Month: July 2007

Today's entry is very brief as I am simultaneously packing for a week of vacation and packing to move when I return. I'll have my laptop and, rest assured, I will be posting bile from the road.

You'll also hear a little more from Mike over the next week to pick up the slack while I'm gone.

You really need to read this. If you ever wondered what kind of people go on the National Review Carnival Cruise, well, it's the kind of people who say:

" Of course, we need to execute some of these people…. A few of these prominent liberals who are trying to demoralise the country," she says. "Just take a couple of these anti-war people off to the gas chamber for treason to show, if you try to bring down America at a time of war, that's what you'll get." She squints at the sun and smiles. "Then things'll change."

In some ways, the crowd on this $1200-$6000 cruise is exactly how you'd imagine it – elderly, fat, completely white (save for the busboys and Uncle Tom Connerly), and with strongly-held belief systems that are utterly impervious to facts. But on the other hand, the crowd is a little bit more out there than I expected. I mean, there's a lot of talk about killing people. Kill the liberals, kill the intellectuals, kill the Muslims…..

It's pretty amazing how these people just abandon all restraint once they think they're among their own. Every comment in this article reeks of people enjoying a seven-day stretch during which they can stop being so darned PC and start speaking their minds. Seven days in which the Constitution and the Geneva Convention and the ComSymps and the Liberal Media and the rules of decency don't apply.
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This, my friends, is why the rule of law must apply to those in positions of power. The alternative is what you see here in this week-long mini-experiment in uninhibited conservatism: intellectual children (violence solves everything!

) with six-figure incomes plotting to kill their "enemies" and anyone who tries to stop them.

It was not until I started this little exercise in logical fallacies that I realized just how easy it would be to knock them down, one by one, simply by reading neoconservative opinion columnists regularly. Analogies about fish and barrels come to mind. Thank god it's so easy, because reading this shit is just painful. Analogies about hot pokers and eyes come to mind.

Bill Kristol is a logical fallacy with pants. There are so many things that make me laugh about this column that I can hardly focus on its formal flaws. But let's start with his textbook use of cum hoc ergo propter hoc – the "correlation equals causation" fallacy. In his latest I-can't-fucking-believe-the-Post-pays-for-this-and-prints-it column, Kristol goes far enough to make even his staunchest allies wonder if he's in the ether. Let's look at his stunning logic at work:

And then, just when I think I have choked through the worst of it, Kristol drops the bomb:

There have been no more incidents, so Bush and Cheney "probably are doing some important things right." Ladies and gentlement, the Washington Post printed this. This man is a multi-millionaire, he gets to spew his bullshit on TV every day, and he has a direct phone line to the White House. Ignore (for just a moment) that points two and three range from complete fabrication (the economy is strong!) to mere delusion and willful misinterpretation of facts ("we now seem to be on course to a successful outcome.")

I'd rather focus on the first part: no domestic terror attacks since 9/11. Why? In KristolWorld, we've avoided this fate thanks to George Bush, the War on Terror, invading Iraq, and so on. No terrorist attacks + George Bush is president = George Bush's actions have prevented terrorism. Let's run with Bill's "logic" here. Since 9/11, the White Sox have won the World Series. The price of gas has exploded. Neil Patrick Harris came out of the closet. Pluto ceased to be a planet. Mickey Spillane died. George Bush is responsible for all of these things.

I'll leave this rather simple, self-explanatory fallacy alone now. But I'm not done having fun with Bill yet. You might want to take a glance at the comments on that Post website. There are more than twenty-five hundred comments. As far as I can tell (and I admit I didn't read all 2580 of them) the thematic range of the comments starts at "This makes no sense" and tapers down to "Bill Kristol is out of his goddamn mind."

He then stretches his legs to do a little fellatio on Gen. Petraeus – a common neocon talking point these days. Why are they laying it on so thick? Well, they have two months until the September deadline for evaluating if the "surge" is working. And they're going to use that two months verbally turning the guy into Jesus Christ and Patton roled into one….so that when he says the surge is working, well by golly we'd better believe him! Finally, and this is when he really gets into the cough syrup, the GOP has the Democratic Party right where they want it. The odds of a Republican sweep in 2008 simply couldn't be better!

