G.O.P Dog Days?

I generally don't have a hell of a lot of use for William Kristol.

During the campaign, he spawned silly rumors like the imminent arrival of Mike Murphy in Team McCain that never happened.

He's a regular panelist on Fox News Sunday and has the awful habit of finding himself more charming than just about anyone else on the panel or off does.

But this morning in the Times, he comes through with a mildly clever observation about Barry's dog talk...and how it might not bode well for conservatives.

Up until now, many of the swing voters who decided to go black did so on the hope of competence rather than because of some seismic ideological change in the country. But in talking about the dog, he added the deadly element of empathy for dog lovers and parents throughout the country.

If Barack can bring not only competence to the table, but also a healthy dose of "I feel your pain," it could be a long few years for the Republicans in the wilderness.

With These Words, Paul Krugman Won My Admiration

As some know, one of my biggest pet peeves is the refusal of most people to acknowledge that "data" is the plural of "datum." (Hey, we all have our little quirks.)

So it's technically incorrect to refer to "this data."

Since the sin has been committed often enough, it's loosely-acceptable to practice incorrect English, but thank God the New York Times is kickin' it old school.

From his editorial on the economy today...

So these data are basically telling us what happened before
confidence collapsed after the fall of Lehman Brothers in mid-September, not to mention before the Dow plunged below 10,000.

They Can't Do That to Our Brokers. Only We Can Do That to Our Brokers!

The Science section of the Times, this morning, has an interesting article on the evolutionary underpinnings of the desire to punish misbehavers.

The context, of course, is all the monkeyshines that have been going on on Wall Street and people's desire (need?) to find someone to punish for causing problems well-beyond those directly and knowingly involved.

Smart as we may be, though not as smart as we might think we are, the evolutionary psychology folks have some valuable observations about the need to punish. In the animal kingdom, as well as in tribes without formal systems of 'government,' there's a demonstrated and predictable trend for groups to punish people whose actions hurt the group as a whole.

Luckily, of course, there's also a demonstrated desire for cooperation and room for forgiveness.

The authors also cite a fair amount of game theory / experimental economics to support the rest of the article. It's a nice overview of the topic and well worth your 15 minutes if I do say so myself.

You're a Slacker, McFly!

This little science article in the Times caught my eye...about societal and generational differences on the Big Five personality traits...especially among men in America...where we might have a breed of slackers.

Now pardon me while I get back to my Wii.

(Truth in advertising, I have never purchased a video game system.)

Nunn of the Above

Torie Clark made an observation on the This Week round table this morning that should be made more often when we discuss the Veepstakes in 2008 and beyond.

Sam Nunn gets talked about as a Democratic running mate each four years, his resume suggests he's fit for the job, but he won't get the nod.

The Times ran a similarly-themed item in its Week in Review section in June.

I'm not sure why this is so, but thinking back, every time I discuss with friends who the new Dem nominee is going to pick, Nunn's name comes up as the most sensible mainstream choice, but it just never comes to fruition.

So let's give it up, Citizens of the World. Drop Sam off the list and find a new perennial tease. How about someone who really represents the heart, soul and character of the party.

How about Alcee Hastings.

Barry is the Acting President?

While there's also the potential for some fun wordplay, that's what Frank Rich thinks in today's Time's Op-Ed Page...

This one is sure to be the talk of the news cycle as people try to digest and put the first-term Senator's overseas trip into some perspective.

Looking forward to Barry's MTP appearance in a little while...

Media Item of the Day

The Two Obamas

Par for the course, David Brooks nails it in his allotted space on the New York Times' Opinion Page today.

He points out what any honest person who's reflected on this presidential race knows...that Barack Obama is one crafty politician and that the 'change' routine, while effective, does not necessarily reflect his heart.

He goes so far as crediting him with having more gumption than Bubba in his claim to win at politics by not playing politics.

The column splits out the two Obamas nicely. One one hand, you have Dr. Obama, who says that he can no more disown his preacher than he could his own grandmother. But when it becomes expedient, Fast Eddie throws him under the bus.

In 2007 and before, Dr. Obama lectured the country on the necessity and benefits of public election financing. In 2008, and much to his credit, when he's built the greatest political fundraising machine this country has ever seen, he makes a claim that would make Bill blush...that the donations he's been getting from folks actually are public financing.

