Losing Latin America

One of the consequences (left to the reader to care or not) of growing anti-Americanism around the world (left to the reader to decide how much of it was avoidable) is the growing popularity of politicians in other countries with anti-American agendas (shocking that). But let's just talk Latin America for a quick sec and take a look at a few changes that have taken place in the political landscape in the new millennium:

• Resource rich Venezuela continued (Chavez was already in power at the turn) its slide towards policies based on anti-Americanism, crazy lefty socialist ideas, local and regional bribery, and consolidation of power. There have been recent signs of hope as some countrymen appear tired of Chavez' gross mismanagement, but Venezuela continues to bribe its neighbors into its anti-American coalition.
• In 2007, Chavez protegé Rafael Correa took power in Ecuador. Ecuador has eagerly joined the anti-American block of Hugo Chavez. Why does tiny Ecuador matter? Well, besides another radical lefty voice and the potential non-renewal of leases, Ecuador seems to have a friendly relationship with FARC. Amid all the disastrous policies of the War on Drugs, the one that actually seems to be working all right is Plan Colombia — not so much with its stated goal of reducing the flow of drugs, but in Colombia's fight with FARC. FARC has been pushed back to the borders (and at least in some cases over the border). Recently Correa sacked some military types for helping with the fight against FARC. With a reasonable administration in Ecuador, the battle against FARC might be won, but as long as they have a safe haven, who knows?
• Anyone remember Daniel Ortega, the leader of the Sandinistas that the US helped oust? Thank God we got rid of him for good, even if there might have been some actions of questionable legality in the process. Well, our friend Daniel ran again in 2006 and — with the help of some ham-fisted diplomacy by the openly anti-Ortega American ambassador — won in a quasi-legitimate vote. Nicaragua seems to be forging friendly ties with our Persian friends.
• Bolivia.

But amidst all the bad news, there's some good, too. It only took 50 years, but we finally got rid of Castro! Seriously, though, smack in the middle of all the anti-Americanism is our staunchest ally Colombia and it's pro-US leader Alvaro Uribe. Amidst all the anti-free trade and anti-American rhetoric stand Colombia. For years, the US has given aid to Colombia and kept US markets open to Colombian goods.

And so how do the Democrats propose to build on this oasis of goodwill in a continent of badwill? By destroying it!

Genius or Sleaze?

An online petition calling for Obama and Clinton to run together is making news.

I'm sorry. I misspoke. An online petition calling for Clinton and Obama to run together is making news. The group is called "Democrats United for Clinton/Obama 08," and the one-sentence petition reads as follows:

We the undersigned call upon the members of the Democratic National Committee to support a unity ticket with both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

The site/petition is "Authorized and Paid For By Clinton/Obama 08."

Nowhere does the petition state who should be at the top of the ticket. This is, I think, a crucial bit of information. If I were to ascribe the most generous motives to the principals of DUCO '08 — names not available — I might say that this is the sticky part, and DUCO wants only to support the general notion of a Clinton/Obama and Obama/Clinton ticket, with the details TBD. The site is about transcending the conflict, and not perpetuating it.

But is it, really? Why does Hillary's name appear first on this page, every time? "Clinton/Obama 08" has an obvious connotation, doesn't it? Not to mention that the idea promoted here sounds a lot like an idea Hillary ingeniously floated a month ago. The site could easily have said, "Sign here, if you want these two on the same ticket, regardless of who is the Presidential nominee." It doesn't. It could also easily have said, "Hillary supports the idea of naming Obama as her running mate. Sign here, if you support Hillary for President and Obama for Veep." It doesn't say that, either.

You have to figure this site means to mislead people. If you favor an Obama/Clinton ticket over an Clinton/Obama presentation, you probably shouldn't sign it, because the Unnamed Principals could easily run off with your signature and proclaim that you and everyone else want the Clinton/Obama ticket.

Verdict: sleazy genius. I.e., it has the Clinton campaign written all over it.

Spam

What are the odds that a person would actually have the name "Viagra Cialis?" I mean, really. "Alice C. Viagra," maybe. But "Viagra Cialis?" Give me a break. I won't fall for that again.

French Boycott of the Olympics?

Uh, no. Just a threat to boycott the Opening Ceremonies.

Whatever.

I'm not someone who defaults to thinking that everything the French do is pathetic, manipulative, or chickenshit. That's right-winger territory. I'm more in the frame of mind of wondering why so much of what the French do really is pathetic, manipulative, or chickenshit. Not sure what that makes me, besides insightful and sad.

Quoth Sarkozy, further: "And if you do not stop brutally repressing ethnic minorities within your nation and financing and empowering rape and genocide abroad, I will personally refrain from attending any black-tie events in Beijing."

Add to my list of concerns about politicizing the Olympics the fact that people tend to do a lousy job of it, anyway. If I'm Nicky Sarkozy and I want to make a point, French-style, I get my Olympic delegation to fetchez la vache. If you thought the skydiving-cattle, "EAT MORE CHIKIN" stunt raised awareness of a crucial issue,



try painting "FREE TIBET" on the cows and catapulting them into the stadium. Boycotts are so tried and tired, anyway.

