This is the problem with going in for that dentist appointment you've been putting off since FSM knows when: the nice hygienist tells you you're in great shape, all things considered, but you've got $700 worth of cavities to fill.
FUUUUUUUUU...
Friday, June 22, 2012
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Primaries again
An update on primaries: Balloon-Juice picked up on this story (and links to Gary Wills doing a much better job than I do demolishing Unger's suggestion), and the comment thread is... vigorous.
One question you see in response to an expressed desire for a primary from the left (eg here) is that, since Obama is quite popular with Democratic voters (true) and would win such a primary in a landslide, what the point of such an exercise would be?
And indeed, we saw no primary challengers to Obama this cycle, despite there being any number of career Democrats (e.g. Feingold) and big-name upstarts (including Keith Olbermann) who found themselves un- or underemployed recently. The reasons not to run are not hard to find: "I don't stand a snowball's chance" is a powerful deterrent to someone whose goal is to win the election. However, I think it speaks to the skillful way that Obama has led the contingent of the party that actually holds power (as opposed to the netroots) that a primary challenge from the left, from anyone who is anyone, would be seen as an act of political disloyalty -- the first and only sin in politics.
I think this is a mistake, but it's an easy one to make, especially if Obama's like virtually everyone else who gets power in that he will use that power to stay in power.
The point of the exercise, the gain that accrues to the party and Obama's presidency from a vigorous primary, is that even if we're going to re-elect, the party should get the chance to take stock of its own successes and failures of the past term.
You don't just do a performance review when you're going to fire an employee. You do a performance review if they're still an asset to you, but need to make a few changes.
In this particular instance, the Democratic electorate needs a formal process where a challenger billing themselves as representing working-class and middle-class interests can stand up and force the president to talk about his decision to repeatedly "pivot" away from fighting unemployment to fighting the deficit. (That same person will have to give props to the president for the Lily Ledbetter act.) We need a process where someone billing themselves a defender of civil rights and civil liberties can force the president to talk about denying GWOT detainees a fair trial in open court (note: lots of Democrats in both houses of Congress ought to have a bit in their performance review on this question too). We need a process where someone billing themselves as standing up for the US being a nation ruled by laws, not men, can force the president to talk about why there have been virtually no prosecutions for a decade or more of Wall Street fraud, theft, perjury, and abuse of mathematics.
OK, that last one isn't a federal offense. But I'm considering founding a Society for its Prevention.
One question you see in response to an expressed desire for a primary from the left (eg here) is that, since Obama is quite popular with Democratic voters (true) and would win such a primary in a landslide, what the point of such an exercise would be?
And indeed, we saw no primary challengers to Obama this cycle, despite there being any number of career Democrats (e.g. Feingold) and big-name upstarts (including Keith Olbermann) who found themselves un- or underemployed recently. The reasons not to run are not hard to find: "I don't stand a snowball's chance" is a powerful deterrent to someone whose goal is to win the election. However, I think it speaks to the skillful way that Obama has led the contingent of the party that actually holds power (as opposed to the netroots) that a primary challenge from the left, from anyone who is anyone, would be seen as an act of political disloyalty -- the first and only sin in politics.
I think this is a mistake, but it's an easy one to make, especially if Obama's like virtually everyone else who gets power in that he will use that power to stay in power.
The point of the exercise, the gain that accrues to the party and Obama's presidency from a vigorous primary, is that even if we're going to re-elect, the party should get the chance to take stock of its own successes and failures of the past term.
You don't just do a performance review when you're going to fire an employee. You do a performance review if they're still an asset to you, but need to make a few changes.
In this particular instance, the Democratic electorate needs a formal process where a challenger billing themselves as representing working-class and middle-class interests can stand up and force the president to talk about his decision to repeatedly "pivot" away from fighting unemployment to fighting the deficit. (That same person will have to give props to the president for the Lily Ledbetter act.) We need a process where someone billing themselves a defender of civil rights and civil liberties can force the president to talk about denying GWOT detainees a fair trial in open court (note: lots of Democrats in both houses of Congress ought to have a bit in their performance review on this question too). We need a process where someone billing themselves as standing up for the US being a nation ruled by laws, not men, can force the president to talk about why there have been virtually no prosecutions for a decade or more of Wall Street fraud, theft, perjury, and abuse of mathematics.
