Rending Of Garments

So, is it Elizabeth Edwards or John Heilemann's source who is completely ripping off Tom Stoppard?

The Theory Goes Right Out The Window

The Washington Post, showing off their economic chops:

Employers, the theory goes, would put the savings into higher wages.

When this theory is the underpinning of your outlook on life, you should really give up on your theory, and probably give up on life. This theory, my theory goes, is completely idiotic.

Contradictinggg Oneself

So, according to GreGG Easterbrook:

(1) Paternalism is a very bad, no good, horrible thing when applied to health care, and everyone, rich and poor, should pay out-of-pocket (!) for services that are legally required to be standardized (!!) so that they can negotiate for their health services the same way you'd bargain shop for, say, a television (!!!),

(2) Paternalism is a very good, not at all bad, terrific thing when applied to young adults who could easily be plying their trade in the NBA, because Grggggg doesn't like the quality of play in a sport he doesn't care about in the first place. [Isn't this the argument that the erudite and not at all crazy Buzz Bissinger absolutely demolished on the same day that this idiotic Easterbrook article was published? -- ed. True, that op-ed has data and logic ... but it forgot that JaVale McGee does not entertain Gregg the same way a player with a degree in communications does!]

It's pretty simple: the father of a family of four should be totally accountable to market forces in determining whether to get that growth looked at, but LeBron James must be protected from himself.

What's not to love?

The Far Center

Christopher Beam, stretching so far that I think he pulled his hamstring:

Swine flu may have an unexpected side effect: political unity. The far left and far right agree that they're sure as heck not getting vaccinated against swine flu.

Wow, the far left hates the swine flu virus? I'm a Radical IslamoMarxist Money Liberal Fascist and I had never really thought about it before ... I better read up before the next drum-in!

For examples of the "far right", Beam cites Alex Jones and Pat Buchanon. No, wait, he cites Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, easily the two most popular members of the conservative media. Swing and a miss.

For examples of the "far left", Beam cites Peter Singer and Amy Goodman. No, wait, he cites Dr. Frank Lipman and Jim Carrey. [*The* Dr. Frank Lipman??? -- ed. In fairness, he also cites Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who at least is a blood relative of somebody that someone might associate with the left.] Swing and a miss.

So, in crafting this pinnacle of a-pox-on-both-your-houses faux-centrist horseshit, he identifies mainstream conservative lunacy as the "far right" and considers the star of Lemony Snicket as emblematic of the "far left."

When the Garmin lady tells Chris Beam to "bear right" or "turn left" does he just run the car into a ditch?

The New York Times Is No Longer Trying

Oh, come on:

I am not unemployable. I have a master’s of fine arts and spent two years in the Peace Corps.

At least *try* to pretend you aren't the paper of record for clueless liberal caricatures ...

Which Is It?

Obama Administration Statements On The Public Option

or

A Nervous Boyfriend Trying To Talk His Girlfriend Into Anal Sex

"I’d be happy [if we didn't] do it ... and if there was a way of doing it that [was okay with you], I’m happy to do it that way, as well."

"I'm just kinda talkin' about how it might be okay to do. If you're into that sort of thing."

"No-one is being forced to [do] it."

"I see nothing wrong with having [it] as a choice."

"Whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the [issue]."

"It's certainly not a deal-breaker."

"Only if you're cool with it."

"These are legitimate concerns, but ones, I believe, that can be overcome."

“I just want to figure out what works.”

"No, I'm just kidding! Unless you were serious ..."

Hobbesian, Really

Uh, what?

“Good or bad, moral or immoral, people are going to make markets and trade via computers, and this is a natural area of financial engineers,” says Emanuel Derman, a professor at Columbia University and a former Wall Street quant.

Yup, out here in the jungle -- the perfect state of nature that exists south of Canal Street -- people are just inevitably going to execute complex trades relating to obscure financial products with insane amounts of leverage and without any oversight or regulation ...

It's just natural.

Say

Remember when Democrats gunned down Miguel Estrada in front of his family?

That was awful.

In-Depth Supreme Court Analysis

Shouldn't Sam Alito have consulted Tom Wolfe before reprinting whole sections on urban politics from "Bonfire of the Vanities" in their entirety and without attribution?

Nice Favorability Rating You Have Here ... Wouldn't Want Someone To Misinterpret It, If You Know What I Mean

Larry Sabato on John Ensign's recent polling:

"That sure says something, that the guy involved in the adultery scandal is the most popular senior elected official in the state," Sabato said. "I don't know what it says, but it says something."

