2020 Presidential Prediction

 This is it:

I don't see Biden winning Georgia or Texas, but I will be happy to be surprised.

2012 Presidential Election Prediction

Obama 303, Romney 235

Map here:  http://www.270towin.com/2012_election_predictions.php?mapid=XIF

Inevitability of Same Sex Marriage

In comments to this post at alicublog on the inevitability of same sex marriage, and whether or not it will be a good thing for conservatives, Halloween Jack had this gem:

I sometimes daydreamed about a Star Trek episode where they woke up someone who'd been in suspended animation since the 20th/21st century, and while they were catching up on history, they asked, "Say, did you ever cure homosexuality?" The doctor frowns, thinks for a minute, mumbling, "That sounds familiar... hmmm..." then taps away on a tricorder for a few seconds, then looks up brightly. "Actually, it was homophobia that got cured. Funny that I forgot about it, my sister and her wife were talking about it just the other day!"

I can't let that one get lost in the ether.

I Write Like

I saw this at Balloon Juice:

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I ran my review of What's the Matter with Kansas through it. I'm not sure if this is a compliment.

A Free Education

I don't mean do be all aimai all the time, but she makes this comment over at Balloon Juice:

We’ve known for a long time that people who listen to Rush,and to Beck, think they are getting a free education on stuff that the elites and the liberals want to keep hidden from them. Think of the radio shows like a kind of free “university of the air” for the rubes.

She's made similar comments before and I think it's very perceptive. I've seen confirming evidence of this, like Victoria Jackson's paean to Beck about how much he's taught everyone. Plus, the books and chalk talks.

Rand Paul and the Civil Rights Act

Much has been made of Rand Paul's non-support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Over at No More Mister Nice Blog, aimai comes closest to what I was thinking. My comments there were:

These people don't start in a vacuum, discover a political philosophy and then realize their philosophy doesn't allow them to support the Civil Rights Act. They already have their biases and prejudices and then discover a philosophy that justifies them. I don't think libertarians and tenthers are unique that way. But having a philosophy like that is sort of a get of jail free card. If I support a progressive initiative, I have to defend it on the merits. A "constitutionalist" can say they oppose it on philosophical grounds and not have to get dirty arguing about policy and the implications of that policy. Maybe Rand Paul is so committed to libertarianism that he regretfully can't support civil rights laws. Maybe Sam Ervin was so committed to the sanctity of the constitution that he couldn't support them either. It certainly never prevented him from being reelected senator.

The Scottish Connection Update

Update for my earlier post The Scottish Connection.

David Cameron

The UK's new Prime Minister was born, educated and lives in England. His constituency is Witney in Oxfordshire. Cameron is of course a Scottish clan name and his father was indeed born in Scotland. He's descended from William IV through Elizabeth FitzClarence, Countess of Erroll. I labeled Harold Macmillan an Englishman despite the Scottish name and Scottish grandfather. I think I'm going to have to call Cameron half Scotsman.

Gordon Brown

The acension of Brown was the genesis of the article that inspired my previous post. Let's see: born in Scotland, went to University of Edinburgh, sat for Dunfermline East and Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. He even sounds like a Scotsman.

The Proto Teapartiers

I saw this post (via Ygelesias) which is about Rand Paul's (now successful) senate campaign in Kentucky. Josh Green finds that some Paul voters are frustrated with both the Republican and Democratic parties. This made me recall a conversation I overheard almost two years ago. We were waiting to get off a plane at Raleigh/Durham. The two men in the seat in front of me where sort of talking economics and politics. This was May of 2008, so the economy hadn't gone in the crapper yet and the major economic issue was that gas prices were well over $3 a gallon. The two men seemed to agree that:

• Oil companies conspire to keep prices just under the even dollar mark so we'll get used to it and then it won't be as much of a shock when they jack it up over the dollar mark.
• We should trade "our" grain for their oil.
• If no one voted in November it would really show both parties.

Conspiracy theory. Economic ignorace. Political ignorance. It's all there.

Me and BP

Even thought I think the company should be destroyed and its fields sown with salt, etc, I've always had a soft spot for BP. When I was a kid I had and extensive Matchbox car collection. This was late 60's/early 70's back when they said "Made in England" on the bottom. It was still pretty much a British oriented company and many of the models were unique to Britain. The tow trucks and tankers were labeled with what you'd see in Britain: Esso and BP. Living in California at the time these were foreign to me. This was pre-Exxon, so we had Enco stations that for some obscure reason (to me) looked sort of like Esso, but I knew BP was British Petroleum and that was in Britain. Traveling in New England one year, I was surprised, and pleased, to actually see the green and yellow shield in front of a gas station. They changed their logo in the past 10 years or so, and I've lost any sentimentality I ever had for them. Here's what I'm talking about (it is a Dodge truck, though): (Photo by Flickr user Danny McL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcl/3645838881/. Used under a Creative Commons license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/. The image has not been modified.)

Shorter 2008 Presidential Campaign

I been thinking about the presidential campaign and I think I can sum it like so:

Bush and the Republicans screwed up the country so badly that the we elected a black man named Barack Hussein Obama.

