Armed Liberal

Jeff Cooper (the law one, not the gun one) has a great post at Cooped Up, setting out the political audience and opportunity waiting for someone to wake up and seize it.

Participants in the new economy, Judis and Teixeira write, tend to be fiscally moderate but socially tolerant, believers in capitalism but also in the need for government to act as a fair referee to curb capitalism's excesses, supporters of political reform. And, Judis and Teixeira posit, as America increasingly moves to a postindustrial economy, these voters will become more numerous. They will not alone be sufficient to form a majority of voters, but they will represent an increasingly important portion of any majority coalition.

The Bush administration is in no position to benefit from the posited shift. From the large tax cuts for the richest Americans, to the refusal to do anything about American corporations relocating offshore to avoid tax liability, to the weak corporate governance reforms, to the massive giveaways in the farm bill and the energy bill, the Bush administration, at least in its domestic policy, is dedicated principally to the proposition that government of the cronies, by the cronies, and for the cronies shall not perish from this earth. Its basic outlook is therefore antithetical to the emerging center-left voters that Judis and Teixeira believe they have identified.

Much of the blame must be laid at the feet of the Democratic Leadership Council, which in recent years has devolved from a useful counterweight to other factions within the party into a pure tool for business interests and the wealthy. Thanks to the influence of the DLC, Tom Daschle has refused to allow a straight vote on requiring stock options to be treated identically on tax returns (where many corporations treat them as expenses) and financial reports (where most do not treat options as expenses). Thanks to the influence of the DLC, the Democratic leadership refuses to call for repeal of the large prospective tax cuts enacted last year, cuts that redound almost exclusively to the benefit of the very wealthy. Thanks to the influence of the DLC, a number of Democrats support the egregious bankruptcy bill that, in a time of economic slowdown, would greatly favor the large banks that bombard consumers with solicitations for cards carrying usurious interest rates. And thanks to the influence of the DLC and the Democrats' ties to the entertainment industry, Democrats are supporting dramatic expansions of copyright law that would significantly complicate the creation, dissemination, and use of content for all but the big media players. These actions on behalf of the powerful over the people, combined with the failure to articulate and advance a coherent agenda in the one branch of the federal government in which they exercise control, means that Democrats, especially Senate Democrats, are ill-suited to seize the opportunity that, according to Judis and Teixeira, presently exists.

From the discussion below:

The only thing that will break the culture of self-destruction (suicide bombers kill the legitimate goals of the Palestinians) is an end to the occupation, removal of the settlements, and a fair settlement to the problem created in 1948. Saying "everyone occupies everyone else's land" is completely false, no one is occupying someone else's land to the extent is has happened to the Palestinians. Simple Zionist history (as you seem unlikely to pick up Tom Segev or Benny Morris) will clue you in to the simple facts behind this conflict: the Palestinians lost most of their land in 1948, and have had the rest occupied since 1967. There is no historical parallel for one modern society displacing another modern society and then occupying the remainder of that land for 35 years.

That being said, it will be impossible for Israel to withdraw (something a majority of Israelis, myself included want) under the terrorist bombing situations. However I disagree completely with Sharon's response, which is only fueling the conflict. Does anyone remember in December when we had close to 20 days of quiet on the Israeli side? Immediately after that Karmi was assassinated. It is a cycle that BOTH sides are perpetuating, and BOTH sides must be "broken". Israel must break the fanatics who are driving the settlement policy, which is really the ethnic cleansing policy in slow-motion. Palestinians must break their claims to their former land and accept fully that their country will be on the W. Bank. Only once BOTH sides have been broken, when the extremist ultra-nationalists on both sides are in the margins, will we move away from this.

-- Eric Pinhas

The acerbic and smart as hell Jill Stewart goes after the race for Governor, in this week's New Times L.A.. A sample:

I don't normally offer campaign tips to politicians, but I can't help it after watching gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon squirm and dodge and get blasted by the media in a week when he should have easily turned reporters' attention back to the antics of our unpopular and slimy Governor Gray Davis.

Not that I am pro-Simon. Both candidates, whom I refer to as Icky and Creepy (you figure out who's who), so turn me off that I am perusing candidates from the Peace and Freedom, Libertarian and Green parties in hopes that one of them may offer a non-nut.
...

News coverage made Simon look like an ass. I got my own licks in with Republican commentator Allen Hoffenblum on KCET's Life & Times Tonight, where we marveled over the fact that Simon paid a sizable federal tax for 10 years -- 24 percent -- and should have looked fairly good. But, as Hoffenblum noted, "He managed to appear to be covering something up."

It didn't matter that the coverage of "Taxgate" was just plain wrong. Few newspapers that reported that journalists were given just three hours to examine the documents later corrected themselves to say that Russo dropped that rule, allowing reporters to peruse the documents for as long as they could stand. And few media outlets that initially reported that only one journalist per news organization was allowed into the room later correctly reported that that rule was dropped, too. Few mentioned that when rich Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Al Checchi released their massive returns, they too required journalists to stay in a room and adamantly refused to allow copying.
...

I'm still worried about the woodchipper.

From: Armed Liberal
To: tom@anncoulter.org
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 23:47:36 -0700
Subject: Is this true??

>http://students.washington.edu/right/12-4-01/coulter.htm

So my ex- lives about a block and a half from our new place (my SO is still working on that one), and wandered by with the Littlest Guy. They were headed to the park across the street, and I had his mitt and ball.

After they took off, I heard a siren, peeked out the window, and saw the paramedic truck pulling up. I’m out the door at this point, but see that they’re pulling up to and then working on a couple sitting on the ground next to a car, so assume it was an accident of some kind. The grownups (EMT) are there, I can’t be of any assistance, it’s not my son or ex-, so I head back to the office. At that point the doorbell rings, and they’ve come back...it appears that two people at the park were attacked by a bee swarm.

So his mom leaves, and LG hangs out with me for a bit, and then I decide to go talk to the apiarists who have shown up and see if we have Africanized bees living nearby. (we don’t)

LG walks with me and we go talk to the lady apiarist, who is cleaning out the remains of a hive from an empty wheelbarrow (there is a community garden across the street as well), and then she gives him a fist-sized chunk of comb, dripping with honey.

