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SOME POLITICS FRIDAY

My original NPF post for today was supposed to be about No Country for Old Men and how you need to sprint to a theater and see it. Since that piece of information fits squarely under "No shit, Cap'n Obvious" I'll leave it at that and talk about something more entertaining. Suffice it to say that Javier Bardem's performance is probably going to rocket into the top five of this list in short order. Having only seen him before as a gay Cuban poet in Before Night Falls, let's just say he was a surprise.

OK. So that "CNN/YouTube" GOP debate last night. I did not watch it. I couldn't bring myself to do it. But after having consumed most of it on the Series of Tubes today, I can't let it go without comment. It was simply humiliating. It wasn't an entertaining kind of trainwreck, nor did the candidates take it in good humor, nor did the format make it watchable. It was just thoroughly degrading in every possible way.

For once I have to throw my lot in with the Liberal Media Bias crowd - there is no question that CNN set that event up with the sole intent of humiliating the candidates and their party. The candidates uniformily look like they are participating in the debate at gunpoint, which underscores the fact that they'd most likely rather be shot than sit there and pretend like they are taking questions from crackpotted idiots and shut-ins seriously. Honest to God, it was one step up from making the candidates answer questions from kindergarteners or the untreatably psychotic. Before the debate was 10 minutes old we already had to listen to some fucking retard with an acoustic guitar sing about the candidates shortly before Giuliani and Romney started clawing at each other like homeless people fighting over meat (except they were actually accusing one another of being nice to immigrants).

My hat seriously, honestly, and without sarcasm goes off to McCain, Thompson, and the others who spent the entire debate looking like they couldn't wait to leave and/or would rather be drinking lead paint. As the Weekly Standard said:

So, a good night for for the lowest denominator, a bad night for the GOP. America got to see a vaguely threatening parade of gun fetishists, flat worlders, Mars Explorers, Confederate flag lovers and zombie-eyed-Bible-wavers as well as various one issue activists hammering their pet cause.

Maybe the GOP deserves the abuse and maybe that was a true and accurate representation of the party. My gut reaction, however, is that it was merely an accurate representation of non-conservatives' caricature of the party. It's about as fair as portraying Al Sharpton and Ward Churchill as representative of the entire Democratic Party. Then again, since the right does just that all the fucking time, maybe CNN is merely settling the cosmic debt by devoting an evening to depicting Republicans as flat-earthers, gun fetishists, and zombie-eyed Bible wavers.

In short, the cynical part of me thinks CNN got it right. The Jerry Springer booing/hooting, the idiotic questions from people who didn't look qualified to work a fryer at Burger King, the scary backwoods gun/Bible crowd....that's GOP America. But the more realistic part of me thinks that the network did all of us a disservice by giving a lot of ammunition to people around the world who are inclined to see America that way. Watching that debate from start to finish (which I couldn't stomach - just a series of short bursts) would inevitably lead one to the conclusion that the American public is totally and irrevocably unfit to govern itself. While I question our national IQ on a daily basis, I actually give us a little more credit than that. Circuses like that only reinforce exaggerated stereotypes and the belief that we, as a nation, can barely dress ourselves let alone engage in political discourse.

WORTHY CAUSES

I must be brief today, but what I lack in quantity I will make up in substance.

Save Tucker! No, seriously, Save Tucker Carlson. Or so the website savetucker.org would have you believe. It appears that Mr. Carlson is being "ideologically purged" from MSNBC as it drops "any pretense of objectivity or balance." It might be worth noting that Carlson's ratings are beyond abysmal. Apparently right-wing talk show fans aren't really excited by a pale 5th-rate imitation of George Will. Come to think of it...if George Will put it in Jonah Goldberg's ass and that somehow resulted in conception, I'd be shocked if the offspring didn't look exactly like Mr. Bow Tie.

It used to be that having the lowest ratings on Earth was ample reason to get cancelled. After all, isn't that why they axed Phil Donahue? Was that an "ideological purging" too or was it the will of the Free and Just Market? Anyway, I will not be writing MSNBC in righteous anger as SaveTucker.org recommends. But I will helpfully offer Mr. Carlson some employment advice. Infomercial host? (Coral Calcium - the miracle cure THEY don't want you to know about!) American Gladiators commentator? Submissive scat porn star?

Oh, who are we kidding. He'll be on Fox News within a week.

FIRE UP THE TIVO

Ten years from now I can picture a lively debate about which ephemeral News Corp ratings bomb was worse: the Half Hour News Hour or Fox Business Network. The former is already resigned to the "bad idea" pile of history while the latter was recently launched to much fanfare and absolutely no interest. I give it six months. Tops. The fishtank at your dentist's office has more viewers. Frankly I don't understand how the public can resist tuning in for gems like this interview between FBN's David Asman and Our Leader:

ASMAN: You call yourself a supply sider. You speech today was all about tax cuts. But were even you surprised at how much revenue came into the Treasury when you lowered those tax rates?

Rupert Murdoch said when pitching the concept of the new network that CNBC is "too negative toward business" and FBN would be more "business friendly." And boy howdy did they deliver. If you haven't watched it, treat yourself to a couple of minutes. It is exactly what you would expect - cloying, insipid cheerleading sandwiched between chunks of fluff. The effect is not unlike being waterboarded with high-fructose corn syrup.

