this land is your land; this land is my land

Happy 4th of July, everyone.

Remember that this country was founded on a tradition of fucking with the police. Sure, the early American colonies defeated the largest extant empire at the time with the aid of another huge empire, but nobody knew for sure that that help would come. The signers of the Declaration of Independence took the chance that they might all hang for what they did.

Real change doesn’t come from the voting booth, the ballot box, the referendum or the petition. It comes from taking a full-pressure fire hose to the chest. It starts with sniping at the King’s soldiers as they march toward your house. It ends with either your death, your exile or your gradual disillusionment as you watch your comrades repeat the same mistakes that inspired your revolt in the first place.

Today is the one time all year when I will talk about America without ending on a skeptical note. As I’ve mentioned before, the word “America” means more than one thing. America means more than just a particular territory or a particular government. It also means a shared set of historical and cultural ideals. It means that fictional, idealized wonderland of liberty and justice, that “eternal thought in the mind of God.”

It’s to that ideal that I raise a glass today. I won’t drink to any man to ever hold the title of Commander-in-Chief, or to any country that America invaded without cause. But I will drink to the dream.

teach your children well

I don’t know that I’m a very good libertarian.

Sure, I talk a good game about free market economics fixing everything, order arising from chaos, and middle class uprising. I read the best libertarian weblogs - Unqualified Offerings, Julian Sanchez, Will Wilkinson, Reason’s Hit and Run, Radley Balko, and I’m sure there are others. I make sneering references to what, in my eyes, are gross and obvious similarities between the two major American political parties. If anyone can lay a claim to being libertarian, I can.

But I have this tiny problem: I cannot stand weird people.

Liberty, in any meaningful sense, requires a healthy tolerance for different people so long as they’re not hurting or threatening you. If I advocate freedom of speech “except for, y’know, racists and fundamentalists and obvious wackos,” I’m not really advocating freedom of speech. I’m advocating for protecting the speaking rights of People I Like. Defending freedom of speech means defending the right for people to blare the most illiterate hate. Even if you disagree with it. Hell, especially if you disagree with it.

Now expand the principle outward from just speech into all aspects of life. Freedom means gambling. Freedom means drug use. Freedom means buggery. Freedom means fundamentalists homeschooling their children about how God created the universe in six days. Freedom means filthy, offensive, hateful music. Freedom means fat SUVs with window-shaking stereos. Freedom means trans fats.

Pick something you absolutely hate, so long as it doesn’t entail a gun pointed at your face. Concentrate on it for a minute; hold it in your mind until you start to feel repelled by your own brain. In a free society, someone, somewhere, is doing that hateful thing and getting off on it.

I went off on this rant because of a line I read in an Eliezer Yudkowsky post the other day (it’s an excellent post in its own right; go read it):

And there are islands of genuine tolerance in the world, such as science fiction conventions.

This stopped me dead in my tracks, because a sci-fi convention remains my personal vision of Hell. Fat bearded men in stormtrooper costumes. Pasty girls with too much eye makeup speaking in Olde Englishe. Yaoi. Yiffies. Monty Python quotes. Vampire LARPs. Body odor.

I’m supposed to be cool with that. And I am, I think. So long as it happens in the cloisters of a Holiday Inn convention room far, far away from me. I don’t believe that, given the power, I would use some form of physical or social coercion to lock those type of people in a cage. At least I hope I wouldn’t. Let’s all pray I’m never put in that position.

Then again, I don’t think I’m alone. The human species isn’t programmed for universal tolerance. It’s programmed for an us-vs-them mentality. Identify and bond with the hundred or so members of your Monkeysphere; don’t trust anyone else. Tolerating harmless differences may make for a better society, but it doesn’t come naturally. Nobody loves everybody.

I hesitated to call myself “libertarian” for years because of that term’s conflation with the Libertarian Party. I don’t think libertarians have any future as a Party. I realized this paradox about five or six years ago: if the American people naturally prefer freedom, then why have they been voting the opposite way for two and a quarter centuries? and if the American people do not naturally prefer freedom, what the hell chance does the LP have?

The answer, pretty clearly, is that no American - or really, no human being - wants freedom in the absolute sense. Sure, we talk about it in glowing terms, but nobody really wants to see Klansmen, Flat Earthers and fecal fetishists on the street while walking to the store. What we want is a certain package of rights and privileges for ourselves, our friends and family, and the social class with which we identify. The rich want lower capital gains taxes; the middle class want to deduct mortgage interest; the poor want income tax credit.

