing for a future power struggle," it said.

We don't hear quite as much about this as we do about the surge "working."

Somebody asked me the other day to summarize the President's most recent speech, which I actually watched. My summary: "Stay the course. Hand over the problem to the next President. God Bless America."

One other thing the media hasn't found nearly as fascinating as OJ memorabilia and tasering students in Florida is the oil deal the Kurds recently signed with Hunt Oil, run by a very big pal of George W. Bush, indicating that the Kurds, at least, are either turning their back on a potential political solution, or betting that it simply isn't going to happen. This seems to be sort of important, but Paul Krugman seems to be one of the few talking about it. I mean, really--OJ got arrested. Surely that trumps everything else in the liberal media, and FOX, and wherever an informed citizenry hopes to find information. Right?

End of Summer Reading

2007-08-28T13:38:00.000-04:00

I spent much of the time this Summer reading, and sweating. The product of my toils, with occasional comments.

Crais, Robert

I heard good things about "The Monkey's Raincoat," which I liked quite a lot. I then decided to read the collected works. Sometimes a bit formulaic, and I'd take Thomas Perry over him any day, but he writes well, has interesting stories and observations, and two good characters. Interestingly, a relatively minor character--Elvis Cole's partner, Joe Pike--turned out to be more intriguing that Cole, and got two of his own novels.

The Monkey's Raincoat
Stalking the Angel
Lullaby Town
Free Fall
Voodoo River
Sunset Express
Indigo Slam
L.A. Requiem
The Last Detective
The Forgotten Man
The Watchman
Demolition Angel
Hostage
The Two-Minute Rule

Iacocca, Lee Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

I have a friend Mike. He gives me lots of interesting books to read, even though I tell him I've got other stuff to deal with. He doesn't care. I end up reading them. Lee has some good ideas, and a lot of slogans. No one will pay attention to his complaints, although in some cases it might be a good idea.

Finkelstein, Norman Beyond Chutzpah

I've read Finkelstein's work before, both on how the Holocaust was treated in the U.S., and his evisceration of Joan Peter's "From Time Immemorial." Finkelstein, as you may know, was involved in a nasty--and to my mind, foolish and short-sighted--tenure battle, in part because Alan Dershowitz got involved. If you had been humiliated in the same way as Dershowitz, you probably would have gotten involved, too. In this case, a close reader and trained historian takes on a lawyer, his rhetoric, and his ideology. On its merits, the historian wins. On the other hand, one is wealthy and tenured at Harvard Law; the other, as of this writing, is looking for a job. It gets ironic when you consider the case in the context of justice.

Dershowitz, Alan Blasphemy: How the Religious Right is Hijacking the Declaration of Independence

To be fair, and because Mike imposed this on me, I thought I should read it. I agree with most of what it says, although I agreed with it earlier when I read Kramnick and Moore's "The Godless Constitution." Very little original stuff here, although some of the arguments are well-stated, and the very topic is an important one. When I read or hear Dershowitz, I always wonder what exactly he did to become the youngest tenured faculty member at Harvard Law? Because I haven't seen much evidence, lately, of what it would have been.

Greenwald, Glen A Tragic Legacy

Greenwald may be better known for his short "What Would A Patriot Do?," but this was a very nice discussion of the influence on Mani on George W. Bush, and uses Bush's Manichean world-view to discuss mistakes in the past (Iraq) and the potential for mistakes in the future (Iran). A bit scary at times, but some very nice writing, and a good reminder of what the Iranians were saying in 2003 about negotiating a whole raft of issues, including nuclear energy/weapons, Israel, etc.. The Bush administration doesn't seem to think Israel and Palestine is an issue worth much discussion or energy. It is wrong, and Greenwald is good at showing why.

Pennock, Robert Tower of Babel
Dennett, Daniel Breaking the Spell
Mills, David Atheist Universe

I'm planning to teach a seminar on atheism next time I offer a seminar, so I try to keep up on what is becoming a voluminous literature, with a great deal of overlap and repetition. Pennock's book is thorough, and takes seriously the arguments of both creationism and intelligent design. He particularly focuses on Phillip Johnson, and is a good reminder that virtually no biologists (yeah, I know about Michael Behe) employs supernaturalism. Dennett's is more of a philosopher's, than a philosopher of science's, book; both Pennock and Dennett cover much of the same ground in certain ways, but Dennett's angle is to argue that religion could be regarded as an evolutionary strategy. One whose time has come and gone. Mills' book is more superficial--although that isn't really a knock, it's just relative to Pennock and Dennett--and covers a wide range of general issues relating to atheism. A few interesting stories, and some helpful analogies.

McCullough, David 1776

I'm teaching the history of American political theory in China in October, so I thought I'd better get started. This kind of book is often derided as "popular" history--which it is--but I learned a good bit about the role New York played in the American Revolution, Washington, Paine, Howe, various other British folks, the degree of support the British has among the colonists, and lots of other things. A good way to get started. Next up: De Tocqueville's Democracy in America.

Pomfret, John Chinese Lessons

A very interesting discussion from a first-person perspective on the changes that have taken place--particularly among intellectuals and those who grew up during the Cultural Revolution--in the Middle Kingdom. A few views--specifically about the reasons China went into/invaded Viet Nam--that I might quarrel with, but the strength of the book is its account of various people, from Bluffer Ye to Little Guan. As they say, it's tough to be Chinese. I do wish Pomfret hadn't made it sound so darn easy to learn Chinese.

I think I might have forgotten a couple of things I recently read; if so, I may add them.

O'Reilly and the Daily Kos

2007-08-14T13:21:00.001-04:00

First of all, I probably don't have enough time, energy, or space (my physics pals will be happy to provide an equation showing the relationship among these) to do justice to this topic. But a number of my friends (mostly on what, in the US, qualifies as the "left") are unfamiliar with the Daily Kos website, which has been under attack recently by pundit extraordinaire, Bill O'Reilly. I won't go into all the details, but here's the gist:

The Daily Kos is a political blog, with lots and lots of visitors. It is explicitly committed to electing Democrats, preferably of the "progressive" stripe, to office, especially in contrast to their Republican opponents.

They have a convention, which this year invited the Presidential candidates to attend. All the Democrats except Biden--who had, evidently, a scheduling conflict--attended. To the best of my knowledge, the Republican candidates were also invited, but declined.

Bill O'Reilly has argued--repeatedly--that the Daily Kos is (and these are quotes, or nearly so) no different than the Klan, or the Nazis. His subsequent argument seems to be this:

Daily Kos is no different than the Nazis and the Klan.

Nothing different than the Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan do. And yet the Democratic Party chooses to embrace and legitimize this website.

Therefore

A candidate who appears at their convention is no worse than a candidate appearing at a convention of the Klan or the Nazis (although I believe the standard term for the latter is "rally," as in Nürnberg).

But Republicans have appeared at Bob Jones University. The founder of this institution made a couple of, um, provocative remarks: "I would rather see a saloon on every corner than a Catholic in the White House. I would rather see a nigger as president"; "God is the author of segregation."

O'Reilly didn't really seem to think it was a problem--at least nothing like Daily Kos--when John Ashcroft accepted an honorary degree from Bob Jones University. Rather:

I spoke with Bob Jones III last week, and the interracial dating ban was still in effect when Ashcroft showed up. He needs to explain his appearance. . . . any public servant that accepts an honor from that school should provide an explanation.

On the other hand, when he was criticizing Brown University for having a party that seemed to involve sex and drugs, O'Reilly chose Bob Jones (not Wheaton? or Hope? or Albion? or Patrick Henry? or Liberty?) as his contrast of choice--saying, and probably correctly, “It doesn’t happen at Bob Jones [University].”

The evidence for O'Reilly's claim about the Daily Kos comes from the comments section, apparently, where the occasional scurillous thing is said, as well as the posting of a rather ribald picture of Joseph Lieberman going down on our maximum leader. I'm assuming it was photo-shopped.

I go to the Daily Kos frequently, sometimes more than once a day. It is a vibrant and active community of hundreds of thousands of people. I have also gone to lots and lots of right wing sites, with considerably fewer people--including those of folks self-identified as members of the Klan, or as Nazis.

There are some problems with O'Reilly's argument. First--and probably fundamental--is that its premise is false. One can read Daily Kos on a very regular basis, including a lot of the comments, without seeing anything but spirited debate and discussion, for the most part predicated on a commitment to the Democrats. No racism, anti-semitism, sexism. It doesn't really take that long at other sites to find all of these, often in the sites "statement of principles."

On one pretty conservative, but not vicious, site I frequent, the moderator of the board--a nice guy, if a bit naïve--recently asked

How long will it take for the world to recognize that Whites are being abused and taken advantage of? When will it be politically correct for other races to go far out of their way to accommodate our needs, and our sensibilities?

This is a comment that presupposes considerably more dubious identity politics than virtually any posting--with the possible exception of some comments, all of which would take a really long time to read--at the Daily Kos.

Others--Stephen Colbert better than anyone--has also shown that holding a site responsible for the views expressed in its comment section is ludicrous. (Colbert did a nice bit about boycotting a local Outback Steakhouse, because what was promised on its bathroom wall was not his idea of a "good time.") If something is really offensive, most places remove it. If something is questionable, some places leave it, some places remove it. The Daily Kos may take the strategy of leaving it, for the very argument about what qualifies as "questionable" is, of course, a political issue. O'Reilly's own site doesn't have this problem, I guess, for a few reasons: one must pay to join (Daily Kos is free); O'Reilly scrubs the comments section; O'Reilly (I've heard) removes members who are there--and have paid--to find comments that are scurillous, in order to have ammunition for their goose/gander argument.

Far too many of my friends--and folks in the "liberal" media--want to claim that O'Reilly is stupid. I don't think that is the case. I don't necessarily think he is all that bright, but what I think is going on here is that O'Reilly simply is using a set of conceptual tools appropriate to one kind of medium, and applying it to the "blogosphere." He's not really capable of thinking within the context of the Daily Kos and its extended milieu, and rather than adjusting his framework, he rejects those who work within a context so alien to him. He probably rejects those who use the word "milieu," as well, a position with which I have some sympathy.

Two good tests:

One: go to the Daily Kos and read it every other day for two weeks. Then go to a Klan site, or a Nazi site, and see if you can tell the difference.

Two: watch if, and how, the following (current as of today) phenomenon is treated. On Tommy Thompson's announcement that he was abandoning the race for President, this bit of "Danny Boy" doggerl was posted at the Daily Kos:

O Tommy boy/
the polls, the polls are falling/
from Council Bluffs, and down to Waterloo/
the summer's gone, and your numbers are dying/
because you failed/
to raise money like a Jew/
And don't come back, your time has come and gone, son/
You're just a hack, who can't hold in his pee/
But you were good for laughs, at least, dear cheesehead/
O Tommy Boy, O Tommy Boy/
we'll miss you . . . see? So? I'm sorry, what was that last word? My hearing aid isn't working . . .

The test is to see how this is treated (if it is), by the critics (including O'Reillly). The two comments boldfaced in black are Thompson's reasons for having given a problematic answer about firing workers because they were gay; the one in red will get the attention (and has, already), for it clearly sounds anti-Semitic, and one of O'Reilly's concerns was the alleged anti-Semitism of the Daily Kos (to be fair, it was pretty brutal to Joseph Lieberman; to be more fair, one can criticize a Jew without being anti-Semitic (otherwise, all of Chomsky's critics are guilty of this); the criticism of Lieberman had nothing to do with anything except his being a Bush lickspittle--especially on the war; and, finally, they were right, because Lieberman is a Bush lickspittle, especially on the war.)

The other part of the test is to see if it is mentioned that the claim (again, above boldfaced in red) is a reference to Thompson's own comment, again prompting an apology:

Washington - GOP presidential candidate Tommy Thompson apologized to a Jewish audience Monday after saying that making money is "sort of part of the Jewish tradition."

At the outset of a speech to the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the former Wisconsin governor told an audience of a few hundred people that, "I'm in the private sector and for the first time in my life I'm earning money."

Added Thompson: "You know that's sort of part of the Jewish tradition, and I do not find anything wrong with that. I enjoy that."

For a longer account, from Thompson's home newspaper.

In sum, it isn't that O'Reilly is stupid. It's that he either doesn't get, or doesn't want to.

An update: Here's a posting dealing with O'Reilly, the alleged anti-Semitism of the Daily Kos, and a discussion about whether O'Reilly should be sued for defamation of character.

Zhong Guo

2007-08-09T07:43:00.001-04:00

Around the first week of October, I will be headed for (as you can see from the above) the Middle Kingdom. I'll be teaching the history of American Political Theory in Nanjing--in English, of course--to students at Nanjing University, and possibly another university in Nanjing, for six weeks. Flying into the Northern Kingdom (Beijing), down to the Southern Kingdom (Nanjing), and flying out of the the town by the sea (Shanghai). Nothing like the chance to fly all the way across the world to talk about the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Federalist Papers, as well as a couple of things that followed, namely the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and, just for fun, the Chinese Exclusion Act. Sort of theory vs. practice.

Perhaps most ironic is that I will be talking about the philosophical foundations of the Bill of Rights during a US Administration that views most of the rights adumbrated there as "optional," with the exception of the Second Amendment, of course. I'm almost with my conservative friends these days in thinking that with this kind of government, we should have access to guns, and lots of them, if only to protect us from our own government.

Anyway, anyone reading this should leave a comment, and, especially, if you've been to China, offer tips, suggestions, etc.. I may not be doing a lot of travelling--there's lots to see just in Nanjing--but I may try to do some.

I may try to blog from there, if I get a chance; no guarantees. I may also blog about my experience with learning the language. On my good days, I can ask young women back to my apartment, offering them the options of beer, wine, tennis, or bowling; I can also ask "who farted?" and complain that my toilet is clogged up. As far as reading and writing, I've got about 200 characters--I've been told after 300 they start to get easier, and I'm certainly hoping that's true--with the goal of getting to around 5,000. Depending on who you ask, one needs a minimum of 2,000 to 3,000 to read a newspaper, get around, etc., and I hope to do better than that. On the other hand, to become an officer in the Imperial Army, I will need 40,000, so that career option seems no longer a strong possiblity. Tant pis.

Pas de deux

2007-07-31T07:38:00.000-04:00

When I think of famous pairs, I think of Lunt and Fontanne, Beavis and Butthead, Mick and Keith, Buck and Bubbles, Abbott and Costello, Heloise and Abelard, Gilbert and Sullivan, and Fred and Ginger. And, of course, of Paul and Woody. (I've switched their names in order to protect their identities.)

I had the good luck of looking up an old pal on the Internet (which is now on computer!), tracked him down, and it turned out he and another friend of his (and mine) were coming to Cincinnati, to see the Reds turn in whatever pathetic performance they might muster against a team--with the possible exception of the Phillies (see below)--with almost nothing but a glorious history of pathetic performances. They got me a ticket, I drove down, and we caught up. Great weather, interesting conversation, a less than riveting ballgame, and they paid for everything. How cool is that?

