Sobering Thoughts

Comments on politics, the culture, economics, and sports by Paul Tuns. I am editor-in-chief of "The Interim," Canada's life and family newspaper, and author of "Jean Chretien: A Legacy of Scandal" (2004) and "The Dauphin: The Truth about Justin Trudeau" (2015). I am some combination of conservative/libertarian, standing athwart history yelling "bullshit!" You can follow me on Twitter (@ptuns).

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Tuesday, March 31, 2009
 
Ousting Wagoner

Jennifer Rubin on Barack Obama calling for -- and getting -- General Motors' CEO Rick Wagoner's head: "Obama promised to take the 'politics out of science' — but plainly not out of business."


 
Four and down

4) I agree with Sports Illustrated's Peter King on an expanded regular season: The league isn't leveling with fans on the idea of a 17- or 18-game schedule. Roger Goodell keeps saying the idea of 17 regular-season games with three in the preseason, or 18 and two exhibitions, is just another way of playing the 20 games that are already scheduled. Wrong. It's wrong because starters would be playing the full game in the 17th and 18th regular-season games, and now they play, on average, a quarter of each preseason game. King goes on to say that more games mean more exposure to injury and therefore playoff football with fewer stars. Not a good idea.

3) I also agree with King that the collective bargaining agreement (and the NFL in general) will be in worse shape with Dan Rooney headed off to Ireland as Barack Obama's ambassador to Ireland. His diplomacy might smooth potentially contentious discussions over the next CBA.

2) Colour me unimpressed: New Orleans Saints re-sign backup nobody, er, QB Joey Harrington. He's fighting for the #2 QB job even though he didn't play for the Saints at all last year and hasn't been able to catch onto any of the four teams he's been with over his seven-year career.

1) Colour me unimpressed II: The pre-season schedule has been announced. I get to see the Buffalo Bills play host to the Chicago Bears and Detroit Lions.


 
Three and out

3) Sad to see Gary Sheffield released by the Detroit Tigers. They still owe him $14 million -- the second highest amount ever for a released player -- and would rather construct a team that is more versatile (RF/LF Marcus Thames deserves a chance at a full-time job). Sheffield is slow and can't really play defense anymore, and even as a DH he is a declining commodity. Shef is just one homerun away from 500, and I hope (and am confident) he will find a team to play for to reach that milestone. I'm not sure the Tampa Bay Rays have room for him, but that's where Sheffield would like to play because it is close to home. The Texas Rangers or Seattle Mariners might make more sense. The one thing I always enjoyed about Shef was when he was readying himself for a pitch:




2) Tyler Kepner writes in the New York Times about how the free-spending Yankees are using 'discount' parts for the bullpen. Of course, this makes sense: relievers are generally unreliable (about half of the top 40 non-closer relievers in ERA one year will not make the list the following year or appear on the list the previous season). It is foolish to spend much money on relief pitchers considering the inconsistency of their performance. A mix of leftover relievers, veterans fighting for a job and rookies and sophomores trying to establish themselves might or might not yield results, but targeting a handful of relievers who pitched well the previous season or so who are not likely to replicate their overall performance, might or might not yield results either. The Yanks have spent money on their bullpen before -- the acquisitions of Kyle Farnsworth and LaTroy Hawkins -- without great results. Why spend the money?

1) It is hard to quibble with the Atlanta Braves signing 3B Chipper Jones to a three-year extension (three years at $42 million with a $19 million option for 2012). He is the only switch-hitter to have both 300 HRs and a 300 BA and still performs at an All Star level. However, the extension smells of rewarding the 36-year-old for his past performance. The Braves, no doubt, are signalling to their fans that it continues to value commitment to the team (Jones will likely play his entire career in Atlanta) and that they are committed to winning. At the same time, Jones had a great season in '08: 364/470/574, all above his career averages. A good move overall with some potential downside that Atlanta should be able to afford.


 
A soundbite that doesn't make sense

Ontario PC MPP Sylvia Jones (Dufferin-Caledon) on the harmonized tax that will be applied to funeral services: "Dalton McGuinty has done it again. The fact that he has found a way to tax the dead is unthinkable, unimaginable and inconceivable." Actually, dead people don't pay for funerals and therefore won't pay the harmonized tax on them.


 
Great advertising idea

Jonah Goldberg posts a suggestion from a reader:

If Ford is smart (and positive it doesn't need bailout money)- it should run an Ad stating "Ford- Still Run by Car Experts Not federal bureaucrats"... or maybe "If you like the IRS you'll love the new GM; Ford still making cars for people and by people who love cars" or perhaps "Ford- for people who like their cars made by auto experts not congressional staffers"


 
The Tata Nano

Lot's of hand-wringing over Tata Motors' new car, the Nano, because greens worry about millions of middle class Indians joining the ranks of automobile owners. I'm excited about those in the developing world attaining something closer to developed world standards of living. Anyway, Forbes has a great sentence on the new line of cars: "The brilliance of the Nano lies in its finely judged balance of skimping where it doesn't matter and pampering owners where it does." Sounds like a great business model.


 
Regulators and the financial crisis

Arnold Kling in a letter to the Washington Post:

"Risk-based capital requirements were a response to the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, and regulators were confident that with those requirements in place, we would not see a repeat. As we watch Mr. Geithner's plan make its way through Congress, we should be wary that it, too, will seem like the correct response to the present crisis while laying the basis for the next one."


 
The Rolling Stone (Oliver Stone?) take on the financial turmoil

It's not about economics, it's about power; its not about bailing out failing companies, but rather an undemocratic revolution that will put the financial elite in charge. It's all very conspiratorial. Matt Taibbi writes that the credit crisis was part on elaborate plan:

"So that's the first step in wall street's power grab: making up things like credit-default swaps and collateralized-debt obligations, financial products so complex and inscrutable that ordinary American dumb people — to say nothing of federal regulators and even the CEOs of major corporations like AIG — are too intimidated to even try to understand them."

If that's your thing, the RS piece will be up your alley. There's plenty of that, and a lot of f-words. Yet, like a stopped clock:

"While the rest of America, and most of Congress, have been bugging out about the $700 billion bailout program called TARP, all of these newly created organisms in the Federal Reserve zoo have quietly been pumping not billions but trillions of dollars into the hands of private companies (at least $3 trillion so far in loans, with as much as $5.7 trillion more in guarantees of private investments). Although this technically isn't taxpayer money, it still affects taxpayers directly, because the activities of the Fed impact the economy as a whole. And this new, secretive activity by the Fed completely eclipses the TARP program in terms of its influence on the economy."


 
Happy birthday to Christopher Walken

He turns 66 today. SNL clips at YouTube have the embedding disabled, so to see the Walken family reunion skit, click here. And there is always Walken reading the Three Little Pigs



 
Politics pop quiz

Tyler Cowen says choose one:

Theory 1: President Obama replaced Wagoner with Fritz Henderson as CEO of General Motors because he is convinced that Henderson will be a better corporate leader.

Theory 2: President Obama replaced Wagoner with Fritz Henderson as CEO because the A.I.G. public relations debacle taught him not to appear "soft" with corporate leaders receiving government money.

Which theory do you vote for? Which principles do you think should be governing the disposition of leadership in major U.S. corporations?


 
Permanent Earth Hour

If you liked Earth Hour's darkness, sitting around singing camp fire songs around the candle, and not have television or the computer on (you did turn off your TV and laptop, right?) you'll love the future. Art Woolf Vermont Tiger has seen the future:

"Would you believe that a country could consume 34% less kerosene, 37% less LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) and 80% less gasoline 2 years?

Sweden? Iceland? Certainly not China. What is the nation that has accomplished this remarkable feat? ... Cuba."


Of course, this reduction in energy use is not due to the conservationist virtues of the Cuban people or the environmental policies of its government. It is because the country is poor and cannot afford to light the darkness or heat the cold. As Woolf says, "If that's what it takes, no thanks."


 
G20 summit

The headline from the Toronto Star: "G20 summit to seek unity on steps to fix economy." That is, the leaders of 20 large countries are not seeking economic solutions, but political unity.

The Economist has a good editorial on the G20 summit and what is needed: 1) first, do no harm, 2) do something useful, and 3) oppose protectionism. The magazine says it is the last item that needs more work as 17 of these same 20 countries that met last fall have erected trade barriers since unanimously rejecting protectionist measures. In November, there was 'unity' at the photo-op that was quickly jettisoned once the leaders returned home. Such unity is unhelpful, indeed counter-productive.