That’s why I don’t vote Libertarian - and of course, absenting them, why I don’t vote at all. If we define economics as the science of allocating scarce resources to unlimited wants, we might define politics as the science of allocating the tools for power to the unlimited desire for power. If you approach this game as a libertarian - someone who does not believe that human society should be shaped by a minority with power - then who do you side with? The folks who want to take away your freedom (to get breast implants, smoke cigarettes and eat greasy food), or the folks who want to take away your freedom (to have pre-marital sex, smoke marijuana and harvest stem cells)?

Nobody will ever campaign on the platform of Having Less Power. Theoretically, we can figure this one out from our armchairs: if someone genuinely didn’t want power, they wouldn’t be running for office. Empirically, we only need to take a look at all of recorded human history, from Enkidu vs Gilgamesh to the 2006 Congressional elections. The Opposition Party might want power for ends that you consider benevolent; these are the Good Guys. The Ruling Party might use its power for ends that you consider malevolent; that makes them the Bad Guys. But nobody ever conquered a tribe, started a coup or ran for office because they didn’t want power at all.

That includes John McCain. That includes Barack Obama. That includes included Ron Paul.

So maybe I’m not a very good libertarian. Maybe I still daydream about what I’d do if I became Dictator Of The World. Maybe I want my enemies punished and my friends rewarded with the force of law. Maybe I want power. But I can’t fault myself for being a bad libertarian if the fault comes from just being human. As Schopenhauer (supposedly) put it: a man can do as he wills, but not will as he wills.

I haven’t figured out what to do yet. But at least I know what not to do, and voting’s still on that list.

P.S. You see that? You see how I started out with “here’s what’s wrong with me” and slowly morphed it into a “here’s what’s wrong with all of you people” by the end? that’s some 70th-level blogging right there.

P.P.S. I did warn you.

step into your wake with your blood on my shirt

Many years ago, Bobby and I were playing Axis and Allies on one warm afternoon. We started joking about Germany’s terrible chances. Inspired by the board game in front of us, I commented, “Wouldn’t it be terrible if some Germany game company made a ‘Concentration Camp Management’ game while the Reich was in power? Like Puerto Rico or one of those other city-builders, only you have to manage an extermination camp?”

Bobby shook his head, chuckling. “You’d have to make sure your railroad depot wasn’t too far from the gas showers or you’d lose turnaround time.”

We both agreed that that would be uniformly twisted.

Flash forward about five years. Browsing through one of the transient dollar stores in the Arsenal Mall, I found the following gem in the Discount Software section: Prison Tycoon 3: Lockdown. If the title didn’t make it clear, I’ll spell it out: the cheery folks who gave you Roller Coaster Tycoon and Zoo Tycoon developed a game where you run your own prison.

Actually: they developed three of them.

What makes Prison Tycoon 3: Lockdown such a comically monstrous game? If I had to make a list:

• “Begin with a low security prison and build it up to a SuperMax.” I don’t know if I’d consider a SuperMax prison an “upgrade” from a minimum-security facility. They serve two entirely different functions - one to house non-violent offenders, the other to provide rigorous supervision and restriction. This is like buying a flight simulator for your computer that boasts “start out with a prop plane and build it up to a C-47.”

• “Hire trust-worthy prison guards and arm them with weapons, riot shields and guard dogs to maintain peace and control, but keep your eye on your budget.” Per the advertisements, budget is the only restraint on how brutal you can be with your prison population. Not your innate concern for civil liberties. Not the inherent dignity of the human. No, the only thing that’ll stop you from giving every guard on the block an autofire shotgun with rubber shells and full Kevlar is a lack of funds. Fortunately, you can augment your budget by building factories onsite - auto shops, print shops, metal shops, etc - so even that limit can be overcome. It’s a circle of some kind … begins with a “v” … I want to say “virtuous,” but I don’t think that’s it …

• “You determine whether to release your prisoners on parole or keep them locked down tight to protect society.” Rehabilitating prisoners gives you a cash bonus and (I suspect, can’t confirm this) improves your overall prison score. Releasing someone who goes out to commit another crime? No real downside. Don’t worry about rehabilitating too many prisoners, though - you’ll get another busload tomorrow morning!

