SDP Jazz Note: Lee Konitz and the perfect poetry of bop

Jazz is to popular music what poetry is to popular writing, which is to say, unpopular.  Neither the consumers of the one or the other have ever constituted more than a sliver of the public.  Part of the reason is that both make great demands on the audience.  U.S. Poet laureate Joseph Brodsky argued that poetry is the most perfect literary form because it says what it says in the most efficient way possible.  Consider one of my favorite poems, by A.E. Houseman:

Stars,I have seen them fall,
But when they drop and die
No star is lost at all
From all the star-sown sky.
The toil of all that be
Helps not the primal fault;
It rains into the sea,
And still the sea is salt.

The reader has to see through the poem to recognize that it is about inertia, something that is perfectly beautiful precisely because it is terrible: it makes human life possible, in all its beauty and wonder, and dooms us at the same time. That truth and two unforgettable images, is a lot to squeeze into 44 words.

Brilliant jazz works simultaneously in two directions.  It takes a basic melody and plays all around it, expanding the melody along any number of chordal and modal dimensions.  Every drop of passion and conception is teased out.  But it also works by leaving things out.  What is not played is as important as what is played, and hints abound.  It's easy to get carried away, and a lot of modern jazz is incomprehensible to me.  But perhaps it is just too demanding. 

I have been listening to Lee Konitz, an alto sax player of consummate genius.  Konitz's music is not background music.  You have to listen to it attentively.  But if  you do, the rewards are awesome.  I  recommend Alone Together, with pianist Brad Mehldau and bass player Charlie Haden. Slightly more demanding is his Duets,  a series of encounters with jazz guitarist Jim Hall, tenor player Joe Henderson, trombonist Marshall Brown, and others.  Every Konitz number is a perfect poem, efficiently mapping out  previously unexplored corridors of the human soul.

For a quick taste, try this clip at Daily Motion.  Konitz joins his long time collaborator, Warne Marsh. 

New SD Blog

Visit the Black Hills Travel Blog, which will be updated six times a week with stories, personal travel experiences, site profiles, and tips written by Black Hills residents and travelers. 

Teen Pregnancy and Welfare Reform 3

I have received some interesting and thoughtful comments on this topic.  You can read the first two posts here and here.  The question is the causal connection, if any, between the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, and the fact that teen pregnancy rates in D.C. plummeted after 1996.  See The Washington Post's Susan Levine for the story. 

The District [of Columbia] has accomplished dramatic improvement. In 1996, its pregnancy rate for the same age group was 164.5 per 1,000. Appalled by the triple digits, a coalition of nonprofit groups and city agencies began reaching out to various communities, holding public discussions and trying to teach parents how to talk to their children about love, sex and relationships.  ...Advocates vowed to reduce the rate to the mid-70s by 2005. Instead, as statistics released this month show, it plunged to 64.4.

Ms. Levine fails to mention welfare reform in her story about the plunging pregnancy rates, but I think the two are obviously connected.  My interlocutors do not.  Josh puts it this way:

I just doubt that the newly passed welfare reform was in the minds of teenage girls when they made the decision to have unprotected sex. I do not doubt that Dr. Blanchard might have had thoughts on federal policy in his head prior to his first sexual encounter, but he is a wise man and probably the exception. Nonetheless, my personal experience going to an alternative high school that provided childcare, a service many students used, the welfare reform act was far from the minds of the teen parents I knew.

Just because teenage girls make decisions that Josh and I would not recommend doesn't mean they are incapable of rationality. Babies are cute, and they bring with them a certain status and source of self-esteem along with the welfare check.  Besides, very rare is the person who depends solely on our his or her own reason  to navigate life.  When we decide whether to marry or just shack up, whether to have kids at all, whether to buy health insurance, we pick up clues from our family and peers.  A teen women living in a household and neighborhood where pregnancy early and out of wedlock is the norm is more likely to become pregnant than if she were living in different circumstances.   The notion that young women are making decisions in isolation from the larger culture is surely a mistake.

When Aid to Families with Dependent Children became Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, that was a big change in the revenue stream flowing to the post-60's welfare society.  Before that act, welfare was an entitlement.  Anyone who qualified got the assistance for as long as she qualified. After that, there was a strict limit (I believe of five years).  I submit that this would have ripple effects all through the local culture.  Teen women were capable, I suppose, of noticing when a bun in the oven was not as happy an event as it used to be.

Josh is quite right to point out that the correlation of welfare reform and pregnancy rate decline does not prove causation.

I am reminded of a statics lesson on spuriousness. Ice cream sales are highly correlated with rape. Does that mean that the increased distribution of ice cream causes incidents of rape? No, we would be better served to look for a third event correlated with both events, which might better serve as a cause for the correlations. For the case of ice cream and rape, the summer heat might be a good start.

When government pays folks a lot less to do something, and they start doing a lot less of it, that isn't exactly like ice cream and rape. It's a lot more like sunshine and snowmen.  The causal force looks pretty obvious.  But Josh thinks there is another explanation.

In the case of teenage pregnancy, perhaps we should look at the 50 million dollars per year that the 1996 bill included for abstinence programs.