Typically, all of us had lost a bunch of hair, gained a bit of weight, and we were wiser indeed (but with so much further to go). I first met Woody in 1975, when he was a naïve, enthusiastic freshman; I met his friend Paul--who is, more or less, still a naïve, enthusiastic freshman--a bit later. I hadn't seen either of them for about 20 years, but as has been pointed out by many others, perhaps a good sign of friendship is that one can step back into these conversations without missing a beat. These two make a point, each summer, of visiting a different ballpark and taking in a game (or three), a fine idea, very much following in the footsteps of the afore-mentioned Heloise and Abelard.

In addition to catching up on mutual friends and what they had done (and to whom), we discussed important things, such as identifying the three rivers that meet at Pittsburgh to give their old ballpark its name; to see if I could name, from memory, the starting 9 of the 1967 St. Louis Cardinals (I could); and the role of unions in a global economy (here Woody started sounding like he had spent too much time paying attention to certain kinds of law professors).

The day was great, capped off by Paul's idea of walking on the wild side: appetizers and/or dessert at Applebee's. Eatin' good in the neighborhood. It was like hanging with Tupac and Notorious B.I.G..

It was a most enjoyable time, and reminded me of how important both old and new friends are to making our way through this particular spatio-temporal fragment of the cosmos. I think the entire experience can be encapsulated by the moment Paul looked at me, after a brief, contemplative silence, and asked slowly, carefully, and thoughtfully:

Kurt, do you respect knuckleballers?

My Hero

2007-07-24T08:51:00.000-04:00

While I've been teaching a course on film, I've gotten to read some interesting things, and watch (or re-watch) some very great movies. Somehow this got left off of my top 10 list, but I'm looking forward to seeing it.

R.W. Emerson and the Phillies

2007-07-16T16:58:00.000-04:00

Sunday night, July 15 2007, the Cardinals beat the Philadelphia Phillies to hand the Phillies their 10,000th loss.

I know Emerson said a "foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," but I think people don't give this franchise sufficient credit. They have one World Series title (a bit flukish, to my mind) in 1980, beating a better but very inexperienced Kansas City Royals team. Tug McGraw doesn't thrown one under Brett's chin, which apparently got into his head? Willie Wilson doesn't set the World Series strikeout record? Maybe it goes otherwise.

Other than than, they've had Carlton (bad trade from the Cardinals), Richie Ashburn, Grover Cleveland Alexander (whose greatest moment came in the 1926 Series, for the Cardinals); Mike Schmidt, that guy who bet on baseball and was banned for life, John Kruk and various other mullets, Mitch "Wild Thing" Williams (best known for giving up the Series-winning walk-off homerun to ex-Cub Joe Carter), and a couple of other guys (who remembers Billy Hamilton?) They also seemed to have their fair share of jerks: the betting guy, Darren Daulton, Larry Bowa, and, of course, their fans.

Other than that, they've sucked for a really long time, and for much of that time, they really sucked. I think one should admire consistency when one sees it, and with the Phillies, they've really sucked for a really long time. How bad do you have to be to need a 1,900+ game winning streak to get to .500? To lead the Cubs by 400+ losses?

I like to think 10,000 losses is 100 seasons with 100 losses each season. Admittedly, the Philllies started sucking before 1907, so there is that. But for a good part of that time, they only had a chance to lose 154, not 162, games.

The Phillies website notes

No one could have realized it at the time, but when the Phillies were formed in 1883, history was in the making. Now, as the 21st century begins, the Phillies are the oldest, continuous, one-name, one-city franchise in all of professional sports.

That is one of the finest statements that the glass is half-full of water I have ever seen.

A Quick One

2007-07-09T10:53:00.000-04:00

If you go down to my post for April 1, I wrote this:

Biggio gets his 3,000 hit with his team 14.5 games out of first. Sounds just to me.

It turns out the Astros were 13.5 games out of first when Biggio got his 3,000 hit.

Sorry for the mistake.

Movie Time

2007-06-22T14:25:00.000-04:00

Okay, I start teaching Monday, the 25th. Two classes, oddly complementary—the Philosophy of Music, and the Philosophy of Film.

I'm pretty sure I don't think there is a "Philosophy of Film," but I'm open-minded. In any case, this summer we will be trying to figure out what makes a film a "great" film. In the past, I've done an extended look at a particular genre (I've done Romantic Comedies of the 30s and 40s, Film Noir, and the Western); that approach has worked nicely, although I'd like a better book about noir. I was tempted to do that approach again, but I had a feeling I might have a revolt on my hands after the 6th or 7th Ozu film (some of us like watching people sit on tatami and talk; some don't); my lovely bride suggested Blaxploitation films, which was very tempting, but I was afraid it would make me look stupid(er). Maybe next summer.

So this time around, I've compiled a list of films that constitute, more or less, a critics' consensus of the greatest films ever made (I've added a couple of my own, and deleted a couple of consensus choices, such as "2001: A Space Odyssey"—hey, it's my course!) All we have to do is watch great films, read a book (Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art), and figure out what makes these films great, what on our list shouldn't be there, what not on our list should be, and why making such lists is silly. Yes, Wittgenstein will be involved.

I'd love to hear what my reader thinks; feel free to offer up alternative lists, alterations, suggested additions, deletions, etc.. Remember, this isn't (for the most part) my list, but a consensus of critics from Sight and Sound, Cahiers du Cinema, the American Film Institute, and whatever other lists I could find.

So, with a drumroll:

1. Citizen Kane (Welles)
2. Tokyo Story (Ozu)
3. Vertigo (Hitchcock)
4. The Godfather/The Godfather Part II (Coppola)
5. Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein)
6. Sunrise (Murnau)
7. Bicycle Thief (De Sica)
8. Raging Bull (Scorcese)
9. Rules of the Game (Renoir)
10. Au hasard Balthazar (Bresson)
11. The Searchers (Ford)
12. City Lights (Chaplin)
13. The Passenger (Antonioni)
14. Out of the Past (Tourneur)

The best kind of "Top Ten" lists, of course, have 14 members.

Rorty

2007-06-15T09:59:00.001-04:00

I thought it worth taking a moment to note the passing of Richard Rorty, one-time philosopher, then "humanities" guy. My blogosphere friend Akrasia described Rorty as perhaps the best-known philosopher outside of the discipline, and the most disliked within it. That may be true (although the latter does have some pretty substantial competition; say, Michael Levin?), but Rorty, to my mind, was important.

Another friend and I got together to drink a bit of beer to observe Rorty's death, and his wife asked me to sum up Rorty's view in a short, accessible, way. (I failed, according to her.) I suggested that he emphasized pragmatics and communication, focusing on interpersonal agreement via Wittgenstein (late), Dewey, and Heidegger in order to develop, maintain, and invigorate conversation about fairness, democracy, rights, and whatever it is we know to the extent we can know it. He insisted on "edifying" philosophy over "systematic" philosophy, and regarded modern (which in philosophy is, more or less Bacon/Descartes up through Kant or up to Hegel) philosophy as "held captive by a picture," that human beings could progress, perhaps asymptotically, to penetrating reality and describing it correctly through mathematics, science, and possibly linguistics/grammar/logic. (I have in mind here, particularly, his most influential book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, but also some of the papers in contingency and responsibility. One of the best things he ever wrote is the Introduction to his collection The Linguistic Turn.)

Rorty views that conception as nonsensical and a fool's errand, and it may well be. On the other hand, Rorty also had to do some remarkable, uh, "interpreting" of some of the authors he attacks in order to make them fit this picture. As Schopenhauer (or Jonathan Bennett) might say, that is to do the history of philosophy à la Procrustes.

Two brief examples: 1) Rorty lumps Kant with Descartes as seeing the human mind as a mirror, and that both think, by "polishing" this mirror, we penetrate more and more closely to reality. Descartes may think this, although I have my doubts; Kant certainly does not. 2) Rorty characterizes Kant's view of truth as ascribing to phenomenal reality (what Kant would consider judgements about human experience, conditioned a priori by what makes such judgements possible) a "second-rate" truth. This means that such truth (really truth-evaluable) claims are inferior, and implies that there are other such truth (or truth-evaluable) claims that are "first-rate." This would be fine, except that it flies in the face of what Kant actually says about truth, truth-evaluability, objectivity, and judgement.

Yet another friend once let me see his notes from a class on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason that Rorty gave at Princeton. These notes made it clear that Rorty knew attributing these views to Kant was obviously inaccurate. But that didn't prevent him from doing so, in order to make his narrative of the history of modern philosophy read a bit more coherently.

Not good form. But I will also insist that he was important in making people confront (or reconfront) various issues, such as the relationship between philosophy and Realpolitik, and the importance of various folks--specifically, again, Wittgenstein, Dewey, Heidegger, but also Davidson, Nietzsche, and Foucault--for developing perspectives and approaches to philosophy that need to be understood, considered, and evaluated. It is of use to be forced to respond to informed, reasoned and fundamental criticisms of one's view, and Rorty played that valuable role quite well.

I once had a phone interview (the University of Wyoming) where part of what turned out to be a rather idiotic experience involved giving brief (1-3 word) responses to various philosophers' names and to various doctrines. I don't remember much, but when Rorty's name was put forth, my response was succinct: "The Enemy." (I didn't get the job, especially when I was asked, after being told there were no wrong answers, to name the three most important philosophers in Western philosophy, and I was told I gave a wrong answer. [For those interested, my answer was Plato, Kant, and Frege; I was told the correct answer {as if there could be such a thing} was Aristotle, Hume, and Wittgenstein. I was tempted to say some smart-ass thing like "But Plato never quoted Aristotle."])

With Rorty's death, the late 20th-century philosophers who influenced me, or provoked me, the most, are now all gone, I think: Quine, Foucault, Davidson, Rawls, and the much less-known Manley Thompson. (Although, Chomsky's still with us, as is Habermas.) Whether you agreed with him or not, or even liked him or not, the world is a more impoverished place without him.

R.I.P.

Summer Reading

2007-05-30T10:55:00.000-04:00

I finished teaching around the first of May, and don't start again until June 25 (and then, in the Fall, I have a sabbatical). So I thought I would just take May off and read read read. Here's the result; I'd love to hear what my reader(s?) recommend.

Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

I've tried to read this three other times; this time I refused to let it beat me. I bought the new translation by John E. Woods, and while I haven't checked it against the German, it read a lot better than the Lowes-Porter I had used in the past. After reading the 850 or so pages, including lots of discussion of weather, food, health, power, love, truth, and various understated sexual attractions, all I can say is: Wow.

Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (vol.I)

I saw Skinner speak at Chicago once, and was very impressed. This book takes up political theory from the early stages (13th century), and in some detail outlines the development, through Machievelli and Thomas More, the various arguments for and against Republicanism. Lots of names, lots of theories, and very subtle and developed arguments about how political views grew out of approaches to education and rhetoric. I would probably have to say that this isn't a book everyone would enjoy, but if you're interested in Bartolus of Saxoferrato, Skinner is your man. I have to pause before I take up vol II.

Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great
Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation

The literature on atheism seems to be quite the cottage industry these days. Along with Harris's The End of Faith, and Dawkins's The God Delusion, I've been trying to stay up with it. (Although I've not gotten to Dennett's version, or some of the others that have recently come out.) I'm now trying to figure out why there is a sudden spate of books developing arguments for atheism. Why would God allow this to happen? And does she like these arguments?

Hitchens is kind of a wanker, and there weren't too many new insights in his treatment. But he writes well, and occasionally poses good challenges for theists, or forces one to look at issues from a new perspective (e.g. Gandhi). His claim is that religion poisons everything, and he makes a pretty good case. It also gives him a chance to talk about politics; interesting that many on the right believe the problem with Islamic-inspired terrorism is what suicide bombers believe, not that they believe.

Harris's brief little "Letter" is, I think, a much more effective statement than his longer The End of Faith. Succinct, eloquent, and occasionally disturbing; quotable, as well, as when he mentions that those drowning in New Orleans, due to a perfect storm of political and bureaucratic incompetence, did so while talking (praying) to an imaginary friend.

This is a book that should at least be considered by theists. I wonder if it is more likely that a theist would read this, or an atheist would read Lewis's Mere Christianity?

Reza Aslam, No God But God

A nice, clearly-written and informative discussion--particularly sympathetic to Shi'ism--of the history of Islam. The sub-text is that Muhammad's delivery of the divine message was co-opted, altered, and in a sense corrupted by later clerics, for political reasons at least as much as for theological reasons. A good book to read for those who want a quick overview, and who are suspicious of the way Islam is represented in the US media.

It made me think that it wouldn't hurt, occasionally, to think about what Christianity looked like, 1400 years after it got started. Kinda violent in Europe, you know. Ask Luther.

On the other hand, I get nervous knowing that there are some people who think I should be killed for what I might say about their religion. I know, intellectually, that this says more about them than about me, but could we move to a point in our history where violence and death aren't regarded as legitimate expressions of a faith tradition?

Al Gore, The Assault on Reason

This was a maddening book to read; on occasion, Al waxes poetically, and actually acheives remarkable eloquence in stating what he regards as traditional American values. At other times, he will write a paragraph that says absolutely nothing, and sounds like the Al Gore one sees on "The Simpsons." He tends to split infinitives, and fails to use "among" instead of "between" when comparing more than two things, but in general he offers a useful diagnosis of what is wrong with the media, politics, and power in the US, including some succinct and powerful criticisms of the Bush administration. He seems a bit naïve about capitalism, in that its success tends to lead to precisely the concentration of wealth (and thus power) that generates the political problems Gore identifies. He also seems to think that one's access to the public megaphone, back in the days before radio, was practically unfettered. But who am I to ask for nuance and subtlety from a politician?

David Quammen, The Song of the Dodo

A fabulous book by an incredible writer. Quammen is informed, smart, curious, and writes beautifully. If you read one 600 page book this year about biogeography and what it tells us about our current environmental situation, this should be it.

Diane Ackermann, A Natural History of the Senses

A nice little discussion, full of all sorts of interesting biological and phenomenological factoids about the senses, structured around each of the basic five. I couldn't keep from thinking that the author was writing this while sipping imported chamomile tea from some windswept plateau in Tibet, wearing a robe made from llama fur hand-chewed by peasants, or something. You know the type; what back in Texas we would simply have called a Yankee, but would, perhaps, more accurately be described as an elitist, overeducated intellectual snob, writing for other elitist, overeducated intellectual snobs. Then again, that never stopped me.

WHORE

2007-05-07T12:39:00.000-04:00

Well, I certainly can't figure out what part of "whore" doesn't fit Roger Clemens.

The Art of Compromise

2007-04-25T11:25:00.000-04:00

Our beloved maximum leader has declared that he will veto any bill that funds the troops and includes a timetable for withdrawing the troops from Iraq. Period.

He has stated that such a timetable would aid the terrorists; when asked why, he said it was "logic."

I think "logic" is a term our beloved leader should avoid introducing. He may be asked about the logic of this inference:

The Congress passes a bill to fund the troops (with a binding or non-binding date of withdrawal).