• “Manage gangs and prisoner morale to avoid riots.” Like in the other Tycoon games, each individual visitor to your theme park prison facility has his own mood. Happy prisoners work eagerly in your shops. Angry prisoners start fights, which can escalate into riots through a cascading effect (one angry prisoner makes the prisoners around him angry, which makes their neighbors angry, etc). Managing prisoner morale doesn’t take much effort - simply dispatch a prison guard over to an angry prisoner. The guard will beat the prisoner with a nightstick until his mood improves to “passive.” No, I’m serious; that’s how you do it.

• “Interrogate military prisoners for vital intel. Earn extra bonuses by getting prisoners to provide crucial information.” … so.

Disclaimer: some of my intel came from an FAQ for the first Prison Tycoon game. My prior experience with the Tycoon series indicates that later games in the series don’t deviate significantly from earlier ones - they just add more gameplay options. If anyone who’s actually played this gem of a game wants to correct me, leave a comment.

believe in me, I’m with the high command

Guys (and I mean Thoreau over at Unqualified Offerings and Brad Hicks of Livejournal). Seriously.

Thoreau

[Philippe] Sands reports that the military commissions act of 2006 may increase the likelihood of a future foreign war-crimes prosecution for those in the torture chain-of-command. Sands glosses a European prosecutor saying that “it would make it much easier for investigators outside the U.S. to argue that possible war crimes would never be addressed in their home country.”

Hicks

So I’m hoping that those of us who’d like to see almost the entire top ranks of the Bush administration brought up on charges somewhere, ideally at Nuremberg or The Hague but at the very least in front of a US federal court, on war crimes and crimes against humanity charges, not just liberal activists but some very serious and non-partisan constitutional scholars, I’m hoping that we manage to keep the pressure on [Ashcroft] about this.

No member of the Bush Administration, from the Commander-in-Chief down to Harriet Myers, will ever stand trial before a war crimes tribunal. Not one of them. Not ever. Thinking otherwise comes from a foolish urge.

The very notion of a war crime itself dates back only eleven decades, if that. You can pin the origin of the concept to the first Hague convention of 1899, but the principles then established only got a test run following the first World War. So you don’t have to look through centuries of precedent to find some obscure decision - a fairly superficial reading of Twentieth Century history will get you up to speed.

I don’t mean to say that the human race didn’t have a notion of “war atrocities” before 1917. Every king, commander and warlord had a deeply ingrained sense of things that Just Were Not Done. But people did them anyway. The first example that leaps to my mind: in the Battle of Agincourt, lord Ysambert d’Agincourt attacked the rear baggage train of King Henry V, slaughtering the unarmed peasants and page boys guarding it. Shakespeare’s Henry V depicts this rather tragically, and the melodramatic grief and vengeance that Hal suffers at seeing the carnage. But Shakespeare, partisan and patriot, omits Henry’s next order [EDIT: includes Henry's next order anyway]: to slaughter all French prisoners in retribution. If either side revisited these incidents after, they did so at the signing of the new treaty in 1415, not before any sort of court.

(thanks to Grenacia in comments for the correction)

We have understood implicitly, for centuries, something that Robert McNamara only recently made explicit in the Errol Morris documentary Fog of War:

[Curtis] LeMay said if we lost the war that we would have all been prosecuted as war criminals. And I think he’s right. He, and I’d say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side has lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?

Let me make clear what Thoreau and Brad get wrong: no one will ever prosecute the victors.

Empirical data alone backs that up. If the U.S. did not stand trial at Nuremburg for Tokyo, or Dresden, or Manzanar, or Hiroshima, then nothing that the Bush Administration has done will get them called on the carpet.

But even without a century of precedent we can figure this one out from our armchairs. Say that President Bush and his employees knowingly violated tenets of the Geneva Convention. Who will charge them? Who will issue the summons? Who will force them to attend? What sanctions will be levied should they fail to appear? America has no challenger on the world stage when it comes to military might. The U.S. Government can not be compelled; they do the compelling.

“Okay, Professor,” you say, “my long-dormant fantasy of Cheney in shackles before Spencer Tracy can never come to pass. But what about a federal prosecution? Couldn’t a U.S. prosecutor charge Ashcroft or Rumsfeld or Gonzales or their subordinates?”