East River makes the same point:

You neglected to mention one of the key factors the article points to: better access to and education about contraception. "Most studies give more credit to teens' greater use of condoms and other protection and the wider array of options available to them, including such long-acting choices as the birth control patch. Calvert County makes contraception accessible to girls at its family planning clinics for no charge and, except in rare cases, no questions. The approach might explain why the teen birthrate there fell 46 percent by 2005."

Well it might, were it not for the fact that abstinence programs and family planning clinics were nothing new in 1996.  Calvert County, Maryland, had been doing what East River remarks on for some time before that, and the teen pregnancy continued to skyrocket.  Government sponsored abstinence programs had generally proven to be very ineffective, at least before 96.  Why did all these programs suddenly start working after 1996?

Moreover, the teen pregnancy rate began to decline, after decades of alarming increase, in all states after 96.  Did every state in the Union suddenly figure out how to discourage teen women  from having babies, and just suddenly and universally apply this knowledge? And this, despite the fact that these teens are, as my interlocutors suppose, incapable of weighing the consequences of their decisions?  Is it not more plausible that it was a change in national policy, over which the states had minimal control, that achieved national results?

Jamie sends me this note:

As a former example of a "teen pregnancy", I can assure you that previous to the act which catapulted me into that position, I spent absolutely zero time considering whether I would qualify for welfare. I would venture to say the large percentage of teenage mothers do not "plot" their pregnancies. A better guess as to the cause of the decline, I think, might be greater access to sex ed. or even information in general. With the stigma toward sex falling down around us, young people are much more likely to have information available to them that helps in avoiding teen pregnancy.

I am sure Jamie is right that most do not "plot" their futures, but clearly young women are more or less likely to become pregnant in different circumstances.  The numbers are a response to something.  The "stigma toward sex" that Jamie speaks of began to fall in the 1950's.   The sexual revolution happened in the sixties, not when Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House.  If information about and access to contraception became readily available only after 1996, well, that is a big story, and one nobody has heard about until now. 

The commenters all want to argue that the one big thing that changed in 1996 was a mere coincidence.  I see no reason that that is plausible.  I don't deny that the social programs they point to are part of the story.  But we need an explanation for why, after decades of failure, they started working in the mid-nineties.  Nor do I think that Welfare Reform was the only "big factor" in the change.  It looks like the teen pregnancy rate began to fall off in a lot of places just before Welfare Reform.  It also seems that pregnancy rates have also begun to decline in Canada.  Most likely, welfare culture was poised to change in the last decade.  Moreover, I suspect that the economic effects of welfare reform were powerful, but secondary; more important was the unambiguous message (changes in monetary incentives are the most effective medium of information) that American society was no longer going to subsidize certain kinds of behavior.  Either way, it seems silly to deny that Welfare Reform was a factor a dramatic change in teen pregnancy rates.

I am grateful to those who posted comments for this exchange. 

Political Clippings

Here's some political happenings regarding South Dakota and the region:

On Monday, the Senate will convene at 2 p.m. to discuss HR 2419, the Farm Bill Extension Act.  The bill passed the House back in July.  Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin voted for the bill's passage.  Both John Thune and Tim Johnson support the bill.

With Mike Johanns retiring from his position as Secretary of Agriculture to run for the seat vacated by Chuck Hagel, President Bush appointed former North Dakota governor Edward T. Schafer for the position.  Once confirmed by the Senate, Schafer will oversee passage of the farm bill.  Schafer was elected governor in 1992, won reelection in 1996, and did not seek another term in 2000.  He was pressured by state and national Republicans to run against Byron Dorgan in 2004, but declined.

The SDWC reports that Dan Sutton's civil trial has been moved to Flandreau, his hometown: "The media is reporting today that Dan Sutton got his civil trial moved to his hometown of Flandreau.  How did that happen? I don’t think I’ve seen any reports of the legal basis for the decision. It’s not like Judge Mark Barnett would cut him slack without a legal basis.  Anyone?"

For those that didn't follow the blog drama, Steve Sibson of Sibby Online, who is considering a run for the state legislature, has left the Republican Party.

Jon Lauck's book continues to hold the #3 spot on Amazon.com's best-selling books about South Dakota.  In a related topic, Argus Leader political columnist Dave Kranz discusses Thune's political future in today's paper.  That future, for the time being, does not include pursuing the nation's highest office.

Ed Olson, representative of District 20 encompassing Aurora and Davison counties, says that taxpayers must "pony up" to improve education and it may be impossible for the state to enjoy the nation's lowest tax rates if we're going to make progress.  South Dakota's taxes can't get any lower.  As my colleague, Jon Schaff, wrote back in June 2006, "compared to other states South Dakota does well in education.  Compared to where we should be we are doing dismally."  I would agree, and I think Olson is right that we need to raise taxes or introduce a new tax.  Yes, the national government is too large and taxes us too much.  But state policy shouldn't be made with an eye on Washington, D.C.  The limits conservatives like to place on the federal government don't always suit state government, a distinction I hope some Republicans see.  As Prof. Schaff said, "Government on the cheap gets you cheap government."  And cheap government gets you "good enough" education, which is the wrong goal.  State governments are here for the "general welfare," and we shouldn't prevent the state in working for the people of South Dakota.