Therefore

Congress refuses to fund the troops.

Or perhaps he will be asked about the more inductively-based Republican claim that Harry Reid is helping the terrorists. Presumably the argument has to include this premise:

Suicide bombers care what Harry Reid says.

In any case, I think what the Democrats ought to do is pass a bill funding the troops, eliminate any of the "extras" (there will be time for that, and another bill to use for such "add-ons"), and put a deadline for withdrawal--the year 2050.

If Bush views this deadline as unacceptable, it will be clear how long he thinks this war will take. If this deadline is acceptable, then we have a new inference to ponder, relative to the rules of Bush-logic:

I will veto any bill with a timetable for withdrawal (P)

A bill that puts the year 2050 as a date for withdrawal has a timetable for withdrawal.

Therefore

I will not veto a bill with a timetable for withdrawal (not P).

You have to love Bush's schema here, which is similar to Da Costa's approach known as "Paraconsistent Logic"--although intuitionist logicians might like this rule as well, one that allows the following inference to be valid:

P

therefore

Not P

Gone fishin'

2007-04-13T11:31:00.000-04:00

At least it's April

2007-04-01T13:38:00.000-04:00

My basketball predictions proved, as usual, to be useless. I should have thought this way: who do I really not want to see in the final game.

Then those two teams would be there. (Although, to be perfectly honest, that method predicts a Duke-UCLA final.)

Basketball fans can now sit back and watch to see who is leaving: Durant? Oden? All of Florida's starters? Brandon Rush? (I predict "yes" for all of them.) This leaves Kansas looking very good for next year. Which, right now, is about all I care about.

On the other hand, the baseball season starts tonight, with some team from New York playing THE WORLD CHAMPION ST. LOUIS CARDINALS. (I get to call them that until October, you see.) The NL Central should again be a battle among mediocrities, with most attention being paid to the Cubs' codependent relationship with the DL, Albert Pujols, the genuine threat posed by Milwaukee, and the return of Roger "the Whore" Clemens to the Astros, which still won't be enough for them to win with their anemic offense and generally annoying approach to life. Biggio gets his 3,000 hit with his team 14.5 games out of first. Sounds just to me.

Preview?

2007-03-11T21:29:00.000-04:00

I always pick wrong, but I have yet, at this moment, to make a single incorrect pick in this year's NCAA tournament.

I have Kansas beating Florida and Texas beating Texas A & M in the final four, and Kansas beating Texas for the championship.

To get there, Florida beats Oregon and KU beats UCLA in the regional finals; on the other side, Texas beats Georgetown and A & M beats Ohio State. The upsets include Oral Roberts winning two games, Wisconsin losing to Texas A & M-C.C., Illinois beating Virginia Tech. Creighton beating Memphis, and Texas Tech beating Boston College.

A little heavy on the Big 12 and Texas, I know. In any case, given my past success, this almost certainly means North Carolina beats Ohio State, UCLA beats Florida, then UCLA beats North Carolina for the championship.

My Next Book

2007-03-06T10:46:00.000-05:00

I've decided, for my next book, to edit a collection of essays. I think what makes it important and of great interest is its fundamental focus and coherence.

Here's the title and table of contents.

Is There A Fish in this Text?

Fish, Stanley Preface

Floundering Historically

Fisch, Max "Hooked on Peirce"
Trout, J.D. "The Line from Malthus to Gould"
Poisson, Siméon-Denis "Distribution and Structure"

Arguing Upstream

Salmon, Merilee "The Bite of Logic"
Salmon, Nathan "Tackling the Sorites"
Salmon, Wesley "Referring and Respooling"

Philets

Bass, Alan "Difference and Disavowal: The Trauma of Eros" (selections)
Minnow, Martha "Making All the Difference: Inclusion, Exclusion, and American Law" (selections)
Pike, Nelson "God and Timelessness" (selections)
Ray, Christopher "Time, Space and Philosophy" (selections)
Sturgeon, Scott "Matters of Mind: Consciousness, Reason and Nature" (selections)

For and Against Reelism

Haddock Siegfried, Charlotte "Nets and Lines: Pragmatic Castings"
Sturgeon, Nicholas "The Hidden Assumptions of Ethics: Cache and Release"

Whose Nightmare?

2007-02-27T09:44:00.000-05:00

It seems that if we take our maximum leader seriously, and Seymour Hersh's latest article from the New Yorker is correct, there is only one conclusion we can draw.

We have to bomb ourselves.

The resolution passed to give el Presidente authority to do, apparently, whatever the hell he wants:

THE PRESIDENT'S CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY TO CONDUCT MILITARY OPERATIONS AGAINST TERRORISTS AND NATIONS SUPPORTING THEM

The President has broad constitutional power to take military action in response to the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. Congress has acknowledged this inherent executive power in both the War Powers Resolution and the Joint Resolution passed by Congress on September 14, 2001.

The President has constitutional power not only to retaliate against any person, organization, or State suspected of involvement in terrorist attacks on the United States, but also against foreign States suspected of harboring or supporting such organizations.

The President may deploy military force preemptively against terrorist organizations or the States that harbor or support them, whether or not they can be linked to the specific terrorist incidents of September 11.

Now, according to Hersh (whose character, credentials, attitude, approach, and probably his love life are frequently attacked; interestingly, it is much more rare to find his results shown to be false by these same critics):

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
. . .
The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora government, according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government consultant. “We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as we can,” the former senior intelligence official said. The problem was that such money “always gets in more pockets than you think it will,” he said. “In this process, we’re financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. We don’t have the ability to determine and get pay vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid the people we don’t like. It’s a very high-risk venture.” . . .

American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the [Prime Minister of Lebanon] Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda.

Opening up the can of worms that was the invasion of Iraq thus has had several consequences--none good:

a) Iran is stronger
b) Hezbollah is stronger
c) Iraq is in a civil war
d) resources are diverted from Afghanistan
e) Pakistan can ignore our pleas to "crack down" on terrorism

To do something about b) (which is exacerbated by a), we do d), can't do much about e) [but send Cheney to threaten the Pakistanis with . . . Democrats!], and all along continue to focus on c), which is, at least to a large extent, what led to a) and thus b) and thus d) and thus e).

Clearly, there are a couple of obvious conclusions to draw from this rather horrifying Realpolitik sorites:

1) Bomb and/or invade Iran.

2) Follow the resolution above, and allow the President to deploy military force against terrorist organizations or the States that harbor or support them, whether or not they can be linked to the specific terrorist incidents of September 11.

The Pentagon is quite nervous about scenario 1; some reports indicate that a number (5 is the number I've heard thrown around) of generals have threatened to resign upon its implementation, and it is quite hard to see what that will accomplish beyond adding f), g), h), etc. [fill in your own consequences] to the list above.

So I think it is pretty clear that by the Administration's logic, we have little choice but to bomb the country responsible for setting all of this into motion.

Last one on Horowitz et al.

2007-02-23T08:36:00.000-05:00

One last thing on Thomas Ryan. Soon, it shall be time to turn to baseball.

Before the invasion of Iraq, a number of us got together, and in spite of the hideous acronym, formed a group called "People Against Preemptive Attack." We stood on street corners, we talked amongst each other, we protested. Mostly, we didn't do much. We did, however, run an ad in the Dayton Daily News, which was signed by a large number of faculty and students, and which read:

1. War destroys lives, injures our humanity, and impoverishes our future. In addition to killing and maiming soldiers, war brings death, destruction, suffering and hardship to innocent civilian men, women, and children. The damage of war endures for generations and harms us all.

2. All major faith traditions and many secular philosophies reject the use of war as a tool of international relations, except under particular circumstances and as a last resort. The US Catholic bishops and many Protestant leaders have rejected a pre-emptive attack against Iraq on moral grounds.

3. The Bush administration’s current movement toward pre-emptive action sanctions war as a viable option even in the absence of a clear and immediate threat. Such an action would make the United States an aggressor nation and establish a deeply disturbing precedent. This policy violates international law and if implemented would likely destabilize the Middle East and undermine any US claim to be a nation devoted to law and peace.

4. Efforts to fight terrorism must involve cooperation among nations from all parts of the world. Military action perceived as driven unilaterally by the United States will inflame hatred against the US and likely increase rather than decrease the possibility of further acts of terrorism.

5. The administration has thus far been unable to link Iraq convincingly to terrorist acts against the US, nor shown that there is an imminent threat by the Iraqi regime to use any weapons of mass destruction that they may possess. Because the administration has failed to demonstrate a connection between the Iraqi regime and the events of September 11, any action taken against Iraq cannot credibly be claimed as part of the war on terrorism.

6. The weapons inspections currently proceeding under the auspices of the United Nations must be given the chance to be effective. Any further steps taken by the US as a result of those inspections must continue with UN involvement, and all possible alternatives short of full-scale invasion must be pursued.

Hmmm. I wonder if we were right?

Mr. Ryan's perceptive account of a similar ad, by the September 11 Coalition, manages to suggest that anyone signing it is a terrorist--I don't think that's too strong. Here's his gloss, in speaking again of Theo Majka:

Majka was also a signatory to an anti-Iraq war statement written by the September 11 Coalition, a Dayton based anti-war group whose mission is to “seek global peace through social and economic justice.” The group’s actions are sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee, a radical Quaker organization that has supported Vietnamese Communists, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and the PLO; and the Southwest Ohio Chapter of the American Muslim Council, which supports Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah. The document states, “War with Iraq is the real threat to our nation.” (The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America.)

To add one's name to an ad against the War in Iraq, which as I noted in an earlier post Mr. Ryan offers as compelling evidence of the Bush administration's competence, is thus to a) agree with all the goals of the groups sponsoring the ad and b) to agree with all the goals of the groups those groups "support," although what precise "support" the American Friends Service Committee offered to Hezbollah Mr. Ryan fails to indicate. Clearly, the Quaker tradition is to endorse suicide bombing and other such things, in spite of its rather consistent commitment to pacificsm.

If this is the kind of argument Horowitz endorses by publishing it in his book, I think the lesson one should take away from this is to be rather suspicious of his general approach. I know the people Ryan is talking about here, and he is about as clueless as one can be; why should I not think that the other things Horowitz says about the dangers of the academy don't also deserve such suspicion?

Of course, that itself makes me suspicious. But, as I wrote Ryan (he never quite got back to me), I should be on that list. How about a second edition? Please?

David Hororwitz is a Boob

2007-02-06T11:16:00.000-05:00

And not the good kind.

Some of my readers (well, my reader) know that I've had a few exchanges with David Horowitz, who now makes his living publishing various things at FrontPage magazine, a webzine of remarkable energy, most of which seems to come from being a bit pissed off about things. I have no problem with that.

My favorite was a letter I sent, under the name of Julius Hibbert (The Simpsons' family physician). Horowitz responded, twice, in his typical brusque, take-no-prisoners fashion. He seems to have cleaned up the page where the letter first appeared, and thus the comments pointing out who Dr. Hibbert was, are gone. Sadly. For those who wish to see what remains, here's the link:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=4492

The second go around was at the chatroom for Ann Coulter (I've posted before about the changes there; I've been banned from that site, which tells us, well, something.) I've posted below (in a separate entry) an edited version (edited solely for readability) of the whole exchange for those who are really interested.

A few days ago, I was in a local bookstore, waiting for my daughter. I picked up Horowitz's relatively recent tome, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. A couple of things struck me about it; there is an article about Noam Chomsky (of course), and there is an article by Thomas Ryan, which mostly highlights a University of Dayton professor, Mark Ensalaco, but takes a few passing shots at some of our other radicals.

The article about Chomsky is interesting, if only because one can read the whole piece without having any idea that Chomsky has done a bit of work in linguistics. (Sort of like Niels Bohr did a bit of work in physics, or Gregor Mendel did a bit of work in genetics.) A reader of this text, then, unfamililar with Chomsky's work, might well be astonished that a Professor of Linguistics at MIT spent all his time railing against the imperialistic power structure of American politics. And have no idea that contemporary linguistics was more or less founded by Chomsky, continues to be fundamentally informed by Chomsky, and that Chomsky's students--who don't necessarily agree with him--dominate the field. Breathtaking stuff.

The article about Ensalaco struck me, first of all because it isn't written by Horowitz, although it appears in a book that lists him as its author. Back in the Ivory Tower, some of us might cluck about publishing another's work under one's name, but the article itself lists Ryan's name, so I guess it's okay.

I also remembered the piece, because I wrote Ryan an e-mail (no longer accessible, unfortunately), showing--I want to be delicate here--what a moron he is. I did so with some degree of tact, concluding with a complaint that it's me who teaches really radical stuff--Plato, Rousseau, Hobbes, Marx, Chomsky (!), Habermas--and that I was sorely disappointed that Ensalaco got all this attention, instead. Ryan never quite got back to me, and the article is published, as far as I can tell, verbatim in Horowitz's book. Here's the link (Ryan's title):

Channelling Churchill

There is a pretty important point here, I think: the more one knows about a situtation, the better one's criticism of a view that is fundamentally wrong. I know Ensalaco, I've seen him speak, I've talked with his students, and I've looked at Ryan's comments about him. Ryan also lists as radicals at UD Margaret Karns, Juan Santamarina, and Theo Majka; I know all of them, and, again, have listened to them, talked with them, read them, talked with their students, and, in one case, seen them teach. I gather, from reading Ryan, he has done none of these things.

Ryan's strategy is a pretty simple one: find a book on a teacher's syllabus, infer that the teacher agrees with everything in that book, find a particulary controversial view in the book, and then attribute that view to the teacher in question.

Thus, since I've taught Heidegger, it would be fair (according to the hermeneutical strategy of Ryan) to claim that I believe the Führer is the leading light of German history and will bring about a new stage in the development of German Dasein. I've taught Hegel, and thus agree with his views on history and race; I've taught Aristotle, so I agree with his views on women; I've taught Hume, so I agree with his views on miracles (well, that may be true); I've taught Peter van Inwagen, so I agree with his views on Christianity. Yikes; talk about a runaround inference ticket.

I can't go into all the details of Ryan's approach, but want to give at least a couple of quotes, to show either that he is beyond postmodernism, or seems to have failed reading, logic, or both.

The University of Dayton, a Catholic, Marianist University in Dayton, Ohio, offers its students a major in International Studies, with concentrations in Global Development, Human Rights, Peace and Global Security, and European and Latin American studies. Described as a “multidisciplinary major designed to meet the needs of students interested in acquiring a broadly based international perspective,” the program’s idea of “international perspectives” are those which are chiefly critical of the United States. In 1999, UD was the first university to offer an undergraduate degree program in human rights. Of this, Ensalaco stated that the program “fits so squarely with the University's Catholic, Marianist philosophy of education because it instills in students an appreciation for social justice.” Social justice, of course, is code word for the contradictory notion of equality under a Marxist rule.