"And," Sabato continued, "if the Senator were to, you know, throw a few bucks my way, I might suddenly figure out what it says ..."

Reflexively Hating Me Because I'm Wrong All The Time About Everything Only Makes You Look Petty

Before Anne Applebaum throws together a column explaining how Mousavi's popularity stems from being a "center-right" "fiscal conservative", I thought I'd share my opinions on her latest blather. Looks like Hitch has a pithy response:


Good ol' Hitch. Way to shoot that one down.

Still, some parts of the idiocy are worth highlighting:

In part because they intuitively disdain anything that President George W. Bush admired, in part because they doubt its efficacy, the Obama administration has quite deliberately stayed away from the whole idea of promoting democracy in general and elections in particular.

(1) A driving force behind Obama's foreign policy is intuitive disdain for Bush? Really? Applebaum knows this ... how? I mean, I know the Obama Administration is basically a bunch of Daily Kos diarists suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome, and the only reason they're not bombing the hell out of North Korea right now is an instinctual hatred for Dick Cheney/Halliburton/AmeriKKKa ...

(2) Hold on, "intuitive"? Isn't disdain for Bush pretty rational at this point? Who's walking around saying, "Boy, there's something about that George W. Bush I don't like, but I just can't put my finger on it ..."?

(3) On that note, isn't the fact that a policy is associated with Bush a *reason* to doubt its efficacy? How many good things came out of that administration again?

It really is remarkable how Applebaum insists that liberals only oppose conservative policies out of anger or spite, while she only obliquely acknowledges the abysmal failures that stem from those policies. Gee, you think that anger might have something to do with those failures?

I mean, remember when she argued that the terrible legacy of the Iraq war is how it discredited all the neoconservative hawks, and now with all that darn liberal disdain for Bush and his preemptive wars nobody was willing to go in and start a war with the people who really truly needed to be bombed?

You know ... the Iranians?


Awesome.

Four Decades Of Exile, And Also Basic Human Mortality

From this Times op-ed, where the author takes Barack Obama to task for not listing every individual wrong perpetrated by Muslims in the course of human history during his recent speech in Cairo:

Mr. Obama never mentioned the belongings I still own in Egypt and will never recover. My mother’s house, my father’s factory, our life in Egypt, our friends, our books, our cars, my bicycle. We are, each one of us, not just defined by the arrangement of protein molecules in our cells, but also by the things we call our own. Take away our things and something in us dies. Losing his wealth, his home, the life he had built, killed my father. He didn’t die right away; it took four decades of exile to finish him off.

Four decades?!? That's a long time! Isn't that kind of a superseding cause here?

Barack Obama's stimulus plan killed my grandfather, but he didn't die right away. No, it took a ten thousand foot free fall into a tank full of sharks to finish him off.

We Can All Agree That I'm Awesome

Will Saletan -- who I will admit wrote one good thing once, and then rode his "if you don't acknowledge the possibility that the world could be flat, you're just a science-hating creationist" bit to eminently predictable disaster -- has apparently found a new shtick:

On medicinal THC: Every feat of re-engineering challenges our moral and legal assumptions. In the case of Sativex, two positions are under attack: the left's lazy tolerance of recreational marijuana in the guise of legalizing medical marijuana and the right's opposition to medical marijuana on the grounds that it's just a pretext. By refining, isolating, and standardizing pot's medicinal effects, pharmaceutical companies are showing us how to separate the two uses. Are you for symptom relief or getting stoned? That used to be a fuzzy question. Now it's concrete: Do you want the reefer or the spray?

To pro-lifers: If you don't accept what [the murderer of George Tiller] did, then maybe it's time to ask yourself what you really believe. Is abortion murder? Or is it something less, a tragedy that would be better avoided? Most of us think it's the latter. We're looking for ways to prevent abortions—not just a few this month, but millions down the line—without killing or prosecuting people. Come and join us.

On cigarette vaporizers: Maybe what we need is a convergence of the tobacco debate with the marijuana debate. In each case, vaporization is dissolving the categories and grounds that warranted prohibition. Liberals can see this, but only in the case of pot. Conservatives can see it, but only in the case of tobacco. Go talk to one another. The engineering and re-engineering of drugs will only get more complicated as technology improves. We'd better start thinking rationally about it.

"Go ahead," he says, grinning smugly. "Talk to each other. Only through good faith dialogue will you discover that I've been right all along."