OK, that last one isn't a federal offense. But I'm considering founding a Society for its Prevention.
Monday, June 18, 2012
Primary campaigns are performance reviews
There's a story that's been on memeorandum today, getting recirculated by a few conservative blogs, about how one of Obama's old profs at Harvard has come out to argue that he must be defeated in November because he has failed the progressive cause. And he's got one thing right: the more progressive your self-identification, the more disappointing you've found the Obama presidency, between complete immunity for crimes against humanity and complete immunity for frauds perpetrated mainly before he assumed office, to committing crimes against humanity and normalizing many of the illegal practices of his inestimable predecessor.
Don't ask me to defend Obama's record on these and any number of other points of law and policy. I think they're indefensible. But I will defend my decision to vote for him this November, despite all of this.
That decision is made much easier by this year's Republican presidential field, currently winnowed down to a bot and a crazy person. But it really would be a stretch to imagine voting for any Republican, no matter how much he or she might themself be sane and reality-grounded -- because the party caucus is not sane and reality-grounded, and the bills that got to that person's desk would be written by the lunatics running the asylum. You really think Jon Huntsman would veto all the batshit crazy nonsense that a united Republican House and Senate would fling his way? If so, I've got some beachfront property in Utah to sell you cheap.
All of which is neither here nor there, since what I wanted to talk about are the relative roles of primaries vs general elections. Here's the point, people: general elections are referenda on caucuses -- on the large political constellations of power, far larger than the individual president, let alone the individual legislator for whom one is voting. Primary elections are referenda on the intra-party divisions -- or, if you like, referenda on the individuals running, since it is pretty rare that you'll have candidates for the same seat who are indistinguishable in terms of policy preferences and ideological emphases.
With all due respect to Professor Unger, it's an idiotic suggestion to start campaining against Obama from the left now, after the primaries are done.
OK, I didn't spend a lot of time digging here. Maybe he's been campaigning against Obama for a while now, and that sneaky liberal media just decided to pick up on the story now because it needs fodder for its "This is bad news ... for Obama" cycle. Whatever, it's not my concern, since I only want to address the top-level point. Once the primaries are over, you've lost your chance to swing the balance of power within your own coalition; your only play now is to lift your own coalition over your opponents.
Now I was a big fan of a primary challenge to Obama from the left, for a number of reasons. The first is that I'm tired of the screwy location of the Overton Window; tired of Equal Time for Right-Wing-Nutjobs and no time at all for the Ancient and Hermetic Order of the Shrill; tired of right-wingers sincerely believing that Obama is the leftiest lefty who ever threw out the first pitch at Nationals Park with his left hand, because they've never heard anyone on their TV who actually represents the progressive ideas. Those people can ignore the guests on Up With Chris Hayes because Up isn't broadcast on any network they know of. But they can't ignore it if an actual progressive stands up and highlights how the President has handed them, the right wing, victory after concession after tax cut. The second, and this may be my academic predilections talking, but you get better public policy out of enlightened, technical, public debate, than you do out of rallying around the flag and anointing the incumbent regardless of his actual performance.
Primary season is job review season for an incumbent politician. And that review is done by the people in his or her own coalition, the ones with the vested interest in how well he or she plays the game and plays it for their team, the people whom that politician most directly represents, the people who made up the critical bulk of the votes that got him or her into office in the first place, who now get to pass judgement on how well they are represented. Did the candidate vote with the party when he or she should have objected? Or object when he or she should have gotten in line? Was the candidate a compromise candidate between coalition factions, and if so did he or she represent all those factions fairly? What were the problems that office-holder was sent to address and solve? What progress was made? What unexpected bumps in the road did we encounter?
We have a very strong meme in the USA, that one should vote for the person, not the letter by their name. Bollocks. Individuals don't make policy or laws, individuals don't wield power in a constitutional system: blocs do. (Yes, I know, the office of the presidency is powerful, but the president is neutered if both houses of Congress are arrayed against him. It's his bloc that gives him room to swing.) Your vote in November is for (or against) a bloc, and that is all. If you want finer control over what your vote means, vote/volunteer/campaign in the primary.