The Rapid City Journal reports that President Bush vetoed a bill that authorized water projects around the nation, including one that would provide water service to 14,000 in north-central South Dakota.  Rep. Herseth-Sandlin and Sens. Thune and Johnson all supported the authorization of the bill, and are confident they have support in Congress to override the veto.

The latest on the disgusting story of Ted Klaudt and the trial can be found at KELO and the Argus Leader. 

How'd Bruce Do?

Bruce Whalen, at the request of the the South Dakota War College, is asking readers how they thought his campaign went in 2006 against Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin.  Head over and weigh in.

UPDATE: With The Professor getting some R&R, his blogger-in-relief, The Reverend, posts the question:  Should Rounds stay or should he go?

New SD Blog

We'd like to extend a warm welcome to the newest South Dakota blog, the Dakota Dog Pound written by Capitol Bulldog.  Welcome to the blogosphere!

Mail Bag on Teen Pregnancy and Welfare Reform

On my Keloland cite I got a couple of interesting comments to my post on Teen Pregnancy Rate in D.C. I argued that the dramatic drop in teen pregnancy rates in D.C. had a lot to do with the 1996 welfare reform, and that Bill Clinton deserves most of the credit.  Thanks to BigT for this comment:

While Bill Clinton deserves some credit here for passing the legislation, the real change came with the Republicans "Contract with America" which addressed all those items Clinton was given credit for in your story. Specifically, it was Newt Gingrich's tireless pursuit and the American people who demanded something be done. The facts are that the original "contract" were negotiated with Clinton because he refused to pass the legislation "as is". So, we got a watered down version of what was really needed.

Posted by: BigT - Oct 30, 2007 7:58 AM

Yes.  Welfare reform was part of the agenda stated in the "Contract with America."  Whereas Bill Clinton would lay out wonderful proposals in his State of the Union addresses, and then forget them as soon as he made his way up the isle, Gingrich actually set out to fulfill the items in his contract.  But welfare reform would never have happened if Bill Clinton had not decided to make it a part of his political strategy.  He decided that he had to pass some serious conservative legislation, in order to be immune to challenges from the right.  His motive was pure self interest.  But he was able to bring over enough Democrats to get the legislation passed.  Gingrich was acting from principle.  Clinton, acting from sheer calculation, made it happen.

And there is this,  from Anonymous.  He doubts that Welfare Reform had an impact on the decision of young women:

Do you honestly think those in the position to be having children in their teens put that much thought into it? Or that their parents put enough thought into raising them to pass that information along? They don't have the foresight to use birth control, and their parents aren't capable of raising them to legal age before they reproduce, yet they are both able to recognize and act upon the fact that the government wont be there to support their children indefinitely? Seems unlikely to me.

Our anonymous contributor seems to think that the teenage women in question are incapable of rational thought.  I think otherwise.  All of us can tell when the weather has changed.  We know when summertime has passed, and the livin' will no longer be easy.  Welfare policy once subsidized  teen pregnancy.  After 1996, everyone knew that the weather had changed.  A young women  "in the position to be having children" didn't have to make the calculations all by herself.  She could tell from those around her that a baby without a daddy around might be a greater burden than it was when it came with a federal subside.

But my anonymous interlocutor seems to ignore the obvious fact: welfare reform was passed, and teen pregnancy saw a precipitous decline.  Unless you believe that all those "non-profit groups and city agencies" suddenly and for the first time became extraordinarily effective (and if you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I can let you have for cheap), what else explains the facts? 

The Stupid Economy

This is the news we get from the Washington Post on the economy:

U.S. stocks dropped sharply today as weak reports on corporate performance and new data on consumer spending soured investors.

and this:

Chrysler ramped up its North American turnaround plan yesterday, announcing as many as 12,000 layoffs, fresh cuts in factory work shifts and the demise of four slow-selling models.

Now these are both headline stories, to be sure.  But it is worth mentioning that the economy is in fact growing like gangbusters.  Here is Lawrence Kudlow at RealClearPolitics:

Real gross domestic product, the best summary report of the American economy, came in at a breathtaking 3.9 percent annual rate for the third quarter. In fact, following the 3.8 percent growth rate for the second quarter, the U.S. economy has posted its strongest quarterly growth in four years. The economy actually appears to be speeding up, following the relatively sluggish performance of the prior 18 months.

On top of this, the inflation rate is actually slowing down. The consumer spending deflator is reading 2.1 percent for the past year, compared to over 3 percent six quarters ago. The core inflation rate is down to 1.9 percent, below the Fed's 2 percent target.

Even employment is holding its own. According to Automatic Data Processing's private employment survey, which showed its strongest gain in four months, October looks like it will produce about 125,000 new jobs.

