Re: Lovano in Sioux Falls

I would agree with Ken that Lovano last night was absolutely wonderful and I hope some of our readers were able to make it.   We were at the Orpheum Theater, my first visit to the beautiful venue.  Lovano surrounded himself with a wonderful rhythm section, and Lovano himself was lyrical and impeccable.  Like Ken, I had trouble hearing who was playing in support, but they were exquisite.  While the other musicians solo, Lovano moves off the stage; in the back, he approvingly nods and sways to the music.  We also approve.  It was truly something to hear and behold, playing wonderful cuts and a great rendition of John Coltrane's "Spiritual."  He let on that his latest album, Kids, recorded live at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola with the legendary Hank Jones, was nominated for a Grammy (at 89 years old, Jones still exudes genius).  Needless to say, a copy of Kids is in the mail.

As a grateful listener I want to say thank you to the Joe Lovano Quartet and thank you to the Sioux Falls Jazz and Blues Society.  It was a spectacular night and I eagerly anticipate more.

Obama Wins

Apparently by a fairly large margin.

Hunting, Texas Style!

Sibby refers to a Tony Dean piece attacking SB 96, which would allow land owners or lessees of more than 320 acres to get one extra big game license for their land that may be used by a resident or non-resident. If I am reading this bill correctly, it simply grants one extra license to land owners with the possibility that a non-resident would hunt at a resident rate.  This seems a reasonable accommodation to land owners who, for example, may have a close relative who lives out of state and wants to hunt on family property.  Contrary to Mr. Dean, the granting of one extra license per property will hardly innauguerate "Texas style pay-for-play."  One question I do have about this bill is what precisely qualifies as a property?  The bill reads, "Only one landowner-sponsored license may be issued for each qualifying property."  Do I get one license for every 320 acres I own, or is it one license if I own 320 acres anywhere?  If it is the former, then Mr. Dean's complaints are more valid. 

Energy and Food Prices

A new report states that the heavy subsidization of ethanol plays a big part in the increase of food prices.  This study is by the environmental group Earth Policy Institute.  When we have free marketeers and environmentalists in agreement, we might want to pay attention. 

In related news, John Thune is looking to expand the definition of "biomass" to allow for greater subsidization of  various other organic materials, in particular wood waste, used to produce energy.

In unrelated news, reader Dennis passes on this Human Events article by Newt Gingrich arguing as I have here that the so-called stimulus package will do little to promote economic growth.  Instead it will promote consumption over savings while adding to inflationary pressures. 

Bill Clinton vs. Nemesis

Victor Davis Hanson thinks that Bill Clinton is living out a Greek tragedy before our eyes.

Everyone remembers the Greek concept of Nemesis ("the giver of what's due"), and the chain of events that invites her to intervene: a fatal character flaw that leads to hubris that in turn incurs divine retribution, culminating in personal ruin.

Bill Clinton this campaign season seems a character right out of Sophocles, an Oedipus that just can't stop himself. He knows the end, but simply cannot desist, no more than he could lecture Monica about the inappropriateness of a subordinate young female employee satisfying the lusts of her male senior superior boss.

As they say, read the whole thing. 

Pharmacists and Conscience: A Reply to Anna

My pal Anna has this at Dakota Women:

Bob Ellis has this to say:

How about a Jewish or Muslim grocery store owner being forced to sell pork. After all, don't we all (Christians, anyway) have a right to get pork without encumbrances, hardships, or even moral judgments?

It's funny he mentions that, because Target in the Mpls/St.Paul area has faced this very issue when Muslim cashiers refused to handle pork in their checkout lines.

What did Target do?  THEY GAVE THOSE CASHIERS DIFFERENT JOBS. 

I don't know why we should treat pharmacists who won't fill birth control prescriptions any differently.

I have this to say: "what do you mean "we"?  Target is here dealing with its employees, and it seems to be well within the rights of the management to insist that their cashiers be willing to handle all the merchandise that is sold in the store.  Target's willingness to find other work for conscientiously objecting Muslims, rather than simply let them go, is gracious precisely because it is not obligatory.  Target would be equally with its rights if it insisted that the pharmacists it employs be willing to dispense any legal product carried by its pharmacy.

By the same token, Target, or Joe who owns his own corner pharmacy, would be equally within their rights if they chose not to carry tobacco, pornography, or birth control.  A Hindu or Green Party restaurant owner may decide to serve only vegetarian dishes, for conscientious reasons.  A Catholic doctor may refuse to prescribe birth control.  A Jewish plumber may refuse to work on the Sabbath.  Target's Muslim cashiers may decide to open their own, pork free supermarket.  We don't get to decide how to "treat" such objecting parties because we aren't their employer.  This is a matter to be decided by the business and its customers.

What Anna wants, if I remember her previous arguments, is to legally compel all pharmacists to carry and dispense birth control.  Apparently "choice," which looked like a vital principle, was only a device to be discarded as soon as it is no longer useful.  But such laws not only abridge the liberties of pharmacists, they also abridge those of their customers.  Many people who have strong convictions on such matters, religious or otherwise, would chose doctors and pharmacists who share their convictions.  Is it not an egregious violation of choice to prevent the objecting pharmacist from meeting their needs?  Anna may have very little sympathy for these folks, but that is precisely what liberty means: letting people make their own choices, even if those choices offend Anna, or me, or all the rest of us.

SDP Jazz Note: Joe Lovano in Sioux Falls

Jason Heppler and I, two thirds of SDP regulars by number, went to see Joe Lovano at the Orpheum Theater tonight.  Wow!  Lovano was backed by a standard rhythm section of piano, bass, and drums.  Unfortunately I couldn't hear their names, and can't seem to track them down.  But all three were individually good enough that I begin looking forward to their solos as soon as a number would start.  The drummer in particular had a very theatrical dance consisting of sudden stops and directional gestures that provided a theme to lay over his beat.  The piano work was spectacular, playing around and through the lines laid down by Joe, as if the piano player had the job of writing a critique of Lovano's saxophone. 

Lovano himself was persistently romantic and lyrical.  He stuck to easily accessible melodies and variations, and every one had me and everyone around me singing with our feet, fingers, and bobbing heads.  All of it was good.  His version of Coltrane's Spiritual was awesome.  He let it out that his recent duet CD Kids, recorded with Hank Jones, has been nominated for a  Grammy.  Darn it.  Now I have to care about the Grammies again.

The Orpheum theater is a marvelous venue.  I was able to hear all four instruments all the time, which is unfortunately rare in any setting.  Sioux Falls has much to be proud of in the Orpheum.  The Sioux Falls Jazz and Blues Society has much to be proud of as well. 

Who Hates

Apropos the post below, sociologist Arthur Books looks at some data about hate in politics.  He uses the "thermometer test" used by the National Election Study to measure how "warm" voters feel toward various people and groups.  Not surprisingly, people feel "cold" towards those with whom they disagree.  But, contrary to the stereotype of the angry right-winger, Brooks finds at least as much "hate" on the left as on the right:

Some might argue that this is simply a reflection of the current political climate, which is influenced by strong feelings about the current occupants of the White House. And sure enough, those on the extreme left give President Bush an average temperature of 15 and Vice President Cheney a 16. Sixty percent of this group gives both men the absolute lowest score: zero.

