Fireside Blogging

Germany & the EU - Part 3

2012-01-29T04:40:00.000-05:00

Germany is the most powerful state in the European Union. Unification ensured that, though the FRG was one of the most powerful since the beginning of integration. France remains one of the most powerful states in the European Union and was the instigator of the ECSC that began the integration project. The two countries, plus Italy and the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg) were combined in a decentralized coalition still no match for the USSR. Hence the move to a centralized coalition. As described by Rosato, there was a symmetrical balance of power in Europe (aside from the Soviet Union) so there was integration throughout the Cold War, most especially in the 1950s and 1960s. The United States provided some level of military assurance to Europe as a guard against the USSR. Nevertheless, the WEU was formed because of mistrust of US commitment and a desire to not be so beholden to the US, though the security it provided was welcome. Due to its distant geography, across an ocean, there was little to no concern of US seeking hegemony over the European continent. And certainly nowhere near as much fear of the US seeking it as the USSR.

The collapse of the Soviet Union, the obvious sign of the beginning of which was the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, changed the balance of power in Europe. No longer was there an overwhelming threat, though by then the European Community had added the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Greece, Spain, and Portugal for a total of twelve countries. The fall of the Soviet Union was not anticipated by the West, as evidenced by President Mitterand asking President Gorbachev to prevent the re-unification of Germany and the ten-point re-unification plan Chancellor Kohl announced three weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Such a plan would have been already in place had the event been truly expected. It is possible that the accession of Greece and most especially Spain and Portugal wouldn’t have occurred had the states been aware of the dire economic straits in which the Soviet Union found itself in the 1980s and the collapse of the USSR that was in no small part a direct consequence of it. But that can’t be known.

What is known is that despite the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR the countries of Europe went ahead with further integration anyway. In my analysis this is due to a desire on the part of France to bind a Germany bound to come into more power soon that would thus tip the balance of power within the European Community. The UK sought primarily to buckpass, leaving the binding to France and being more willing to take the change of an un-integrated but unified Germany. Italy, the fourth biggest power in the EC, would have sought to bind a more powerful Germany. The Benelux countries, Ireland, Denmark, Greece, Spain, and Portugal were all engaging in wave of the future bandwagoning. Of those seven countries, Spain is the only one with enough clout to even be able to attempt a strategy of binding.

Why binding and bandwagoning instead of balancing? If there had been no European integration prior to the re-unification of Germany balancing and buckpassing would likely have been the favored strategies. But the mechanism for binding existed, and so it was used by the great powers of Europe as a means of better preventing war. The smaller states can’t hope to balance without the support of the great powers, so they bandwagon instead.

Germany’s strategy is the most simple and compatible with Mearsheimer’s theory. Germany desires to gain as much power over its neighbors as it can, and it aims to become regional hegemon. Because of the prior integration during the Cold War, it can do so peacefully through the very institutions that France and Italy seek to use to bind it. Negotiations over the institutions, which one gains what power in what way, have been and will continue to be the new battleground over which control of Europe will be fought. France is able to increase its power over its other neighbors with further integration as well.

The Franco-German axis has been the most important in European politics throughout the integration process. The events from the SEA through German re-unification and the Maastricht Treaty did not change that. On April 6, 1990, the foreign ministers of France and Germany announced from Paris an EMU agreement and declared that the EMU negotiations would move forward without delay. Thirteen days later a timetable for political and monetary union simultaneous conferences was announced by President Mitterand of France and Chancellor Kohl of Germany with plans to have a working treaty in effect by the beginning of 1993. They also announced at that time the goals of a political union agreement, which were: increase the democratic legitimacy of the EC, increase the effectiveness of EC institutions, ensure political, monetary, and economic unity and cohesion, and define and put into place a common foreign and defense policy. (Baun, 1996, p. 46)

In fall of 1989 the chiefs of the various national central banks were charged by their finance ministers with “developing a set of statutes for the future ECB.” (Baun, 1996, p. 61) They were to have the draft statutes ready in time for an EMU conference to take place in late 1990. By December of 1989 the central bankers had created a list endorsing German EMU demands, prime among them the priority of inflation-fighting for the future ECB and the total independence of the future ECB from political or governmental influence and interference. (Baun, 1996, p. 61) The chair of this committee of central bankers of the twelve EC countries was the head of the Bundesbank (central bank of Germany) at the time, Karl-Otto Pöhl. (Baun, 1996, p. 61) Their proposals would be unveiled prior to the conference:

The one area of EMU negotiations in which there was relatively little controversy concerned the structure of a future European central bank. In fact, agreement on this had largely been achieved prior to the beginning of the conference. Basically, it had been decided that the ECB would be modeled on the German Bundesbank. This outcome reflected not only Germany’s direct influence and bargaining leverage but also the predominance in Europe of German monetary norms and values. (Baun, 1996, p. 61)

The ECB structure as proposed in the draft statutes the central banker committee came up with was to have six executive directors appointed by the European Council for eight-year terms and the twelve national central bank governors. More controversially the draft statutes also mandated, as a result, that the national central banks be given total independence like the ECB was to have and the Bundesbank did have. The ECB would also have a mandate to fight inflation, total monetary policy control to be shared with no other institution, and complete independence excepting its annual report to the European Parliament and the European Council. (Baun, 1996, p. 62)

There was a dispute on the ECB’s priority in exchange-rate policy. Germany wanted internal price stability to be privileged over external exchange-rate stability. The economically weaker EC countries desired the reverse. There was also dispute over the ECB control of exchange-rate policy. Germany wanted the ECB to have unquestioned control, but France, Italy, the UK, and other EC countries wanted national governments to have more power via the Council of Economics and Finance Ministers (Ecofin). This dispute on the role of the ECB in exchange-rate policy was settled by a compromise on March 31, 1990 when the finance ministers of the twelve EC countries agreed to give control of the broad parameters of exchange-rate policy to Ecofin but day-to-day handling of it was given to the ECB. (Baun, 1996, p. 63)

The location of the ECB also proved controversial, with several proposals being put forth. Germany wanted it in Frankfurt, the location of the Bundesbank, reasoning that it would assure the international financial community of the soundness of the ECB. Chancellor Kohl also thought that placing it in Germany would help overcome domestic opposition to the abandonment of the Deutsche Mark and the surrendering of monetary sovereignty. France reasoned that it should be in Paris or Strasbourg, fearing undue German influence if it was located in Frankfurt. The UK, somewhat dubiously given their skepticism of EMU, claimed that the ECB should be in London because of London’s history as the center of global banking and finance. Smaller countries sought compromise proposals placing the ECB in Luxembourg or Amsterdam. In the end the issue was put off until the signing of the EMU agreement. (Baun, 1996, p. 63)

In 1990 there were some events of note dealing with monetary policy within the now-unified Germany. On July 1, 1990 the Deutsche Mark became the official currency of both East and West Germany. Within a couple of months the effects of this became known, and the verdict wasn’t good. The Bundesbank attempted to use the experience to argue for a slower EMU implementation, and even a two-speed approach. (Baun, 1996, p. 49) On September 19, 1990 the Bundesbank took an unusual step for it and released a paper with conditions for the EMU: “a future European central bank would have to be closely modeled on the Bundesbank, with complete independence from political authority and a statutory commitment to fighting inflation,” “there should be no firm timetable for realizing full monetary union,” “greater strides toward economic convergence among individual countries were necessary before establishment of a European central bank could be considered,” and “inflation had to be effectively eliminated from all participating countries before the final stage of monetary union could take effect.” (Baun, 1996, p. 50) These four points were all major parts of the negotiations and the first, third, and fourth were put into effect in one way or another at varying levels of strength.