Monday, March 30, 2009
 
Your team making the championship can be bad for your health

... if your team loses. Wall Street Journal has the story, which seems to be little more than two data points for Los Angeles County. Cardiac deaths in the two weeks after the LA Rams lost in the 1980 Super Bowl increased 17%, but when the LA Raiders won the Super Bowl four years later, cardiac deaths decreased by 6% over the following 14 days. Hardly convincing.


 
Suckling at government's teat is recession proof


















Or perhaps even counter-cyclical. The Washington Post reports:

"Last month, just before Valentine's Day, business at Holland & Knight was so slow that the law firm laid off more than 240 lawyers and staff, victims of the economic downturn that has dented Washington's reputation for being recession-proof.

But one area of the multi-service firm was thriving. Rich Gold, head of the firm's public policy and regulation practice, was hiring more than a dozen lobbyists, bringing his federal lobbying team to about 70, every one of them scrambling to stay on top of provisions and changes in the mammoth economic recovery package that was barreling through Congress. They were handling about 240 clients, including 50 new ones, all eager to win a portion of the stimulus that President Obama wanted passed."


In a nutshell: "Put another way, Main Street's gloom has been K Street's boon," although total fees paid to lobbyists are expected be down from $3.2 billion from 2008.


 
The Pope is right

Condoms aren't the best way to fight AIDS/HIV in Africa. Who supports the stand of Benedict XVI? Edward C. Green, a senior research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health, that's who. Writing in the Washington Post, he says:

"One reason is 'risk compensation.' That is, when people think they're made safe by using condoms at least some of the time, they actually engage in riskier sex.

Another factor is that people seldom use condoms in steady relationships because doing so would imply a lack of trust. (And if condom use rates go up, it's possible we are seeing an increase of casual or commercial sex.) However, it's those ongoing relationships that drive Africa's worst epidemics."


Interestingly, the research supports the claim that condom access reduces the transmission of the disease in Thailand and Cambodia, where the disease spreads mostly via the commercial sex trade.


 
Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario attracts conservative leadership

Randy Hillier is running for leader of the Ontario PCs.

Frank Klees has also announced he is running.

Tim Hudak will make it three.


 
The pay twice nation

P.J. O'Rourke has a sadly amusing article in the Weekly Standard on doubling down on the welfare state. Your paycheck is less because you have to support federal, state and welfare programs for people who don't work. Your taxes support the public school even though it is so awful you pay the private tuition for your own kids. You pay taxes so there can be a police department and you still have to pay for burglar alarms, private security, guard dogs and a gun for self-defense. Your hospital bill subsidizes the hospital bill of someone who doesn't have a job/insurance. Your retirement savings are taxed to support other people's pensions. You have to sort your own trash before the taxpayer-funded garbage collectors will pick it up at your house.


 
Obama and Notre Dame

Peter Kirsanow in The Corner:

When a Catholic institution confers an honorary degree upon President Obama, it should be prepared to explain, with some degree of rigor, why the public should believe the institution takes the following actions of the president seriously:

1) The executive order reversing the Mexico City Policy that prohibits the use of taxpayer dollars to perform abortions in other countries;

2) The votes against the Illinois version of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act that would require medical care be provided to babies born after botched abortions — as opposed to leaving the babies to die;

3) The order allowing the use of federal funds for embryonic stem-cell research that may (and likely will) lead to the destruction of human life;

4) The declaration that he will sign the Freedom of Choice Act, a bill that would reverse virtually every restriction on abortion, ranging from parental-notification laws to laws against partial-birth abortion;

5) The expected abrogation of the "conscience clause" that permits observant Catholic (and other) health-care workers to decline to perform abortions;

6) The nomination of Kathleen Sebelius, arguably the most pro-abortion governor in the U.S., to head the Department of Health and Human Services;

7) The unalloyed support for Roe v. Wade that permits abortions at any stage of pregnancy.

Merely stating that the honor is being conferred in recognition of the president's historic election is insufficient. The historic nature of the election has already been marked thousands of times in thousands of venues. Any incremental value in having it done yet again — only this time in the form of an honor bestowed by a Catholic institution — must be explained against the actions noted above. Otherwise, it appears prominence and celebrity trump principle and values.


Sunday, March 29, 2009
 
Stuff

1. Oil in West Africa in Granta. (HT: Tim Harford)

2. 20 best views in the world.

3. "Everything taking too long," from The Onion.

4. "Mesmerizing" video at Boing Boing of hula Darth Vader on the dashboard.

5. David Mader on Warren Kinsella's predictions of the demise of CanWest. More annoying than the incessant National Post death watch is Kinsella's celebrating the death of a Canadian business with which he disagrees.

6. A comic that resonates with my wife -- and, I assume, most moms of young children.


 
Wonder Woman knows how to anti-celebrate Earth Hour

By enjoying the fruits of man's labour and rejecting the the hour of darkness.



 
The pizza cone

The Indianapolis Star has the story about what is known elsewhere in the world (Australia, Italy, Japan, Korea) as Pizza Hands coming to America.



 
Ayn Rand is right (about altruism)

Over at Freakonomics, Daniel Hamermesh relates a story and lesson:

My 9-year-old granddaughter announced, “I feel very sorry for my friend Olivia.”

“Why?” her father asked her.

“Because I will be away and won’t be able to attend her birthday party,” she replied.

This struck me as a typical child’s self-centered behavior. But another way of looking at it is that it’s the epitome of altruism.

Most young kids view themselves as the center, or near the center, of the universe; that being so, their absence from an event honoring somebody else will in their minds detract from the other person’s enjoyment, so that my granddaughter’s sympathy for Olivia can be viewed as charitable.


 
Paying for the privilege of joining the MHC

I offer this without comment or judgement. The Mile High Atlanta is a service in Georgia for those who, well, might find the lavatories of commercial airlines too small, too public, or insufficiently romantic:

"Make your fantasy a reality with Mile High Atlanta. We are located at West Georgia Regional Airport near Carrollton, GA. just a short drive from the Metro Atlanta area in rural Georgia. We will take you up to over 5,280 feet above the earth's surface so you have the opportunity to join the exclusive 'Mile High Club.' For only $379.00 per couple, you and "your significant other" will have a one hour flight in a Piper Cherokee Six designed exclusively for this purpose. Also included is a bottle of champagne, a certificate of your accomplishment and you get to keep your sheet as a souvenir of this special event."

(HT: Marginal Revolution as part of Tyler Cowen's 'markets in everything' meme)


 
March Madness Elite eight predictions, Part II

South

North Carolina Tar Heels (1) edge Oklahoma Sooners (2) -- Interesting fact of the game and a big reason this is a great game: big men Tyler Hansbrough (UNC) and Blake Griffin (Okie), the past two Sporting News college basketball players of the year, will face off against each other. The Tar Heels have the better backcourt with the best guard in the sport right now, Ty Lawson. UNC beat Gonzaga with ease and their coach Roy Williams has made the Final Four five other times. Oklahoma has won all three of their tourney games with relative ease (Morgan State, Michigan, Syracuse) and haven't been tested like they will be today by the best basketball school in the country. Should be close, but North Carolina is simply the better team.

Midwest

Louisville Cardinals (1) beat Michigan State Spartans (2) -- MSU is coming off a big game with Kansas, down 58-53 in the final minutes, the Spartans out-scored the Jayhawks 14-4 down the stretch to make the Elite Eight. Going into this game, Louisville can't take anything for granted. The marquee battle here is between the coaches: Rick Pitino (Louisville) and Tom Izzo (MSU) combine for nine Final Four appearances and each man has a national championship. On the court, the Spartans rely on phenomenal point guard Kalin Lucas, the Cards on a four-man guard rotation, although as The Sporting News pointed out, that's as much because no one in the backcourt has separated themselves from the rest of the crowd as it is because of philosophy. Louisville puts a lot of pressure on opposing teams and they'll create a good many turnovers and easy baskets. But their key to winning is the fact that they have the two best players in this game, center Terrence Williams and forward Earl Clark (when he brings his A-game), and as long as they play as well as they can and the guard rotation wears down Lucas, the Cards shouldn't have any problem winning.