To put this into perspective, note that even Saddam Hussein (when he was still among the living) got an average score of eight from Americans. The data tell us that, for six in ten on the hard left in America today, literally nobody in the entire world can be worse than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. (snip)

In 1998, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were hardly popular among conservatives. Still, in the 1998 ANES survey, Messrs. Clinton and Gore both received a perfectly-respectable average temperature of 45 from those who called themselves extremely conservative. While 28% of the far right gave Clinton a temperature of zero, Gore got a zero from just 10%. The bottom line is that there is simply no comparison between the current hatred the extreme left has for Messrs. Bush and Cheney, and the hostility the extreme right had for Messrs. Clinton and Gore in the late 1990s.

This is reminiscent of an article from political scientists Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio who found the growing secularism of the Democratic party was typified by delegates to Democratic national conventions who, using the same thermometer method, registered an antipathy toward Christian fundamentalists (Bolce and De Maio's term) that they felt for no other group:

In 1992, the average thermometer score of Republican delegates toward union leaders, liberals, blacks, Hispanics, and Democrats, for example, was 17 degrees warmer than their mean score toward feminists, environmentalists, and prochoice groups (44 degrees versus 27 degrees, respectively). Similarly, the mean thermometer score of Democratic delegates that year was 21 degrees warmer toward conservatives, the rich, big business, and Republicans than their average score toward prolife groups and Christian fundamentalists (34 degrees versus 13 degrees, respectively). Of the 18 groups tested by CDS, the most negatively rated group was Christian fundamentalists. Over half of Democratic delegates gave Christian fundamentalists the absolute minimum score they could, 0 degrees, and the average Democratic thermometer score toward this religious group was a very cold 11 degrees.

Funny enough, Bolce and De Maio find that "intense dislike" towards Christian fundamentalists was very high among those who "strongly agree" that "one should be tolerant of persons whose moral standards are different from one's own."

Archie Bunker Returns

Fresh off placing me among the "wacky" for daring to even question the progressive orthodoxy on birth control (while not explicitly disagreeing with it, I note), Scott Ehrisman now turns his sights on the Bishop of Sioux Falls.  Back in the days of the Clean Cut Kid blog, Prof. Blanchard took great joy in comparing that site's proprietor, Chad Schuldt, to Archie Bunker.  "[I]ntolerant, bombastic, and invincibly ignorant," is how he once described the CCK site, which was fairly accurate.  We don't have enough evidence from Mr. Ehrisman to suggest any ignorance is invincible, but intolerant and bombastic seems accurate enough.  Perhaps we have the new contender for the left-wing Archie Bunker. 

Mr. Ehrisman has, literally, a cartoon image of Bishop Swain and the Catholic position on abortion.  His attack on the bishop is the perfect example of ad hominem.  He can't advance any argument against the bishop, as a smart political cartoon might, so he must attack the man.  To the extent there is an argument in the cartoon it is, "I hate these kind of people."  Mr. Ehrisman tries to portray the bishop as an out-of-touch old man who, because he has certain hobbies and took a vow of chastity, must have no moral authority.  Perhaps our moral authority comes from having cool hobbies and "scoring with the babes," or, just maybe, moral authority comes from study, experience, and demonstrated moral seriousness. 

Mr. Ehrisman apparently hasn't read the bishop's bio. The bishop is actually older than Ehrisman says, (and how Scott Ehrisman knows the status of the bishop's, er, experience with the ladies is beyond me).  Perhaps Mr. Ehrisman was not aware that Paul Swain was 43 years old before he became a priest. Before that he earned both a masters degree in political science and a law degree from the University of Wisconsin.  Perhaps he was unaware that Paul Swain is a veteran who earned a Bronze Star for his service in Vietnam, or that Bishop Swain also held high positions in the Wisconsin executive branch.  No, to Scott Ehrisman the Bishop is a joke because he is old, chaste, and likes bowling, and, more to the point, the bishop has the "wrong" view on abortion.  (Btw, is there something goofy about people who like bowling, fishing and bible study?  Some of the best people I know like all three.) 

It just so happens that Paul Swain has a wealth of life experience and, from what I hear from people who have met him, he is a kind, decent and caring man.  Indeed, if a woman was contemplating an abortion he'd be exactly the kind of man I'd suggest going to for advice.   

I now await the ridicule from Mr. Ehrisman for once again committing offenses against progressive dogmas. 

It's Back

Take the SOTU quiz and win valuable prizes. 

Liberty and Contraception

There is some debate over SB 164 which is designed to force pharmacists to distribute contraception even if they have moral objections.  The argument for the bill, one presumes, is that access to contraception is so central to human freedom (the bill calls it a "protectable interest") that not only must contraception be legal, but that the public should provide it (as we do through copious public subsidization of Planned Parenthood) and pharmacists must be compelled to provide this product. If they have moral objections to contraception they must be compelled by the state to violate their conscience or get out of the pharmacy game altogether.  Pharmacists who refuse to distribute contraception due to moral conviction are not to be tolerated. 

A thought experiment.  We certainly have a fundamental liberty right to use our minds and talents as we see fit.  This is the meaning of "liberty," a natural right listed in the Declaration of Independence.  I have the right to express my ideas as I see fit and to put into my mind what I see fit.  Of course there are some limits on this freedom, such as the time, space and manner restrictions on speech. But the general principle holds.  So the question is this: if I have the desire to buy a particular book, one of some controversy, say,  Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, is the bookstore compelled to sell it to me?  One could imagine a particular bookstore owner who refuses to sell this book. If one follows Goldberg's book blog, apparently such stores exist.  Bookstores are necessary instruments for my desire to exercise my right, thus should they be forced to sell me the book I want? 

Of course the answer to this, "No." The bookstore owner has his liberty right as well.  He has the right to use his talents as he sees fit.  So perhaps he runs a "progressive" bookstore which only carries left-wing books.  He has every right, indeed both a constitutional and natural right, to do so.  But, it may be claimed, some towns in South Dakota may only have one pharmacy, so if that one pharmacist refuses to sell contraception that places a burden on the person seeking contraception.  First, this assumes that the government must not only grant a space for us to use our rights, but it must actually guarantee us the ability to fulfill our rights with minimal burden.  Second, I point out that I live in a town with only one bookstore that sells new books.  That bookstore is small and does not carry many titles I want.  Indeed, when I wanted to buy Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons, which was on the New York Times Best Seller list at the time, I couldn't find it in that store.  If I want most books I desire I must take on a burden: either going elsewhere to buy the book or ordering the book and paying extra shipping fees.  I certainly can't get the books immediately, again placing a burden on me.  But still we say that even though I face obstacles getting the books I want, I can still get them and the government has no duty to compel the violation of anyone's freedom of conscience for me to get those books. Indeed, we'd call it an abuse of government power if the government did. 