Of course, this means any Marxist rule, from contemporary Viet Nam to North Korea to, perhaps, Sweden. Ryan's suggestion seems to be that those who major in International Studies should not look at international perspectives. While an odd inference, it is clear that since such perspectives may well be critical of the US's role in the world, such views entail an identification between "social justice" and Marxism of any and all stripes. The Ryan approach to International Studies seems to be that one should ignore international perspectives, and stick to views that are a) domestic and b) supportive of the US role in the world. One might suggest a change of the title to this major to "Bush Suck Up." A minor detail.

I don't think I even need to provide comments on the following incisive analysis provided by Ryan; I'll leave it to the reader to determine its accuracy, and whether Ensalaco's questions are worth considering:

Ensalaco has also been critical of the current administration on Iraq. He has exclaimed, “I don't see the sense of asking really serious questions about this Administration's exit strategy or the force levels or serious concerns I have with respect to the way the intelligence analysis was conducted prior to the war. I think there could be a lot more serious criticisms which all goes to the question, is this administration competently managing the crisis, did it miscalculate with terrible consequences in Iraq, and if so and what is the consequences in Iran or North Korea or other trouble spots?” The democratic elections, which Iraq successfully achieved for the first time in its history, are proof that the Bush administration is managing Iraq competently.

Finally, he picks on my friend Theo Majka, who teaches sociology at UD, quoting what he tells his students:

"One thing I would like you to come away with is a realization that political issues have an enormous impact on our own lives and futures, even though their influence may often be indirect and complex. Also, if you and I are not knowledgeable about political issues and do not participate in political decisions in informed ways, then others, usually powerful private interests, will successfully manipulate our consciousness and dominate the public arena, often in ways that are not neither in our personal nor in our national interest."

With this statement, Majka is telling students that the U.S. government can’t be trusted, and that throughout this course he will instruct them on whom and what to be wary of, indicating an expressed declaration of his political intentions.

Actually, with this statement, Theo is telling students that it is the responsibility of citizens to be informed about the decisions they make, decisions that are important in their own lives and in the lives of their community. This, by the way, is not particulary controversial (Theo has some views that are, by the way!), unless one wishes to regard the history of American political thought (and before), from Locke and Burgh to Jefferson and Franklin to De Tocqueville and Mill on to virtually any competent thinker (which evidently excludes Ryan), as problematic. For consider the alternative: accept what politicians say, don't be informed about your political decisions, and shut up.

The Founding Fathers set up a Constitution on the premise-well-founded then, with mounting evidence ever since--that Government cannot be trusted, one should be wary of it, and that it is the obligation of citizens to keep informed. That being informed is often prevented and obstructed in contemporary society should remind us that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. I wonder what commie said that? Or which threat to the Republic observed "A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both"?

Love and Kisses from the Right

2007-02-06T11:08:00.000-05:00

This is long, and I'm putting it on here just as sort of an archive. Do with it what most of America, and the world, has chosen to do: ignore it.

[This has been edited, but contains the entire set of responses from Horowitz, in their entirety. For those who can't figure it out, I'm Benjamin Dover. It begins with a piece by Dave himself, and then my responses, and then the "threat" that Dave is coming over to kick my ass. I'll leave it anyone with enough patience to determine if he was successful.]

From: anncoulter.com (Ann Coulter Official Chat)

[BD: benjamin dover; CH: moderator DH: david horowitz; the others are identified by their chatroom monikers]

[Original Post]

A refresher course on Wilson/ Plame treachery from Horowitz
Post Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2005 3:34 am

Liberals lie, and employ so much trickery and deceit, that sometimes it is hard to remember what transpired just a few years ago.

These Rove Ragers are defining the moonbat position well....

David Horowitz wrote an excellent article regarding this story;

The Witch-Hunt of Karl Rove and the war at home.

Posted by David Horowitz @ Saturday 16 July 2005, 3:30 pm

So now we know a lot of the facts. In the midst of a war, a rogue CIA employee named Valerie Plame set out to sabotage the President’s war policy — a policy ratified by both political parties and both houses of Congress. To do this she sent her husband on a mission to Niger to discredit the President’s statement that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium there [emphasis added] — in other words to discredit a justification for the war in which Americans were continuing to die. Forget for a moment the treasonous nature of an action designed to undermine a duly arrived at war policy and to destroy the credibility of the commander-in-chief while this nation’s soldiers were in harm’s way. The mere act of sending a relative on a mission like this was illegal under existing statutes for someone in Plame’s position.
Her husband, Joseph Wilson, went off to Niger, did no investigation and came back and lied about what he had allegedly discovered. The bi-partisan 9/11 commission concluded that Wilson’s claims were false – a year and half after the damage the Plame-Wilson team intended was already done.
The Plame-Wilson lie was designed to make the President look like a liar and the nation’s democratically and legally arrived at war policy a fraud. This came right at the climax of anti-war primary campaign of Howard Dean in July 2003, just three months after the fall of Baghdad and when the terrorist counter-attack had already begun.
Immediately the Democratic Party leadership jumped on the President calling him a liar and a fraud using the 16 words in the January 2003 State of the Union address about Niger as evidence. These 16 words were perfectly true than (as now) yet that didn’t stop Democrats from using the Plame-Wilson lies to undermine the authority of the commander-in-chief in the eyes of the American people and before the entire world. No psychological warfare campaign ever conducted by an enemy against the United States has been as effetive as this one.
It emboldened our terrorist enemies, and sowed distrust in Europe and throughout the world about American policies, continued for more than six months with of course the megaphone provided by the NY Times and other Bush-hating and America bashing media institutions.
Joseph Wilson threw fuel on the fire by falsely claiming that Vice President Cheney had sent him and not his treacherous anti-Bush wife in her attempt to protect Saddam Hussein and his monster regime. NDavid Corn of the Saddam- and terrorist-sympathizing Nation and other journalists in the opposition press jumped on the story and projected the treacherous activities of Wilson and Plame onto the Bush Administration which was still trying to carry on an anti-terrorist war in the Middle East.
Corn was the first to suggest that outing Plame as a rogue CIA employee was itself treason and certainly against the law. It was not. Plame is not a cover CIA operative and besides and all its Democrat friends in Congress opposed the law protecting CIA agents and protected and even lionized the rogue CIA agent Philip Agee whose leaks of the names of covert CIA agents had gotten one agent killed and was responsible for the enactment of the law. The Nation also has been in the forefront of the fawners at the feet of liar Joseph Wilson giving him a dinner and award for his treachery. (Working against your own government in time of war, while in the employ of your government is by definition treachery.) In other words The Nation is entirely consistent: it will protect those CIA agents (Agee, Plame) who are enemies of the United States or its policies, and and only those agents.
Democrats will of course mentally dissociate themselves from acts of conscious treachery. And many of them have reason to do so. Unlike the Nation radicals, they are not rooting for our enemies to win. On the other hand, over and over in this war they have shown that they are prepared to win elections even at the cost of American defeats in the war on terror — which as we can easily caculate may cost 100,000 American lives at a blow. Or as the President once put it to Tom Daschle, they are a party who will put their partisan interests above the security of 300 million Americans.
In a synchronity that all honest liberals should pay attention to, an appeals court has found that no torture or illegality took place at Guantanamo and that the legal campaign led by communist supporter Michael Ratner in behalf of the Guantanamo terrorists is based on an even bigger lie than the Plame-Wilson sabotage. In this assault on the war on terror from behind our lines the Democratic Party is also a willing and essential accomplice.
It’s time for the Democrats to stop their sabotage of the war on terror. It’s time for them to put away the witch-hunt against Karl Rove and Homeland Security, and to begin finally to think about defending this country instead of its internal enemies.

BD:Post Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2005 7:52 am

Quote:
To do this she sent her husband on a mission to Niger to discredit the President’s statement that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium there.

I don't know much about how the CIA works--or anything else--but I understood she recommended him for this mission; is that the same as "sending" him? Was she in a position to "send" him? This is a minor point, but typical of Horowitz's approach--rewording descriptions, ignoring contrary evidence, overstating the position of one's opponent, and arguing by false dichotomy. As I said before, he was widely regarded as a joke on the left when he was on the left.

CH: I remember you saying that; astonishing that Robert Scheer coauthored the magazine Ramparts with someone he considered to be such a joke.

You're full of it, Ben.

BD: Sun Jul 17, 2005 8:26 am

No doubt. It would be interesting to see what Scheer himself says about Horowitz, during the days of "Ramparts" and now. I'll see if I can track it down.

More generally, I would resist the assumption that if two people edit a magazine together that we should regard them as in both ideological lockstep and as intellectual comrades. They may well have been. Or maybe Horowitz was, as the phrase goes, an "angel" (i.e. had some dough or contacts that were useful) or, for that matter, a "useful idiot." Finally, Ramparts had a rather motley collection of people editing, writing, and working for it, as you may know from reading Warren Hinckle's memoir of his days running Ramparts.

BD: Sun Jul 17, 2005 8:55 am

I'd love to nuance this to death, but at my advanced age I tire easily.

Some quick points:

I said Horowitz was widely regarded on the Left as a joke; Scheer evidently hired him, and Horowitz helped get rid of Scheer (this is according to Horowitz himself). Regardless of what Scheer's view of Horowitz, there is a long list of names of those on the Left at the time who kept their distance from Horowitz and his approach, which looked more like self-promotion than anything else. (I've exchanged a number of e-mails with Horowitz on various issues; he has been kind enough to respond, although the responses themselves were quite hostile, in spite of my own polite approach. No, really.) As far as I can tell from a cursory search, Scheer has spent little or no time responding to the vast number of attacks Horowitz has made on him. But that one person on the Left has said little or nothing that I can find says very little about what the views of a wide range of writers and activists (whose names are now little but footnotes in a dusty history; e.g. when was the last time you read something by Carl Oglesby?)

Second, I'm lecturing no one. I'm simply pointing out that, unsurprisingly, Horowitz is a "journalist," and had very few original or insightful things to say then (and doesn't now.) I don't expect much from him or from many journalists, on the left or the right, who seem to be more interested in publicity and generating income by writing what they believe will produce both. There are, of course, exceptions to this idea of throwing red meat (or, I suppose, tofu) to eager consumers looking for someone simply to confirm the view with which they began.

Third, you can see from the above description why I don't think Horowitz is such a good writer. Others, who are in more agreement with his ideological viewpoint, may find him an articulate spokesperson.

I'm sorry to hear about your sister. My sister is an evangelical Christian and a good strong Republican. We remain close, in spite of our differences. I guess I would think the causal sequence you refer to--you know the information, of course, I only know what you told me--seems a bit reductive of what is almost always a very complicated personal and family situation. In short,

Quote:
If you want to know why I became a conservative, it's seeing my best friend in my young life turn from a funny sister, a normal human, to some slogan-spouting, humorless, screaming ideologue

the story behind this is known to you, not to me, but my guess--and it is only that--is there is a very complex causal sequence from this beginning to this tragic result.

Right Wing Conspirator
Sun Jul 17, 2005 10:26 am

benjamin dover wrote:
I'm out of here, trying to find a serious review of Horowitz's "Empire and Revolution: A Radical Interpretation of Contemporary History" (one of his alleged "serious" books while back on the Left) turns out to be tricky

Aren't you just so intelligent. We're all very impressed that you could post the name of a Horowitz book while he was a leftist.

Perhaps you're using the same trickery that you're accusing Horowitz of, in that, it was the first book he had ever written and he admits it was largely ignored at the time by the left. He also admits that his inexperience showed in this work and it is not something he is proud of now or then. It was also written before he had become a force on the left and he was actually living in Europe at the time. His credentials as a Leftist were earned long after that at Ramparts and his relationship with Robert Scheer has been well documented in Radical Son. Funny how you could ignore such a honest self evaluation as that book in forming your own opinions. To accuse Horowitz of being self-promoting and to not attribute that criticism to Robert Sheer is everything we need to know about Ben Dover.

BD: Sun Jul 17, 2005 11:46 am

The wife is expecting me home, but quickly:

I can't share Horowitz's e-mails; I deleted them awhile ago, and it would violate netiquette to share e-mails sent when one of the respondents hasn't been told they might be so shared.

The Ramparts staff, as indicated, was a motley crew; the ones who come to mind--in addition to the Panthers, which is a whole 'nother story--such as Oglesby, Scheer, Chomsky, Hinckle, and others don't seem to have waited until the publication of Radical Son to either ignore Horowitz or to dis him privately. I'm sorry I don't have tape recordings or e-mails of my exchanges with Oglesby to share that would confirm a part of this. I stand by my claim, but neither have the energy nor the inclination to attempt to prove this to those who would reject a priori any such confirming evidence .

I mentioned Horowitz's Empire and Revolution simply because it was one of his books I remembered--the only one, actually--from that phase of his political career. I gather from looking on the web that it was ignored by the left, the right, and the center. Horowitz is not a serious scholar, he is a journalist and a polemicist. Those who agree with him find him an articulate spokesperson and diatribist for their position. I don't see any problem with that; it's not my position, hence I don't find him that articulate, and those topics he has written about that I know anything about have been superficial, poorly argued, and clumsy. Big deal.

CH: Sun Jul 17, 2005 3:14 pm
I REALLY hope there may be a surprise in store for Ben on this thread. I mean REALLY.

Right Wing Conspirator
Sun Jul 17, 2005 3:30 pm

Here is an email that I just received from David Horowitz:

Here's what I wrote. I don't know if the submission worked. I kept getting spell check back. Also this is a very unsatisfactory set up since you have to reply to a post without seeing it on the screen.

Please submit this for me:

This is a response to Benjamin Dover, whom I don't remember corresponding with but whose word I'll take for it (though I make it a rule never to reply rudely to anyone who is not first rude to me, so I doubt his account of what happened in our exchange).

Dover says no one took me seriously in the left (despite the fact that I wrote the most widely read New Left account of the Cold War and edited its largest magazine). Here's what Paul Berman wrote about me in the Village Voice in 1986 when I was no longer a leftist and Berman in particular hated me: “Other writers of the New Left figured larger in the awareness of the general public, but no one in those days figured larger among the leftists themselves.”

The idea that I was regarded by leftists when I was a leftist as a "self-promoter" is laughable. Peter Collier and I ran Ramparts but if you look on a Ramparts masthead you'll see five editors listed in alphabetical order. I was in fact self-effacing compared to any typical New Left leader you can name (Hayden, Rubin, Hoffman etc).

Of course the attitude of people like Scheer who did hire me at Ramparts and whom I fired because he was a bully and treated the entire staff badly. The vote against Scheer in the staff he himself had hired was 17-2.

Of course leftwing ideologues pretend not to take me seriously, because none of them can answer the case I have made at great legnth against them. They are destructive reactionaries who have the blood of millions of Indo-Chinese on their hands, whose ideological blinders have helped to kill 200,000 gays in this country by undermining the health care system and who are self-declared enemies of America and therefore human freedom. The pages of my website are open to any established leftist like Scheer who wants to respond to, refute or answer anything I have written. I guarantee it will be hard for Dover to find a single leftist to take me up on this offer. The left is intellectually and morally bankrupt. It has no argument except name calling and the constant invocation of the alternative reality it has concocted to justify its malevolent deeds.