Saturday, March 28, 2009
 
Rex Murphy on HRCs

Rex Murphy reviews Ezra Levant's book on the human rights commission industry, Shakedown, in the pages of the Globe and Mail. The review is every bit worth reading as the book. Here's a flavour:

"Ezra Levant, for my taste, could be the love child (ideologically speaking) of Noam Chomsky and Ontario human-rights impresario Barbara Hall, but his indictment of the procedures, practices and ideology of Canada's human rights commissions, their Orwellian character, shameless amateurism and overweening reach is simply right. He has their number. He has experienced their practice. He has documented their absurdities and pettiness."

But the most important part of the "review" is the way in which Murphy uses it to discuss the political reaction -- or lack thereof -- to Levant's persecution:

It's very much worth noting here that while Levant's personal politics may have stayed the enthusiasm of Liberals and New Democrats for giving him the support in his fight he clearly deserves, they haven't carried an opposite dividend. Where has Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper been on this issue? It is a cause of deepest principle. It isn't just a Tory thing. But Harper has been craven on the subject.

There is some thought in Conservative circles that Harper "stayed away" from the human rights commission scandal because he fears "sending the wrong signal" of associating the Conservative party with an "attack" on human rights, and thus confirming in the minds of the bien-pensant that he and his party are the troglodytes some suspect them of being from the old days of Reform.

If true, this is sheer cowardice and evasion. If free speech, free thought and freedom of the press don't register as the absolute cardinal principles of any democratic polity, and if Harper calculates that not defending them is a worthwhile tactic, he doesn't deserve to be Prime Minister.

About some things, silence or temporizing is not — may I use Brian Mulroney's phrase here — "an option, Sir." The same thought applies with equal force to Michael Ignatieff and Jack Layton. They have no excuse for standing — as they have — on the sidelines while this issue has been raging.


 
March Madness Elite eight predictions, Part I

West

Connecticut Huskies (1) beat Missouri Tigers (3) -- Missouri had a great game against Memphis on Thursday, scoring 102 points against what is likely the best defense in the country (Memphis hasn't allowed more than 79 points all year). So anything could happen today, but I thought U Conn would win the whole thing since the beginning and I'm sticking with them. If the game is a face paced, back-and-forth game, it might neutralize the game of the Huskies' big center Hasheem Thabeet, who had 15 points and 15 rebounds against Purdue. The Huskies will be smart to slow the game down to keep Thabeet in the game longer. U Conn should be able to control the pace of the game, score lots, and pull out the victory. They have the better starting lineup, although Missouri has the deeper bench, especially with Huskies guard Jerome Dyson injured. If U Conn makes this a half court game, they win; if not, all bets are off.

East

Villanova Wildcats (3) beat Pittsburgh Panthers (1) -- Panthers have got to the Elite Eight with three narrow victories. The Wildcats had impressive wins against UCLA and Duke in the second and third round, respectively. I like the relentless attack of 'Nova that should get the Panthers into foul trouble. But the 'Cats have also played great D throughout the tourney. The game should start slow (the familiarity of the two Big East teams, says The Sporting News' Daniel Blank, will lead to an early tentativeness), but it should become something special as the game progresses. Pitt has never made it past the Sweet Sixteen until this year, while 'Nova is making its second trip to the Elite Eight in four years. Pittsburgh, the early tourney favourite has struggled, while Villanova has dominated, averaging nearly a 20-point margin in its victories. The Wildcats have the better backcourt game, the Panthers have the advantage in the paint. But Villanova's deeper bench and superior coaching will make the difference in a game that should be much closer than 'Nova's last two games.


Friday, March 27, 2009
 
South Park commentary on the financial crisis and politics

Very, very good. (As South Park always is.)



 
Pretty freaking cool

Thrillbillies



(HT: Virginia Postrel)


 
The Woodstock Death Count

West Virginia Surf Report goes day-by-day, performer/band-by-performer/band and finds:

130 total performers: 105 alive, 25 dead
Total Woodstock death percentage: 19%


I agree with the author: thought it would have been higher.


 
NCAA predictions, Part II

Midwest

Louisville Cardinals (1) beats Arizona Wildcats (12) -- I predicted the Wildcats would get past the first two rounds. I like SI.com's Joe Posnanski's description of Arizona: undeserving entry into the tournament but dangerous now that they're in it. But their ride comes to an end. The Cardinals probably have the weakest offense of the number one seeds, but Arizona's defense is pretty limited. Louisville is a deep team, which probably explains why they have beaten their last five opponents 204-138 in the second half. Arizona is overly reliant on their three stars (Juniors Chase Budinger, Jordan Hill and Nic Wise) and if even one gets into foul trouble or has a bad game, the 'Cats are in serious trouble.

Michigan State Spartans (2) beat Kansas Jayhawks (3) -- MSU beat the Jayhawks 75-62 at home in January, and the CW is that is is difficult to beat a good team twice in one year. This might come down to (as Mike DeCourcy of The Sporting News) says, to a battle between the 'Hawks' inexperience vs. the Spartans' inconsistency. Kansas center Cole Aldrich is coming off a great game (triple double) but the Spartans are good against big men. The Spartans give up a lot of turnovers, but the veteran team is finally healthy, has great depth, and is extremely athletic. But it will be MSU's stout defense that will lead to the Spartans pulling out the victory.

South

North Carolina Tar Heels (1) beats Gonzaga Bulldogs (4) -- By any indication, the 'Zags have a great defense, but 12th-seed Western Kentucky lit them up for 81 in almost upsetting the four seed in the second round of March Madness. If WK can exploit the Bulldogs D for 81, what will the offensively dominant Tar Heels do? UNC is averaging 90.4 points per game, with five players averaging 11 points per game. The Heels win and they should do it convincingly.

Syracuse Orange (3) beats Oklahoma Sooners (2) -- The Sooners have great perimeter shooting and forward/center Blake Griffin is probably the best player in the country (61 points and 30 rebounds in two tournament games thus far). The Orange victories over Stephen F. Austin and Arizona State in the first two rounds were impressive. Point guard Jonny Flynn is one of the best in NCAA. Syracuse may not have the most talent in the tournament, but as SI.com's Seth Davis says, "whatever Syracuse has to do, it's able to do." What they have to do is contain Griffin, and I'm sure they'll find some way to limit the damage the big center does. But even if the Orange don't, this could be a very high scoring affair, with a high percentage of shots made. Syracuse is prone to turnovers, but if they can limit their mistakes, they'll upset the Sooners.

Quick prediction for Elite Eight

North Carolina man-handles Syracuse
Louisville beats Michigan State

Final Four

North Carolina beats Villanova
UConn beats Louisville

Final

UConn beats UNC

All that said, I was wrong predicting three of the four games for Thursday nights' games, although fourth ranked Xavier almost beat number one seed Pittsburgh until a final burst by the Panthers in the last minute.


Thursday, March 26, 2009
 
NCAA predictions, Part I

West

Connecticut Huskies (1) beat Purdue Boilermakers (5) -- I think Purdue could beat any other #1 seed. Unfortunately for the Boilermakers they are playing the Huskies. UConn has destroyed their first two opponents, Chattanooga and Texas A&M. Purdue, who "upset" four-seed Washington State on the weekend, can win if they force seven-foot, two-inch, Tanzanian-born center Hasheem Thabeet into foul trouble early, an absolutely dominating presence in the paint. Purdue is a speed bump on UConn's road to the Final Four.

Memphis Tigers (2) beat Missouri Tigers (3) -- Two teams called the Tigers, two physical teams. Memphis gets little respect because they ran up an incredible record in a weak conference. But they are going for their fourth consecutive trip to the Elite Eight and shouldn't be under-estimated. Missouri won't score the early points to let them get into their full court press. Memphis wins, probably by a larger than expected margin.

East

Xavier Muskateers (4) edge Pittsburgh Panthers (1) -- Pitt has never gotten past the Sweet 16 and they had less than impressive wins over a pair of defensively deficient teams, East Tennessee State and Oklahoma State, in the first two rounds. It is hard to believe all the college hoops pundits, so high on Panthers before the tourney began, could be so wrong. Pitt has trouble shooting from any distance, Muskateers forward Derrick Brown will have a big game and Xavier pulls off a big upset.

