Locks and Lockpicking

Slate has an article up about locking picking videos on the intertubes, and the implications for locksmiths and lock manufacturers.
Apparently, amateurs interested in lockpicking have been organizing themselves on the internet and forming "locksport" clubs. They then videotape how to pick progressively more difficult locks, and put it on the internet. In the article, the author, Farhad Manjoo, compares the problems presented by amateur lockpicks revealing how to break into locks to computer hacking. This comparison is somewhat problematic though, because locks and computer security have different functions.

Locks are not meant, by themselves, to keep someone out of a place. The crucial function of a lock is to increase the time and effort required to enter a given location, be it a building, a safebox, or a car. Ultimately, the function of a lock is to slow down the person attempting to gain access to a location. There is an assumption in placing a lock on something that by slowing down access to a place through greatly increasing time and effort to enter there, someone or something can provide further warning of the security breach. Locks by themselves cannot make something safe. The time bought by the lock is the protective value of the lock.

For example, and one can think of many examples, if someone wanted to break into my house, they could simply smash a window and climb in. Now there are really high costs to this type of entry. Namely, the likelihood a neighbor or I will hear or see them doing smashing the window and be properly alerted to call the cops or arm myself. Someone smashing a window is a pretty rare occurrence, which is what would give the action the alarm value. If I didn't have locks on my house they could just walk in the front or back door, a rather normal occurrence, not provoking any potential alarm value. Similarly, someone kneeling in front of my doors, apparently picking the lock, would also provide a similar amount of warning.

This expectation that locks only provide time is further evidenced by door alarms in houses, where if a door is opened and the alarm is not disarmed in enough time, it begins issuing a warning through sound or calling the alarm company.

The point ultimately is that although you can apparently find videos on how to pick the locks of the White House and Buckingham palace, this knowledge is useless because other security measures exist to protect those places. Perhaps the greater problem with lock picking videos online is the damage it does to lock companies in the sense that they want to sell you on the strength and security of their locks, but to a large extent the strength and security of their locks is a fiction. In other words, a lock company wants you to believe that their locks can keep anyone out, but that simply isn't the case. It seems unlikely anyone would buy a lock if they were told that the lock will slow down potential burglars/thieves, but after that you are on your own.

An Idea for Helping Generate Free electricity

I think this idea is so dumb it just might work. Would it be possible to develop a work out gym where the people in the spinning class, or rowing class, or on the stair master, or whatever, some how generate electricity to help power the building? Think of all the wasted energy that could be captured. I think it would be cool. Furthermore, you could have competitions between work out types, as in "I generated X-watts of electricity today dude!" and "Oh Yeah? Well I generated X+1-watts and therefore am better than you!".

Damn I am smart.

I came across this statement in an article I was reading today

"You can play “what if?” until the cows come home, and it will make no difference to what was, and what is, and what will be." citation

Sophistry, at its finest!

Well, not entirely, but the statement is only about half true. One can play "what if" until the cows come home. So that is true. It will make no difference on what has happened, so the what was part is also true.

Where the statement fails is on the last two parts. The past, and debates about it, including "what ifs" form what is the current world. So on this point the statement is false, because playing what ifs do make a difference in what is. Similarly playing what ifs informs the future, and this gives the game of what ifs its other power. To some extent playing what ifs is simply the exercise of understanding the world. Obviously the author of this piece wanted to take the intellectually lazy way out of the situation, and attempt to cut of further discussion by damning all of what ifs.

A random thought I hope to expand at a later date

I was thinking this morning that it might be possible that the only thing that separates traditional conservatives and more socialistic liberals is their views on altruism and greed. I would like to expand this more at a later time, but am putting it up now so I won't forget.

Rule of Law?

Can you have the rule of law when the laws are vague, unspecified, and utterly lacking in modern content?

I am not sure you can, and I don't know what this means for the United States and its archaic constitution.

Thinking about the Tigers

In light of the last post, and thinking about the Tigers again. Man that Cotton Bowl win over Arkansas was satisfying.

I hate lazy journalism

So I was reading about my hometown favorite college football team on ESPN.com this morning and I came across this sentence:

"Now, the Tigers just have to do it all over again, only better. And they'll have to do it without a few key figures from last year's team, and with an even bigger target on their backs."

This is a supremely lazy statement for a journalist to write in a college football preview piece. One could write that sentence about almost any team, in any league, in any given year. With free agency in the pros, and with the pressure to go pro at the collegiate level, it is very rare, if not impossible, for every team to have every "key figure" back, every year. The part about doing it "all over again, only better", goes for any team that has a great year, but doesn't win the championship in any sport. I don't know what to make of the "even bigger target" because in college football with the one loss and you are out of the national title picture set up, every team has a huge target on for every game.

I just wish the sentence was more informative and not so much just filler.

Poor editing ESPN.com, poor poor editing.

Updatin' is so much fun!!!!

Alright, its been awhile, and much has happened in the political world.

More importantly I have moved, still in the central timezone, thank god, but much much further South. Not much news about that, but it is warm.

Bush as Brezhnev? Maybe. That should remain for a much further discussion later, if I gets around to it.

Obviously I quit updating the electoral college predictioning. Basically, I don't care anymore. Obama "moved to the center" and that was dumb. I will probably still vote for him, but I am not enthusiastic about it anymore. Boo on him. If he wins, I hope he brings the pork chops. (shout out to GC)

Furthermore, on this front coupled with the dead comedic giants, I read some where that part of what led Obama to support FISA was he began receiving the daily intelligence briefings. I don't know if that is true or not, but it reminds me of Bill Hicks' point about why nothing ever changes with elections of new presidents. Where some people take the new president to a darkened room and show him the Kennedy assassination from a never before seen angle. If you know what I am talking about, then, tautologically, you know what I am talking about. If not, listen to Bill Hicks.

