Letters in Bottles

The eternal victim

2009-11-24T18:49:00.000-06:00

Brad discussed it recently, but I think it bears repeating:

If that three-part narrative has a unifying theme, the theme is that everything – and I mean everything – that has ever gone wrong for Sarah Palin was someone else’s fault.

Sarah’s lackluster performance during her interview with Frank Murkowski when she somehow made the short-list of candidates to succeed Frank in the U.S. Senate? That was Frank and his Attorney General, my friend Gregg Renkes’s, fault. The Troopergate scandal? Walt Monegan and the Democratic members of the Alaska Senate pulled that mean-spirited prank on a blameless Sarah. The nationally televised interview with Katie Couric that branded Sarah Palin as an ignorant and uneducated laughingstock? Katie sandbagged her. The fabulously disastrous Thanksgiving television interview when Governor Palin pardoned a turkey while in the background unpardoned turkeys were having their heads shoved down a funnel and their throats slit? Sandbagged again. That time by a local TV news cameraman.

Clearly she revels in her own victimization -- the Newsweek cover being the most recent example. It's far easier to be a brave victim eternally fighting back than to actually come up with real policy, and in many ways it typifies the recent tactics of the Republican Party, eternally defensive about the liberal media and the war on Fox News. There are moments when simply digging in and opposing bad policy is the right move -- but to win in politics, good new ideas need to be advanced.

The Telegraph declares the death of ManBearPig

2009-11-24T16:10:00.000-06:00

or is it man-made global warming? Whatever you want to call it, these are stunning revelations from the UK.

Now I'm not a lawyer

2009-11-24T15:37:00.001-06:00

So the police see your facebook photos. It seems like there would be too much reasonable doubt to find a person guilty with only the pictures after the fact. Even if you're holding a beer can or bottle, it could be something else inside it.

"an excellent way to escape from the valley of despair -- an escape right into the abyss of despair."

2009-11-24T15:18:00.000-06:00

An Althouse commenter homes in on the folly of the increasing number of young people trying to escape the economic downturn by going to law school.

I don't think undergraduates or young workers are fully aware of just how backlogged the legal job market is right now. It may take years to unclog - if it ever returns to anything resembling its former state at all. Law students are, unfortunately, finding this out firsthand right now.

Law school is not the silver bullet many portray it to be far too often. The debt alone is a dizzying prospect.

Back to Wisconsin

2009-11-24T11:07:00.000-06:00

Louis Armstrong International must be trying to prep me for a return to the cold. The air here in the terminal is freezing!

I'm very excited to be heading home for Thanksgiving this year - the first time I've been able to swing it in my law school career. Although I'll be working for much of the week, it will be a welcome change of scenery.

I'm very much in need of a break.

Possibly Prescient

2009-11-23T20:34:00.001-06:00

"The conservative vs moderate GOP civil war will be avoided because you'll be able to run as a conservative in 40 states in 2010."

Especially with the way the numbers are looking.

Tangential

2009-11-23T20:30:00.000-06:00

While Ross Douthat ruminates on celebrity, it was one throwaway graph that struck me most:

It’s possible to be a celebrity and a serious politician at the same time: Barack Obama’s career proves as much. But Obama’s celebrity status is frequently a political liability, and he’s (usually) wise enough to know it. That’s why he plays the wonk as often as he plays the global icon.

It's a comment that deserves further elaboration, because I think these two sides of Obama's coin both come up a negative in terms of actually governing.

His celebrity side has been thoroughly critiqued already: he's airy and meaningless, tossing empty phrases to the throngs of cheery fans who don't really care what he means so long as he represents something they think they like. Fame allows him to be hollow, to be invested with ideas he can't or won't carry out in practice. The fame obscures his inability. He becomes an avatar -- a projection -- of good governance, rather than its embodiment.

But his wonk side does not fill out the void, doesn't give Obama the weight to hold him down and ground him. Instead, it exacerbates his inability to lead. It makes him indecisive. It leads to his inability to press forward on Afghanistan, always waiting for one more expert opinion, always waiting for that one piece of information that will lead to an obvious answer. It leads to his getting so bogged down in the details of the stimulus bill and the health care debate that he ceases making sense, ceases to be able to articulate a broad vision of where he wants to go: the details become everything, the trees overwhelm the forest.

And that leads to a constant dithering, an inability to accomplish. The fame makes him push for tremendous gains on all fronts at once; the wonkiness means that he gets bogged down everywhere.