Duke Blue Devils (2) beat Villanova Wild Cats (3) -- Best game tonight with the Blue Devils winning a close one because of its vastly superior perimeter game. Basketball Prospectus doesn't like Duke's defense, FoxSports does. I'll take BP's word for it. Villanova drives hard to the basket and will expose the Blue Devils' defense if it is weak. But Duke doesn't give up turnovers, giving the Wild Cats no room for error. Duke squeezes through.

Quick prediction for Elite Eight

Duke beats Xavier in a back-and-forth game

UConn beats Memphis handily


 
Things to ponder

Arnold Kling on financial regulation:

"Regulation is a chess mid-game, not a math problem. With a math problem, once you solve the problem, it stays solved. In a chess mid-game, new opportunities and threats arise constantly. You try to plan ahead, but your plans inevitably degrade over time."

Also, Kling considers what to write about the George Mason University Economics department. Me: GMU's is better than Chicago's.


Wednesday, March 25, 2009
 
Stuff

Great website, Old Jews Telling Jokes, is updated on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This is my favourite joke.

Ben Stein really, really, really, really, really likes the director's cut of Tropic Thunder.

Intrade has the likelihood of the Employee Free Choice Act becoming law by the end of 2009 is getting progressively less, falling dramatically from 35 to 18 over the past 24 hours. Chances are also getting slimmer that it passes by the end of 2010, falling from 60 to 45.

Barack Obama's support of using taxpayer dollars to fund embryonic stem cell research represents a major step backwards on using stem cells to find treatment to diseases and injuries that would benefit from regenerative medicine.

Moderately amusing comic on economics and/or politics.

Photos by my friend Jono from the top of the Verve building in Toronto. I quite like the last one.


Tuesday, March 24, 2009
 
George F. Will at his best

A great column in which he provides a "partial list of recent lawlessness, situational constitutionalism and institutional derangement" -- or how the United States increasingly looks like a banana republic.


Friday, March 20, 2009
 
Cool football video



 
Keep the government's hands off the internet

Dan Gardner in the Ottawa Citizen: CRTC doesn't need to regulate the 'net. The battle is essentially between "Broadcasters and (Internet service providers)" (who are against regulation) and content-makers (who want it to protect their industry). Putting aside ideological preferences, the pragmatic problem is that regulation is virtually impossible. Another important issue is that there is no need. As Gardner notes, "The Broadcasting Act and the CRTC came into existence to solve the problem of spectrum scarcity. There is no spectrum scarcity on the Internet." Regulation of the internet will either be fruitlessly impossible or akin to a bailout for culture makers (TV, newspapers, music, etc...), both at the expense of consumers and taxpayers.


 
Burkean canuck

Ottawa Citizen columnist John Robson says we need to have a broader concept of democracy, one that does not fetishize the masses voting as the sole definition of a healthy democracy. This is true conservatism and it is likely to look very elitist to most. (Sorry, folks, but that's genuine conservatism, from Burke to Kirk.) Robson says:

"The right question is how we get back to regarding voting as a privilege that carries a social duty to cast intelligent, responsible, public-spirited ballots, not a right allowing us to howl, grab or preen.

Yes, it goes against the temper of the times. But is there not at least superficial plausibility to the claim that the 'fairer' our electoral methods have become, in our terms, the shabbier the resulting politics?"


The problem with democracy as currently practised -- and perhaps this is inevitable -- is that when you give the masses the right to vote, the less productive majority will use it to grab stuff from the more productive minority. Modern democracy has elevated envy to a political virtue and given the populace a means by which to complain and act on those complaints. It isn't healthy for the nation or, I would add, the individuals who howl, grab and preen.


 
Gerson on the AIG bonuses

Michael Gerson has a very good column looking at the actions of the politicians -- Congress, the President, his administration officials -- and the peak inside the Washington sausage factory it isn't a pretty sight. Gerson concludes:

"What sane money manager would want to partner with a government that blames others for its mistakes, urges the violation of inconvenient contracts and threatens to tax benefits retroactively? One Wall Street expert told me, 'Even if people trust the president, they don't trust Congress.' This kind of trust and confidence is essential to the next stage of our economic recovery. It is also being actively undermined by the incompetence and hypocrisy of the government itself."

And there is a marvelous paragraph about President Barack Obama's Clintonian taking credit for taking the blame.


Thursday, March 19, 2009
 
Shaidle interviews Levant

Read the full interview with blogger and author Ezra Levant by Kathy Shaidle. Find out who Levant's heroes were growing up and more about his battle with human rights commission industry. A snippet from Levant who is promoting his anti-HRC book Shakedown:

"My book contains some explosive facts about the CHRC that will likely shock 'severely normal' Canadians, including evidence that the CHRC is Canada's largest disseminator of anti-Semitic, anti-black and anti-gay bigotry. I just don't see how any government other than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's could accept the fact that staff from their 'human rights' agency has actually joined various neo-Nazi organizations, and made literally hundreds of bigoted comments (e.g. gays are 'deviants' and a 'cancer on society'; an apartheid city called 'Whiteville' should be formed; Canadian neo-Nazis need to get 'dangerous', etc.). This is a scandal of the first order, and political heads should roll."


 
Trade freely and carry a big stick

Guy Sorman at CityJournal.org has an interesting article on the Seventh Fleet in the Pacific Ocean. Do read the whole thing, but chew on his concluding two paragraphs:

"For a stark example of what the region would be like without the American presence, look at the piracy occurring these days along the Somali coast, an area that America does not patrol. Pirates hijack and ransom tankers, interrupting the flow of oil, increasing insurance premiums, and ultimately raising the price of gas. In the Pacific, however, pirates act cautiously or not at all because they know that the Seventh Fleet is never far off.

In the long run, says [Vice Admiral John Bird, commander of the Seventh Fleet], regional conflict in the Pacific could even disappear, thanks to expanded global trade. But the presence of the Seventh Fleet is exactly what makes global trade possible here—and no other country has the power and the inclination to do it. The ultimate role of the U.S. Navy, the vice admiral concludes, is to keep the channels of commerce and communication open and safe, just as the British Navy did in the nineteenth century. 'I am a disciple of Adam Smith,' he says wryly. 'Peace can be reached by free trade, but free trade requires that the sea be policed by a strong navy'."


 
Will on Mexico's drug war

In today's George Will column there is a good bit of sobering thought (Mexico is not on the verge of being a failed state) and a good many facts, but this says why the war on drugs is not going to be won by a democracy:

"Although almost all the cartels' weapons come from the United States, the cartels are generating upward of $15 billion annually from drugs, human trafficking and extortion. So they will find ways to get guns -- and grenades and other military weapons -- for their internecine disputes about control over routes for smuggling drugs and people."

$15 billion is enough incentive to break the law for the producers and distributors of illegal drugs -- if not through Mexico, then somewhere else. As last week's Economist notes, most of the product coming through Mexico from South America was once getting into America via the Caribbean.

Another important fact: more Mexicans lost their lives last year in Mexico's drug violence than Americans have lost their lives in Iraq.


Wednesday, March 18, 2009
 
Conservatives are upset

I know, I know -- conservatives are usually upset. It is their nature. But this is about something (or someone) specific: the Stephen Harper-led Conservative government. Publius at Gods of the Copybook Headings:

"Conservatism isn't dead. The hundreds of conservative / libertarian blogs spitting their outrage daily attest to that fact. Behind every blog isn't simply an angry young man in his pajamas - I actually don't own any - it's his friends and family at the local Tim's saying much the same thing, perhaps less tactfully. The rightwing Canadian blogsphere gives a good temperature sense of the grassroots of the party, though not of the overall electorate. It's currently divided, I'd guess around two-thirds cautiously supporting the government and its actions as necessary evils. The rest are like Publius, very,very annoyed. Considering that a year ago the blogs were running about 9 to 1 in favour of the government, whatever their reservations, this does not bode well. If the economy does not recover promptly, or the budget deficit expands to inflation adjusted Trudeau levels, the clock will start ticking on the Prime Minister's political career. You may or may not win an election by reaching out to the middle. You will definitely lose the election if you betray your base. Watch the blogsphere very closely Mr Manning and Mr Harper. We're an obnoxious canary and you're pretty far from the daylight."

I don't think Publius is right -- although I don't think he's wrong either.