She explains that this part of the hive was where baby bees would have grown up, and we can see some larval bees in a couple of the cells. He and I have talked about bees and what they do…there are flowers in front of the house, and where we hike in Palos Verdes, there are chest-high flowers that always seem to have bees on them.

He starts licking the dripping honey off his hand, looks up and offers me some…and I take it and it is just amazingly good. A Platonic ideal of what the honey in the stores ought to taste like. A burst of sweetness then an incredible flavor that I find nowhere else.

Then I walked him back to his mom’s house.

Somehow, walking down the street with your kid, licking honey from a comb off your fingers, and watching him happily lick the comb, makes the day perfect. All you folks who don’t live in big cities may scoff and do this every day. But for me it just put a sweet glow on the day that I hope will last for a while.

They're smarter than we think.

Bigwig at Silflay Hraka actually presents a damn good idea that could make a difference in the Middle East.

According to best estimates, there are just over 5 million Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories. There are maybe 5 million more scattered throughout the Middle East. Let’s start with the ones in the occupied territories and let them emigrate; in small numbers at first, then more, then hundreds of thousands a year. Let them come to America. And in exchange, they give up the Right of Return for themselves and all their progeny, forever.

Open the doors...

Bigwig has essentially proposed that we hold out immigration to the US as a bribe to the broader Palestinian community to a) stop the violence against the Israelis; and b) abandon the ‘Right of Return’ which is probably one of the key issues holding the two sides apart.

I’m attracted to the idea, but for different reasons than Bigwig sets out. I reserve the right to change my mind once I sleep on it, but restate my belief that right now two very stubborn and resilient people are playing Irish Sit-Down (a game I've seen played in which two thickheads take turns hitting each other until one of them can't get up). Even if we don’t care about the players, all the furniture is getting broken. The solution to this problem is going to either come from exhaustion, which I doubt, or from outside the narrow band of negotiation both parties seem trapped in.

Comments and email have flowed, and they make two sensible points:

1) The Palestinian crisis is really a mask for a deeper crisis with Arab world, so ‘solving’ this problem will only deal with the symptom, not the problem;
2) Why would we let thousands or hundreds of thousands of virulently Anti-American folks into the country?

First, let me explain why I think this would be a brilliant move.

It seizes the moral high ground: No one can accuse the US of not extending a hand to the poor oppressed Palestinian population after we make an offer like this. I’m ignoring the fine details of Bigwig’s plan, like the ‘tax’, and simplifying the plan into: if you’ll stop bombing and accept a peace plan, we’ll let 100,000 Palestinians who pass security checks into the US per year.

It gives us a stick to hold over the Palestinian and Arab leadership: Play ball or we turn off the tap. I have to believe that the hope of immigrating to the US would be a strong enough lure for the average person that the PA would risk losing control if they messed with it.

It divides our opponents: I believe there is a ‘silent middle’ in the Palestinian world; people who just want to live their lives and raise their kids. Right now they are cowed by the thugs with guns, in large part because they have nothing to fight for. The thugs steal the aid dollars, kill political opponents, and will wind up with whatever wealth can be created. This is an appeal to them, an offer to them of a future both in Palestine, and possibly here in the U.S. What is needed is for the Arab and Palestinian middle-class to stand up; something that has been rare up until now because, in part, they haven’t had anything to stand up for. Suddenly the political spectrum there isn’t narrowed to IJ, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and while the PA might get away with ‘retail violence’ - the occasional murder of a political opponent, ‘wholesale violence’ against large crowds would not play well for them at all.

As to the issues raised, my responses are simple:

Yes, I deeply believe the Palestinians are a proxy used to mask a deeper conflict between the Arab/Islamist world and the West (and its beachhead, Israel). We keep getting stuck in the proxy argument and not being able to deal with the deeper one. Let’s get the proxy off the table so we can see what’s really going on.

No, I don’t think that the Palestinian immigrants will substantially place us at risk; we’re already at risk. The only reason Hamas hasn’t attacked on U.S. soil is that they don’t want to, and I don’t believe that Homeland Security could do a damn thing about it.

I don’t think that the average Palestinian is virulently anti-American. If that was the case, we’d have no choice except to kill them. I think they are trapped physically and economically and culturally, and the question is how can we help them out of the trap?

I've discussed it here and here. Now, via Instapundit (thanks for the link!! How 'bout something permanent, hey?), we find Toren Smith, at The Safety Valve (great graphics): Dems get bigger gun, shoot selves in foot.

The Dems are Wylie Coyote, "suuupah genius", and the weapon was made by Acme...

Our own L.A. Times. The quote:

Outside Nablus, in the village of Salem, troops surrounded the home of Hamas activist Amjad Jubur, and shot and killed him when he tried to escape, Israeli officials said.

Charles Johnson has a little detail on the kinds of "activities" Hamas is up to.

Folks, just because I want to be nice to some Palestinians doesn't mean I want to be nice to all Palestinians. I'm looking for a way to minimalize the control nutjobs like Amjad can control. I'm for a combination bribery and threats; we knowwhat the threats are, let's start talking about the bribes.

Dawson (why, dammit, why do I always think of ‘Jay and Silent Bob’ when I hear that name?? Actually, why do I think of ‘Jay and Silent Bob’ when I hear most things?) throws a little chin music my way over my Ann Coulter comment.

His points, as I read them early this morning:

1. She probably said what she said, and there’s nothing new here. I’m pretty new to this whole Ann Coulter thing – remember that we don’t have TV – so the comments are new to me, anyway.

2. He dings me for printing my email to her website. I intended to do two things in doing so, and I probably should have said something about them when I put them up: a) having hammered her for saying something, at least do her the courtesy of asking if she really said it in the only way I know how; and b) try in my own tiny 200-unique-visitor-a-day manner to put some pressure on someone to either have her back or repudiate the clear meaning of the quote.

3. He justifiably dings me for sending it to the webmaster, and expecting some kind of response. OK, where else should I have sent it? I mean, again, at least I’m trying to confirm it!

4. He dings me for not knowing her oevre. He’s right. At some point I’ll try and read her book…it’s just that what with moving, unpacking, looking for work, getting a kid off to college, etc. etc. time is a little thin. I promise that by the end of the year, I’ll have read the book and commented.

5. He appears to support her in what she appears to have said. Here we go pretty far off the rails, and I’ll enlarge below.

