Mad Social Scientist

I'm still trying to figure what it means to be a "steady leader" (e.g., does a brainless, unchange rock have these qualities? or do you have to be a stubborn, unthinking, unchanging human to qualify?). Maybe the key is "optimism", as ever-astute political commentator Giblets explains:

"This is not a time for pessimism and rage. This is a time for optimism, steady leadership, and progress," says George Bush, or his ad***, and Giblets agrees. Giblets is an optimistic kinda guy. And so is George Bush. Between invading Iraq without a plan, leaving al Qaeda to metastasize while pulling troops out of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and putting out the same tax cut three years in a row to solve different economic problems, Bush has gotta be the sunniest optimist out there. I mean man, if you bottled that sunshine you'd be glowin' for a month.

Back when I was an undergrad, a professor I had referred to the "Jesse scale" of American politics, which was that basically all major American political figures lay on the left-right spectrum somewhere between Jesse Jackson, on the left, to Jesse Helms, on the right. I guess those days are over, now that Helms is looking like a swing voter:

"I would not have voted for [President Bush's] tax cut, based on what I know. . . . There is no doubt that the people at the top who need a tax break the least will get the most benefit. . . . Too often presidents do things that don't end up helping the people they should be helping, and their staffs won't tell them their actions stink on ice."

Former senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), in a recent interview with Business North Carolina magazine.

Quoted from Atrios. To be perfectly clear, I don't think Jesse's less conservative than he used to be, just that the Republicans in the White House and in Congress are so conservative they would have fallen off the scale in the 1980s or early 1990s.

FYI, from a certain perspective, popular in the study of American politics, statement's like Jesse's criticism of Bush are crucial pieces of info for the electorate. If you are a middle of the road voter (the kind who decides elections), you don't learn much when you hear that liberals oppose a conservative policy. What else is new? You can't easily tell what, as a moderate, you would think if you bothered to do the research (and that's not going to happen, of course).

On the other hand, if a true conservative criticizes a policy as too conservative, even for him, that's another matter. You can be pretty sure that the policy would offend your moderate sensibilities even more. The information content of a conservative's criticism of conservatives is much higher, from the perspective of mostly uninformed voters.

Of course, this is part of the reason why the Bush people go into character assasination mode when a former insider criticizes the administration. Because if the public ever realizes that few serious people on the right buy the administrations stories, it won't even be close in November.

The "handover" of "sovereignty" to Iraq took place today, two days early. Juan Cole thinks the primary reason for moving it up was to throw off insurgents and/or terrorists who wanted to attack the official ceremony that was to have taken place Wednesday. A sad statement on our failure to secure---and provide security too---Iraq.

The significance of the handover seems to me not the "sovereignty", seeing as the new government will have such limited powers it can hardly be called sovereign. That's just replacing one puppet government with another. Instead, the most significant thing is that we replace the DoD, Bremer, and a bunch of Heritage Foundation rejects with the State Department. Maybe they'll do a better job. The best that can be said for the disastrous reign of Bremer is that it was better than the hilariously inept reign of Garner.

It will be interesting to see if the dance among the US, its puppets, Iraqi politicos looking to score points by attacking the US, and the insurgents changes. But I'm not holding my breath.

Really, I think the more significant news of the day is the announcement, in three decisions, that we still live under the rule of law. The Supreme Court found that Guantanamo detainees have recourse to the courts, as do citizens labelled enemy combatants by the president. Thank God; if we'd lost this one, we would have lost the Republic.

Which makes it all the more spooky that Clarence Thomas dissented from the Hamdi opinion, and was joined in dissent by Scalia and Rehnquist on the Gitmo case. Would these guys really be more comfortable in a right-wing dictatorship? Or is Thomas's loyalty to the Bush family so great he'd give up basic civil rights to please them?

This "mystery" is weird and intriguing, in a Magus meets Foucault's Pendulum kind of way. Scanning through some of the mysterious ads this group has run in the University of Arizona newspaper over the last 20 years, it's clear that they have an eclectic knowledge of the classics, math, science, and religion, and way, way too much time on their hands. They may also be barking mad, but who knows? If there's one thing I got out of reading the Magus and Foucault's Pendulum, it's that you probably wouldn't want to get involved in the fantasy lives of intellectuals who've decided the world is too boring, and should be "remade".

Some good advice from Daniel Dennett.

I bet Disney shareholders let out a sigh of relief. To think, they almost picked up a movie that turned a profit its opening weekend.

From Reuters:

KABUL -- Taliban guerrillas kidnapped and then killed 16 people in an Afghan province after finding them with voter registration cards for the country's September elections, a district official said Sunday.

The guerrillas stopped a bus carrying 17 civilians through the district Friday, said Haji Obaidullah, chief of Khas Uruzgan district in the central province of Uruzgan.

The guerrillas took the passengers to the neighboring province of Zabul and killed all but one of them when they found they were carrying voter cards, he quoted the lone survivor as saying.

``They were apparently killed because they were carrying the registration cards,'' he said.

May their deaths be not in vain.

Green Party won't nominate Nader. I'm a fan of the Greens (indeed, I would love to see a two-party system consisting of the Greens and Dems, which is another way of saying I wish the country were radically different). And Nader's done a lot of good in his time. But this election is too important to risk on either count.

Check this (from Atrios)

THE White House has lodged a complaint with the Irish Embassy in Washington over RTE journalist Carole Coleman's interview with US President George Bush.

And it is believed the President's staff have now withdrawn from an exclusive interview which was to have been given to RTE this morning by First Lady Laura Bush.

It is understood that both RTE and the Department of Foreign Affairs were aware of the exclusive arrangement, scheduled for 11am today. However, when RTE put Ms Coleman's name forward as interviewer, they were told Mrs Bush would no longer be available.

The Irish Independent learned last night that the White House told Ms Coleman that she interrupted the president unnecessarily and was disrespectful.

She also received a call from the White House in which she was admonished for her tone.

And it emerged last night that presidential staff suggested to Ms Coleman as she went into the interview that she ask him a question on the outfit that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern wore to the G8 summit.

and this:

The policy of the White House is that you submit your questions in advance, so they had my questions for about three days."
-Carol Coleman, RTE.

Bush doesn't want to president of a democratic country, answerable to the people. He wants to be---and acts as if he were---a king. Any reporter who refuses to play along is punished. The Irish media doesn't give a shit what the White House thinks, so they showed us how the White House press operation tries to stifle questioning of the president.

You can bet that what the WH does to domestic journalists is much more oppressive. Can you imagine: "Ask about what toothpaste he uses and you'll get more questions in the future" or "Ask about Enron and you'll never work in this town again".

One thing the Bush administration has a difficult time understanding (or at least admitting openly) is that most decisions are made under constraints. Scarcity is the basic fact of life under the sun; indeed, it is the single most important and indispensible assumption in economic theory. So why can't the Bushies recognize it?

On fiscal policy, the Bush approach has always been you can have your cake and eat it too. They promise massive tax cuts, increased domestic spending, and more money for entitlements. But you can't have it all. Supply-side "theory" in general falls prey to the same fallacy. Of course, modern Republicans *know* that they can't really have it all; they think they are going to "starve the beast" of government. In the meantime, though, they are feeding it faster and faster, and running up a big tab, yet with fairly little positive to show for it.

On foreign policy, the neocons prove to be counterparts of the supply siders: they think American might is so great, we can fight all our enemies (and potential enemies, and future enemies) at once, in the manner of our choosing. This has turned out to be a colossal mistake. As Max points out, the Bushies can't tell the different between the enemies out to kill us, and the enemies who just want to be left alone. By picking fights with the latter, we empower groups like al-Qaeda (you know, the real enemy? the ones who killed 3,000 Americans?).

What's more by showing our bellicosity *and* getting bogged down in Iraq, we've given the two other "Axis of Evil" states the impetus and opportunity to nuclearize. North Korea is a much bigger threat than Saddam was, and Bush's policy has made it much worse. (Now, Bush is admitting Clinton was right all along---but in the interim 20 months, NK has probably become a nuclear power).

On the environment, Bush says pump the oil faster, and let the future sort itself out. Once again, he has no idea what it means to make choices under scarcity; no clue what it really means to conserve or be prudent.

At bottom, the modern day Republicans have missed the key lesson of the first day of Econ 101. They instead they mooch off the future, piling up debts, enemies, military committments, and resource shortages that will haunt responsible Americans for years. It's time to take the checkbook away. These aren't conservatives in any sense of the word. They are instead the Deadbeat Party.

In contrast, the Democrats, starting with Clinton, have been the model of responsibility and prudence on fiscal and foreign policy. They eliminated the deficit; they avoided wars through effective diplomacy; they made the world a safer and more prosperous place. Had they not had the Republican albatross around their necks, they would have no doubt also made dramatic improvements in environmental stability and economic security for all Americans---because, unlike the Republicans, they know how to get something of value for the money they do spend. Which would you rather buy, a pointless war or health care for everyone?