Again, this will never happen. For one thing, the Bush Administration has already laid a shaky, spurious but thorough legal framework to cover themselves. The Opposition Party has controlled Congress for over a year now^* and mounted no serious challenges to it. I can speculate as to a number of reasons why:

1. For career politicians, prosecuting an exiting official, elected or appointed, sets a horrifying precedent. When you retire from office, you’re supposed to step into a world of ghostwritten book deals, lucrative speaking engagements and the occasional Viagra commercial, not a jail cell. “Christ … if they got him, they could come after me next term!”

2. The Opposition Party likes the precedent that the Ruling Party has set in bizarre legal roller coasters and would not want to dismantle the ride without trying it first. “So executive privilege protects anything I order my lawyers to do … and I’m justified in using executive privilege because I acted on the advice of my lawyers! Brilliant!” (Please note: not making this up)

3. The Opposition Party does not have any actual objections to anything the Ruling Party has done, and only claimed such in order to win an election. I hesitate to endorse this level of cynicism but I have to offer it as an option.

But again, all of this we can arrive at through reason as such. The machinery of empire will not dismantle itself. A federal prosecutor, whose role only exists through a complex network of appointments, confirmation hearings and internal memoranda, will not turn around and attack that network for being complex. A war crimes tribunal will not press charges against the country that gives them most of their business in the first place. If you want the bastards out, you’ll never hit them from the voting booth.

President Bush took advantage of the immense machinery of state to order several inhumane acts under the cover of bureaucracy. He joins a long list of Presidents - both Opposition and Ruling party - who have done the same. His only failing, aside from giving torture the blessing of the American flag, killing a few thousand Iraqi civilians and displacing tens of thousands more, and putting into place a program of domestic surveillance that later villains may use to more villainous ends?

He got caught. Oops.

________________________
^* Please don’t talk to me about how tenuous their majority is. If Republicans in the Senate could threaten to nuke a filibuster, the Democrats can as well. The talk I regularly hear about how important it is that the Democrats build support, not alienate voters, not appear weak, etc., makes the Democrats sound more like the Party of Political Expediency and less like the Party of Principle. Which, I have to emphasize, I have no problem with. I just wish you’d stop calling them the latter.

so much to say, so much to say, so much to say, so much to say

Link dumps in lieu of content:

#: Actual inflation up at least 6.9 percent in the past year. Most inflation statistics that you read in the news report core inflation - inflation that excludes changes in the price of oil or food. But if inflation comes from an increase in the money supply relative to the demand for dollars, then we’d want to look extra closely at any industry the U.S. subsidizes - any stops along the trough where the feds pour more money in. And the U.S. subsidizes domestic food production, to the point that American corn sells on the international markets below cost, and wheat sells at nearly half cost. And the price of oil today certainly reflects decisions that the Commander-in-Chief makes in regards to certain Middle Eastern provinces. So if you have an argument for why I should pay more attention to core inflation than bottom-line inflation, I’d love to hear it.

(This article explains inflation in better detail than I can)

#: On the subject of economics: a New York Times article on Jan Chipcase, a “human behavior researcher” for Nokia. He travels all across the planet - to Vietnam, to Sri Lanka, to Bangladesh or to Mississippi - to simply document how people live. Nokia’s not trying to sell these people cell phones - at least not through Chipcase, anyway - but rather, trying to understand what their needs are and if Nokia can make a product that fulfills them.

The article also explores one of my favorite themes: markets evolving out of nowhere, unbidden and unpredicted. How does a Ugandan day laborer send money to his mother in a rural village where only one person (a “phone lady”) owns a cell phone?

Someone working in Kampala, for instance, who wishes to send the equivalent of $5 back to his mother in a village will buy a $5 prepaid airtime card, but rather than entering the code into his own phone, he will call the village phone operator (“phone ladies” often run their businesses from small kiosks) and read the code to her. She then uses the airtime for her phone and completes the transaction by giving the man’s mother the money, minus a small commission. “It’s a rather ingenious practice,” Chipchase says, “an example of grass-roots innovation, in which people create new uses for technology based on need.”

Order arising from chaos turned me onto economics in the first place. I eat nuggets like this for dessert.

#: “”Expelled, Ben Stein’s new jeremiad against Charles Darwin, purports that Darwinism caused the Holocaust. Not true! In fact, the Holocaust is almost solely the work of Scandinavian astronomer Tycho Brahe!”

#: More coverage of John McCain on the campaign trail:

McCain has a whole slew of superstitions and rituals, many stemming from his days as a Navy fighter pilot, a notoriously superstitious bunch. He won’t throw a hat on a bed (bad luck), and he carries a lucky feather, a lucky compass, and a lucky penny — and nickel, and quarter.