Of course books aren't contraception.  The fact that some may favor government compulsion in the provision of contraception but not in books only reveals how freedom of the body now trumps freedom of the mind.  SB 164 suggests that sexual freedom without the consequences of pregnancy is so fundamental to human happiness that it compels violating the integrity of the pharmacist's mind.  Perhaps the right to contraception is that fundamental.  I leave it to the reader to consider the implications of that mindset.

Update: Mr. Ehrisman demonstrates the limits of "liberal" tolerance.  Mr. Ehrisman believes there is nothing wrong with contraception, certainly a respectable view.  But more than that he is so certain of his rightness that he believes any moral objection to contraception must be founded in irrationality.    That is very convenient for him as it spares him the effort of having to grapple seriously with the the ethics of science as it pertains to human reproduction.  He can just dismiss those who disagree with him as "wacky" and be done with it.  And apparently he thinks the arm of the state must be used to force people to accept his view of morality.  No doubt he will rest easy tonight, comforted by the belief that unlike those on the wacky right he is open minded and does not impose his values on others. 

Gimmie! Gimmie! Gimmie!

We have a deal for tax "rebates" for the citizenry (unless you make too much money). 

Congressional leaders announced a deal with the White House Thursday on an economic stimulus package that would give most tax filers refunds of $600 to $1,200, and more if they have children.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Congress would act on the agreement—hammered out in a week of intense negotiations and uncustomary bipartisanship—"at the earliest date, so that those rebate checks can be in the mail."

President Bush praised the agreement at the White House, saying it "has the right set of policies and is the right size."

The rebates, which would go to about 116 million families, had appeal for both Democrats and Republicans. Pelosi's staff noted that they would include $28 billion in checks to 35 million working families who wouldn't have been helped by Bush's original proposal. Republicans, for their part, were pleased that the bulk of the rebates—more than 70 percent, according to an analysis by Congress' Joint Tax Committee—would go to individuals who pay taxes.

But as Dr. Pat notes, this isn't really a "rebate."  The government isn't giving you your money back.  Indeed, as the news story notes even if you have no tax liability you will still get a check.  This is simply money that we will add on to our national debt, satiating ourselves now with nary a concern about the future.  What's more, this rebate is of limited economic value.  That's the tragedy.  We go deeper into debt for nothing other than selfishness.  The prospect of a recession is used to justify simply giving away money that we don't have. And, yes, this will further devalue our currency.  Ugh. 

Racism in Aberdeen & Elsewhere

My Keloland colleague, Professor David Newquist, has some provocative things to say about our home town. 

Only in in the grips of complete absurdity can one be in Aberdeen, South Dakota, and contemplate Martin Luther King, Jr., Day in terms of how much progress we have made toward social justice. No question, we have made some progress, but that progress reveals deeper, chronic social pathologies in the human psyche which are institutionalized in new forms, in new expressions.

Aberdeen had a racist fest this spring. When plans for a beef packing plant were announced for the town, an outcry rose over the "kind" of people it would attract as workers. Groups organized to oppose rezoning and financial assistance for the plant on environmental and public nuisance grounds, but the arguments also included a disclaimer of racial motives, and invariably concluded with the observation that certain ethnic groups have a propensity for criminality. The local newspaper discussion board was widely cited among civil rights groiups for its virulent and demented expressions of racist propaganda.

Now I certainly agree with Professor Newquist that some of the opposition to the proposed beef plant in Aberdeen was motivated by a fear of the immigrant workers that it might attract.  I wrote a piece for the American News in favor of the beef plant, and I pointed out the prejudice that was behind some of the opposition. But hardly all of it.   

Not everyone who opposed the beef plant did so out of illegitimate motives.  Professor Newquist should know, as he has raised environmental objections.  Some conservatives I know object to the very idea of TIFs.  Others were concerned about property values, and other quality of life issues. 

But for all of the objections, the vote for the beef plant (TIF) passed by a very large margin.  Contrary to what my colleague says, Aberdeen is a great place from which to contemplate the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.  We chose the general prosperity and future growth of our community over prejudice and fear.  We have every right to celebrate Martin Luther King day. 

I grew up in Craighead County, Arkansas.  The schools in Jonesboro were only desegregated when I was in third grade.  I remember when I was a boy scout, I rode to summer camp with a friend of mine and his parents.  At some point along the way, my friend's father started taking about "those niggers."  I was shocked.  No one in my family talked that way.  My father was scrupulously polite to everyone, regardless of color.  I had learned from school about the evils of racial prejudice.  I scolded my friends father.  He became defensive, and directed a torrent of abuse at me.  It was a very uncomfortable ride.  It was no big deal.  Its just something that I remember.

I know what racism looks like.  It is a very ugly thing.  Aberdeen is not free from it, because no place is free from it.  It is like original sin.  But Aberdeen is a much better place in that respect that most places on planet Earth.  We have no particular reason to be ashamed, and every reason to celebrate Martin Luther King and his achievement. 

John McCain & The Republican Party

John McCain is not my first choice for Republican nominee.  Unfortunately, Winston Churchill decided not to run.  Had Winnie run, he would have run into some of the same problems that McCain does.  That is not to say that McCain is a Churchill.  Without a Hitler to bounce him off of, there is no way to tell. 

I do not know if McCain will be the Republican nominee.  I do not plan to endorse anyone now or in the future (like my endorsement would matter!).  But I do say that conservative Republicans should think long and hard before they reject him.  Michael Medved, a conservative in good standing, has a list of Six Big Lies about John McCain, i.e., Republican objections to McCain that don't hold water.  I will back him up on two of them.

LIE #1: John McCain isn’t a loyal Republican.

TRUTH: McCain has been a stalwart Reagan Republican since he first entered politics in 1981.

Yes.  As Medved points out, McCain had been a reliable supporter of Republicans across the board.  After 2000, he was understandably bitter.  He recently remarked: "The night after I lost South Carolina, I slept like a baby.  I would wake up and cry; sleep for an hour, wake up and cry ..."  But McCain stepped up to provide strong support President Bush in 2004.  That is a loyal Republican.

LIE #3: John McCain organized “The Gang of Fourteen” to Block the Confirmation of Conservative Judges.

TRUTH: John McCain organized “The Gang of Fourteen” to win- not to block -the Confirmation of Conservative Judges, and his efforts succeeded in the Senate.

Of course!  The gang of 14 (half Democrats and half Republicans) saved the right to filibuster over judicial nominees, something that may soon come in handy for Republicans.  It also won two conservative votes on the Supreme Court.  Probably McCain was the only Republican senator who could have pulled that off. 

I have lots of differences with McCain.  McCain-Feingold was an atrociously bad bill, as Medved concedes.

McCain-Feingold was a piece of useless, misguided legislation but it’s done no serious damage to the country, the constitution or the conservative pro-life cause. After nearly seven years on the books, robust and impassioned discussion of political issues and candidates is more vibrant and free-wheeling than ever.

If conservatives want to pull for Romney, ok.  But if its McCain who has the muscles, they will sooner or later have to step up behind him as he did for President Bush.  Probably we want to keep that in mind in the meantime.   