Well the right-wing talking heads have already pre-ordained the "Petraeus will succeed" part – just talk about the guy like he's an infallible genius, and then all he has to do to succeed is say "I have succeeded." Combined with the great odds that our next president is going to be Fred Thompson, Bush is going to be positive fawned over in the history books.

Given that Bill Kristol has been wrong about every single goddamn thing in the last four years (the talk of sectarian strife in Iraq was overblown "pop sociology") it's really amazing that he continues to make these kinds of predictions in print. I guess it's easy when no one in the media ever calls him out on his abject stupidity…and they keep writing him checks to squeeze out more brown, sludgy lumps of brilliant prognostication.

(I apologize for the limited length and scope of today's entry. I can assure you that I will make up for it tomorrow or Wednesday with a piece that will push your endurance to the limit.)

I think my favorite part about the massive settlement checks that Catholic diocese around the country are writing out lately (with disturbing regularity, I might add) is that no one seems to blink twice at their ability to pay. This weekend, the diocese in Los Angeles agreed to pay a staggering amount – a record $660,000,000 – to more than 500 abuse victims. If you don't think that's fair, I'd strongly encourage you to watch the documentary Deliver Us from Evil. You can see Roger Mahony squirm on camera as he attempts to explain why a priest who confessed to raping dozens of children as young as 18 months old (think about that for a second) was transferred from parish to parish to parish without a word of warning or explanation over 20 years.

That's a pretty daunting amount. And yet the diocese will pay it, just like they doled out $86,000,000 in Boston a few years back on account of Bernard Law's habit of using unsuspecting parishes in a game of "Hide the NAMBLA Member" with pedophile priests under his authority. Sure, they will do some whining about how they have to sell off property to do it, but….does it strike anyone else as a little odd that a church has that much money lying around? It reminds me a bit of the old Onion classic "Pope Asks to be Taken Off List of World's 100 Richest People."

The fact that one single diocese can come up with $660 million (although insurance is paying about 40% of that) gives the lie to the estimate that the church's overall net worth is about $5 billion globally. If individual diocese like Boston and Los Angeles have enough non-essential property to readily raise a hundred million or so (mind you, they're not selling churches – this is just their assorted real estate holdings) then, worldwide, the assets must certainly be beyond even the largest estimates.

Don't worry, though. I'm sure it won't take long for word to filter down from the Vatican that more parishes should follow this example and take refuge in Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. That will spare them from having to sacrifice any of their office parks – clearly a steep punishment for allowing priests to fuck kids for decades. What it won't stop them from doing, of course, is cajoling the faithful into coughing up more of their paychecks. If one were to resort to the rhetorical device of asking What Jesus Would Do, I'm fairly certain that the answer would not be "Hide the church's massive financial empire behind federal bankruptcy laws to avoid having to take child rape cases to trial."

It was with considerable sadness that I received the news of James D. Barber's passing back in 2004. Barber is a well-known political scientist whose most important work deals with presidents' "character." Essentially, he psychoanalyzes the presidents from afar. It has its flaws (quite obviously) but it is still canon. Not only do I rely on Barber as an important component of teaching the young'ns about the presidency, but I desperately wanted him to live long enough to have to deal with George W. Bush.

Barber divides presidents into four personality categories based on two dichotomous components: Are they active or passive, positive or negative? Active-positive presidents (FDR, Clinton, JFK) show high levels of confidence and move past failures easily. Passive-positives (Reagan, Taft) are genial but get wounded very easily; they detest conflict and need to be everyone's friend. Passive-Negatives (Eisenhower, Washington) are reluctant, hands-off presidents who do the job only out of a sense of duty. Lastly, Active-Negatives (LBJ, Nixon) are entirely resistant to change, see "enemies" everywhere, and refuse to get over (or abandon) failed policies.

Let's just say you don't need to take my entire course to figure out where George W. Bush belongs in Barber's typology.