[...]

He’s got more stuff on him, too. On St. Patrick’s Day in Chicago, “this guy had a lucky four-leaf clover that was laminated,” Buchanan said. “He pulled it out of his pocket and told the senator it had brought him good luck and now the senator carries it around in his wallet.”

I don’t know what bothers me more: the notion that President Dog might decide to bomb Iran based on a horoscope, or that he’ll carry any random piece of shit that a stranger hands him. Here, Senator - my grandfather had this rusty sewing needle with him when he landed at Omaha Beach. My mom buried it with him five years ago but I want you to have it.

#: Finally, Delta and Northwest announced plans yesterday to combine and form the world’s worst airline. Finishing the work that the TSA started on September 12th, 2001 would daunt most challengers, but I think Northwelta can handle the task. Combining their unions’ contracts, their legacy software and the various deals they have with our nation’s airport hubs, they can make transcontinental travel just as quick, safe and cheap as it was in 1908. If you need me, you can find me in the club car, stretching my legs.

dollars and cents and no accidents, not in the name of democracy

Time to rant about economics again.

First, some stupid journalism about housing:

After falling for six straight months, sales of existing homes posted an unexpected increase in February. But the median home price tumbled by the largest amount on record.

How did journalists meet deadlines before they could just hit CTRL-A, CTRL-C, CTRL-V on a press release? The above comes from a helpful e-mail from the National Association of Realtors, who I’m sure don’t have a pony in this race.

Rant #1: Why is there a “but” in that sentence? What do you expect sales to do when prices drop?

Rant #2: Patri Friedman pointed this one out: January is always the low point of the year for home sales. So a month-to-month increase between January and February should shock no one. Year-to-year, sales are still way down (here, have some graphs).

Second, Paul Krugman says something dumb again. If you’ve known me for a while, you’ll know I have no love for the man, possibly the dumbest popular writer on the subject of economics after Thomas “Being Wrong’s No Reason To Withdraw” Friedman. And that’s still a hotly contested spot! The rankings could switch any day now!

Krugman weighs in on the three candidates’ stances on the economy. He’s hurt and saddened by what the Democrats are spouting:

On the Democratic side, it’s somewhat disappointing that Barack Obama, whose campaign has understandably made a point of contrasting his early opposition to the Iraq war with Hillary Clinton’s initial support, has tried to score a twofer by suggesting that the war, in addition to all its other costs, is responsible for our economic troubles.

The war is indeed a grotesque waste of resources, which will place huge long-run burdens on the American public. But it’s just wrong to blame the war for our current economic mess: in the short run, wartime spending actually stimulates the economy. Remember, the lowest unemployment rate America has experienced over the last half-century came at the height of the Vietnam War.

(1) “In the short run, wartime spending actually stimulates the economy.” Thank the devil he qualified that one with “in the short run” or I’d be checking the signature on his diploma. Not that this is a more defensible statement.

As I’ve said before, the economy is not a thermostat - it’s a thermometer. What we call “the economy” is just a collection of statistics that experts believe measures the wealth of a set of people. A nice bloody war can increase capital spending (by defense contractors), for instance. But paying for that war inevitably means higher taxes or massive inflation. You can’t crank up one statistic without making the others fluctuate wildly.

The fact that Krugman defends this as a short-run gain means he’s at least anticipating the “but in the long run” objection. The fact that he offers nothing to that means he’s either a coward or a moron. Take your pick, America!

(2) “the lowest unemployment rate America has experienced over the last half-century came at the height of the Vietnam War.” First off, who’s complaining about unemployment right now? Sure, there’s griping over jobs moving overseas, but is anyone suggesting that unemployment’s a problem on the national scale? Unemployment’s at its lowest monthly average since 2003. How long did it take Krugman to cherry pick this statistic?

Second, if we go back 40 years, the numbers back him up: unemployment was at its lowest during the height of the Vietnam War. Once the war ended, however, and the U.S. had to actually start paying for its misadventure, unemployment shot back up. Between 1973 and 1983, unemployment hovered between 5 and 10%, typically on the higher end. We didn’t see “Vietnam levels of prosperity,” to use a term Krugman’s itching to get into the lexicon, until the dot-com bubble of the late 90s.