My personal position on abortion is pretty complex. Up to my late 20’s, I was firmly on the ‘women’s right to choose/get the oppressive state out of my uterus’ side of things. I’d paid for one or two abortions, and had a mild twinge about it, but it wasn’t a big deal to me. The moral stance was clear.

Then we (ex and I) decided to have a kid, and soon were pregnant. I clearly remember walking into the doctor’s office and seeing the first sonogram (we have the video somewhere) of Biggest Guy in utero. It was a transcendent moment, second only to the moment he crowned and I saw him for the first time.

As we walked out of the office, we were both contemplative. I turned to her and said, “You know, this whole abortion thing is far more complex than I ever thought.” And to this day I agree that it is.

I’m still on the side of some limited right to choose on the part of women. I agree that it should be secure, safe, and most of all, rare. I’m less dogmatic about it.

I am dogmatic, however, about threatening and shooting people.

It’s real simple: the right to personally take up arms and act violently toward another person has to be reserved for a case where you are personally under threat of harm, or when any reasonable person would agree it is appropriate.

If I were armed, and a 7-11 was being violently held up as I drove into the lot, I’d retreat to a position of safety, get on the phone, and be a good witness. If the robber(s) saw and attacked me, we’d have a different kind of discussion.

No one is personally threatening the clinic killers. There exists a spectrum of opinion on whether abortion is murder; this suggests that they need to work the process, not rifle bolts.

John Brown was a psychotic nutjob. His impact on history was questionable, regardless of his place in song. Clinic murderers are nutjobs as well, and the right-to-life movement tarnishes itself by harboring, aiding, and tolerating people like that.

Is my position on that clear?

On a more conciliatory note, I also enjoy Dawson’s site, and I’m flattered as hell that he said this about me: Armed Liberal, who I honestly enjoy reading and find to be, not only a good writer, as in a damn fine wordsmith but also a rational, articulate person….

Let’s find some stuff we can agree on and go do it. Meanwhile, let’s go eat some BBQ…

Everyone on my Blogroll seems all put out by Bill Simon’s latest bout of idiocy.

Ann Salisbury is waiting to see me and go “I told you so!”
Bob Morris is digging up jokes.

Look, it’s simple.

It’s Daddy’s Money. Why be careful with it? He never has been before.

I just have one key question. If I vote Green, do I have to buy Birkenstocks?

It's nice to see a clear instance where government can be so cleanly bought and sold, and where our interests as citizens can be shelved by those with the cash and clout to buy better access. Check out Last week's L.A. Times story: Free Tax E-Filing System Defeated. See, the government can't offer a useful service for free, because it would compete with people who make money offering that service. So instead of differentiating or improving their service, or acknowledging that certain things change (buggy whips, typewriters, travel agencies), you hire lobbyists; Joseph Schumpeter is grinning hugely.

In California, where Intuit Inc. has led the industry's effort by hiring lobbyists and making targeted campaign contributions, the private companies have successfully scuttled the Franchise Tax Board's plans to offer a free, state-run Web site in which a computer does a taxpayer's arithmetic.

An industry-supported bill that would ban an interactive state-sponsored electronic tax filing system is scheduled to be heard before a Senate committee Wednesday.

At both the federal and state levels, the tax agencies say they are simply trying to give people a quicker, easier way to file with the government and eliminate long lines at the post office before midnight on April 15.

Makers of tax preparation software call the government effort unwarranted competition.

One of the things I do in the Real World is try and manage “problem” projects – projects that are failing or otherwise in trouble – in technology and some other areas. (Editor’s note: I’m looking for a project in Southern California right now, and if anyone hears of one, drop me a note at armed-at-armedliberal.com) One thing I tell my team members at the beginning is this:

The only thing I want to hear when you’re messed up is this: “I messed up. Here’s what I did, here’s what happened, here’s how we need to fix it.” I don’t want to hear how the SA caused it, or you had bad docs, or anything else except in the context of how you messed up and what we need to do to a) fix it right now; and b) make sure it doesn’t happen again.

I find admitting fault a liberating experience, and when I learned to admit my own faults in projects it was a major step in my maturation professionally and personally.

That’s why the current furor over the Time Magazine article on the current and last Administration’s terrible track record on terror is making me mental.

As long as the Democratic and Republican (I'm looking for a link, will have one in a bit) operatives spend all their energy spinning this so that it looks like the other side caused it, we’ll never get out of this. As far as I’m concerned, every one of these fools ought to be flipping burgers as far away from the levers of power as possible, right now.

Let’s make it clear: The Clinton administration had a chance to do something about Al-Quieda, and failed to take the opportunity. The Bush Administration had a chance before 9/11 and failed to take the opportunity. All I want to hear from these people and their handlers is this: “I messed up. Here’s what I did, here’s what happened, here’s how we need to fix it.”

Otherwise, shut the f**k up. I’m not interested in hearing it.

In this month's The Atlantic (not yet online) a brilliant article about 4G security in the form of an interview with Bruce Schneier.

The moral, Schneier came to believe, is that security measures are characterized less by their success than by their manner of failure. All security systems eventually miscarry in one way or another. But when this happens to the good ones, they stretch and sag before breaking, each component failure leaving the whole as unaffected as possible.

“Okay, somebody steals your thumbprint,” Schneier says. “Because we’ve centralized all the functions, the thief can tap your credit, open your medical records, start your car, any mumber of things. Now what do you do? With a credit card, the bank can issue you a new card with a new number. But this is your thumb - you can’t get a new one.”

The consequences of identity fraud might be offset if biometric licenses and visas helped prevent terrorism. Yet smart cards would not have stopped the terrorists who attached the World Trade center and the Pentagon. According to the FBI, all the hijackers seem to have been who they said they were; their intentions, not their identities, were the issue. Each entered the country with a valid visa, and each had a photo ID in his real name (some obtained their ID’s fraudulently, but the fakes correctly identified them). “What problem is being solved here?” Schneier asks. (my emphasis)

"The trick to remember is that technology can’t save you,” Schneier says. “we know this in our own lives. We realize there’s no magic anti-burglary dust that we can sprinkle on our cars to prevent them from being stolen. We know that car alarms don’t provide much protection. The Club at best makes burglars steal the car next to you. For real safety we park on nice streets where people notice if somebody smashes the window. Or we park in garages, where somebody watches the car. In both cases people are the essential security element. You always build the system around people.”