That's the vision of the Democratic party. And the Republicans call it "tax and spend". But we know all about the way they manage things, given the chance. Its time to remove the Deadbeats from the Oval Office and from Congress. We're in a hell of a mess, and we know who made it. Give the Dems a nice cushy majority in both houses, and I suspect that in eight years, we'll be looking back, as we did in 2000, wondering how things got so good. I'd sure like the chance to feel that way---I took Clinton for granted last time, wishing he had done more for the poor, for the environment, and for the people of Rwanda. But with hindsight, I see that he was under seige by a group who would sacrifice the public good for power, and that it is Clinton's enemies, rather than Clinton, who should shoulder the blame for his shortcomings.

Jon Stewart systematically shows how Bush/Cheney are the biggest liars ever to hold the White House. I've been waiting for this video. Watch it, laugh, and weep.

I think we're building a lovely little dilemma in Iraq. Stay or leave, it's going to be hell.

But this new abuse of economics from the National Review takes the cake and eats it too (and proceeds to argue the cake is in fact bigger as a result). Geez. "federal government deficit = non-government savings" indeed!

Krugman has a nice column on the story behind the Bush admin's overly optimistic terrorism report. Key lines:

Was the report's squishy math politically motivated? Well, the Bush administration has cooked the books in many areas, including budget projections, tax policy, environmental policy and stem cell research. Why wouldn't it do the same on terrorism?

...we can be sure that if the statistics had told the administration something it didn't want to hear, they would have been carefully checked.

...

In a press conference announcing the release of the revised report, the counterterrorism coordinator Cofer Black attributed the errors to "inattention, personnel shortages and [a] database that is awkward and antiquated." Remember: we're talking about the government's central clearinghouse for terrorism information, whose creation was touted as part of a "dramatic enhancement" of counterterrorism efforts more than a year before this report was produced. And it still can't input data into its own computers? (It should be no surprise, in this age of Halliburton, that the job of data input was given to — and botched by — private contractors.)

Think of it as just one more indication that Mr. Bush isn't really serious about this terrorism thing. He talks about terror a lot, and invokes it to justify unrelated wars he feels like fighting. But when it comes to devoting resources to the unglamorous work of protecting the nation from attack — well, never mind.

A fascinating reversal in the latest WaPo poll: asked whether they consider Bush or Kerry more honest and trustworthy, 52% said Kerry, and 39% said Bush.

This is a big gap, and probably has Rove et al scared.

WaPo a month ago worded things differently, asking separate questions about whether Bush or Kerry were trustworthy. Bush was seen as trustworthy by 53%, and Kerry by 48%. So a lot has changed (and in April, it was Bush 55%, Kerry 49%).

Implications? The hundred million Bush has dropped in Kerry-bashing ads have done very little, and the endless parade of administration failures, misdeeds, and lies over the last month and a half have seriously undermined Bush's (ill-deserved) reputation as a straight-shooter.

And how, exactly, is he going to get that back?

Check out Too Stupid To Be President. I like Get Stupid, National Jeopardy, The Quest for the Oily Grail, and this Winnie the Pooh parody.

Here are some quotes from "Anonymous", a senior US intelligence official, posted on TPM:

To secure as much of our way of life as possible, we will have to use military force in the way Americans used it on the fields of Virginia and Georgia, in France and on Pacific islands, and from skies over Tokyo and Dresden. Progress will be measured by the pace of killing …

Killing in large numbers is not enough to defeat our Muslim foes. With killing must come a Sherman-like razing of infrastructure. Roads and irrigation systems; bridges, power plants, and crops in the field; fertilizer plants and grain mills--all these and more will need to be destroyed to deny the enemy its support base. … [S]uch actions will yield large civilian casualties, displaced populations, and refugee flows. Again, this sort of bloody-mindedness is neither admirable nor desirable, but it will remain America's only option so long as she stands by her failed policies toward the Muslim world.

Spencer Ackerman asked Anonymous to clarify these comments:

ANONYMOUS: The war we need to conduct is simply to protect America. It's to stop the enemy, to have him cease and desist from attacking us. It is not--I hope it's not--to make them democratic, or to make them become libertarians or whatever, whereas the Indian intention in Kashmir is to install Hindu domination. The Chinese intention in western China is genocide: a silent genocide as they're doing in Tibet by inundating the Uighurs with Han Chinese. And the Russians are intent on doing what they tried to do in Afghanistan: to subject the population and eliminate whatever percentage of that population is necessary.

TPM: But isn’t it enough like those governments, or certainly like Russia in Chechnya, in that you’re calling for scorched-earth tactics? And isn't that at the heart of what the Islamic resistance in Chechnya views as Russia’s attempt to destroy Chechnya--and what in fact fuels the Islamicization of Chechnya?

ANONYMOUS: I think that's a good argument. My argument, I think, taken from the whole book, is that we've left ourselves with no option but the military option, and our application of military force against our foe, whether it's Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere else, has not been particularly intimidating. They've ridden out two wars. They're on the offensive at the moment. What are we left with? If we don't use our military power, we really just sit and take it. …

TPM: But isn't the argument that we'd be using our military force disproportionately?

ANONYMOUS: The question is survival. What are we going to do, dive an airplane into the Grand Mosque at Mecca? No, we're not going to do that. Proportional war ends up being war forever, because they'll never stop being able to attack us, and if the cost they pay is minimal, it just goes on forever. That's where we are now.

I have serious problems with this line of thought.

First, we aren't in a war of survival. There is no remotely plausible scenario by which the terrorists could wipe out the population of America. (In contrast, the US could rather easily exterminate any non-nuclear country on the globe). The US has fought for its survival before---in the Cold War, we faced the extinction of humanity through global nuclear war; in WWII, we faced implacable enemies who sought to conquer and tyrannize the world; in the Civil War, millions of Americans died in a struggle for our national soul. The "war on terror", in contrast, is a struggle to protect our citizens from the weapons of the weak---suicide bombs and the like. Even if we suffer a nuclear terror incident---and such an attack is inevitable, whether in this conflict or in some future struggle---we must resist the temptation to enlarge the conflict. Because enlarging problems, contra our idiotic Secretary of Defense, doesn't help solve them. It usually makes them irreversably bigger.

Second, it is the height of irresponsibility to talk of the war on terror as if our existence were at stake. Most voters know little about warfare, the capabilities of states and terrorist groups, the interests of key geopolitical actors, etc. Tell them that Saddam can destroy us all, and a significant proportion will believe it, even if it's ridiculous. I am sure that even today, a significant fraction of Americans would support brutal total war on Islamic societies, just because the 9/11 bombers were Muslim. To blame---and massacre---the innocent to punish terror acts by a few, or even in the misguided hopes of preventing or discouraging future attacks, is to descend to exactly the same level of depravity and evil as the terrorists themselves. And with our military's far greater capabilities, the US could unleash death and murder on a scale that would leave Hitler and Stalin in awe. No, to loosely talk of turning Muslim countries into Dresden is to engage in a very dangerous game, because many in the audience don't realize how sick, how horrible, and how unnecessary that would be.

Third, and separately, massive retaliation for terror has been shown, again and again, to escalate conflicts, not to end them. Chechen rebels today killed about 60 Russians in a sneak attack, the latest sordid episode in a pointless civil war. The Russians could have let the Chechens go, sealed the border and refused Chechens entry to Russia, but instead chose to respond to each attack in kind, often with interest. As much as this might satisfy the people's lust for vengeance, it has sown only more violence. The survivors in Chenchnya spring up like dragon's teeth to perpetuate the cycle of violence; international terror groups looking for a battlefield hone in, and everything goes to hell. A tit-fot-tat strategy only discourages violence when the opponent fears retaliation. Often, terror groups welcome it. It helps draw the innocent of their societies into the struggle. When we bomb innocents, we sow terrorists.

So if proportionate response is off the table, what's left? Law enforcement, to prevent attacks and undermine terror networks; selected use of force, to wipe out terror resources (what Afghanistan should have been, if Bush hadn't pulled away resources to fight in Iraq); and smart policies to remove the sources of conflict without much sacrifice (get troops out of the Middle East; reduce oil dependence).

It doesn't have the macho satisfaction of smiting our enemies. But it will keep us much safer, and protect us from turning a war for safety into a war of kill-or-be-killed.

NYT has a fascinating article on "high-tech" origami, worth a look for the pictures alone.

In an earlier post on the Spanish elections, I argued that when it comes to elections and terror, the best way for voters to avoid being manipulated by terrorists is to vote their consciences. Instead, if you set some simple decision rule, you can always be manipulated by terrorism. This holds whether the rule is "If there is a terror attack before the election, always vote for the incumbent, to show you can't be intimidated", or "Always vote for the challenger, because the government has failed to protect us."