Hildy in the WSJ

The Wall Street Journal today looks at the Democratic campaign in the South and includes a bit about former Tom Daschle campaign manager and current Barack Obama strategist Steve Hildebrand in a piece entitled "In South, Democrats' Tactics May Change Political Game."  Excerpt:

Steve Hildebrand, Mr. Obama's chief strategist for early voting states, set out to build an organization that relies heavily on circumventing the established black political gentry in South Carolina. A native of South Dakota, Mr. Hildebrand is not only an outsider, he is also white -- an unusual combination for someone setting out to win the black vote here. Many of the people he has hired have come from out of state or have no presidential-campaign experience, or both.

He says he has largely eschewed the local tradition of giving "walking-around money," or "street money," to political figures who back candidates. Such funds are used to hire van drivers, canvassers and poll watchers who turn out the black vote on election day. It's a practice as old as the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Mr. Hildebrand, 45, says he has repeatedly heard from skeptics inside and outside the Obama camp. He says he was lectured just two weeks ago by a state representative about not giving out street money. "He said, 'You people don't know what you're doing -- to organize my district, you need to hire my people,' " says Mr. Hildebrand.

Mr. Hildebrand cheerfully confesses confusion with the folkways of South Carolinians. "Everything is so racial here," he says as an aside, just before ordering a bowl of "sea crab soup" at a Columbia eatery (the low-country delicacy is known as "she-crab soup"). He avoids the beauty parlors and barbershops that have long served as the venue for ground-level political discussions "Barbers make me nervous," the buzzcut Mr. Hildebrand says.

Starting With the Basics

One of Mr. Hildebrand's first hires was Jeremy Bird, another white outsider, as his top campaign coordinator in the state. A 29-year-old Midwestern labor organizer whose divinity degree from Harvard has earned him the title of "reverend" among the locals, Mr. Bird had campaign experience, but it was limited to largely white states such as New Hampshire. Mr. Bird nabbed Ms. Young and three dozen other recruits to build local Obama organizations in seven regions.

When he arrived in the state last spring, Mr. Bird began with the basics in a state where voters had little information on Mr. Obama. At a Fourth of July picnic at a church in rural Orangeburg County, for example, he says he was surprised to learn that many of the elderly parishioners didn't know that Mr. Obama was black. He had to pull out a portable DVD player and a campaign disc to prove it.

The revelation that Mr. Obama was almost a complete unknown led the campaign to retool Mr. Obama's image. Mr. Bird tossed out most of the rainbow-shaped, logo paraphernalia that was ubiquitous in Iowa and other white-dominated states. He opted instead for a new series of campaign buttons, push cards and issues literature, all of which showed photographs of Mr. Obama -- orating at a church pulpit, shaking hands with supporters, with eyes lowered and hands laced below his chin in a pose of deep thought. These images are now stamped on virtually everything the campaign distributes to potential South Carolina supporters.

But it wasn't just letting voters know Mr. Obama was black. In a state where skin tone is seen by many black people as a measure of social standing, the campaign frequently brought out Michelle Obama, whose darker complexion carries a special meaning when contrasted to the lighter skin tone of her husband. "It was important for people to see that Obama wasn't putting on airs by marrying a woman lighter than him," says Anton Gunn, South Carolina political director for the campaign. "You think a thing like that wouldn't matter, but here it does, very much."

The Fed Takes The Bait

Yesterday the Federal Reserve cut its key rate by .75%, the biggest cut in some time.  I argued against this move.  Apparently Fed Chair Ben Bernanke does read this blog.  My suggestion was that such a cut will only spur already high inflation.  Robert Samuelson argues that the interest rate cut is a major gamble by Bernanke:

Still, Bernanke's gamble isn't guaranteed to succeed. Since World War II the Fed's greatest blunder was to unleash double-digit inflation. In 1960 consumer prices rose 1.4 percent; in 1979 the increase was 13.3 percent. With hindsight it's clear that Fed policies were too loose, creating too much money chasing too few goods. But that was not so apparent at the time, when the Fed responded to public pressure to minimize recessions and keep unemployment down. It loosened money and credit, and the effects on inflation showed up a couple of years later. There was a steady upward creep; that is the risk Benanke is now running.

The Times of London worries that this rate cut is a more of a political move than good policy, a theme echoed by the Wall Street Journal.  The Journal takes Hillary Clinton to task for her "stimulus proposal" and the preposterous claim that such spending bill doesn't have to be paid for. 

Some Democrats still think that government stimulation of demand is an antidote to a slowing economy. Yet economics has certain iron laws that the government violates at its peril. One of them has been called Say's Law, because it was first enunciated by the late 18th-century Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Say. He said "products are paid for with products." Or to rephrase the point, "a society can't consume if it doesn't produce." Hillary's assertion that her "stimulus" package shouldn't be paid for denies reality. Somebody has to pay for it. One man's consumption must be paid for by his own or someone else's production.

I note that the Journal warns the the "real problem the U.S. economy faces" is devaluation of its currency.  Read also the Amity Shlaes piece on inflation to which Jason referred.

The politicians, one supposes, must make it look like they are "doing something."  But it is almost certain that before anything is done any recession will have run its course (assuming we actually go into recession).  Further, even if one buys into the economic benefit of government spending packages (which I do not), the amount of money being discussed is so small relative to the U.S. economy it would have minimal impact. If we really want to "stimulate" our economy, the Journal has the prescription:

If a government hampers production through heavy taxes and economic regulation -- or by inflating the currency -- production will slow down and there will be less to consume. To revive production, government must reduce the tax and regulatory burden and kill inflation -- which Reagan did to such good effect.

Photographing the 1930s and 1940s

A number of color photos from the Great Depression and World War II (via Instapundit).

Inflation, not Deflation

Amity Shlaes, author of the excellent and thought-provoking book The Forgotten Man, says that Ben Bernake should be worried about inflation, not deflation.  Excerpt:

Ben Bernanke is spooked. That's one explanation for the Federal Reserve chairman's decision to lead the Open Market Committee in yesterday's unprecedented 75-basis- point cut in the fed funds rate.                  

The Fed spoke of a "weakening of the economic outlook and increasing downside risks to growth," a vague phrase that reminds us that what Milton Friedman said in 1965 is still true: "We are all Keynesians now," monetary and fiscal fiddlers who think the government has a broad mandate to manage the economy.           

But what Bernanke was also saying was that he fears a more general contraction of money and credit. If not outright deflation, then disinflation, a slowdown in price increases.           

He and his allies note, in defense of their move, that long-term interest rates aren't high and, indeed, have generally headed down this month. That suggests that investors don't fear inflation. Still, if you look at some of the other standard measures, you don't see deflation or disinflation, or anything else that starts with "D." You see an "I" -- inflation.

Be sure to check out the whole thing.

Clintonism

Maureen Dowd is not someone I usually cite as an authority.  It is fascinating to see her say so openly what everyone has long known about the Clintons. 

If Bill Clinton has to trash his legacy to protect his legacy, so be it. If he has to put a dagger through the heart of hope to give Hillary hope, so be it.

If he has to preside in this state as the former first black president stopping the would-be first black president,  so be it.