Clash

2009-11-23T19:41:00.001-06:00

Competition lives!

(ht/DH)

Large Hadron Collider angry! Large Hadron Collider smash!

2009-11-23T19:40:00.000-06:00

Better than NASCAR, the Large Hadron Collider has finally started busting stuff up:

Seemingly making up for lost time after years of disasters and delays, the collisions came only three days after engineers had begun shooting the subatomic particles known as protons around their 17-mile underground racetrack. The physicists announced that they had succeeded in making the beams collide, producing what they called "candidate collision events" in the giant particle detectors in the collider.

That's awesome.

"But the biggest economic problem facing the nation is not health care. It's the deficit."

2009-11-23T12:26:00.001-06:00

I concur.

Do it yourself, New Orleans

2009-11-23T12:24:00.001-06:00

A vigilante takes on trash - with an artistic flair - down on St. Claude.

Quotable

2009-11-22T13:23:00.001-06:00

In the Hullabaloo:

"If the administration was looking for more parking, perhaps it should have refrained from closing McAlister Drive."

Fire Truck

2009-11-22T12:17:00.000-06:00

Ye Olde Tacqueria

2009-11-21T17:45:00.000-06:00

"The victim thing is getting old."

2009-11-21T10:51:00.001-06:00

Yes, Cal Thomas, Sarah Palin's "victim thing" is getting very, very old.

"If she can sharpen her intellect"...he says, she'd be a force to be feared in a few years.

Cal, I don't think that's going to happen. If it was going to happen, it would have had to happen now, as she "re-emerged."

I've watched the sound and fury unfold over the past two weeks, however, as Palin burst back onto the scene along with her new book.

I have not seen anything new, anything that convinces me that I could trust Sarah Palin with power. Even if I agree with a few of her stances - the ones I can actually discern - her interview with Bill O'Reilly made me cringe all over again. I don't care about Reverend Wright. I could care a less about John McCain's campaign staff. I don't want to hear another word about Bill Ayers. Good for the AP if they set reporters off fact-checking your book.

Sorry - I'm not buying what you're selling. Or, at the very least, I refuse to buy it from you.

Block by Block

2009-11-21T10:23:00.000-06:00

A detailed map of the repopulation of New Orleans post-Katrina. (ht/MK)

It feels like that some days

2009-11-20T22:42:00.000-06:00

Andrew Bird has been playing me in to work lately.

Another repercussion of Obama's China jaunt

2009-11-20T21:52:00.000-06:00

Relations with India -- good under Bush -- are souring:

The visit comes at a time when the Obama administration is making overtures to China and focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the Indians are worried their rank on the White House priority list is falling. While U.S.-India relations are generally strong, in what is often seen as the zero-sum struggle for White House attention, New Delhi simply can't compete with Beijing and is increasingly worried about what that means for power politics in Asia.

"From the Indian point of view, they are very unhappy with Obama," said Stephen Cohen, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, "Indians are really bent out of shape by what they see as a shift of American policy from India to China in Asia. This is complicated by America's dependence on Pakistan."

Obama should be pressing for India's permanent accession to the UN Security Council, but probably won't.

I've argued before that India is a critical ally in SE Asia, and stand by that. It's absurd to see Obama, supposedly the wunderkind who would make America popular again internationally, failing to balance interests and alienating a country that could be a strong source of support down the road. And disengaging with India only makes the situation with Pakistan less stable -- not more. Obama really does seem to be failing spectacularly on the international stage, and it's sad to see.

9-0 was a lot to handle

2009-11-20T19:43:00.000-06:00

I hope they're recovered in time to watch 10.

Is the state's unemployment rate really that good?

2009-11-20T10:57:00.000-06:00

The state Department of Workforce Development is touting that the Wisconsin unemployment rate has dropped again for the month of October - down to 7.6%

Not bad, especially since the national rate is 10.2%, but the rate reported by the DWD is not seasonally adjusted. The seasonally adjusted rate for Wisconsin is 8.4% and unchanged since September which is important to note because the national unemployment rate is also seasonally adjusted. Still better than the national rate, but let's not sugarcoat it. If we're going to compare rates, we should probably compare apples to apples.

Also, the reason our unemployment rate is dropping is not because we are adding jobs or people are finding work. Our unemployment rate is dropping because more the total workforce is shrinking faster than we can shed jobs.