Part of the reason I gave this advice is that it seems people have a hard time figuring out what outcomes terrorists want. For example, I've heard it argued that al-Qaeda would love to get Bush out of office, because he's doing such a bang-up job. I've said that al-Qaeda probably would prefer he stay, and a new book by an anonymous intelligence official agrees. He figures "Bush is taking the US in exactly the direction Bin Laden wants, towards all-out confrontation with Islam under the banner of spreading democracy." Moreover, he thinks al-Qaeda is getting stronger, and is capitalizing on the Iraq war.

Bottom line: don't worry about whether your vote is a vote for or against al-Qaeda; that way lies madness. Instead, ask which candidate will do the best job, which includes, among other things, fighting terrorism and cleaning up the Iraq mess.

Bill O'Reilly said the following on his radio show (via Media Matters):

O'REILLY: Because look ... when 2 percent of the population feels that you're doing them a favor, just forget it, you're not going to win. You're not going to win. And I don't have any respect by and large for the Iraqi people at all. I have no respect for them. I think that they're a prehistoric group that is -- yeah, there's excuses.

Sure, they're terrorized, they've never known freedom, all of that. There's excuses. I understand. But I don't have to respect them because you know when you have Americans dying trying to you know institute some kind of democracy there, and 2 percent of the people appreciate it, you know, it's time to -- time to wise up.

And this teaches us a big lesson, that we cannot intervene in the Muslim world ever again. What we can do is bomb the living daylights out of them, just like we did in the Balkans. Just as we did in the Balkans. Bomb the living daylights out of them. But no more ground troops, no more hearts and minds, ain't going to work.

[...]

They're just people who are primitive.

If, like me, you can scarcely believe someone would say such things on radio, you can listen here. I'm going to discuss some recent reporting on the mismanagement of the occupation in a moment, but first just ponder the hate in this quote. Here is a widely syndicated talk show host exposing himself as a hateful bigot who feels qualified to judge an entire nation unworth of respect; a man who advocates mass murder of anyone in a Muslim country based on his hatred for Iraqis; a man who clearly thinks some nations are primitive (sub-human?), and that more advanced nations need not respect their dignity or lives.

As always, it is easier to understand how vile this statement is by substituting different names into the equation. If an Iranian claimed that because of "trouble" with the US, they were justified in bombing the living daylights out of Canada, another Christian nation, since they would no longer be patient with Christians who caused problems, we would consider the statement barbarous. O'Reilly deserves no slack on this one. And he deserves no mouthpiece for his hatred. I refuse to take Fox News the slightest bit seriously while they give him an audience.

But now on to the main event. Several reviews of the Iraqi occupation are showing it was even more calamitous than we thought. The WaPo is starting to wise up to the disaster, and this report is well-worth reading:

The Iraqi army is one-third the size U.S. officials promised it would be by now. Seventy percent of police officers have not received training. When violence flared across the country this spring, many soldiers and policemen refused to perform their duties because U.S. forces failed to equip them, designate competent leaders and win trust among the ranks.

About 15,000 Iraqis have been hired to work on projects funded by $18.6 billion in U.S. aid, despite promises to use the money to employ at least 250,000 Iraqis by this month. At of the beginning of June, 80 percent of the aid package, approved by Congress last fall, remained unspent.

Electricity generation remains stuck at around 4,000 megawatts, resulting in less than nine hours of power a day to most Baghdad homes, despite pledges from U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer to increase production to 6,000 megawatts by June 1.

...

Attacks on U.S.-led forces and foreign civilians now average more than 40 a day, a threefold increase since January. Assassinations of Iraqi political leaders and debilitating sabotage of the country's oil and electricity infrastructure now occur routinely.

...

"Did we really do what we needed to do? What we promised to do?" a senior CPA official said. "Nobody here believes that."

...

Despite the scale of their plans, and Bremer's conclusion by last July that Iraq would need "several tens of billions of dollars" for reconstruction, CPA specialists had virtually no resources to fund projects on their own to create much-needed local employment in the months after the war. Instead, they relied on two U.S. firms, Halliburton Co. and Bechtel Corp., which were awarded large contracts to patch Iraq's infrastructure.

...

The CPA also lacked experienced staff. A few development specialists were recruited from the State Department and nongovernmental organizations. But most CPA hiring was done by the White House and Pentagon personnel offices, with posts going to people with connections to the Bush administration or the Republican Party. The job of reorganizing Baghdad's stock exchange, which has not reopened, was given in September to a 24-year-old who had sought a job at the White House. "It was loyalty over experience," a senior CPA official said.

...

Because many of the 2,300 projects to be funded by the $18.6 billion are large construction endeavors that will involve foreign labor instead of Iraqis, they will result in far less of a local economic boost than the CPA had promised, another senior official involved in the reconstruction said. The projects were chosen largely without input from Iraqis.

"This was supposed to be our big effort to help them -- $18 billion of our tax dollars to fix their country," the senior reconstruction official said. "But the sad reality is that this program won't have a lot of impact in it for the Iraqis. The primary beneficiaries will be American companies."

...

When anti-occupation militiamen converged on the Rafidain police station on April 4, officers inside the blue-walled building sprang into action.

They grabbed their possessions and ran home.

...

The militiamen met surprisingly little resistance elsewhere. Rafidain, in central Sadr City, was no exception.

"To shoot those people would have been wrong," said Sgt. Falah Hassan, a lanky veteran whose uniform consists of rolled-up jeans and a rumpled blue shirt. "If a man comes with principles and I believe in those principles, I will not shoot him."

...

Of nearly 90,000 police on duty now, more than 62,000 still have not received any training.

But Iraqi political leaders and several CPA officials contend that the problems with security were more fundamental than training police. The U.S. military came to Iraq with too few soldiers to maintain order and guard the country's borders from foreign terrorists, they said. "I don't know anyone who thinks there's enough troops here," the senior adviser to Bremer said.

...

The sympathy for Sadr today at the Rafidain station -- on Fridays, officers pin his picture to their uniforms before going to the mosque -- suggests that the odds of getting the police to resist the cleric's militia have not improved.

...

"We were supposed to leave them with a permanent constitution," a senior CPA official said. "Then we decided to leave them with a temporary constitution. Now we're leaving them with a temporary constitution that the majority dislikes."

...

Life inside the high-security Green Zone -- what some CPA staffers jokingly call the Emerald City -- bears little resemblance to that in the rest of Baghdad. The power is always on. Shiny shuttle buses zip passengers around. Outdoor cafes stay open late into the night.

There is little effort to comply with Islamic traditions. Beer flows freely at restaurants. Women walk around in shorts. Bacon cheeseburgers are on the CPA's lunch menu.

"It's like a different planet," said an Iraqi American who has a senior position in the CPA and lives in the Green Zone but regularly ventures out to see relatives. "It's cut off from the real Iraq."

...

Limited contact with Iraqis outside the Green Zone has made CPA officials reliant on the views of those chosen by Bremer to serve on the Governing Council. When Brahimi, the U.N. envoy, asked the CPA for details about several Iraqis he was considering for positions in the interim government, he told associates he was "shocked to find how little information they really had," according to an official who was present.

Patrick Cockburn of the Independent adds his view from Baghdad:

[The soldier] added that security was not quite as tight as it looked since prostitutes were regular visitors to the [Green] zone.

My friend, a little alarmed, decided to investigate. He went to a house which was being used as a brothel. He says: "In the toilet I found that the women were writing pro-Baath party, anti-American and patriotic slogans with their lipstick on the mirrors." Their clients could not tell what they had written because it was in Arabic.

The story illustrates the way in which the CPA officials became wholly isolated from the real opinions of Iraqis. Arriving in the wake of the war last year they cut themselves off inside Saddam Hussein's old palace complex. They were as remote from the lives of ordinary Iraqis as if they lived in a Martian spaceship which had temporarily touched down in the centre of Baghdad.

This isolation helps explain the CPA's repeated mistakes. When it arrived 14 months ago Iraqis were evenly divided on whether they had been liberated or occupied by the US. The CPA's own poll shows that just 2 per cent of Iraqis say they feel liberated and 92 per cent say they are occupied. The CPA may be the least successful organisation ever created by the US government. It is certainly one of the strangest. "It is really like living in an open prison,' said one CPA official.

...

Uncertain where real threats come from, the guards of the CPA - both regular US army and private security firms - treat all Iraqis as equally suspicious. According to one former Iraqi minister a suicide bomber was able to blow up Izzedin Salim, the head of Iraq's Governing Council, on 17 May after his convoy had been prevented from passing through US security into the Green Zone because a vital document was missing. His vehicle turned around giving the bomber his opportunity.