I am sure I had other things on my mind, but they are gone now.

Maybe post later.

Not News

White chocolate is fucking gross. It isn't even chocolate, it is chocolate fats or something like that. It wouldn't matter if it is made from tears Jesus cried on the Cross. It is fucking gross.

What Happens When

What happens when global factor prices actually converge? Specifically in the global labor market? What happens when it is no longer possible for a company to move to another country to get cheap labor? Could this occur due to shipping costs increasing from the price of fuels increasing such that it no longer becomes profitable to sell goods made in one country all the way around the world?

I really don't know and the problem is eating at me.

I wish I knew some smart economists who could help me unpack these questions and find good answers for them.

The Importance of Doing Something

So over at mydd.com, Jerome Armstrong has post up about how McCain's offshore oil drilling gambit appears to be helping McCain make headway with Florida and Ohio voters in that according to Rasmussen more voters support McCain when they find out he is for offshore oil drilling and Obama is opposed. Now, this is appears to be a tricky problem for Obama. On closer inspection however, the political problem isn't that difficult. Just like his gas tax gambit, McCain is banking on the "well at least we are trying to do something to alleviate your pain at the pump" type of support. Much like Roosevelt's actions in the Depression, as described by Jonathan Alter, just doing something, anything, to help Americans is a good way to get support. To address this, Obama, and the Democratic party, need to get all populist on McCain. This requires making the argument that McCain is willing to risk great environmental damage for what will amount to a give away to Oil companies who are making record profits. This argument is going to require leadership to walk Americans through the fallacious reasoning of the Republican Party and the McCain campaign. There are several key talking points here that need to be hammered again and again.

-Any gains from offshore drilling won't occur for at least 10 years.
-McCain is relying on Big Oil Companies, with their record profits, to pass any savings on to consumers.
-This is another typical Bush Republican give away to oil companies with no protections in place for the Consumer, and after 8 years of these policies, America deserves better.
-America deserves a future of renewable energy that will strengthen the national economy, not plans to extend the life of tired old technologies at the expense of the people as a whole.

Obviously those aren't as refined as they could be, but I am just throwing things out. Properly structured this is a political fight the Democrats can win, but simply attacking McCain as I described isn't enough.

As I mentioned above, McCain is going for the "well at least he is trying to help us" support. Attacking McCain as I described tries to change that thought process to "He isn't trying to help us, he is trying to help the oil companies." There is still an opening, if not a necessity, for Obama to also come out with some proposal that makes sense as a way to help Americans. I am not sure exactly what the best proposal would be, but it must do two things: 1) continue the incentives brought about by high fuel prices to develop transportation technologies that are not reliant on the burning of fossil fuels at the current rate of consumption and 2) alleviate the pain to the individual consumer/voter of the transition away from those technologies. Put differently, Obama should articulate a way for the United States to move away from fossil fuels, and the prosperity that will bring with it, while at the same time helping those feeling the fossil fuel pinch.

Dang, I rewrote that last sentence and it still sounds too wordy. That idea needs to be simplified down more for talking points/sound bite purposes.

Tied! The Media Narrative

All abouts the Liberal Blogosphere is disgust at the fact that the apparent narrative selected by the media for this election is that it is a dead heat tie between John McCain (I wrote John W. McSame initially, but I don't want to resort to such name calling) and Barack Obama. Many in the blogosphere are moaning the fact the media doesn't tell the true story which is the impending Obamanami that will sweep the nation around November. I personally am coming to like the chosen narrative for several reasons, that in true bloggin' fashion, will follow.

First, the narrative of a tie is good because it means we have to work harder. We don't get lulled into thinking that we are ahead so that means we can coast. Obama looks terrible when he coasts. He is going to have to be a scrapper to win this election, and even if the campaign's internals say they should coast, the media narrative prevents that coasting from occurring.

Secondly, what are the alternative narratives? We could have the Obama inevitability narrative, or Obamanevitability, as the kids are calling it. This is a terrible narrative for many many reasons, not the least of which Clintonevitability worked out so well for Hilldozer (I miss her). Related to this point is that if Obama is the front runner by far, Little Mac (go go Boxing Rapist's Punch Out!) becomes the underdog. That is a bad narrative to have because we don't want McCain to be the underdog. With the way McCain and Bush are tag teaming on policy these days it should be impossible for McCain to be considered the underdog. That will change if the liberal blogosphere gets its way in shaping the media narrative to be Obamanevitability though.

If the liberal blogosphere succeeds though, the question will become is the success of changing the media narrative worth the potential harm to Obama by becoming seen as inevitable. I don't think that success is worth it though because the Obamanevitability has the advantage of becoming closer and closer to being true. Which means the liberal blogosphere shouldn't need much help in getting it to become the media narrative. What would be harder is forcing the media narrative to remain "the Elections tied!"

Electoral Vote Prediction Wednesdays!

Welcome to the inaugural Electoral Vote Prediction Wednesday! Hopefully this will become a recurring feature. Like most prediction things, this will probably end up telling the dear reader more about what I think about the Presidential race than any thing close to reality. I have done my cursory look at the polls and am feeling pretty good about an Obama landslide, even though McCain is the Lazarus of the 2008 election. Not letting that get in my way, I feel like the electoral college will come out thusly:

Obama-412

McCain-126

Insanity? Probably. But it is the first prediction, and I am feeling frisky.

Here is the breakdown state by state. Starting on the East Coast

Obama-ME, NH, VT, MA, CT, RI, NY, NJ, DC, PA, WV, VA, NC, SC, GA, FL, OH, MI, IN, IL, WI, MN, IA, MO, ND, SD, MT, CO, NM, NV, WA, OR, and CA.