The Clintons — or “the 2-headed monster,” as the The New York Post dubbed the tag team that clawed out wins in New Hampshire and Nevada — always go where they need to go, no matter the collateral damage. Even if the damage is to themselves and their party.

Bill’s transition from elder statesman, leader of his party and bipartisan ambassador to ward heeler and hatchet man has been seamless — and seamy.

Wow.  Of course, all this is nothing we have not known the Clintons for a long time.   But coming from arch-Democrat Dowd, wow.   And then there is this analysis by Dick Morris. 

If Hillary loses South Carolina and the defeat serves to demonstrate Obama's ability to attract a bloc vote among black Democrats, the message will go out loud and clear to white voters that this is a racial fight. It's one thing for polls to show, as they now do, that Obama beats Hillary among African-Americans by better than 4-to-1 and Hillary carries whites by almost 2-to-1. But most people don't read the fine print on the polls. But if blacks deliver South Carolina to Obama, everybody will know that they are bloc-voting. That will trigger a massive white backlash against Obama and will drive white voters to Hillary Clinton.

Obama has done everything he possibly could to keep race out of this election. And the Clintons attracted national scorn when they tried to bring it back in by attempting to minimize the role Martin Luther King Jr. played in the civil rights movement. But here they have a way of appearing to seek the black vote, losing it, and getting their white backlash, all without any fingerprints showing. The more President Clinton begs black voters to back his wife, and the more they spurn her, the more the election becomes about race -- and Obama ultimately loses.

It's hard not to think that Morris is right.  Obama did try, very hard, to minimize race as a factor in the campaign.  And for a while he succeeded.  It was the Clintons who, just at the moment their campaign looked to be in crisis, put it back in.  Are the Clintons cynically, if very cleverly, using race as a wedge issue to split the Democratic party in their favor?   I don't know that for sure.  Would the Clintons do so, if they thought they had to to win?  About that, there can be no doubt.  Just ask Maureen Dowd. 

 

Fred Thompson Withdraws His Bid

Via email from the Thompson campaign: "Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for President of the United States. I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort. Jeri and I will always be grateful for the encouragement and friendship of so many wonderful people."  This is too bad.  I liked Fred and hoped he would have a good showing on Super Tuesday.

UPDATE:  Chris Cillizza analyzes the impact of Fred's withdrawal.

Down and Dirty in Las Vegas

Now politics ain't bean bag, but it will be interesting to see if those Democrats who complained incessantly about the anti-Max Cleland commercial run by the Saxby Chambliss campaign in Georgia (2002), will have the same reactions to the tricks played by Ms. Clinton's allies in the recent Nevada caucus.  Consider this one, from Ben Smith at the Politico:

The Obama campaign has released a recording (mp3) it says came from a Nevadan's answering machine of an anonymous robocall that criticizes Obama for taking money from special interests while repeating, four times, his rarely used middle name: "Hussein."

"I'm calling with some important information about Barack Hussein Obama," the call begins, before saying that  "Barack Hussein Obama says he doesn't take money from Washington lobbyists or special interest groups but the record is clear that he does."

After mentioning his full name once more, the call concludes:

"You just can't take a chance on Barack Hussein Obama."

This is very low politics.  But most people won't hear about it, because it has the potential to hurt both Clinton and Obama.  How many people know that Obama's middle name was Hussein?  I don't know and let's hope it would not make any difference.  But I am betting it ain't on his official campaign web page.  The use of this tactic would hurt Senator Clinton, who of course, will turn out not to know anything about it.  Of course. 

Daschle Says Pres. Clinton Acting "Unpresidential"

From the Capitol Hill newspaper, The Hill:

Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), speaking on behalf of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), said on a conference call Tuesday morning that former President Bill Clinton’s criticisms of Obama in recent days and weeks are “not presidential.” 

“It’s not in keeping with the role of a former president,” Daschle said.

The former majority leader said the Clintons are engaging in the same kind of tactics Republicans did when they went after him in 2004, defeating him in his reelection bid even as he was the sitting Senate leader of his party.

“This is the same kind of tactic that Washington uses quite frequently,” Daschle said, adding, “I think it destroys the party. Ultimately, it divides us.”

The purpose of the call was to announce the creation of the South Carolina Truth Squad, which Daschle said will “respond forcefully to each and every one of these distortions.”

Anti-Americanism

James Taranto: "In an age of heightened sensitivity over slurs involving race, religion, sexual orientation and so forth, why is anti-American bigotry considered socially acceptable?"

HRC and the Economy

New York Times:  "Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said that if she became president, the federal government would take a more active role in the economy to address what she called the excesses of the market and of the Bush administration."  Because giving rewards for doing poorly and penalizing those who are successful works so well.  David Harsanyi writes, "Scary stuff for anyone who still believes in the free market."  Scary stuff indeed.

The Negative Side of Affirmative Action

My Keloland colleague, Todd Epp has a piece on his primary web site calling for more minority lawyers. It is a serious argument, and I sympathize with the premise: that more minority lawyers (doctors, computer technicians, etc.,) would be in general a good thing.  Based on that premise, Epp opposes efforts to roll back affirmative action. 

For the civil rights movement to advance and for those who have not always shared in the American dream to get their chance, we need to make sure there are spots for those smart kids with lower LSATs who will make perfectly good—even great—attorneys.  Then, someday, can the full effect of Dr. King’s dream be realized.

But there are a lot of problems with this argument.  First, if the LSAT is effectively blocking smart kids who would make perfectly good lawyers, shouldn't Epp be pushing for the abolition of that test?  Second, we have been practicing affirmative action in almost all public institutions of higher learning for decades.  The racial disproportion among the professions has hardly gone away.  Why expect that you will get different results in the future?

More importantly, affirmative action has serious social costs.  Affirmative action is clearly correlated with low graduation rates for minority students.  See Thomas Sowell:

At the flagship University of Colorado at Boulder, test score differences between black and white students have been more than 200 points -- and only 39 percent of the black students graduated, compared to 72 percent of white students. Meanwhile, at the University of Colorado at Denver, where the SAT score difference was a negligible 30 points, there was also a negligible difference in graduation rates -- 50 percent for blacks and 48 percent for whites.

In other words, affirmative action adjustments such as Todd advocates are either 1) too small to have a big impact; or 2) they have pernicious effects on the very groups they are supposed to benefit.

You are not doing anybody a favor by sending them where they are more likely to fail, rather than where they are more likely to succeed. Critics of racial preferences and quotas have been saying that for more than 30 years, and now the data back them up -- which may be why you don't hear much about those data.

A significant portion of Black and Hispanic students are less well-prepared academically than their White and Asian counterparts when they leave high school and contemplate college. Until we figure out how to fix that, the problem won't go away. Affirmative action may make White liberals like Todd feel better about themselves, but it is snake oil as a remedy.  It is also at least a little bit toxic.   

The Gray Lady and Vets

Roger Kimball: "I am glad that our former paper of record is getting some small portion of the obloquy it deserves for 'Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles,' the front-page story it ran on January 13 inaugurating a series about the supposed violent tendencies of American soldiers who had returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan."  Don't miss Iowahawk's "Bylines of Brutality" and his Media Violence Project. 