...

It is still unclear why Mr Bremer and the CPA showed such poor judgement. The swift overthrow of Saddam Hussein showed few Iraqis supported him. But Mr Bremer disbanded the army and persecuted the Baath party pushing their members towards armed resistance.

By last summer he had alienated the Sunni Arabs (20 per cent of Iraqis) and by this spring he had infuriated the Shia (60 per cent). He turned the hitherto marginal Shia cleric Muqtada Sadr into a respected martyr and the hillbilly city of Fallujah into a patriotic symbol.

Many able and intelligent CPA officials are mystified by the extent of the failure, perhaps the greatest in American foreign policy. "Bremer stuffed his office full of neo-conservatives and political appointees who knew nothing of the country or the region," one said. "They actively avoided anybody who did."

America---or at least its semi-legitimate leaders---chose to invade Iraq and remake it. The Iraqi people did not ask for the chaos we have unleashed. We should do everything we can to make things right---though I fear there is little hope left---and we should beg Iraqis' forgiveness for treating their country like a playground for greedy corporate cronies, young Republican ticket-punchers, and sadistic prison guards. To speak of ingratitude is not just insulting. It is tempting fate, should there ever be a reckoning of our deeds in Iraq.

From Bush:

You can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror.

From Cheney:

Blaming what he called "lazy" reporters for blurring the distinction, Vice President Dick Cheney said that while "overwhelming" evidence shows a past relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, the Bush administration never accused Saddam of helping with the Sept. 11 attacks.

"We have never been able to prove that there was a connection there on 9/11," he said in the CNBC interview that aired on NBC's "Today" show Friday.

Cheney was echoing comments by President Bush on Thursday, and they followed a report by the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission that found no "collaborative relationship" between the former Iraqi leader and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.

Cheney, however, insisted the case was not closed into whether there was an Iraq connection to the Sept. 11 attacks. "We don't know."

The vice president noted a disputed report about an alleged meeting between an Iraqi intelligence official and lead hijacker Mohamed Atta in the Czech Republic in April 2001. "We've never been able to confirm or to knock it down," Cheney said.

The 9/11 commission, however, said in one of three reports issued this week that "based on the evidence available — including investigation by Czech and U.S. authorities plus detainee reporting — we do not believe that such a meeting occurred."

Cheney responded that, for his part, the findings remained inconclusive. "It doesn't add anything from my perspective. I mean, I still am a skeptic."

Overall, the vice president defended the administration's view of Iraq's links to al-Qaida, saying the "the evidence is overwhelming" and citing the commission report's evidence of a meeting between bin Laden and an Iraqi official in 1994 in Sudan, as well as the presence of terror suspect Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq.

He said he disagreed with the commission's conclusion on whether there was a "general relationship" between Iraq and al-Qaida.

"I don't know what they know," Cheney said of the commission, adding however that he "probably" knows more about Saddam and al-Qaida than the panel.

But Cheney declined to disagree outright with the report's conclusion that no evidence exists to connect Saddam to Sept. 11 — saying instead that, "I disagree with the way their findings have been portrayed. There has been enormous confusion."

Reiterating the distinction between contacts and actual collaboration on the Sept. 11 attacks, Cheney said some news media had blurred that distinction and reported the administration was directly tying the attacks to Saddam.

"The press is, with all due respect there are exceptions, often times lazy, often simply reports what someone else in the press says without doing their homework," Cheney said.

(I'm so glad Cheney has been working to clear up this confusion for the public.)

From Rice:

In publishing a report that cited no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, the Sept. 11 commission actually meant to say that Iraq had no control over the network, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on Friday.

As the White House strove to curb potential damage to President Bush's credibility on Iraq, his closest aide on international security denied any inconsistency between the bipartisan panel's findings and Bush's insistence that a Saddam-Qaeda relationship existed.

"What I believe the 9-11 commission was opining on was operational control, an operational relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq which we never alleged," Rice said in an interview with National Public Radio.

"The president simply outlined what we knew about what al Qaeda and Iraq had done together. Operational control to me would mean that he (Saddam) was, perhaps, directing what al Qaeda would do."

From Rumsfield:

...But let me just say this: I have read this -- editorials, "torture" -- and one after another. Washington Post the other day -- I forget when it was -- just a great, bold "torture."

The implication -- think of the people who read that around the world. First of all, our forces read it. And the implication is that the United States government has, in one way or another, ordered, authorized, permitted, tolerated torture. Not true. And our forces read that, and they've got to wonder, do we? And as General Pace said, we don't. The President said people will be treated humanely, and that is what the orders are. That's what the requirements are.

Now, we know that people have done some things they shouldn't do. Anyone who looks at those photographs know that. But that's quite a different thing. And that is not the implication that's out there. The implication that's out there is the United States government is engaging in torture as a matter of policy, and that's not true. Think of the second group of people who see it. All those people in the region and in Iraq and in Afghanistan, that we need their cooperation, we need their help, the people in those countries, the people in the neighboring countries, and think how unhelpful that is for them to gain the inaccurate impression that that is what's taking place.

Third, think of the people who, for whatever -- whenever -- today, tomorrow, next year -- capture an American civilian or American military personnel and will use all those headlines about torture and the impact in the world that people think that's what's taking place, and use that as an excuse to torture our people. So this is a very serious business that this country's engaged in.

Now, we're in a war, and I can understand that someone who doesn't think they're in a war or aren't in a war, sitting in an air-conditioned room someplace can decide they want to be critical of this or critical of that, or misstate that or misrepresent something else, or be fast and loose with the facts. But there's an effect to that, and I think we have to be careful. I think people ought to be accountable for that, just as we're accountable.

One last quote:

Why of course the people don't want war ... But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.

Oh wait, that's not a Bush official---that's from Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg Trials.

A reader has pointed out that hiding prisoners from the Red Cross is specifically prohibited by the Geneva Conventions, which would make Tenet, Rumsfield, Evans, Abizaid, and Sanchez criminals according to American law. I have little faith though that the law still applies to the Bush admin, if it ever did. (Didn't the Republicans used to make a big deal about the rule of law? And didn't they accuse Saddam of violating the Geneva Conventions by putting POWs on TV?)

Michael Froomkin has some scary speculation on what these latest revelations portend.

An amusing anecdote from Brad DeLong. I bet he doesn't like the partisan business cycles literature, either.

I haven't written too much about the news over the last few weeks because I find it profoundly depressing. But I figure I should provide at least the public service of collecting in one place the recent developments I've seen, pertinent to Iraq and the Bush administration.

So here goes:

1. Rumsfield ordered that a suspect in Iraq be kept secretly, without records, and hidden from the Red Cross (is this a violation of international law?). Virtually everyone in the chain of command has his fingers in this one.

2. Iraqis overwhelmingly hate us and want us to leave, according to a US poll. The best face you can put on this is that perhaps anti-Americanism will unite them. But it is not good for our security, either at home or of our troops in the theater.

3. Bush must really want to be Reagan: now the Dept of Agriculture is classifying frozen french fries as a fresh vegetable. I guess every Republican has to have his comical vegetable story. But back to the real news.

4. A long list of former Republican and Democratic diplomatic officials are calling for Bush's defeat, saying he has damaged America's standing in the world and security.

5. Despite insistence to the contrary, the military is keeping track of some civilian casualties in Iraq. Moreover, the air strikes early in the war aimed at killing key Iraqi officials completely failed to nail any of the targets, but did kill hundreds of innocents.

6. The torture scandal gets worse and worse. If you haven't read the infamous memo of the Office of Legal Counsel justifying torture and law-breaking by the president, you should (and read this commentary, too; this one's also good). Also, note that the use of dogs against prisoners was allowed. Still think it's a few bad apples? Maybe the worst apple is at the top.

Some real life mad science here. Two separate teams have "teleported" a beryllium atom a short distance.

The method uses "quantum entanglement" to pass the information of the first atom to the second by means of a third. In the process, this information is lost from the first atom (oddly, this teleportation without the possibility of replication is one thing that always seemed fishy in Star Trek---but now it makes sense, which is scary, instead).

Alas, practical teleportation of objects complex enough to be interesting (DNA, a paramecium, a baseball, a cat) still seems out of reach. If anyone reading this understands quantum entanglement, please correct me, but surely it would be hard to entangle two complex objects---in some sense, a harder problem than teleportation. But I know just enough about quantum to know I know less than nothing about it...

defined.

By Nicholas Xenos.

Not terrorism. Climate change.

A report from APSA (the American Political Science Association) here.

Lots of eliminationist thoughts out there in right wing blogs, if this contest is any indication. Glenn Reynolds certainly has one of the most depraved views on genocide I've seen from the postwar era.