Catching up on my blogging, I read Ted Barlow, who comments on and takes me back to Diane E., who comments on Mickey Kaus. The subject??

George W’s 10% partnership interest in the Texas Rangers baseball team, and Kaus’ defense of it, which is hammered on by Ted and Diane.

Sadly, this is a case of Too Little Knowledge on their part. Here’s the deal; I’ve spent the last year trying (unsuccessfully so far, but I’m not done yet) to raise a bunch of $$ to start a business. Here’s how these deals work: there is a division of ownership between capital – the folks putting up the green – and labor – me and the rest of the management team (actually, to connect to an earlier discussion with Kevin R., there is a further division with ‘intellectual property’, with the folks (me, in this case) who came up with the idea getting an additional share).

What the management team and founders get is called various things, but a ‘promoted interest’ is typical. It is a percentage of ownership in the company that we get, not in the form of options, but typically in the form of outright grants. It is very typical for the promoted interest to be subordinate to the investor’s capital and a defined return … essentially they ‘loan’ the money, secured only by the ‘value’ of the company, so they get their cash out and some interest rate. Then they share the income and value, withthe 'labor' side getting their for the work they did in putting the deal together and in advancing the interests of the company.

This is absolutely a generic prototype for buying a business, and anyone who is in business could tell you so. Bush wasn’t ‘gifted’ with his 10%, he earned it just like Jeff Bezos did.

Now why they chose Bush as the promoter, what other financial relationships the investors may have had with him, his dad, or his later campaigns, I can’t speak to, because I don’t know. There may be oodles of sleaze buried in there waiting to be discovered. There probably is.

But if our team attacks him on this point, we’re going to look really damn silly. Let’s avoid that, OK?

(via Andrew Edwards, with whom I need to have a chat with re guns...)

Andrea Dworkin and suicide bombing.

I don't want to copy the whole thing, and no single quote does it justice.

National ID isn't popular in Japan...Japan in an Uproar as 'Big Brother' Computer File Kicks In.

It's Eric and Dawn's birthday. Happy returns of the day, fellas. May you share a hundred more.

(From Joe Katzman).

A Fire Captain's Eulogy

When a friend dies we miss them, we regret words unspoken, we remember the love. When a brother dies we grieve for the future without him. His endless possibilities. If your brother doesn't die of old age you might never accept the parting. When a comrade dies we miss them, we regret words unspoken, we remember the love, we grieve the future without them. We are also proud. Proud to have known a good man, a better man than ourselves. We respect the need for him to leave, to rest.

Some people equate camaraderie with being jovial. It is anything but. Camaraderie is sharing hardship. It is shouts and commands, bruises and cuts. It's a sore back and lungs that burn from exertion. It's heat on your neck and a pit in your stomach. It's a grimy handshake and a hug on wet shoulders when we're safe. It's not being asleep when it's your turn on watch. It is trust, it is respect, it is acting honorably.

Unqualified Offerings sets out arguments for waiting on Iraq:

Deterrence requires two components:
1) A sure penalty for noncompliance.
2) A clear benefit to compliance.
US policy toward Iraq has lacked factor 2 for a decade. Current, stated policy is
1) If Saddam uses, acquires or conceals weapons of mass destruction, he dies.
2) If Saddam foreswears use, acquisition and concealment of weapons of mass destruction, he dies.

“Wow!! Bummer about Tel Aviv!! Who would be crazy enough to smuggle a nuke in there? Wasn’t us, promise!! No, really!!”

While the tame game theory model suggests that he and others can be managed successfully through boundary and consequence-setting, the only thing that might work would be something Godfather-like:

If anything bad happens to me; if I catch a cold and go to the hospital; if I get hit by a car while rollerblading drunk; you will die. You are now the guarantor of my wellbeing.

And of course, if something bad did happen, there would be many people who would say: "With no apparent thought given to the thousands of casualties on both sides, de-stabilization of the entire Middle East, loss of just about every ally we have except maybe Britain - well, the whole thing is quite mad. Adventurism at it's worst, cynically done, at least in part, as a desperate ploy to aid Bush & Co. in the midterm elections." (from Bob Morris)

Personally, I lean toward doing something, and doing it now. It will destabilize the Middle East, but the reality is that the Middle East is going to get destabilized soon by demographics, resources, poverty, and most of all by a virulent and murderous culture that is growing there unchecked.

I have three reasons for wanting to get it over with; they are eighteen, fifteen, and five years old. I want to buy some time for them, and some space to try and come to any humanly sustainable resolution, and we simply can’t do it in the face of an increasingly belligerent (the proof is just inland from Battery Park) culture that will only be richer, better trained, and better armed tomorrow.

I’m still looking for an alternative path. But I don’t see one.

I'm working on the migration to www.armedliberal.com, and having a small problem...the archives don't appear. I've both left them in the \blog\ directory and put them in their own directory and made the code changes suggested on the help page on Blogger.

Can someone smarter than me make some suggestions??

Charles Johnson is hosting a discussion on the peaceful youth of islam.

It appears that a Muslim-hate-kidz site has been discovered: Clearguidance.com. It's full of fun posts and video clips if you have a stronger stomach than I do.

Yeah, yeah, there are Christian Identity sites almost as bad - but, and it's a big one - there are mainstream Christians actively denouncing and working against those folks.

As I've said before, where are the 'moderate' Muslims? Personally, I'll bet that they have been oppressed into silence by the nutjob thugs who are currently running many of the Arab countries, and who are promulgating the messianic, destructive culture that we have to break somehow.

How becomes the question.

CNN.com - New Orleans aquarium platform falls, dumps 10 into shark tank - August 8, 2002

Not quite "Headless body in topless bar", but sound, very sound.

I've always imagined that my retirement job would be writing the headlines for the Post or another tabloid...

Race-based voting, in which voters are defined by race and then can only vote for a candidate of that race is proposed for a British NGO. Electoral apartheid comes to Britain

(from Junius)

Brad DeLong, who is smarter (and probably better-looking) than I am, launches on the ‘rhino neoliberals’ who, he says, are bridging over to the neoconservative side.