Gall and chutzpah, folks. Gall and chutzpah.

Dark Days Looming for the Internets

I've been following stories like this for some time, but they have mostly been in quasi-techie forums...but now that this story has made it to the Sunday's front page of the Old Gray Lady, I might really start sweating bullets.

The article is about how ISPs are moving to consider tiered pricing and bandwidth limits. When they plotted out how many gigabytes the average user transfers a month, I confirmed what I already know...this dreadful bootleg habit has me many, many, many standard deviations above the mean...confirming the accusations of deviancy I've heard all my life, I guess.

So while the argument for pay-as-you-use internet is clear on one hand, they also duly note that it's just this creation of artificial scarcity by providers that may have slowed down the initial growth of the internet.

Everyone remembers when AOL had its pricing based on the # of hours you spent online per month and some associate this with stifling the penetration of the internet to all facets of our lives.

Similarly, just as the media companies are trying to encourage people to spend more time transferring information and entertainment online, they are starting to plot out the fences.

I'm sure there'll be some kind of reasonable way to survive, but I did find my toes curling a little bit while reading this one.

Barney Frank...One Cool Dude

This morning, the New York Times ran a front page article about one of my favorite members of the US Congress, Barney Frank (D-MA).

And I write that without a drip of sarcasm.

Frank is the most well-known homosexual in Congress, the poster child for contemporary liberalism, a man with biting wit and one of the smartest dudes in that joint.

I don't always agree with where he comes down on certain things, but the guy is one of the real true-believers in there and I pity the fool who tries to challenge his grasp of what he's talking about. (Frank is the chairman of the Financial Services Committee and the article is about his working for a deal to help out people being hurt during this housing crunch/crisis.)

They cite someone from the White House who just calls him 'scary smart.'

Below, I pulled out some of his funnier lines from the article....

MARCH 11 “Mr. Speaker, a parliamentary inquiry. Mr. Speaker, is blatant hypocrisy a violation of the rules of the House?”

Responding to Republican complaints that Democrats had extended the voting period for 15 minutes to win approval of a bill creating an independent House ethics office. In 2003, the Republicans once extended the voting period for three hours to get their desired outcome.

NOV. 7, 2007 “I am grateful for the obscurity of the opposition’s argument.”

In a debate over the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, a bill to prohibit discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation.

JULY 18, 2006 “So, apparently, same-sex marriage is the V8 juice of America.”

During a debate over a “marriage protection” amendment, Mr. Frank said he did not understand Republican arguments that gay marriages would undermine traditional marriages, as if happily married men in Indiana, Nebraska, Kansas and Mississippi, learning that same-sex marriage was legal in Massachusetts, would smack themselves in the head and declare, “Wow, I could have married a guy.”

SEPT. 11, 1986 “I am afraid that this bill is becoming the legislative equivalent to crack. It’s going to give people a short-term high, but it is going to be dangerous in the long run to the system and expensive to boot.”

During debate on a bill authorizing $4 billion for the war on drugs, and allowing the military to protect the nation’s borders from drug traffickers.

MARCH 6, 1984 “Well, if this is a Christian nation, how come some poor Jew has to get up at 5:30 in the morning to preside over the House of Representatives?”

Mr. Frank, in an interview describing his reaction when Representative Marjorie S. Holt, Republican of Maryland, declared America to be a Christian nation during an all-night debate over school prayer. Mr. Frank, who is Jewish, was presiding as the speaker pro tem.

The Neocon's Enemy's Enemy...Is Also His Enemy

Bill Kristol, the new kid on the block over at the New York Times Opinion Page, comes through with a winner this morning.

While no fan of Hillary Clinton, he argues that she's actually run a much better campaign than most of us expected her to, wiggling herself out of more than one tough spot and throwing some excellent punches, compared to Barry's Chinese Water Torture approach picking up caucuses and the like.

The press, he points out, has been very unfair to her in not noting her successes and framing everything in an Obamacentric point of view.

Well worth your time if you have it.

Good Write-Up on Halperin's The Page Today

The Times had a very favorable review of Time Magazine's The Page, the brainchild of Mark Halperin.