Publius is probably right about the two-thirds of conservatives still backing the Tories, while one-third have wondered off the reservation. (Hence, Homeless Cons.) He is also right to say that the Tim Horton's crowd is not pleased with the party in power, but I don't think it captures that they don't think any other party would be doing anything differently or that the large, double-double sucking hockey dad thinks of himself as a conservative. They might be upset with the Tories, but will be in a forgiving mood with Michael Ignatieff and Jack Layton are getting more air time. Publius is also right about the Tories losing the next election if they lose the base (they'll stay home like I did).

But I'm uncomfortable with the idea that conservative blogs are a decent barometer of conservative support. I don't think that's accurate. Kathy Shaidle says don't pay attention to the bloggers, pay attention to the comments on the blogs. I'm not sure about that either.

Most conservatives I know are unhappy with the Harper Conservatives. I'm just not sure what that means. At least yet.


 
About those AIG execs

Washington Post economics columnist Steven Pearlstein has a piece that is interesting throughout (I don't agree with all of it), but this is especially noteworthy:

"One of the reasons AIG gave for offering retention bonuses in the first place was that the employees who had negotiated the infamous derivatives contracts are the best people to help the company unwind those positions at the lowest cost. Indeed, over the weekend, it was reported that some of the employees were being recruited by other banks and hedge funds, which hope to use the inside information to inform their own trading strategies."

Washington politicians might want to be careful about ticking off the financial experts with their rash and irrational comments about the companies that are now in their joint care.


 
Three and out

3) Tim Marchman on the World Baseball Classic: "Incidentally the silliest criticism I've seen has to be that it isn't the World Cup. First, saying that it isn't the single most popular thing in the world aside from air isn't much of a criticism. Second, the World Cup is 80 years old and if I recall right, at an analagous point in its history the field comprised anyone who wanted to send a team. Let's give this some time—give the rest of the world a reason to give a fuck about our insanely incomprehensible and bizarre sport, and they just might do so!" For the record, I'm still not a fan of the WBC, but I'm not against it either, although I don't like the idea of endangering pitchers with excessive usage before a full Spring Training.

2) The Vernon Wells signing was a big mistake for the Toronto Blue Jays. This is one argument I must repeatedly make because so many Jays fans think that Wells is an elite player. He is a good but far from great player and looking at his last two seasons one has to agree with Dan Turkenkopf at Hardball Times when he says: "It seems more likely, however, that Wells will fail to perform up to the expectations set by his contract." Using similarity comparisons to other players, Wells projects to be a drag on the Jays payroll and one that inhibits their ability to make improvements at other positions.

1) Josh Alper at Fanhouse describes why no one should be surprised that Cole Hamels's elbow is sore. Considering his workload the past few years, he was "due" for an injury. Driveline Mechanics says the workload isn't an issue, but rather his delivery. I am no fan of the Philadelphia Phillies, but I like Hamels; he reminds of old-school pitchers, but maybe that's because of his longish, '70s style hair.


 
Delaware wants to expand freedom/line its pockets

Delaware Governor Jack Markell wants to legalize sports gambling in the state in time to cash in on the upcoming NFL season. MSNBC reports that the state has a $700 million deficit and that estimates have sports betting pumping an additional $50-100 million into the government coffers. Betting on horses, the lottery and slot machines is already allowed in the First State. There is a hitch: it will only permit parlay betting (betting on two or more sports events), not single game betting. Baby steps.

(HT: Hit & Run)


 
The future of Israel

At ProWomanProLife, Rebecca Walberg wonders about the future of the Jewish state when one in four Jewish pregnancies in Israel end in abortion. Good question. I found this sentence quite poignant: "[I]t's heartbreaking that the behaviour of so many Jewish women places just as little value on the life of a Jewish baby as does the basest antisemite."


 
Substitute political terms for corporate terms

Russell Roberts riffs on Senator Charles Grassley's 'joke' that executives at flailing large companies should follow the Japanese lead and commit suicide by substituting senators for AIG executives, etc... It is really worth reading.

By the way, as Greg Mankiw points out: "The AIG bonuses now being debated in Congress and everywhere else represent about .001 percent of annual GDP."


 
AT&T 1993 'You Will' Ads




Pretty amazing how right AT&T was about the future.


Tuesday, March 17, 2009
 
Bush's spending

The Mercatus Center has the story in charts and graphs. Here is an incredible figure, the change in real total outlays, non-defense discretionary spending:

Lyndon Johnson: +34.2%
Richard Nixon: +25.5%
Jimmy Carter: +7.6%
Ronald Reagan (1st term: -9.7%
Ronald Reagan (2nd term): +0.2%
George H.W. Bush: +13.9%
Bill Clinton (1st term): +0.7%
Bill Clinton (2nd term): +14.4%
George W. Bush (1st term): +20.7%

The numbers for the second term are not yet available, but the estimate for overall discretionary spending from 2005-2009 is an increase of 29%, more than any president since the Great Society.

Also, entitlement spending in 2009 is expected to be about twice the cost in 2004 ($2.516 trillion compared to $1.32 trillion), and total spending is expected to be about twice what it was in 2002.


 
The AIG bonuses are a good case against government involvement

So says Tyler Cowen: "The real lesson is that this is another reason not to nationalize banks. It means politicizing every decision which ends up in the newspaper." Or as Newmark's Door remarks:

"Trying to solve a problem--real or imagined--Congress gives boatloads of money to somebody. Then they're shocked--shocked!--at what the recipient does with it.

Reminds me of the old joke:

Patient: Doc, it hurts when I do this. (Raises arm.) What do you suggest?

Doctor: Stop doing that."


 
Wisdom via Ben Casnocha

At the end of a long, worthwhile post on uncertainty and the frustration that come from it, Ben Casnocha says:

"I think there's some truth to the idea that 'everything is flawed and you just need to get on with it.'

As Martin Buber said, 'The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable'."


 
The personality of blogs

Justin Wehr puts a bunch of blogs through a website that determines the personality of the blog using the Myers-Brigg personality scheme. Of the blogs Wehr looked at that I read, most are categorized as The Duty Fulfillers, The Scientists, The Thinkers, The Mechanics and The Doers. That said, I found a few interesting blogs that weren't on my regular reading list by checking out blog personalities I am less familiar with (Cool Infographics (The Guardians) is neat, Passive Aggressive Notes (The Socializers) a funny in a cranky kind of way, and Carpe Durham (The Performer) has pictures of delicious-looking food).

When I put Sobering Thoughts into the Type Analyzer, it told me that I am a Thinker:

"The logical and analytical type. They are especially attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about."


I would say that while the Type Analyzer website makes a point of saying the author of the blog is this or that, it would be more accurate to say that the blog displays such traits or that the portion of the personality that the blogger reveals of himself is this or that. Blogs are a lot about signaling what type of person the blogger wants people to think he is. That said, the description mostly fits for me, although I see and understand the needs of other people, I just don't care.


 
Central bank shouldn't be a regulator

AEI's Peter J. Wallison has a paper worth reading ("Risky Business: Casting the Fed as a Systemic Risk Regulator"), the main points of which are:

• There are inherent conflicts between the role of the Fed as the nation’s central bank and its potential role as a regulator of systemically significant companies. The United States is one of only a few major developed countries that have authorized a monetary authority to take a role in bank regulation, and the trend in the last quarter century has been to separate monetary policy from financial regulation.

• To maintain its credibility for monetary policy purposes, the Fed must be independent of the political organs of government. But, as systemic risk regulator, it would inevitably be drawn into the politics of regulation, adversely affecting the credibility of its efforts to maintain price stability.


 
Distrust of government is a good thing

Because it leads to distrust in government doing lots of the things it shouldn't be doing. Conservatives hurt their cause by providing competent government. The friendly face of Ronald Reagan endeared Washington to the average American and federalist intrusion is as relentless today as it was in the 1960s and '70s.

Gene Healy of the Cato Institute looks at the most recent University of Michigan government trust numbers and is happy to see that distrust is on the rise:

"When political trust declines, the D.C. cognoscenti typically wring their hands and hold earnest conferences at the Brookings Institution, exploring how best to restore the people's faith in their rulers.

But, as usual, the political elites have it precisely backwards. Declining trust in government is a good thing, something that Americans of every political stripe ought to celebrate.

Conservatives should welcome increasing skepticism toward federal power, because that skepticism makes ambitious federal programs much less likely to pass. Vanderbilt University's Marc Hetherington, one of America's leading scholars on the subject, writes that declining faith in the feds makes 'another Great Society or New Frontier... unlikely in a post-Cold War world.'