Kaus has thus passed through the third of the four stages of becoming a Rhinoceros... excuse me, a neoconservative.

The first stage is to hold that the flaws--the mighty flaws--of the center-left in American politics are important enough to more-or-less balance the flaws of the right. The second stage is to start making desperate and implausible excuses for Republican politicians and functionaries. The third stage is to lose contact with the substance of public policy issues, and focus instead on intellectual and rhetorical "errors" made by those left of center. And the fourth stage is to start acclaiming right-wing political hacks as noble thinkers, and right-wing office holders as bold and far-sighted leaders with a plan to guide us to utopia.

Then I thought about it a bit.

Here’s the deal: I think Brad is conflating two different sets of issues, which are rooted in our political ecology.

One set are substantive, and have to do with policy, governance, and what exactly we want the government to do…in my case, offer great day care, have a moderately progressive tax code, etc. etc. … the other set are procedural, and have to do with how the government makes decisions and constitutes itself.

Substantively, I stand with the liberal side of the house (with a few wrinkles on guns and foreign policy).

But procedurally, I think that the mainstream liberal and conservative actors are indistinguishable, and I have a huge problem with them and with the process that maintains them.

Let’s take California for an example. I’ll take a wild-ass guess and say there are 3,000 jobs that will change hands over a two-year period if Republican Simon is elected over Democrat Davis. Officially, I’ll bet there are something like 500 - 1,000 exempt jobs…jobs that are exempt from civil service and are truly ‘political appointees’. But an additional few thousand jobs will shift as the new bosses hire and promote folks who they are more comfortable with, have more experience with, and who look at the world in the same way they do.

Brian Linse focuses on the importance of these jobs:

…But I still maintain that having the State in the hands of the Dems is more important for the '04 nationals than having a better man in the job up in Sacramento. Riordan would be a better man, but it now seems certain that Simon would not, so the BadDude endorsement stays with Davis.

The ones out of power become lobbyists, columnists, professors, political campaign advisors, go into private practice of law or other professions, and bide their time.

But they remain a part of an insular political class, and as that class gets more and more reified, elections become essentially contests between two branches of the same bureaucratic organism.

The first problem this presents is that it has been almost impossible for a true outsider (Riordan) to come in and play on a big level. Simon was wealthy, the ranks of attractive Republicans in California is thin, and from the talks I’ve had with the Republicans I know, no one thought Davis was beatable.

(Jesse Ventura will come up later in the argument).

The second problem is that the views of the ‘operative class’ become more and more insular and parochial as they increasingly interact with and talk to themselves. They are upper-middle class, educated, and articulate. They are my kind of people, they are fun to hang around with and chat about political gossip. But they live in the better bobo suburbs and have the option of sending their kids to private schools, because they can afford it.

The third, and to me biggest, problem is that the rest of us…the folks outside the political process…begin to get increasingly alienated from both the process and the people in it. See my discussion on legitimacy below, and the two books on legitimacy in the ‘must read’ section below. The average voter (or more realistically, the average non-voter) really doesn’t give a damn about the politicians, the laws they pass, or, increasingly, about the polity that we are all part of.

Why? Because instead of any effort to engage the broader population in discussion or debate, politics has become entirely tactical. What matters is how I can get positive coverage for my team, and negative coverage for theirs. And the metaphor of teams holds up, as we start talking about whether the Democrats will draft Gore as their QB in ’04, or if the plucky understudy Lieberman, will get the nod.

The people aren’t stupid, they get it, they see that it’s MLB and that the best they can do is but a ticket in the cheap seats (the SkyBoxes are already filled with the patrons of the game). And when presented with an attractive option, the non-voters (who Ventura singled out as his base) come out.

For me, I have to say that the broader issue of the isolation and alienation absolutely trumps the narrower issues which divide the electable left and right. Because I believe that if we don’t begin to deal with those, it really won’t matter who we elect.

...well, not really...

Ann Salisbury points to the S.J. Mercury-News article about the noxious Intuit bill restricting free state e-filing dying.

I'm off to paint a picture of a lobbyist on the side of my motorcycle...

Mike Hendrix, of Cold Fury, weighs in on hard times (forgive the extended quote, link over and give him some traffic, but this is too good):

ABC's presentation was just as lame. I don't remember the specifics like names and places and whatnot completely, but I do remember quite well that they spent a good bit of time on some guy whose stocks had dropped in value by a third (!) due to the recent fluctuations. Yep, that's right - this poor poor man had lost around 370,000 dollars. That of course means that he originally had over a million bucks worth before the market nosedived, and how much do you want to bet that he made most of that nut back during the '90's bubble? And I'll guarantee you he has way more than a million tucked away elsewhere, like real estate and 401k's and such. But the still-rich-by-my-standards little snot still had the audacity, the sheer tacky gall, to complain about possibly having to keep on working past age 55 just like Mr. Chest-butt above did.

Let me tell you a little story about my mom and stepdad. My stepdad is almost 65. He has no thought of retiring - he still works in the cotton mill he's worked in for 40 years and will most likely keep right on until they wheel him out, and he ain't doing it because he loves the work either. My mom has been unable to work for years due to the gradual worsening of a neck injury she suffered in a car accident 35 years ago. They're on something like their 4th or 5th mortgage and have no hope of ever paying off the house, until they die and the insurance does it for 'em. They provide constant care and a living space for my mom's sister, who has emphysema and requires the assistance of an oxygen tank to breathe. They do the usual sort of complaining about money that we all do, but nothing like the sort of whining these dickless yuppies are doing now. They have absolutely no expectation whatsoever that the Almighty Federal Government is going to step in and save their asses either and would be somewhat amused by the thought, which is probably why ABC News won't be putting them on TV anytime soon. My mom gets a very small amount from Social Security and my aunt is on Medicare, and that's the limit of federal assistance they figure on getting.

Let me tell you a little story about myself now. I don't own stocks, I don't have a retirement plan, and I barely scrape by month to month. I work my ass off and have never taken a vacation in my entire working life - not once. I've ducked out on the occasional Friday for a long weekend, sure, but a full-fledged week-long pleasure trip, never. I don't expect the government to bail me out of any financial woes I may have anymore than my mom does. I've made my own choices over the years and it's my responsibility to find a way to deal with the potential adverse consequences of them.