McCain-KY, TN, AL, MS, AR, LA, NE, KS, OK, TX, WY, ID, UT, AZ.

At this point, I see Obama taking the Coastal South including the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. I also think Obama will make gains in the Northern Plains and Mountain States of the Dakotas and Montana.

Remember there are no hard and fast rules here, and if anything I played really fast and loose with this prediction (Ah, mixing metaphors and playing with the meanings of words). We will just call this the Landslide Prediction Version 1. Version 2, if it appears likely will have other states switching like Mississippi and maybe Arizona.
We will return to this next Wednesday. Maybe.

Do Not Try to Disarm

I was reading a long today about potential vice presidential candidates for Obama. A common theme in every article regarding vice presidential candidates is how each candidate neutralizes potential attacks against the top of the ticket. For example, some folks say Obama should choose Wes Clark or Jim Webb because they will help inoculate him against attacks on his foreign policy credibility. Another example is that Obama should choose McCaskill or Sebelius to help himself with women. This type of reasoning is flawed for a number of reasons. Perhaps the greatest problem with this reasoning is the belief that simply having a person who has military experience or is a woman is enough that one will not be attacked on that issue. John Kerry proved this not to be the case. Anyone can be attacked on any point regardless of what that person specifically embodies. The attack isn't what is important, the given candidate's response is the crucial matter. Relatedly, simply being a war hero (using that term in the loosest possible sense as most in the media and politics do) or being a woman doesn't forward a winning political argument in and of itself. This is best seen in John McCain in the current cycle, but John Kerry and Al Gore also embody this point. Specifically, relating to McCain, what about flying attack aircraft (the awesome A-1 Skyraider and the A-4 Skyhawk), getting shot down, and spending years in a POW camp does not seem to me to provide any relevant experience to being President of the United States. The only tenuous link is to the commander in chief powers, but flying aircraft, getting shot down, and spending years in a POW camp means one specifically does not have the experience leading large groups of people similar to being the civilian commander of the armed forces. Now, I realize that McCain retired a Captain, and his Navy career extended beyond his time in Hanoi, but the point is still there. It is incumbent upon McCain to make the argument why that experience matters. Simply having it means nothing. Ultimately, Democrats should stop making this mistake, and instead should seek a Vice Presidential nominee who is going to best make the arguments (read as rhetorical skills) the Democratic Party needs to win the White House and increase our majorities in Congress. It doesn't matter if that person has a great biography.

On a similar note, regarding the connecting of experience to arguments, Obama does this very well when talking about his experiences as a community organizer exposed him to all sorts of people and helped him gain a greater understanding of what people face on a daily basis in this country. This is a great example of what we need in a candidate and vice presidential candidate. Just being a community organizer or a war hero means nothing on its face.

A Loaded Question

Shouldn't the Right wing world view, and its detachment from anything approaching "reality", be enough to disqualify a right wing President such as John McCain?

Sometimes I think McCain is actually smart enough not to believe the insane points of view of the far right. Other times not so much.

Part of the problem facing the Democrats this election bears on this point. Out of touch needs to become the watchwords. However, the republicans are attempting to make their greatest weakness, their being completely out of touch with the times and with the destruction their policies have wrought, into a slam on McCain's age. I am sure they believe this will inoculate them from electoral disaster in the fall, and it might if the Democrats don't step up to the plate on hammering this point home.

Also, at some point, I will begin making electoral college predictions. These will be completely by the seat of my pants with no real methodology behind each prediction, other than cursory looks at whatever polling data is available and my own gut feeling on it. I will update my predictions repeatedly as we get closer to the election stopping on the Monday before. Maybe if I think about this more, I can schedule when I make a prediction, but I am not making any promises.

What 60s bands still deserve respect?

So I was ponderin' the 1960s today. Part of my thoughts involved how much Boomers ejaculate themselves over their music. Really want to start a fight with someone over 50? Tell them their music sucks. You won't hear the end of it. In light of this, I had the question that makes up the title of this post. What bands from the 1960s still deserve respect? Or for a finer point, what bands from the 1960s are true classics, not just Boomer viewed classics. My list would probably start with Beach Boys, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones. All of which are obvious, although I would say a case could be made against each as well (My case against the beatles would be all their music sounds the same, be it early or later stuff, and their innovations were coming anyway. They were also sell outs, both early on and as their career progressed but that is another argument.) The whole goal here is to develop the canon of 60s bands, who were the most essential at the time and for later development of popular music.

Joe Loserman

Why is it so hard for the Democrats to beat this guy? To shut him up so that he has no credibility with the American people? Obviously the narrow majority in the Senate figures into this equation, but Lieberman really is a terrible politician and shouldn't be that hard to smack down.

Wouldn't an effective strategy for beating Lieberman be emasculating him the same way he consistently was emasculated by the Right during the 2000 election? It just seems like that the easiest way to get rid of Lieberman would be, in the next Congress, when the Democratic Majority is larger, to simply amend every bill cutting any money in it for Connecticut placed there by Lieberman. Couple this with a full out assault on Joe Lieberman as a person to the point he has no credibility left. If the Democrats were daring, they would implement this strategy now. Daring and aggressive are two things that haven't defined the Democrats for some time though.

Things I am thinking about today

Misogny versus Racism, which is more pernicious, what are the roots of each, what can be done about each. Are they the same type of problem? At first glance it appears so, but I am guessing, to more or less quote a more or less wise man, "its a bit more complicated than that",

North Korea. How does this specific political economic equilibrium exist. I don't get it. Sure it is a one party state or a personalistic dictatorship, but I really don't understand how it exists. On some level political economic structures have to be supported by more than just the will of one person, which is what makes North Korea so puzzling to me. Obviously I am just ignorant about the situation, but I would like to know more.

The Weather. What the hell. Seriously, can we have more Thunderstorms and tornadoes please? Jesus. Whatever.