Professor Hetherington leans left, so he's not happy that the data has driven him to that conclusion. But even though increased political distrust presents major challenges for the Democratic agenda, liberals should recognize that there's a silver lining in the growing cloud of skepticism."


Liberals should notice that if Washington isn't trusted, the national security state and foreign adventurism is harder to see to the public.


 
Happy St. Patrick's Day

JibJab has the Leprechaun bailout.


 
What I'm reading

1) Shakedown: How Our Government Is Undermining Democracy In The Name Of Human Rights by Ezra Levant

2) The Improving State of the World: Why We're Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet by Indur M. Goklany

3) "The Happiness of the People," the 2009 Irving Kristol Lecture by Charles Murray

4) The transcript to the Brookings Institute panel, "Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: A Reconciliation," featuring, among others, Jonathan Rauch and David Blankenhorn

5) "The Obama Budget: Spending, Taxes, and Doubling the National Debt," a Heritage Foundation briefing by Brian M. Riedl and "Time for a Real Change: Repeal the Corporate Income Tax," a Heritage Foundation backgrounder by Karen Campbell


Monday, March 16, 2009
 
Jeffrey Kuhner, ass-hat

Ramesh Ponnuru and Jonah Goldberg go after Jeffrey Kuhner, who has a ridiculously awful critique of David Frum in an article about the "Conservative Civil War." Ponnuru says, "It is difficult to exaggerate how stupid the whole piece is"; Goldberg corrects his colleague: "You may be understating things."

As Goldberg notes, it is a little rich for Kuhner -- a columnist for the Washington Times and head of the Edmund Burke Institute -- to complain that Frum is an elitist conservative. But more seriously, Kuhner gets his facts wrong. As Goldberg says, "I'm at a loss as to why Kuhner thinks it's a winning approach to simply make things up," such as saying Frum "led the charge" for "uncontrolled immigration." Some conservatives are a special kind of stupid and they do their cause no good by their actions.


 
GMU blogs

Mark Perry notes two stories about George Mason University economics professors blogging and how they are educating the general public -- the blogosphere is just another classroom. About half of my regular economics blog reading is from blogs written or co-written by GMU econ professors.

And beyond educating the masses on the internet, there is an advantage for GMU. As Free Exchange, a blog from The Economist reported, "Anecdotally, it sounds as if George Mason may actually be attracting more quality students and faculty because of the higher profile it gained from blogging."


 
Unreasonable bonuses

I don't like executives at large, failing companies getting bonuses -- what are they being rewarded for? (Okay, I understand that these are contractually obligated.) On the other hand, I don't like the idea of government interfering with private (or semi-private) businesses and telling them how to remunerate their employees. On my third hand, I generally agree with George Will's suggestion that government-run companies or companies that rely on government subsidies, should cap salaries along the lines of government salary structures (which are limited by law). If Will's remuneration rules were enacted, it would likely end the line-up at the government trough.

Still, there is something about Aarron Zelinsky's proposal to use the IRS rules against companies paying out big bonuses by invoking the agency's "reasonable allowance for salaries or other compensation" rule. By declaring the big bonuses unreasonable, the IRS would "render them nondeductible for federal tax purposes," thus reducing the supposedly excessive compensation, if not eliminating it entirely. Even if AIG and other companies challenged the ruling and won in court, it would send a strong signal about the appropriateness of the size of bonuses to government subsidized companies. I'm not entirely persuaded, but it is a reasonable and defensible policy for the government to pursue -- other than the administration's interference with the IRS to convince them to clamp down on bonuses. But as Zelinsky says, "these are abnormal times."


 
Bad policies lead to more bad policies

Government spending is forcing cutbacks in programs that shouldn't be cut back. Newsweek reports that with 46 states "facing budget deficits for the remainder of this fiscal year or for fiscal 2010," at least nine states are considering releasing prisoners, including Kentucky, Michigan and South Carolina.

I'm sure that in many cases probation or parole makes more sense than incarceration, but such decisions should not be influenced by financial considerations. These decisions must be made with consideration to what is an appropriate punishment (just desserts) and, less importantly, by the need to protect society. Most people recognize that one of the key responsibilities of the state is to protect individuals from foreign and domestic threats (war/terrorism and crime, respectively); putting a balanced budget ahead of locking up criminals -- or for that matter, putting health care and education ahead of locking up dangerous offenders -- is a signal failure of government.


 
Three and out

3) While John Heyman doesn't explicitly say so, his Sports Illustrated list of best contracts signed over the winter is the best from the players' perspective, not the team's. So there is a sense that the player got a deal he didn't deserve, was disproportionate to his abilities or that has a lot of risk. But that isn't the 'best contract', either. The best contract for a player is the one for the most money, so I'd still put Mark Teixeira and C.C. Sabathia on top of that list even if the Yankees have a medium-risk because of the long-term nature of these deals. But by no means do I consider either of those deals (or Derek Lowe's 4-year, $60 million contract with the Atlanta Braves) undeserving or disproportionate.

2) In my opinion, the five "best" deals for the players -- and therefore worst for the teams -- are OF Raul Ibanez (Philadelphia Phillies), CF Willy Taveras (Cincinnati Reds), SS Edgar Renteria (San Fransisco Giants), RHP Carl Pavano (Cleveland Indians) and RHP Mike Hampton (Houston Astros). Ibanez might be worth the money he gets (probably not) but there were at least two comparable options who signed for a lot less; Taveras has a horrible OBP for someone used at leadoff and such 'scrappy' leadoff hitters are a dime a dozen, not $3.35 mil a year, per dozen; Renteria is a severely declining property and there were similar or better players at SS who signed for less; Pavano is only guaranteed $1.5 million plus incentives, but that appears over-priced considering that he threw in less than a season's worth of games over the four-year deal with Yankees and when he did play it was nothing special; ditto for the oft-injured Hampton who returns to Houston for $2 million.

1) Heyman also reports that the New York Yankees are considering trading for Mark Loretta or perhaps Blake DeWitt (both of the LA Dodgers) to man 3B while A-Rod is out for six weeks. The cost? Phil Hughes or Ian Kennedy. That's too much for an unnecessary six-week rental. Cody Ransom is a perfectly fine short-term solution. Giving up promising young pitchers -- it is too early to give up on Kennedy and Hughes has been spectacular in the pre-season this year -- when you have the often fragile A.J. Burnett and elderly Andy Petitte on staff seems foolish. To give up so much future potential for a month-and-a-half of fill-in is ridiculous.


 
Four and down (Jay Cutler edition)

4) Jay Cutler, the Pro Bowl quarterback for the Denver Broncos, has formally asked to be traded. Detroit Lions-bound? The Minnesota Vikings and Tampa Bay Buccaneers would benefit most in the short-term from such an upgrade under center, but considering the trouble Cutler has created recently -- which makes him a less attractive option to teams that care about "chemistry" (whatever that is) -- the Oakland Raiders and New York Jets seem like possible destinations, too. (Although Denver might be loathe to give Cutler to another AFC West team such as the Raiders.) It will be difficult to get maximum value out of such a discontented player considering that other teams know Denver is being forced to be a seller.

3) It would never happen but what about Dallas sending Tony Romo to Denver for Cutler straight up, giving both Pro Bowl QBs a second chance.

2) Two other teams that ostensibly don't need a QB but might want to fiddle with their teams because their current quarterback hasn't got the job done lately: Jacksonville Jaguars and Carolina Panthers. I consider these teams 25-1 longshots to even be interested, but Cutler would represent an upgrade over David Garrard and Jake Delhomme, respectively.

1) As Chris Burke notes at Fanhouse, Tampa has the 19th pick overall, while the Lions have the 1st, 20th, and 33rd. If Denver does poorly in 2009, new coach (and former New England Patriots' offensive co-ordinator) Josh McDaniels will be under fire for 1) not getting Matt Cassel from the Pats and 2) driving away Cutler. That won't be fair, but that will be the widespread view of Denver's new coach.


 
Could have seen this coming

A TD Economics report says that declining growth forecasts indicate larger than expected deficits.