See, I am a liberal. I do believe that government should help folks who need help.

But seeing us look to help those whose portfolios dropped from $1 million to $100,000 really doesn't make me feel all soft and warm. You were a grownup when you asked for the cards and put your money on the table. Ther's nothing in the Constitution about a vacation house in Aspen. Get over it.

But if there were a group of Democrats who were looking at Mike and his parents...trying to figure out how he could retire without working as a greeter at Wal-Mart, and how they could get health care and still pay the mortgage...well, I'd bet there is a consituency out these who would vote for them.

I know I would.

Today, Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Instapundit comment on the Brad DeLong post I disuss here.

Check out the discussion thread on Hayden's site, where Buckaroo Banzai references fly unchecked.

More important; it remains a two-dimensional tug-of-war in which one small team gains and another loses. I'll restate that the rest of us are watching from the cheap seats as the game itself becomes increasingly irrelevant to us and our lives.

Except for the taxes, laws, and wars. Stuff like that which leads me to want to take the game back.

Biggest Guy is starting UVA in a few weeks (I'll be there next week, who's close to there in the Blogosphere?), and one thing has tormented me for the entire time he's been there (he's been working in a research lab for over a year, trying the place out before deciding to go there). How does the school...mascot Cavaliers (makes sense, Southern light cavalry and all)...wind up with the nickname 'Wahoos'??

And, aimlessly surfing the blogs this morning, I discovered...wait for it...the WahooPundit. Email has been sent, and an answer anxiously awaited.

I wasn't going to blog this, because it's not like Matt Welch needs traffic from me, but moral consistency (and an instinctive desire to tweak Ann's reflexive 'protect all Democrats' instincts) forced my hand.

Short version: Gov. 'SkyBox' Davis offers $650 Million to Movie Studios.

Now this is something I know little bit about, and the reality is a) that the costs of production in Canada are lower in part because of the Canadian/U.S. dollar spread, and b) because the Canadians gave a significant tax incentive to produce there. Davis proposes to offset this with a state tax credit.

I'm not inherently opposed to tax credits or other government incentives. But the sad reality is that they more often reflect the desire of politicians to be close to those incented...often to ensure the steady supply of donations...than any kind of reasoned effort to grow the economy.

So the incentives often go to the places that need it least...sugar growers, as a good example. There's actually a great quote from this article: "The U.S. sugar program is the most efficient tax we have," says Kempner with bitter sarcasm. "It comes directly from consumers and goes directly to the growers, who turn around and give some of the money to the politicians. It never goes through Washington at all.".

The film (and music) industries have been critical to the health of the California economy. Sadly, they are facing huge structural challenges right now, as anyone who reads Instapundit or Eric Olsen knows. There's a huge budget shortfall in the state. You gotta ask yourself; is this the right place to spend our cash right now? Well... is it, Governor?

I’ve read a great deal about anonymity in the last few days; mostly critical to be sure. From comments on Electrolyte:

Regarding blog pseudonyms: I don't like 'em. I try not to make an issue out of it, and I know people of all stripes who feel they have good reason to use them. But it bothers me. When I'm in a dispute with someone who calls themself "Pericles" or whatever, I feel very much at a disadvantage. Patrick Nielsen Hayden is a real person; you can look me up in the phone book, you can accost me in front of my office building, you can find me at conventions and public appearances. "Pericles" is a drive-by with mirrored glass windows. (comment by Patrick Nielsen Hayden)

When someone won't even reveal his name, it should set off alarm bells unless he provides a legitimate reason for keeping it secret. If someone is confident about what they're saying, they should be willing to own up in public to holding those opinions. A person who debates anonymously may not be wrong, but you should certainly be far more skeptical about anything they say.

But they do give me pause to reflect, and to try and explain why I chose to be, and for now, still choose to be anonymous.

First, because one of the reasons I started this blog is to try and reconcile some of what I perceived to be contradictions in my own politics. How can I have dinner with Jeff Cooper (that one, not the law one) and still send money to Amnesty International (although I’ve stopped in light of their recent piss-poor performance in the Middle East)? How can I believe in progressive taxation, and be opposed to teacher’s unions?

One of the features of modern political life (that I continue to beat on in the vain hope that it will get up and walk and talk, thereby dazzling my readers) is the fact that we are first and foremost formed into narrow political teams. We wear our team colors, and sing the fight songs from scripts handed us by the marketing division of the team that’s playing today.

The problem is that there is no “America’s team” any more (Sorry Jerry Jones), even though pretty much every team would have us believe that secretly, it’s really them.

And, like a lot of people, I belong to more than one. So when I talk to my progressive friends, it’s hard to address shooting or gun rights without triggering yet another dead-end disagreement. When I’m with my friends who shoot, I really don’t spend a lot of time debating environmental policy, because I’m not going to convince them to look beyond what Rush has said. It’s simpler that way. When I’m with my friends who work in politics, I don’t spend a lot of time dwelling on the failures of our electoral system, because no matter how diplomatically I couch what I say, I’m talking about them and their livelihood.

Now the reality is, that I lose and they lose in that, because I can’t express my full self…can’t as it were come out of the closet…and they don’t get their worldviews broadened. It even feels kind of cowardly right now as I write it.

But the reality is that our political lives are so Balkanized (meaning that we passionately defend and exploit the boundaries in the narrowly fragmented landscape) that I have to question whether it’s worth it to be engaged in battle every day, and so I quietly hold my tongue.

This page is where I get to speak out.

There are other petty practical issues as well. I contract for a living, meaning that like an actor, I need to audition for work several times a year. (did I mention that I’m looking for consulting right now?) Getting and not getting work can seem capricious and in fact is highly political. Which means that I need to exercise care not to overtly offend those who put bread on my family table.

And on this page, I get to offend them. Like almost everyone else in the Blog-verse, I’d love to make my living opining, and so be free to stand behind my words. I’d also love a pony, as long as you’re delivering on wishes…

From WahooPundit:

As some of the comments on your blog have alluded to: a Wahoo is a fish that can drink twice its weight. The Wahoo is a long, narrow fish -- similar to a gar -- with many sharp teeth and a bad temper. It certainly makes for a much fiercer mascot than a Terrapin, a Tarheel or a Hokie.