Third: I’m just reasoning from my armchair, here, but wouldn’t the forced conscription of a lot of able-bodied young men be a huge drain on the workforce? Wouldn’t reducing the supply of available laborers reduce the unemployment rate, in the same way that smashing every third camera on their shelves would reduce Best Buy’s inventory? Is this the sort of economic miracle Krugman’s looking for? Wouldn’t a great solution to the (nonexistent) unemployment problem be to shoot one out of every five Americans between the ages of 18 and 34? Or did Krugman simply not think about the consequences of his reasoning, as is standard?

America came out of the Great Depression with a pretty effective financial safety net, based on a fundamental quid pro quo: the government stood ready to rescue banks if they got in trouble, but only on the condition that those banks accept regulation of the risks they were allowed to take.

Over time, however, many of the roles traditionally filled by regulated banks were taken over by unregulated institutions — the “shadow banking system,” which relied on complex financial arrangements to bypass those safety regulations.

I pick on the “managerial liberalism” mindset a lot, to the point that I worry sometimes I’m attacking a strawman. But Krugman spells out exactly what’s wrong with it here and then blithely stumbles onward.

Here’s the history of central banking in this country, exactly as Krugman laid it out:

(1) Banks went wild.
(2) Regulations were created to restrain them.
(3) Pseudo-banks (e.g., savings and loan institutions) emerged to evade regulations.
(4) Pseudo-banks went wild.

Even if you don’t buy every step in his reasoning, can you see where it breaks down? #3 is a direct and inevitable result of #2. Investors saw regulations and looked for loopholes to exploit. Krugman’s solution is to revisit #2 - create more regulations. And apparently he doesn’t have the imagination to see that new institutions would arise to exploit those new loopholes. So either regulation doesn’t make humans better people, or …

I’m not an apologist for the healing power of free markets, any more than I am for the healing power of gravity. Gravity makes a lot of machines work. Gravity can also knock you on your ass if you’re not careful. But regardless of whether you like it or not, gravity’s a fact you can’t escape. You can’t pass a law to make it slower than 9.8 meters per second squared. So it is with supply and demand, inelastic commodities and incentives. Markets evolve; legislation does not.

Given the risks to the economy if the financial system melts down, this rescue mission [Bush's and the Fed's bailout] is justified.

Do I even need to address this?

It’s one thing for someone completely ignorant of the science to make these kind of mistakes - if you’re still subscribing to zero-sum economics or conspiracy theory economics or one of the many common stand-ins. But Krugman’s nominally an economist himself. He supposedly has a degree. But he’s so clearly surrendered the logic of economic thinking in the name of his own agenda - which is a weird agenda in its own right, by the way - that I wonder what he calls himself. How does he introduce himself at parties? What does he put on his resume? And so forth

insane in the membrane; insane in the brain

“Hey Professor,” you asked, “what are the four craziest things John McCain has said in the last month? Not just goofy or indicative of a radical political bent, but out and out deranged?”

And here I am to tell you:

#4: “Al-Qaeda Would Be Taking A Country.” Responding to a statement by Obama on February 27th, McCain said:

“And my friends, if we left, they (al-Qaida) wouldn’t be establishing a base. [...] They’d be taking a country, and I’m not going to allow that to happen, my friends. I will not surrender. I will not surrender to al-Qaida.”

Right. The predominantly Shi’ite Iraq is going to be conquered by fringe Sunni guerillas. I mean sure, it’s happened before, but they had the U.S.’s help that time.

Joe Klein from Time calls McCain out on his error in the link above, but makes the mistake of saying “McCain knows better. He knows the complexities of the world, and the region.” Joey, presuming that McCain knows the day of the week is wishful thinking.

#3: “There’s Strong Evidence Linking Thimerosal to Autism.” At a town hall meeting in Texas on February 29th, John McCain told a crowd of supposedly literate adults that “there’s strong evidence” that thimerosal (which used to be a common ingredient in childhood vaccines) is responsible for the rise in autism.

This is not true. There is no evidence to support such a conjecture. Anyone who says this or thinks this disagrees with the CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the FDA, the Institute of Medicine and pretty much every doctor with a credible license.

#2: “You’ve Stumped Me.” I’m cheating a little, because this is a quote from an interview with McCain in 2007. But it came up in a 2008 op-ed, so I’m shoehorning it in. And if you’d like to argue that McCain has grown less senile and not more in twelve months’ time, I’ll entertain the argument.