This won't make any sense to you unless you take the plunge and briefly tune in, but I have one burning question - who or what do they think is the market for this shit? Obviously, judging by the ratings, the answer is "no one." But I'd really like to get inside the heads of the marketing folks and Exec VPs of Programming who dreamed up this backyard abortion of a network. I can't imagine anyone who knows about, cares about, or works in the field of finance sitting down and watching tripe like this. It would be akin to expecting professional chefs to watch "Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee" with rapt attention.

Apparently (as best I can tell) the brilliant minds at Fox were expecting to create a business channel for idiots, having already mastered news for idiots. They thought that people who don't know a goddamn thing about finance or the economy would tune in and be easily influenced by psychotically perky "experts" telling them how wonderful everything is. Unfortunately, as they are now learning, mouth-breathing adults who process the world at a grade school level simply aren't going to be watching a business network - no matter how lobotomized and dumbed-down. Where are the "breaking news" stories about celebrities? Where are the heated discussions about Hulk Hogan's divorce? Where's the sports break every 10 minutes?

So congratulations, Rupert. You've got your business network; your own 24-7 platform to tell the world how f'n great the Greatest Story Never Told really is for the average man. The result is something far too vacuous and irrelevant for people who actually care about business news...and not remotely interesting to the average Fox News drone with a 30-second attention span. Fire up the TiVO and record your very own slice of what will soon be forgotten. Ten years from now you may need to reassure yourself that it existed and you did not imagine something so ridiculous.

ED VS. LOGICAL FALLACIES, PART 11: SUNK COSTS

I've enjoyed talking about a lot of very common logical fallacies, but today I want to go slightly more obscure (inspired by yesterday's comments): the fallacy of sunk costs and its close relative the Monte Carlo fallacy. Both fallacies proceed from the same basic - and utterly flawed - premise. They assume that the probabilities or outcomes of independent events are somehow dependent.

The sunk costs fallacy is simply the belief that having already invested x to accomplish y logically supports the idea of investing more irrespective of whether or not it will contribute to accomplishing y. This is sometimes known as the "Concorde Fallacy" after a famous academic paper that used that ill-fated aircraft as a perfect example. Both investing nations (Britain and France) knew perfectly well that the plane was an albatross with no chance to be financially viable, but....they had already invested so goddamn much in its development that they believed the only logical thing to do was spend more to finish it. I think "good money after bad" is the proper adage. In other words, "If we stop now, all that we have spent will be lost."

This logic need not always be fallacious. If spending a few more bucks would have made the Concorde a money-making airplane, then additional spending would clearly be the best choice. To put it another way, let's say you're done with 2.5 years of law school. Stopping is a poor decision. Your investment will be lost - spending money for one more semester is the only smart choice. But suppose that after 3 years of law school you had not managed to pass a single class or accumulate a single credit. You're no closer to the goal than you were at the beginning. Unless you have some explicit reason to think that the 7th semester will be a success whereas the first 6 availed you of nothing, investing more is retarded.

Examples of this are far too common in the political world. We need not think back very far to find images of LBJ hemmoraging money and lives into Vietnam well after he explicitly concluded that the cause was hopeless. In more recent times, of course, Our President constantly tells us with respect to Iraq:

I’ve met too many wives and husbands who’ve lost their partner in life, too many children who’ll never see their mom or dad again. I owe it to them and to the families who still have loved ones in harm’s way, to ensure that their sacrifices are not in vain.

Look at that. It says absolutely nothing about how likely success is, or if we are any closer to success than we were in 2002. It is simply, "If we quit now, all we have invested will be lost." Which is, you know, the f'n definition of this fallacy. If you are wasting or have wasted something, the proper response is to stop. Instead, they spend more in a Quixote-like quest to change what has already happened. If there is a reason to believe that spending more will affect the outcome, then by all means go ahead. But an argument based on spending more to honor or justify what has already been spent is...is "idiotic" too strong of a word? There's a reason that every stock market investor who subscribes to this logic goes broke.

One often finds this paired with the Monte Carlo fallacy (aka "Gambler's Fallacy"). This is simply a belief that independent events are not independent. If I flip a coin 10 times and get 10 heads, it is still 50/50 that the 11th toss will be tails. It is not more likely to be heads because the coin has produced 10 consecutive heads. Gamblers believe in things like "runs" of events and completely disregard the fact that most of what they do (roulette wheel spins, for example) are entirely independent. Your odds for red vs. black on any roulette wheel spin are 18/38. It doesn't matter if it's the first spin or the 10,000th spin - that is the probability. Period. Two blacks in a row or two thousand blacks in a row are irrelevant.

The logic of allocating resources depends solely on an objective analysis of the facts. Will the expenditure contribute to accomplishing the goal? What are the actual odds of success? Instead, partly out of stubbornness and partly out of abject stupidity, people abandon all logic in favor of emotion. They're humiliated by failure and embarassed to be wrong so they rationalize proceeding when all signs say "stop." All of these arguments - we're "due," we're on a hot streak, or we must keep spending because we've already spent a lot - are branches of the same tree. And all of them are the kind of thing that enable stupid people to turn ordinary setbacks into crippling, spectacular failures.

ON SUPPORTING THE CLIPPERS

Looking forward to the 2008 presidential election, as I find myself doing often lately, there are literally dozens of reasons for the Democrats to be optimistic. We can run down a lengthy checklist of positive signs. Polling data showing the incumbent and his party to be incredibly unpopular? Check. Well-funded candidates with money and name recognition? Check. A lousy field of GOP candidates with no clear front-runner? Check. Economy going straight into the shitter? Check. Wildly unpopular, expensive, and interminable war? Check. Positive outcome from the 2006 midterms? Check. Yes, it's a great time to run for president as a Democrat.