Political footballs

2012-01-29T03:39:00.003-05:00

"But opponents told the Senate Government Operations Committee that they aren't done fighting. Joseph Backholm, director of the Family Policy Institute of Washington, said the issue should be put to a public vote.

'If we as a state are going to take the position that mothers and fathers are interchangeable and replaceable, if we are going to send a message to fathers and potential fathers in this state that it isn't important to be in the lives of their children because dads specifically don't matter, that is something we should all do together,' he said." From a CNN article.

The argument of this guy, in other words, is that there already is a high proportion of straight men who make terrible husbands and fathers that we wouldn't want gay people coming along an showing them up or encouraging the (continuation of the) dereliction of their moral duties. Really? Reminds me of what Dan Savage said regarding gay adoption in a YouTube video I saw. The only reason there are enough kids out there for gay couples to adopt some is because their straight parents couldn't afford, were incapable of taking care of, or simply didn't want the kids. Some are in the system because they're orphans. Far from all though.

Same-sex marriage is making strides across the country. Washington looks like it may pass a bill for it that the governor has pledged to sign. Maryland and Rhode Island are working on legislative means for legalizing same-sex marriage. Maine is looking at another attempt with the referendum. New Jersey is looking at both. The Democratic majorities in the legislature are wanting to pass a bill to legalize it there. Governor Christie and other Republicans are claiming that a referendum is the best way to settle the issue.

I agree with the principle that civil rights shouldn't be put up as a referendum. You don't put civil rights on the ballot. Governor Christie is wrong to want to. However, the reason for it is clear. He doesn't want to get tagged with the veto from the left and he certainly doesn't want to be a Republican governor who signed a gay marriage bill into law. There are still plenty of Republicans, social conservatives, who hate the fact that sodomy was legalized by the Supreme Court of the United States nine years ago. Some think there is no constitutional right to contraception. Even condoms. Santorum, one of the four candidates still in the race for the GOP nomination and the likely conservative alternative to Romney if and when Gingrich implodes, disagrees with the Griswold v. Connecticut decision. If Governor Christie has national aspirations (which he probably does. I hope so, at any rate) then he'll have to contend with the social conservatives in his own party. That's proven difficult for Romney. It'd be just as much so for Governor Christie. And if he had a legislative, and not just rhetorical, record to back up criticisms of him that his social conservative credentials aren't in order, it could end any potential he has for national office.

Gay marriage is being legalized in more states, though, as I already said. There's also the Perry v. Schwarzenegger case (Perry v. Brown) and the case against DOMA which are both in the 3-judge panel of the US federal appeals circuit (ninth and first circuits, respectively) stage of the process. One or both will almost assuredly end up being decided by SCOTUS. The Prop 8 case, in particular, has two outstanding lawyers fighting for marriage equality and a finding of facts from the trial court that was so abysmally done on the part of the pro-Prop 8 people that even the trial judge (a gay man in a long-term relationship, having lived with his boyfriend for about ten years) chastised them for not doing better. I can't say for sure who will vote in which direction. I would be unsurprised, though, if there were a 5-4 decision in favor, with Justice Kennedy being the swing vote (as usual). That's assuming, though, that the Supreme Court even hears the case. If they don't, the DOMA case can't be dismissed for want of a federal question, so maybe the Supreme Court will hear that. Even in a narrow ruling that does nothing more than strike down DOMA for reasons of the tenth amendment and ignores the fourteenth, it'll be a victory for gay rights. Progress, however slow, is clearly being made.

Which brings me around to my point. Why would the Democrats want to pass the bill now? Maybe it's just a desire to see marriage equality. We are talking about a state that already has civil unions which grant the same rights as marriage after all. Maybe they're against the referendum for reasons that they said they were. It's possible. I don't deny it. However, it's also possible that they intend to put Governor Christie in a bind. Signing it or vetoing it could and likely will lead to problems for Governor Christie. It could and probably will hurt his re-elect. And it could and probably will harm his likely-coming attempt to enter the national scene in a more official capacity. Republicans are fighting against what seems to be the tide of time here, and Governor Christie probably knows it. Should civil rights be decided by the ballot? No. But I'm content, as a gay man, to be satisfied for now with civil unions that grant equal rights. That's not enough for me, ultimately. But I'm not convinced marriage equality will come any way but through the courts. Not permanently. Civil unions we can get through the legislatures with much less chance of it being reversed by the people as happened in Maine.

Would that mean fewer members of the LGBT community get to marry in the nearer-term? Yes. But in New Jersey they are only missing out on the name. They have the substance. I'd rather see the efforts and money of the LGBT community, particularly the legal part of it, be directed towards anti-discrimination efforts, especially for the trans people in this country. By all means, we should keep working on Perry v. Schwarzenegger in the courts, and the case to repeal DOMA. I have high hopes most especially for that latter case. But I resent the Democrats using my rights (or rather, in this case, only one right: the name of the union) as a political way to go after a rising Republican star. Just as my rights shouldn't be put on the ballot, nor should they be used as a wedge issue. By either party.

Leader of the party of bad ideas

2012-01-27T14:07:00.000-05:00

Obama outlines incentive plan to reduce college tuition costs - The Washington Post

Increasing Perkins loan funding from one to eight billion dollars is a good idea. No complaints from me there. But decreasing funding from universities where the tuition goes up? I thought it was a terrible idea during the State of the Union, and I still think it is. What good could possibly come of this? The consolidation of universities in the country? Because that's the future I see if President Obama gets his way. Which he probably won't.

Under a plan like that which universities are going to be able to keep their federal funding? The big ones, of course. OSU should have little to no problem with it. They can just jack up the price of tickets a little, charge some extra fees (maybe the graduation application fee, for example) and get by. Maybe fire a few professors. Raise the price for room and board. They have a whole slew of options for keeping tuition from going up. What can, say, Wright State University or Ohio University do? Not as much. Neither has a sports program that brings in money. So that'll get cut a good amount. Professors will be fired. Schools and maybe even colleges will be consolidated and shut down. Room and board prices could go up. The end result of all that? Nothing good.

If the schools simply raise other rates (like room and board or graduation application fee) then the students aren't being saved anything and the problem isn't being taken care of. If they fire professors and/or consolidate/eliminate programs, then the education the students will be getting won't be as good. Which doesn't help the US at all and could set us even further back in the competition over education with the rest of the world. If the smaller schools start slashing their athletics programs? That will hurt the poor most of all. Many poorer students rely on athletic scholarships to be able to attend university. No scholarship will mean less attendance. Is that what we want? I think not.