Now, if McCain’s position were that abstinence education was the most effective way to reduce teen pregnancy and teen STDs, that’d be one thing. I happen to think that position is silly, puritanical and unsupported by anything empirical, but at least it’s a recognizable Republican talking point. At least McCain would be a voice of the establishment at that point, instead of a decrepit lunatic who shouldn’t be allowed to drive.

But! When asked what exactly he thought about sex education, on the spur of the moment, he had the following to say:

Q: “What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?”

McCain: (Long pause) “Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy.”

Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

Not a “No, they make people more promiscuous.” Not a “Yes, but they encourage loose morals.” He just simply doesn’t get the connection. Do prophylactics reduce the spread of STDs? Hmm, that’s a puzzler! You might as well ask McCain what’s the difference between rhubarb and a pigeon in the attic? You’re just talking gibberish!

#1: “Al-Qaeda is Going Into Iran and Receiving Training …” For this one, I’m just going to quote the Times entirely:

Mr. McCain said several times in his visit to Jordan — in a news conference and in a radio interview — that he was concerned that Iran was training Al Qaeda in Iraq. The United States believes that Iran, a Shiite country, has been training and financing Shiite extremists in Iraq, but not Al Qaeda, which is a Sunni insurgent group.

Mr. McCain said at a news conference in Amman that he continued to be concerned about Iranians “taking Al Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.” Asked about that statement, Mr. McCain said: “Well, it’s common knowledge and has been reported in the media that Al Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran. That’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.”

It was not until he got a quiet word of correction in his ear from Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who was traveling with Mr. McCain as part of a Congressional delegation on a nearly weeklong trip, that Mr. McCain corrected himself.

“I’m sorry,” Mr. McCain said, “the Iranians are training extremists, not Al Qaeda.”

Even if you believe that the war in Iraq is still worth conducting - and as insane as I find that, I know some people believe it, so I’ll take it for argument - how can you support a man so blithely ignorant of the basic facts of the matter? So willing to let fantasy and delusion rule his words? What would it take to prove to you that John McCain is delusional?

don’t worry, be happy was the number one jam

Sorry to disagree with you, everyone on the Internet, but I wasn’t impressed with Barack Obama’s big speech on Tuesday.

Obama took the pulpit today to denounce some speeches made by his pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, over the last six years. Apparently, Rev. Wright suggested that “the United States brought the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on itself and say blacks continue to be mistreated by whites.”

Here we have a problem with proper nouns. The “United States” can refer to a number of different things. It can refer to:

1. a particular region of land defined on a map;
   
2. the people living within its borders - you, me, that guy sitting next to you, the people on the street, etc;
   
3. a set of shared historical and cultural ideals - truth, justice, the American way, democracy, etc;
   
4. the policy of the governing body that claims a monopoly of force over the aforementioned region - the laws passed by Congress, the actions ordered by the President and the movement of armed forces carrying the U.S. flag.

Osama bin Laden had a particular grievance with the United States (4), in the presence of troops in Saudi Arabia and Somalia. Because of his radical religious beliefs, he also has issues with the United States (3). So he recruited a number of sleeper agents to infiltrate the United States (1) and carry out attacks on the United States (2).

The outrage comes because citizens of the United States (2) tend to connect, implicitly or openly, the ideals of the United States (3) with its actions abroad (4). They also identify strongly with those actions in their own selves (2), seeing them as a reflection of their democratic voice. However, #1, 2, 3 and 4 are entirely different entities which can - and usually do - contradict. Witness Bush declaring, “We do not torture.” Witness leftists declaring, “Bush is not our President.” To believe either of those statements, you have to ignore - or even worse, embrace - the contradictions between the U.S.’s citizens, culture and elected officials.

So it is with the Rev. Wright’s statement. To believe that the U.S. brought the attacks of September 11th “on itself,” you have to believe that #2, #3 and #4 are one and the same - that every action the U.S. takes abroad, from funding anti-Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua to bombing Cambodia to sending CIA agents to Cuba to firebombing Dresden to occupying the Philippines - reflects the will and culture of the people living in Delacroix, Denver and Des Moines. You call yourself a U.S. citizen so, apparently, every dead Iraqi baby is all your fault. Oops.

To reject the Reverend’s notion, you have to reject the idea that democracy does what it says on the tin - that it creates a government responsive to the explicit desires of the civilians it governs. Sometimes people who ran in open elections start secret wars. Sometimes the U.S. lends its name to torturers and thugs. But if you accept that you are ruled by forces out of your control, it’s not an issue.