See also Tom Tomorrow.

Good Gracious

Brother Atrios points us to this:

The Bush team had worked assiduously to make the transition smooth for the incoming President Obama and stayed out of the way as he used the postelection period to take leadership of the economy even before being sworn in. And now, as far as some of them were concerned, the new president had used his inaugural lectern to give the back of the hand to a predecessor who had been nothing but gracious to him.

Peronally, I thought Obama was a little too gracious. If it were me, I would have had Bush and Cheney arrested right after the oath but before the address.

My Prediction

A couple of weeks ago, I was thinking that it looks pretty solid that Obama will hold the Kerry states and pickup Florida and Ohio which would give him 299 electoral votes. Now I think I will expand that and make my 2008 prediction. Obama will get 341 electoral votes: the Kerry states plus Ohio, Florida, Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia and North Carolina

Update (1/31/08):
I meant the union of Gore and Kerry states, plus the ones I listed. I missed Nevada, Indiana (I still think, wow, Indiana) and, of course, the 2nd Congressional district of Nebraska. But that's 17 more, so I must have added wrong.

Standard Operating Procedure

Speaking of The New Yorker and continuing on with my obsession with superior orders...

A while back I read Errol Morris and Philip Gourevitch's article on their movie Standard Operating Procedure. The article was about the M.P. company at Abu Gharib and specifically about Specialist Sabrina Harman. She's the subject of the infamous thumbs up photos. The article was actually pretty sympathetic to Harman and the other M.P.'s, but that's not what set my radar off. Harman's unit, the 372nd M.P. company was a combat M.P. unit. They were trained to support front line units and earlier on their deployment they had trained Iraqi police. But they ended up as prison guards at Abu Gharib. Why? Gourevitch and Morris say:

The new assignment [...] bewildered the company. Combat units don’t run prisons. That is the province of another cadre of M.P.s, known as internment and resettlement M.P.s, who are trained according to the Army’s extensive doctrine on handling all manner of wartime captives and displaced persons. The 372nd M.P.s had no such specialized experience.

This is what we call a feature, not a bug. Their lack of experience in handling prisoners and they ignorance of proper procedures, including the Geneva conventions, was just what the officers running Abu Gharib wanted. The brass deliberately staffed the prison with people they knew, or at least hoped, would be amenable to helping them torture the prisoners.

The The New Yorker Cover

Since it's now day 3 of the outrage, I guess it's time to weigh in.

To call the cover satire is incorrect. Wikipedia has a pretty good rundown on what satire is and isn't, and this isn't. It is, however, ironic. Here's what I think the Obamas' fist bump symbolizes:

We really are 60's era radicals and Muslim terrorists who burn the flag for fun. We fooled all those liberals and the MSM. Only the right wing lunatics, who everyone scorned, were right! Ha Ha Ha!!

Oh, I guess I should say I thought the cover was funny. And it's Wednesday I haven't got the issue in my mailbox yet.

Book Review: What's the Matter With Kansas

What's the Matter With Kansas, by Thomas Frank

Frank chose to look at Kansas for a number of reasons, not the least of which was it was where he grew up. Another is Kansas is often seen as authentically middle American. It has seen the economic damage done by Republican policies as much or more that any other area. The downtowns of the small towns are virtual ghost towns, while Mission Hills, has returned to the glory it was in the 1920's. In the early 1990's there was a grass roots revolt of socially conservative voters that transformed the state's politics. Finally, Frank claims that racism has virtually nothing to do with the economic inequality. He does say that race does have an effect elsewhere, but due to Kansas' history as a free state counterweight to slave state Missouri, it doesn't have much of an effect.

Before reading the book, my impression was that the fiscal conservative branch of the Republican party (or moneycons for short) were some how subverting the the social conservatives (or theocons) into voting against their own economic interests. But, it Kansas, it didn't turn out that way. It was the theocons, as a grass roots movement, that drove out the more socially liberal moderate Republicans out of the party. Kansas Republicans had a history of moderation and pragmatism. This was all kicked to the curb. The theocons pushed all sorts of religious kookery, which when you get down to it is basically ineffective. All along they kept the moneycon issues of taxation, breaks to corporations, etc, intact. This in contrast to a 100 years ago where you had William Jennings Bryan, a fundamentalist Christian, but economically quite progressive. This is a political area (social conservative, fiscally liberal) that is empty now a days. This was all helped along by conservative pundits pushing the idea that these authentic Kansans were victimized by the liberal bogeyman. Frank doesn't really get to the root of the issue until the last chapter. Here he blames the New Democrat movement. The DLC's idea of triangulation on fiscal issues made the only way to differentiate between Democrats and Republicans was on social issues. So wedge issues were a successful way to capture potential Democratic voters. He does concede that with Democrats in charge you won't get screwed quite as badly as with Republicans.

I'd still like to see some explanation of why socially conservatives, buy in to the full moneycon party line. These are the issues that I don't see as having a particular Christian viewpoint: taxes, global warming, environmentalism, war in Iraq, socail spending. It's almost as if liberals are for it, then conservatives (of all stripes) have to be against it.