Meanwhile, rising exports of American goods and services are booming to such an extent that the deep housing recession is being cancelled out. And while many continue to predict a consumer collapse because of falling home prices and tighter credit, after-tax inflation-adjusted income is 4.1 percent ahead of last year, for a $344 billion gain, while the purchase cost of energy prices are flat. The little noticed factoid is that consumer energy use per unit of GDP has actually fallen by more than 50 percent in recent decades.

Kudlow wants to give some credit to President Bush, and that's only fair.  His father paid with defeat for a mild recession in the early 90's.  But the truth of the matter is that the American economy has been remarkably strong since the early 80's.  By almost any standard-inflation, job growth, income, you name it-the American economy has been successful beyond the wildest dreams of economists who looked into their looking glasses in the 70's. 

So why don't we celebrate this success?  It is one of the ironies of the human soul that success breeds discontent.  When we have more than we once hoped for, we look around to see what we don't have yet, and even more what we have to lose. 

Iowa and Duke

From the Duke Chronicle:  "The University of Iowa's history department and Duke's history department have a couple of things in common. Both have made national news because neither has a Republican faculty member. And both rejected the application of Mark Moyar, a highly qualified historian and a Republican, for a faculty appointment."  Be sure to read the whole thing.

Happy Halloween!

The Family Jack

The Two Minute Reversal

During last nights Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton ended up having a disastrous night.  Her worst gaffe was her reversal that occurred in a period of two minutes, when she flipped her position over giving licenses to illegal immigrants on national television:

McKinney said Clinton grew testy when pressed on whether she agrees with a proposal her home state governor has to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. She first expressed support for the idea. But when Dodd objected, Clinton grew defensive and said she wasn't saying it should be done, although she recognizes why the governor is trying to do it even though she doesn't think it's "the best thing for any governor to do."

Edwards pounced. "Unless I missed something, Senator Clinton said two different things in the course of about two minutes," he said. "America is looking for a president who will say the same thing, who will be consistent, who will be straight with them."

Obama piled on. "I can't tell whether she was for it or against it," he said. He said he supports the idea.

Her answer made her look pandering, unsure and, even worse, indecisive.   How many voters look for indecisiveness in their presidential hopefuls?  It's the same thing John Kerry had to deal with in 2004 after his "I was for the $87 billion before I was against it" remark.  And Mrs. Clinton had to know the issue would come up in the debate.  Governor Eliot Spitzer's approval rating has plummeted thanks to policies like this.  Immigration has been on the front burner of politics since last summer, so why she wasn't prepared for this is beyond me.

According to a clip over on Matt Drudge, the Clinton campaign is blaming Tim Russert for being "unfair" and "bordered on the unprofessional."  He's a debate moderator!  These guys, whether its Russert, Chris Wallace, or Chris Matthews, are suppose to be tough on the candidates.  The only person Clinton has to blame is herself for boggling her answer.  You can bet this will move to the center of the Republican critique of Hillary, and probably will gain traction among her Democratic rivals also. 

When you watch the video (see below), Clinton tries to shift the blame on (who else?) George W. Bush.  Recall, however, the Bush supported her side on immigration reform.  She created a straw man to deflect her bad answer.  This has been disastrous for Hillary Clinton, and she will live with it for the next year.

UPDATE:  A couple additional observations.  For one, Dodd has the best answer that licenses are a privilege, not a right.  He also notes the bureaucratic mess that the three-level New York plan would introduce (different classes of driver's licenses: one gets you on an airplane, another is a "regular" drivers license, and another ID's illegal immigrants.).  Clinton has always struck me as more politically savvy than this.  Amazing. 

How To Know We've Had Too Many Debates

Chris Cillizza:

In the weird last minutes of the debate (the period, by the way, when The Fix made it onto the basketball court in high school) Rep. Dennis Kucinich (Ohio) gave us a highlight.

Asked about the statement by actress Shirley MacLaine that Kucinich had seen a UFO at her house, Kucinich said that he had. He quickly sought to clarify -- an "unidentified flying object" he said holding up his hand -- but man oh man.

The big news tonight: DENNIS KUCINICH HAS SEEN A UFO.

Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico, also claimed the government hasn't come clean or released documents on Roswell, although he doesn't believe in their existence.  Right.  Is he serious?  Everyone knows that the zombie menace is a far more important issue, anyways.

Ideological Reeducation at the University of Delaware

Via Instapundit comes this story about the University of Delaware's plan for, as it's referred to in the university's own materials, the "treatment" of incorrect attitudes and beliefs of the 7,000 students in its residence halls.  John Leo comments: "The basic question about the program is how did they think they could ever get away with this?"

More on Mike

My colleague Prof. Blanchard below writes about the possibility of a successful Mike Huckabee campaign.  People have started criticizing Huckabee's economic record and claiming that he's a populist liberal like Bill Clinton.  The criticism is based on his tax issue, which John Fund discussed last Friday when he declared Huckabee was no fiscal conservative. 