What the hell?

Senator Clinton, I am watching your speech, and I got a question. Where the hell has this been? Thematically, this speech is amazing, and you have a fantastic delivery. This speech really shows great instincts and is a great speech. Also, this speech just shows how bad of a candidate McCain is. If you can just hold this feeling right now, we, the Democratic party, need you on the campaign trail

Rhetorical difference between liberals and conservatives

Rereading my last post, I had this thought.

I wonder if there has been any studies done on differences in rhetoric use by political parties that compares the parties' rhetoric against each other. Essentially, I wonder if there is any variation in the parties' rhetoric attributable to the parties' positioning on an ideological scale. It seems to me that the Democrats, and probably left of center parties in general, say "we" a lot. Republicans on the other hand say "you" a lot. Now, one could assume that over time, as parties were able to test the efficacy of certain rhetoric, there would be convergence of rhetoric such that there wouldn't be a distinguishable difference. Nonetheless, the topic intrigues me.

Collapsing Conservatism

I believe I have mentioned in the past the ongoing discussion, that seems to have slowed a bit lately, amongst intellectual righty bloggin' types about the intellectual bankruptcy of conservative ideology at the current moment. I have had two posts on this topic brewing for awhile, but haven't really found the desire to write either one. Well, now I so desire. I am sure one of those intellectual righty bloggin' types have already covered this but none the less here is my view from the Central time zone. I think there is an extreme self centeredness at the heart of right wing ideology today. More than likely it has always been there, but it seems ever present now. To exemplify, I am going to use an anecdote from some former roommates of mine, good conservatives all, even if one wouldn't admit it.

At the time of Hurrican Katrina, these smart young men could not wrap their heads around why the black folks of New Orleans just didn't leave the city before hand following the evacuation order. Further, they couldn't stand the fact that "those people" then had the audacity to expect the federal government to bail them out of the disastrous situation in which they found themselves. Now I somewhat share sympathy with the idea that it is stupid to let people live below sea level on a coast. I am not sure if I have blogged about how I do not think we should be rebuilding massive parts of NOLA or not, but this story isn't about me, so lets return to my conservative roommates at the time.

In light of their stated opinions regarding those trapped in New Orleans at the time of Katrina, I pointed out that everyone everywhere in the United States expects the government to bail them out from disasters, whether it is hurricanes in the East, Tornadoes in the Midwest, or forest fires and earthquakes out West. Politically, this is one of the things we expect our government to do. As an aside conservatives might want to add rebuild after disasters to their mantra of the goverment should only build roads and defend the nation. Returning to the point at hand, my conservative roommates response was very similar to my point about living below sea level, but broader. Simply, they did not believe that people should live in areas in which such natural disasters existed if those people couldn't afford to rebuild themselves after such a disaster. We are coming up on the ultimate point, so hold on. When I pointed out that they likely would not be able to afford to rebuild after a disaster such as Katrina, their rejoinder was that they wouldn't live anywhere like that anyway.

What is important about this anecdote is that in the course of a conversation with two conservatives, is that their justifications for their beliefs ultimately rested on the idea that disasters wouldn't happen to them. The discussion kept coming down to what my friends and roommates as individuals. Broader intellectual points be damned, bad things just weren't going to happen to these two roommates so obviously the government shouldn't do anything to help anyone. This must be the much discussed "optimism" of conservatism. To me, it seemed exceptionally self centered and the reasoning infantile. It should make sense that if this is the ultimate foundation of American conservatism, and as it waters down this does seem to be the message, then it makes sense that conservatives are intellectually bankrupt right now.

Stupid Media Actions

I really hate complaining about the media. I think it is a waste of time. However, I am going to break my hatred of complaining about the media to ... complain about the media! My basic problem comes from something I just saw on Hardball. Jonathan Alter, how I really respect, just gave a lengthy hypothetical of possible was Clinton could withdraw from the race after Tuesday's end of the primary. After reviewing possibilities such as Clinton joint appearing with Obama in Minneapolis as a way for Clinton to appear gracious at the end of the election, Alter proceeded to bash Clinton for not doing his hypothetical. In fairness to Alter, he did mention how he suggested his hypothetical to someone at the Clinton campaign, and then shockingly, they didn't do it. Perhaps this gives him some justification for bashing Clinton. I mean, her campaign didn't follow Alter's BRILLIANT suggestion.

It just really gets my goat (I don't know what that means) when the persons in the media create hypothetical situations and then bash any given candidate for not following that hypothetical. Boo on you Jonathan Alter, Boo on you. And to think that I read all of your book about Roosevelt.

Woo Who?

So Obama has won it. That is good I guess. I will miss Hillary's never ending campaign though. I think the whole process has been very good for the Democratic party. An end was necessary though. One thing on my mind now that the primary is ostensibly over, is the need for Clinton's voters to become Obama voters. As I mentioned before, I think this will happen.

However, other commentators, one's with actual platforms from which to broadcast their ideas have been discussing the need for Obama to woo Clinton's supporters. These calls generally focus on the two to three groups that Obama must win over. These groups are women, working class whites, and Reagan Democrats.

Before discussing these groups, it should be pointed out that any call for Obama to woo Clinton voters must also explain why those voters didn't vote for Obama in the first place. Given the minuscule policy differences between Obama and Clinton, Obama's wooing shouldn't be too difficult as there should be no major hang up for Clinton voters to switch their support. However, as was well documented in the final primaries, a portion of Clinton supporters appeared to be voting for her because she was white. It seems to me that there isn't much Obama can do to woo these voters. Their support is just lost. Now, in this election, that shouldn't be as big of a deal as it has been in past elections, as many of those who would never vote for a black man are already Republicans, who wouldn't vote for a Democrat of any skin color. The main take away point here is that Obama cannot woo the voters who voted against him because he was black, and the explanation of voter motive is necessary to any discussion of the efficacy of Obama's wooing efforts. This point is dodged by many of those calling for a woo-athon by Obama as they do not want to confront the ugly reality of Hillary's support as the race progressed to its conclusion.