The warnings of Sy Hersh that the torture photos yet released are much worse has been haunting me this last week (and Sy has been right about this thing every step of the way):

Seymour Hersh spoke... at the University of Chicago.... I took some scattered notes. The remaks will be disjoined--as will be the notes--but chilling. He asserted several things that he says he didn't have nailed down enough to write, but that he was confident of....



Unsurprisingly, he flagged the extraordinary importance of the WSJ memo revealing the government's plans to torture, including its assertion that it's not against the law if the president approves it, and mocked the New York Times headline "9 Militias Are Said to Approve a Deal to Disband," suggesting in its stead, "Bush Administration Offers Hoax in Hopes of Convincing U.S. There's Some Peace." His assessment of the postwar settlement: "It's going to come down to who has the biggest militia will win."...



And this was one of the most stunning parts. He had just returned from Europe, and he said high officials, even foreign ministers, who used to only talk to him off the record or give him backchannel messages, were speaking on the record that the next time the U.S. comes to them with intelligence, they'll simply have no reason to believe it.... He lamented of his journalistic colleagues, "I don't know whey they don't just tell it like it is."...

He said the people most horrified by the way the war was planned were the military commanders responsible for protecting their troops.... He talked about the horror of the 1000 civilian deaths in Fallujah (but was careful to note the Marines were doing their job, placing the blame with their superiors)....

He talked about how hard it is to get the truth out in Republican Washington: "If you agree with the neocons you're a genius. If you disagree you're a traitor." Bush, he said, was closing ranks, purging anyone who wasn't 100% with him. Said Tenet has a child in bad health, has heart problems, and seemed to find him generally a decent guy under unimaginable pressure, and that people told him that Tenet feared a heart attack if he had to take one more grilling from Cheney. "When these guys memoirs come out, it will shock all of us."...

He said that after he broke Abu Ghraib people are coming out of the woodwork to tell him this stuff. He said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, "You haven't begun to see evil..." then trailed off. He said, "horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run."

He looked frightened.

Apparently, this haunts Christopher Hitchens, too. I don't usually like Hitchens' stuff, but give him credit for well explain why torture is a unnecessary and counteproductive:

Skill, in these matters, depends on taking pains and not on inflicting them. You make the chap go through his story several times, preferably on video, and then you ask his friends a huge number of tedious questions, and then you go through it all again to check for discrepancies, and then you watch the first (very boring and sexless) video all over once more, and then you make him answer all the same questions and perhaps a couple of new and clever ones. If you have got the wrong guy—and it does happen—you let him go and offer him a ride home and an apology. And you know what? It often works. Only a lazy and incompetent dirtbag looks for brutal shortcuts so that he can get off his shift early. And sometimes, gunmen and bombers even have changes of heart, as well as mind.

Yes, but what about the ticking bomb? Listen: There's always going to be a ticking bomb somewhere. Some of these will go off, and it's just as likely to be in my part of Washington, D.C., as anywhere else. But we shall be fighting a war against jihad for decades to come. And the jihadists will continue to make big mistakes based on their mad theory. And they are not superhuman: They can be infiltrated, bribed, and turned. You don't have to tell them what time of day it is, or where they are, or when the next meal will be served. (Though it must be served.) But you must not bring in that pig or that electrode. That way lies madness and corruption and the extraction of junk confessions. So even if law and principle didn't enter into the question, we sure as hell know what doesn't work. The cranky Puritan voice of Sir Edmund Compton comes back to me down the corridor of the years: If it gives anyone pleasure, then you are doing it wrong and doing wrong into the bargain.

Homicide detectives know this routine, at least according to this book, which was made into a rather gripping TV series on how detectives get suspects to talk with no more than words. But instead, of the pro's, we've got naive, sadistic, inexperienced private contractors. And a leadership that refuses to believe that the best answer to a problem is anything other than the simplest violent alternative.

Hence we started a war to make peace in the Middle East, and are trying to create democracy at gunpoint.

I've been waiting for someone to write an essay on Reagan that captures my view, so I can link to it (quicker than writing!). My roommate has just posted a review of Reagan I can wholeheartedly endorse (indeed, he has convinced me to give Reagan more credit for heeding Kennan when it counted; no one ever understood the Cold War better than Kennan).

On foreign policy and economics, this is all you need to know on Reagan.

TPM caught a hilarious segment from Press Secretary McClellan; I've added a running commentary for those scoring at home:

Q Why do you say you've made it clear on Geneva Conventions when it's -- obviously, they've been violated ever since we went into Iraq?

MR. McCLELLAN: Are you talking about the abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib?

Q And Guantanamo and everywhere else.

MR. McCLELLAN: I don't know what specifically you're referring to, everywhere else.

[The Bush White House sees press briefings as a chance not to inform, but to play their own version of the board game clue:

Q: Did Col. Mustard commit murder?
A: I don't know what specifically you're referring to.
Q: Many people have suggested Col. Mustard is responsible for the mysterious
disappearance of Mrs. Peacock.
A: I really can't speculate on such vague claims
Q: Did Col. Mustard stab Mrs. Peacock with the knife in the kitchen?
A: That's absurd. Of course Col. Mustard did no such thing.
Q: Did he hit her over the head with the candlestick in the study?
A: No comment.

The game has become so popular, it's been picked up by Condi "The memo gave no specific recommendations" Rice]

Q I'm saying that you people have never said definitively that you are obeying the Geneva Conventions.

MR. McCLELLAN: Helen, no, we made it very clear when it comes to Iraq that the Geneva Convention did apply.

Q Consistent with, you say, but --

MR. McCLELLAN: No, not in Iraq. In Iraq we made it very clear the Geneva Convention applies.

[Of course, we also interpret the Geneva Conventions to allow all kinds of things that look a lot like torture, and your question is whether we were obeying the real Conventions, and not some weird alternative version we cooked up in the Office of Legal Counsel. I know that, and you know I know that, and I know you know...]

Q Can I ask about Vice President Cheney, because yesterday he repeated what is a very controversial claim. He said that Saddam Hussein had long-established ties with al Qaeda. Does the President believe that Saddam Hussein had long-established ties with al Qaeda?

MR. McCLELLAN: We certainly talked about the ties with terrorism between the -- between the regime that was removed from power, and we talked about those ties prior to the decision to remove that regime from power. So that was well-documented. Secretary Powell went before the United Nations and talked about some of those ties to terrorism, as well. And Zarqawi is certainly a senior al Qaeda associate who was in Iraq prior to the decision to go in and remove the regime from power.

Q There's also al Qaeda in the United States. That does not mean the United States is cooperating with those members of al Qaeda. Just by the presence of someone does not mean there's a cooperation.

MR. McCLELLAN: But, remember, we're talking about an oppressive regime that was in power in Iraq that exercised control over that country. And go back and look at what we documented, Norah. We documented all this, and I think that's what the Vice President was referring to.

Now let's play "who's paying attention". Zarqawi was hiding out in northern Iraq, in the Kurdish zone. We were keeping Saddam out of the region, so my claims about Saddam's oppressive control are so much hot air, and I know it. What's more, we could have taken Zarqawi out on numerous occasions, and the military kept coming up with plans to do so, but Bush vetoed them because that would have undermined the claim that we needed to go to war with Iraq that I'm making right now. This whole sorry affair comes closer to treason than any action by an American president in history, but I'm guessing you won't bring that up, because it's complicated, and there are so many simpler scandals to bring up.

Q So today you're saying the President does agree there were long --

MR. McCLELLAN: We stand by what we've said previously, in terms of the regime's ties to terrorism, yes. And I think that's what the Vice President was referring to.

Q The President said there were no ties in the run up to the war.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, Helen, that's a mischaracterization. There were clear ties to terrorism between the regime --

Every question so far has asked about ties between Saddam and al Qaeda; I'll just change the subject to any terrorism in the world, even though you didn't ask about that.

Q He said there were no ties with al Qaeda.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- certainly supporting suicide bombers in the Middle East.

Q Are you repudiating what the President said?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, I think you're talking about September 11th.

A seeming non sequitur, meaning: "yes, the president has admitted that there was no link between Saddam and 9/11, but since it is so useful that voters think there is, we haven't said so very clearly, and I'll avoid being clear now."

Q Has the President been asked to answer questions before the CIA leak investigation?

MR. McCLELLAN: I don't have any update at this point. But those are the types of questions that you need to direct to the prosecutors who are overseeing that investigation. And I'll see if there's any further update beyond what we said previously.

Q Why can't you tell us? I mean, he's the President of the United States. You aren't going to tell us if he's been questioned in a criminal investigation>

MR. McCLELLAN: I just said I don't have any update from where he -- what he previously responded to, Terry.

Q Right, but we'd like it from you, please.