It has been interesting to teach the course for a couple of years.
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Originally, the College Republicans in the audience would argue that Bush is Active-Positive. After all, he does propose a lot of very big ideas (most of them terrible, of course) and seems relentlessly positive. As time goes on, the students who argue that seem to be disappearing. The key, defining characteristic of the Active-Negative category is the refusal to abandon failed ideas coupled with paranoia and secrecy. The consensus seems to be that Bush belongs there. Barber would agree. Believe it or not, I am starting to think everyone is wrong.

Reading the most recent column by former Reagan/Bush 41 apparatchik Peggy Noonan really got me thinking…can Barber's analysis even handle someone like W? Noonan says:

As I watched the news conference, it occurred to me that one of the things that might leave people feeling somewhat disoriented is the president's seemingly effortless high spirits. He's in a good mood. There was the usual teasing, the partly aggressive, partly joshing humor, the certitude. He doesn't seem to be suffering, which is jarring.

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Presidents in great enterprises that are going badly suffer: Lincoln, LBJ with his head in his hands. Why doesn't Mr. Bush? Every major domestic initiative of his second term has been ill thought through and ended in failure. His Iraq leadership has failed. His standing is lower than any previous president's since polling began. He's in a good mood. Discuss.

…Fair enough: Presidents can't sit around and moan. But it doesn't look like an act. People would feel better to know his lack of success sometimes gets to him. It gets to them.

Presidents never fit squarely and cleanly into one of Barber's little boxes, and we can't expect that W will. But Barber's analysis presumes a lot of things about its subjects. It presumes that, for the most part, our presidents are sane. They may be awful people (Nixon, LBJ, etc) who get boners from belittling people and neurotically see "enemies" everywhere. They may be jerks. They may be inept. What they are not, Barber assumes, is out of their goddamn minds.

When I see the way this president acts – and the complete absence of doubt in public or even in private – I'm convinced that there's something wrong with the guy. Here is a president who experiences failure after failure, a man whose decisions have caused untold death and suffering (not to mention leaving our national finances in an absolute shambles). He's essentially hated by everyone who is not a hardcore, unmovable Republican loyalist. And yet he's on top of the world. He's happy. He's convinced that he's well-liked. He brags about how well he sleeps. He constantly goes on vacation. Optimism and the ability to brush off failure is one thing – a complete disconnect from reality is another.

I look at the reality in which Bush finds himself and I cannot help but think this is not how a normal person would act. That's a weak line of argument, as none of us can judge (especially from afar) how someone "should" react. But I can't help it. Honest to god, how can anyone face the failures that face the president – and the knowledge that it's entirely his fault – with that fucking smirk on his face?

Whoever continues Barber's work will probably take the path of least resistance and lump him in with Nixon and the Active-Negatives. Is that possible, when Bush acts like this is all a great big joke to him? That's what makes him truly unique. Nixon didn't spend his press conferences laughing and plying the press corps with Dumbass Fratboy Humor. I don't recall seeing a smile on LBJ's face anytime after 1965. But George W. Bush feels just fine despite that pesky war and those dirty liberals who obstruct his plans to privatize everything between here and the moon.

I half expect that if he addressed the Iraqi parliament he'd crack a few jokes and, perturbed by the lack of response, ask "Why all the long faces?"

So Friday night at Pitchfork Fest was definitely worth $20 and a drive. I couldn't entirely turn off the social commentary track that runs on a loop in my head, though. Even while rocking out.

First of all, and this bears emphasizing, it was very well-organized for a festival. I hate festivals. They are almost always somewhere between a clusterfuck, a fire drill in Chinese, and a backyard abortion. Even though the crowd easily filled a very large park area (I'm bad at estimating crowds but I'd guess somewhere around 5000) the entry/exit was easy and there were plenty of bathrooms, water, first aid, and so on.

High-five to pitchfork and the Chicago Park District. Most festivals resemble historical re-enactments of the Fall of Saigon. This didn't.