Now, returning to the three groups. I am not sure how Obama can woo working class whites for many of the reasons I laid out above. I think these voters are for the most part low information voters and therefore can be further subdivided into two categories. First, the aforementioned racists. The only information necessary for these voters to make up their minds is the color of the skin of the candidate. That is it. Obama will never win these voters. The second group of low information voters would be non-racist ones. This group of Clinton voters voted for her based off her name recognition alone. They didn't really every get to know Obama or care about him. They heard the name Clinton, and that was all they needed to make a decision on how to vote. These voters can become Obama voters after they get to know Obama more and more. So these voters should definitely be targeted for wooing, but this can be done in the manner of a normal political campaign.

Moving on to women, I don't know what can be done here. I am guessing that the numbers of women who are going to only vote for Hillary is pretty low. Basically, the core of her support, women over 65 doesn't form that large of a voting bloc in the US. The 2007 population estimate says there are approximately 22 million women over the age of 65. Assuming they break 60/40 for the Democratic party with no independents, that means that around 13.2 million of them are Democrats. This isn't a constituency to be sneezed at in an election where the Democrat might get 65 million total votes. In such a case, those 13.2 million voters would be almost 20 percent of the Democratic total. Very obviously this is an necessary constituency for Obama to woo, but there are several questions that are unanswered here. First, how many of these voters are Clinton and Clinton only voters? Probably not very many. Second, of those in this group who have qualms about Obama, what can he do in a practical manner, to address their concerns about his candidacy? I would assume there is very little he can do beyond continuing to wage an aggressive campaign against John McCain drawing the appropriate contrasts between McCain and himself on the issues important to these voters.

The last group to discuss is the fabled Reagan Democrats. They are not really fabled, they do exist, but there are two problems with them for this election. 1) They are old, and not that much of the population anymore; and 2) Most of them are Republicans now. A person who was 18 in 1980 would now be 46. This means that every Reagan Democrat out there is at a minimum 46 years of age. This is a relatively advanced age. I realize that young keeps getting defined upward, but 46 is not very young. The second issue is that these voters are Republicans. If they voted for Reagan twice, H.W. once, if not twice, Dole and all the rest of the Republicans for president and/or Congress. They are Republicans now, regardless of whatever party they nominally identify with. This is not a constituency that really exists in a meaningful way for the Democratic party. Efforts to woo them are a lost cause, and surely Ms. Minnesota and D.C., Geraldine Ferraro, is not the best person to consult as to what is the best way to approach this constituency.

I don't have a conclusion.

The Party or the Person

Now that the Rules and Bylaws Committee has ruled, there is talk that Clinton supporters are still angry. The question becomes, regardless of what the Clinton campaign does, whether those supporters are going to support the person or the party. I realize that Clinton wants to hold herself out as the last hope to her supporters to use that position as leverage against the rest of the Democratic party. Whether her supporters understand their role in this drama is another question. If they choose to remain loyal to Hillary, and only Hillary, they are choosing the person over the party, and ultimately should be held responsible for their lack of commitment to the ideals of the center left as embodied by the Democratic party. Obviously, there is no mechanism for holding them responsible beyond shaming and guilting them into realizing that they really don't care about universal health care or ending the war in Iraq or the political makeup of the Supreme Court becuase they refuse to accept the outcome of the process. Such absolutist thinking is detrimental to the Party and ultimately to the country.

For these reasons, I think that on a micropolitical level, by which I mean interactions between Obama supporters and Clinton supporters on an interpersonal level, Clinton supporters choice of the person over the Party, will collapse. It is untenable in a face to face interaction for someone to maintain loyalty to Clinton, whom they have likely never met, over the ideals which both Clinton, Obama, and as previously mentioned, the Democratic Party, represent. I would probably be writing the same about Obama supporters if the results had turned out the other way, and by results I mean the votes.

Hillary's Assassination Talk

Hillary's assassination comment is regrettable, and it is rather sad that she is getting pilloried for it. Frankly, she deserves it. Many americans probably believe that we do not have a history of political violence of any note. I think that is mistaken on two fronts. First, we do have a long history of assassinations and assassination attempts against presidents in the United States. Secondly, we have a long long history of other political violence.

In the first instance, every president since Nixon have had at least one assassination attempt, according to the ever reliable wikipedia. Now, some of those are less credible than others, but that doesn't make them less important. For example, the plot to blow up George H.W. Bush in Kuwait or the guy shooting at the White House hoping to kill Clinton are not the same as Squeaky Fromme trying to shoot Ford, or Hinckley trying to impress Jody Foster. The fact still remains that while Eisenhower and Johnson were both not shot at, every president since Roosevelt has had some form of attempt on their life. That seems like a pretty decent history of political violence regarding assassination of presidents.

The second history of political violence is much less talked about. Within this group would be America's history with lynchings at the end of the 19th century through the early 20th century. This history is not was much discussed within the polity of the United States and has much greater bearing on why Hillary's comments are so offensive. In light of this history of white people attacking black people simply wanting to be americans, the statement should not be made.

I know that Clinton's point was not to suggest what came across, but she should have been more mindful of the context of this election, and the history of the United States, before she made the statement.

Lost in the When will another woman run fray.

So over at Salon, Katharine Mieszkowski writing on Broadsheet wrote THIS

With Hillary Clinton less likely every day to be the Democratic nominee for president, the guessing game is to try to predict when the first American woman will serve as commander in chief.