It could come down to some universities closing. If they lose their federal funding, and the states continue to cut back on their funding for the universities, they won't be able to compete with the bigger schools for students. Their tuition will go up, they won't have sports teams, their dorms and cafeterias will be old, and their libraries not updated. They'll have less programs, and they won't be able to attract the professors necessary to stay in the upper rankings of various programs they currently specialize in. It'll take longer, but such a plan as President Obama has put forth could, and probably would, lead to the closing of some universities. At best this simply means more competition for more spots at less universities. In the medium-term. Long-term, universities like OSU can only accommodate so many students no matter the funding they receive. Plus, if universities close, that will mean less people live within commuting distance of a university. Who will this hurt the most? The poor. Again. They can't afford room and board even with federal help and they oftentimes work while going to school and living at home and helping out with the house and sometimes younger siblings. Or maybe, in the case of would-be college-bound women, they got pregnant and need to stay at home for help with the baby from their parent(s). Either way, not a scenario we would want.

President Obama is right to worry about the increases in tuition. All governors should be worried about it too. As should state and national legislators. Nevertheless, the remedy isn't the one President Obama has laid out. That leads to nowhere good. Sure, some will be helped by his plans. Those who would be hurt most, though, are those most in need of help: the lower middle class and the poor.

Losing the big mo'

2012-01-27T09:42:00.004-05:00

I saw two stories in the news today that will probably mean blog posts for me. One of them is the military budget. I'll hold off comment on that for awhile, probably until the full budget proposal is submitted by President Obama's administration. The other is the debate last night in Jacksonville. The last debate for nearly a month.

Everyone noted that Gingrich lost the debate and Romney won. This is, obviously, bad for Gingrich in the lead-up to Tuesday's primary in Florida. Santorum did well. If Gingrich should implode he'll be well-positioned to be the conservative alternative to Romney. He won't win as said alternative, but he can be it. Congressman Paul had a couple of memorable lines, but no breakout performance. He's doing a better job connecting to the electorate, though, and being less wonk-y.

Romney looked good on offense against Gingrich. Gingrich looked unable to respond effectively. That'll hurt. With no debates until late next month, Gingrich's momentum will have to come nearly entirely from primary/caucus results and issues in the campaign like Romney's taxes. Such an issue can't be counted on again, though. Leaving actual contest results. Hard to know how he he'll do. Polling is looking favorable from Romney at the moment though.

Gingrich made one of the most lame attempts at an attack on Wolf Blitzer and the "mainstream media" I've ever seen or heard or read. He attacked Romney, then Santorum attacked him sideways, and he tried to, on his very next answer, suggest the four Republicans don't attack each other and told Wolf Blitzer his question was nonsense. Blitzer held his ground, and Romney played Gingrich for a sucker.

Romney lied about his blind trust and his investments in Fannie and Freddie. But Gingrich didn't make that clear in the debate so we'll see how fact-checking goes and how much play it gets in the media.

Gingrich's moon colony idea was the subject of considerable discussion, relatively speaking. It's a big, grandiose idea. As he admitted. He was also the only one to support it. It led to one of Romney's would-be bad moments when he said he'd fire anyone who brought such an idea to him had they proposed it when he was a businessman. But, aside from that, Romney's point was accurate. It'd be difficult at best, likely impossible, to get private enterprise to commit to that no matter how many tens of billions are offered in incentives. But, I like the big-ness of the idea. I like the commitment to manned space flight and further exploration. And, contrary to Romney's assertion, Gingrich had had this idea well before he started campaigning on the Space Coast in Florida. That said, a lunar colony is just not practical. As the other three made clear.

The last thing I'll say is that I'm tired of the likes of Gingrich and the others talking about, and agreeing with, this notion that there's a war on Christianity in this country. Persecution is part of that religion. And it's not alone in that. However, the idea that the US is anti-Christian is just ridiculous. Three quarters of the country is Christian. All of the presidents following Lincoln, starting with Andrew Johnson, were nearly certainly Christian. From James Monroe to James Buchanan they were all nearly certainly Christian. George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Abraham Lincoln were all, at minimum, highly doubting. Lincoln was the only one who seems even reasonably possible to suppose was a Christian by a modern definition. And we've never had a president of any other religion. The Founding Fathers did not make a Constitution on the basis of Christian ideals and morality. It's true. But that was because of the notion of separation of church and state. Which the founders certainly supported. Several of them were deists, among which were the first through fourth presidents, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and many others. Hence people being endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.

My point is, though, that this isn't a nation founded on Christianity. But neither is it a nation with historical persecution of Christianity. Persecution of non-Christians, certainly. Not of Christians, though. I don't know from where grown Christian adults get the gall to claim they're persecuted in this country. Atheists are the most mistrusted minority in the country. It's a disqualifying belief for well over half the citizens in this country regarding their votes for would-be public officials. Can Christian leaders say the same thing about their theological beliefs? Obviously not. For a country as wealthy as the US is, Americans have an abnormally high level of religiosity. In the country at large, there is a strong direct correlation between poverty and religiosity. There are two countries that defy that correlation: the US and Israel. Both are abnormally religious given their level of wealth.

If Newt Gingrich and other Republicans and non-political Christian leaders could come home to reality and stop this nonsense talk about persecution of Christians and a war on Christianity we'd all be better off. If nothing else, that truth Christians are so fond of claiming to have with a capital 'T' wouldn't be backed and defended by blatant and patently obvious falsehoods. If nothing else, I am tired of hearing it and I can't imagine I'm the only one who is.

Germany & the EU - Part 2

2012-01-27T02:22:00.001-05:00

I will examine in this paper the theory of neofunctionalism as formulated by Ernst Haas in his book The Uniting of Europe: Political, Social, and Economic Forces 1950-1957. Neofunctionalism rests on three main ideas. The first is that of spill-over. Haas claimed that integrating in one area provides an impetus for further integration in other areas. Haas also spoke of the notion of geographic spill-over in which states that aren’t part of the initial grouping will be more inclined to integrate upon seeing its success. In regard to a spill-over of integration, the European Community, now named the European Union, began simply as a European Coal and Steel Community. Haas’s theory predicts that this will extend from coal and steel to include more and more economic sectors, more and more shared economic policy, and even lead to shared political institutions and policies. Haas also predicts an expansion of the European project from the original six countries (France, Italy, West Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands) to gradually include more countries and expand the union.

Second is the transfer of allegiances to the supranational level. As more and more services are provided by and laws are passed down from the supranational institution(s) people will increasingly ally themselves with those institutions. Spillover means more areas of people’s lives where the laws governing them are handed down by the supranational institutions. The notion of the European citizen fits in to the scheme of things here. Nationalism is still a force under Haas’s theory. But people will gradually begin to think of themselves as European first and German or French or British or Dutch second. And this will happen as a result of European decision-making.