As for the official version, I defer to the Unofficial Fan Page of Virginia Sports -- The Sabre.com

"Legend has it that Washington & Lee baseball fans dubbed the Virginia players Wahoos during the fiercely contested rivalry that existed between the two in-state schools in the 1890s. By 1940, Wahoos was in general use around Grounds to denote University students or events relating to them. The abbreviated Hoos sprang up later in student newspapers and has gained growing popularity in recent years.

Cavaliers is derived from those who supported the Restoration of the Monarchy during the English Civil War -- in opposition to the Roundheads who backed Oliver Cromwell.

In response to the SFSU events I discuss here, the task force has met, labored mightily, and brought forth a mouse. Islamic studies proposed for S.F. State. "Trying to improve relations between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli students at San Francisco State University, a task force has recommended that the college create an Arab and Islamic studies program."

Charles Johnson has comments as well; but my take is simple.

First, I'm typically dubious about [fill-in-the-ethnic-group] studies, even though there are a number of legitimate things to study, because in fact they typically become job programs and sinecures for those who make their living in 'racial identity' politics. I know there is a Jewish Studies department there, and so in the abstract it's probably not a bad thing to also have one for Islamic Studies.

But...the lack of significant condemnation and consequence (a moderately strong letter from the University Presdent to the GUPS regarding the hateful poster, and defunding of GUPS for one year) to what were outrageous and repressive actions by the GUPS-led counterdemonstrators blows the decision into the stratosphere.

Here's a thought experiment. The demonstrators were African American. The counter-demonstrators were white. Imagine the same words spoken, the same actions taken. We'll skip over the fact that the counterdemonstrators would have needed police protection as the justifiably outraged demonstrators reacted; what would the moral reaction be? Even if one were under consideration, would we be seeing a 'department of Christian Identity Studies" right now? So obviously not that the very idea is absurd.

Here's the deal. The reported behavior of the GUPS-led counterdemonstrators was outrageous. There has been no report anywhere that I have read that has suggsted that the reported behavior didn't happen. So we'll assume it happened. The University is now complicit in this behavior by a) tolerating it in the first place, only reacting late (which certainly gives the appearance of reacting to the public response, not the event), reacting to it minimally, and now by doing something which while possibly reasonable on its own (establishing a Muslim Studies Department) sure gives the impression of rewarding the wrongdoers.

Great. Just great.

Check this out!!

Launch is tomorrow...I'll try and do some linking...

Demosthenes builds on Nathan Newman's post on the Democratic accomplishments of the last few years, and adds this:

To be honest, it's just a logical fallacy to say that the Dems (in their entirety) are no different than the Republicans (in their entirety), and the Greens are pretty obviously trying a "invasion from the margin" attack (where a third party takes over an increasingly large group from the margins of a party in a two-party system, until the party it's trying to eliminate is left only with moderates and eventually drops out of sight), but it's still worth proving that Democrats are Democrats.

Next, I've discussed this myself almost endlessly, but the money quote is this one:

[there are]...two different sets of issues, which are rooted in our political ecology.

One set are substantive, and have to do with policy, governance, and what exactly we want the government to do…in my case, offer great day care, have a moderately progressive tax code, etc. etc. … the other set are procedural, and have to do with how the government makes decisions and constitutes itself.

Substantively, I stand with the liberal side of the house (with a few wrinkles on guns and foreign policy).

But procedurally, I think that the mainstream liberal and conservative actors are indistinguishable, and I have a huge problem with them and with the process that maintains them.

Not intentionally, but telling nontheless. From the Washington Post, an article about styles of argument. Style #9:

The author was a scoundrel. Which doesn't, of course, mean that he wrote a bad book, but that has never stopped critics hoping to find that elusive philosopher's stone that connects personal misbehavior with bad art. The best practitioner of this form of mudslinging is the surviving spouse of the scoundrel, who is best able to paint an intimate picture of the beast. After the spouse lays out the ammunition, professional critics step in and "reconsider" the author's work, looking for evidence of suppressed rage, wife-beating, child abuse and addiction. Then the all-important sleight of hand: connecting personal weakness to artistic weakness. "So is Nietzsche's philosophy really no more than a coded confession of secret experiences?" asks a recent New York Times review of a book that examines Nietzsche's supposed homosexuality. The conclusion, at the end, is no, he was human and he had ideas. But the reviewer raises the specter of a damning accusation: that the philosopher is really just a memoirist, dealing not with ideas but with repetitive personal obsessions. Just raising the idea for 800 words is usually enough to be sure some mud sticks.

I don't have to live with him or her. He didn't abuse me as a child, she didn't beat me with coathangers. It is of some slight interest that they advocated parboiling children, or wound up dying poor, divorced, syphilitic, and advocating random acts of violence.

It is the work that matters. I'm building a body of work here that people can do what they will with. Someday, I would like to tie it into the other things I do and have done with my life. But right now, what you see is what you get.

(from Blog Critics)

Hot Rod Circuit Sorry About Tomorrow/Vagrant

Part of what is so cool about music is that it evokes place so well. Listen. Go put on a Springsteen or U2 disc; where are you? A stadium, packed shoulder to shoulder in a kind of Leni Riefenstahl collective human mass. Put on Bach’s Suites for Solo Cello and suddenly you’re in a church.

My weakness is for the kind of music that makes you feel like you’re leaning against the cigarette-grimed wall of a small club, a bottle of cold beer in your hand, as you shout to try and talk to the person next to you. There are a lot of subclasses here…you may be dodging chairs thrown from the mosh pit, or listening to synthesizers while watching clips from 50’s TV projected on the wall, or actually dancing, as opposed to bobbing up and down in place, to a hard-edged update of Bob Wills…but the sweet spot is a band with 2 guitars, bass, and drums. The singer is a tortured intellectual with a reedy, slightly sharp voice who sings smart-sounding lyrics, and the guitars phase back and forth between a buzz of noise and melody.

Some of my favorite bands sound sort of like that; Jesus and Mary Chain, The Pursuit of Happiness, Thirteen Engines, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and now Hot Rod Circuit.

So call me a sucker for this style. Put the disc in and go open a Bud. You’ll be transported back to every little rock club you’ve ever been to; feel all the edgy insecurity you felt being there, as well as that adolescent hunger for something more than sex that brought you there in the first place.