I have seen much more of this discussion lately, wherein feminist commentators discuss when we will see the next woman to run for President, and whether or not it will be another "generation" till it occurs like the 24 years between Ferraro and Clinton.

I have several issues with this discussion. First, dabbling within the identity politics kiddie pool, this commentary seems to almost lament the fact that Clinton's not getting the nomination is going to set women back for another generation. How this operates I do not know, and is rarely explained. This line of commentary does not assess real factors, like the differences in the numbers of women politicians in 1984 and 2008. I am assuming that there has been a real increase in the number of women politicians holding potentially presidential springboard offices since 1984. In the specific article above, the author describes a hypothetical next woman presidential candidate with the admonishment that "she might not even exist." I am sorry, but Kathy Sebelius, Janet Napolitano, and Claire McCaskill are all future potential presidential candidates for the Democrats. At least, they should consider themselves such.

Another issue I have with this feminist handwringing is that, again playing identity politics, blacks have NEVER gotten as close as Ferraro did in 84, or as Obama has now. A fair question is who would be the next black candidate in the position of Clinton or Obama? To be fair, I would say Deval Patrick and Harold Ford might be in that position, but I think neither are as close as the three women I mentioned.

War and Resources

One thing that occurred to me this morning upon reading Andrew Leonard's latest post at How the World Works at Salon was how wrong those who predicted resource wars have been. The standard claim, grossly oversimplifying, is that as resources run out, countries would go to war to secure resources necessary to their economies. Resources like oil. I personally do not know if we are at peak oil or not. I just don't feel qualified to make that determination. I do know, however, that the United States is not going to fight wars to secure oil in the future. The basic calculus has to be the cost of a war to secure oil versus the price of alternatives to an oil based economy. The reality is that the cost of war, including the physical costs and reputational costs, is simply too high for such a war to be an effective instrument of policy. It will simply be cheaper to develop alternatives in the United States and on the world market than to use an expensive blunt instrument of state policy such as war to secure energy for the economy of the future.

What of the Iraq war? I know many on the left see the Iraq war as exactly the type of war I am saying will never happen. The fact of the matter is that the primary motivations for the Iraq War did not develop out of the board rooms of the administration's oil buddies, but instead came from the think tanks of the neoconservative hawks. The claimed benefit of using Iraqi oil to pay our costs in the was not a motivating factor, but instead just some lagniappe.

CNN's Headline T-Shirts

CNN.com now has a feature where you can order a T-Shirt with a headline from cnn.com on it. This makes me wonder if now that they have an even greater financial interest in their headlines, are they going to start coming up with loony headlines simply to sell T-shirts? I think we have the first evidence in a headline they have up today to a story that has been around for a couple of days. The headline says "Crazy ants chew through electrical cords." The story has been about an ant infestation in Houston, Texas.

Frankly, I think this is a great development for news organizations.

Banner Year for Democrats?

A banner year for Democrats or a banner year for Liberals?

A lot of people in the proverbial liberal blogosphere have looked at the recent victory by the Democrat in the Mississippi special election as evidence of the impending liberal landslide in the fall. I think many in the blogosphere are conflating a Democratic landslide in the fall with a liberal landslide in the fall. They are two different things, and this distinction needs to be constantly kept in mind or liberals are setting themselves for grand disappointment in 2009 when their agenda doesn't get enacted in its entirety. Now, normally, I don't care about individuals' levels of disappointment. However, in this instance, I think this issue is important because of what it can mean for the Democratic party. To provide an alternative to the Republicans the Democratic party needs to show itself to be different in many ways. Simply becoming doctrinaire and dogmatic as to what the party believes is a surefire way to repeat the mistakes of the Republicans. The Democratic party needs to be inclusive of those more moderate to conservative members of the party who are going to be entering it as the Republicans continue to collapse. Part of the distinction the Democrats can draw is as a party that respects intellectual and political difference within reason and as a place of respectful discussion of issues and national policy. I am not talking about tolerating Joe Lieberman's though. Lieberman is a specific example of someone who has used his position as a Democrat (in the past) to attack other Democrats, and the Democratic agenda, by playing to the repentant sinner archetype in American politics.

A link

I want to throw this up and I will comment on it after while.


http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/29/autos/gas_engine_improvements/index.htm

I put this up a week or so ago, because what I found most interesting was the "Experts" cited in the article. All of them are from the American automobile manufacturers. No independent experts, no Japanese experts, no German experts. All of these "experts" come from companies who have been hemorrhaging money for some time now, and whose primary products are singularly unsuited to a world of high gas prices. Of course they are going to reach the conclusions they reach in the article, that the gasoline engine is here to stay. If you are GM and you don't have 10 years experience building hybrids like Toyota, you are going to see hybrid technology as expensive and complicated. The article was hilarious.

Oil Independence

I think it is time we change our rhetoric on oil independence. It has been common since 9/11 for many people to talk about the need for foreign oil independence because the money going to the middle east helps fund terrorism. On a geopolitical level, this logic makes sense. In fact, some version of this idea has been around since at least the 1970s with the first oil shocks, in that it has been viewed as a bad thing for the United States to be so dependent upon foreign oil. I think it is time for a change in the way we think about this issue though. Namely, we need to stop talking about getting off foreign oil, or achieving foreign oil independence, and start talking about achieving oil independence in general.

It seems readily apparent that tying our economy to one commodity such as petroleum has been a terribly bad idea as we begin to see the effects of that choice upon the broader economy. Reduced consumer spending is going to become a reality as long as we live in a period of the 100 dollar fill up. It is obvious to me as well that slowly things will simply change. Humans have lived through periods of expensive energy before, namely any period before the invention of the automobile and the exploitation of petroleum as a means to power those automobiles, and will be able to adjust to a new reality of expensive petroleum based energy sources. It is likely though, that this period will be economically painful. These reasons make the necessity finding new energy bases for our economy imperative. One place I think we should start is instead of talking about independence from foreign oil, we should be talking about moving away from using oil altogether. Changing our rhetoric will be easy. However, I do not know how we will ultimately achieve the specific change in policy, and at the risk of sounding flippant, I am sure something will come up.