Liberal Fascism: A (Really Long) Review

Yesterday I completed Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism. This book is something of a sensation, rising to #1 on Amazon (as of this writing it is #5) and spawning considerable discussion.  You can follow some of that discussion on Goldberg's Liberal Fascism blog.  Goldberg, a writer for National Review and a syndicated columnist, has written a fine work of intellectual history, skillfully tracing the many connections between Fascist and National Socialist thought and American Progressivism.  As the modern "liberal" is the inheritor of the Progressive mindset (indeed, the term "progressive" is coming back into vogue), we should be aware of these connections.  In short, I can recommend the book.  Goldberg's marshaling of evidence to show the common intellectual parentage of the European movements and Progressivism is impressive.  On the other hand, as Goldberg's history moves toward the present his book becomes more confused and to that extent less successful. 

Goldberg has gone to great pains to explain the potentially inflammatory title of this work.  The title comes not from Goldberg's desire to throw bombs at the left but instead from the mouth of leading Western socialist H.G. Wells, who once called for a "liberal fascism."  This was before WWII and the horrors of German style fascism would be made known to the world.  Goldberg also continuously makes the distinction between how fascistic ideas have taken hold in a relatively decent America and how they turned violent in a Europe with a very different (namely less democratic) history.  For Goldberg the term "fascism" is a descriptive term, not necessarily one of opprobrium.  Because of its historical connection to the Holocaust, fascism is certainly now a dirty word, but Goldberg wants to show that one can tease out a fascistic policy program separate from racial politics (this is especially true in Italy, the birthplace of the Fascist party, and very much less true of the Nazis, for whom anti-Semitism was always part of their program).  That program was popular among Progressives in America. As Goldberg effectively demonstrates, there was "something in the air" in the early 20th Century creating conditions where this kind of politics could take hold on both sides of the Atlantic, albeit in different forms due to circumstances. 

The book is most successful in laying out the historical antecedents of fascist thought.  Without going into too much detail (this post will be long enough), Goldberg lays out six basic characteristics of European fascism.  First, it was socialist and thus antagonistic towards Bolshevism only as a rival for the working class, not as a matter of economics.  As many have pointed out, the Nazi party was properly named the National Socialist party. The fight with the Communists was partially over turf and partially over the nature of socialism (should it be a nationalist phenomenon or a internationalist phenomenon).  Second, fascists, as part of their socialism, attacked capitalism as exploitive of the working class and fed the resentments of the working classes.  Next, there was a glorification and romanticizing of power, especially that of the state and the great leaders who ran the state.  Fourth, the fascists tended to glorify the idea of war as an organizing principle. In war a people are united and willing to accept state intervention for the good of the cause.  Those who oppose the cause are easily portrayed as traitors.  Fifth, fascists saw conventional morality as typified by family and religion (especially Christianity) and a threat to their cause. In an attempt to build the new Fascist Man, conventions must be overthrown and the family and church subsumed under the arm of the state.  Finally, fascists portrayed themselves as pragmatists who were above ideology and partisan differences.  Especially economically they were willing to do "what works."  In practice that meant applying the rule of experimentation to economic problems.  Administrators schooled in the scientific method should be put in charge of society to create programs "that work." 

Those familiar with American intellectual history will already recognize many of these characteristics in the American Progressive movement of the early 20th Century.  Many Progressives, Woodrow Wilson is a primary example, were schooled in universities highly influenced by the same German philosophy that laid the groundwork for European fascism.  Progressives tended to reject the limited government/natural rights founding of America as too constraining. Herbert Croly denounced the tyranny of "the Word," by which he meant constitutionalism.  Woodrow Wilson and others attacked the notion of static "Newtonian" approach to society in favor of a "Darwinian" view of society as an organic being, one that cannot be constrained by past thought or past generations.  As Goldberg ably discusses, Progressives had a zeal for experimentation and the science of administration (indeed, Wilson is one of the founders of the field of public administration).  As Goldberg puts it at one point, "Free societies are disorganized."  This frustrated the Progressives who saw progress in scientific planning, not random choice.  In addition, Goldberg discusses the Progressive distrust of traditional religion and family as enemies of progress and "enlightened administration."  One of the highlights of the book is the treatment of the Progressive glee at the American entry into WWI, allowing them to truly organize the nation on a wartime basis. As Goldberg later discusses, FDR would eventually do the name thing during the Depression, using the New Deal to fight the moral equivalent of war.  Both Wilson and Roosevelt were more than willing to use the power of the state to propagandize in favor of their policies and to label as traitors those who did not accept their policy proposals. For example FDR's National Recovery Administration threatened jail time for those who refused to put up the famous NRA blue eagle.  In a separate chapter Goldberg demonstrates the Progressive fondness for eugenics, perhaps summed up by Progressive icon Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who as a Supreme Court justice favored forcible sterilization of the mentally retarded, stating in the particular case, "Three generations of imbeciles is enough."  Or as H.G. Wells wrote in an introduction to a book by Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, "We want fewer and better children...and we cannot make the social life and the world-peace we are determined to make, with the ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens that you inflict on us (272)." 

As this post in already enormous, I will briefly sum up the rest of the book.  Goldberg takes these  Progressive  ideas and traces them to contemporary liberalism.  This is of limited success.  The Progressive (and fascistic) tendencies are most clear on the radical left of the 60s, with its obsession with violence, revolution, and power all in the name of reworking civilization on enlightened grounds.  In the latter half of the book Goldberg does tend to see fascism everywhere.  For example, he portrays the Kennedy administration as a quasi-fascistic youth cult.  Well, Kennedy was young and he would have been politically foolish not to make the best of that fact. Most astoundingly, Goldberg, a card-carrying conservative, sometimes strays precariously close to arguing that the Cold War was a false crisis drummed up to justify government power.  For example, he argues that Kennedy's promotion of putting a man on the moon was "sold to the public as a response to the fact that the Soviet Union was overtaking America in science."   Well, weren't they?  Was it not important for American to compete with the Soviets in science and in space?  Usually when a politician yells "crisis!" he is crying wolf; but sometimes there is actually a wolf (or in this case a bear). 

In his take on contemporary liberalism Goldberg is a bit too quick to find a liberal fascist under every bed (or in every do-gooder organization).  Goldberg is guilty at times of reductio ad Hitlerium i.e., that an idea is discredited simply because Hitler held to it (Hitler liked dogs, therefore people who like dogs, like Jonah Goldberg, are Nazis).  Again, sometimes when people are frustrated and critique modern consumerist bourgeois/middle class life they are fascists.  Sometimes they are just frustrated with modern consumerist bourgeois/middle class life.  Indeed, Goldberg favorably cites Christopher Lasch's harsh critique of Hillary Clinton's desire to use the state to take the place of parents.   Well, if there was ever a guy who was frustrated with modern consumerist bourgeois/middle class life, it was Christopher Lasch! In the same vein, Goldberg writes as if every film that expresses unease with the modern condition is guilty of incipient fascism.  File this under "trying to prove too much." In a final criticism, Goldberg sometimes cannot decide whether liberal fascists are committed to modern scientific government running our lives or to an anti-scientific critique of reason.  He needs to explain this seeming contradiction. 