What do you say, Vercingetorix? You went to all this trouble to unite the Gauls, and for this?

Note to a Neighbor

Thanks for speaking with me today. I understand your position about the parking at the end of the street, on your side of the road. I want you to know that I have never encouraged anyone to park there, and we’ve never parked there ourselves. If I’ve been slow or neglectful in arranging to have parked cars moved from that location, I apologize. In today’s case I presumed, mistakenly, that you had left for the workday, and rather than trouble the cleaners to move their car immediately, I thought it would be fine to let them finish, then have them vacate the space when they were done with the work. I realize now that this was the wrong answer, and I won’t make that mistake again.

Since the day we moved in here and your daughter made known that you did not want cars parked in that location, I have emphasized to house guests and visitors that they should not park in that space. On a number of occasions I have asked them to move their cars. As I told you on the phone, I will continue to warn visitors against parking in that area, and I will continue to ask people to move whenever I see cars there and they belong to folks who are visiting our house.

As I also explained, people feel compelled to park their cars in that space, for whatever reason. Accordingly, there may be instances in which you find someone parked there, and my wife or I is not aware the car is there and we have not been in a position to get it moved. We agreed on the phone that a reasonable and appropriate response in this case is to have you contact me so I can get the car moved. I told you I would leave my phone numbers for that purpose, and here they are:

[REDACTED] (home)
[REDACTED] (mobile)

I want to reiterate that I do not think it is a reasonable and appropriate response to block the road and deny passage off of [REDACTED] Street, as you did today to my cleaners. It’s not a proportional response, it’s not legal, and it’s not safe. I also believe it is not constructive to blare your horn and call the police, but I understand that it’s within your rights to do either or both of these if you choose (as blocking the road is not).

I understand how strongly you feel about this issue, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to keep the parking there to a minimum. You must understand, however, that my wife and I cannot keep constant surveillance over the street, and the problem will likely recur every now and then, despite our sincere best efforts. In fact, there may be cases in which persons who are not our guests are parked in that space, and we can’t answer for the offense or assist you with resolving the matter, because we don’t know the offenders. We have seen cars parked there that did not belong to anyone visiting our house. You said that you think posting a No Parking sign on the fence is unnecessary and unsightly. I think a sign would go a long way toward avoiding these situations, but I’ll defer to your judgment. If you change your mind, I’m happy to go get one and put it up.

You agreed on the phone that persons may lawfully park their cars past the driveway on our side of the road. Street parking is allowed in front of our house opposite your driveway just as it is in front of your house opposite ours. That said, as a gesture of goodwill, we will ask anyone who parks on our side of the road to park as close to the yard as possible, and if you have any preferences as to where in that zone they should park — to make it easiest for you to back out your car — please let me know and I will communicate those preferences to our visitors. This is, I think, the way neighbors should handle their affairs.

You and I both worry about “getting off on the wrong foot.” I had hoped that our relationship took a turn for the better when you helped my wife and I clear the snow from our driveway: I very much appreciated the help, and I gathered from this that neither of us might have made the best first impression on the other, but our hearts are in the right place. My goal is to maintain civil relationships with my neighbors, and the best way to do that is for us to communicate our concerns to one another and work constructively at resolving them. We should have had this morning’s conversation a long time ago. Now that we have, let’s treat this as a “do-over.” I pledge from this point to do everything I can to keep our visitors’ cars out of the offending location (we will talk to the cleaners tonight), and I only ask in return that when — as may happen from time to time — some visitor to our house unwittingly parks in that space, and you learn of it before I do, you simply let me know and refrain from these dramatic, confrontational gestures.

Sincerely,

[Phutatorius]

Who Ought To Be Bailout-Eligible?

It appears the Federal Reserve will be providing a limited bailout to Bear Stearns, which will have a 28-day credit extension courtesy of the federal government. Commentators who know a heck of a lot more about this than me are wondering why it's suddenly the government's job to cover the downside of aggressive investment strategies on Wall Street.

The answer I'm hearing, which makes some sense to me, is that the government ought to take limited steps to contain the fallout of these bad decisions. In short, allowing Bear Stearns to disintegrate completely would be really bad for the economy. And although it's not necessarily good for the economy to spare investors the punishment for their bad decisions, the Feds can balance two competing interests — protecting the larger economy and ensuring that brokerage houses "bear" the downside of the market (two puns intended) — with a calibrated approach that gives some assistance to BS (yes, another pun), without carrying the company on its back.

So fine. Now the turn:

Hillary Clinton gave an interview on NPR some time ago (yes, to the "latte-drinking crowd," surprisingly), and she was asked what she thought of Mike Huckabee's position that federal assistance to subprime borrowers was a bad idea. Huckabee's argument was simple, and it had homespun, surface appeal. As he put it, why should a taxpayer who made good decisions and bought as much house as he could afford have to pay for his foolhardy neighbor's mortgage, too? Clinton answered with three points:

(1) For the subprime mess to happen, a lot of people had to make bad decisions — borrowers, lenders, and investors, to name the three most obvious categories — and the borrowers were arguably the least reckless and culpable, but they expected to bear the brunt of the consequences, by losing their homes.