MR. McCLELLAN: And I'll see what else I can find out. But remember what we've made clear from the very beginning. There's an ongoing investigation right now. We want to do everything we can to help that investigation conclude successfully and get to the bottom of this. And in that spirit, that's why we've referred questions like that to the investigators, because if they feel it will help move their case forward, I'm sure that they will discuss that information with you. But I will -- but I'll go back and just check from our end to see what else I can find out.

Q It's an historic event. Not many Presidents --

MR. McCLELLAN: Understood. No, understood, but I have to balance that with the ongoing investigation that's underway.

Q Has he retained his lawyer yet, regarding this?

MR. McCLELLAN: That's what I said. I don't have any update from what he previous said. Let me look into things.

Go ahead.

Q Scott, Richard Clarke says that in the wake of his book, NSC lawyers were used to do opposition research against him, that they contacted his former colleagues to -- quote -- "dig up dirt" on him. Is that accurate? And is it an inappropriate --

MR. McCLELLAN: Arash, I think we've been through this issue and I don't think there's anything to add to what we've previously said.

Translation: "No comment." Translation of translation: "You caught us red-handed."

Mass Lt. Gov says Kerry should resign from the Senate while running for President. Just like W. Wait, no Bush didn't resign from the Texas Governorship until December 21, 2000. (Of course, it's a mostly ceremonial post anyway).

Ah, but there's a key difference. If Kerry resigns, Mitt Romney can put a new Republican in the Senate. To better "represent" Massachussetts, you see. Seems to me that an absent Democrat better represents Massachussetts than a present Republican.

My former grad school colleague Pete Singer has the scoop.

Bush wants the new Iraqi "government" to exempt US contractors there from the law, just as it is going to exempt the US military. Of course, this raises the question, yet again, of whether the Iraqi government will be sovereign in any real sense. But given the role contractors have played in the prison abuse scandals, this demand raises a scarier question: does the Bush administration have any respect for the rule of law, or any appreciation of its importance for building a stable political order and healthy economy?

Bush went to Iraq to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, bring freedom and justice to the Iraqi people, stability to the Middle East, and to fight terrorism. The consequences? No weapons were found, the Iraqis still lack freedom and justice, but live in a chaotic, violent society rife with terrorism where there had been none there before. The Iraqis aren't better off yet. And if the Bush administration isn't willing to take chances and make sacrifices for the good of Iraq, they may not be a year from now, which would be real tragedy of this war.

President or King? The case for king is looking stronger all the time. A quick review:

1. Came to power when the unelected Supreme Court ordered a halt to the counting of votes.

2. Father was President; Father's appointees made him President

3. Claimed the right to interpret law

4. Treats the public treasury as private funds to be dispensed to his cronies (e.g., Halliburton)

5. Claims (and uses) the right to hold citizens without trial or charges indefinitely

6. His henchmen label criticism of the President as treason and a threat to security

7. His government lawyers assert the President is above the laws in wartime

8. Claims the right to torture

9. Considers the protests of millions no more than a "focus group"

10. Launches wars to settle family disputes ("He tried to kill my daddy")

Not looking good. Hence I suggest a new name for W., to go along with such classics as President Vacation, the Chimperor, and Shrub: King Bush the Awful.

Pretty much sums it up, eh?

I've been thinking about the suggestion that Nader select Kerry's electors, so that a vote for Nader is a vote for Kerry. A brilliant idea---and amazing that no one has thought of it before. Because anyone who wants to build a third party can do it!

A couple of points:

1. The main barrier to getting a respectable number of votes as a third party candidate is the lack of a party organization and recognizable party label. Third party candidates tend to underestimate the importance of parties (indeed, their disdain for party politics often is a factor in the choosing to run). If you really wanted to build a new force in politics that could (someday) contest the presidency, you'd put most of your resources into races you could win. You'd target region and local offices, try to get into the House and eventually the Senate. Sure, you'd run a presidential candidate, but knowing he will lose, you'd put more resources where you can build up a party that could someday hope to pass one of the two heavies---and thus take its place.

2. The next biggest barrier is people's fear of wasting their votes. Nader tends to take from the ideologically closest party, the Dems. So Naderites, by expressing their support for a more lefty party, end up helping the righties! Get rid of this problem, and people can express their true preferences and avoid their worst fears. A candidate using this strategy is still unlikely to win, but will get enough votes to qualify for federal funds (helping build the party), and will show the establishment he can mobilize support, making it easier to recruit and run serious candidates for lower office.

In short, by pointing your electors at a major party, you can use the Electoral College to pull your party into the big leagues---or at least AAA ball.

Now sure, the two major parties aren't going to sit idly by; they'll try to change the rules while they still control the game. But at least this gimmick gives a third party a fighting chance. Why not give it a shot Ralph? And if not you, surely someone else?

Your handy one stop source for state level polls, here.

It's early, but since April I've been giving Kerry 2 to 1 odds. Of course, unexpected events could change that (things that would help Kerry: indictments or resignations of major Bush admin players; collapse of the new Iraqi regime; oil price spike. Things that would help Bush: capturing Osama, a major terrorist attack on the US, or an unexpected turn-around in Iraq).

This is hilarious. A must see for French speakers, and everyone else.

Need some relief from the Bush admin? I can't give it to you, but you can work out your frustration with Dishonest Dubya. He needs new quotes, though.

Andy Foulds, a graphic designer, has a nice website with many examples of web design. Most of these are more on the "design for design sake" side of things, and less than fully functional (e.g., some beautiful menus that nevertheless hide all the menu options until you cursor over them, one by one!). Still I can't help but find a lot of these examples erieely beautiful, if impractical. He also has a fair number of flash based games and amusements. Worth a look. But probably not worth imitating if your think your content is more important that the packaging.

Bush previously claimed terrorism was way down in 2003, and took credit. Now the government admits the numbers were wrong, and terrorism was way up. More incidents, more dead. Will Bush be taking credit for that soon?

Remember, the Bush and GOP motto is, "Whatever happened, it's our responsibility if it's good. If it's bad, Clinton did it."

It's as good a theory as anything else.

Some good climate news, for once: a study using ice-core data to suggest we may have thousands of years till the next natural ice age.

Ice ages are a fact of life on Earth in our era; human civilization has arisen and flourished in a single interglacial period, and it remains to be seen whether that civilization can survive an ice age, or at least weather it without massive population shrinkage.

Climate change has a human component and a natural component, the relative sizes of which are much contested. I could care less who causes climate change; I am more concerned with trying to maintain a stable, conducive environment. In other words, the day will come when Nature will try to kill us. We should prepare for that day by getting really good at engineering the carbon cycle, among other things. This report suggests we may have a bit more time to get ready.

We'll need it---managing the climate is the public good problem to end all public good problems.

Update: JMM has an update to his earlier post on the topic, devoted mostly to this argument about strategic behavior. See also his American Prospect article. Finally, see an unintentionally hilarious response from the WSJ which shows a deep ignorance of politics and race.

****

TPM notes an undemocratic tendency of some pundits to pretend non-white voters aren't "really" voters. They say things like "The Democrat wouldn't have won the election if there weren't any blacks/Indians/Hispanics". As TPM concedes, why this is insulting is a subtle point, and many people who make such comments probably aren't aware that they are treating non-whites as less than citizens. But to see that it is at best pointless drivel, consider how a white person would react to the corollary statement: "Republicans wouldn't hold more than 5 seats in the House if there weren't any whites."

There's another problem here that TPM doesn't mention: these hypotheticals are completely silly. Don't get me wrong; I like counterfactual questions, and find them very useful. But you have to be careful when you set them up. If all black voters moved to Canada tomorrow, the Dems--who are strategic actors---wouldn't roll over and die, they would adjust.

Take an example electorate of 100 people:

50 white Republican voters........30 white Democratic voters.......20 black Democratic voters

To start, this is an evenly split district. Now suppose the 20 black Dems move away. Anaive conclusion is the Dems will lose future elections 50-30.

But why are people voting for D's and R's in the first place? As long as the reasons include things like policy differences and symbolism, the Dems can shift to be more like the R's, and peel away some of their voters. The ability of D's to scoop up R's is limited by factors outside the candidates' control (especially party identification socialized over a long period, the national party's platforms and image, and incumbency effects), but it's likely the D's will get more than the 30 voters they start with.

What's shifting as we including and exclude voting blocks is not the party labels on winning candidates, but something more tangible and important: the policies they support. So the right counterfactual is "if blacks (whites) didn't vote, policy would be more (less) conservative," which is a no brainer.

Sick bastards. Think of the working poor of California, suddenly having their electric bills spike. Or the rolling blackouts disrupting everyone's lives. Then read these quotes from Enron traders. Finally, ask yourself, "is regulation always such a bad thing"?