Third is technocratic automaticity which claims that as the supranational institutions operate they will by necessity gain authority and will even take the lead in pushing through further integration. Thus there is also a political spill-over effect as the increase in economics under the authority of the supranational institution(s) leads to further political integration. In Europe the institution that functions as the civil service is the European Commission. Its members and president seek to increase the power of the Commission relative to the other European institutions and relative to national governments. They will favor integration whenever and wherever possible. It should be noted that most of the increased authority that happens under this part of neofunctionalism is realized between treaties. The Commission does try to influence the debate on the treaties, however, and the Single European Act and Maastricht Treaty both were signed, ratified, and put into force during the administration of the influential Jacques Delors.

Also of note is that those involved in the beginning the of European integration project, chief among them Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, relied on neofunctionalist theory in their creation of European institutions that began Europe on this road to integration that began decades ago.

The countering theory I will examine will be one of realism. I will be using a combination of offensive realism as expressed by John Mearsheimer in The Tragedy of Great Power Politics and balance of interests as expressed by Randall Schweller in Deadly Imbalances: Tripolarity and Hitler’s Strategy of World Conquest. The realist theory of international cooperation expressed by Sebastian Rosato in Europe United: Power Politics and the Making of the European Community offers a convincing explanation for the beginning of an integrated Europe. However, it cannot fully account for the Maastricht Treaty (TEU) or especially the Treaty of Lisbon, if either or both are viewed as significant for European integration. This is important in the history of a united Europe, and can explain why the mechanisms with which the states of Europe, especially Germany, now operate even exist.

One of the underlying assumptions of Mearsheimer’s theory is that all states are power-maximizers. That is, all states seek to gain as much power as they can, when they can, within reason given their capabilities and capacity. In language Schweller would use, all states are revisionist powers. Schweller, however, wrote a theory he called the balance of interests theory that claimed that not all states are power-maximizers. Some are security-maximizers. These he calls status-quo powers. In Schweller’s theory there are both, in Mearsheimer’s only the one. I concur with Mearsheimer on this point that all states are power-maximizers and furthermore that they seek regional hegemony but no more due to the stopping power of water.

However, that still leaves the behavior of states in question. Mearsheimer wrote that states primarily either buckpass or balance against other powers. He admitted that some states do in fact bandwagon, but this is a tricky and potentially even dangerous action and so is done relatively rarely and never by the great powers in the system. In the theory I will use for this paper there are more behaviors possible that those three, or two.

Mearsheimer acknowledged that in a state’s quest for increasing their relative power states sometimes have to primarily worry about thwarting the rise of their rivals more than increasing their own power. This could be for several reasons, but they all come down to the power doing the thwarting being unable to increase their relative power as compared to the rising power. This could be because of demographics, or fiscal problems, or economic stagnation or recession. The reason why is irrelevant. What matters is that the state is incapable of increasing their relative power through their own actions. Which leaves thwarting their rival. Therefore, states will act in a manner not too dissimilar from the way that a security-maximizing, or status-quo, power would act. The distinction is perhaps subtle, and may seem trivial, but Schweller provides a good explanation of revisionst powers:

Preventing relative losses in power and prestige is sound advice for satisfied states that seek, above all, to keep what they have. But staying in place is not the primary goal of revisionist states. They want to increase their values and to improve their position in the system. These goals cannot be achieved simply by ensuring that everyone else does not gain relative to them. They must gain relative to others. (Schweller, 1998, p. 21)

States that are revisionist power but seek primarily to thwart their rivals rise are still seeking to increase their own power. There are three behaviors that Schweller discusses as the possible response of states to the rise of a revisionist power that only status-quo powers would engage in. They are distancing, binding, and engagement. However, I argue that all three of these can be used by revisionist powers.

If a grouping of states can’t effectively balance against a threat, then those who are less threatened may distance themselves from those who are more threatened. This could buy them valuable time that would allow them to prepare for their own defense. It also could reduce the resources of the threat and make them less of one, at least for a time. Additionally, it saves the resources of the distancing power for its own power-grab against a smaller state.

Engagement is an easy way to direct the energies of a potential threat elsewhere. Most importantly, engagement can be used to buy time, which may be crucial for building up a war-time economy to allow a country to defend itself against a threat. State may be power-maximizers, but they aren’t always at full military readiness for attack. That is counterproductive as it would drain resources from their economy, thus increasing their current capabilities at the cost of perhaps greater latent capabilities. And any country that is threatened by another and seriously faces danger wouldn’t be too likely to win the arms race that’d be the constant state of affairs in the world if state’s were constantly prepared for full-scale war against their most dangerous rivals.

Binding is a useful strategy because it not only slows the increase of power for the rising state but it also usually gives the state using the strategy of binding some level of authority over the rising state. International institutions are, naturally, set up to be as advantageous as realistically possible for the most powerful of the founding member states. The introduction of a new great power into an institution won’t change that fact.

All three of those strategies, which Mearsheimer doesn’t even consider, can, if used properly and carefully, be used to increase the power of the state in question. They can be dangerous, though. If used incorrectly they could result in only making the rising power’s hegemony-seeking that much easier. But so can buckpassing, if the calculations are off or something happens in the war that is unexpected and surprising. As Mearsheimer pointed out, war is an inherently unsure and to some degree unpredictable occurrence. The outcomes aren’t always a function of who had the stronger armed forces at the beginning of the fight.

Now there are variants within two of the strategies Mearsheimer accepts as legitimate. Unification and integration are forms of balancing, and are detailed in Rosato’s theory. Essentially, if states are faced with a superior competitor they buckpass or balance with decentralized coalitions but if they face an overwhelming competitor they bandwagon or balance with centralized coalitions, given their capacity to coalesce before the competitor can prevent it.

Bandwagoning has several variants. Schweller lists one as being a response to a threat: avoid being attacked. The other three are responses to opportunities. I would contend that avoidance of being under attack is certainly a motivation for bandwagoning, but never is it the only one. Bandwagoning for the spoils of victory, be they from the actual war itself or from the state(s) they joined in the aftermath, is always a goal. There is also holding the balance bandwagoning, in which a state holds off on involvement in the conflict until it’s most advantageous for its involvement, often as a result of incentives squeezed out of the opposing powers already in conflict. Finally there is wave of the future bandwagoning, in which states will bandwagon because they believe that the side they’re joining represents the future and they can seek to profit by it. Mearsheimer wrote briefly on the premium states put on innovation. This is one manifestation of that. If a state believes that by, say, becoming communist, it can increase its own wealth and importance in the system that’ll make them more likely to do so.