BOOK REVIEW

(also, surprisingly enough, from Blog Critics)

‘A Brief History of the Flood’ by Jean Harfenist

…disclaimer; I know the author. But I know several other authors with books out and you don't see me talking about them...

I’m a city boy, raised under the brilliant glow of success and possibility which I saw everywhere around me. This is a novel about someone who grew up in a place where possibility was barely a faint glimmer on the horizon.

It’s a novel – there is a character, Lillian Anderson, who undergoes trial and changes as we watch. But it’s written as a linked set of short stories (think Susan Minot) and so is episodic. Each of the stories closes you in more and more tightly, and in each one you see Lillian struggling harder and harder to get out. Unlike Ray Carver, who similarly wrote about isolated people on questionable roads, the love and respect the author has for these real characters comes through. But not at the expense of an acid point of view: “My sister is the kind of girl who thinks letting Buddy Franklin fuck her in the Hoffmans’ hayloft is the same thing as a date”

It’s a modern Huckleberry Finn, with the modern demons…family rage, the limits of class…replacing the more-concrete demons…bandits, slave-catchers…that Huck and Jim faced together. But both the characters – Huck and Lillian - share a saucy grit that pulls you toward them, and makes you know that wherever they are today, their demons are at least a little bit behind them. And because of that, the book matters.

On a plane tomorrow at 0-dark-30 for Dulles, then down to Charlottesville, where I'll help the Biggest Guy get out of his apt, and into a dorm room. I'm ass-u-ming I'll have access and time to read and blog a bit, but it may be sketchy. Back Saturday. Please don't blow anything up while I'm gone...

9/10/02: Visitors from InstaPundit: I'm not Steve Skubinna. He was a frequent commenter here, and someone I thought highly of even before this.

...and boy, am I behind. Haven't had a chance to catch up on blogs or news yet; will try and do some in the next day or so. Have been thinking hard about terrorism through history, and came to some surprising conclusions. As soon as they get set (sort of) articulately down in pixels, I'll post them.

Lots of reading to do.

We were lucky enough to have dinner Sunday with Dave Trowbridge, his lovely and incredibly talented partner Deborah Ross, her daughter and friend, Ann Salisbury and friend, and briefly, Steve Den Beste. It was great to talk with all of them, and I walked away again impressed at the luck that I've had since starting this through the people I've met physically and electronically.

We rode a motorcycle down, since anyone who knows Southern California can tell you how awful the traffic is on the 405 on a Sunday afternoon and evening. Remarking on this, Dave commented that he'd recently seen a motorcyclist die on Highway 9 near his home, and that he'd written about it.

Here's what he wrote:

Tuesday night, as I drove home from work along Highway 9 in the Santa Cruz mountains, I passed a dying man lying at the side of the road. I couldn't know at the time that he was dying, although I thought it likely, for his kind die weekly on our roads during the summer. He was surrounded by his friends, and there was nothing I could do, so I drove on.

But the next day, on my way to work, I knew his fate, for where he had lain were the spidery orange lines of spray paint left by the Highway Patrol investigator, and some hyacinths planted in the embankment, surrounded by cut flowers still in the florist's plastic sheaths, there in the deep shade of a redwood forest where such flowers never grow, much less bloom, except on the occasion of violent death.

He was a young man, I suppose, for his hobby is not for the old. Or, rather, those that persist in it usually do not reach a great age. He was a café racer, or so we call them here in the mountains, naming them for the low-slung motorcycles they ride. If you drive the mountains, you will have seen them, blurred harlequins in their riding leathers flashing by, hugging the center line or even crossing it, impatient with the slower pace of four-wheeled traffic. Theirs is a dance of the physics of untreaded rubber and asphalt, the fragile vector between the inertial ghost of centrifugal acceleration and the pull of gravity, first one knee and then the other almost brushing the rushing road beneath them as they follow the highway's weaving path in an ecstasy of speed that has no teleology but the moment...

In the last six years, three people (one of whom was a very close friend) I know have died sportriding (riding motorcycles quickly on mountain roads). Dozens of others have been injured, usually mildly, thank Someone. And my partner, my significant other, my fiancee has had two trips to the hospital engendered by her own over-enthusiastic riding.

And yesterday, I was riding hard through the hills above Ojai helping test and review some motorcycles for a friend.

Hang on, there's a point. Actually, two.

First and foremost, there's this: People have some right to be stupid. I said earlier:

There’s more, which can be put simply that people will sometimes do stupid or evil things with their freedom. But without their freedom, they will seldom do great things. So by protecting society against one, you also deprive it of the other.

For now.

The second is that while it’s great to advocate the freedom to be stupid, there is also an obligation to minimize the risks to yourself and others, to act responsibly, in other words. This is a gospel I preach most of the places I go, whether in the shooting community, motorcycling community, or, for that matter in politics and other public spheres. Your actions have consequences on you and on the people around you. And to the extent that you decide to simply ignore those consequences…to ride beyond your capabilities or beyond what is remotely safe for the conditions you are in, or in a way that infuriates the other legitimate users of a road or a community…then you are abusing your freedom, not building it, and someone is likely to take it away from you.

Rights and responsibilities are inseparable. It is meaningless to talk about one without the other: to have rights, implies that you are an actor, not an object.

Actors have responsibility. Period.

Every day my local, small-town, Republican newspaper has a historic quote on the front page. Today's got my attention...

I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in the process.

-Benjamin Harrison

So I spent most of a week with my 18 year old son, and other than worrying about the usual parental concerns (Does he have enough condoms? Does he understand his school’s sexual harassment policy? WTF is he doing with a tobacco pipe?), being with him makes we think about our immediate future and so about terrorism.

If you have read this blog at all, you know that I’m no friend of Hamas or any of the other alphabet-soup of Islamists up and to Bin Laden the Asimov-reading nutjob who destroyed the World Trade Center. I don’t believe that a Palestinian state is the answer at this point, nor have I excused terror as the inevitable consequence of oppression.

But being with my son made me worry, both about the impacts on my sons’ futures of not doing anything about terrorism, and about the cost in young lives (like my son’s) of doing something. And when I worry, I think.

First, let me set the stage.

I think that we’re headed into some dark times. While many in the world are better off than they h