Sundry Samples

2009-11-20T09:51:00.013-06:00

A tour of Chernobyl
How to live forever
There's a name for when the sound of a film or tv show is within the world of the characters. Also when a character acknowledges the camera, directly addresses the audience, or references being in a production that's breaking the fourth wall.
Logo color real estate
Big Chart O'Evolution
The Frat Pack, ha, perfectly descriptive. I'm not sure about Steve Carell, though.
If your scheme isn't taking, you could try squeezing it in through the Overton Window
If the Earth had rings like Saturn's
The Open Boat, a favorite short story of mine
Costermongers!
I love old photos; bonus points for machinery. This site is chocked full of them. As a matter of fact, this is currently my desktop.
All of Carl Sagan's Cosmos is viewable online! In the science video department, I highly recommend the 2 hour long Nova History of Absolute Zero.
If you have an .edu email, you can get the new version of Windows for $30. I did last week. For that price, it's worth it. Moreover if you're at certain uni's, you can get other Microsoft software for free.

Online Poll - Old Anthropology Building

2009-11-20T07:43:00.002-06:00

The Tulane Hullabaloo asks for feedback on its sidebar: "How do you feel about demolishing Anthropology building for parking lot?"

Yes, it's official - now that the building is almost entirely demolished, the university has informed the paper that it intends to make the site into a tiny parking lot.

The paper sought comment from me, so the edition that hits newsstands today may have a story on the development.

The Other Deluge

2009-11-19T21:11:00.000-06:00

Judge Duval's decision yesterday marks the most significant change in the NOLA legal landscape post-Katrina.

Another showdown looms

2009-11-19T18:14:00.000-06:00

The Democrats probably have the numbers in the Senate to pass Harry Reid's bill, having apparently bought off Mary Landrieu with some nice plump benefits to her state. Interestingly, some seem to be claiming that it would be better to spend more money and opt for the obviously budget-busting House bill instead of a budget that may be somewhere near fiscally neutral.

But here's the catch:

CBO also cautioned the bill includes "a number of procedures that might be difficult to maintain over a long period of time."

The Democrats' cost estimates of slightly below $1 trillion was considerably smaller than a House-passed bill's price tag of between $1.2 trillion to $1.3 trillion.

Remember, when you think "Democrats' cost estimates," think stimulus bill:

The Administration claims to have spent $2.4 billion in the state of Wisconsin, resulting in 10,073 jobs "created or saved." In the Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, taxpayers spent roughly $1.5 million per job. More troubling, millions more of your money has apparently been spent in six congressional districts that don’t exist. Despite promises of unprecedented accountability, it is unclear what has happened to the $1.2 million earmarked for the non-existent 55th Congressional District of Wisconsin, as the Badger State only has eight congressional districts. These false jobs claims are not only embarrassing, but further erode the trust between Wisconsinites and their federal government.

This exercise illuminates Washington’s fundamental error in its elusive quest for job creation: the belief that only greater government spending can generate jobs. Because every dollar Congress spends must first be taken from the economy, Congressional spending can’t grow the economic pie - it just redistributes the slices. Congress must recognize that real, sustained growth and job creation comes from the work, savings and investment of American families and businesses - not from the federal government.

What to do with Glenn Beck

2009-11-19T12:34:00.000-06:00

When Glenn Beck first got a show on CNN Headline News, I was a fan. When his Fox News show started, I was a fan. Then Glenn jumped the shark. He became a parody of himself. He went so over-the-top and goofy that he became a joke.

The problem is that he is an undeniable media star. Despite being in a horrible time slot he pulls better ratings than everyone on cable news except for Bill O'Reilly. The substance of his commentary - in terms of the dangers of ever-expanding government - is more often than not correct, but his style often makes any salient points irrelevant.

Charles Murray, writing for the American Enterprise Institute has a great take on the "Unbearable Paradox of Glenn Beck:"

I don’t really want to shut him up. I want him to change. Take those enormous talents and make all the arguments that he can legitimately make. Keep the cutesy gimmicks (I understand that we’re talking entertainment here), but have an iceberg of evidence beneath the surface. Fox is making so much money from the show that it can afford the staff to do the homework.

Absent that change, and I’m not holding my breath, let me suggest to my colleagues who want a better public policy debate that we’ve got to avoid the if-I-were-God fallacy. It’s not in our power to decide whether Glenn Beck’s show continues. He will save the Republic or fail to save it whatever we do. All we can do is be honest about what we think. I’ll go first. I say it’s spinach and I say the hell with it. What Beck does is propaganda. Maybe propaganda has its place, but let’s not kid ourselves. Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann are brothers.