So why am I so pessimistic?

It's tempting to say that I feel like a fan of the Washington Generals (for those of you who miss that reference, they're the fake team who were created to play, and lose every game to, the Harlem Globetrotters). That would be inaccurate; the system was set up such that the Generals literally could not win. The Democrats are not hopelessly unable to compete. Instead, the sad fact is that they are not only able to win but in many cases the odds are in their favor. No, the Democrats are a team that often should win but always finds - invents, if necessary - ways to blow it. They're the political world's Arizona Cardinals. Chicago Cubs. L.A. Clippers. "Lovable losers," if you will, although they're often only half of that statement. Give the Democrats a decorated war hero to run against a draft dodging idiot and they find a way to blow it. That's the sort of thing they do...all the goddamn time.

Am I just being too pessimistic? Have years of being an actual Arizona Cardinal fan warped my mind so that I see defeat looming everywhere? Feel free to sound off and let me know how you're feeling about the odds. No matter how many polls I see or how terrible the GOP field manages to look (and make no mistake, it is historically awful) I just cannot shake the feeling that the Democrats are going to go down in flames next November. Every comment I hear - be it media or regular voters - has the same pattern: an expression of condemnation of the GOP followed by some sort of suggestive hint that, well, those Democrats just aren't any better. Ergo, if I may complete their mental road map, voting for Giuliani is the superior option. No matter how many people die in Iraq, no matter that the GOP field is laden with neocon cowboys hell-bent on war with Iran, no matter how much real wages fall, no matter how badly unequal our nation's wealth....when shove comes back to push these "middle American"/"undecided"/"average Joe" voters are going to make up some reason to vote for another right-wing gas bag. Said reason, of course, will probably be some fiscally ludicrous round of tax cuts.

So it's time for a verdict on Ed: paranoid or drifting toward the sad truth?

WHERE IS (THEIR) MIND?

Frank Black wants to know. I want to tell you.

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MAGIC BEANS AND A BRIDGE FOR SALE

I assume the whole world is traveling to spend a few quality hours with the uncles who weren't allowed to be alone with you when you were younger. So I will keep this brief - as brief as you will keep the substantive portion of your conversations with Uncle Larry.

Scott McClellan's writing a book. Lo and behold, he will reveal within that many of the things he was told to say were not true. White House Press Secretaries have approximately the hardest job on Earth (maybe that's why Tony Snow couldn't hack it....oh wait, it was because it didn't pay enough). Maybe McClellan should go play tennis with old Clinton human shield Mike McCurry. The latter found himself in a nearly identical situation during MonicaGate. He was repeatedly assured by a man he deeply trusted that there was simply no truth at all to these allegations. Cut to the next scene: Deeply Trusted Man admits guilt.

It's a difficult job inasmuch as they are usually people with strong emotional commitments to the men they serve, but it's only a matter of time until the Press Sec ends up being hung out to dry. I don't believe they're stupid. I think they're willing to trust their presidents. That trust can only tempt politicians for so long until they abuse it by making subordinates unwittingly shill for their lies. The White House insists that McClellan knew everything all along. Is this just image rehab on the part of a forgettable bag of fluid in a cheap suit? I doubt it. More like the tales of a jilted lover.

POST-HUMANITY

I don't usually encourage people to spend more time watching television, but do yourself a favor and catch a repeat of the Ted Koppel special "Breaking Point" on Discovery Channel. The show gives an excellent snapshot of our nation's downright insane correctional system and meticulously documents its transition into the post-rehabilitation, purely punitive era.

Since 1980 we have essentially abandoned the idea of educating or rehabilitating the incarcerated in favor of simply warehousing them. It's pretty basic - offer tidal waves of rhetoric to scare the crap out of yuppie suburban taxpayers, build more jails (with a healthy dose of privatization), and shift the emphasis to segregating Us from as many of Them as possible. Add a healthy dose of lunatic recipes for overcrowding like mandatory minimums, three-strikes legislation, and boatloads of War on Drugs-sponsored 10- to 15-year sentences. Forget all that liberal nanny state New Deal era nonsense about rehabilitation - the solution to all of our problems is more brown people in more jails for longer periods of time. We don't want to rehabilitate them. The goal is simply to get rid of them.

One scene from the Koppel special merits emphasis. Prisoners suspected of having drugs (a neurotic obsession of the staff throughout the program) are subject to constant searches. In some cases they are suspected of swallowing or inserting drugs into their anuses to prevent detection. To counter this, the guards wrap the suspected inmates in an orange body suit which is sealed with tape at the neck, waist, ankles, and wrists. The inmates must wear the sealed suit for three days (urinating and defecating in their clothes) after which the suit is removed and their excretions are searched for drugs.

Read that again and let it sink in. Upon seeing this, I beg any rational person to ask: Is it even remotely surprising that these people are like animals when they get out of prison? Anyone shocked that they fail to rejoin society as productive members? The system treats them like animals and they become exactly that. Then the Tough on Crime crowd can point at them and say "Look! How can animals like this be rehabilitated?"