CH: Sun Jul 17, 2005 4:01 pm

Welcome to the board, Mr. Horowitz. We are definitely glad to see you here (well, except possibly for Ben).

I hope you will find time to contribute as your schedule permits!

DH: Sun Jul 17, 2005 4:04 pm
Thanks.
dhorowitz

Sun Jul 17, 2005 4:12 pm
I appreciate the moral support guys, but I came on as a result of a request that I respond to Dover. I'm waiting on his reply.

CH: Sun Jul 17, 2005 4:15 pm

He may or may not be online, but I will keep this up for him to notice; in your profile (or on your post itself) you should be able to be notified, by checking a box, as to responses to this topic.

Sorry, Mr. Horowitz, we're all just thrilled to have you, but we promise to keep the cheering to a dull roar. At least until you let Ben have it.

CH: Sun Jul 17, 2005 4:54 pm

This situation just sort of reminds me of Ethel Merman's character slipping on a banana peel and falling on her butt at the end of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I'm sure it never occurred to Ben that someone might actually know David Horowitz, which makes it easy to just spout off with no fear of response.

BD: Mon Jul 18, 2005 7:34 am

I'm so flattered that this thread has become so important, and that someone alerted Mr. Horowitz to its existence. The internet is a beautiful thing. I will state upfront that Horowitz is far better than I am, or ever claimed to be, at doing this kind of thing. He does this for a living, debating, reading, writing, criticizing, polemicizing, etc.; for me, it is at best a hobby. I have no doubts that he would win such a "debate." I might do better talking about late 18th-century German philosophy, or possibly whether the "Gorgias" is a late early or early late dialogue; but I'm not so stupid as to fail to recognize that I'm in his bailiwick here.

The claims I made, as far as I can tell, were these:

A lot of people didn't take Horowitz that seriously while he was on the left. I don't see him taken that seriously now, either; within the circumscribed world that ranges from Limbaugh and WorldNetDaily and FrontPage.com all the way to FNC, he is regarded as some kind of hero, having courageously broken away from the clutches of the New Left. He isn't widely seen in the media, although I'm quite confident that he appears more than I realize, and the fact that he doesn't appear more is due much more to the nature of the media than it is to the quality of his insights. Academics don't seem to take him seriously, but, again, that isn't Horowitz's problem but rather the nature of an academy that is dominated by uncritical ranting leftists, who dogmatically refuse to listen to him. Thus Horowitz's greatness is only recognized by those who understand (a rather "Straussian" point), and those who fail to do so are blinkered by dogmatism and knee-jerk shallow leftism. This entails that all those who fail to agree with Horowitz simply don't, or can't, understand him, a classic question-begging strategy.

I stated above that for those who agree with him, Horowitz is no doubt an articulate spokesperson for those views. I disagree with him, and make no pretense of being able to convince him or anyone else about the details of the specific points. Were I to go into those details, this would require more time and energy than I (or most others) have, particularly in trying to convince those who would reject a priori my arguments or my evidence. One can clearly recognize this as a simple constructive dilemma: if I argue the specifics, I lose (for various reasons); if I don't argue the specifics, I lose; I either argue or I don't, therefore I lose.

I would be interested in knowing if others here think one should share private e-mails with a chat room, when those writing those e-mails were not told they might so be shared. I'm not asking anyone to accept my word for what the tone and content of those e-mails were; they no longer exist in any way I can access them. In my original post I also noted that fact that Horowitz was even willing to respond, which is much more than I can say about a lot of people.

As far as the specifics of the column in question, I didn't say anything other than to ask if a CIA worker in Plame's position was able to "send" anyone; I understood she had recommended Wilson. Perhaps such a recommendation in such a setting is an ipso facto sending of that person. I admitted that I don't know how the CIA works, hence the question, and the "?" Not all questions are rhetorical.

I'm about done with this thread; I particularly liked the name calling, and the inference from disagreements about Horowitz to claims about how everything I've ever said is a lie, how those who discuss anything with me are somehow mentally retarded, that I'm a slave to my ideology, as well as the occasional gratuitous insults.

I didn't see anything I said that was uncivil, outside of the kind of animus found within political discourse, and I daresay not rising to the level of invective Mr. Horowitz on occasion has employed.

Most important, as our presicient Powerprof noticed, I was much more interested in seeing how well Carpenter pitched, and the "good night" delivered to the Astros.

I think it best that I bow out of this thread for awhile, at least; I will, no doubt, be reading the reactions. If Horowitz has time, perhaps he can comment on some of the other threads, say those calling for the rounding up of those critical of the Bush administration, or using nuclear weapons on Tehran, Damascus, Pyongyang, and probably others. Surely suggesting a disagreement with Horowitz isn't the only thing deserving of his critical acumen here, is it?

CH: Mon Jul 18, 2005 7:46 am

Good subject-changing, Ben. Let's address those other threads later. Perhaps you might apologize for your apparent error in saying that the left widely regarded Mr. Horowitz as a "joke" (no doubt based on comments from people like Scheer) and saying his writing is pedestrian before we go on to those other threads. Or, if you won't do that, how about at least addressing it?

I hope calling you "Ben" isn't "name-calling".

Mr. Horowitz directly addressed you; do him the courtesy of commenting on what he said a little more fully before you start pointing at what other people said as a method of misdirection, could you please?

That's a good fellow.

BD: Mon Jul 18, 2005 8:27 am

Capt.Herp wrote:
Good subject-changing, Ben. Let's address those other threads later. Perhaps you might apologize for your apparent error in saying that the left widely regarded Mr. Horowitz as a "joke" (no doubt based on comments from people like Scheer) and saying his writing is pedestrian before we go on to those other threads. Or, if you won't do that, how about at least addressing it?

I hope calling you "Ben" isn't "name-calling".

Mr. Horowitz directly addressed you; do him the courtesy of commenting on what he said a little more fully before you start pointing at what other people said as a method of misdirection, could you please?

That's a good fellow.

I said I was going to bow out; I'll try to be courteous and follow your orders, but I actually have other things to do than this (somedays I do, somedays I don't; such a claim is, no doubt some weaselly lie concocted for me to run and hide from my intellectual and moral superiors).

Here was my original claim:

Quote:
I don't know much about how the CIA works--or anything else--but I understood she recommended him for this mission; is that the same as "sending" him? Was she in a position to "send" him? This is a minor point, but typical of Horowitz's approach--rewording descriptions, ignoring contrary evidence, overstating the position of one's opponent, and arguing by false dichotomy. As I said before, he was widely regarded as a joke on the left when he was on the left.

No one, including Horowitz, has told me how Plame "sent" Wilson on this mission.

Horowitz writes

Quote:
The pages of my website are open to any established leftist like Scheer who wants to respond to, refute or answer anything I have written. I guarantee it will be hard for Dover to find a single leftist to take me up on this offer.

They may not be willing to do so on his website, but it wasn't hard to find "leftists" willing to take Horowitz up on the offer of responding to what he has written. This took about 12 seconds to find, at a single site:

Kurt Nimmo: The Delusions of David Horowitz
www.counterpunch.org/nimmo1031.html

Alexander Cockburn: A Whiner Called David Horowitz
www.counterpunch.org/cockburn05312003.html

Paul de Rooij: Horowitz's Corrosive Projects
www.counterpunch.org/rooij04112005.html

Tim Wise: David Horowitz and the Politics of Ad Hominem Distortion
www.counterpunch.org/wise06152005.html

Joshua Frank: Horowitz's Gang of Ghouls and Cowards
www.counterpunch.org/frank04262005.html

Jack McCarthy: Horowitz Comes to Tallahassee
www.counterpunch.org/mccarthy04132005.html

Kurt Nimmo: Horowitz, Powell and Belafonte
www.counterpunch.org/nimmo1028.html

Alexander Cockburn: Congressman Moran & the Dixie Chicks; Hitchens ...
www.counterpunch.org/cockburn03152003.html

William MacDougall: America's In-Bedded Journalism
www.counterpunch.org/macdougall04192003.html

Alexander Cockburn: Hollywood's 9 Billion Dead; Carl Pope War Pig ...
www.counterpunch.org/cockburn1205.html

The Common Dreams website and on David Horowitz's Front Page website
www.counterpunch.org/lerner02142003.html

Tariq Ali: The New Empire Loyalists
www.counterpunch.org/tariqempire1.html

Bob Libal: The Right's Assault on the Academy
www.counterpunch.org/libal07052005.html

Jack McCarthy: A Letter to Christopher Hitchens
www.counterpunch.org/mccarthy1022.html

Ben Tripp: Christ is Born
www.counterpunch.org/tripp1224.html

Jordy Cummings: Screw the Humanitarian Bombers!
www.counterpunch.org/cummings1213.html

Horowitz takes the view that no one has been able to respond to him successfully as an indication that the "left" is scared and unable to respond to him; thus, he writes

Quote:
Leftwing ideologues pretend not to take me seriously, because none of them can answer the case I have made at great length against them . . . The left is intellectually and morally bankrupt. It has no argument except name calling and the constant invocation of the alternative reality it has concocted to justify its malevolent deeds.

Presumably, all of the above columns are nothing but name calling and a constant invocation of an alternative reality (and I'll remind you that this is a single web site; I'm surprised there is as much available as there is).

So the argument seems to be that if Horowitz is correct, then the "left" is incorrect. Clearly the left is incorrect if it has no arguments against him except name calling and fantasy.

However, it is not a universally accepted premise that the left has no arguments against him, therefore it doesn't follow that that the left is necessarily incorrect, and therefore it doesn't follow that Horowitz is correct. The devil, here, is in the details of the debate over specifics, as outlined in the above columns and elsewhere, by those willing to engage in the endless minutiae of these issues.

Horowitz writes

Quote:
The claims repeated by Dover are just attempts by pathetic individuals like Scheer to dismiss me without dealing with the arguments I have made. I have shown Scheer to be a pretentious fraud in more than one article which Dover himself is welcome to respond to. The reason Scheer doesn't defend himself is 1) because he knows he can't and 2) since his platform is the NY Times he thinks he can ignore me. People like Dover support him in this delusion.

I'm not sure what claims I repeated; I accused both left and right "journalists" of too often being interested in self-promotion more than the issues; perhaps the comment has been made before (about Michael Moore? about Al Franken?); perhaps the comment hit too close to home. I'm not defending Scheer; I would be interested in knowing why Scheer ignores him. It would be nice to have his own view of this. (I'm assuming Horowitz means the "LA Times" here.) The addition of "pathetic" and "delusion" is, of course, gratuitous and vintage Horowitz. I said Horowitz was regarded as a joke by many on the "left," a claim I stand by; this doesn't entail that he is a joke (without the added and controversial assumption that his critics are correct, an assumption I'm not willing to make a priori). I don't think I, myself, said he was a joke, or pathetic, or delusional. I do think he has, as have others, become quite successful in practicing what he does. Kind of the Willie Sutton of journalism, perhaps?

Horowitz writes

Quote:
The idea that I was regarded by leftists when I was a leftist as a "self-promoter" or not to be taken seriously is laughable and also maliicous. Peter Collier and I ran Ramparts but if you look on a Ramparts masthead you'll see five editors listed in alphabetical order. I was in fact self-effacing compared to any typical New Left leader you can name (Hayden, Rubin, Hoffman etc)

Of course, it doesn't follow from the claim that a given person of group x has property y that no other person within x has y. Nor did I claim it did. I wonder if Horowitz and others saw a change in Ramparts after he took over; how much longer was it in business, or had it already run out of steam? And am I to take him as seriously, less seriously, or more seriously than "Hayden, Rubin, Hoffman etc."?

I've gone on far too long here. I've said, and I shall repeat: this is Horowitz's bailiwick, not mine. I've tried to respond to both Horowitz and the others who posted in this thread, not to misdirect or anything else but to save a bit of time.

DH: Mon Jul 18, 2005 10:18 am

I'm sorry that Ben Dover appears to be so intimidated at the prospect of debating the issues with me that he has retreated in advance. I regret especially because his response was civil and respectful and that means if we had the opportunity to discuss the issues it would be an interesting conversation. On the other hand this is all too typical of the left which is very bold on the attack but very weak on the comeback. Note that even for a fellow who seems relatively decent, the attack was an ad hominem attempt to eliminate me from the discussion altogether (no one takes Horowitz seriously), but the comeback was in effect: I can't handle him when it comes to the issues. In other words, Ben Dover takes me so seriously that he doesn't want to take me on when I actually appear.

BD: Mon Jul 18, 2005 10:34 am

dhorowitz wrote:
I'm sorry that Ben Dover appears to be so intimidated at the prospect of debating the issues with me that he has retreated in advance. I regret especially because his response was civil and respectful and that means if we had the opportunity to discuss the issues it would be an interesting conversation. On the other hand this is all too typical of the left which is very bold on the attack but very weak on the comeback. Note that even for a fellow who seems relatively decent, the attack was an ad hominem attempt to eliminate me from the discussion altogether (no one takes Horowitz seriously), but the comeback was in effect: I can't handle him when it comes to the issues. In other words, Ben Dover takes me so seriously that he doesn't want to take me on when I actually appear.

Maybe I intimidate too easily. What issue, is it, exactly, that we are debating? That Valerie Plame "sent" Joseph Wilson to Niger? I didn't have a view I was defending, but rather asked a question, namely, was she in a position to do this? Others here have a great deal more experience in both the military and the intelligence community; I thought they might bring some precision to this claim.

I guess I wouldn't characterize what I said as a "bold attack" (or, as another poster pointed out, "starting a war"); to reiterate

Quote:
A lot of people didn't take Horowitz that seriously while he was on the left. I don't see him taken that seriously now, either; within the circumscribed world that ranges from Limbaugh and WorldNetDaily and FrontPage.com all the way to FNC, he is regarded as some kind of hero, having courageously broken away from the clutches of the New Left. He isn't widely seen in the media, although I'm quite confident that he appears more than I realize, and the fact that he doesn't appear more is due much more to the nature of the media than it is to the quality of his insights. Academics don't seem to take him seriously, but, again, that isn't Horowitz's problem but rather the nature of an academy that is dominated by uncritical ranting leftists, who dogmatically refuse to listen to him. Thus Horowitz's greatness is only recognized by those who understand (a rather "Straussian" point), and those who fail to do so are blinkered by dogmatism and knee-jerk shallow leftism. This entails that all those who fail to agree with Horowitz simply don't, or can't, understand him, a classic question-begging strategy.

Clearly enough, a large number of people take you seriously, hence it couldn't be the case--and I don't think I asserted--that "no one takes Horowitz seriously." So the alleged ad hominem attack is based on a faulty premise.

In spite of the notorious lies and foolishness of whatever it is that constitutes the "left" in the US, I'm happy to admit when I'm wrong. Perhaps you were taken more seriously than I thought; I don't remember Ramparts, in its last few years, as being of much significance in my reading, but perhaps I had moved on, perhaps I couldn't find it as easily, perhaps it was no longer something I found compelling. Perhaps Berman is correct, and your text(s?) were the most widely-read of The New Left (although my guess is that most folks were still reading Marx, Lenin, Fanon, Sartre, Foucault, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Fisk, Rawls, a few hundred others, and, eventually, Habermas and Castoriadis more).