(2) Quite a lot of the borrowers signed on to exploitative contractual terms by which advance payments against principal triggered dramatic percentage rate increases. In attempts to "do the right thing" and get ahead of their payments, they paid more than their monthly bills required, triggering the oppressive rates.

(3) The housing market is interconnected. There is not a separate market for houses under subprime loans. The more borrowers default on their loans, the more the housing market is affected, and the "wise lender" that Huckabee would protect from the government loses equity in his house, because his foolhardy neighbors are flooding the market with homes they can't afford.

Now, to me, Hillary's argument (3) sounds quite a lot like the argument for bailing out Bear Stearns. One wonders, then, why it's okay for the government to cut breaks to brokerage houses, but to offer help to borrowers is creeping socialism in the minds of our free-market conservatives. If there's going to be an inconsistency here, shouldn't it favor the borrowers, who, as Ms. Clinton observed in argument (1), at least have the equities in their favor?

Untitled Brio Track #9 (March 16, 2008)

I was looking for something long and lean here, with a lot of networking and switches in the southeast corner, and then a long hairpin-style out-and-back on the northwest end. I've been interested in curved bridges lately, and the focal point of this piece — the knot in the bow tie, if you will — is the curved bridge over the Y-switch track. That's an innovation, not a gimmick, if you're keeping score.

I would also like to point out the inverted-L design. The idea here was to enable The Boy to get right up on the track by nestling into that right(ish) angle.

There were a lot of positive reactions to this piece around the living room. All in all, I was pleased with the result, and it survived (with minor interruptions of service) almost twenty-four hours before a mid-morning rampage — we think The Boy was jacked up on maple syrup — did it in.

Ah, the evanescence of Art.

Spring Forward, Flexibly

It's that time of year again, when your weekend becomes an hour shorter so we can all shift our clocks. I'd like to take this occasion to re-present what I thought was a pretty fantastic idea — the Flexible Spring Forward.

The idea is simple and straightforward. Rather than lose an hour of sleep between Saturday and Sunday, you pick your own time to jump ahead. As I proposed several years ago on my pilot blog:

Give everybody a week to spring ahead, and let 'em make the jump whenever they damn well please. Who wouldn't want to show up to work an hour late all week long and tell the boss, "It's cool, man — I just haven't sprung yet?" Then 4:00 comes on Friday afternoon, and wham! you skip ahead to go-home time, sparing yourself sixty minutes of tedium and the coffee cup another hour of pencil-tapping.

Or suppose you go into McDonald's, craving a Big Mac, and the guy at the counter says, "It's ten o'clock, sir. We're only serving breakfast." Oh, yeah? Well you can shove your Egg McMuffins where the sun don't shine, pal, because I've just declared it lunchtime. SUPER-SIZE ME!

Suffering through travel delays? Plane or train not due to depart for another fifty minutes? Hit that spring button, baby, and you'll be instantly in the air/on track and closing in on your destination.

Here's one: somebody actually thought you'd enjoy going to the Symphony (the nerve!). You can use the hour in your pocket to make this snoozer of a Handel program half as long. Along those lines, the strategic planners among us who happen to have our yearly physicals scheduled during Spring Week can fast-forward through the more, er, awkward parts of the examination. And all you Guinness Book of World Records aspirants trying to set endurance marks (sleep-deprivation, balancing on a bicycle, jumping rope) can get an hour's leg up on your competition.

In short: who wouldn't jump at the chance to flummox Father Time once a year? Sure, there are a few logistics to work out — chiefly, keeping a record of each person's timekeeping so the bullshitters among us (you know who you are) don't try to spring more than once. Easy to fix. The government sets up a website — the usual login/password kind of deal — so that when you feel the itch to spring forward, you play your chit to the Central Server, and your spent hour is on record for anyone to see. No computer handy? Call in from your mobile phone!

Once America gets going on this, you can bet Flexible Fall Back is next. So make those October massage appointments now, because for a week that second hour is free for everyone: What do you mean, you're "done?" It's still only three o'clock by my watch. Get back to the hot oils.

The Aforedescribed Idea and all renderings, variations, toutings, vigorous defenses (with and without resort to gunplay), depictions, embodiments, Power Point presentations, and exaggerations thereof are the lawful property of the Phutatorius Idea Bank™. All rights reserved.

What do you all think?

This One's for All You Fascists Out There

From the "Funny Because It's True" Department: Godwin's Law.

More on the subject here.

Why, just this week, in an email discussion about the Presidential candidates, someone near and dear to me (but obviously of a different view than I am) cautioned against finding too much inspiration in Barack Obama, on the ground that "Hitler was inspiring to his people in the 30s."