Goldberg is on firmer ground when he discusses the ways modern Progressives use "the children" as the equivalent of war, an organizing principle to which no one can object and which justifies any state intervention into our lives. This is best seen in his review of Hillary Clinton's It Takes a Village (and lots and lots of government).  Clinton, Goldberg points out, begins with a distrust of parents and a reciprocal trust in government experts who, armed with credentials and scientific training, are much better able to raise your children than you poor slobs armed with common sense (read: unenlightened prejudice) as your only parenting tool. Goldberg also is effective in disabusing us of the myth that corporations are conservative.  First, when is the last time you heard of a corporation giving large sums to pro-life or pro-traditional marriage groups?  But corporate funding of socially progressive causes (such as "family planning") is common. Second, the early Progressives actually liked corporations.  These Progressives had drunk deeply from the draught of Darwinism (or a form of).  They believed in survival of the fittest.  If large national corporations ate up smaller companies, than that was the way of nature.  The object, then, was to use the state and its scientific administrators to manage these corporations for the public good.  Goldberg argues that both sides are happy.  The Progressives are happy because they get their enlightened administration, and the corporations are happy because the statist regulation will drive away any potential competition as the "little guy" cannot afford the massive entry costs created by said regulation.  This is known as corporatism or corporate socialism, and the "fat cats" love it. 

Let me close what might be the longest post in SDP history with a suggestion.  Continuously through Liberal Fascism Jonah Goldberg speaks of the  statist/collectivist agenda of the liberals. Liberals want to regulate the things we buy, the places we work, how parents parent, the things we eat, and, through their commitment to "diversity," even the thoughts we think. Liberals reject the limited government and natural rights philosophy of our founding. But "liberalism" is the politics of "liberty."  Liberalism, or as Goldberg likes to call it, "classical liberalism," is committed to limited government, constitutionalism, natural rights, property rights, free exchange, and assumes a kind of moderate, virtuous citizenry capable of self-denial. If this is liberal, then modern liberals aren't liberals.  They reject these core ideas or, as with the "living Constitution," reinterpret them in ways that indicate a clear break from the founders' purposes.  Why else did FDR think we needed a Second Bill of Rights?  Was the first one insufficient?   A theme runs through Progressive thought: the ideas of the American founding are too static and too limiting for the pragmatic, scientific government we now know is necessary for progress.   The real liberals are what we now call "conservatives."  This makes Goldberg's book confusing at times as he talks about "liberals" like Hillary Clinton who want (as Clinton has advocated) large television screens placed in public areas that constantly play videos showing us the latest in government approved scientific parenting techniques.  This is liberty?  The libertarian economist Milton Friedman never stopped calling himself a liberal.  Perhaps modern conservatives can take a lesson from him.  They should call themselves what they are, liberals, and call the left what they are, Progressives.  That's truth in labeling.

Update (if you actually make it this far): We get a mention at National Review (what, no link!).  Contrary to Jonah's interpretation of this review, I give the first half of Liberal Fascism a big thumbs up and thumb 3/4ths of the way up for the book's second half.  So for those wondering about the position of my thumb, that's more positive than sideways for the second half of the book. 

The Florida Contest

Next Tuesday, we'll be heading into the Republicans' first closed primary in Florida, where we'll see if McCain can hold his advantage over Republican-only voters, whether Romney can win in a state not predisposed to support him, and whether Giulani's strategy will work.   The Washington Post reports:

Riding the momentum from his weekend victory in South Carolina, John McCain turned his attention Sunday to Florida and the high-stakes primary there that will test whether the Arizona senator can consolidate support among Republican voters and take control of the GOP nomination battle.

The Jan. 29 contest in Florida will be the first Republican primary closed to independent voters, who have provided McCain with his margins of victory in both New Hampshire and South Carolina. A victory, strategists agreed, would stamp McCain as the front-runner in what has been a muddied Republican race and give him a clear advantage heading toward Super Tuesday on Feb. 5.

...

Florida has played a pivotal role in the past two general elections and now is poised to help determine who the Republicans will send into the main event this November. The primary looms as a potential showdown in the GOP nomination battle not only because of its size and importance but because it will be the first this year in which all the leading candidates are competing.

Giulani has kept a low profile in the race so far but, according to the Real Clear Politics polls, he remains in the middle of the fight in Florida.  McCain carries five of the six polls listed by RCP, but Giuliani  remains within the margin of error.  Given Florida's closed primary status where only Republicans can vote, the state will help provide an indication for Republicans going into Super Tuesday.  I would suspect that if McCain wins, the race will come down to Romney and McCain.  If Rudy wins, the delegate hunt continues and the possibility of a brokered convention becomes a greater possibility.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today we celebrate the birthday of one of the most influential men in American history.  The son of a reverend born in Atlanta, Georgia, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. began the campaign for civil rights in 1953 by helping to organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott.  He later brought his nonviolent campaign against segregation to Bull Connor's Birmingham in 1963.  The trip landed King in jail on Good Friday, where he composed "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," a truly remarkable document explaining the religious and philosophical underpinnings of nonviolent civil disobedience.

Change didn't come easily.  Bombings at homes and churches, police brutality, and murder at the hands of white supremacists continued.  However, a month after the Birmingham protest, President John Kennedy sent a civil-rights bill to Congress, prompting a sea of marchers to descent on Washington to build support for the bill's passage in August 1963.  The marchers assembled at the Lincoln Memorial and listened to performances by Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Odetta and Mahilia Jackson.  Veteran activist A. Philip Randolph urged the passage of the civil-rights bill.  Then, the master orator King took the podium: "Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. . . . Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. . . . We are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like the waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."  He concluded, in his now-famous lines:

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream.  It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.

...

When we let freedom ring, whem we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

(First posted on Martin Luther King Day 2007.)

SDP@The Movies: Coverfield

Giant monsters had their celluloid moment in the 1950's.  The grandfather of them all was Godzilla, a super-sized dinosaur whose radioactive breath expressed the all too real terrors of the atomic age, but whose slow pace as he flattened some of the most expensive real estate in Asia reminded the viewer of the blitzkrieg.  After Godzilla came a lot more big lizards and sea creatures (the best of these brought to life by Ray Harryhausen's stop motion magic).  And then there were a lot of giant spiders, a praying mantis, and of course Mothra, who battled Godzilla. 

Cloverfield was born, so it is reported, when J. J. Adams (Lost) visited Japan, and his son picked up a Godzilla toy.  'We need our own monster,' he thought, meaning an American giant monster.  But of course, America has its own monster, even older than Godzilla.  King Kong was born a good twenty years before Godzilla, and the original King Kong still stands as the best Giant Monster movie. 

Cloverfield cannot give us a distinctive American monster, because it so carefully hides the monster until the very end.  Anyone who has seen a Godzilla movie, let alone liked it, knows exactly who and what Godzilla is.  I drew countless pictures of BigG when I was a boy.  No one leaving the theater after Cloverfield has more than a vague image of the monster. 