 
Ron Silver, RIP

It takes a certain bravery to run counter the herd of independent minds in Hollywood. John Podhoretz remembers the actor Ron Silver, who died over the weekend:

"Ron Silver, a character actor of such power that he rose to the standing of a movie star for a few years in the late ’80s-early ’90s, died today at the age of 62. His career was a fascinating one, encompassing brilliant performances on Broadway (Speed-the-Plow), on television (Wiseguy), and the cinema (Enemies: A Love Story, Reversal of Fortune). He was also unique among American performers in that the intensity of his interest in politics and political affairs was matched by his knowledge. A founder of the Creative Coalition, which all but inaugurated the age of the lobbying star, Silver was never an orthodox Hollywood liberal, in part because he was always keenly aware of the fragility and danger of Israel’s position and because he did not assume that his absolutist commitment to free speech required him to share every view with the American Civil Liberties Union.

September 11 merely hastened an ideological journey he was already making, and he was without illusion that his plain-spoken support for George W. Bush and Rudy Giuliani was going to make his career a more difficult one. It is difficult to say how much injury it did him, since he got sick not long after the 2004 election and was battling cancer for years."


 
Science/morality dichotomy

Two quotes in P.J. O'Rourke's article in the Weekly Standard on President Barack Obama's embryonic stem cell announcement for your consideration.

Obama in 2009: "In recent years, when it comes to stem cell research, rather than furthering discovery, our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values."

The Encyclopedia Britannica in 1911: "[T]he negro would appear to stand on a lower evolutionary plane than the white man, and to be more closely related to the highest anthropoids. Mentally the negro is inferior to the white ... [A]fter puberty sexual matters take the first place in the negro's life and thought."


 
'Do influential people develop more conventional opinions?'

Tyler Cowen says, "We are talking about the time series here, as people rise in influence. I see a few mechanisms":

1. People 'sell out' to become more influential.

2. As people become more influential, they are less interested in offending their new status quo-oriented friends.

3. As people become more influential, their opinion of the status quo rises, because they see it rewarding them and thus meritorious.

4. The status quo is good at spotting interesting, unusual people who will evolve (sell out?) and elevating them to positions of influence.

5. Oddballs who are influential arrive first at where the status quo is later headed, and eventually they end up looking conventional.

6. Influential people are asked to write increasingly on general interest topics ('How to Be Nice to Dogs') and thus they find it harder to be truly unconventional. They cultivate skills of conventionality because that is what they are paid for or allowed to express.

This seems accurate to me.


Sunday, March 15, 2009
 
Next Bond girl?

New York Post says producer Barbara Broccoli likes Slumdog Millionaire's Freida Pinto. Better choice than Jennifer Aniston, who would surely follow in the footsteps of Denise Richards as lamentable opposites to 007. Generally speaking, Bond girls are better when they are relatively unknown (Diana Rigg, notwithstanding).


 
Two sentences to better understand politics

From Irwin Stelzer in The Times: "[A]nnouncements don’t necessarily mean action."

From Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution: "[M]arginal steps in the right direction are usually all we have."

These facts often lead to cynicism and disappointment, but they are understandably the reality of politics.


 
Weapons of Mosquito Destruction

The Sunday Telegraph reports:

"Experts behind the 1980s missile shield idea have helped to develop a laser that locks onto and kills airborne insects.

It is thought the device, dubbed the 'Weapon of Mosquito Destruction' (WMD), could be used against mosquitoes, which kill almost one million people around the world every year by spreading malaria."


The Cold War-era research has been applied to a much larger scourge and has been funded by Bill Gates, although the feasibility and affordability of using the technology to kills mosquitoes is not addressed the story. Reading the Wall Street Journal account of the story, one realizes that researchers are nowhere near addressing the practical questions:

"The scientists envision their technology might one day be used to draw a laser barrier around a house or village that could kill or blind the bugs. Or, laser-equipped drone aircraft could track bugs by radar, sweeping the sky with death-dealing photons.

They now face one big challenge: deciding how strong to make the weapon. The laser has to be weak enough to not harm humans and smart enough to avoid hitting useful bugs. 'You could kill billions of mosquitoes a night, and you could do so without harming butterflies,' says Mr. Myhrvold.

Demonstrating the technology recently, Dr. Kare, Mr. Myhrvold and other researchers stood below a small shelf mounted on the wall about 10 feet off the ground. On the shelf were five Maglite flashlights, a zoom lens from a 35mm camera, and the laser itself -- a little black box with an assortment of small lenses and mirrors. On the floor below sat a Dell personal computer that is the laser's brain.

The glass box of mosquitoes across the room is an old 10-gallon fish tank. Each time a beam strikes a bug, the computer makes a gunshot sound to signal a direct hit."


Favourite details: one part of the technology was purchased on eBay.


 
Might not go anywhere but still troublesome

The Sunday Telegraph reports:

"Chief medical officer Professor Sir Liam Donaldson will tomorrow recommend state limits on the price of alcoholic drinks, meaning that none could be sold for less than 50 pence per unit of alcohol."

Remember today's unthinkable idea often becomes tomorrow's policy. And if not in the United Kingdom, elsewhere.


Saturday, March 14, 2009
 
What's good for the goose

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that "New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is in discussions with Rep. Barney Frank and other lawmakers on a plan to tie Wall Street pay to the long-term performance of the firms." Don Boudreaux wonders: "I wonder how Mr. Frank and his fellow members of Congress would react to a proposal to tie their pay to the long-term fiscal soundness of the U.S. government."


 
IFC's 50 worst sex scenes

Pretty well every bad sex scence except Sharon Stone's performance in Basic Instinct is there (are there good sex scenes?), but this comment on the worst sex scene is worth posting in its entirety:

1. Last Tango in Paris (1972)

Taken totally out of context, no scene in "Last Tango in Paris" has the concentrated terribleness of Elizabeth Berkley's waterlogged whiplashings or Matt Dillon's teenager three-way or Lea Thompson's zoophilic flirtation. Then again, none of those films was ever hailed by an ecstatic Pauline Kael as "the most powerful erotic movie ever made... it may turn out to be the most liberating movie ever made," and credited with having "altered the face of an art form." None of their scenes were described by Roger Ebert as "not sex at all (and a million miles from intercourse)... just a physical function of the soul's desperation."

36 years after "Last Tango in Paris" premiered at the closing night of the 1972 New York Film Festival, the uproar and taboo-smashing and obscenity trials that were once part and parcel of any analysis of the film have long faded, and Bernardo Bertolucci's lugubrious drama about a grieving man and a young bride-to-be anonymously fucking their way through sorrow and ennui looks rather rough in the morning light, embarrassing maybe, self-important certainly, like a one night stand that seems like an ever worse idea as more memories of the evening trickle back through the next day's hangover. And so what better way to crown this listy ode to bad sex on screen than with "Last Tango in Paris"'s legendary sodomy sequence, in which Marlon Brando's Paul method-mutters to Maria Schneider's Jeanne to "get the butter," only to use it to enable some forced anal sex on the floor while his partner cries her way through a litany about families?

The scene wasn't in the original script -- last year Schneider told the Daily Mail that it was Brando's idea, and that "I was crying real tears. I felt humiliated and, to be honest, I felt a little raped... Thankfully, there was just one take." That context aside, arguments of misogyny aside, general repellence and dairy product misuse aside, the scene stands out for its tiresome pretentiousness, Paul's dreary railing against the world's hypocrisies like a mush-mouthed expat Holden Caulfield without the excuse of callowness or appeal of emotional believability. I don't begrudge Kael her grand gestures (I do begrudge her the scale of excitement that could once greet an arthouse feature), but I wasn't at that 1972 screening, and I can't believe that today "Last Tango in Paris" isn't esteemed more for its place in cultural history than its lasting artistic value. Certainly whatever it may have done to change the visage of cinema isn't detectable in the average sex scene in theaters right now, and thank the lord for that. The thought of every moment of on-screen intimacy arriving joined at the hip -- or wherever else you'd prefer -- with freshman college-level Freudism could convince anyone to start cooking with olive oil instead.


 
If this is true, Prager is an idiot

Kathy Shaidle in her weekly round-up of right-wing talk radio:

"My guilty-pleasure highlight of the week? Ross Douthat? Never heard of him, says Dennis Prager of the guy about to replace William Kristol as the NYT’s inhouse 'conservative.' Ouch!"

I like Prager. I've been reading him since I started university. I think he does a wonderful job of tearing apart liberal arguments. But even if Prager never reads blogs -- not just Douthat's, but the dozens of big-name blogs that discuss, debate and link to his Atlantic blog -- he might have noticed the name in either the Atlantic magazine or as the movie reviewer for National Review for the past few years. Maybe Prager doesn't pay attention to bylines. Or perhaps he's missed one of the most intelligent conservative commentators around. But neither of those facts reflect poorly on Douthat.