I have to say I admire the "reductio ad Hitlerum" formulation, too. My practice has been to describe this form of argument as "dropping the H-bomb," but I'm always partial to the Latin.

Triangle Man vs. Universe Man: Who Wins?

I've been wondering about this for years now, and I don't feel like I'll ever have closure on the subject. Triangle Man and Universe Man are the two surviving, undefeated parties at the end of The Song. We're left hanging. There is an obvious classic matchup in the offing, but we're never treated to the particulars. It's sort like the AFL and NFL before the leagues instituted a Super Bowl to settle the matter.

I should qualify this talk about a "classic" matchup, as well as my AFL/NFL comparison, by noting that by no means is Universe Man a champion. He is not battle-tested. He is undefeated, but only by virtue of never having fought. Could I get behind a fighter with an 0-0 record in a contest of this magnitude? Would I put money down on him? Let's do a tale of the tape:

Location: Universe Man is the size of the entire universe, man. Simple logic commands that whatever venue the promoters select for the fight will be familiar and comfortable to him. He has per se home field advantage. That is, unless the fight breaks out in Triangle Man's house, in which case I declare it a neutral field.

Size/Agility: I cover these characteristics in tandem, for reasons you'll understand shortly. This is obviously a David and Goliath-style matchup. We don't know Triangle Man's dimensions. In fact, we don't know anything at all about him, except that he's chippy. He's chippy, and he channels hatred well. I think, though, that we can safely assume that Universe Man, at the size of the entire universe (man), will tower over Triangle Man. As the smaller party, Triangle Man is certainly the more agile combatant. For my purposes, I define "agility" as "litheness, ability to move, ability to escape and elude an attack." Universe Man takes up all the space in the universe. In theory, this renders him completely immobile, and that immobility hurts his case. On the other hand, for these same reasons Universe Man is inescapable. He completely envelops Triangle Man, thereby neutralizing Triangle Man's greater agility. (I should add that by this analysis, I find it pretty likely that this will be a lousy fight, from a spectator standpoint. By definition, Universe Man and Triangle Man must be in a clench at all times, and no amount of refereeing can separate them and make the combat worth watching.)

Shape: Cosmologists have ventured a number of theories as to Universe Man's shape. I won't presume to declare one of these models to be better or truer than another. I will say, however, that Triangle Man is pointy. Pointy is sharp, and sharp can hurt. In fact, pointy-sharp can arguably tear through the space-time fabric, if its wielder is sufficiently motivated and skilled. Advantage: Triangle Man.

Essential Qualities: As I have noted, we know very little of Triangle Man, except that he has an unblemished record, and he appears to have been the party who picked the fight in both instances. Triangle Man's irrational hatred of others fuels his aggression. He's a dynamo, no doubt about it. But remember that Universe Man has a watch with three hands, and when they meet it's a happy land, and for this reason, he is a powerful man, Universe Man. That three-handed watch may be the trump card here. If the alignment of hands conjures up happiness throughout the land, one would expect its spell to be binding on Triangle Man as well. Its effect should be to neutralize Triangle Man's aggression, thereby rendering him a substantially less formidable opponent. So long as Universe Man can hold out until minute hand, millennium hand, and eon hand meet, he has a shot here.

Deeper Analysis: Clearly Triangle Man is the symbolic embodiment of fascism, and clearly The Song means to leave us to consider the challenge of fascism to certain "universal" truths. We know the destructive effects that pointed, militant, simple-minded hatred can have on particles and persons. But what threat does it pose to the universe writ large? Are we talking about the collision between matter (in the form of Universe Man) and anti-matter (in the form of Triangle Man)? What follows? One would think an absolute canceling-out is what would follow. We're left with nothing. Emptiness, a void. Silence, you might say. When one considers that this is the likely outcome, we finally understand why The Song never reaches the point of reporting on this fight we're so curious to see. The Song doesn't mean to tantalize is. It does not mean to deprive us of this gold medal round. That's not the case. The Song just ends: it ends like everything must if Triangle Man takes up arms against Universe Man. The silence does not mean that the fight never happened. It means that the fight did happen. Do you see?

So who won? Well, it depends on how you look at it. If Triangle Man and Universe Man definitionally obliterate one another, then arguably no one wins. However, it's important to note that Triangle Man is not self-reflective. Triangle Man is entirely outward focused. That is, he fights not to vindicate some important interest of his own — he fights because he hates the opponent. If Triangle Man joins a fight, and the outcome of that fight is that both parties are destroyed, then Triangle Man has achieved his principal objective and lost nothing. He has destroyed Universe Man, the object of his hatred. That he is also destroyed is immaterial. He accomplished what he came to do. Triangle Man wins.

Thus, Triangle Man, Triangle Man, Triangle Man hates Universe Man. They have a fight, Triangle wins. Triangle Man.

This is where I stand right now, today, but if past history is any guide, I will surely revisit this question again some weeks down the line, and I can't promise I won't come round to the view at that point that Universe Man is the obvious winner. Right now? today? It's Triangle Man.