Fund reports that Huckabee raised some taxes and dramatically increased state government spending.  Lucas Roebuck responds to John Fund's article, Joe Carter at the Evangelical Outpost defends Huckabee's economic record, and Huckabee himself has said he pushed a large tax cut through a Democrat-controlled legislature, indexed the state income tax, and eliminated the capital gains tax on home sales.  I think Fund misses the context of the story.  He may have raised taxes, and if the tax structure he inherited as governor and the condition of roads, schools, and other infrastructure were weak, as Roebuck contends, it may have demanded he do so to fund improvements.  Huckabee isn't the strongest economic conservative compared to his GOP rivals, but fiscal conservatives shouldn't give up on the man.  He supports a balanced budget, the presidential line-item veto, the elimination of earmarks, and a flat tax.  I respect Huckabee and I like the guy, but I don't know that he has enough behind him to make a serious presidential run.  In any event, the criticism leveled at him for his fiscal conservatism seems misplaced.

Might I suggest another addition to Prof. Blanchard's campaign literature?  We Like Mike!  [Update: Just for fun, here's a list of political slogans.]

Sibby Update on Kranz

Sibby has removed his accusation that Argus Leader political columnist Dave Kranz attempted to prevent Barnes and Noble from distributing Jon Lauck's book after receiving an email from Randell Beck.  Good.  It was a serious allegation to make against Kranz without any substantial proof, and unfair to Kranz.  And it resulted in a rather intense blog drama between the SDWC and Sibby.  We can criticize the content of the paper and the coverage they provide to people and events (or lack thereof), but singling out Kranz without proof and without naming names made the contention hard to believe.  However, it would be interesting to examine each side here and determine what the truth is.  Will that happen?  I doubt anyone in the media will pursue this story, so Kranz will never be asked if he really did contact Barnes and Noble and Sibby will never be asked who his sources were by them.  But the blogs will be looking in to the story.  If Sibby turns out to be correct, this is the story of the year.  Otherwise, Sibby loses credibility.  We will wait and see.

Happy Halloween!

Yankton Mayor Recall

The blog dedicated to the recall situation happening in Yankton, New Yankton, lays out the reasons for initiating the recall against Mayor Curt Bernard.  See this Sioux City Journal article for background info.

Huckabuzz

Just right now the only interesting story in the Presidential campaign is former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.  When every Republican presidential candidate wants to trick-or-treat as Ronald Reagan, maybe the Incredible Huck will be the next hot costume.  But so far the only story here is the story itself. 

David Yepsen at the Des Moines Register puts it this way:

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's been the hot candidate in the Republican race since he finished second in the Iowa GOP's straw poll back in August.  ...In recent days, that talk has escalated to a new level of buzz: Huckabee's doing so well in Iowa, he just might be able to win the Iowa Republican caucuses.

The Politico wonders whether Huckabee is conservative enough for the Republican base.  The Washington Times wonders whether Huckabee can really keep right wing evangelicals from bolting the GOP to form a third party.  Fred Siegel continues the theme on his Commentary blog.  He calls the new guy from Hope, with his call for "applied Christianity wowing some of the values crowd, William Jennings Huckabee.  According to this view, Huckabee is the candidate for Southern Whites who drifted into the GOP but aren't exactly comfortable with the party's business interests.  Salena Zito at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is impressed at the candidate's "Huckappeal."  That's a lot of Huckabuzz over three days. 

Zito notes what Huckabee's rise doesn't consist in.

Huckabee is rising among the GOP candidates, not by money. (He has little.) Nor by establishment support. (He has none.) And not by slick television or radio ads. (Again, no money.)  Huckabee is there because he has earned it, says Charlie Gerow, a Republican strategist in Harrisburg.

But where, exactly, is "there."  Nationally, Huckabee is barely registering the polls.  The Republicans split between Giuliani, with about 30%, and Thompson, McCain, and Romney making up another 40% in total.  Iowa looks best for Huckabee.  He has about half of Mitt Romney's 28%, to give the Huck second place.  But he has no resources to flood the state with, as Romney does.  Beating Giuliani in Des Moines would be cool, but might not be enough to get him the resources he needs.  Romney is also ahead in New Hampshire with the same 28% to Giuliani's 20%; but there Huckabee has about as much support as Budweiser has alcohol.  I don't think he makes it into the top four in any other state. 

It is hard to see that Huckabee is rising anywhere except in the bored imaginations of bloggers and pundits.  As a native Arkansan, I am a little disappointed.  As a blogger, I am very disappointed.  Nobody in the race on either side has a name that so readily lends itself to puns.  But perhaps where there is this much smoke, there really is a fire burning under Huckabee's candidacy.  If he does get the nomination, I am available for the campaign.  My first blow will be a poster of the White House, with the words blazing above it: The Huck Stops Here. 

It's Coming

The Argus Voices blog says that the anticipated review of Jon Lauck's Daschle Vs. Thune is coming:

[I]t wouldn’t be fair to Jon to have somebody here review a book in which we’re criticized. It puts the reviewer in an impossible spot, and it doesn’t give the book a fair shake. That’s why we’ve been looking for an independent reviewer.

We finally found somebody on Friday. Look for the review in the coming weeks.