Welcome to another step in America's journey to a third-world society. 10% of the country controls 99% of the wealth, 80% of the population (the wage earners) live in debt/fear/insecurity, and the remaining 10% are entirely superfluous. You just have to get rid of them. Third-world countries send out paramilitary skull-crackers to round up and kill them. We enlightened Americans demonize, warehouse, and brutalize them until their lives are forfeit. That's really all the War on Drugs is about.

FEEL FREE TO TASE ME, BRO

UPDATE: Speaking of the devil, here's a front-page CNN story on Taser deaths. Good timing, Ed.

By now we've all seen the video and read the news about the unarmed Polish immigrant tasered to death by the RCMP up north. Sad, alarming, and so on. What bothers me is not so much this isolated incident (and let's be honest, it is rare for people to die from a taser) but the shocking willingness of police to use what are antiseptically called "less lethal" (formerly "non-lethal") weapons.

I do not like cops. Sorry. I realize that many cops are good, decent people. Many more of them are not. I wholeheartedly subscribe to the generalization that they are adult incarnations of junior high bullies who overcompensate for mediocrity with authority. Beyond that, the attitude that their actions are above reproach (especially by those of us who haven't walked in their shoes and don't know what it's like**) coupled with a monolithic bunker mentality is enough to make me puke pure bile. So now that my biases are out of the way...

The average cop in the post-Reagan, War On Drugs, COPS, kicking through doors, smashing through windows, militarization of law enforcement era needs boundaries. For the most part I believe those boundaries are provided by the law. They understand that they are being watched and videotaped, and that we know what is and is not acceptable behavior. Unfortunately I believe that the use of pepper spray, tasers, less-lethal projectiles (beanbags, rubber bullets), CS gas, and the like are an area in which no real boundaries exist. And I do not trust cops to "use their judgment" to effectively restrain themselves.

The problem lies with the original nomenclature: "non-lethal" means. We've played a neat little semantic game and re-named them "less lethal" since, well, the non-lethal weapons were killing a lot of people. But I believe the damage has been done. The police and their apologists (the kind of people who bend over backwards to excuse every video of 5 cops wailing on a black guy or shooting an unarmed immigrant 41 times) have so thoroughly convinced themselves that pepper spray and tasers are "harmless" or no big deal that cops' restraint is approaching zero.

A taser is just like a little electric shock! Stun guns only give victims "an owie." Pepper spray causes a little bit of burning for a few minutes - no biggie. Rubber bullets only leave a tiny welt and can't kill. Yes, all these things are so unbelievably insignificant that....well, there's just no harm at all in using them. Why not just approach every suspect with the pepper spray in hand? If he gives you any lip, empty it in his face. Since it's "temporary" and "minor pain" and "less lethal" and all those other things, why not? Why not disperse every crowd with some flying beanbags and tear gas? No lasting harm done, right?

Most police - and I mean 99.99999% of them - realize that they can't respond to any and all threats by whipping out the pistol and plugging away. I doubt many of them feel the same way about their "less lethal" methods. High profile incidents like the UCLA library taser incident or the now-infamous "don't tase me, bro!" video show that using weapons (and remember, less lethal items are exactly that) is no longer a last option for the police. I'd say it's a second or third option these days. Ask yourself, in either of those two campus incidents, why the police did not simply pick up the suspect and carry him out of the room. I understand the concept of resisting arrest, but I'm pretty confident that 8 cops can carry a 180-pound sophomore - even a struggling one. Why bother? It's so much easier to whip out the taser and zap away.

Well, unfortunately "less lethal" tends to be Pretty Lethal when used repeatedly. Incidents of people dying from pepper spray are not common by the percentages, but when the sample size is dramatically increased.....well, the raw numbers start to be consequential regardless of the probability. We see people dying to celebrate the World Series. You have almost 100 people being given an impromptu death sentence since 1990 by police who douse them in pepper spray regardless of how insignificant their offenses were (see here or here, or just as your friend Google about pepper spray deaths).

The fact is that the status of these weapons as non-lethal or less-lethal is probably already too ingrained in the minds of law enforcement (and a pitifully large percentage of the public) to do anything about it now. There are too many excuses about "isolated incidents" and phony internal reviews in which police departments investigate themselves and determine (shockingly) that the deaths were due to other factors. But the poor, poor police are just so badly overmatched by pissy college kids. Under such circumstances we should be downright thrilled to be tased.

**(This is why people like Bill O'Reilly would never criticize college professors. They understand that, not having been professors, they cannot possibly pass judgment on the profession)

FEDERAL POUND-ME-IN-THE-ASS PRISON

Today's No Politics Friday (tm) is about baseball and Project Runway.

First of all, Project Runway Season 4 is on notice. I mean, honestly, did you see that shit? Several months ago I saw a website with headshots and short bios of all the new contestants, and I had only one thought: Oh shit. Rather than do what made the show so good - pick likeable people (save one or two designated assholes) with a lot of talent - they've obviously put together an MTV Real World cast of "quirky" people with stupid tattoos. It's like they went down a goddamn checklist. Straight guy who looks like Jeffrey? Check. Jay-like fat gay dude? Check. Completely stoned-out idiot a la Bradley? Check. Utterly talentless woman in her 40s? Check. UltraMegaSuper Gay guy along the lines of Austin Scarlett? Check.