 
Great exchange

John Stossel was on Sean Hannity yesterday and this exchange was reported by David Henderson:

Stossel: That's why we should legalize drugs. That's our old argument. They're killing each other because the stuff is illegal.
Hannity: Do you want to walk the same streets as people on crack and heroin?
Stossel: I assume I am. I'm living in New York city. They use it regardless of whether it's legal or not.
Hannity: Every once in a while you just have to say "Checkmate. I lose."

As Henderson noted, it is not often Hannity admits he was bested by a guest.

In the same post, Henderson also reports that Hannity almost admitted what most of us know: torture doesn't work because most people will say anything to stop the torture.


Friday, March 13, 2009
 
Three and out

3) Interesting stat from the Wall Street Journal (too brief) story on the success of Honkball -- the Dutch team at the WBC: "[There are] about a 100,000 baseball players in all of Europe, compared with 17 million in the U.S."

2) J.C. Bradbury loves The Fielding Bible II, with its plus/minus system of runs saved, which Bradbury and others describe as the best defensive metric available. He notes the best at each position and the runs saved from 2006-2008. Interestingly, the two best defensive players are 2B Chase Utley (63) and 1B Albert Pujols (61 runs saved) and Kenny Rogers saved the most runs (27) among pitchers despite missing most of last season. It also surprised me that LF Alfonso Soriano -- someone often thought to be a bit of a defensive liability -- is the best at his position.

1) Fans and writers are fickle. Or are they? Mike Lupica writes in the Daily News about Alex Rodriguez: "For a while there this spring, a lot of the chatter around here was about whether the Yankees could somehow figure out a way to get rid of Rodriguez eventually and get out from under a contract whose total value could reach $300 million someday. Now everybody is marking the days until the guy comes back in May." What Lupica and others might not notice is that the people wanting A-Rod to go and those who can't wait for his return might not be the same people. But even if they aren't, there is no dissonance here. It is perfectly logical to want A-Rod to return to the lineup soon to help the Yankees win this year and still want him to eventually leave so the team is not on the hook for an expensive decline down the road.


 
Earmark hogs































Over at Slate, Timothy Noah ranks the ten worst earmark offenders in the U.S. Senate:

1. Thad Cochran, R-Miss.: $474 million
2. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.: $391 million
3. Mary Landrieu, D-La.: $332 million
4. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa: $292 million
5. David Vitter, R-La.: $249 million
6. Christopher Bond, R-Mo.: $248 million
7. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.: $235 million
8. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii: $225 million
9. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.: $219 million
10. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa: $199 million

Note that six of ten are Republicans, but also that four of the top five are from Mississippi and Louisiana. Both senators from Iowa are also on the list. It is also interesting that only Cochran rates among the 10 RINOs as rated by lowed ACU rating among Republicans.


 
Fraser Institute hospital ratings

The Ontario hospital Report Card is here. I'm sure that this study has some merit, but it is also a bit gimmicky and possibly misleading. These ratings are entirely dependent on what those doing the rating chose to rate. Choosing one criteria over another inevitably effects the outcome of the study. But even the things that are rated might be misleading. For instance, the hospital mortality ratings by municipality (page 11-15) ranks the single small hospitals in Bowmanville and Ingersoll better than hospital systems in Toronto and London. Fine, but what does the mortality rate miss? Extremely sick people in Ingersoll and Bowmanville are more likely to be sent to larger hospitals for treatment and extremely sick people are more likely to die while in the hospital. This brings down the mortality rate in regional centers like London, Hamilton and Toronto, and improves the rating for smaller communities.


 
Dead tree = dead

The New Republic has a wide-ranging collection of statistics showing the trajectory of the newspaper industry (down, down, down faster).

I recently told someone that alternatives to classified ads appearing in newspapers is probably harming newspapers more than the decline in journalism because searchable websites is much more convenient than scanning a paper. TNR quotes figures from the Newspaper Association of America:

Total newspaper revenue from automotive classifieds in 2003: $5.2 billion

Total newspaper revenue from automotive classifieds in 2007: $3.26 billion


Regular advertising is also in steep decline:

Amount total print ad revenue for newspapers was up in the third quarter of 2000: 4.3 percent

Amount print ad revenue for newspapers was down in the third quarter of 2006: 2.6 percent

Amount print ad revenue for newspapers was down in the third quarter of 2007: 9 percent

Amount print ad revenue for newspapers was down in the third quarter of 2008: 19.26 percent


But there also the decline in serious journalism (reported from various sources):

Amount the number of U.S. wire services and newspapers accredited to cover Congress has fallen since the mid-1980s: 72 percent

The number of foreign newspaper correspondents in 2002: 188

The number of foreign newspaper correspondents in 2006: 141


 
Douthat on Islam

Ross Douthat in the October 22, 2001 edition of the Harvard Crimson:

"[G]oing back to the beginning of Islam, one finds Muhammed himself—the model Muslim, against whose standard all the faithful must be judged. And where Christianity has a Christ who turns the other cheek and gives himself over to be crucified, Islam has a Prophet who makes war—in self-defense, arguably, but with a glad heart, a warlike spirit and a knowledge that Allah is on his side. It is that example, that spirit of war, that flung the early Islamic empires outward to the corners of the earth, that spirit that inspired militant Muslims down through the centuries—a spirit that divides the world into the House of Islam and the House of Unbelief, and declares irrevocable enmity between them.

That spirit endures to this day."


(HT: Campus Progress, via Marginal Revolution)


 
Frum rubs me the wrong way

David Frum uses Bristol Palin's breakup with her fiance as a jumping board to discuss how "downscale" voters aren't going to be as socially conservative as they used to be and therefore Republicans should nix their own social conservatism. I find this disturbing for four reasons:

1) The term "downscale voter" signals that Missouri evangelicals are not as worthy to court as Manhattan Jews and Georgetown Episcopalians. Frum might as well call them trailer trash voters.

2) The blame social conservatism meme from some FrumCons and Reformist Republicans is annoying. If the polls are correct, the Battle for Iraq has done much more to push away independent voters than any nod to a socially conservative agenda. That is, the GOP dance with neocons has hurt them more politically than their half-hearted dance with the Religious Right.

3) Throwing social conservatism overboard to find new voters (do uneducated, poor, single moms vote in any greater numbers?) leaves social conservatives effectively disenfranchised or, worse for the Republicans, open to consider non-social issues when voting which might push them to the Democrats.

4) There are some principles worth fighting for whether or not they are electorally beneficial.


Thursday, March 12, 2009
 
Three and out

3) Ben Reiter of SI.com says that the Minnesota Twins won't catch anyone by surprise this year after outperforming their predictions of a mid-70s win team needing just one more win to make the playoffs. He's right, the Twins are a great team and could very well win the American League Central (my tentative pick right now). But it wouldn't surprise me if they finished in the middle of the pack, either. Too many writers and fans look at the previous year's team, see the additions they've made and assume that they will only get better. There is little appreciation of the concept of regression -- that some players over performed expectations and should reasonably be expected to do worse this year. Enough players do that and a team goes from very good to mediocre very quickly.

2) Totally agree with Rob Neyer that the Detriot Tigers are likely to be in the AL Central mix this year. Pitching was awful last year, but there are a number of good pitchers who should bounce back. And despite the disastrous record last season, they hit ball and scored a ton of runs.

1) I have a hard time believing this report: Manny Ramirez might walk away from the 2010 option year and try the free agent market again. Unlikely, but the New York Post is playing up the possibility of Manny joining the Bronx Bombers next off-season.


 
Who care about band music?

Robin Hanson starts a pretty interesting discussion with this post:

"Smiling politely through yet another performance by my son's school band tonight, I wondered: why do school bands play music so different from what the kids, or even their parents, choose in their free time? Music at parties, movies, etc. is pretty different. The novels kids read in English class differ from the novels they or their parents read in their free time, but most people accept that school novels are deeper, subtler, etc., so that kids learn more by studying them. But do most people really accept a similar claim about band music? What gives?"

Read the comments as well as Tyler Cowen's thoughts (and the discussion there). I liked this comment on Cowen's post: "If high school bands played cool music, then the cool kids would all be in band. And the football teams would suck."