Don't ask me to defend Obama's record on these and any number of other points of law and policy. I think they're indefensible. But I will defend my decision to vote for him this November, despite all of this.
That decision is made much easier by this year's Republican presidential field, currently winnowed down to a bot and a crazy person. But it really would be a stretch to imagine voting for any Republican, no matter how much he or she might themself be sane and reality-grounded -- because the party caucus is not sane and reality-grounded, and the bills that got to that person's desk would be written by the lunatics running the asylum. You really think Jon Huntsman would veto all the batshit crazy nonsense that a united Republican House and Senate would fling his way? If so, I've got some beachfront property in Utah to sell you cheap.
All of which is neither here nor there, since what I wanted to talk about are the relative roles of primaries vs general elections. Here's the point, people: general elections are referenda on caucuses -- on the large political constellations of power, far larger than the individual president, let alone the individual legislator for whom one is voting. Primary elections are referenda on the intra-party divisions -- or, if you like, referenda on the individuals running, since it is pretty rare that you'll have candidates for the same seat who are indistinguishable in terms of policy preferences and ideological emphases.
With all due respect to Professor Unger, it's an idiotic suggestion to start campaining against Obama from the left now, after the primaries are done.
OK, I didn't spend a lot of time digging here. Maybe he's been campaigning against Obama for a while now, and that sneaky liberal media just decided to pick up on the story now because it needs fodder for its "This is bad news ... for Obama" cycle. Whatever, it's not my concern, since I only want to address the top-level point. Once the primaries are over, you've lost your chance to swing the balance of power within your own coalition; your only play now is to lift your own coalition over your opponents.
Now I was a big fan of a primary challenge to Obama from the left, for a number of reasons. The first is that I'm tired of the screwy location of the Overton Window; tired of Equal Time for Right-Wing-Nutjobs and no time at all for the Ancient and Hermetic Order of the Shrill; tired of right-wingers sincerely believing that Obama is the leftiest lefty who ever threw out the first pitch at Nationals Park with his left hand, because they've never heard anyone on their TV who actually represents the progressive ideas. Those people can ignore the guests on Up With Chris Hayes because Up isn't broadcast on any network they know of. But they can't ignore it if an actual progressive stands up and highlights how the President has handed them, the right wing, victory after concession after tax cut. The second, and this may be my academic predilections talking, but you get better public policy out of enlightened, technical, public debate, than you do out of rallying around the flag and anointing the incumbent regardless of his actual performance.
Primary season is job review season for an incumbent politician. And that review is done by the people in his or her own coalition, the ones with the vested interest in how well he or she plays the game and plays it for their team, the people whom that politician most directly represents, the people who made up the critical bulk of the votes that got him or her into office in the first place, who now get to pass judgement on how well they are represented. Did the candidate vote with the party when he or she should have objected? Or object when he or she should have gotten in line? Was the candidate a compromise candidate between coalition factions, and if so did he or she represent all those factions fairly? What were the problems that office-holder was sent to address and solve? What progress was made? What unexpected bumps in the road did we encounter?
We have a very strong meme in the USA, that one should vote for the person, not the letter by their name. Bollocks. Individuals don't make policy or laws, individuals don't wield power in a constitutional system: blocs do. (Yes, I know, the office of the presidency is powerful, but the president is neutered if both houses of Congress are arrayed against him. It's his bloc that gives him room to swing.) Your vote in November is for (or against) a bloc, and that is all. If you want finer control over what your vote means, vote/volunteer/campaign in the primary.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Drinking Liberally 14-6-12
At the Flying Saucer. Drinking local beer (Jackalope Red Rye) until happy hour gets done, then switching to Sierra Nevada Summerfest.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Memorial Day music
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Lemmata
So I may have just closed the gap, ie understood a proof of the last lemma needed to prove what I'm using to organize my qualifying paper (and what will be the Main Theorem of the joint paper Ralph and I are planning to turn it into).