Even worse, from everything I've read this season descends into Top Chef-style judging; i.e., the producers tell the judges who to pick based on which catty bitch wars they think are amusing. That rewards talentless little cunts like Marcel (who stuck around Top Chef to the bitter end because they thought we wanted to see him argue with everyone) and this fucking guy Christian. The second he opened his goddamn mouth I wanted him and his stupid f'n Hot Topic haircut to die. I will not be satisfied until he does. And what is the deal with the retarded nicknames? "Kat Pistol"? "Sweet P"? I feel like I'm at f'n roller derby or some stupid crap like that. Shame on you, Bravo. Stop recruiting talent from the list of rejected extras from Miami Ink.

Second, the Barry Bonds news had me on the floor last night. Yes, I am a huge baseball fan. No, I don't particularly give a crap if he rots in hell and/or Federal Pound-Me-in-the-Ass Prison. What slays me is that Bonds was indicted and 90 minutes later his personal trainer Greg Anderson walked out of prison. You've gotta hand it to the Feds, they know how to play mind games. Read it loud and clear, Barry: We're indicting you...because your last friend in the world just flipped on you. Anderson was so willing to stay quiet until he had a couple months to chat with Mr. Prison. Prison'll do that, I guess.

There you go. Baseball and Project Runway.

ED VS. LOGICAL FALLACIES, PART 10: FALSE DILEMMA

Do you ever stop and think about how much easier your life would be if you were willfully ignorant, narrow-minded, and provincial in the extreme in your worldview? The complexity of any issue could be reduced to Good vs. Bad or Black vs. White. As one's appreciation for nuance and complexity asymptotically approaches zero, the reward is the ability to "solve" all of the world's problems in the time allotted for commercial breaks.

False dilemma (a.k.a. "Either/Or" Fallacy) is somewhat incorrectly named because it need not always involve a dilemma. Nevertheless, its basic form is illustrated by two quotes (h/t Non-Seq for the Parker quote):

" And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. " - Our Fearless Leader, Joint session of Congress, 9/20/01

"In any case, by the same logic, we might also say that (immigration amnesty) is good for the country because then everyone would be legal. Rather than fix something, we simply accommodate circumstances. As in: Kids are having sex anyway, so we’ll just give them condoms." - Kathleen Parker, "Incentives Fueling Illegal Immigration" Chicago Tribune 11/7/07

Isn't it precious how Kathleen introduces a patently fallacious bit of reasoning with the phrase "by the same logic"? Keep trying, sweetie. You'll learn how to use the potty eventually. The fallacy in the President's statement is quite obvious; even logically-challenged people recognize that there is some ground between complete, unquestionable American hegemony and bedding down with al Qaeda. So rather than beating that dead horse, let's look more closely at Parker's setup:

The choices are X and Y.
We are not choosing X.
Therefore Y.

Consider, for instance, her "analogy" about teen sex. What is the public interest in preventing kids from having sex? Well, there are social consequences in the form of sexually transmitted diseases and unintended pregnancies. Both of those problems can be virtually eliminated with things like birth control, testing for diseases, condoms, and education. Not so in Kathleen ParkerWorld! Our options are two: stop kids from having sex, or fail to stop them from having sex. That is her sole, cloyingly simplistic answer to everything: it must be stopped. Terrorists threatening us? Kill all the terrorists. Teen pregnancies and STDs? Stop kids from boning. Illegal immigrants? Stop illegal immigration. Let's apply her "logic" for a moment: Spraying water on houses that are currently on fire is idiotic - it is "simply accomodating the circumstances." Either we stop house fires from happening or we are effectively doing nothing.

It just....it makes so much sense I can barely stand it. False Dilemma is one of those "brute force" fallacies, the kind employed by either the lazy, the careless, or those whose attention span for sociopolitical issues approximates that of the fruit fly. I suppose that if the complexity of real life overwhelms one's cognitive abilities, creating a simpler one makes a lot of sense.

HONEST MISTAKES

For the second consecutive day I will not only mention George Will but also tip my hat to him. Don't worry, it's in the context of tearing him a new one.

Kudos to Mr. Will for recommending Curveball by devoting his Nov. 12 column to it. If this book were mandatory reading for every American adult I can guarantee you that we'd avoid the impending aerial fireworks display over Iran. Alas, it is not required reading. But if you feel like being really angry (or have an academic interest in group decision-making along the lines of Scott Plous' Psychology of Judgment and Decision-Making) don't wait another minute to read it.

Good work, George. Unfortunately, even in your best moment you cannot hide what a pedantic, smug, and condescending tool you are. To wit (emphasis mine):

(Curveball) claimed to have been deeply involved in Hussein's sophisticated and deadly science, particularly those notorious mobile labs. Notorious and, we now know, nonexistent.

A few months ago I wrote about the Republican Unburdening of the Soul (RUotS) ritual, for which I have exactly zero patience. The nation is littered with middle-aged white guys who are just so gosh darn upset about this war for which they were mindless cheerleaders in 2002 and 2003. They wander around seeking absolution and loudly speaking of lessons learned. Will is doing the pundit's version - the I Made an Honest Mistake ritual. Put in the uncomfortable position of having to rationalize how they got Iraq so completely, mind-bendingly wrong, pundits' choices are limited. If they're not going to go Bill Kristol (i.e., "Wrong? I'm not wrong!") then the only tactic left is....Well golly, folks, how on Earth was I to know that the entire case for war was based on a mountain of happy horseshit? Will titles his column "Seeing what's not there is a dicey strategy" like a man who speaks from experience. And yet he still won't accept responsibility for it.