Balancing is the strategy least likely to turn on the state using it. However, it is not the most effective for assuring that the rising power won’t start a war in the first place. And war devastates the countries in which is takes place. Balancing is meant to ensure eventual victory against a threat, and hopefully deter the attack in the first place. But since all states are revisionist no great power in a system will join a coalition that does more than the minimum at ensuring equal distribution of power between coalition on the one hand and the threatening power on the other. Once the minimum winning coalition has been achieved, states are likely to buckpass as they can. Such is the nature of revisionist alliances as dictated by Schweller. War being unpredictable, and the actors being aware of this, a rising power can attempt to wage war against a coalition that has only slightly more power than it. Especially since such a coalition will be decentralized as Rosato predicted. Therefore, balancing is not a reliably effective deterrent.

Binding is the strategy that offers the best deterrent. The purpose of binding is to gain some measure of control, however small, over the rising power. It also brings the rising power into the system such that it is to said power’s disadvantage to wreck the system. The danger is that a rising state may use the very system the others sought to bind it with to dominate whatever policy areas the system is involved in, be they military, trade, social policy, monetary policy, or anything else.

Germany & the EU - Part 1

2012-01-25T14:52:00.001-05:00

Why is Germany in favor of European integration? In April 1951 the Treaty of Paris was signed, establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (ESCS). The Western European Union (WEU) was formed in March 1948 and expanded and completed in October 1954 by the Treaty of Brussels. The former began the process of economic integration; the latter attempted to do the same for military integration. The Treaties of Rome signed in March 1957 established the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom).

The ground for the Treaty on European Union (TEU) was prepared by the Single European Act (SEA) signed in February 1986. The TEU mandated eventual participation in the euro by member states along with setting up criteria before it could be adopted. The TEU also set up the three pillars of the European Union [European Communities, Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), and Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) to be renamed by the Treaty of Amsterdam signed in October 1997 Police and Judicial Co-operation in Criminal Matters (PJCC)]. Negotiations for a European Constitution began in December 2001. That Constitution was later rejected by French and Dutch voters in May and June of 2005. It was replaced by the Treaty of Lisbon signed in December 2007. The European Central Bank (ECB), which was established by the TEU, was elevated to the status of an institution in the EU. The European Council likewise had its status elevated. The Treaty of Lisbon also changes in voting system, reduces the ability of member states to use a veto in the Council of Ministers, gives additional powers to the European Parliament, creates a EU representative in foreign affairs, provides for a future potential for a unified military, abolishes the WEU whose mutual defense clause was included after a fashion in the Lisbon Treaty, gives the EU legal personality, ended the pillar system, explicitly defined the competencies of the EU in specific policy areas, and makes the Charter of the Fundamental Rights of the European Union legally binding.

The TEU, or Maastricht Treaty as it was then referred to, is inseparable as an issue from the events of 1989-1991. The re-unification of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), West Germany, with the German Democratic Republic (GDR), East Germany, and the collapse of the Soviet Union loomed large over the negotiations leading up to the signing of the Maastricht Treaty. “The main impetus for agreement was the widely shared belief that, if the Community did not act now to forge an agreement that would permanently integrate Germany, it would be missing a historic opportunity that might never come again.” (Baun, 1996, p. 73-74)

German re-unification would change the balance of the European Community. Germany would have 80 million citizens once the FRG and GDR which would give it a population 40% larger than that of France. (Baun, 1996, p. 36) The labor force of Germany, at 32 million, would be larger than those of France and Italy combined. (Baun, 1996, p. 36; Welfens, 1993, p. 161-162) The economy of Germany would be nearly as large as those of France and the United Kingdom combined, generating 30% of the Gross National Product (GNP) of the European Community. (Baun, 1996, p. 36)

This economic juggernaut, though, wasn’t without its potential problems. The re-unification of the FRG and GDR would place great strain on the much wealthier western portion of the country in the attempt to bring the eastern portion up to an equal level of economic advancement:

German unification has turned out to be a very costly, difficult, and complex process during which nominal and real interest rates have increased, public deficits have sharply increased, conflicts over income distribution have intensified, and traditional policy stances of the Federal Republic of Germany have been questioned. (Welfens, 1993, p. 159)

In 1990 West Germany saw an influx of 977,000 immigrants, followed by 900,000 the year after. East Germany lost 2.5 million of its 10 million jobs in 1989, and the labor force fell by 300,000 in 1991. (Welfens, 1993, p. 161) This was foreseeable, though perhaps not to such a degree as actually happened.

All was not dark on the horizon, however. According to the 1988 European Commission Cecchini Report, the medium-term effects of the completion of the single market were a 4.5% increase in GDP, a 6.1% reduction in consumer prices, and an increase in the labor force of 1.8 million if the national governments of the EC kept their laws as they were. If, on the other hand, the national governments altered their policies so as to best take advantage of the completion of the single market, then the GDP increase could be as high as 7% and up to 5 million more jobs could be created. (Smith & Wanke, 1993, p. 355) “West Germany benefited greatly from rising intra-EC trade, rising German exports, and gains from trade and foreign investment in the form of rising real income.” (Welfens, 1993, p. 159) Those benefits could be expected to continue to accrue to a unified Germany, even with an economically bumpy re-unification. And, in the long run, Germany will be in a strong position:

In the short term … unification will lead to some reduction in overall EC growth, as well as shifts in the relative gains away from Germany. However, over the longer term, the productivity, technology, research and development, and financial and human capital that make Germany the dominant economic power in Europe will most likely be, in large measure, retained. (Smith & Wanke, 1993, p. 367)

It was this long-term power that EC countries were already reacting to once the Berlin Wall fell. A mere three weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall German Chancellor Helmut Kohl put forth a 10-point plan for German re-unification within European integration. This plan scared the other EC governments, who weren’t expecting this, and many complained to United States President George H. W. Bush. They demanded that Bonn commit to a European Monetary Union (EMU) timetable, something that was to become the subject of negotiations. (Baun, 1996, p. 39) The government of the United Kingdom, led by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was the most openly hostile to German re-unification. But the British weren’t the only ones hostile. The French, under the leadership of President François Mitterand, considered a UK-France alliance in response to German re-unification. They opted instead for enhanced European integration with united Germany in the thick of it. (Baun, 1996, p. 36)

President Mitterand did attempt to slow re-unification though. He personally appealed to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to prevent or at least delay it. In December 1989 he specifically warned Germany against forcing the pace of integration and throughout the lead-up he expressed and emphasized his concern over the pace. President Mitterand also made clear his conviction that the border between the GDR and Poland was inviolable. (Baun, 1996, p. 41) For Germany’s part, Chancellor Kohl thought that France was using the Poland-GDR border as an excuse to slow down unification. And he viewed as most unwelcome the reception of the candidate for chancellor of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in East Germany by President Mitterand in Paris in early March 1990. The SPD favored slower unification than did the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Chancellor Kohl’s party. He thought of it as interference in internal electoral affairs. Nevertheless, the CDU handily won the election on March 18, an event widely viewed as approval for fast unification. France responded by dropping its delaying tactics and instead focusing its energies on integrating united Germany into European instiutions. (Baun, 1996, p. 44)

Germany & the EU - References

2012-01-25T14:51:00.000-05:00

Andrews, D. M. (1993). The global origins of the Maastricht Treaty on EMU: Closing the window of opportunity. In A. W. Cafruny & G. G. Rosenthal (Eds.), The state of the European Community: The Maastricht debates and beyond (pp. 107-123). Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.