New Signs in Madison

Prairie Roots Blog: "How Not To Attract Business"

SDP Halloween Audio Guide

I did my annual post on Halloween movies.  It's time to add another feature to the ever-expanding galaxy of services offered by SDP: Halloween audio.  If you want to put together a quick mixer disk for a Halloween party, I suggest the following:

1. Cat People, by Giorgio Moroder with the Theme by David Bowie.  It is dense, electronic music, perfect for the dark holiday.
2. The House on the Hill, by Audience.  Great spooky story told in a rock song (and I wouldn't go near that house on the hi-hi-hi-hill...)
3. Monsters in the Night, by Greg Abate.  Straight ahead jazz bop by an masterful sax and flute player.  The music isn't particularly spooky, but all the numbers have titles from the great 30's horror movies, like Dracula and Frankenstein.
4. And last, but not least, The Man Who Got No Sign, by Shell Silverstein.  Silverstein made his name writing very clever books for children.  The Freakers Ball album, on which this song is found, is strictly for adults.  The song is about the perils of superstition, but it is told in a deliciously spooky way. 

All of the above are available on iTunes.  You can have one or two Halloween disks burned in minutes.

If it's spooky stories you are looking for, podcasting has revived audio storytelling, mostly dead since TV eclipsed radio.  One site is so good that it's no use mentioning any other this year.  Pseudopod is a weekly horror podcast.  I am a devoted fan.  The stories are excellent and well-read, and each one will chill the blood to the recommended Halloween temperature.  You can download them to your iPod, but if you don't have one of those (who are you?), you can download from the website or into iTunes and burn it on a CD. 

I highly recommend Pseudopod 52: That Old Black Magic, a tale of demonic contracts and old girlfriends, told in a film-noir voice.  P51, Brothers, weaves the Jewish story of the Golum (a clay man animated by magic) together with the Holocaust.  P50 is a nice Lovecraftian tale with a Victorian science of the occult subtext.  My recent favorite is P49 Big Boy.  It is the story of a boy trying to save himself and a little girl from adults turned into murderous faux-zombies by a chemical plant explosion.  It opens in a day-care center rocked by a distant tremor.  This one pushes all my buttons.  And then there is P46 The Hanging at Christmas Bridge, another Lovecraftian piece about a bridge on a lonely road that you really shouldn't look at as you drive by.  If you are in the mood for a spooky story, and you have an internet connection, Pseudopod is your ticket. 

The Missing Link in Declining Teen Pregnancy Rates

The Washington Post's Susan Levine has some good news concerning teen pregnancy rates in D.C. 

Teen pregnancy and birth rates have dropped sharply across the Washington region in the past decade, with the District cutting its numbers by more than half to historic lows.

Wow.  Historic lows!  I am guessing that there were times when the rates were lower than they are now.  But I am being peevish. 

"We think kids are making better choices," said Donald Shell, health officer for Prince George's, where the birthrate for females age 15 to 19 fell by nearly a third between 1996 and 2005. "Our efforts finally are bringing forth some fruit."

The District has accomplished dramatic improvement. In 1996, its pregnancy rate for the same age group was 164.5 per 1,000. Appalled by the triple digits, a coalition of nonprofit groups and city agencies began reaching out to various communities, holding public discussions and trying to teach parents how to talk to their children about love, sex and relationships.  ...Advocates vowed to reduce the rate to the mid-70s by 2005. Instead, as statistics released this month show, it plunged to 64.4.

The deliciously cheeky Mickey Kaus at Slate tilts his head and rolls his eyes toward the elephant in the room that Ms. Levine seems not to notice. 

Did something happen in 1996? Might be worth mentioning! Not to take anything away from "coalitions of non-profit groups ... reaching out," but one of the post-1996 things they could "teach parents" to tell their children was "welfare won't necessarily be there for you if you have a baby."

What happened in 1996 was welfare reform: the end of welfare as an entitlement, guaranteed to anyone who qualified by having a baby without a legal husband in the house.  Welfare reform was possible because of the unusual combination of Bill Clinton triangulating policy, and Republicans willing to sit at one corner of the triangle.  I have frequently written that Bill Clinton was the most successful conservative reformer ever to land in the White House.  Not only did he pass conservative policies that would have been nearly impossible for any Republican President (welfare reform, NAFTA, a balanced budget), but the policies were astonishingly successful.  Clinton did this by grafting obedient Democrats to Republican majorities.  That he did so not out of principle but for pure political strategy, well, that proves another point.

What Kaus points out is the blindness of a Washington Post reporter.  It was inexcusable not to mention welfare reform, having focused on the year it was passed.  I have heard it said that success has a thousand fathers, while failure is always an orphan.  But in this case, a remarkably successful policy is loved only by its mother. 

Kranz on the Coming State Senate Battles

In today's Argus Leader, Dave Kranz has a good article about the several possible state senate races that are shaping up, including an intriguing primary battle forming in my hometown of Mitchell:

District 20: Sen. Ed Olson, term-limited. Possible candidates: state Rep. Mike Vehle, Joe Graves, Steve Sibson. Possible challenger: former Democratic state Sen. Mel Olson, but there is no certainty about him running for anything.