What precisely has been the influence of your political views in the stream of American thought, in general, in the media, and in the academy?

That, and what issue we are debating (so I know what it is I'm ducking), is what I will ask at this point.

DH: Mon Jul 18, 2005 11:17 am

Your charge was that no one takes me seriously outside the fever chambers of the (obviously) wrong true-believing right now and I was generally disrespected by the left when I was a leftist. This is a bold ad hominem attempt to discredit all my work without reading it. I won't belabor this, but if you send me a mailing address, I will send you my book Left Illusions which contains my writings both as a leftist and as a conservative and you can judge for yourself. The book also contains observations about my work and about its influence.

Some years ago Insight magazine did a survey among conservatives of the conservative books they found most influential. They published the results of the survey as "The Top Ten Most Influential Conservative Books" or words to that effect. Radical Son was number two in the ranking if I remember correctly. I think when conservatives now talk about the "left" instead of "liberals" when they refer to the "hate America left" or the "Fifth Column" left, they are speaking language and reflecting understandings that I have had a large influence in promoting. I believe my views on racial issues, specifically the left's own racism is substantial. And I believe I have had something to do with the more aggressive stance of conservatism over the last decade. The book I wrote with Peter Collier, Destructive Generation, was assigned by the late Lee Atwater as required reading for his staff, which included Karl Rove. My pamphlet The Art of Political War was praised by Rove as "the perfect guide to winning on the political battlefield" and has been read by over 100,000 Republican operatives. You can judge for yourself whether it's been effective. Insofar as the left is now understood by conservatives as a crypo-religion and a reactionary social force, that is partly the result of my influence as well. Also the conservative critique of the AIDS crisis as reflected in books like Michael Fumento's The Myth of Heterosexual AIDs was directly inspired by work I did with Peter Collier on this issue. I coud go on, but what's the point? The culture you inhabit is so closed, so insular, and so determined to erase people like me, that it doesn't surprise me that you could make the remarks you did. As I have pointed out more than once, when I was on the left my books were reviewed on the front page of the Sunday Times. Now that I am a conservative, they are not reviewed at all. Do you think I became less intelligent over the last twenty years or less capable as a writer? Why should someone like you, who probably thinks of the Times as representing enlightened opinion not conclude from this what you did?

BD: Mon Jul 18, 2005 11:33 am

I know you're busier than I am, and I'm pretty busy, so I appreciate the time you have taken here to discuss these things. I do like the idea that when you get the chance, you drop a few insights into my own psyche, in terms of my insular worldview and my dependence on the NY Times. It doesn't advance the discussion, but believe me, I've heard a lot worse. I'm not sure what you think someone is who is "like me"--married, kids, likes baseball and bluegrass, or do you mean crypto-Stalinist bent on destroying America? You seem to know a lot from the minimal exposure you've had (this is usually when the term "ilk" gets used).

I simply don't have time to respond to all of this, so I'll be brief and try to return tomorrow or Wednesday.

Quote:
Some years ago Insight magazine did a survey among conservatives of the conservative books they found most influential. They published the results of the survey as "The Top Ten Most Influential Conservative Books" or words to that effect. Radical Son was number two in the ranking if I remember correctly.

I'm impressed with these results, and I find it amazing that you were ranked more highly than all but at most one of these: "Witness," "God and Man at Yale," "Atlas Shrugged," "The Road to Serfdom," "None Dare Call it Conspiracy," "Reflections on the Revolution in France," "The God That Failed," "The Conscience of a Conservative," "A Choice Not an Echo," "The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot," among a few that come to mind.

Quote:
As I have pointed out more than once, when I was on the left my books were reviewed on the front page of the Sunday Times. Now that I am a conservative, they are not reviewed at all. Do you think I became less intelligent over the last twenty years or less capable as a writer? Why should someone like you, who probably thinks of the Times as representing enlightened opinion not conclude from this what you did?

This puts you in good, albeit mixed, company, doesn't it? I haven't read the New York Times Book Review on a regular basis for years, so I neither keep track nor have my reading determined by what its editors think. Sorry.

Again, thanks for taking out the time for your responses. Vote Quimby.

DH: Mon Jul 18, 2005 12:08 pm

I never use the word "ilk." If you were to look through my article archive on frontpage or the discussions in the main "Guide" section of DiscovertheNetworks.org you would find that I have written many articles distinguishing between shades of leftists. Nonetheless I get attacked all the time in the manner of this your most recent email for not making these distinctions. The problem with even Quimby leftists like yourself (a decent chap but stupid don't you think?) is that you seem to operate from your paranoid projections of what you think conservatives are like than what they actually are like. I made you an offer: Left Illusions is a representative sampling of my work over 40 years. I will give you a copy free so that you can address what I have actually written instead of what you think I've written.

And I will give you this point (which is not what roused me to respond to you however): I should have written in my original Plame blog, that Mrs. Wilson "recommended" Mr. Wilson; not that she actually sent him. This recommendation, however, was a violation of agency regulations, as I said.

DH: Mon Jul 18, 2005 1:38 pm

It is my understanding (having read this in the course of the controversy last year) that it is a violation of the law for a CIA employee to recommend a relative for the position that Plame recommended Wilson.

BD: Wed Jul 20, 2005 7:47 am

dhorowitz wrote:
I never use the word "ilk." If you were to look through my article archive on frontpage or the discussions in the main "Guide" section of DiscovertheNetworks.org you would find that I have written many articles distinguishing between shades of leftists. Nonetheless I get attacked all the time in the manner of this your most recent email for not making these distinctions. The problem with even Quimby leftists like yourself (a decent chap but stupid don't you think?) is that you seem to operate from your paranoid projections of what you think conservatives are like than what they actually are like. I made you an offer: Left Illusions is a representative sampling of my work over 40 years. I will give you a copy free so that you can address what I have actually written instead of what you think I've written.

And I will give you this point (which is not what roused me to respond to you however): I should have written in my original Plame blog, that Mrs. Wilson "recommended" Mr. Wilson; not that she actually sent him. This recommendation, however, was a violation of agency regulations, as I said.

I gather this thread is pretty much done. I again would like to express my appreciation for Mr. Horowitz coming over and offering his views. In what almost certainly my last comment (on this thread; sorry, coastie), I'll just make a few observations.

a) "I get attacked all the time in the manner of this your most recent email for not making these distinctions." I don't think I "attacked," I just pointed out that to generalize about me on the basis of such limited exposure seems a bit hasty; to include comments about my psyche, being delusional (and now paranoid) didn't seem supported by anything I've said in this thread. Nor did I make any generalizations about what "conservatives are like," nor base any claim on such (nonexistent) generalizations.

b) "Quimby leftists like yourself (a decent chap but stupid don't you think?)"; Quimby is not a decent chap; he is the classic corrupt politician many of us know from the Simpsons. There isn't much evidence that he is particularly smart, nor that he is much of a "leftist." I do like the gratuitous "leftist like yourself," whatever that may mean given a) above.

c) "I never use the word 'ilk'." Nor did I say Horowitz used the world "ilk"; I said that it is often used in this context.

d) "you can address what I have actually written instead of what you think I've written"; Since we haven't discussed the content of anything that Horowitz has written, there seems to be little room to object that I caricature it.

e) "And I will give you this point (which is not what roused me to respond to you however): I should have written in my original Plame blog, that Mrs. Wilson "recommended" Mr. Wilson; not that she actually sent him. This recommendation, however, was a violation of agency regulations, as I said." This was one of two points I made, although I was asking a question more than making an assertion; so on this I was correct, according to Horowitz himself.

The only other point I made was that Horowitz was not taken seriously on the Left. Other than a quote from Paul Berman, without a source as far as I remember, I see nothing offered to suggest otherwise. Ramparts, I think it could be argued, had run out of steam at least by the time Horowitz took over. Was he cited much in various manifestos, or in academic or popular writing? Did the prominent members of the Left have much to say about his importance and influence on their thought and activism? Do they now? I haven't seen much evidence for it, but perhaps I haven't done sufficient research to find it.

On the basis, then, of a question about "sent" vs. "recommended," and the claim about Horowitz's importance on the Left, I'm accused of being delusional, paranoid, and adopting the worldview of the New York Times as a beacon of enlightenment. My original characterization of his writing and method seem to be confirmed here, Horowitz has accepted the point of my question, and offered little to suggest that my second point was false. I have been told, along the way, about Horowitz's influence on the right, including the remarkable influence he has on the readers of Insight magazine, that I should read various books of his, and that his various websites have much to offer. These claims may all be true, but they may also confirm the charge of self-promotion, as well.

Again, I enjoyed the discussion, and hope Mr. Horowitz returns on a regular basis to offer his views here.

BD: Wed Jul 20, 2005 9:37 am

Quote [from another poster]:
I sort of wish Benjamin Dover hadn't suffered quite such a reaming.

Perhaps "reaming" is in the eye of the beholder. I made two points, one of which Horowitz conceded (and subsequently changed the wording of the piece about which I had asked); on the other, he gave very little evidence to indicate that my claim was not, in fact, true.

I hang my head in shame.

DH: Wed Jul 20, 2005 9:47 am

This is so typical of leftists. They insult you and misrepresent you. They never admit a mistake and they never acknowledge when you acknowledge one yourself. They never engage you on the issues, but always return to their ad hominem attacks. I withdraw my offer to send Dover a book. Why waste the money and time on an intellectual coward?

BD: Wed Jul 20, 2005 10:01 am

dhorowitz wrote:
This is so typical of leftists. They insult you and misrepresent you. They never admit a mistake and they never acknowledge when you acknowledge one yourself. They never engage you on the issues, but always return to their ad hominem attacks. I withdraw my offer to send Dover a book. Why waste the money and
time on an intellectual coward?

If I offended you by insulting you, my apologies; I don't know what insult you are referring to; I do know in this exchange that one of the interlocutors was described as adopting the NY Times as his beacon of enlightenment (on the basis of no evidence), as paranoid (on the basis of no evidence), and now as an intellectual coward (on the basis of no evidence). I was glad to see the word "sent" changed to "recommended," although if it was you who acknowledged that, I missed it; I'm happy to revise that misinterpretation. Thanks.

To the extent that I have "misrepresented" you, I also regret that; if I have, I hope it was unintentional. Can you suggest where and/or how I have done so?

The only issues here were the issue of Plame's "sending" or "recommending"; I gather that issue has been resolved. The other is the seriousness of your influence on the Left, back in the day. I'm happy to acknowledge that Ramparts had its day in the sun; I'm not nearly as familiar with its history or the timeline(s) involved--as I've admitted above--to determine whether it was all that influential in its last few years, or whether I simply found it less compelling for other, rather quotidian, reasons. As I also said, I may simply not be aware of the information that would indicate that influence. If it is there, clearly I have been misinformed, but that is more of a recognition of my ignorance than my cowardice.

I appreciate the offer of the book(s), but I will be happy to get my own, and read them as time permits. I still find it impressive that Radical Son was ranked as highly as it was by the readers of Insight magazine, and I certainly cannot deny your evident influence there.

Finally, once again, I thank you for time and patience in responding to the various points posters here have made. There are a lot of interesting folks posting here, many of whom are big fans of yours; I hope you come back often.

DH: Thu Jul 21, 2005 10:27 am

Thanks to all of you who have dealt with Dover. It's a sad commentary on the left that it's only real purpose is to slander people who disagree with its agendas, never to engage the issues. But then Ann [Coulter] has written the book on that. Thanks again.

BD: Thu Jul 21, 2005 10:36 am

FeedFwd wrote:
Ben,

Perhaps part of your credibility problem comes from the fact that most of us around in the time prior to Horowitz's conversion who were running in conservative circles recall that his name was as commonly identified with the radical left as Hoffman or the black panthers or any of the others. It seems unbelievable that he was considered a leading radical by the right and at the same time was considered unimportant by other leading radicals on the left at the same time. The writers that are left of center do have a record of revising history on occasion. So with the conversion of Mr Horowitz, it is more plausible to many of us that the leftists who bother to write on such matters may be engaging in a bit of exaggeration.

That's the best response I've read on this thread. You may well be right--as I've admitted--and what is required is the research of what was said and written at the time to avoid precisely the bias you indicate could be a problem. This also requires a bit of semantic jousting over the notion of being taken seriously, but I certainly don't have the energy to do so.

As far as this:

Quote:
Thanks to all of you who have dealt with Dover. It's a sad commentary on the left that it's only real purpose is to slander people who disagree with its agendas, never to engage the issues. But then Ann has written the book on that. Thanks again.

Now we can add slander to the list of things I'm guilty of, simply for having suggested a testable claim that I've admitted, more than once, can be confirmed or disconfirmed and about which I said I'm confident but not absolutely certain, without doing the kind of research mentioned above.

Mr. Horowitz mentions all these issues, but the issues that I raised on this thread were a) Plame didn't send Wilson (and that is now well behind us) and b) Horowitz wasn't "taken seriously" by the Left. The evidence calling this into question: a quote from Paul Berman, and the history of Ramparts, which deserves some specificity of when and where its influence was. There may be a lot more evidence available (or evidence that confirms my claim). How this leads to "slander," and is thus characteristic of "the left" (whose only purpose is to slander), is either a rather Pickwickian use of the term "slander" (or "agenda") or is simply further confirmation of Mr. Horowitz's style.

Kirsten Loves Logic

2007-01-25T09:50:00.000-05:00

Nathalie Dupree used to have a cooking show. One evening, she made this enormous mess, and looking straight into her camera, told the audience "Don't do as I say, do as I tell you."

There is, in the south suburbs of Louisville, a large billboard, advertising a tattoo parlor. With no indication of irony (or jest), its slogan? "Done while you wait."

In the McDonald's on High Street, a couple of miles north of campus, there used to be a sign in the parking lot. "Parking for Drive Through Only." It's no longer there; my guess is that the McDonald's folks got tired of it being stolen by philosophy professors.

A friend of mine told me the other day of a movie he recommended, saying, in part, that "it was like no other movie." I asked him, given that there might be another movie that was "like no other movie," if these two movies would, then, be like each other.

A house in Miamisburg had a sign in front, saying "House and/or lot for sale." How annoyed would the people be if someone just bought the lot?

A tip o' the hat to "Bow Legged Lou" (I'm not sure who he is, but my guess is that he watches too much tv) for reminding me of this one. My friend Bob and I went to a local bar (Tanks, in this case), and he just stood at the door, refusing to go in. He stood there about five minutes; I came out and asked him what his deal was. He said "the sign says 'You must be 21 to enter.' I'm 34."

I couldn't find a picture of that famous sign reading "In case of flood, this sign will be underwater."

I may have a few more; I'll add them when I think of them. I would ask my many readers for examples of their own, but that seems a request that would fall on deaf ears.