In the Course of Which 2 of 3 Feigned Outrage Authors Prove Themselves To Be Nimrods

The following substantially transcribes a phone conversation late Monday night, the subject being an online Scrabble game:

Ethan Allen Hawley: What's wrong with "bailif?"

Phutatorius: I have your other "f" on my rack.

EAH: Two f's?

P: Two f's.

EAH: That's ridiculous. That can't be right.

P: Of course it's right. Name one word in English that ends in "-if."

EAH: "If."

P: Yeah, OK. Fine. But "bailiff" has two f's.

Kosovo Declares Independence . . .

. . . Serbs take their toys and go home.

(Note FO's first link to a Brisbane Times article.)

So I have occasion now to wonder: how long a waiting period has to lapse before the historically brutal and oppressive state gets to complain about the conduct of the ethnic minority it brutally oppressed? I suppose it's a subjective calculation. From where I'm sitting, though, ten years is way too short.

I say we send Jack Bauer on a secret mission into the vacant Serbian embassy to short-sheet all the beds. I'm not a master of diplomatic protocols by any means, but it seems a reasonable way to send a message. If you'd prefer something more straightforward, I propose a letter on Department of State stationery that reads, Hey, Serbia: before you come back, why don't you contribute something to world culture other than mass rape and attempted genocide? You pricks.

Should We Use the Olympics?

There's been an undercurrent in the news lately about the awkwardness with China, which will host the Olympic Games in Beijing this year, even as it tramples all over international norms in an effort to bring resources home to fuel its growing economy. Now there isn't a "developed" nation on this Earth that hasn't behaved unscrupulously on its climb into the world's economic elite. Colonial abuses, slash-and-burn agriculture, deforestation, displacement of native peoples, child labor, sweetheart deals with foreign leaders to exploit local resources — it's all there in the historical record. No one is innocent, to be sure — not even the U.S.

Right now, though, the world leader in amoral economic policy is the Chinese government. If your country has resources the Chinese economy can use, the Party will do business. It doesn't matter that you're promoting the wholesale slaughter, rape, and displacement of ethnic minorities, or that your military government just defied the international community and gave shoot-to-kill orders on peaceful protesters. Got oil, Sudan? Got pipeline prospects, Myanmar? Let's talk.

Which brings us to the Olympics, which supply an occasion for people to call attention to China's complicity in human rights disasters around the globe. Or not.

It occurs to me that, more than any other institution, the Olympics are a universally-shared human value. Sure — al Qaeda won't be sending a delegation of athletes anytime soon, notwithstanding its members' well-documented tire-course expertise. (They only do obstacle-course competitions on Battle of the Network Stars.) But nihilistic transnational terror groups excepted, everybody else loves the Olympics. Everybody believes in the Olympics, whatever else they may believe.

And so I wonder: given the Olympics' status as a shared, transcendent value, should we be using it to promote our sublunary politics, however benign and upright our intentions? I'm of two minds here. I genuinely believe that there are certain baseline human values that should enjoy the same worldwide appeal and enthusiasm that the Olympics do. Those values — life, liberty, autonomy, equal treatment, the rule of law, freedom of expression, etc. — are certainly more important to me than a shot-put contest. If we can exploit an institution like the Olympics to advance these values, then we certainly should do it. Right?

On the other hand, as I just noted, it's fair to say that the Olympics are the only value we all hold in common in this so-often vicious world. That counts for something. It counts for a lot, actually. President Carter's boycott of Moscow 1980 to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan didn't accomplish much. The Eastern Bloc's retaliatory decision to eschew the L.A. games in 1984 was predictable and — dare I say it? — lame. We look back on the boycotts as pathetic gestures, instances of down-and-dirty politics sullying an institution that we hold very dear to our hearts, and that (we hope) will continue to survive and thrive after petty conflicts like the Cold War are long gone.

We'll never be able to distill the politics out of our Olympics. In fact, I would argue that we shouldn't try. Politics give the Olympics a lot of their dramatic kick, after all: we all grew up pulling for our aw-shucks regular American kids to go higher, faster, farther than the affectless Frankenroiders from East Germany. The competition offered us all a kind of safety valve: we were able to see the two camps compete — capitalism vs. communism, West vs. East played out on ice, in a pool, in the gym, rather than with ICBMs. And what better storyline is there than Jesse Owens, the epitome of grace in competition, conquering his Aryan rivals in Berlin in 1936? Without politics, Jesse Owens is Carl Lewis — a great athlete, but not a hero. (Did I say that Jesse was a Buckeye?)

The Olympics are The It-Institution. Off the record, six drinks deep into a Saturday night, the United Nations tells the bartender it wishes it could be the Olympics. No other idea has ever been so broadly embraced by the world community as M. de Coubertain's. Consider China as a classic example: this government goes around the world arming genocidaires and could give a crap who complains. But give it a shot at hosting the Olympic Games, and suddenly the Chinese are desperate to impress the international community. That's cachet, people, and you'd really like to think that cachet could be leveraged to bring the world something bigger than impenetrable performance art (though I do love you, Björk, more than you'll ever know) followed by two weeks of televised sports. On the other hand, I'm not sure who to trust to get that done, and I worry that the effort will spoil the Olympics — and we'll end up a more fragmented world community than we are even now.

Thoughts? Help?

Legislatures

Making the impossible possible, and the irrational rational, since at least 1897.

Think of all the dorky "how many decimal points can you recite?" contests that this law could have averted. Oh, you mathematicians! [shaking fist]

Hypocrisy

There is a very interesting piece in the Boston Globe about political leaders and hypocrisy.  Perhaps there's nothing terribly earth-shattering, but it puts all the pieces together in a nice way.  I'm no fan of hypocrisy, but what if the alternative is really too much consistency (and therefore an inability to learn and change course as necessary) or too much simplicity?

For Romney, the illegal immigrants working for the landscaping company he hired seems completely irrelevant and reminiscent of AGs who were disqualified because they didn't pay social security tax on their housekeeper's pay.  And we all know what happens if you disqualify AGs on these grounds - you end up having to look at pictures of Janet Reno for years.

For Obama voting to provide funds for the Iraq war, this doesn't seem to be hypocrisy at all.  Being against the war shouldn't compel someone to cut off funding.  He was right on Iraq in the beginning, but he's not a moron.  Whether he wanted it this way or not, we are at war and we need to wage it effectively.

The hypocrisy accusations against Clinton seem more valid.  Initially for a bad war, but then against it when it's unpopular and we really need to keep fighting.  It seems like hypocrisy here, but it could just be consistently bad judgment, which would be even more troubling.

I don't know too much about McCain's positions on Bush's tax cuts.  Maybe he is a weasel and a hypocrite like the rest, but it seems like in the primaries you're going to get some inconsistency from everyone as they pander to the extremes of their respective parties.

Anyway, it's an interesting read.

Specter and Spygate: Feigned Outrage, To Be Sure

So two days before the New England Patriots play in the Super Bowl, Senator Arlen Specter (R, Pennsylvania) is demanding that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell explain why the League destroyed evidence relating to the "Spygate" scandal of earlier this year. To which I — no Boston fan, I emphasize — have to say, You've got to be kidding me. And I've got company in London's Globe and Mail.

You may remember in Week One of the NFL season, New York Jets head coach Eric Mangini complained that the Patriots had cameras trained on the Jets' sideline to record hand signals the Jets' coaching staff was making to players on the field. Goodell found that the Patriots had violated league rules, and he ruled the violation to be a flagrant one, because it came on the heels of an explicit directive the League had issued in a memorandum earlier in the week. Much teeth-gnashing and garment-rending followed. Pats head coach Bill Belichick tried to dismiss his team's violation as a simple misinterpretation of the rule. Players on other teams attributed playoff losses to the Patriots' cheating. There was much discussion of whether the use of cameras at issue here really confers a meaningful advantage, and of course there were a steady stream of excuses served up by callers to Boston sports radio on the order of "Come on — everybody does it." (As if Chuck from Quincy would be in a position to know . . .)

The Pats were docked a first-round draft pick and the League personally fined Belichick $500,000 — a non-negligible amount of money. A Jets fan filed a class action, claiming he and similarly situated football fans who bought tickets to Jets/Pats games were deprived of fairly-contested play and should get their money back. Oh, the outrage.

For those of us who could give a crap about pro football, the New York Jets, and the New England Patriots, the "Spygate" story was flatly uninteresting, much ado about nothing, a scandal hardly deserving of the "-gate" suffix that was so quickly attached to it.

But for those of us who find our sensibilities offended daily by the sad, silly personages who purportedly represent our interests in Congress — well, now we do have to dignify this subject matter, because over the past few years our earnest legislators in Washington have learned that they can score points with constituents by taking on organized sports.

First it was steroids in baseball — this is an ongoing matter of concern for the United States Congress, which holds Major League Baseball's exemption from the antitrust laws in its back pocket, so empowering it to haul the sport's august personages (and its Commissioner) into the Capitol for regular beratings.

Last year the hot topic was sports on television. As Opening Day approached and it became clearer that MLB's sale of exclusive Extra Innings programming rights to DirecTV would result in something close to a nationwide blackout of out-of-market baseball games, John Kerry got involved. Because of the NFL Network's ongoing negotiating beef with Big Cable TV, the Patriots' final regular season game against the Giants would have been available only to a limited audience. Pressure from Connecticut, Vermont, and Rhode Island Congressmen, along with a joint letter from Senators Specter and Patrick Leahy (D, Vermont), prompted Goodell to relent and make the game broadly available on the networks, so the nation could actually watch New England finish off a perfect 16-0 season.