Holding off the champagne until I have a relatively complete proof and had Ralph look over it for goofs, but I'm feeling pretty good.
UPDATE: Damn thing doesn't work.
Holding off the champagne until I have a relatively complete proof and had Ralph look over it for goofs, but I'm feeling pretty good.
UPDATE: Damn thing doesn't work.
In which NRO pisses on my head and wants me to believe it's raining
It is a losing proposition to give a thorough response to every piece that comes out of the conservative internetosphere. Firstly, most of the content on the political internet is written for those who already agree -- it may be hortatory, but rarely closely argued with the skeptic as internal audience, one who wants every factual claim to be supportable or common knowledge.
Maybe that's where the problem begins -- there are factual propositions which are common knowledge on the right, or in certain subgroups of the right, which are simply false. Tax cuts increase revenue. The Paul Ryan budget plan cuts the deficit and/or pays down the debt. Illegal immigrants are taking jobs away from otherwise hard-working Americans. Barack Obama had the farthest-left record in the whole Senate. Hell, for that matter, the Democratic Party is leftist. (Or is it still the Democrat Party? I can't keep the ungrammatical silliness straight. In any case, that claim isn't linked to a patient explanation of why it's bollocks because it's a matter of definitions, and I'm not sure that the Right even agrees among themselves on what constitutes a "leftist".) "Republican" is synonymous with "conservative" (and the exceptions should be drummed out). "Republican" has always been synonymous with "conservative".
Yeah, you see that one a lot actually, sometimes expressed in a skillfully trollerific fashion and sometimes just stated baldly. And it's insulting, really, when a troll or an op-ed writer tried to pull that one out on you, because they're betting that I didn't learn a damn thing in high school history or afterwards. And the sad thing is, it's a pretty good bet.
All of which is a long introduction to why I'm writing about the latest bit of ahistorical gibberish infesting the virtual pages of the National Review. (And it probably ain't even the latest anymore.) I promise, I won't take this much time on every piece of ahistorical gibberish that pack of gibberers gibbers out. But among other reasons to make a special exception (aside from the obvious fact that I've been negligent on my bloggardly duties lately), I wanted to make a point to the Facebook friend who linked the story originally, about why National Review does not get much benefit of the doubt. Why it's almost never the wrong decision to not even bother clicking on a link to their website, and if one finds one has through some mischance, to CTRL-W without delay or compunction.
Maybe that's where the problem begins -- there are factual propositions which are common knowledge on the right, or in certain subgroups of the right, which are simply false. Tax cuts increase revenue. The Paul Ryan budget plan cuts the deficit and/or pays down the debt. Illegal immigrants are taking jobs away from otherwise hard-working Americans. Barack Obama had the farthest-left record in the whole Senate. Hell, for that matter, the Democratic Party is leftist. (Or is it still the Democrat Party? I can't keep the ungrammatical silliness straight. In any case, that claim isn't linked to a patient explanation of why it's bollocks because it's a matter of definitions, and I'm not sure that the Right even agrees among themselves on what constitutes a "leftist".) "Republican" is synonymous with "conservative" (and the exceptions should be drummed out). "Republican" has always been synonymous with "conservative".
Yeah, you see that one a lot actually, sometimes expressed in a skillfully trollerific fashion and sometimes just stated baldly. And it's insulting, really, when a troll or an op-ed writer tried to pull that one out on you, because they're betting that I didn't learn a damn thing in high school history or afterwards. And the sad thing is, it's a pretty good bet.
All of which is a long introduction to why I'm writing about the latest bit of ahistorical gibberish infesting the virtual pages of the National Review. (And it probably ain't even the latest anymore.) I promise, I won't take this much time on every piece of ahistorical gibberish that pack of gibberers gibbers out. But among other reasons to make a special exception (aside from the obvious fact that I've been negligent on my bloggardly duties lately), I wanted to make a point to the Facebook friend who linked the story originally, about why National Review does not get much benefit of the doubt. Why it's almost never the wrong decision to not even bother clicking on a link to their website, and if one finds one has through some mischance, to CTRL-W without delay or compunction.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)