Surgin' General

2007-01-11T12:22:00.000-05:00

November 29, 2005, I wrote this (you could look it up), as a proposed speech (short and sweet) for our President to make, given what we were confronting at the time in Iraq.

I don't think our troops ought to be used for carrying out an ill-conceived plan, based not just on faulty intelligence but contrary to that intelligence in many cases, and from sources the US intelligence community (and others) regarded as fundamentally flawed, with no particularly clear idea of what will constitute success, and generating more problems than are solved. As my Daddy might say, the first thing you do when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging.

But now our President has drafted a new plan, and defended it in what is now, yet again, the most important speech of his Presidency.

So I watched his speech, listened carefully to his arguments, watched FOX, MSNBC, and CNN for punditry, and read various reactions today in the newspapers, blogs, etc..

It took a lot of time for me to consider and evaluate all this new information, in order to compose my own response, based upon the new strategy, leadership, and direction so articulately defended by our President last night. Here it is.

I don't think our troops ought to be used for carrying out an ill-conceived plan, based not just on faulty intelligence but contrary to that intelligence in many cases, and from sources the US intelligence community (and others) regarded as fundamentally flawed, with no particularly clear idea of what will constitute success, and generating more problems than are solved. As my Daddy might say, the first thing you do when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging.

Do As I Say?

2006-12-28T13:21:00.000-05:00

President Ford is no longer with us; he seemed like a nice enough fellow, and clearly Homer Simpson got along with him much better than George H.W. Bush.

We are now in the phase of saying wonderful things about him--he healed the nation, he was a man of integrity, he was a fabulous human being. Perhaps. On the other hand, he was pretty much of a non-entity, helped Reagan figure out precisely how to get the 1980 nomination, became somewhat of a laughingstock with his "Whip Inflation Now" buttons, and historians and others argue about the Mayaguez incident. I don't have any particular truck with him, but when the history of this century is written, it will be abundandtly clear that another figure who died this week--James Brown--will be of vastly greater importance.

I'm more interested in what our current President had to say. Here are the quotes and paraphrases, with a brief remark following:

Former President Gerald Ford will forever be remembered for helping to "heal our land" following the Watergate scandal.

Our President, on the other hand, has done little but generate and exacerbate the genuine hostility that exists in the body politic, by ignoring environmental threats, by acting as if Christians have a special route to the truth, and by questioning the patriotism of those who criticize his Administration. Thus we have, as we did with Nixon, wounds badly in need of beng healed. Thus Bush seems to have followed Nixon by a) campaigning on a unity theme (remember Nixon's "Bring Us Together"?)--"I'm a uniter, not a divider" and b) doing almost everything imaginable to violate that theme.

Bush praised the former president for using common sense and "quiet integrity" to restore the nation's confidence.

Our President, on the other hand, has shown little common sense and less integrity, by invading a country that was not much of a threat, inflating whatever threat there was, changing the reasons from day to day for how he dealt with that threat, and then having, evidently, no clue how to deal with Iraq after militarily deposing Saddam Hussein, has disregarded much of the advice (and common sense) and chosen to escalate the US commitment to the war. People on the right don't like the comparisons between Iraq and Viet Nam, and the analogies aren't perfect, but how long until we hear that we have to destroy Fallujah (or Najaf, or even Baghdad) in order to save it? Nixon move number two.

"The American people will always admire Gerald Ford's devotion to duty, his personal character and the honorable conduct of his administration."

Our President, on the other hand, has indicated that torture, illegal wiretapping, suspension of habeas corpus, and extraordinary rendition are his, and his alone, to approve--so much for "honorable conduct." W. confuses consistency with character; Emerson told us all we need to know about a foolish consistency. Duty, consistency, and resolve all sound like characteristics of a good leader, unless we look at the ends to which they are directed. Then they start to look like stubbornness, an unwillingness to look at the real issues, and a borderline paranoiac perspective on views coming from outside one's own perspective. Nixon move number three.

"With his quiet integrity, common sense and kind instincts, President Ford helped heal our land and restore public confidence in the presidency," Bush commented.

Our President, on the other hand, is responsible for the integrity of those who, for instance, choose to denigrate the military service of those who actually served in country; those who question the patriotism of critics; those who accuse journalists of being fifth-columnist terrorists; those who continued, long after it was plausible, to suggest links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and those who were willing to leak names and information as political payback. Our President had helped wound our land, and drawn down sharply whatever reservoir of good will and public confidence that had been extended to the presidency, most saliently after 9.11. He has shown little or no integrity, little or no common sense, few if any kind instincts; he has failed to heal our land and failed to restore public confidence in the presidency. Nixon move number four.

Evidently, W. didn't listen to what he himself said about Ford; the contrast is striking with Ford, and the similarities apparent between Bush and the man Ford replaced. The difference is that while Bush and Nixon may have shared the meanness, the pettiness, and the vindictiveness, Bush lacks what Nixon did have--a global vision, a sense of realism, and the political intelligence to try and reach those goals.

Reading

2006-12-18T10:12:00.000-05:00

Now that I'm going to publish my own book, I still try and humor those who have done the same, by occasionally picking up some volume to see if they have what it takes. Here's the recent stuff.

Thomas Perry; Nightlife

Perry's best books--Island, Butcher's Boy, Metzger's Dog, and the Jane Whitfield series--are quite good. His characters tend to be smarter than you (and me), and have remarkably keen senses of what is going on around them, which is, generally, what keeps them alive. Jane Whitfield, for instance, is a woman who helps folks disappear (from the Mob, a homicidal spouse) and does a bang-up job of getting all the myriad details just right to be successful. It is something worth noting that such a strong and independent female character--much more admirable, in my view, than V.I. Warshawski, for instance--was created by a man. Perry writes very well, has an excellent eye for detail, and his best books really are, as they say, hard to put down. I read this one in about two settings; unfortunately (because I'm always looking for a new one) this wasn't very good. It is about a female serial killer being chased by a female cop--there seems to be some kind of Doppelgänger thing going on, that isn't very well developed--and, then, suddenly it's all over. There are a couple of very interesting characters introduced who then just sort of disappear, or don't play much of a role; this seemed like one Perry sort of "phoned in." But I will look for his next one (out in July 2007), because even bad Perry is better than the best stuff by most I've read in this genre.

Raul Hilberg; The Politics of Memory: The Journey of a Holocaust Historian

Some reading this may be familiar with Hilberg's 3 volume (definitive?) history of the Holocaust/Shoah, The Destruction of European Jewry, or perhaps seen Hilberg in Claude Lanzmann's (9 hour) Shoah. This was a strange book, and one of the saddest I've read in a long time; not because of the obvious reason of the content with which Hilberg has spent his life understanding, but because of his tragic self-conception. Clearly he has some bones to pick, in how his work has been received and/or treated by those who participate in what has been called "the Holocust Industry," and he has some incisive criticisms of Lucy Dawidowicz. He has some more subtle reflections on Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem, as well as various tales to tell about getting from Vienna to Vermont, where he spent most of his career teaching. But at the end, he clearly is concerned that his work has been for nought, and he begins and ends the book with some troubling and very personal considerations about what he has accomplished, what its value is, and whether he has really acheived what he sought. An oddly disturbing text.

Steven Pinker; The Blank Slate

I'm teaching "Philosophy and Human Nature" starting in January; this seemed to be an interesting text to use, so I've even read it. I was particularly compelled to do so when a colleague told me it was a terrible book and then conceded that he or she hadn't read it. Clearly Pinker is asking for trouble, here; by suggesting that just as it makes sense that height and eye color are determined genetically, what if other aspects of the human being have similar causal stories--such as violence, altruism, various strategies for getting and/or avoiding sex, language learning, and playing the violin? What if some of this genetic determination cannot be overcome by the environment? Pinker issues a challenge to those who wish to maintain the old empirical tradition of the "blank slate," as well as the "Ghost in the Machine" and the Noble Savage, and is willing to defend that challenge from various directions, including cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, and linguistics (as well as more specific data, such as that gained through various studies of identical and fraternal (sororital?) twins and adoptees). It is interesting--and this will be the focus of my course--to see how those who wish to reject his conclusions do so: namely, simply assert that he either is directly supporting sexism and racism, or to take up the more difficult task of showing how genetics informs but doesn't determine the results in quite the way Pinker suggests. To complement this text, we will be reading Plato's Protagoras--a whole different approach--and I'm going to read Anne Fausto-Sterling's Myths of Gender as soon as it arrives in the mail. This should be a fun course: Pinker provides enough ammunition to piss off everyone.

in process

Richard Dawkins; The God Delusion

Speaking of pissing people off, Dawkins is gifted in this particular area. He is smart, he is courageous, and he writes very very well. This is a bad combination for those who don't like his thesis, which is, more or less, that given evolutionary biology's fundamental mechanism of descent with modification, the hypothesis of a supernatural creator (and its frequent corollary, a supernatural being that hears prayers, intercedes in human affairs, and cooks up the occasional miracle) is superfluous. Therefore, one should recognize that God plays no plausible explanatory role in any investigation that qualifies as "rational," that those who suggest their religious claims are off limits to criticism are intellectual cheats, and that in terms of probability, the hypothesis that God does not exist is much stronger than the opposing view. Thus agnostics are criticized for suggesting that since one cannot know (in a strong sense of "know") whether God exists, that each claim has equal possibility of being true. Fundamentally, Dawkins has written this book for those who are too chicken to admit that they are atheists, and thinks that they should come out of the closet and quit being respectful to the point of idiocy in taking seriously claims that have no evidence, no merit, and which, at best, are psychological crutches with a long pedigree designed originally to comfort those who are overwhelmed by the actual world, and continue to force their children to adopt those same crutches. (See how he can piss people off?)

Erich Auerbach; Mimesis

Nothing like a 600 page book on literature from Homer to Proust to get you through the day. Auerbach was one of those old school scholars who seemed to have read everything, and read it in the original. He has a lot to say, obviously, about the mimetic function of literature and its relation to the world we seek to describe and understand. If I finish this book, it will be precisely the kind of miracle that some would suggest calls into question Dawkins' cosmological worldview.

Merry Christmas to my reader, and remember the Festivus "airing of grievances" on December 23!

COGS? ROI, EVA, or Residual Income?

2006-12-11T11:57:00.000-05:00

Tempted as I am to extol my love of accounting, both financial and managerial, I shall instead take this opportunity to respond to the one request (it doesn't take much) to say something about my book.

First, it's an unbelievable thrill ride, a roller-coaster of action-packed excitement, with sex, drugs, rock 'n roll, perversion, politics, murder, mayhem, carnage, and cosmic significance.

Oh, wait: Kant was against lying. My apologies.

It is a study of the Critique of Pure Reason, suggesting that we read it the way Kant saw it: as a logic. That is, as identifying and justifying (in one way or another) a set of universal and necessary rules for the possiblity of the domain over which those rules range. To keep my one reader here, I'll just say that for thought to be possible, it must conform to rules we might call "logic"; for cognition to be possible, it as well must conform to rules, which Kant refers to as the "logic of experience." My guess is that the same thing applies to the moral philosophy, as well as aesthetic and teleological judgements. The central idea is that "transcendental" is to be glossed as "necessity for a possibility," and reading the Critique that way makes Kant's claims relatively modest and relatively defensible.

To scotch any ill-founded rumors, often started by the French department at Wright State University: it is not a pop-up book. There are no pictures. It is in English (sort of). It can be read by those with a general interest in philosophy; there is some slow-going stuff, but not all that much. It will not be a book on tape, the author will not appear on Oprah, it will not be reviewed by the NY Times, and it will not make the best-seller list. It is what it is: a nice solid little book explaining the final and absolute truth about Kant, that makes all others obsolete and superfluous.

It is being published by the Catholic University of America Press, apparently as part of the Vatican's continuing attempt to get me to enroll in its 12-step program (or to convert; I'm not sure of the difference)--after all, I've taught mostly at Catholic Universities (Loyola of Chicago and the University of Dayton), a really Catholic school (I guess) is publishing my book, and I have yet to be put on the Index (is it still going?). The odd thing was that a) a surprisingly large (I don't know how to do exponents here) number of publishers chose not to publish this piece of brilliance and 2) after I had accepted CUA's offer, I was called by a pretty good publisher asking me why I hadn't responded to their e-mails of six months ago, offering to publish it. I thought my reason a pretty good one, and I told them: "Because I never saw them." But I was in the unique situation, for me almost certainly never to be repeated, of saying "I've decided to go with another press." I tried to use my best Gore Vidal voice, albeit masculino voce.

So when I find out when it is appearing, I'll let you know. As I've indicated elsewhere, expect the kind of madness that occurred a few years ago with "Tickle Me Elmo."

And for those who really care, here's the Table of Contents:

Necessity and Possibility: The Logical Strategy of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

Chapter One Kant's Critical Model of the Subject

1. Introduction
2. The Archytpal Model
3. The Ectypal Model
4. The Archtypal and Ectypal Model
5. Kant's indirect argument for the "critical" model
6. The judging subject and objective validity

Chapter Two Kant's Conception of General Logic

1. General Logic and Aristotle
2. The Role of General Logic
3. General Logic as A Priori
4. Criticisms of a Kantian Conception of General Logic

Chapter Three The Historical Background of Kant's Logic

1. General Logic and Grammar
2. The Historical Background of Kant's General Logic
3. Kant's General Logic: Some Conclusions

Chapter Four The Metaphysical Deduction

1. The Goal of the Metaphysical Deduction
2. The Strategy of the Metaphysical Deduction
3. The Argument of the Metaphysical Deduction
4. Logic and Common Sense

Chapter Five Kant and Contemporary Philosophy

1. Introduction
2. Kant and Laurence BonJour's "Moderate Rationalism"
3. Kant, Davidson, and Conceptual Schemes
4. An excursus into the postmodern
4.1 Introduction
4.2 The tenets of postmodernism
4.3 Kant and the postmodern
4.4 Kant, Foucault, and Foundationalism

Chapter Six The Modesty of the Critical Philosophy

1. Introduction
2. Kant's epistemological modesty
3. Kant and Common Sense
4. Conclusion

Grimm? Or Grim?

2006-11-25T16:13:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, there was a good but clueless King, known to his subjects as Herb the Hapless. Herb tried to follow in the footsteps of previous Kings, but rarely seemed to know where he was going or how to get there. When he was deposed by Jefferson the Lech, no one really seemed to mind.

Herb the Hapless had two sons, both of noble birth and breeding, and, as is often the case, the younger son Walker the Weakling had come by his name honestly. An indifferent student, Walker focused on having fun, apparently having a deep affection for dipping his beak in the King's caskets of ale.

As luck would have it, the Kingdom sought in vain for an heir to Jefferson the Lech, and thus a hue and cry went throughout the realm, seeking a just and righteous leader to follow him. Various suitors for the crown were examined and eliminated, through a variety of palace intrigues and whispering campaigns, and, ultimately, the only one left standing was Walker the Weakling. Pointing to his illustrous lineage, his outstanding academic degrees (albeit deflecting attention from the actual work involved), his success at business (which generally seemed to be the result of his father's friends giving him money), Walker declared himself King amid much pomp, and noted his popular acclaim from the masses. (In doing so, he tended to neglect his actual lack of popularity, and the nagging but substantial part of the people who regarded him as, at best, an idiot.)