Nonetheless, it is a success.  The movie is presented as the record on a digital video camera found at Central Park sometime after the event.  It is the Blair Witch Godzilla Project, along with all the shaky camera footage.  We see a going away party (the lead is taking a job in Japan) for much of the beginning, which is all the introduction we get or need to the main characters.  Then all Hell breaks loose, and we follow our heroes across Manhattan, as they try to rescue our hero's love interest.   Bits and pieces of a recorded-over film help to explain why the hero is so determined to save the girl.

The video camera device has lots of flaws.  Who is going to keep filming when he is being attacked by the vicious critters that fall off the back of Monster One?  But it keeps the movie very tightly focused.  We never learn what the monster is, or where it came from.  We only know what it might be like to try to survive in a city under attack by a Gargantua. That is more than any movie has shown us before. 

Cloverfield plays on two fears.  One is the very real fear of terrorist attack on our cities.  A lot of 9/11 mood is woven into the movie.  Another is fear of the world we live on and the cosmos that surrounds it.  In the scheme of things, we are really very small.  Sooner or, we hope, very later, something very big will come stomping around in our pond.

My brother Dave, who is a bigger monster movie fan than I am, has identified the creature on which the monster and its parasites/offspring are modeled.  It is the wind scorpion.  It is the most aggressive arachnid on the planet.  It has the strongest jaws in relation to size of any known creature.  It is found in Iraq. 

Herpes, Right Wing Rants, and Todd Epp

My esteemed Keloland Colleague, Todd Epp has a post that might well get the seal of approval from the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

As I watch the onslaught of Valtrex ads, it strikes me that that happiest, wealthiest, and most active people in America have itchy genitals and take the wonder drug Valtrex to keep them from itching too much.

Seriously. 

Have you looked at these people with herpes? 

They are handsome/beautiful, successful, well traveled, wealthy, and happy beyond all human belief.

Damn, I almost wish I had herpes.

Damn.  Having seen the same commercials, I too almost wish that Todd Epp had herpes. 

But all kidding aside, I think Todd is dead spot on.  There is something really wrong with these commercials.  And there is something even more wrong with the fact that I have to listen to two or three lists of medical side effects per night.  I wonder if lawyers have something to do with this. 

The Republic & Nevada

The Republic is a collective person, formed from the decisions of voters as they coalesce into groups, and focused by elections and by constitutional bodies like the President and Congress into images called policy.  We can see this process work, if in something of a haze, in each primary and caucus this year. 

Jay Cost, at RealClearPolitics, has a good summary of how Senator Clinton has been assembling a coalition that, so far, is outflanking that of Senator Obama.  Ms. Clinton is winning a majority of the female vote, the Catholic vote, and those making less than $50,000 a year.  She won the Hispanic vote comfortably, as well as the White vote and voters over 60. 

Senator Obama won the men and split the Protestants, but he beat Senator Clinton by 69% among Black voters.  That last bit is the most significant worry for Democrats.  There is no doubt now that the African-American love affair with the Clintons is over.  Black voters are not likely to defect to the Republicans, but they might stay home in November and that will matter if the contest is close.  There is also no doubt that the Nevada contest has left wounds in the Democratic body.  Some of Ms. Clinton's allies in Nevada played dirty politics at its dirtiest.  See John Fund at the Wall Street Journal:

Both Democrats and Republicans are good at practicing hypocrisy when they need to. But it's still breathtaking to see how some Democrats ignore that it was only last week they argued before the Supreme Court that an Indiana law requiring voters show ID at the polls would reduce voter turnout and disenfranchise minorities. Nevada allies of Hillary Clinton have just sued to shut down several caucus sites inside casinos along the Las Vegas Strip, potentially disenfranchising thousands of Hispanic or black shift workers who couldn't otherwise attend the 11:30 a.m. caucus this coming Saturday.

D. Taylor, the president of the Culinary Workers Union that represents many casino workers, notes that legal complaint was filed just two days after his union endorsed Barack Obama. He says the state teachers union, most of whose leadership backs Mrs. Clinton, realized that the Culinary union would be able to use the casino caucuses to better exercise its clout on behalf of Mr. Obama, and used a law firm with Clinton ties to file the suit.

This attempt to block casino workers from participating in the Nevada caucus looks to be a magnificent unforced error, made worse by President Clinton's hissy-fit on camera.  It looks like the Culinary Workers Union wasn't able to deliver much of its promised vote to Mr. Obama.  Black voters will recognize these tactics. 

From the point of view of republican government, on the other hand, the thing is going quite well.  James Madison worried about the threat that factions pose to democracies.  What he hoped is that the large and diverse American Republic would split and dilute the various factions.  His hopes were not disappointed.  Today, even a place like Nevada is so demographically and politically diverse that all of the natural factions (Catholics, Protestants, Blacks and Whites) were split into a spectrum by the prism of a caucus system.  Nobody won all of the men, women, Whites, Blacks, rich or poor, etc.  Instead these potential factions are split among the candidates, and we count only who won the largest chunk.  Nor were all women or Protestants forced to decide between Clinton, Obama, and Edwards.  A lot of women in Nevada are Republicans. 

In caucuses and primary elections, voters have a choice that may be described by a simple equation C+1, where C is the number of candidates, and the one represents the option of not participating.  What matters is not only how each demographic group votes, but how many voters are represented in each group and how many of those come to the polls.   The mix is fluid in each state, and differs from one state to another.  In such an environment, the outcome of the 2008 election cannot possibly represent the victory of one faction over others.  It can only represent the victory of a temporal coalition of many divisions within many distinct groups.  I may like the outcome less well than Todd Epp.  But this is government not from accident or force, but from reflection and choice.     

Leader Of The Pack

Today the Argus Leader profiles NSU Men's Basketball coach Don Meyer.  Last night coach Meyer won his 879th game as a head coach, tying Dean Smith for #2 all time.  Just a couple snippets from the article:

"Contrary to popular belief, life is a team sport," says Meyer, driving his Toyota Prius around Aberdeen this week to show a guest some points of interest. "If you can't get along with people, if you can't work with them and get the best out of them, you're not going to be very successful.

"That's the No. 1 thing I want people to say about our guys is that they're a real team. That's our only chance here at Northern, and our only chance here in Aberdeen. Everybody has to be a team player to make it go." (snip)

The enemy in Meyer's world is not the opponent. It's not the officials, either, who regard him as distinctively fair and respectful. No, the devil on this earth is mediocrity, with selfishness and sloth to the right and left. You go after them all with your fists up, ready to rock and roll.

To know Don Meyer is to respect him.  South Dakota could use more like him. 

Cyberattacks Hitting Powergrids

This seems like a big story (via Slashdot): "The CIA on Friday admitted that cyberattacks have caused at least one power outage affecting multiple cities outside the United States."

Waiting for Reagan

William Kristol:  "You fight an election with the politicians you have."  Someone had to say it, eventually.

UPDATE:  Glenn Reynolds notes the same story and a dissenting email from Bill Quick.