Superior Orders Revisited

In a previous post, I discussed my take on the superior orders defense, sometimes called the Nuremberg Defense. I had seen various discussions dismissing the "just following orders" defense since it was not accepted at Nuremberg. My point in the post was that the Nuremberg tribunals did not summarily reject the superior orders defense, but considered and rejected it on the merits. I thought that CIA operatives who had performed torture may have a plausible case in using the superior orders defense. Now I'm reconsidering that. The crux of the defense is that the person did not know that the actions were illegal, that is they were excusably ignorant. The Detainee Treatment Act states that "good faith reliance on advice of counsel should be a important factor" in deciding whether the person knew the acts were illegal. The phrases "advice of counsel," "Bush administration" and "good faith" don't exactly go together. I don't find it plausible that executive branch attorneys would exactly be acting in good faith in this situation. Again, experience shows to expect the worst in the Bush administration. And then ratchet it down a little.

Update (Apr. 2):
I wrote this post before I saw that the infamous John Yoo memo authorizing torture had been released. That's what I'm talking about: when a ideological hack like Yoo can say the president can order torture with no legal repercussions, that's not exactly good faith. Glenn Greenwald says it better that I ever could:

This incident provides yet more proof of how rancid and corrupt is the premise that as long as political appointees at the DOJ approve of certain conduct, then that conduct must be shielded from criminal prosecution.

Missing Manual

I saw this on O'Reilly's feed today, so I'm not sure if it's for real. I do like the idea, though.

Superior Orders

Over at TPM Muckraker, I was reading the comments to the post about Mukasey and waterboarding. On the subject of wether CIA operatives who actually performed water boarding would be in legal jeorpordy , a reader by the name of phred asked:

I was under the impression that the argument that one was "only following orders" did not fly at Nuremburg. Why is it tolerated here?

I referred him to the judgement in the Einsatzgruppen Case where the superior orders defense is dealt with. Briefly, the superior orders defense is an allowable defense, but the tribunal rejected it. In the judgement, the tribunal lays out that in order for a superior orders defense to succeed, the defendents must show that they had excusable ignorance that the acts were illegal, or that the act was committed under duress. That is, in failing to act the perpetrator will incur serious consequences that will be "immient, real and inevitable." The second is easier to dispose of: there was no evidence that any Einsatzkommandos would have been threatened with death if they failed to act. The first part, excusable ignorance, is a little more complicated. The tribunal allows for the fact that by the time the acts had occurred, there had been nearly 20 years of Nazi propaganda on how the Jews were sub-human and there elimination was necessary. After all that, would it be possible that rank and file Einsatazkommandos actually belive it was perfectly legal to kill Jews? The tribunal rejected that. The order to exterminate Jews was not absolute. Many German Jews were allowed to live out the war (see for example Viktor Klemperer, a WWI veteran and married to a non-Jew). Aryan looking Jewish children were adopted by German families. Thus the Einsatzkommandos should have know the order to exterminate was not absolute.

Would a defense of superior orders be available to CIA operatives who performed the water boarding? I find extremely unlikely they could say it was done under duress. There is no way the consequences of refusing to torture would be any thing like the torture itself. On the "excusalbe ignorance" part, I think they might have a possible defense. My belief is that water boarding is self evidently torture and thus illegal. But there is certainly enough chaff being thrown around, by the vice president and attroney general nominee among others, that a reasonable person may believe it's not. And I don't mean a reasonable person who reads liberal blogs, I mean a reasonable person who works for the CIA. For arguments sake, let's assume that such people exist. According to this post by Jack Balkin, the Detainee Treatment Act and Military Commissions Act effectively immunize operatives who perform torture. The actual text in the Detainee Treatment Act says:

[... I]t shall be a defense that such officer, employee, member of the Armed Forces, or other agent did not know that the practices were unlawful and a person of ordinary sense and understanding would not know the practices were unlawful. Good faith reliance on advice of counsel should be an important factor, among others, to consider in assessing whether a person of ordinary sense and understanding would have known the practices to be unlawful.

So if the operatives acted in good faith based on Office of Legal Counsel's opinion that water boarding is not torture, they could use that as a defense. Although I find it highly unlikely that any operative will go on trial, I believe that this would give them enough reasonable doubt to escape conviction.

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, and have no legal training. Take my legal opinions for what they're worth.

Mukasey and Waterboarding

I heard this quote from Senator Specter the other day:

The facts are that an expression of an opinion by Judge Mukasey prior to becoming attorney general would put a lot of people at risk for what has happened.

The NPR reportor then helpfully explained it meant that CIA employees who have been using waterboarding would be liable for prosecution. That works for me.

Kennedy '80!

From an undisclosed location in upstate New York, I came across this classic:


We were at an inn that at one time passed itself off as a Catskill's resort. This was in the "barn" which was a long abandoned bar (one whole side was missing, I don't know if that was on purpose or just poor maintenance). Also, there was this:


I had completely forgotten about him. How many states would he have lost to Reagan?