***

First, some questions:

(1) Why is Saletan treating cigarette vaporizers, an unregulated product generally sold in "Akbar and Jeff"-style mall hutches, as equivalent to a peer-reviewed and scientifically tested pharmaceutical product? [But Emily Yoffe casually said it might not be so bad! -- ed. Emily Yoffe, whose primary mission appears to be making Rachel Larimore look sane, also quoted a consultant to the WHO saying that "[i]t stuns me people would so willingly accept the word of manufacturers from an unregulated industry, claiming their product is safe and pure when they won't tell us what's in it and haven't done the most basic studies."]

I guess he was too busy thinking rationally and challenging moral assumptions to notice he was lecturing a group of tweens outside a Hot Topic.

(2) Wait, liberals can see how vaporization of drugs undermines existing rationales, "but only in the case of pot"? You were just saying that the vaporized THC attacked "the left's lazy tolerance of recreational marijuana"! It only took a week for liberals to adopt your position on this? Why wasn't I informed?

(3) And why is my tolerance of recreational marijuana "lazy"? I'd say it's quite robust.

Unless I'm stoned.

***

Anyway, in the spirit of constructive dialogue, FMK now presents "Um, Really?", a play in three acts:

Act I
Pro-Choicer: "Do you consider abortion something less than murder?"
Pro-Lifer: "Sure, but I'm still against legalizing it."
Pro-Choicer: "Oh. So the only common ground here is that we think the death penalty is inappropriate for abortion providers? Great."

Act II
The Right: "Are you for symptom relief or getting stoned?"
The Left: "Both."
The Right: "Oh. Well, nice talking to you."

Act III
Conservatives: "Wait, why am I pro-electronic cigarettes?"
Liberals: "What?"
Conservatives: "Huh?"
Liberals: "Huh?"
Conservatives: "What?"
Will Saletan: "So how are you two doing? Have you withered under the challenges I've laid down to your moral and legal assumptions, and come to the conclusion that my clearly superior logical abilities have divined the only correct answer to these timeless dilemmas?"

[Liberals and Conservatives clasp their hands together, then punch Will Saletan in the face.]

Fin.

If It Were Sgt. Brett Favre, He'd Be Singing A Different Tune

Peter King, on Monday:

Although I'm told the league really wants the Rams to stay in the Midwest, it wouldn't be a disaster if they moved back home to Los Angeles. This is one franchise that can be moved without upsetting any competitive applecart. The Rams in the NFC West always were a bit of a stretch. But a Seattle-San Francisco-L.A.- Arizona division makes much more sense than leaving the Rams in St. Louis.

Kick in the teeth to some St. Louis Rams fans, but who has time to care about them? An access whore like Peter King wouldn't want to come across as churlish about the sordid business of professional sports -- he might not get any more late night texts from Roger Goodell!

But on to what really, truly matters, from the same article ...

I think you'll all appreciate a long-overdue update about your favorite soldier. Army First Sgt. Mike McGuire ...

Oh, right, Sgt. Mike McGuire. This Sgt. Mike McGuire:

"I love St. Louis," he said. "It's my home, and I'm really into the Rams. Greatest show on turf. Hope I get a chance to see them before I go back the first of October."

... Here's a guy whose biggest thrill is to see the Rams whip up on someone, while he's literally going to be laying his life on the line.

But, you know, it wouldn't be a disaster or anything if they were to move the team 2000 miles away. Hey, there are Goldman Sachs deal fees to consider! Mike's gonna be dismantling IEDs in Iraq for most of the season anyway, right?

Peter King gets mocked a lot, and justifiably, for everything from solipsistic personal updates, lazy and obsequious "access" journalism that wouldn't be out of place in the Washington press corps, and insights so insipid they wouldn't make the final cut of Larry King's column ... but this?

Oblivious corporate whoring for the NFL's latest merger and acquisition turned game of municipal brinksmanship right next to a pious attempt at a hacktacular "there are more important things than just a game" human interest story, the subject of which will be directly affected by the NFL's naked obsession with the bottom line?

To the next twenty years, Peter!

First You Access The Money ... Then You Access The Power ...

From a story about a campus "men's professional group" started at the University of Chicago to counterbalance women's groups [A frat? -- ed. A frat with all the obvious benefits of a fraternity removed and all the obvious drawbacks of a frat doubled, yes.]:

Hayward said one of the biggest myths borne of the women's movement was that men like to help each other out.

"We are competing directly for access to women and jobs," he said.

"What you do last weekend, bro?"

"Aw, I got lucky and accessed one of the Delta Phis!"

It's okay, though. They're not treating women like objects, they're treating women like *resources*.

Much better.