One or the other. Take your pick.

Obama, of course, doesn’t take his pick. He doesn’t cling to the balm of the democratic process and say that yes, you voted for Nixon and Carter and Reagan and Bush and Clinton and Bush again, and therefore those dead Vietnamese and Cambodians and Laotians and Grenadians and Iraqis are on your head. And of course he doesn’t say, “Sure, vote for whoever makes you feel good, but the U.S. will continue to conduct extraordinary renditions and cover operations and bombing campaigns all over the world.”

Rather, he embraces the contradiction. He says that the Reverend Wright’s comments are “not only wrong but divisive.” Really? Not only wrong but divisive? Being wrong isn’t sufficient? If the Reverend’s comments were right but divisive, would you object? If they were wrong but unifying, would you stay silent? Is divisiveness not an inherently wrong thing, such that you have to call it out?

You can accuse me of nitpicking over word choice, but if I have to accept this man on the quality of his rhetoric - as so many other people are - then I’m going to take my time double-checking it. Barack Obama said that the Reverend Wright’s statements about America are wrong. He doesn’t say in what way. Barack Obama said that the Reverend Wright’s statements about race were divisive. He doesn’t say what would unify. Barack Obama takes the controversial maverick stance of saying, “I disagree with this person you don’t like,” puts a little more wear on some platitudes about investing in schools and rebuilding the economy, and people get giddy!

Update: Yes, I read the part about “binding our particular grievances to the larger aspirations of all Americans.” And about “providing this generation with ladders of opportunity.” What do those words mean?

Reverend Wright may be wrong. That doesn’t make Barack Obama right.

you hate to see another tired man lay down his hand

In the wake of the subprime mortgage collapse, legendary brokerage house Bear Stearns lost 80% of its value in the year up to this past Friday, and 89% of its remaining value over the weekend. J.P. Morgan, in a deal financed by the Federal Reserve, will be buying Bear Stearns for $2 a share, or a total of $236 million (not billion).

Here’s a short list of better ways to spend $236,000,000 (inspiration for this idea c/o Brad at Sadly,No):

Alex Rodriguez: Possibly the best hitter of the modern era, Alex Rodriguez is the third baseman for the New York Yankees. His current contract is guaranteed by the Texas Rangers (not as storied a bank as the Federal Reserve, but no slouch) through 2010. J.P. Morgan could pick up the remainder of his contract with the Yankees (extended through 2018 after some recent shuffling) for probably a little shy of $236M. They’d then have an experienced hitter in the prime of his career, rather than the decrepit remains of a once great investment firm.

236,000 ounces of gold bullion: Gold recently made an historic close at over $1000 / oz. Valued for its rarity and luster in ancient days, gold’s value on the modern market is as a hedge against inflation. As the dollar devalues, the price of gold skyrockets. And with Bernanke cutting the Fed funds rate late on Sunday (and probably cutting it again later this week), the price of gold will probably continue to climb. Therefore, J.P. Morgan could invest $236M and end up with, maybe, $237M after holding their investment for a while. This would be preferable to throwing two hundred and thirty six million dollars into a fire.

The Harvard Business School Classes of 2008, 2009 and 2010: The Harvard Business School remains one of the most competitive and prestigious graduate business programs in the world. Harvard typically accepts between 1000 and 1050 students for its MBA program every year. Tuition runs about $77,150 per year (that includes room, board and expenses). J.P. Morgan could pay the entire cost for three classes full of MBA students - let’s say only those currently enrolled, so as not to flood the poor dears in Cambridge with cheapskate applicants next year. A fancy letter could arrive in the mail, “Dear So-and-So: Your entire tuition has been reimbursed thanks to a grant by J.P. Morgan. If you’d like to learn more about what America’s greatest investment firm can do for you, please contact our local recruiter.” Presuming that only one student in fifty ends up working for J.P. Morgan after receiving such generosity, do you seriously doubt that 63 Harvard Business School graduates couldn’t bring more than $263,000,000 to the company over their careers? Or is making sure your buddies at Bear Stearns get to retire with a decent nest egg a wiser bet?

This is Bear Stearns we’re talking about: a firm that weathered two World Wars, the Great Depression and any number of recessions until this past weekend. And this is the blow that leveled them. Bear Stearns was one of the heaviest riders on subprime mortgage bonds, but they were not the only one.