Yes, George, "we now know" that the WMD stockpiles and the cartoon drawings of mobile bioweapons labs were nonexistent. Of course there was just no way of knowing that at the time, nor was there even the slightest cause for skepticism. That's odd, given that I recall reading quite a bit about the Judith Miller - Chalabi - Curveball dog & pony show long before the White House sent Uncle Colin's credibility on a kamikaze run to the U.N. We hear a similar, if not identical, argument from Hillary Clinton (and John Kerry in 2004) - "I voted for the war because I believed the President. How on Earth was I to know, or even suspect, that the entire administration is full of shit to the bursting point?" Such rationalizations leave only two possible conclusions: either they (Hillary, Will, etc) are flat-out lying or they are criminally stupid. To expect us to accept that they swallowed the White House's story with less skepticism than the average American uses to shop for a new car is beyond insulting.

My advice to the gentle reader: let no one (columnists or random right-wing acquaintances) wash off the blood so easily. There are 4,000 servicepeople and untold six-figure numbers of Iraqi civilians dead on account of their thundering ignorance. Indulging their quest for forgiveness and accepting "It was an honest mistake based on what we knew at the time!" is simply the most efficient way of ensuring that no one learns anything from this experience - meaning, of course, that we will be repeating it presently.*

So please blow it directly out your ass, Mr. Will. Take your guilt to your grave. There will be ample time for your rationalizations then, and you will need them.

*No, I am not using that incorrectly. "Presently" means, in the classical sense, "imminently."

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SELFISH TREES

On Sunday's edition of This Week on ABC, the panelists engaged in a discussion about the overall mood of the electorate in which Cokie Roberts characterized it as "slightly Democratic." Many commentators, for example the folks at Crooks & Liars (where I continue to get good plugs every time Mike, who apparently hates me, goes on vacation and leaves the Round-Up to guest moderators), have mocked Roberts for her biased or flat-out incorrect assessment of the current political landscape. They cite both polls and commentary by well-respected political scientist John Judis as support for the idea of a strongly Democratic swing in the electorate. I will now put myself in the awkward position of defending the likes of George Will and Cokie Roberts.

The C&L author comments, "Um, hello? See that forest, Cokie? It’s made of trees." Oh, Cokie sees the trees alright. And she knows quite well how they behave. A year prior to the election they will all voice appropriately loud discontent with the Republicans. They'll talk about how they're tired of the war in Iraq (they are either legitimately sick of it or afraid of looking like a moron for voicing their support for it). They will voice outright hatred for George W. Bush. And they will claim, in the most extreme cases, that they are done with the GOP altogether.

Twelve months from now the election will require action, not just complaining. Complaining is easy and cost-free. People can say whatever the hell they want right now because it doesn't matter. Making a decision will have consequences. It is easy to offer sweeping criticism of the Republicans in 2007, but Cokie understands that when shove comes back to push the Republican Issue of Last Resort - taxes - will sway oh-so-many of these newly discontented suburban Republicans. They have 12 long months to rationalize why voting for Giuliani or whoever is "different" than supporting the incumbent administration. The right-wing media will give them dozens of excuses for why Rudy ain't so bad (or, more likely, why Hillary is Too Horrible to Imagine Let Alone Support).

In those 12 months they'll slowly - and so terribly predictably - decide that they're really against the war in Iraq, but......golly, ducking the Alternative Minimum Tax sure would be sweet. They'll reassure their friends that they really think the GOP is corrupt and incompetent, but.....boy could they use that Capital Gains Tax cut. They value human life, but the sad truth is that they value paying 31% in federal income taxes instead of 33% just a little more.

No, Cokie Roberts is not intelligent. On this point, however, she is either correct by accident or showing a deeper understanding of the selfish, solipsistic trees than her critics realize.

(PS: Apologies to a favorite regular commenter for the political flavor of Friday's NPF)

MAKING THE LEAP

Happy No Politics Friday (tm)!

So hopefully you'll get as big of a kick out of this as I did. In the 1980s, when America was still in the throes of its "support brutal autocrats as long as they oppose (democratically elected) Marxists" phase, our aid to Nicaraguan Contras took many forms. You're probably familiar with the more salacious aspects of our covert involvement (and somehow Ollie is still wringing a career out of that one big break) but we also tried to make subversives out of ordinary Nicaraguans. Enter the CIA-produced leaflet "Freedom Fighter's Manual." Illustrated in a child-like cartoon style, the pamphlet urges ordinary people to topple the Communist oppressors from within through subversive activities like "Dropping typewriters," calling in fake sick days, and making phony hotel reservations. If fake sick days could bring a government to its knees, I would have reduced America to anarchy and a barter economy when I was working in collections.

The best part is how slowly the pamphlet unfolds (pun intended). It starts the reader out with puerile, college dorm style pranks. Then it moves on to damaging property (and a particular obsession with puncturing tires). By the final page they're illustrating how to make a Molotov Cocktail, which the reader is instructed to throw into a Police station. That Cold War-era CIA, you've gotta hand it to them. They had tremendous faith in the intellectual abilities of those they tried to brainwash and use. To expect people to make the leap from phony sick days to killing cops in 15 comic book pages is pretty amazing. They also had faith that the citizenry would somehow forget these skills once the Dictator-of-the-Month was back in power.

Then again, that would imply that they thought ahead to the future ramifications of their actions. Snicker.

