Momentary Language

Gay marriages will save the economy?

I'm not sure gay marriage can avert the impending economic doom, but "Prop 8 - The Musical" is pretty funny nonetheless.

YES!

(From The Big Picture.)

Another reason why I'm depressed ...

Regardless of what you think of John McCain, particularly given the sleaziness to which his campaign has stooped, it is undeniable that he served the United States for decades, often in a manner that demonstrated real integrity, judgment and personal courage.

Now, as earlier posts of mine should have indicated, I feel very strongly that Barack Obama -- and not John McCain -- should be the next president of the United States.  Certainly, he doesn't match McCain with respect to McCain's decades of service.  Nevertheless, Obama brings many qualities to the office that make him more qualified than McCain:  Obama's obvious intelligence, his equanimity under pressure, his creation and management of the largest, most efficient, most democratic (small-"D"!) presidential campaign in history. 

Furthermore, aside from questions of mere competence, one must also consider a candidate's agenda: a competent candidate committed to a wrong-headed agenda would not be desirable.  I happen to think Obama's approach to the domestic problems that face this country (health care, in particular), his commitment somehow to extricate us from our disastrous experiment in Iraq and to realign the United States with the prevailing international consensus on the rule of law and the threat of global climate change, and his promise to redress the conservative imbalance that currently exists in our nation's federal courts are correct; all stand in stark contrast to McCain's long-held and starkly conservative positions.

It would seem that a majority of Americans now agree with me in preferring Obama to McCain.  Why, then,  am I depressed?

Here's why.  Regardless of what any thinking person thinks of McCain or Obama, there is some sense in which one could recognize that neither of them would be undeserving of the office of the presidency.  Sarah Palin, however?  I'm not alone in thinking that it would be a travesty if Palin became president.

In particular, then, I would think that it would be a travesty if Sarah Palin had a greater chance of becoming president than John McCain.  Given this, I would be depressed to discover that Sarah Palin has a greater chance of becoming president than John McCain.  As Alex Tabarrok (over at Marginal Revolution) notes, however, it is in fact very plausible that Sarah Palin has a greater chance of becoming president than John McCain.

Tabarrok, following the betting markets, gives McCain about a 16% chance of winning the presidency.  Should McCain win, Palin could become president either by assuming the presidence should McCain die in office or as McCain's successor; let's put that chance at 40%.  Since many are already suggesting that Palin will be a Republican standard-bearer in 2012 should McCain lose in '08, we have to figure some chance that Palin could win the presidency as the Republican nominee in '12; Tabarrok puts that chance at a (very conservative) 12%.

Given these probabilities, we have:

Pr(Sarah Palin=President) = (0.16*0.4) + (0.84*0.12) = 16.48 > 16% = Pr(John McCain = President)

Thus, I'm depressed.  Q.E.D.

Person Alex Tabarrok

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Apparently, McCain was for Khalidi before he was against him ...

In their latest attempt to smear Obama by association, the McCain/Palin ticket is criticizing the LA Times for their refusal to release video of a dinner at which Obama apparently praised Palestinian scholar Rashid Khalidi, currently the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies and former Director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University.

As reported on the Huffington Post (here), however, McCain has his own history with Khalidi:

In regards to Khalidi ... the guilt-by-association game burns John McCain as well.

During the 1990s, while he served as chairman of the International Republican Institute (IRI), McCain distributed several grants to the Palestinian research center co-founded by Khalidi, including one worth half a million dollars.

A 1998 tax filing for the McCain-led group shows a $448,873 grant to Khalidi's Center for Palestine Research and Studies for work in the West Bank. (See grant number 5180, "West Bank: CPRS" on page 14 of this PDF.)

Facts on Obama's Tax Plan

As Cass Sunstein notes in yesterday's TNR, it seems that McCain's endgame involves hammering Barack Obama on the tax issue.

As an analysis provided by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center makes clear, however, Obama's tax plans are good news for the vast majority of Americans -- much better news, in fact, than McCain's plans:

(Thanks to Kevin Drum for the graph, based on the Tax Policy Center results.)

"I love the loneliness of it. Love the language in it - the frank language."

There's a great interview with Matthew Weiner, the creator of AMC's excellent Mad Men, here.

There are so many nuggets offering insights about the show that you just have to read the whole interview yourself, but -- to cite merely one example --  I was struck by how unsurprising many of Weiner's cited influences were, how clearly those influences are reflected in the show:

I love John Cheever.

...

There’s a lot of movies. There’s a movie called ‘The Best Years of Our Lives," which was made in 1946, about the reality of soldiers. It won the Oscar that year. It’s a very unflinching look. The audience had just come out of the war and so had the characters in the movie. I love "The Apartment," obviously, very important. It was very much of its time – very topical, trying to get it right. Not a period piece but trying to make it seem exactly as people’s lives were at that time.

...

"Catcher in The Rye" has got to be at the bottom of the entire show. It's the first book I ever completed reading. I read it many times. I fantasized about living in New York. I loved the WASP-iness of it even though it’s got these Jewish undertones to it. I love the loneliness of it. Love the language in it - the frank language.

Why I'm still nervous ...

As Andrew Burman suggests at Salon (here), there is the very real threat of Republicans' using dirty tricks to suppress voter turnout in Democratic districts.

Indeed, I'm convinced that the whole point of the McCain/Palin camp's hammering on the ACORN issue is as preemptive justification for the (more real threat of a) Republican theft of the presidential election.

Sarah Palin Debate Flowchart

If you're like many vice presidential candidates from major political parties these days, you've often been confronted by pesky debating tasks for which you're worried that you're woefully unprepared.

Now, however, thanks to Daily Kos (here), you can simply refer to your handy Sarah Palin debate flowchart:

Sarah Silverman for The Great Schlep (Warning - Expletives!)

McCain's terrorism problem

Funny how the criticisms Republicans level against Obama seem to redound with much more force against their own candidates.  (Remember the charge that he was inexperienced?)

Now the jedreport suggests that it's McCain whose past deeds include not merely "palling around with terrorists," but protecting them against legal punishment for murders, bombings, etc.:

McCain's terrorism problem dates back to the early 1990s, when he sided with right-wing domestic terrorists and voted against tough new legislation cracking down on a wave of anti-choice domestic terrorism targeting women who visited abortion clinics, their doctors, and clinic staff.

In both 1993 and 1994, McCain voted against the anti-terrorism measure. On each occasion, McCain was one of thirty radical anti-choice Senators to oppose the bill Fortunately, despite McCain's opposition, it passed the Senate by a 69-30 margin.

At the time, right-wing anti-choice extremists were terrorizing women, doctors, and clinic staff across the United States with thousands of acts of physical violence and threats of violence each year. The new legislation was necessary because in early 1993, the Supreme Court had ruled that even though the terrorism crossed state lines, the federal government could not protect clinics without a specific grant of statutory authority.

After Dr. David Gunn was murdered by an anti-choice terrorist outside the Pensacola Women's Medical Services clinic, Congress finally passed the much-needed legislation giving authorities the tool they needed to protect women, doctors, and clinic staff from the ongoing threat of terrorism.

Most Americans welcomed the new law -- even including far-right conservatives such as Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell. Nonetheless, John McCain stood by his extremist views and opposed the anti-terror bill.