I've mentioned it here several times and was so pleased when he came back onto the web scene.

I was a shameless addict of The Note (despite, as this article mentions, its use of a lot of practically-decipherable inside jokes) and disappointed when he left it.

The Page really is where it's at for a quick catch-up on all things politics.

More on Racial Imagry

The LeBron item below was still on my mind when I went out and grabbed this morning's paper from the stoop.

The Arts section in the Times this morning has a pretty cool feature on post-racial art.

Check it out online for the slideshow.

Nayland Blake’s “Coat’’ (2001)

A Column I've Been Mentally Relying On

As this fascinating primary season has worn on, I've been trying to figure out why I'm so inclined to see Barack Obama and John McCain favorably.

Obama's lack of intense focus on talking about budget balancing and my irritation with McCain-Feingold over the years would seem to make it hard for me to support them.

Within-party, head-to-head, considering only on-paper policy positions, would lead me to see Mitt and Hillary more favorably.

Why can't I vote for them?

It's because I just don't like them and that overrides my thoughts about their stated policy positions.

There's something I perceive about them that I just find irritating.

This recent Times article by David Brooks argues that I'm by no means unique. He holds that we're not as smart as we think or wish we'd be.

Relying on a healthy dose of social science research, he posits that being human, we make flash judgments about people's character and that can override the sensibilities we tend to pride ourselves in.

(Space constraints being what they are in the paper, he doesn't extend the argument in this column, but you can see where sociobiologists would be able to spin yarns about how this is actually a favorable trait for us to have and what kind of survival outcomes it can lead to.)

It can be disconcerting in some ways to find out that you're only human...especially when you extend this realization to product marketing (which is really no different than a political campaign, unfortunately), but on the other hand, it does end up satisfying that I can at least rationally understand my own irrationality.

Today's New York Times

Mitt Romney...The Change Candidate?

This picture in the NY Times today struck me as a little bit funny.

Kind of a mixed message they're sending here...

Gail Collins Makes a Funny

Gail Collins must have been bumping right up against a deadline to get this in in time to make the national print edition of the Times, but thanks goodness she did.

The opinion piece is pretty much just a run-down of the cast of horses' asses running for the GOP nomination, but it has some really funny quips in it.

I mean, frankly, how can you not like an article that throws down a Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat reference? ;-)

Anyway, her little juxtaposition of where one might expect to see 'alleged' made me chuckle.

"Lately, Thompson has also been busying himself attacking the Fox network for bias against his alleged campaign."

The New York Times Editorial Page Gets it Right?

I had to check and see what my coffee was laced with this morning as I nodded my head in agreement with the Times editorial staff.

Lamenting the current writers' strike in Hollywood, they rightly point out that the last strike was a catalyst in the growth of "reality TV" shows. I, along with their page, hope that we are not led down a similar path again!

The Decline of the Gayborhood

The Times ran an interesting item this morning about the decline of some notorious "gayborhoods" in major cities like the Castro in San Francisco.

As a backdrop, and perhaps for other reasons, the story is draped in the annual San Francisco Halloween bash being canceled this year. There was considerable violence last time and way too many posers showing up.

The neighborhoods are going away because people are now spreading out to the suburbs and the prior enclaves invaded by heterosexuals.

The reason for this seems to be that it's becoming less and less a big deal to be gay.

While my cohort probably has somewhat higher-than-median wages and education, I can't name a person I know under the age of 60 who I believe would give a crap if a homosexual couple moved in next door. That's not a statement about my virtue or that of my company, it's just become such an irrelevant thing to characterize someone as.

When you know this information about someone, what does it really tell you besides the obvious?

While there's something charming about the surviving socio/ethnic neighborhoods that survive in our cities, their demise is probably a good thing because of the larger story they tell. Shells of the neighborhoods will survive for a long time, but the areas no longer have to serve as the only place certain folks feel comfortable to be themselves.

My Cubs hat is tipped to the Times for an informative feel-good read today.

Review of a Shins NYC Show in Today's Paper

Alas, no new studio album to announce here, but one of my favorite comtemporary bands, The Shins, got a nice review today in the Times. Check them out....