(Incidentally, and not to creep anyone out here, but that is a terrible way to make a Molotov Cocktail and it stands an excellent chance of setting its user on fire. The rag only gets stuffed into the bottle opening in A) movies and B) CIA manuals. The proper technique involves a sealed container to preclude the possibility of pre-ignition with a robust ignition source like storm matches or a powder wick taped to the bottle. Just sayin'.)

THE ELEPHANT MAN

So this is the last time I'm going to dignify David Horowitz's existence. I promise.

You might need to watch this video. D-Ho doesn't like being filmed, so thank the miracle of hidden cameras for this masterpiece. Go ahead, take a few minutes to watch it. I'll wait.

Am I misperceiving or is he essentially a circus freak at this point? Is going to a Horowitz "lecture" driven by the same impulse that makes us click on the headlines about the girl with 8 limbs? Look at that guy. The uncoordinated lumbering back and forth, the ranting, the obsession with conspiracies against him, the talking into the ground or his chest, the complete lack of any coherent structure to his thoughts....this man belongs on a street corner behind a bus station with a colander on his head and a Bo Gritz for President sandwich board. This is starting to raise Wesley Willis-esque questions about whether it is OK to laugh at him when he is so obviously mentally ill.

This is the sad, sad downside of our collective overreaction to the right-wing industry of manufacturing insidious webs of bias and prejudice against their viewpoints. If we don't let him speak - and in fact if we don't invite him to campus so he can do so on our dime - we're silencing the right. But if conservatives want to be represented by a man who belongs in the darkened corridor of a state mental institution, picking corn out of his own shit and accusing the nurses of poisoning him, that's just fine by me. The first rule of electoral politics is that when your opponent is tying his own noose, don't interrupt.

ED VS. LOGICAL FALLACIES, PART 9: BEGGING THE QUESTION

While doing some reading on yesterday's topic, and more specifically the Greatest Story Never Told economy since 2001, I came across a slightly old but positively stunning example of a common logical fallacy - begging the question, a.k.a. circular logic. This is simply any argument in which the conclusion is also a premise or precondition of the same.

It has long been an open secret (to anyone who cares to pay attention) that the overwhelming majority of the costs of Bush's economic policies have simply been shifted into the future. In some cases they have been so cynical as to pay for tax cuts and portions of the prescription drug benefit program with line items in the 2009 budget. It's fairly clear, as Leon Panetta states in this article from 2005, that whoever follows Bush into the White House is A) going to have zero ability to implement any sort of domestic agenda, B) going to spend 99% of his/her term dealing with the mess they inherited and C) probably going to be a one-termer. Why? See A and B.

What I find so amazing about that article is a quote from Lindsey Graham which I assume barely registered with most readers. If not for James Inhofe, Graham would be the undisputed reigning Biggest Idiot in the Senate (a feat akin to being the dumbest journalism major at Arizona State). We all expect him to say ridiculous things by the dozen. But this takes it to a whole 'nother level (you may need to read the whole article to get the context):

With a fix to the AMT, deficits in a decade would likely reach $650 billion to $700 billion, said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). "The days of being everything to everybody are quickly coming to a close," he said, adding that a permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts would make it politically impossible to borrow the full cost of a Social Security fix. "We have to look at the deficit in a holistic way."

Wait, what? Social Security must be privatized because we can't keep funding it on the fly....and we can't do that because....George W. Bush has bankrupted the country with half-assed right wing economic policy....such as privatizing Social Security. If you're confused, let me break it down for you.

A PORT IN THE COMING STORM

I lack the time for an in-depth entry today, but please, please take the time to read this (Part I and Part II) discussion of "the greatest story never told."

You know what I find really ironic about the post-2001 Neocon Economy? It's encouraging people to work for the government. They stand there cheering and rationalizing as one industry after another pulls up its chutes and heads to the third world. Since all of our "economic growth" these days is nothing more than consumer spending dumped on credit cards, the entire matchstick house depends on individuals' ability to service their debt. Losing a decent job and replacing it with a Taco Bell shift won't cut it. So where do we look for stability? Un-outsource-able jobs? Working for the government. Teachers. Cops. Professors. District attorneys. Civil servants. Face it, in another 20 years that's essentially all that will be safe from outsourcing. If today's "knowledge economy" superstars really think that there won't be Indian and Indonesian accountants, lawyers, IT people, etc., ready to take their jobs they're in for a charming surprise.

So thanks, Cato Institute! You've gotten your way, and now "the market" is telling us that the best (and perhaps only) bet is the government teat.

WHY ARGUING IS SO FULFILLING

One common complaint among political scientists, or those who like complaining about academia, is that so much research has so little to do with real politics. This is not a difficult argument to support; one could easily read a dozen contemporary academic journals and count on one hand the articles that are actually relevant outside of a university setting. As you can imagine, there are two camps on this subject. Some people feel that research is not intended to be popular reading and that it necessarily targets a very small audience. This argument is not without merit. Academic journals are written in a way that presupposes a lot of knowledge on the part of its readers.

Conversely it is often argued that research, or at least its conclusions, should be somehow applicable to the real world. In other words, you may not care about academic argument nor will you understand all of the statistical jargon/literature reviews in an article but you will be interested to know that the research shows X and Y to be true. I fall firmly in this camp. I believe that the first question to ask of any research agenda is "Will I be able to explain this to an intelligent layperson, and if so will he care?" Of course research cannot be written to the average Jerry Springer audience. But a normal person with an interest in politics and the ability to process arguments above the Sean Hannity level should be able to grasp the implications of your findings.