Baring, A. (1994). Germany, what now? In A Baring (Ed.), Germany’s new position in Europe: Problems and perspectives (pp. 1-20). Oxford, UK: Berg Publishers.

Baun, M. J. (1996). An imperfect union: The Maastricht Treaty and the new politics of European integration. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, Inc.

The Economist (2008, November 19). Nice project, shame about the voters: One vote after another disturbs the European agenda. Retrieved from http://www.economist.com/node/12494470.

The Economist (2009, June 4a). Europe’s democracy deficit: Who are the most enthusiastic voters in Europe? Retrieved from http://www.economist.com/node/13768993.

The Economist (2009, June 11b). Swing low, swing right: A low turnout a shift to the centre-right and seats for the far right and a few loonies. We report from across Europe , starting with an overview. Retrieved from http://www.economist.com/node/13832286.

The Economist (2009, June 11c). The endless election round: Why do members of the European Parliament never learn from experience? Retrieved from http://www.economist.com/node/13825164.

EurActiv.com (2007, March 25) Constitutional treaty: The ‘reflection period’. Retrieved from http://www.euractiv.com/en/future-eu/constitutional-treaty-reflection-period-archived/article-155739.

Gillesen, G. (1994). Germany’s position in the centre of Europe: The significance of Germany’s position and misunderstandings about German interests. In A. Baring (Ed.), Germany’s new position in Europe: Problems and perspectives (pp. 21-33). Oxford, UK: Berg Publishers.

Laffan, B. (1993). The Treaty of Maastricht: Political authority and legitimacy. In A. W. Cafruny & G. G. Rosenthal (Eds.), The state of the European Community: The Maastricht debates and beyond (pp. 35-51). Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.

Schöllgen, G. (1994). National interest and international responsibility: Germany’s role in world affairs. In A. Baring (Ed.), Germany’s new position in Europe: Problems and perspectives (pp. 35-49). Oxford, UK: Berg Publishers.

Schwarz, H. (1994). Germany’s national interests. In A. Baring (Ed.), Germany’s new position in Europe: Problems and perspectives (pp. 107-130). Oxford, UK: Berg Publishers.

Schweiger, C. (2007). Britain, Germany, and the future of the European Union. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Schweller, R. L. (1998). Deadly imbalances: Tripolarity and Hitler’s strategy of world conquest. New York City, NY: Columbia University Press.

Smith, D. L., & Wanke, J. (1993). 1992: Who wins? Who loses? In A. W. Cafruny & G. G. Rosenthal (Eds.), The state of the European Community: The Maastricht debates and beyond (pp.353-372). Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.

Welfens, P. J. J. (1993). The new Germany in the EC. In A. W. Cafruny & G.G. Rosenthal (Eds.), The state of the European Community: The Maastricht debates and beyond (pp. 159-176). Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.

Upcoming posts

2012-01-25T14:40:00.003-05:00

Now that Croatia has voted in favor of joining the EU, albeit with a voting turnout that could have been higher, the question will go to the 27 current states within the EU. Will they allow Croatia to join them? It seems appropriate, therefore, to begin the process of posting my paper on the German view of European integration. It will most likely take 5-6, maybe 7, posts to do so.

The citations will be in the paper. The works cited pages will be the first post. So there will be two today. Then probably one every day or two until it's all up.

In the meantime, it's possible I will interrupt the series for another post. I thought about posting after Gingrich's blowout in South Carolina. But I didn't really have anything to add. So I'll wait and see if Florida offers anything. Last night's State of the Union and the GOP Response would also be potential topics, if I felt that either President Obama or Governor Daniels said something truly new and/or worth remarking on. Mostly, though, it was a rehash of what we've heard for the past year. I'll just throw out two numbers regarding the president's campaign against a do-nothing Congress. In 2011 Congress passed, and the president signed into law, 81 bills. In 2007, the last time there was divided government in a non-election year, 175 bills were passed by the Democratic Congress and signed by the Republican president. We'll see how Congress does this year, but those numbers indicate more-than-usual difficulties getting Congress to work with each other and with the president.

For now, that's all.

Hiding in plain sight

2012-01-21T17:45:00.001-05:00

Q&A: Europe's new treaty to tighten budget rules | Reuters

I know this is being treated as a minor treaty, and one that will do little to help the confidence of investors. However, I can't help but to see this as a major step. The media keeps writing and talking about how the treaty itself, if passed, will do little to help with confidence but that, should there be a snag or two in the negotiations, it could actually weaken confidence. I just don't see that. Maybe I'm missing something obvious. After all, this isn't just the media or just the politicians talking this way. Everyone is. The media, the politicians, the businesspeople, investors, the pundits and columnists, everyone has been talking for months, over a year, about the possibility of a collapse of the eurozone. You see people making predictions that the euro has only a 50% chance, or whatever, to last through the year. The contagion will spread, they won't be able to handle it, and Europe will be dragged into recession. This will, in turn, drag the US back with it. Given China's upcoming (hopefully soft) landing, that could potentially mean another worldwide recession. Sounds awful, right?

I don't mean to suggest that this can't happen. But I didn't find it likely a year ago, and I don't find it likely today. First of all, there is no mechanism for a state to withdraw from the euro or for the euro countries to boot one of their members out of the club. Second, it wouldn't be to the advantage of any of the 17 eurozone countries to do that. The smaller countries are relying on the EU and euro institutions to help them out. And the larger countries (most notably Germany and France) aren't interested in surrendering their influence over the other countries. It's true that the bailouts aren't popular in Germany. And so? I don't care how democratic (or not, in the case of most EU institutions) the country's governance is, sometimes the government goes against the will of the people. It's supposed to. Representative democracy, as opposed to the direct kind, is in part an acknowledgement of the fact that the issues are too many and too complex to allow people to make informed decisions on all of the issues in their spare time. Germany has shown no sign that it's willing to just let the troubled states of the EU go bankrupt. It has demanded strings be attached to the help it provides. That's not unusual, though. The IMF has historically done the same thing. Why do people who give to charities not give to homeless people on the streets? Because they want to ensure to the best of their abilities that the money they're giving away charitably is used for purposes they approve of and not, say, alcohol and drugs. Same thing, but on a personal level. Germany attaching strings, therefore, should be expected and is in no way an indicator that Germany is prepared to let states in the eurozone fail.

I wrote a paper for a class last year on the question: Why Is Germany in Favor of European Integration? I'm tempted to post it in a few parts on this blog. I've done that with a health care paper I had to write in the past. Saves me some typing.

Anyway, it would seem to me that the EU has continued to, and will continue to, integrate. The UK is wary of being part of it, understandably. But the Franco-German axis is pushing it. At the moment, the EU would still be most accurately seen as an international organization, albeit an elaborate one. There are two key powers for a state. One is the military/security situation. The other is taxes. France has been pushing the former for decades. Germany's been pushing the latter for years. Those are the two most powerful and influential states in the EU, and they've had a tendency to operate in tandem as part of a Franco-German axis. Or, at least, attempt to do so. For pro-EU types, that's encouraging.