Things went along in the kingdom, with Walker's mediocre rule reveling in its mediocrity, while making his friends and his father's friends very wealthy; in turn, his father's friends became his most trusted advisor's, from the chief advisor Warrior Dick the Mighty Hunter to the wily courtier James of the Deal, who was able to secure Walker the Weakling's original seat on the throne.

Then, one horrific day, the Kingdom was invaded. After a momentary--if predictable--moment of confusion, the King united his Kingdom against the evildoers. Having used his enormous army to pummel a weak and disorganized enemy, he then turned to invade another country. Explaining his reasoning, he stated, more or less, in his Victorian third-person, "We've invaded them because we could."

Sadly, those who had attacked the Kingdom became stronger, the Kingdom attacked became a charnel house for those who lived there and who had nothing to do with attacking the Kingdom of Walker the Weakling; a reign that began in mediocrity became bad, then worse.

Walker the Weakling, as he had so many times in the past, turned to his father Herbert the Hapless for help. "Father, I've made a bad mistake. I can't change it, I can't turn back, and I can't go forward. Please help."

And, as he had so many times in the past, Herbert the Hapless sent his most cunning, most clever courtier, James of the Deal, who had saved Walker so often in the past. Perhaps only James of the Deal could save Walker the Weakling from the popular demand for Walker to abdicate his throne, just as so often he had abdicated his responsibility.

Yet, on that somber and chilly day, James of the Deal came to Walker the Weakling with a sorrowful countenance. "I'm sorry, my liege, but I've looked in my bag of tricks, and it is empty. Thus I can offer no hope, and neither can your good father. They were all used up, to get you on the throne, and to keep you on the throne. I can't even find a trick to scare your subjects enough for them to ignore the plight you--and they--are in. Your highness, evidently the Lord has declared that, for once, you've been stubbborn or stupid enough to get yourself finally into a fix from which you must extract yourself. The real trick will, of course, be providing a solution to a problem that can't be solved."

With that, Walker the Weakling shook his head, mystified. After having Warrior Dick the Mighty Hunter explain to him what James of the Deal had said, Walker the Weakling paled, cried briefly, held his head in his hands, and thought very hard--harder than he had in many, many years.

Finally, he stood, inhaled deeply, and strode forthrightly to the phone. "Get me Karl the Marketer. Tell him I need his help on explaining to the Kingdom how we have won."

Times a wastin'

2006-11-16T09:50:00.000-05:00

Well, it's that time of the semester that grading, my own course (the ever scintillating managerial accounting which, if forced to choose, I prefer to financial accounting; then again, I prefer being thrown off tall buildings to financial accounting), and lots of other stuff, means that I don't have time to write anything here. But for my reader, I wanted you to know I haven't forgotten you, and I hope to be back next week with a fairy tale about King George II.

I also will have details about the book all America is talking about, Necessity and Possibility: The Logical Strategy of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, which has been accepted by the Catholic University of America Press. I have to admit that the Catholics have been very good to me. God Bless 'em.

Finally: I think it is very cool that George Bush is finally going to make it to Viet Nam. I gather he thinks it is finally safe enough.

We Are the Champignons!

2006-11-05T10:28:00.000-05:00

This is the last entry before Tuesday's election. I don't have much to add to what is the torrent of information, disinformation, misinformation, and simply irrelevant nonsense already out there.

I would urge my readers to vote, but one isn't a citizen and the other, I think, isn't old enough.

I was wondering if someone stopped me and asked me why I was voting the way I am (pretty much a straight Democratic ticket), what my answer would be?

I guess it would be because they aren't Republicans. I think that's a good enough reason.

The Republicans, or at least those who appear to be in power and driving policy, seem to stand for some positions I find worrisome (for some, I just offer shorthand):

We are in a war on terror. Which may last forever
Checks and balances are a luxury--in a war on terror
Torture, or an indistinguishable subsitute, is permissible--during such a war the President can identify enemy combatants (alien or citizen) and deny them access to legal representation without any appeal outside of his own branch of government
Global warming is sufficiently confusing that we shouldn't worry about it
Katrina victims in New Orleans are a bunch of whiners and often colored
Evolution is sufficiently confusing that we should also teach untestable, unfalsfiable claims that provide virtually nothing in the way of a research program as comparably scientific
Christians have access to truth that others fail to
Israel must be defended at all costs and at all times, except the End Times, when Israeli Jews must either convert to Christianity (suitably interpreted) or die
Iraq
Iran
North Korea
Pakistan
Sudan
Burma/Myanmar
Afghanistan
Chechnya
Homosexuals don't deserve equal rights
A President who lies about a consensual sexual relationship in a deposition for a case that is thrown out deserves to be impeached and removed from office
A President who authorizes torture, violates international law, and eliminates habeas corpus for those he identifies as appropriate, should be immune from investigation, censure, or any other penalities
Health care
No Child Left Behind
Conservative principles that include ignoring deficit spending, embrace Military Keynesianism, and send mixed and confused signals about immigration
If something is "good for business" (appropriately interpreted), it is unimportant that it conflicts with one's principles, or damages more people than it benefits
The environment

In short, a vote for Republicans in this election seems to say this (unless, perhaps, one is either a single issue voter and can identify a single issue worthy of voting them back in, or one who, in some sense, benefits from the points above):

please keep treating me as if I'm stupid, cannot possibly understand complexity, and will vote for you because you have made me afraid.

There's a country song where the complaint is registered that one's object of affection treats the narrator as a mushroom: "You keep me in the dark, and feed me ______________" [scatological reference deleted].

I don't like being treated that way, and even if I weren't a Yellow Dog Democrat (for the most part), I would vote against the Republicans for having done so.

That's a good enough reason, this time around.

Coup sans grace

2006-11-01T13:15:00.000-05:00

As a number of my readers (both) know, I have, for several years, been a very active participant in the chatroom that is linked to Ann Coulter's site (anncoulter.com). On its first version, I had approximately 11,000 posts; the second version, a few over 5,000. (I quit for a couple of months at exactly 5,000, but rejoined when the events to be described occurred. I had planned on returning Nov. 8 for what should be obvious reasons.)

The board is pretty fun. While there are one or two "liberals" (also known as "libtards," "communists, "socialists," "leftists," and "comlibs," usually without much differentiation), for the most part I'm on my own, against sometimes a hundred people who disagree with me on virtually every point. I go there to annoy, argue, and learn, usually in that order. I also got a couple of academic papers out it and a classroom exercise, generated by this basic idea: we think and argue better if we have smart, informed people to disagree with. So, rather than using the Web only to find people who agree with us, it is intellectually stimulating and salubrious to find people with whom we disagree.

Anyway, I logged in a few days ago, to discover that the main moderator of the board, as well as a number of other moderators and frequent posters, were gone, replaced by others whose name I didn't recognize. A prank by some hacker at the Democratic Underground? A trick by someone at Halloween?

Nope. It turns out (to the extent that I've got this right; the details are a bit controversial) that someone hipped La Coultera that something wasn't right at her board. She, or more likely some minion, dumped the staff that ran it (which takes a lot of work, and was done on a whollly voluntary basis) and replaced it. The moderators and their supporters were banned, some immediately, others (such as myself) a bit later. So I got to see some of what the old board was up to.

The old board had a thread explaining things, called "There's a new Sheriff in town." So I posted on the site a couple of questions, including "How's that Sheriff thing working out?," and included a lovely picture of Deputy Barney Fife (for you youngsters, from The Andy Griffith Show; if you still don't know, never mind [although you should know]). I also sent a "private message" to one of the new moderators, who had always treated me fairly and who is pretty sharp, saying "Let me know when or if this board gets its sense of humor back." The next time I logged in, I had been banned.

The great part is that those who had been dismissed started a new board, and got 150+ to register in just a few days. Many of them are old friends from the old board, and, naturally, there has been a good bit of discussion about the behavior of La Coultera and her representatives.

La Coultera has mostly gotten a pass, although a standard line is "She's a bitch but probably has nothing to do with it," "She owes the old moderators an apology," "I don't like her but still like her writing."

What is interesting is that there was no discussion about this move. The owner of the site dismissed a bunch of people without investigation, ignores any questions about such behavior, and is now represented on her board by those who ban anyone who praises the former moderators or dares even to ask questions about possible unfairness (these folks then come over to the new site, and tell us their particular version of what is almost always the same story.) In short, La Coultera behaved precisely like a Nazi.

She likes to say those who disagree with her (aka "traitors" and/or Democrats and/or "liberals") always resort to name-calling (although, of course, she does it herself all the time--on the basis of an accusation, she loves to refer to Bill Clinton as a "rapist." For more specifics, see Brainless: The Lies and Lunacy of Ann Coulter by Joe Maguire). But when you act like a Nazi, and provide evidence of that behavior, it isn't "name calling"; it is a description or characterization. Maybe the shoe fits? Given her standards of evidence, if Bill Clinton is a rapist, Joe McCarthy a hero, and anyone who votes for a Democrat a traitor, what are we to think of La Coultera, on the basis of evidence considerably stronger than that which she marshalls?

THAT'S A WINNER!

2006-10-28T14:59:00.000-04:00

GO CRAZY, FOLKS!

Uno mas!

2006-10-27T09:40:00.000-04:00

The Gods of Baseball have been invoked. By Granderson, by Monroe, by Eckstein (and especially by Preston Wilson); what deity is involved in cursing the Tigers' pitching staff is a scary beast, indeed.

A fine and enjoyable game. These games have been for purists; few home runs, lots of good pitching, good defense (generally), crucial plays (taking an extra base, getting to first on a dropped third strike--what other sport has such a peculiar and engaging rule?).

As soon as Granderson slipped on Eckstein's ball (which wasn't, as Jayson Stark at ESPN said, "gently lifted"; it was hit very well, which seemed to surprise Granderson), I thought of Curt Flood's slip in '68 on Northrup's fly, which gave the Tigers that Series. Curt Flood's principled stand on the reserve clause is what, ultimately, made millionaires out of Albert Pujols and Greg Maddux (and Wayne Garland and Willie Mo Peña, for that matter). I thought every baseball player in the majors should have cut him a generous check for the sacrifice he made.

FOX almost immediately ran the clip. He slipped--he didn't fall--but just enough to prevent him from catching the ball. Now he's known for refusing to abide by the reserve clause and for not catching Northrup's ball. But he should also be remembered for having been as good a defensive center fielder as any of his era, a solid offensive player, and a contributor to a great Cardinal team. The team (including Cepeda, and Brock, and Gibson, and Javier, and Maxville, and McCarver and Shannon and, of course, Nelson Briles--announced by Harry Carey and Jack Buck) that convinced me to love baseball.

The Gods of Baseball may finally be extracting their revenge.

YIKES

2006-10-22T11:26:00.000-04:00

Originally posted 10.20.

My son likes to characterize things as "sweet." Perhaps he doesn't remember Jackie Gleason's standard line "How sweet it is." In any case, the NLCS was . . . sweet. Fucking sweet.

A few things come to mind:

So's homerun (see above)

Yadie's homerun ('nuff said)

Weaver--who I tend to dismiss as a head case--coming up huge.

Suppan coming up even huger (and who will be very well rewarded, although most likely not by the Cardinals).

The ESPN geniuses. Not one picked the Tigers or the Cardinals to be in the Series; all picked the Padres to win the NLDS, all picked the Mets to win the NLCS. No doubt all (as would I) pick the Tigers to win the WS. Perhaps this is a weird year? Jayson Stark said it best the other night: the Mets-Cardinals series was one in which no logic obtained. Fine with me. Logic is overrated.

57,000 disgruntled New Yorkers, with their little signs and their arrogance. Go home, and get mugged on the way.

Joe Buck being an idiot. How long did it take him to figure out that when no one is on base, or when one is intentionally walked, that that made it quite a bit more difficult to drive in a run? Admittedly, if it is true of anyone, it is true that when Pujols is at bat with the bases empty, there is one "runner" in scoring position. I haven't seen the numbers, but what were Sir Albert's--El Hombre's--LOB numbers, and RISP numbers? I think he was pressing a bit--as Barry Bonds did when Pittsburgh was in the playoffs--but I still look forward to him in the WS. Pujols meets Zumaya. Like I said, Yikes!

It was a great game, and the last two games made it a great series. Next week, I may have more to say about baseball, but it is getting close to time to start looking at politics again.

Just make sure you don't count the Cards out, and make sure all those complacent Democrats you know go out to vote. As often as possible.

What rhymes with "Carpenter"?

2006-10-13T08:48:00.000-04:00

The old saying in Milwaukee was "Spahn and Sain, Pray for Rain." The Cardinals got a terrific pitching performance from Jeff Weaver tonight, and hand the ball to Chris Carpenter. If Carpenter pitches as well as Weaver, the 'birds should head back to St. Louis 1-1. Otherwise; well, all along (since about August, actually), I thought any wins after the regular season concluded were lagniappe (I didn't even try to get tickets to the WS or NLCS this year, after getting them the last two years.) So I'm pretty happy they are even still playing. Harder to imagine is that after the first NLCS game, the concern isn't the pitching, but the hitting.

One should, of course, recognize that Glavine pitched a great game. One mistake by Weaver (to a very good hitter), solid defense (and in one case, spectacular), a couple of balls that didn't get through, and Glavine and a good bullpen: the Mets followed the recipe that worked for them all year. The Cards have to figure out some way to break that up. Not having Glavine pitch should help.

Eckstein isn't getting on base, and hitting the ball into the air too much. (His lineout to short was, along with Preston Wilson's 8th inning popup, the crucial AB of the game.) Wilson strikes out too much for a number two hitter and doesn't inspire confidence at moving the runner along. Pujols is, well, Pujols; he has had some pretty ugly ABs recently, but hit it hard twice last night (both "at'em" balls). Encarnacion sometimes looks like he's thinking about video games, drifting along offensively and defensively (while giving him his props for his triple against San Diego). Edmonds is doing ok, but doesn't have too many folks on base in front of him; Rolen seems clearly to be injured, and isn't helping offensively at all (and thus is hurting the offense). Belliard is a non-factor (although playing well in the field, albeit right field). Molina seems to be hitting better, but the comparison here isn't one that is inspiring; Weaver is hitting better than Rolen. My son Henry wonders "where's So Taguchi?"

This isn't an offense to strike much fear in an opponent. The Mets don't need to pitch around Pujols at this point; tonight, I assume Duncan will be providing a bit more of a threat, both to pitchers and to any tricky balls that come his way in the outfield. I like our chances with Carpenter, but LaRussa needs a chance to try some moves. I have discovered, in many years of watching baseball, that it becomes exponentially more difficult to hit and run if there is no one on base.

The ALCS has been a bit different; the Tigers have, after their first game against Satan's Farm Team, clearly been the superior team, in all facets of the game. Now, of course, we have to see how well they play in the snow.