Comment: State Republicans make it clear. They want Vehle in the Senate race. That means you might find Graves and Sibson competing for the vacant House seat. If Mel Olson is out, you might see Rod Hall, former state senator and a former Mitchell school board member, enter the race in an area where the once-strong Democratic Party is decaying.

Be sure to read the whole thing.  HT to SDWC.  Hopefully, I'll have more comments later tonight after class.

Congress to Mukasey: No, You Make the Law!

In what seemed would be a fairly smooth Attorney General confirmation process, Judge Michael Mukasey has hit a snag after telling Congress he wasn't sure if waterboarding constituted torture.  Mukasey has refrained from calling waterboarding torture, and therefore illegal, despite calls by the Senate Judiciary Committee that he do so for the confirmation.  Herein lies the absurdity.  Congress, represented by the Judiciary Committee, demands that an AG candidate declare an act specifically illegal.  But, this is backwards.  Congress is responsible for passing laws and determining the legality or illegality of a measure.  The AG has the responsibility to enforce those laws. 

If Congress is so concerned about making waterboarding explicitly illegal, they should fulfill their Congressional responsibility and introduce a measure to outlaw the practice.  Odds are favorable that they would have enough votes to pass cloture in the Senate; John McCain, who has long opposed the practice, would certainly stand with them on this issue and probably carry over more supporters.  Once the measure passes and gets through a Presidential veto, the AG would have no options but to enforce the law.  Interrogators would lose waterboarding as a technique against detainees.  All violations of the new law would be subject to prosecution by the Justice Department.  This is a straightforward legislative practice, yet since Congress seems to be abdicating its role as legislator, we have this ridiculous spectacle demanding the AG create laws instead of enforce them.

Abourezk Watch

Last week was "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" (IFAW) on many college campuses.  Conservative campus groups promoted this week as an effort to support moderate Islam and to highlight the extremism of the radical politicized Islam.  The naming of the week may be inartful, but the cause is reasonable. 

This appeared today at NRO's "Phi Beta Con" blog, which keeps watch on political events on campus.  I want to disassociate myself from the extreme language of the following piece, especially where Jim Abourezk is described as "an outspoken enemy of his own country."  I am on record as suggesting Abourezk is more a fool than a knave.  It is also my opinion that the author of this attack, David Horowitz, is too often intemperate, willing to discuss the ideas and actions of his leftist opponents in the most inflammatory language.  Still, the following represents an all too typical low concern for free speech on campuses when it is speech that offends left-wing sensibilities. 

In an email David Horowitz comments on what Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week achieved. Here is an excerpt:

The attacks on IFAW exposed the broad scope of the alliance between radical Islam and American leftists who regard it as their political task to run interference for America’s enemies: Iraq yesterday, Iran today. These attacks were spear-headed by the misnamed American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee whose founder James Abourezk is an open supporter of the terrorist army, Hizbollah, and an outspoken enemy of his own country. Under the Orwellian banner of defending tolerance, Abourezk’s group sent letters to the presidents of all the colleges hosting events, in an attempt to get administrators to shut them down and silence their speakers in advance. Abourezk’s Committee was joined by offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, including the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Muslim American Society, the Council on America Islamic Relations, and the Muslim Students Association, all of whom set out to stigmatize the students organizing the events as racists and bigots and haters of Muslims.

This Is Moderation?

Fresh off aligning itself with the left-wing American Prospect, now the South Dakota Democratic Party site Badlands Blue site is quoting the far-left Daily Kos.  Does not seem ironic that one quotes Daily Kos about anger on the political right and, adding to the irony, one has to edit out the expletives?   

Here are a couple pieces from Daily Kos that took me about five minutes to find.  The Kossacks really hate Joe Lieberman (they have a whole thread dedicated to him).  Not on untypical is this quote:  "Listening to Joe "Sanctimonious Prick" Lieberman at today's AG hearings..."  The first commenter calls Lieberman "toadying, bleating, sanctimonious, Bush-kissing GOP lickspittle." 

Here's one posted this morning, which includes this gem: "Sure, I also believe that these neo-conmen are cynical bastards..."  and concludes:

The Republicans that offer us cynical and cowardly crazy talk are espousing something else—rather than appeal to the better angels of our nature, they exploit and expose some of our most devilish flaws.

If there were an ideology we could label “terrorist”—that is pretty much how I would describe it.

One commenter writes, "The absolute greed of these death merchants is appalling," and concludes, "This asshole just flat out wants to kill and plunder."  But at least they aren't angry at Kos. 

Sen. Johnson, who will no doubt campaign as a moderate, might want to caution his supporters from aligning themselves with and drawing arguments from left-wing sources such as American Prospect and Kos.  BTW, the National Journal ranks Senators on a liberal scale and conservative scale.  As you can see, overall Sen. Johnson, in the 2006 rankings, voted liberal  69.2% and conservative 30.8% of the time.  Readers can decide whether that counts as "moderate."  I happen to think Sen. Johnson can reasonably run as a moderate Democrat, but his supporters are making his job harder. 

Red Sox Win World Series

I took my wife and son to see the Red Sox play in Fenway Park this summer.  It was a good year to go. 