What I mean more accurately is increasing costs of petroleum energy sources make alternatives much more viable as technological and market development reduce costs of those alternatives. The result of this is two cost lines on a graph, one the increasing cost of oil based energy sources and the other a decreasing cost of bringing certain technologies to market that will coalesce around a new point that will be how society then becomes based. For example, from say 1920 to 1960, roughly, trains and streetcars were the primary mode of transportation for many people in this country whether locally or long distance. Following the beginning of construction of the interstate highway system, and all federal highways in general, and the development of the jet liner, the system of transit in this country moved to an automobile/bus/airplane equilibrium. We are now in a position, due to rising oil prices, in which that equilibrium is unsustainable, and will change again.

Hopefully it will change back to trains.

I like trains.

Okay to be Racist!

So, talkingpointsmemo.com has the headline up that Obama loses working class whites to Clinton in a landslide.

What is interesting to me about this to me is that I think the Jeremiah Wright business has obviously hurt Obama amongst working class white voters, but not quite in the way most people think. Frankly, I think that the Jeremiah Wright business has given working class voters a reason to vote on their baser instincts. Namely, voting out of racism. Any squeamishness those voters would have had about Obama before could have been swallowed to vote for him in absence of the Wright controversy. However, since Wright has been all over the news, those voters can now say to themselves and the media, well I really don't agree with Wright, so I am not voting for Obama for that reason. In reality they were uneasy voting for a black guy in the first place, and are just using Wright as convenient excuse. The reason I believe this to be true is that if Wright was really as damaging to Obama overall as it appears based off Obama's loss amongst working class whites, then Obama would have lost whites across the board, and just not within that one subset of the white vote. Obviously, Obama hasn't lost support amongst whites across the board, so it leads me to think that the Reverend Wright business is operating only amongst working class whites for a reason beyond just what Wright has said. The intervening variable I believe is operating is latent working class white racism. The Wright controversy has made it okay to express that racism by giving it the veneer of reasoned argument of "well I really disagree with what Wright said."

On another note, I was listening to one of the things Wright said at the national press club about the way white kids and black kids learn and think. At one point, Wright claimed that white kids primarily think and learn with the left brain, whereas black kids think and learn with the right brain. I trust that Wright is educated enough to have read a study on this point somewhere. The problem with this logic, and any study designed to show this, is that it is impossible to prove. Well, maybe not impossible, but damn near. In complicated bio-chemical reactions like what takes place in the brain, one would expect to find some type of structure that leads to this claimed differentiation. However, I almost guarantee no such a morphological difference exists between the brains of white and black children. I suppose if one really wanted to test this proposition, one could try teaching children of both races the same topic and use one of them fancy machines (MRI? EKG?, I dunno, hence fancy machines) to see if there is any difference in the areas of the brains stimulated by that topic. I would be willing to make a hefty bet that there wouldn't be such a difference.

Talking to Iran

Lately, it seems that there has been some folks calling for the Bush administration to talk with Iran. I know that during the Petraeus/Crocker hearings several Democrats brought up this point, and that Obama also has this as a central point on how he would conduct foreign policy. While I do agree that normalizing diplomatic relations would probably be a good idea, I do have some qualms. Well, really only one qualm.

Do we really want the Bush Administration of all groups to begin those talks? Is no one concerned about what they might say or how bad they might screw this up? Wouldn't it be better to wait until a more responsible and sober administration took office to begin a major diplomatic initiative?

Like the earlier racism post, maybe I will get back to this later.

One more thought about the 2nd Amendment

At the end of my post about the 2nd amendment, I kind of let things hanging in the air. I had another thought about those fanatical supporters of the 2nd amendment. While I have already talked about how I think 2nd amendment supporters are cowards who don't really believe their own logic, this cowardice can be seen yet again in their claim that the 2nd amendment is there to defend all the other amendments. Take an example that has been ongoing for most of the Bush Administration: Federal warrantless wiretapping and repeated violations of the 4th amendment. In no way does having a firearm prevent the government from engaging in activities that violate that amendment. Furthermore, if you had a firearm and a illegal search of your home and person is occurring in front of you, shooting the officer is still murder. No court has recognized an affirmative right to defend one's interpretation of the other amendments of the Constitution. Attempting to do so would still put one in other legal jeopardy.

This point about the 2nd defending all the other amendments could be stood on its head. Just as the 2nd allegedly defends the others, so do the others defend the 2nd. Without the 4th, the government could know exactly where all firearms are at all times, assuming the feasibility of a monitoring regime. Without the 1st, supporters of the 2nd could not organize politically to defend their rights, such as they conceptualize them to exist, under the 2nd. Without the the 5th and the 6th amendments, gun owners could not defend their rights in court such as the use of deadly force to protect themselves and others, or even their right to litigate their interpretations of the 2nd.

Well, I feel like I have beaten topic into the ground. I am sure I will have more on this topic in the future.

Are they going to hurt us, Walter? No Donnie. These men are cowards.

You know something that really chaps my ass. Fundamentally, almost all Americans are nihilists. They believe in nothing. Everyone is a cafeteria everything. A little from this philosophy, religion, or political beliefs, a little from that. Frankly, it is kind of disgusting. Why this is, I don't know. Could just be the fact we live in a post modern age or that beliefs have become too dangerous. How could ideas become too dangerous? Ideology can destroy the world now, but does it really operationalize down to individuals not having personal beliefs? Do people really not believe things because those beliefs aggregated could lead to horrible consequences like nuclear wars? I think that people don't have fundamental beliefs because having such are too painful on a much more personal level. Having beliefs is painful because beliefs generally require sacrifice in one way or another. Most Americans don't want to sacrifice anything, if at all possible.