The treaty being worked out right now would give the ECJ power to levy a fine on a state that didn't meet the budget deficit requirements. The deficit can't be any larger than 0.5% of the GDP, and the fine can be up to 0.1% of the state's GDP. Such definitive control over a clearly domestic, intrastate process and the means for punishing bad behavior are both big steps in the direction of federal power. This is significant, on a level beyond investors' confidence. That's a transient thing. As the now-tepid recovery picks up in the US, if China does in fact achieve the soft landing they appear to be shooting for, investors will gain confidence. The mood of the markets is a response to more than just what's going on in the conference rooms of Brussels. The world-at-large improving, as it's doing, will pick up their confidence levels in Europe too. Later, and less, but nevertheless. As time passes and the stories in the media aren't constantly about this worrying statistic or that one, but rather economic news gets back to a more normal state, there will be an upward spiral. The reverse of what happens as recession approaches (when it doesn't do so suddenly).

This recession will take time to fully recover from. The economy itself in advanced countries is changing from an industrial one to the next step, whatever it may be called. Post-industrial, at the moment (rather unimaginatively). In the US, a lot of people's money was in their houses, and the housing market crashed. That will take time for the consumers to rebound from, and the US is a consumer-oriented economy. Third, the financial system itself is what screwed up. That's how businesses get anything done in the modern economy. It is unreasonable to expect a speedy recovery given that. And, lo and behold, we're not getting one. Unemployment will take awhile to recover due to items one and three, and that's exactly what the CBO has consistently projected.ll

It's interesting to report on every bad number that comes out. And in the age of 24-hour news media, and social media, every number that isn't completely positive can be spun ad focused on and made to look bad. In an era where most media is owned by for-profit big businesses it shouldn't be surprising that that's what they report on. Even nonprofits have to take that into consideration because if they aren't watched because they don't give enough play to stories like that then they could go under just as easily as a for-profit company can. Combine that with the interest politicians have in declaring that we're on the brink of disaster but it can be avoided if only we vote for them and their parties and you have a recipe for fear-mongering. Which is exactly what we have. News isn't limited anymore by trying to fit everything into a half-hour TV program, or an hour-long radio program, or X column inches. The media and the politicians have incentive for fear-mongering, and they have the space and time for it.

I mention all that because that affects how investors and the markets writ large react. Which means their confidence is shaky and we all get to read endless stories about how the EU, and the euro specifically, is on the brink of collapse. That's all perception, though, and it doesn't change the underlying reality. The economy is improving. The numbers show that. Jobs are being created at faster rates, even though there are blips. Consumers are spending more, people are loaning more, and countries are, slowly, getting their fiscal houses in order. That's all in plain sight. Commentators and the players in the game itself are just missing the forest for the trees. It's obvious the eurozone will continue on. It's obvious the economies in the Western world are recovering, even if slowly and unevenly. It's obvious politicians understand the magnitude of the problems facing their states. The EU will continue to exist, as will the euro. It will still expand. Croatia is likely to be added soon (their referendum tomorrow is expected to approve their accession to the EU). There will be further integration. Especially as China continues to rise, Russia continues it's resurgence, the Eurasian Union forms (if it's as successful as Putin is hoping it is. If it's a failure, the Europeans won't care about it), and the US turns inward slash turns its focus to Asia Pacific rather than Europe. The US has sixty-some military bases in Germany, I believe. It's also my understanding that 15-20 of them are scheduled to close within 5 years. And that's before the most recent strategic review and the upcoming military budget. The EU isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

EDIT: For some reason, I accidentally typed "access" when I meant "axis". Fixed that.

One week 'till the general begins?

2012-01-16T03:57:00.000-05:00

Sources: Huntsman to drop out of 2012 race tomorrow, endorse Romney - POLITICO.com

I didn't blog the day after the New Hampshire primary about the results because there was little to say. It was too early to see the effects on South Carolina. Romney emerged strong, the Gingrich and Santorum muddied the waters for people looking for the far right alternative to Romney. Congressman Paul came in second, which has little meaning in terms of who's going to get the nomination. Huntsman came in third, which is what led to the story I begin this post with. And Governor Perry came in last.

A few things can be seen now, though. Number one, Romney is in good position to take South Carolina and end the nomination fight. There are two debates over the coming week, but I doubt anything substantial will happen in either one. It's possible, of course. It can't be counted on though. Congressman Paul is having trouble making headway there. That'll likely be because of the influence of military voters, evangelicals, and the establishment in South Carolina. All three are important and entrenched there. And he isn't the favorite of any of the three groups. The Tea Party, for sure, has power and influence there as well (their governor is a tea party type). However, it also shows the power of the GOP establishment there that Governor Haley would endorse Romney rather than any of the more preferred tea party types in the race (there probably is also an element of self-interest there, as Romney is almost guaranteed the nomination and Governor Haley is almost equally certainly on his VP shortlist).

The evangelical conference in Texas that voted for Santorum will probably have some influence. The indications are, though, that that influence will be relatively small. Governor Perry performed extremely poorly in New Hampshire and Iowa both. South Carolina is definitely his last stand. And he'll probably have to bow out afterward. Gingrich and Santorum will likely split the vote of the non-Ron Paul tea partiers and the evangelicals and perhaps even some of the military voters as well. If they have a result that looked like New Hampshire, they could both attempt to stay in. Which will dry up their funding pretty fast and cause them to keep splitting the far right vote. One of them needs to drop out before Saturday, ideally. The day after, at latest. What with the delegate allocation this cycle being what it is, there could be a theoretical capability yet still for someone other than Romney if the far right consolidated behind the one or the other. Especially because New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida all had their delegate counts halved (to 12, 25, and 50, respectively). The nominee will have to get over 1,100 delegates. That leaves Romney technically a long ways off. It won't happen, Romney will win if he wins South Carolina, but it's their best shot.

The results will tell all, of course. The most recent polling I've seen has Romney in the lead, followed by Gingrich, followed by Congressman Paul and Santorum, followed by Rick Perry, and then Huntsman in last. Hunstman's support will probably either not show or go overwhelmingly to Romney. If Santorum can pull off a second in South Carolina, and that's followed by Gingrich and Governor Perry dropping out, that'll be a big help to him. But can he get the organization and money together and pull off a national campaign? Without as much time in each state as he had in Iowa, it's hard to see how. Can Gingrich? Yes. But he has lots of baggage and is staggeringly vulnerable to negative ads, as Iowa made clear.