Second, as much as I enjoyed the GZA tearing through Liquid Swords, it felt more than a little odd to me. Something about a couple thousand white kids throwing up W's, chanting Wu-Tang, and smoking large amounts of drugs (which no doubt routed their way to Naperville through the black communities on which they are a cancer) was discomforting. Not to mention that the performers must have felt a bit like an anthropology exhibit for the thousands of current and soon-to-be grad students eager to show how deeply they Understand Other Cultures.
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To wit (and you have to give GZA the 2007 Knowing One's Audience Trophy), large portions of the crowd seemed as though they were hearing Liquid Swords – easily one of the best albums of the decade – for the first time. When they encored with an ODB tribute / cover of "Shimmy Shimmy Ya" the crowd practically ejaculated on itself in unison.
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Don't get me wrong, I appreciate ODB more than most. But it had a sad sort of "Let's play something they recognize so we can get out of here" feel to it.

The experience was not improved by the simultaneous flashing of 5000 cameraphones and a collective "I can't wait to blog this on MySpace" thought-bubble.

And in case you were wondering, Sonic Youth still bores me to fucking tears.

Since absolute security is unobtainable (except at an unacceptable cost in terms of individual rights) it is inevitable that the United States will be the target of another terrorist attack at some point in the future.

It may be tomorrow, or it may be thirty years from now. It is bound to happen. When it does, there will be two very happy groups of people: Islamic fundamentalists and American neoconservatives.

I'm starting to get downright alarmed at the eagerness with which these people are begging for more terrorist attacks to validate their idiotic worldview. They just can't wait. They're likely on their knees praying for it on a nightly basis. It's both alarming and, in a twisted way, impressive to see people so committed to an ideology that they're willing to pay for its validation with American blood. To wit:

Before our nation finds itself balls-deep in the upcoming presidential election, let's take a moment to focus on the race to control the most important chamber. In many ways the presidential election is of secondary importance. The composition of the Senate will be far more determinative in several key areas like court appointments and the length of the new president's leash on Iraq.

Rather than diving into specific races today, let's start with an overview of the 33 Senate races as a whole. To put it mildly, the Republican Party has an uphill battle in 2008. Of the 33 Senate races, 21 are currently held by the GOP. Given that the chamber is currently 50-50 (for all intents and purposes) it represents incredible bad luck to have 64% of the contested seats belonging to one party. The bad luck is compounded, of course, by the fact that the GOP has fallen on some hard times after riding a high wave from 1994 – 2004.

To whatever extent you find polling data persuasive (and there are certainly reasons to be skeptical), Democrats are solidly leading the GOP in the generics. Generic matchups tend to be some of the most unreliable polls, as more detailed survey work always finds that Americans hate "Congress" but love their Congressman. Nonetheless it is not an encouraging sign for a GOP hoping to re-take the majority.

The analysis for 2008 is complicated by the uncertainty surrounding the true "balance" of the current Senate. It's either 51-49 (counting Independents Sanders and Lieberman as Democrats, with whom they currently caucus) or 50-50. I argue in favor of the latter. The Democrats have a procedural majority thanks to Lieberman, but he has gone completely off the wagon on their agenda. Holy Joe is now essentially a Republican or, at best, a sniveling unknown on whom the leadership can't rely. In a way, both parties are trying to take the majority in 2008. The GOP obviously wants to regain a numerical majority, but the Democrats probably won't feel comfortable until they hold 52 solid seats (including Sanders).

Not having to worry about appeasing Lieberman will be worth its weight in gold to the Democratic leadership. Right now he's the swing vote on every issue. With a slightly larger majority he'd be irrelevant.

For the GOP to re-take a majority, it would have to defend 21 seats successfully and then take two or three of the remaining 10 Democratic seats. I can't stress enough how highly unlikely (in historical terms) that would be, especially given the party's current lack of popularity. The good news for the GOP is that 10 of the 21 seats are in the south. The incumbents in those seats are essentially safe barring a catastrophe or retirement.

Of course, the same is true for some Democratic seats (I consider 8 of their 12 seats safe – more on that later). So how many races are actually competitive?

There are currently seven races that show the potential to switch party control, and….
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well, our Republican friends may want to look away for a moment….five of those are currently held by the GOP. In addition to those seven, the Alaska race is teetering on the brink as 85 year-old Ted Stevens stands ready to be indicted. The seven competitive races are: