As I read the ongoing coverage of Obama’s “big win” on Tuesday and the epitaphs being written on behalf of the Clinton campaign, I can’t help but think that one of the many things that has plagued the Clinton effort is that it seems to suffer from a bad case of “inside the beltway” disease. It’s a disease that’s echoed in the analysis that so many pundits are now engaging in.

Let’s take Obama’s “big win” in North Carolina. That “big win” expanded his lead by 17 additional delegates. Really…that’s not alot. Ms. Clinton’s “big win” in Pennsylvania let her pick up 12 delegates more than Obama. Ohio gave her an 11 delegate advantage. Texas let her gain ground…by giving her 4 more delegates than Obama won. So, in the last three “big” wins for the Clinton campaign she inched a total of 27 delegates closer to catching Obama. These are not “big” shifts in the delegate mathematics. The press, because it’s more fun and dramatic and sells more papers, talks about primaries and caucuses as if they are winner-take-all battles. On the Democratic side they aren’t. It ain’t like the electoral college. Mr. Obama’s campaign showed an awareness of this, Ms. Clinton’s…until very late in the game…did not.

Hillary paid alot to high profile strategists who, I think, have not served her terribly well. It was as if they were running a campaign based on the electoral college. “We won Pennsylvania!” is a much more exciting battle cry than “we got marginally closer but not enough to matter!” If you look at the Clinton strategy, it was to focus resources heavily on winning big states with fat delegate counts. And, to an impressive degree, they succeeded. But they did so at the price of not just “losing” the small primaries and all the caucus states, the lost them by more than they had to. Until late March, the Clinton campaign essentially ignored those small states. They didn’t set up much in the way of campaign machines in them, they made token appearances, they stayed off of TV and (because of the few appearances and missing machines) out of the press compared to the Obama campaign. Right now, if you average out the difference between Obama’s and Clinton’s pledged delegate counts, it works out an advantage by Obama of just under 3 delegates per contest. If they had played to minimize the losses in smaller contests instead of only maximizing the wins in big ones…this would be a very different race.

Ms. Clinton’s campaign never seemed to grasp that a loss wasn’t a total loss and a win wasn’t a total win. Take her “big” win in Pennsylvania. Three months ago the thought that Barack Obama could capture 45% of the popular vote there was laughable. He still campaigned hard and spent a ton of money.  He tried to minimize the loss. The net? Hillary gaining on him by a total of 12 delegates given the number of contests left at that time and his lead was trivial. Yeah, yeah, yeah…I know…the pundits will tell you that it signaled this or that or whatever and Obama was on the ropes and blahblahblah. But it seems to me that the Obama camp (wisely) ignored those histrionics and kept doing the arithmetic and came to the correct conclusion that they were still winning and didn’t need to panic. Given how far behind she was in the pledged delegate count, Hillary’s net gain of 12 delegates in Pennsylvania, in April, towards the end of the primary season was the equivalent of a football team being down by 17 points with 3 minutes left and scoring a field goal…yeah…they needed it…but it really didn’t change alot.

I’ve been listening to talking heads from the Clinton camp say silly things like…”if this were winner-take-all like it is for the Republicans Hillary would be winning”. Well…yeah. She would be. But it isn’t winner take all. It was never winner take all. It’s never been winner take all. So that lament is, to me, a huge indictment of the campaign. It is saying, obliquely, “we didn’t pay attention to the rules”. Which is cool, I guess. But at that point your only hope is that your opponent drinks the same Kool-aid as you. And in this case, he didn’t.

Here’s an interesting li’l tidbit from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (for reasons I don’t understand when I tried to put the link in I kept blowing up this post).

H.J. Heinz Co. plans to close a plant in Dallas next month, affecting nearly 200 employees. The Pittsburgh-based food company says work now done at the plant will be transferred to Heinz facilities in Mason, Ohio, Jacksonville, Fla., and Chatsworth, Calif.

The reason I bring this up is that here in Minnesota (and happening in states all over this great land) the righties in the state legislature have an annual drama-fest over “lower the corporate tax rate! lower the corporate tax rate! Businesses leaving! Can’t compete! blahblahblah”. In the case of Heinz, I don’t know why they decided to consolidate operations and shut down one of their four plants. I do know that corporate tax rates weren’t the reason. In fact, if you read about consolidations taking place and the reasons for choosing one state over another, etc…the one thing that rarely comes up, and when it does it’s way down the list, is the corporate tax rate. In this instance I know, unequivocally, that it wasn’t the corporate tax rate. How, you ask? ‘Cause California is a high tax state, Ohio is medium-high, and Florida is generally low. And Texas? The state they left? The “we’re a damn tax-haven state so come bring your biness (Texan for business) here” state. It hasn’t got a fucking corporate tax rate (okay, okay…it has a thing that’s called a Franchise tax but it’s full of loopholes and even when applied it’s roughly 3x lower than Florida’s low ass rate).

So, righties in the legislature, shut the hell up. Stop selling the theory that the corporate tax rate leads to decreased business investment. Bring me data…not anecdotal examples…but solid data.

I issue this challenge with great confidence. ‘Cause their ain’t no data to support it. Sure, you could set the rate so high that businesses would bail. Absolutely. But the tax rates that currently exist in this state, high as they are, show zero…ZERO…correlation to corporations exiting the state or cutting back on operations within it.

The TV just told me that Hil’ry is gonna “take on OPEC”. She’s gonna “break them up” apparently by filing an action with the WTO. Yup…the working mom ($120MM income in the last few years) is gonna save the working class ’cause she knows what it’s like to struggle (rich daddy paid her room, board, and tuition but nothing more when she was in college so if she wanted “a cup of coffee” she had to go work) and she knows who the bad guys iz (those damn A-rabs - just like George Bush sez).

She ain’t stupid. She knows that filing an action with the WTO is going to accomplish nothing. She knows the OPEC nations will simply ignore it. She knows she can’t get the gas-tax holiday passed and she knows it would be a policy that would do absolutely nothing to help anyone. She knows she’s promising things she can’t deliver and, more important, that she doesn’t want to deliver. She also knows there’s an opportunity to use that false populism to keep the race tight so that after the primaries she can win over a bunch of superdelegates.

And the most alarming thing judging from recent polls is this shit it working. In the same way that a rich guy (Prezzz Bush) recast himself as a good ol’ boy a few years back and got the shit-kicker vote to carry him home to the White House.
Jesus…are we really this stupid?

Here on the eve of the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, the haggling of the candidates over Hillary’s genius “gas-tax holiday” strategy…genius in the “I’ll do anything to win” sense, spectacularly stupid as policy. You can bet your life that oil companies, knowing that consumers will pay the current price, will just raise the damn price up to the current levels as soon as the tax is rolled back. Duh.

Anyway, it got me to thinking about inflation. Kevin Phillips has an interesting piece in Harper’s this month. I like Harper’s because I often read things that remind me of things I learned back in econ school that blew my socks off. Here’s the reminder I got from the Phillips piece…

All the inflation numbers you read in the paper are total, utter horseshit.

First, you will always read that the CPI, excluding food and energy, is blahblahblah. Food and energy are taken out because they are volatile. Meaning, they cause the inflation rate to jump and fall. Because…um…they represent huge expenditures for each and every household. Think about that for a moment. Taking out food and energy from inflation is the logical equivalent of taking inflation out of inflation. As an example, between March 2007 and March 2008 the “core” inflation rate (inflation minus food and energy) was 2.4%. Don’t seem so bad. But the inflation rate on food was 4.5% and on energy a whopping 17%, making for an inflation rate with food and energy of 4% and rising.

But wait, there’s more…

Due to numbers cooking by Ronnie Raygun (with ongoing assistance from Bush the first and Bill Clinton) our inflation numbers have been cooked even farther. If you want to see how much, check out Shadowstats.com. The long and short of it is that the inflation rate, if we still measured it the way we did in 1992 (which means reporting core inflation without food or energy) isn’t 4%…it’s about 7.3%. What does that mean? It means that social security payments are far too low. It means that real GDP is grossly over-calculate. It means that your buying power ain’t shit and hasn’t been for awhile.

So…if you were wondering why the inflation numbers don’t match up with your personal experience…it’s because on a bipartisan basis we’ve been cooking the books for years.

I am getting more worried about this man by the day. And not just because he apparently calls his wife names and has that slightly disturbing anger problem.

Fareed Zakaria on the speech McCain gave on Foreign Policy last week:

On March 26, McCain gave a speech on foreign policy in Los Angeles that was billed as his most comprehensive statement on the subject. It contained within it the most radical idea put forward by a major candidate for the presidency in 25 years. Yet almost no one noticed.

In his speech McCain proposed that the United States expel Russia from the G8, the group of advanced industrial countries. Moscow was included in this body in the 1990s to recognize and reward it for peacefully ending the cold war on Western terms, dismantling the Soviet empire and withdrawing from large chunks of the old Russian Empire as well. McCain also proposed that the United States should expand the G8 by taking in India and Brazil—but pointedly excluded China from the councils of power.

Holy buckets.

I just hope he doesn’t kick the wrong country out accidentally:

Posted another one of my longer essays (too long to post here, I think), this one about the left-wing religious movement. Those interested can check it out over at Libertarian Rage.

Becuase they’re saying what the Clintonistas want them to say…

The Huffington Post has an article about how some—well, two—Iwo Jima vets are all upset that the raising-the-flag picture has been used by Time for a cover on global warming:

“It’s an absolute disgrace,” Mates said. “Whoever did it is going to hell. That’s a mortal sin. God forbid he runs into a Marine that was an Iwo Jima survivor.”

…

“The second world war we knew was there,” Mates said. “There’s a big discussion. Some say there is global warming, some say there isn’t. And to stick a tree in place of a flag on the Iwo Jima picture is just sacrilegious.”

I find it terribly curious—disturbing, really—that this man describes something he  perceives as a slight against him as “a mortal sin,” “sacrilegious” and that the person who did it is “going to hell.”

I think it’s clear: We should be not just appreciative of these men and women—the Greatest Generation, the military, whatever—but we should worship them as the living gods they are.

It should no longer be shocking that the Greatest Generation—Those Great Souls Who Through the Largeness of Themselves Saved Us and Made Europe Safe for Speaking English—spawned the self-important, barely tolerable Baby Boomers. The Clintonian and Bushian apples don’t fall very far from the Nixonian tree.

Okay, so Natascha and I were having sushi instead of watching the—apparently, very, very stupid and insulting—ABCNews debate.

I’ve decided that I’m no longer going to live my life as if Hillary Clinton could win the Democratic nomination. That is, I am going to relax for a while, until my deep-seated fear of the American elite’s provincialism becomes unavoidable during the DNC and I have to confront it, here, again. And, yes, it should be painfully obvious in the last week that the coastal cosmopolitans are the most fucking provincial sons of bitches in this entire country… Which doesn’t really surprise me, of course, because I’ve spent enough time with people who have advanced degrees and, really, all it does is make them really good at saying “A=A” except that “A” is defined as some sort of postmodernist identity cocoon from which no pupae can survive. (That’s a joke about racial constructs, just in case you were wondering. ¡Arriba!)

That is, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes people can actually think coherently regardless of the restraints placed on them by genitalia, melanin, region, income and gun ownership status. I know this is probably shocking to many academics and journalists. But, alas, it is true, and just because you read James Brooks’s books ironically doesn’t mean they’re not damaging your behavior.

ANNNNYWAY, apart from giving Barack Obama $20 whenever I can, I’ve decided I’m going to completely check out of the entire political process and have Japanese food with my friends from time to time.

Because, let’s face it, when you’re being insulted by George Stephanopolous on a regular basis—as, I feel, the vast majority of the non-punditocratic American population has been recently, not least of all this evening—sometimes you just have to just change the channel.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force is better than the Sunday talk shows, anyway. And certainly a lot less surreal.

So a while ago I read the novel “Empire” by Orson Scott Card. I’m a fan of his fiction, less so of his political writing — frankly, I think he’s off his rocker most of the time, and obnoxiously dismissive of anyone who disagrees with him, although he will occasionally startle me with a well-reasoned and fairly-argued point about a controversial issue. So I was looking forward to this one, not least because its premise — a civil war breaking out in the contemporary United States — is an interesting one to me.

It’s appallingly bad.

Leaving its politics aside, its literary qualities are pure camp, played with an absolutely unironic intensity. Its heroes are all unflinching, steely-eyed, square-jawed military men; its villains cringing, conniving academics plotting the overthrow of the free world. The prose is riddled with intrusive editorials from his blog. It’s almost impossible to believe that this emerged from the same mind that created the tales of Alvin Maker — stories about a group of men and women trying to stop a civil war that are thoughtful, layered, and inventive. Seriously. This reads like one of Stephen Colbert’s Tek Jansen novels, only it’s not a parody.

I suspect that all of these issues are symptomatic of an underlying conceptual problem. The basic argument of the book is as follows: that all of the moderates need to get together and stop arguing, or the extremist wackos will break us apart. On its face, this seems like a reasonable position, and echoes one that I’ve been hearing in political discourse for a while. The problem is that it’s bullshit. Read his work closely, and his definitions become a bit less opaque. Do you support homosexual marriage? Then you’re a wacko! Do you oppose the occupation of Iraq? Then you’re a wacko! And pretty soon, it becomes clear that the real argument of the book reads thus: that all of the moderates (people who think what I do) need to get together and stop arguing, or the extremist wackos (everyone who disagrees with me) will break us apart.

It’s a rhetorical trick — six of one, half a dozen of the other. For that matter, I have a hard time seeing the virtue of moderation as a guiding moral principle, period. Sure, you can look around you and draw up an average of the opinions of everyone within your political boundaries — and I guess that would make you a moderate, if such a thing is to be desired — but in nearly every other place and time in human history, you’ll be a raving extremist. You believe in representative government? Guess what? In the context of most other civilizations throughout time, you’re a wacko. I know that it’s an extreme example. but if you were a moderate in Nazi Germany, I wouldn’t want to know you. What’s to be gained by seeking a middle position between two morally untenable ones? The founding fathers weren’t seeking a reasonable middle position, and they were quite openly contemptuous of those who did. This guy sure as hell wasn’t a moderate about anything.

After I spoke at my Republican caucus, I was followed by a man who stood up and asserted that “an election is not the time to assume a moral position.” Buh? Then when is the appropriate time? When there’s nothing at stake? When there’s nothing to be either gained or lost by espousing a principle?

I’m annoyed with myself, because I’ve been so hesitant to support Ron Paul. For a number of reasons. He seems too good to be true, for one thing, and I’ve been burned by politicians before — the last time I was this enthusiastic about a politician was Bill Clinton in 1996. (Which, I suppose, demonstrates how far my politics have swung in the past decade.) For another, I’m embarrassed to be playing to type, to be so utterly predictable. A fellow playwright asked me who I was supporting a couple of weeks back, then cut me off before I could respond: “Oh, you’re a libertarian. You’re just going to be supporting Ron Paul.”

So yeah, I’m annoyed with myself. Not because I haven’t been shoving my opinions down people’s throats (like, I’m afraid, so many other Ron Paul supporters have been doing), but because I’ve been squatting over my enthusiasm for him, stammering and changing the subject even when people ask me point blank who I like in the race — when I’m faced with the most exciting political candidate I’ve seen in my lifetime. In a way, that’s why I’m pleased to see the success of Obama’s candidacy, despite my profound dislike for his policies — that someone has the opportunity to support a candidate that they can believe in. Lord knows the Republicans don’t. When presented with the options, they chose the path of political expediency.

And if that’s the voice of moderation, then I’ll none of it. If there’s a basic argument to what I’m trying to say, it reads thus: that all of the extremists need to keep arguing…

…before the self-styled moderates find a way to pull us together.

Hey, y’all.

Forty years ago today Martin Luther King was gunned down.

Trying to write something about it…to explain the hit our nation took that day…somehow lessens that statement. So, I’ll just say it again…

Forty years ago today Martin Luther King was gunned down.

CNN has a roundup of possible John McCain running mates. WARNING: NOT SAFE FOR WORK.

Okay, so we all know about Gov. Timmy “Aw Shucks” Pawlenty and how he stomps his widdle foots whenever the big, bad DFL tries to save the budget from his super-duper veto pen. But look at who is competition is for prettiest girl in the class! Bobby Jindal. Tom Ridge. John Thune. Steve Forbes…

Haley Barbour.

That’s right. We could be staring down a McCain-Barbour ticket. Which would be the clearest way of the GOP saying, “We’re a bunch of sweaty, fat old men who have survived the glories of battle and we have nothing for contempt for you abnormal ingrates, AND YOU WILL FUCKING LIKE IT.”

Which certainly hasn’t not worked for the Grand Old Party as of late.

Dear Gavin,

Can’t resist the pie fight.

The Strib put side by side today two opinion pieces the placement of which, I assume, was not coincidental. If it was coincidental, I hope the paper is smart enough not to cop to it. It was a beautiful little piece of irony. One, by E.J. Dionne, rails against the excesses of capitalism. The other, by Margo Thorning, rails against the excesses of regulation. Probably worth reading. More important, it provides a wonderful side-by-side comparison of two very different political philosophies. In the interest of full disclosure up front I loathe Ms. Thorning’s organization (more below) and all it stands for. At the same time, E.J. Dionne’s apparently unlimited supply of blood – he bleeds for everyone, everywhere – and generally poor grasp of economics annoys the shit out of me (I think he gets it more or less right in the piece referred to here…which makes me take a long, hard look at my own belief system ‘cause, really, the guy blows).

With the fall of Bear, Stearns and the government bailout via the subsidized buyout of Bear by Morgan, we see the logical conclusion of the deregulation fever that started in the late 70’s. That is, the ever decreasing regulation of capital markets in particular (and everything in general) leading to an outcome that we’ve seen before…in the late 1920’s and 30’s, and the various and several recessions/depressions that preceded the big magilla. Capitalism, with too much freedom, will drive itself off a cliff. Does it every time. The great capitalist voice, Adam Smith (hell of a guy, hell of a philosophy, hellaciously misunderstood by his proponents today), knew that markets have to have rules. Rules are also known by a less popular name…regulations.

[Read more →]

(Bill says: I hope that fixed it. If so disregard my comment.)

I really hope that this is not the video that they will play in 50 years or so when they talk about the big crash of 2008 in Economics 101:

Bush was joking about “interesting times” in his speech to the Economic Club of New York on March 14, while down the street Bear Stearns was drawing its last breaths, sending out worldwide financial shock waves. Some people were comparing him to Hoover today, who promised that prosperity was around the corner right as things turned pitch black during the Great Depression. But Hoover at least tried to change things for the better after he saw that laissez-faire the Invisible Hand didn’t quite cut it. Too little, too late, I know, but still.

We, however, are dealing with the same president who sat out Katrina, playing the guitar at a fundraiser.

No dam this time.

James McGreevey and his wife were having ménages-à-trois since at least 1999. With a boy.

So maybe Dina Matos McGreevey isn’t much a martyr after all.

The New Republic has a very useful take on the last few weeks. To sum, Barack Obama is winning because he’s cool.

I totally agree.

Also, this is about as funny and accurate as political pundicy gets:

[I]f Obama were white, the Democratic nomination would be over—and … if Hillary were black, she’d be Star Jones, and that if she were a black male, she’d be mayor of Detroit

First it was that no one would campaign in Florida and Michigan because their state parties ignored the national rules. Now their delegates should be seated. Then it was that—apparently—a white lady would have, one presumed, an easier time running for president than a black man. But now… that things aren’t going so well…

Well, Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has the smartest readers on Earth, and they found this tidbit from a December ‘06 New York Times article:

“I think it’s more realistic for a woman [to become president] than it is for an African-American,” said Ms. [Geraldine] Ferraro. “There is a certain amount of racism that exists in the United States — whether it’s conscious or not it’s true.”

“Women are 51 percent of the population,” she added.

Heh.

Also, please (in the next few days) keep in mind that, despite protests to the contrary, Barack Obama and his campaign have never, ever called anyone “racist.” “Ridiculous,” yes. But they have yet to utter the word racist—nor do I think they ever will.

Me? Barack Obama is a much bigger man than I am—and much more temperate. And I’m not above saying that—despite the fact that many of Clinton’s supports are, in fact, Benevolent White Liberals Who Have Fought For Solutions—the Clintons and their supporters are also, in my view, either racist or are willing to benefit from underlying racism.

So, you know: To hell with them.

Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let’s address reality and the problems we’re facing in this world, you’re accused of being racist, so you have to shut up.

White man’s—or, sorry, woman’s burden is such a (pardon my French) bitch, ain’t it, Geraldine?

Okay, so in Hillary Clinton, we have a woman who is trying to pass off being married as an accomplishment (there, I said it…) sending her surrogates out into the world, accusing her opponent of not addressing reality? You mean, like the reality of the Defense of Marriage Act? The reality of Hillarycare delaying universal health care for 15 years? The reality of passing off having tea as bringing peace to Northern Ireland? Like the reality of saying your “leadership” matters, when all your leadership has been is “raising awareness” at best and being consumed by a white-hot ball of failure at worst?

Hillary Clinton is serious. And Johnny Knoxville is worthy of a Palme d’Or.