Surprising Signs of Republican Strength

Looking at next year's election from that point of view, I would be very concerned that the Donkeys have peaked way early.  All the conventional wisdom favors the Democrats, and that is not necessarily a good thing more than a year out.  Besides, the Democrats keep losing on the issues that they seem most to care about. 

Michael Barone, at RealClearPolitics points out that Bush is showing a remarkable degree of control over the agenda for a lame duck President.  It wasn't too long ago that the majority leaders in both houses of Congress were planning to impose a withdrawal date for American forces in Iraq.  That project has utterly collapsed. 

That leaves the left wing of the party angry at its leaders and the party split on the war, much as it was in 2002, when about half of congressional Democrats voted to authorize military action.

The Democrats here suffered from a lack of imagination. They could not imagine that the United States military could perform more effectively in 2007 than it did in 2005 and 2006.

George W. Bush seems to have had a similar lack of imagination until the November 2006 elections woke him up. But he chose a new commander and a new strategy, and things have changed. Democratic leaders have acted on the assumption that the status quo of November 2006 would persist indefinitely.

You can look at Bush's "surge" as a strategic innovation that may be showing dramatic results, or as a political strategy to design to maintain control of the agenda despite Democratic control of Congress.  Either way, the Bush Administration is running circles around the Democrats.  Lack of imagination is indeed the Democrat's problem, but it is far deeper than Barone indicates.  The Democrats are very good at complaining about Bush's military policy and his national security policy, but they have no imagination for drafting a policy of their own.

Barone also mentions the Democrat's retreat on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and on the resolution condemning the Turkish massacre of Armenians in 1915.  Of course, a string of defeats on the floors of Congress does not necessarily indicate electoral weakness for the party of Clinton, Reid, and Pelosi.  But then there is this:

Last week, Democrat Niki Tsongas won a special election with only 51 percent of the vote, in a Massachusetts district where John Kerry won 57 percent in 2004 and would have run much better in 2006.

Now if you are a nervous Democrat, that looks suspiciously like the canary in the coal mine.  It would be wishful thinking on a Republicans part to count this one piece of data as an indication of Republican strength.  But it is rather hard to explain otherwise. 

I would add to this list the election of Bobby Jindal to the State House in Louisiana.  Louisiana was one of the last one party states in the South, and so it had a run-off election system.  Jindal won 54%, so he goes straight to the Governor's seat.  His three strongest Democratic rivals got a mere 45% in total. Piyushnabu "Bobby" Jindal will be the nation's first Indian-American governor.  He would be the nation's first Hindu governor, except that he converted to Catholicism when he was a teenager.  Son of immigrants from Punjab, he was born in Baton Rouge.  The sky's the limit. Rumors of the death of the Republican party are perhaps premature.   

Todd Epp Scoops Me on a Local Zombie Invasion

See S.D. Watch at Keloland.  Apparently, "zombie walks" have become rather common in cities around the U.S.  My brother and fellow zombie movie fan witnessed one in Memphis.  At ZombieWalk.com there were about 20 scheduled around the U.S., and a handful in other cities around the world.  Readers of World War Z will not be surprised at this, as refugees fleeing from the areas where the infection first appears die, reanimate, and spread the infection in population centers around the world. 

I do thank Todd for one vital new idea: lutefisk.  Zombies are only interested in the flesh of the living.  Lutefisk is, however, more than dead flesh.  I would suggest it is "anti-living" flesh, even deader than zombie tissue.  Perhaps it will even repel zombies?  That new weapon might turn the tide.  At the first sign of the next zombie outbreak, we at SDP plan to smear Epp with lutefisk and stake him to a Daschle for Senate sign in order to test the theory.  Whether it works or not, the experiment will advance the cause of humanity. 

Sibby: Kranz Tried to Suppress Book

Sibby today makes the rather bold claim that Dave Kranz tried to suppress the distribution of Jon Lauck's Daschle Vs. Thune.  He writes:

I have reliable information that Dave Kranz twice contacted store management and requested that they not carry the book. So what’s up with that? Is it that Kranz only wants his worldview on politics to be available for the masses? Or is there something(s) in the book that he doesn’t want the masses to know?

Sibby has no physical source for the information, so take it for what it's worth.  It's a rather serious allegation, so we'll have to see who explores this and watch how it plays out.  HT to SDWC.

SDP Jazz Note: St. Thomas

Via John Hinderaker comes this video of Sonny Rollins playing St. Thomas, which is on his Saxophone Colossus album.  As the album suggests, Rollins is a giant on the tenor sax, on par with John Coltrane and Dexter Gordon, and it's hard to go wrong with anything he's recorded.  He's backed by Max Roach on drums, Tommy Flanagan on piano, and Doug Watkins on bass.  St. Tomas in particular is important because he mixes Caribbean and Afro-Cuban sounds with traditional jazz instrumentation, anticipating Latin Jazz before it became mainstream.  If you like Saxophone Colossus, you might also enjoy his Freedom Suite, or move on to Joe Henderson's work, especially Page One.