I haven't heard a single good argument against legalizing same-sex marriage. Let be more specific: I haven't heard an argument that is simultaneous not repellant, moronic, incoherent, irrelevant, or trivial. My interest here is not personal (I'm happily heterosexual); rather, I'm simply frustrated by the fact that this important issue appears to be a non-debate, and would prefer opponents of gay marriage either admit that, better explain their arguments, or find better points to make. To this end, I've compiled here a short catalog of anti-gay-marriage arguments, and treat them as seriously as they deserve to be treated.

But first, let me sketch a very short defense of gay marriage, to put my criticism in context. I espouse the Rawlsian notion of justice as fairness in pursuing life goals, and further suppose that a fair organization of society is what rational beings would agree to subject themselves to under conditions of ignorance about their particular plans and place in that society ("the initial position"). I stipulate that marriage (permanent, legally recognized bonding) to a loved one for the purposes of companionship, sharing of life's burdens, and/or raising children is a central life goal of many people, and one that any reasonable being in the initial position would recognize as worthy. Furthermore, a being ignorant of whether they would be born gay (or develop homosexual preferences in a marriage partner) would rationally prefer institutions which insured against exclusion from marriage on such grounds.*

This abstract Rawlsian argument needs a real world instantiation, and finds an admirable one in the US Constitution, which seeks to protect the rights of minorities to pursue their own lives, especially when their needs for these protections are great and the propensity for the majority to exercise low-benefit tyranny over these minorities is strong. Moreover, the Constitution was written in fairly general terms, in order to adapt to new social questions as they arise, while applying a consistently pro-minority and pro-liberty regime. Hence, it what follows, I will often refer to Constitutionally defined notions of justice.

I suspect it would be easy to construct similar arguments in any other liberal framework (nb: I mean liberal in the broad sense that encompasses virtually the entire American political tradition, not in the liberal/conservative sense. Theocrats, fascists, monarchists, and perhaps communists might have principled disagreements, but I will not speculate on them).

So how weak are the counter-arguments?

God opposes gay marriage.

I suppose this is internally consistent (though I disagree that any being like the Christian deity would hold this view). But it is massively irrelevant: state marriage is a secular institution, and constitutionally must remain so. It is very good that it is secular; the religious tolerance America was founded on has helped us avoid violent religious conflict, senseless religious oppression, and, according to one novel argument, is a key to America's flourishing religious culture. If you want to discriminate against gays, do so through your church---have that debate in the private sphere, and leave the state out of it.

Gay marriage counters human tradition.

G.K. Chesterton called tradition the democracy of the dead. Tradition serves neither justice nor the democracy of the living. If an institution has little positive or negative effect on society, but has traditional significance, by all means, preserve it; it's harmless. But many "traditional" institutions, like slavery and the subjection of women, have little positive to recommend them, and do great harm. When "tradition" is raised as a cry to save an embattled institution, it is a sure sign that it should be abolished.

Homosexual sex is "unnatural".

Appeals to naturalism are difficult to take seriously in a world of rapid technological and cultural change. What is the "nature" its advocates appeal to? That of the 19th century? The middle ages? The time of Jesus? Of Homer? Of Gilgamesh? etc. The standard is incoherent, inconsistently applied, and of dubious significance. But that doesn't matter here: there are plenty of instances of homosexual sex in nature. It appears likely homosexuality in humans has at least partially a genetic basis; in which case it is as "natural" as any other human behavior.

Recognizing gay marriages will lead to an increase in taxes, since these couples will be eligible for state benefits.

This argument is raised in tax-hating Texas. It is honest, at least. But partially beside the point: legislatures can always lower benefits to married couples to maintain constant overall spending. What this argument really acknowledges is that currently, the is a net transfer of wealth from gays to straights through discriminatory laws based on heterosexual-only marriage. On the grounds of justice and equal application of the law, this is really an argument for gay marriage.

Gay marriage will open a slippery slope to marrying any N objects, living or dead.

This is perhaps the dumbest slippery slope argument I have ever heard. Slippery slopes are weak arguments to begin with; they lack a mechanism, and merely extrapolate a trend outside of the data. In reality, each policy decision is its own debate, connected to others certainly, but not predetermined (else we wouldn't even be having this debate; it too would be part of some other policy's "slope"). Perhaps someday some crackpot judge will hold that gay marriage sets a precedent for nonconsensual marriage, or incest, or bestial marriages. Let us call this simply Horror X, and posit that the vast majority of society opposes Horror X for specific reasons (including, perhaps, genetic disadvantages of incest, or a rejection of nonconsensual sex as repugnant, or of bestiality as animal cruelty---not to mention a misapplication of the concept of a legal person). Whatever the reasons---and public revulsion to the bottom of the slope is key to the critique, so there must be a basis for that revulsion---they will be specific to Horror X, the Horror will be rejected through public condemnation, appeal, or legislation, and the whole thing will be over in two newscycles. The slippery slope doesn't exist in this case.

Gay marriage harms children

This is a matter for research, and for counterfactuals at that, since there is not yet gay marriage. This is potentially a real argument against gay marriage, but it is an unlikely one. Replace "gays" with group Y (which might be blacks, or people under 30, or people with below average IQs). Would a scientific finding that children raised by married couples of group Y do worse than average children justify banning group Y from marriage---or from raising children? (Bear in mind that if the question is whether to allow marriage, and the counter argument rests on childrearing, the implicitily advocated policy is a ban on childrearing altogether; if not, then one must show children of married couples of group Y do worse than children of unmarried couples of group Y, which is a priori very unlikely). I think phrased in general, ethical terms, most of us would agree that it would be a grave injustice to prevent people from realizing a key life goal (marriage and childrearing) for such crude utilitarian calculations. Put a different way, the gap in child happiness would have to be vast to justify restricting the institution of marriage. Indeed, I doubt any gap small enough to require serious social science to uncover would be too small to justify such a move. (Another question is what counts as a "harm". One imagines some critics mean that children may grow up gay, and hence be "harmed". That is a repugnant argument.)

Gay marriage undermines heterosexual marriage

An unusual argument, which at first I took for the non sequitur it ultimately is. But what people who make this argument refer to is something truly bizarre: the notion that marriage is primarily a social sanction for restraining male promiscuity which succeeds only to the extent that it is respected by heterosexual men. If including gays in the marriage institution tarnishes it in the eyes of heterosexual men, they will feel no compunction in cheating on their wives. I find this hard to believe as an empirical model of marriage and fidelity. I also find it hard to believe including gays in marriage would have such effects on heterosexual men's views or behavior. Finally, I see no reason alternative, primarily religious institutions could not take up the slack, if such a slack existed. Finally, were I to accept this argument, I would see the problem not as gays, but unfaithful straight men. Why should gays pay the price for their failings? Moreover, wouldn't gay marriage, on the same basis, reduce gay infidelity?

Gay marriage undermines the societal commitment to procreate

I don't think this is true. Gays nowadays tend to avoid heterosexual marriages, unlike in the past, so I don't think there will be noticeable effects on the fertility rate. But if there were, great: another tool to fight overpopulation, and one that makes people happier to boot, by allowing them to live as they wish to live. Seriously, the urge to procreate is awfully strong (fertility clinic, anyone?) It existed long before language, laws, or marriage, and is unlikely to vanish when marriage changes.

Court-ordered gay marriage is undemocratic

Yes, it is. So was court-ordered desegregation, so is the free speech protection of the Constitution ("Congress"---the people's representatives---"shall pass no law..."), so is anything else the Constitution forbids representatives from doing. The reason is simple, and well-known to most users of this argument: minority rights and civil liberties need protection from the majority, whose passions, to invoke Madison, may threaten those liberties. The genius of the Constitution is its effort to balance liberty and democracy. What critics are really saying is that gays don't deserve protection, either because they are not "really" a minority (e.g., they choose to be gay, and somehow that disqualifies them), or because marriage, for some reason, should be controlled completely by simple majority rule. The first argument is offensive: whether gays choose to be gays or not, they deserve the protections any other minority or majority group, popular or unpopular, enjoys (people choose to be Democrats and Baptists; would it be right for the state to discriminate against them?). The second argument is difficult to take seriously, since I doubt even the people who make it would like to follow it to its logical conclusions.

God will punish the nation for allowing gay marriage

A silly argument, but then aren't most of these? The best answer I can give, in all seriousness, is the following link.

Gay marriage will make more people gay

Uh, no. And even if it did, so what?

****

Anyone have any arguments I've missed? When every argument is unpersuasive, they can be a bit hard to remember. Suffice it to say, I doubt I've ever heard a public debate that was so one sided.

Postscript: Some conservatives can see the writing on the wall (gay marriage is inevitable), and say they might as well accept it. They pretty much admit what I'm saying here: the arguments against gay marriage are either weak, or appeals to an ethic whose time has passed.