Just Look How Well That Turned Out

From Christine Todd Whitman:

I worry about the direction this country could go with a filibuster-proof Democratic majority. Some historians suggest that no president has had such power since 1937, when large Democratic majorities in Congress gave President Franklin Roosevelt tremendous leverage.

Oh no!!!!!!!

If the analogy holds up, Obama would bring the economy out of a depression and defeat fascism!

Some historians suggest that would be *truly* terrible.

Debating Debates Debated

From the department of shooting redundant fish in a barrel department:

“I’ve always been on the fence about whether waterboarding constituted torture,” Mr. Goldberg of the National Review wrote last week, but if the figures are true, “then I think the threshold has been met.”

He added: “Debating whether it was worth it still seems open to debate, depending on the facts.”

I mean, when Sarah Palin mangles a thought this badly, she's usually speaking extemporaneously and gets lost somewhere between the verb and the object. Given that this is prose, we'll just have to assume that Jonah Goldberg actually meant that there's an open debate, subject to the facts, on whether we should even be debating whether the activity which Jonah Goldberg thinks might be torture was worth it.

Seemingly.

Ugh.

"It Was Like Playing Basketball, And I Couldn't Use Stilts"

It's totally and completely unrelated, but I can't let low-hanging fruit just dangle there.

"It was high-stakes poker,'' Angelo said when it was over. "And I couldn't see anyone else's hand.''

Man, that is just perfect. Does Jerry Angelo think that you can ordinarily see other people's hands in high-stakes poker? Low-stakes poker? Any card game?

Uno?

I mean, under what circumstances ...


Ah, that explains it.

But Enough About Michelle Obama's Arms, What About Michelle Obama's Dress?

Good lord, does Slate keep the XX Factor going just to make Kausfiles look sane and reasonable by comparison?

"What Women Really Think"? Shouldn't women sue Slate for defamation?

I'm 95% Confident Nate Silver Is Full Of It On This One

Like (almost) everyone else on the planet, I respect the hell out of Nate Silver. He generally doesn't make assertions that he hasn't tested thoroughly (one of these days he's going to run 10,000 simulations through 10,000 simulations and rip a hole in the fabric of time), and this level of rigor has made him scarily accurate on most non-Oscar subjects.

So why is he doing the ol' Kaus trick of creating a false choice between Current Policy Proposal A (here, the bonus tax) and Not Mutually Exclusive Progressive Policy Idea B?

Here:

If we want to address wealth discrepancies in this country (and I think that we should), we should do so by changing marginal income tax rates ... if we're monkeying around with tax policy, it's important to do so in an economically coherent way.

Again:

The compensation paid to AIG's employees, however, is less a moral failure than a market failure ... there are some ways to address these market failures; the more time we spend focusing on those, and the less on AIG, the more money we the taxpayers will save ourselves in the end.

And again:

Moreover, I wonder if it does not augment the view that the financial crisis was perpetuated by a few bad apples, when the real causes were far more systemic, and systemic reform will be required avoid their recurrence.

Bonus Kaus points to that last post for (a) suggesting that the Democrats will somehow be hurt by taking a popular position on a contentious issue and (b) the completely untenable and wildly inflammatory comparison in the headline ("That Thing I Hate Is Like That Thing You Liberals Hate", another Kausfiles staple).

Silver seems to be endorsing a Law of Conservation of Outrage here -- the idea that the electorate is so emboldened/distracted/whatever by the claw-back of the AIG bonuses that they simply won't have the energy/willpower/whatever to clamor for reform to the tax code, or Wall Street practices, or laws regarding executive compensation, and so on.

But ...

(1) There's no logical reason why there can be only one response to this mess, and the former could just as easily be a springboard for the latter.

(2) For a site based on thorough statistical analysis, isn't it a red flag that there's not even so much as a scatter plot or a line graph on these posts? If there's anyone who could put together data proving the link between allegedly misdirected rage and failure to pursue meaningful reform, it's Silver. Pics Logistic regressions or it didn't happen.

(3) The same evidence-free theory was advanced by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, making it highly probable that it is utterly wrong or horribly banal.

(4) A half-assed glance at recent history (the Kausific Method) also suggests that scapegoating and fingerpointing can totally co-exist with structural reassessment. After the Enron collapse there was both an outlet for populist ire (the criminal prosecution of Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling -- and, man, you could beat a federal agent to death with a brick of cocaine and get a lighter sentence than Skilling did) and a genuine attempt at reform (Sarbanes-Oxley).

So I think I've got Silver here -- all I need now is for Mickey to endorse Silver's view, and I'll be assuredly correct.