Maybe that is all wrong, maybe Americans are not fundamentally nihilistic, or maybe not for the reasons I propose. This was just something I was thinking about this morning.

Thoughts on the 2nd Amendment

While I still have that other question about race to develop into a much larger post, I wanted to take a moment to discuss some things I was thinking about the 2nd amendment.

A decision is pending in the Heller v. D.C. case, and that has made me think about the amendment again. It seems likely that the conservative members of the Court will interpret the Amendment to allow an individual right to own guns. This is the true crux of this case, as a finding in this direction will then allow the conservative majority to overturn the D.C. handgun prohibition. In light of the conservative majority's potential ruling, I got to thinking about the ramifications of what the Court might do.

The question seems to me to revolve around what will actually change in the U.S. if the Court finds an individual Constitutional right to own guns, incorporates it to apply to the states through the 14th amendment, and strikes down the D.C. gun regulation paving the way for all gun regulations anywhere in the country to be struck down by future Federal court action.

I think about this question as this would be the perfect ruling from the perspective of the right wing gun owners and their lobbying group the NRA.

While those of us on the left might see a ruling such as this as disastrous, I do not understand why. Put another way, what is wrong with giving on the gun control front? To me, this issue appears similar to the issue with the ending of the federally mandated speed limit. At that time, there were some who posited that raising the 65 mph speed limit on rural interstates would result in a large increase in the number of highway deaths in this country. However, to the best of my knowledge, that hasn't occurred. It has been several years since I last looked at the speed limit issue, but I feel relatively confident in saying that at worst, the rate of decline of the number of highway deaths in this country slowed, but a spike from high speed limits never occurred. I could be wrong about that assertion though.

I believe a similar thing would occur if right wing gun owners got their wish. Is there really pent up demand in NYC, Chicago, SF, DC, and all the other cities with restrictions on handgun ownership? Are gun ownership rates in those areas going to skyrocket if the regulations are gone? If gun ownership rates skyrocket, does that mean that gun deaths are going to also skyrocket? I don't think that either of those two things will come about because I don't think that there is pent up demand for guns in those cities. Perhaps, if gun ownership rates in those cities do spike, there might be a spike in the number of accidental shootings or gun accidents, but in terms of widespread shootings I just don't see that developing.

This whole discussion leads to the question of the political effects on the liberal agenda as a whole on the devotion to gun control. Is this devotion costing votes in rural areas that could be garnered in attempting to develop a greater progressive majority? Possibly, but I also am not sure that even if gun control didn't exist that rural voters would reassess their positions and find themselves to be Democrats.

Additionally, I was thinking about one of the arguments some gun owners make frequently about the 2nd amendment. Namely this argument forwards the idea that the 2nd amendment allows Americans to defend themselves with force against a tyrannical government (hereafter, gubmint). This argument is ridiculous on several fronts. First, I want to discuss it one from a philosophical point of view. Then, I want to discuss this argument from a practical point of view.

From a philosophical point of view, the right to rebel against the gubmint doesn't make sense in the context of relatively free participation in that gubmint by the people of the polity. Put more simply, voters and citizens cannot rebel against themselves, and as long as free and fair (for the most part) elections take place on a regular basis, a tyrannical government is not likely to exist. On the one hand I think the gun owners who forward this argument are part of a broader group of conservative rejectionists who refuse to play by the underlying rules of democratic/republican government. On the other hand, I think that those who espouse this view are simply playing on larger cultural ideas of American history and are ignorant of any broader political philosophical ramifications of their beliefs. Obviously those things are not incompatible, but, to me, the degree of culpability of the two positions in making the argument is important. The conservative rejectionists being more morally and intellectually culpable than those playing on larger cultural ideas. The basic philosophical point remains however, which is that citizens in a democracy cannot rebel against themselves. (I am sure someone else has developed this idea much more thoroughly, and as soon as I know who that is, I will attribute them properly.)

Having discussed that aspect of this idea that the 2nd amendment will allow people the ability to engage in armed insurrection against the United States, let's talk about the more practical aspects of such a belief. To do this,we need to conceptualize, and this is going to be tough, how the United States Military would respond to an armed insurgency... Snark aside, using Iraq as an example for a tyrannical US gubmint fighting an armed insurgency, it is possible to see the ludicrousness of the belief that Bubba and his brother are going to be able to pull it off a successful resistance to the gubmint. Iraq is actually a much better example than the United States because of the lack of any authority to control the dispersal of military grade weapons in the period between the collapse of the Saddam regime and the implementation of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Given the success in which the USMC crushed the insurgents in Falluja, I find it very hard to believe that engaging trained U.S. Military personnel in a fire fight is a recipe for success. As the Iraqis have shown, destabilizing a U.S. military occupation is much more successful when one uses explosives. From this practical point of view, the idea that "bearing arms" in the form of private ownership of firearms provides a means by which "the people" can protect themselves from the gubmint is inherently flawed. Any citizens militia in this country faced with the combined military and para military forces of this country would not stand a chance at achieving their goals. I bet this part of the reason why, despite proliferation of such right wing groups in the U.S. in the 1990s, none of these groups have actually moved to engage in such a battle. They know their claimed right is a practical sham.

A Quick Question

I hope to follow up on this in a soon to be forthcoming post.

Are those on the political right knowingly or unknowingly racist?

Obviously, it is probably a continuum.

The business with a recommended blogger from Instapundit made me think of this question.

You are wrong

It has been almost a year, and I just wanted to take this time to say that you are wrong regarding your last post. So boo on you.