Now Specter, citing his concerns for the "integrity" of pro football, is waving the NFL's antitrust exemption in the air, crying Look at me! Look at me! Let's put aside for just a minute whether the National Football League and Major League Baseball are comparable American "institutions." I recognize that people actually like to watch the NFL, and for the sake of argument I'll accept that point. But the gap in magnitude between the steroid scandal and Spygate is dramatic. For starters, steroids are controlled substances under federal law. Second, we gather that the use of steroids in baseball was so pervasive as to severely threaten the health of players, distort the outcomes of games, and destroy the sport's hallowed record book. Third, there is abundant evidence to suggest that team owners and league officials willfully turned a blind eye to the scandal, notwithstanding the abundant violations of federal law and the enduring threat to the integrity of the game.

Spygate is a simple instance of one team cheating, arguably to no substantial advantage. This is not a matter in which the Commissioner's Office was complicit, by commission or omission: Goodell absolutely hammered the perpetrators. The Giants stole signs down the stretch in their historic overtaking of the Dodgers in 1951. Gaylord Perry threw spitballs. Sammy Sosa and Albert Belle corked their bats. Bill Laimbeer played dirty. All that sucks. Now is it Congress's business? Humph and hardly.

I wrote to friends a couple weeks ago about my ambivalence on Congress's involvement with the steroids issue:

I'm of two minds about this. For starters, Congress is pathetic. They're not only venal, self-absorbed, and perspectiveless — they're lazy. They slap together a rewrite of the federal government's surveillance powers at the last minute so they can go on vacation — no worries, they tell us: the law only applies for six months. By then they'll have their act together. Right. And these jackasses yesterday couldn't even be bothered to know anything about the subject matter of their questioning. It's real easy to criticize Bud Selig, but it's even easier to pronounce his frickin' last name correctly. So I'm with you on one score, Mark: when you consider how seriously Congress takes its time off and how not-seriously it takes it work hours . . . well, yes, it demonstrates a bit of a priority gap for them to preoccupy themselves with hearings like this. To be fair, though, it's just one committee. I believe they do it because feigning outrage and abusing people while they're under oath is what they're good at. It gets them in front of cameras and allows them to perform. Of course, it also reveals many of them to be jackasses when they arrive utterly unprepared and then participate anyway — any one of us would be fired from our jobs if we didn't bother to prepare ourselves for work.

* * *

But I agree with Bob, too: this is a situation that Congress is peculiarly situated to help solve. MLB had absolutely no interest in policing itself until players were called to testify back in 2004. Once McGwire and Sosa humiliated themselves and the sport before Congress, the union and the league and commissioner's offices finally got on the same page and implemented an aggressive testing policy. Congress does its worst when it legislates, to be sure, but it does its best when it threatens to legislate — any institution with half a brain will walk through fire to avoid letting these bumbling idiots get their hands on it. Congress has a hook here: the antitrust exemption it's given baseball in light of its status as the national pastime. It can regulate if it wants to. Nobody wants that to happen. So calling the bad actors and nonactors to the carpet here isn't the worst idea in the world.

I know you don't think much of the sport, but baseball is an important part of our national heritage, and a lot of people in this country care about it. If [Congress] can make some noise at the last minute and help prompt the NFL to show the Patriots-Giants game to a national audience — because it expects to be historic — then certainly this is within the purview of Congress, if not its very limited range of competence.

To that I don't have much to add, except that we shouldn't be surprised that our Congressmen continue to stick their noses deeper and deeper into organized sports. It's really the perfect subject matter for them: (1) sports inflames the passions of Americans, so with sports you're assured of appealing to voters' most deeply-held beliefs (as opposed to appeals about the genocide in Darfur, which are just boring); (2) big, contemptible monied interests are involved, so you can call people in for hearings and humiliate them to general applause; and (3) the stakes are hardly life-and-death, as in the larger scheme of things, sports are meaningless — so there is no great importance in solving the problem or appearing to manage it competently.

So go get Roger Goodell, Senator Specter. Because, as you say, Goodell's exercise of discretion as Commissioner of the NFL to destroy the Spygate tapes really is "analogous [to] the CIA destruction of tapes" of its pressure-based interrogations.

Steroid Social Network

Another link from Slate (I know, I know — I need more diverse reading habits): this one posts Adam Perer and Chris Wilson's "social network" drawing, based on George Mitchell's report on steroid use in baseball.

It's interesting, but woefully incomplete. I'd like to see this network expanded to include information on the BALCO investigation and the accusations leveled by Canseco in his book. For example, Miguel Tejada is given a "green" label indicating that he was a peripheral player with "four degrees of separation" from core distributor Kirk Radomski. But we know as well that Rafael Palmeiro (not named in the Mitchell Report) tested positive, and that Palmeiro insisted he never knowingly took PEDs — but he had recently been given a Vitamin B-12 shot by Tejada.

We also know that Tejada's career took off in Oakland, where it all started, with the Bash Brothers. Canseco openly admits his steroid use (and is now capitalizing on it with his periodic exposés — another will hit the shelves on Opening Day) and named Mark McGwire as a partner in crime. Jason Giambi, another admitted user, started his career with the Athletics and shared a dugout with McGwire. Later in his career — after he tapped into BALCO's product offerings — Giambi played with Tejada in Oakland. Canseco went on to Texas, where he says he introduced Palmeiro to steroids.