*Incorporating religious beliefs in the original position is more problematic, and would involving weighing the p(religious opposition to gay marriage)*(Psychic cost of gay marriage to religous people) against two terms, p(gay and desiring marriage)*(benefits of marriage) + p(belief in moral imperative to permit gay marriage)*(psychic benefit of gay marriage). Although I do not want to ignore this problem (as most reader of Rawls seem to do), I think in this case the latter terms clearly outweigh the former.

I occassionally play poker with a group of political scientists (and long suffering significant others). We try to keep things interesting by inventing politically-inspired games (e.g., French Election). My contribution is Median Poker (inspired by the "median", a less well-known but politically significant alternative to the mean).

The median is the middle element of a set. In median poker, the winning hand is not the highest, or the lowest hand, but the middle hand of those remaining when the hand is called. Let's do an example:

Five players deal a hand of five card draw, median poker style. Their hands (neglecting suits) are:

1) Q Q Q 5 4
2) 2 2 J 10 3
3) A J 9 7 6
4) K 9 8 4 2
5) J 10 8 7 5

If everyone stays in, the winning hand is 3, which ranks in the middle of the five according to the standard ranking of poker hands.

But suppose the players aren't total dummies. Player 1 realizes three queens is a very high hand for five-card draw, and folds. So does player 5, who figures there can't be many hands worse than his. There are three hands remaining, and the winner is player 3, again.

Ah! says the attentive reader, what if there are an even number left? Suppose player 1 drops, but player five stays in. Now the median is not clearly defined. Conventionally, the median would be calculated as the mean of the two central hands (in this case, 3 and 4), so perhaps 3 and 4 should split the pot. But there is no need to stand on convention (this is mad social science, after all!). Instead, I recommend that with an even number of hands, the higher of the two middle hands should win (in this case, player 3).

I've played this game a few times, and have some observations:

1. Beliefs about other players hands and strategies often play an important role in poker. Median poker takes this to another level: in addition to other considerations, each player tries to figure out where other players think the median will be (Ace high? A low pair? etc). This quickly becomes a game of "what do I think they think I think" .... ad infinitum. For this reason, after a shaky start, a group of players may settle into a consistent set of beliefs after several rounds, but different groups may vary in where the median is. (There are limits, of course; three of a kind will never be a good median poker hand. And there may be optimal strategies to play against a group that has settled on an unlikely median).

2. Wild cards probably are a bad idea for median poker.

3. Median poker is most fun with at least five players

4. The "higher central hand wins in even games" rule may help beliefs gel about what the best hand is, and in any event avoids a lot of boring pot-splitting.

5. You probably shouldn't try this game unless your players are willing to be patient as everyone learns the ropes.

6. Ace high tends to be a very good median poker hand in five card draw. (Not surprising, since Ace high is the median five-card hand dealt without drawing more cards.)

So go ahead! Experiment on your friends! If anyone out there tries this game, I'd be happy to hear your experiences.

It looks like the Republicans are going to push for putting Reagan on the currency.

I should start by saying I oppose this: for his many failures and misdeeds, Reagan does not deserve this signal honor. Moreover, it is an intentional affront to the many citizens who view Reagan's legacy as mostly negative. My preferences would be to leave the currency as is.

That said, it sounds like the Republicans are putting together a clever strategy for getting Reagan on at least one piece of currency (most likely the 10 dollar bill). They will make at least three separate proposals, in the hope that one will seem inoffensive enough to pass.

The only way the Dems can stop this is a fillibuster, and many will shy from such action, fearing they will look mean-spirited (though I think it would be justified).

So what the Dems need is their own clever strategy. Here it is: Concede that some of the faces on our currency could use updating, but note that Reagan is a controversial figure. We can add him, but we need to maintain balance and diversity at the same time; it's only fair and best represents the nation as a whole. So update two bills: one to Reagan, and the other to, say, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Many will say this is an affront to one or the other of the pair---and in a sense that is the point. Under the new model, the currency should reflect the spectrum of American heros, while implicitly recognizing that different Americans have different views about who the "real" heroes are that haven't been resolved.

Under this approach, it is the Republicans who risk looking mean-spirited or intolerant by opposing MLK. And it transforms the debate over memorializing MLK from a largely local one, which the Republicans fight in strategically chosen places, into a national one, in which it will be much harder to make racial-coded appeals without looking, well, racist.

If the Democrats think a Reagan currency is a near-term inevitability, they better get something out of it---and they can, by turning the wedge issue around on the Republicans.

To be extra fair, why not replace old heros of a given stripe with new ones? With a fair amount of license, this suggests switching the early champion of capitalism, Alexander Hamiliton, with the newer Reagan, and the early founder of the Democratic party, Andrew Jackson, with the newer MLK, who helped the Democrats atone for their sins on America's great issue of race.

It's worth a try.

E.J. Dionne has a nice, calm op-ed on the mess Bush has got himself into.

And since Reagan's legacy is in the news, here is a fascinating debate between Dionne and Dinesh D'Souza from 1997, in which Dionne calmly and systematically demolishes D'Souza's claims that all good things spring from Reagan's administration. Also worth noting is how silly D'Souza's attacks on Clinton look to anyone who a.) misses the prosperity of the Clinton years or b.) wishes those years hadn't been wasted on silly sex scandals, when we could have been preparing for the challenges to come.

While reading Caroline Alexander's "The Bounty" yesterday, I noticed she used the punctuation "!?" as if it were a legitimate mark. I've always found this formulation clumsy and unprofessional, and pondered what we should use instead to indicate bafflement. I came up with this symbol on the spur of the moment, only to randomly discover it today (while reading an unrelated article on AT&T's advertizing). My idea was forseen by a mere 42 years. Oh well.

Now to see if it can be found in Latex...

Don't have time to write much on Reagan now, but here are some articles that capture a few relevant views. Here's Gorbachev on Reagan's big accomplishment---leaving behind the bellicose Cold War policies of his first term to talk with Soviet reformers, ultimately ensuring that that collapse of the Soviet Union and its buffer zone in East Europe was a peaceful, manageable process. This success should not be minimized; lots of things could have gone wrong---imagine if the coup against Gorbachev had come two years earlier, or if a crumbling Soviet Union remained on hair-trigger nuclear alert.

But almost everything else about the Reagan administration is bad, often comically so. Here's Juan Cole's assessment. He notes that Reagan made friends---and gave arms to---the precusors of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, Saddam, and various Latin American death squads. There is a real question whether we would be faced with a "War on Terror" had there been no Reagan administration. In other areas, the myth of Reagan has superceded the reality. Defense spending didn't significantly hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union, SDI was a total failure, Reagan remade the Republicans into the fiscally irresponsible party they are today, created massive deficits, dramatically increased economic inequality, and lowered the bar for presidential intelligence, with long term effects evident only today. And of course, many wonder whether Reagan had a foot in reality, and a foot in the moview all the way through. If you really want to dip into the madness of Reagan's fictional worldview, check out this article.

There's a lot more to think about---the lingering insanity of supply-side economics, the environmental and public health legacies of Reagan, the Iran-Contra scandal, the Reagan tax bill, etc. Maybe later

This is a truly bizarre piece in the NYT. It starts with the rather simple idea that many French politicians profess to love America but not its president:

Politicians speak of saying yes to America but no to Mr. Bush. The newspaper Libération warns Mr. Bush that he should not take President Jacques Chirac's expected expressions of gratitude as directed at him, but rather at America. Laurent Fabius, a former prime minister, says Mr. Bush is viewed "as the exact opposite of the values that make us love America."

After oddly characterizing the notion that one could love American ideals but not Bush as "very French" and "subtle", the piece gets to its real point:

The fact is, whether France likes it or not, Mr. Bush cannot be distinguished from America. He has the support of roughly half the United States. ...
Of course, there is another big slice of America, the one closer to the French idea of the American soul, that loathes Mr. Bush.... These two camps make up America today and will face off in a fiercely contested election. At least until that day in November, Mr. Bush represents America, in all its many facets, the one that loves him and the one that loathes him. To pretend otherwise is ultimately misleading....Bush is America, just as Chirac is France. The two nations' highest offices represent every shade of opinion that makes up their democracies. No separate national essence exists.

This idea---"L'etat, c'est Bush"---would be more at home in Loius XIV's France than in the America that wrote the Constitution. That document gives pride of place to Congress as representing the people. Its writers saw the task of government as representing, balancing, and harnessing diverse interests and ideas, not in finding some Leviathan in which to vest nation- and statehood. And since the constitutionalists eventually won this 18th century argument (not without a lot of blood and suffering along the way), it is very odd to see an American reporter criticize the "French" (in his view, some sort of national gesalt) for praising these very constitutionalist ideals as what they love about America.

Let me second the view: I love America, and because I love what it stands for, I detest George W. Bush, who seems determined to wreck the very constitutional order he presides over. My stance is reasoned (not "subtle"), patriotic, and shared by tens of millions of my fellow citizens.