From time to time I would like to take the opportunity to share some relevant research with you the gentle readers. I don't care to turn this into an academic blog (believe it or not, there are plenty in every conceivable field of interest) but I think it's important for more people to realize that there is solid empirical support - quantitative and experimental - for many of the things we presume to know about the political landscape. In other words, "Right-wing talk radio badly misinforms people" is not an assumption but rather a well-supported argument.

Along those lines I would like to recommend one of my favorite pieces of public opinion research, one that goes a long way toward understanding why our national political discourse is one step above a throng of retards slap-fighting in a mud puddle. Jim Kuklinski and Paul Quirk's
"Reconsidering the Rational Public: Cognition, Heuristics, and Mass Opinion" from Elements of Reason (if I link the book they might not punch me for posting a chapter here) is one of the best, most cynical analyses of individual-level public opinion that you will find. While I doubt you're interested in reading 50 pages of it without the benefit of course credit, even a glance at their experimental results (pages 28 and beyond) will be interesting.

The authors perform a series of lab experiments to measure opinions, information, and how individuals react when their beliefs conflict with facts. They ask the participants to guess what portion of the budget is spent on welfare, offer an appropriate amount to spend on welfare (if it differs), and state how confident they are in their estimations. The findings tell a lot of us what we already know.

First, the Reagan years of "welfare queen" rhetoric have resulted in nearly every participant significantly overestimating the amount we spend on welfare payments (other forms of public aid were explicitly not included in the discussion). Some guessed amounts as much as 25% of the annual budget. Secondly, and more importantly, people are wildly overconfident in their levels of information. Two of three respondents were either "confident" or "very confident" that their guesses were accurate. The relationship between accuracy and confidence was inverse; that is, the less accurate the guess, the more confident the respondent was in its accuracy.

If you have a strong stomach you can proceed to the section entitled "Resistance to Correction" (p. 29). Presenting the participants with facts showing that their responses were incorrect had almost no effect on their opinions. Very few of them were willing to revise their positions or retract their previous statements even when the hard facts were put in front of them. In short the beliefs/preferences of participants with no information were indistinguishable from those who were given the facts. There is no relationship between what these people believed and reality. Whether the two coincided or not was irrelevant to the firmness with which they clung to their versions of the facts.

If you've ever wondered why debating "average people" about...well, about anything is so goddamn fulfilling, I think this type of research does an excellent job explaining it. People aren't "stupid" in the sense that they lack information or access to it (well, that may also be the case but it's beside the point). The truth is much more depressing. It makes absolutely no difference whether or not they have information. Presenting the average American with cold, hard facts disproving his or her beliefs is likely to be of no consequence, especially on issues connected to a set of ideological beliefs or values.

Our society encourages people to create their own reality, and it is succeeding. Bertrand Russell said "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." In the current political landscape we find that the less people know, the more confident they are that they know everything.

AND SUCH A POOR HOUSING MARKET....

Life can be imperfect. It's not exactly the best time to be putting a house on the market, but it doesn't appear that Fred Phelps has much of a choice.

Do these people even have $11 million in assets? I mean, after the IRS seizes and auctions off a dozen double-wide trailers and their contents (let's go ahead and assume there are no priceless works of art in the Phelps households) I think the tab is going to be closer to $11,000 than $11 million.

But seriously, kudos to the family and the judge for breaking it off in the Phelps family's ass. Morris Dees and the SPLC have bankrupted many a white supremacist using the same tactics, and God smiles every time it happens.

HISTRIONIC ENDURANCE

Among the most common criticisms of our political system is the appallingly small amount of time spent debating issues of actual importance. Of course the media bears the lion's share of the responsibility, with 36 hours of OJ Simpson coverage for every 10 minutes of political news (pundits screaming at one another does not count). You already know this and you've heard it all before.

What amazes me lately is the extent to which talking about absolute nonsense has become the official strategy of the right these days. I am well accustomed to the concept of latching onto anything to divert attention from the trainwreck that is Iraq, but the last couple of weeks have just floored me. As someone else put it, they have refined the Art of the Hissy Fit to an unprecedented degree.

We have moved in an almost unbroken chain from the Petraeus/MoveOn story to Obama Won't Wear a Flag Pin to Columbia University Hosts Ahmadinejad to Pete Stark's comments to Al Gore Winning the Nobel Prize to Dumbledore is Gay to Islamo-Fascism. Just two solid months of pure, unadulterated, pulled-out-of-asses bullshit non-events. Every one was fabricated out of whole cloth by Drudge or Malkin or O'Reilly or whoever. None of this even remotely qualifies as relevant news.

I seriously do not know from where the right wing media get the stamina to constantly maintain such a high state of phony moral outrage. How many times can this act be played out before even the dumbest listeners approach fatigue? After so many hissy fits in such rapid succession, Mary Ann from South Dakota must be wondering "Gee Rush, is this really important? I can only write so many angry emails in a day." The fruit fly sized attention span of the talk radio audience should be taxed to the limit soon.

If I wasn't already convinced that most conservatives are about 4 years old emotionally, this orgy of non-news would be overwhelmingly persuasive. They have literally reduced themselves to stomping their feet, crying, and throwing hysterical temper tantrums every 30 seconds until they get their way. The next time they threaten to hold their breath until we stop at Dairy Queen, I vote for letting them suffocate. I'm more than happy to grab a piano cord and help, in fact.