George Mitchell should be credited for the diligence and integrity he showed in preparing his report, but let's call it what it is: a biopsy report. Mitchell found a malignant piece of tissue, he put it under a microscope, and he reviewed the hell out of it. What he didn't do was go rooting around for every lesion, every suspicious growth, every cancer cell. He worked with the sources he had, and his rigorous standards of proof would not admit every shred of rumor or innuendo (there's legal liability to consider, for crying out loud). I'm guessing a lot of players heaved sighs of relief when the report came out and their names weren't mentioned.

If this much wasn't apparent from the report itself — to be sure, when a guy produces 409 pages of fact reporting and analysis, it gives the impression of an exhaustive search — the social network drawing makes it quite clear. When I look at the Slate drawing, I can't help but think there's a much larger, integrated work lurking out there beyond its margins, and we've only managed to turn the flashlight on this small section.

It's doubtful we'll ever get to see that full picture of the "steroid social network," so we can authoritatively and completely track the PED diaspora in baseball. There is, however, more information out there than has been found to meet the George Mitchell Gold Standard for reliability. It would be interesting to see a network that takes account of the data we have and includes Canseco, McGwire, Palmeiro, Barry Bonds, Greg Anderson, and Victor Conte — for starters.

So Mr. Perer, Mr. Wilson, get back to work!

Feds Preempted State Efforts To . . . Er, Preempt Subprime Mortgage Crisis

So says Nicholas Bagley at Slate. States like Georgia, New Mexico, and New York passed legislation that would have subdued the market in subprime mortgages, but a federal agency, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which apparently draws its operating budgets from banks — and is therefore, in Bagley's eyes, unduly beholden to their interests — wrote regulations preempting these laws.

I'm not sure what to take from this.

There's much to be said for the states serving as "laboratories of democracy," that is, for state governments enjoying the authority to test out legislative solutions within their own borders. Varying state laws will produce varying results that can in turn inform public policy at the national level — or even among the states, as they look to one another for effective solutions to social ills. Massachusetts, for example, is a "laboratory" for mandatory-subscription universal health care. And we'll see how it goes. California hopes to impose its own program to alleviate or limit global warming. If the legislation isn't held preempted by federal law, we'll see where that goes, too.

The state-as-laboratory theory can't be absolute, however, because if 50 states pass 50 laws, companies that do business across the nation have to answer to 50 different legal standards, some of which may impose conflicting obligations. So there is a virtue as well to writing laws at the national level.

That's the backdrop to all this, and I suppose Bagley would conclude that the subprime crisis supplies a classic example of why certain matters ought to be left to the states. I've argued that this is all well and good, but that state governments have atrophied over the years — principally because all the action is happening at the federal level. State legislators are hacks; if they aren't, they're treating their jobs as stepping stones to something better. And legislation isn't the beginning and end of the matter: state legislation is interpreted and applied in state courts, and please, oh please don't ever get me started on the quality and dedication of state court judges. So Mr. Bagley will have to pardon my cynicism on this score: he himself writes that the AARP — a lobbying group — basically wrote the pioneering subprime regulations in Georgia. In retrospect, the AARP and the legislators it owns in Georgia (if they're writing laws there, just imagine who's running the show in Florida) may have had the right answer. But it's not the AARP's job to consider the long-term effects of subprime mortgages on the larger economy and the global financial markets, is it? My guess is Georgia got it right, in retrospect and by accident. This doesn't make me more confident in the ability of states to solve the nation's problems — except that maybe because there are so many of them, it's statistically more likely that one or more might stumble upon a right answer. But I suppose it's encouraging that at least three other states adopted Georgia's solution. Color me equivocal, then.

Which brings us to the federal government. Another "preemptive" strike, another disaster. Score it! Clearly it's far from optimal to have bankers so peculiarly positioned to dictate federal preemption legislation. One would hope the OCC would be more independent than it is. And there's the obvious irony that the OCC apparently made its case to The Federalist Society. One wonders how the OCC's position was received there: did it meet catcalls from the purported "states rights" folk in the Society, or did the Federalists nod agreeably, understanding as all good conservatives do that what is good for the short-term interest of the nation's banks must be good for America?

Humph.

Another Reason (I Don't Count Them) Why I Am Scornful of Michigan

Rich kid gets richer, ditches Michigan. Then he comes back as more of a prodigal son than a native son, except unlike in the parable, he's asking for something, and he's copping a 'tude. He blames Washington, D.C. for the state's economic malaise, and Republican Michiganders, no doubt admiring his lush head of hair (as seen in minutely television commercials), hail him "the victor" in the state's Presidential primary.

Hey Mitt: I suppose it's Beltway Politics, too, that are responsible for the Wolverines losing four straight to my Buckeyes?

You big dork.

Here's a Hint, TSA

When the Department of Justice has paid for a guy's plane ticket, he's probably not a guy you need to subject to additional security scanning.

Honestly — what the hell kind of profiling is that?

Anyway, more on this trip tomorrow.