After playing around with a delegate calculator in a highly unofficial and unscientific way, I tried to come up with a plausible path to the nomination for Gingrich or Santorum or Governor Perry. The only one I see is through a brokered convention caused by the proportional allocation of delegates rules in so many states (and which states have proportional versus winner-take-all allocation) in conjunction with the continuing presence of Congressman Ron Paul, siphoning off delegates from all parties in question and keeping anyone from that 50%+1. Oh, and only one of the three can continue on past South Carolina. If more than one does, it's hard to see how even a brokered convention could end up in their favor. Romney maybe wouldn't get 50%+1, but he'd have a hell of a lot more than any of his competitors. In fact, if more than one of the three stays in the race, Congressman Paul could wind up in second in number of delegates going into the convention. He obviously won't be chosen. It would be bad for the party, bad for Romney who would come out of it the nominee, and great for President Obama.

My guess is that I won't feel any sort of pull to blogging about the nomination fight again after this unless something unexpected happens in South Carolina, so I'll likely write any future post on the 2012 US presidential election under the assumption that the general election has begun between President Obama and Romney. I lean towards President Obama at this point, but Romney is a possibility (albeit a relatively distant one) for me to vote for. I have been reading quite a bit on him, especially those who like him better than I, and their writings have convinced me to moderate my stance on him (among the writers to whom I refer are Michael Gerson and The Economist). I still think President Obama will have a decent enough chance of beating him in November. But the right VP choice, and world/national events (mostly out of the president's control) could give Romney the White House. And maybe give Republicans the Senate and allow them to keep the House. It'd be interesting, if nothing else, to see how the relatively far right House would work with the relatively moderate Senate and the decidedly non-ideological Romney and what they'd do and accomplish (some of that would depend, I suspect, on the presence or absence of a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate). Also, if President Obama is in fact given the power he's asking Congress for regarding the streamlining of the executive branch, it'd be interesting to see how a President Romney would use that power with the influence of the tea party being as strong as it is (though not strong enough to unseat him as the prohibitive favorite for the nomination, obviously). President Reagan was elected promising to cut the Department of Education and the Department of Energy. Congress took away the power President Obama is now asking to have back in 1984. It's possible he meant to. But he had three years to do it and didn't. That makes me doubt it. Will Romney? Maybe. Will they actually repeal Obamacare? Perhaps most of it, certainly not all of it. Will his foreign policy be noticeably and significantly different? Problem about as different as President Obama's has been from President Bush's, which is to say not much. Will they balance the budget? I'm not holding my breath. And then we'll see what happens to the tea party in 2014 and 2016. That could be reason enough to hope Romney wins this November. To watch that movement die.

Stupid people or lousy exit polling... or both?

2012-01-11T10:35:00.000-05:00

Primaries - Exit/Entrance Polls - Election Center 2012 - Elections & Politics from CNN.com

Pundits and journalists like to analyze the exit polling data after elections, general or primary, to look for patters and discover, if they can, what segments of the population each candidate gets their support from. It's useful, both for analysts and for the campaigns. One of the striking things about the NH primary exit polling data was that Mitt Romney won nearly every group of people. He won amongst men and women both. He won among most age groupings. He won on all levels of education. He won among all income groupings except for those making under $30K. He won the moderates, somewhat conservatives, and very conservatives. He won all groupings on fiscal tax and spend issues and only lost the "very liberal" section of social issues. Anyone who ranged from "somewhat oppose" to "strongly support" on the Tea Party voted for him. Protestants, Catholics, and born-again evangelicals all voted more for him than any other candidate. The early and late deciders all went to him. As did rural, suburban, and urban voters.

All of that looks like good news for the Romney campaign. Such broad appeal has to be encouraging, and it flies in the face of the narrative that exists about him. But looking at some of the numbers, one has to question either the accuracy of the polling or the intelligence of the voters (how well-informed they were). A few of the numbers that stuck out most in this regard. But some of the ones I question could be explained away. One of them, however, makes no sense no matter how I spin it in my head:

-20% of voters who "oppose" the Tea Party voted for Ron Paul. Further broken out, 24% of those who listed "somewhat oppose" and 18% who listed "strongly oppose" regarding the Tea Party voted for Congressman Ron Paul.

Congressman Ron Paul is the intellectual godfather of the Tea Party. This is well-known. You could argue about how influential he is versus other major figures in the movement, but it is inarguable that he is one of their heroes. The Tea Party's major issues and platforms are versions of what Congressman Paul has been advocating for 3+ decades. And yet, when people were asked about their tea party support/opposition, those are the numbers that show up. How ludicrous. How insane. How embarrassing.

I imagine some of it is the inaccuracy of exit polling data. I use it and think about it myself when trying to figure out what happened in an election or is going to happen, etcetera. But it seems to me that it's less trustworthy than the news media and politicians make it out to be. It's like standardized testing. It's a crappy way of discovering the knowledge and intelligence of the students, but it's the most useful tool we've yet come up with and it's better than nothing. The lion's share of that discrepancy, I suspect, can be attributed to the lack of knowledge on the part of the voters. Maybe some of them don't realize how extreme he is. Maybe they just like his foreign policy (like as not, not fully or even partially understanding the implications of neo-isolationism in this day and age). This is a man, though, who follows an economic ideology that has little-to-no room for a government aside from national defense. Certainly no place for public education. But also public firefighting and police forces. No place for the printing of money, and even a resistance to a gold-backed official currency (that, by the way, is his "compromise" position). Maybe they're just crazy about a guy who seems to support the Founding Fathers' wishes (never mind that it's been over two centuries since the Constitution was written and the Founding Fathers were far from a monolithic group anyway).

It's hard to know. But Congressman Ron Paul is like a prophet to his supporters. He sees darkness on the horizon, unless we reject modern conveniences and compromises (on a constitutional-legal level, not societal, in his case) and go back to the ways of an idyllic (and mostly nonexistent) past. The Tea Party utters much of the same rhetoric. They reject big-government conservatism and big-government liberalism. For them, fiscal issues are the most important, and getting the deficit back under control our first priority. Ending fiat money sounds good and a balanced budget has no downside except for special interests and enemies of liberty.

But one fifth of the people who oppose all that supported Congressman Paul yesterday. Unbelievable.

Covert war

2012-01-11T09:41:00.001-05:00

Iranian nuclear scientist killed in bomb attack http://t.co/0Vh6UlZe via @theatlanticwire -- TheAtlantic (@TheAtlantic)

Another strike for Mossad and the CIA. Another victory. Romney and the rest of the GOP field can say all they want that President Obama isn't taking a tough enough line on Iran, but that's nonsense. We can't, and don't want to, go to war with them to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon (or several). Sanctions, ultimately, don't work. We should keep applying them in a targeted fashion. But apply them too broadly and all we'll accomplish is creating a rally-around-the-flag effect.

So, sanctions won't work to stop it any may not even delay it. An invasion is impractical and no one wants it. Air strikes will be incredibly destabilizing and delay only marginally. A covert war, though, involving cyber war and assassinations etcetera, in conjunction with Mossad could also delay it years while only being a fraction part as destabilizing as air strikes.

If this is us and/or Mossad, and I would be totally unsurprised to discover it is, we're slowing the proliferation of these weapons into countries we don't like and who don't like us and doing it the best way possible (for us). Another foreign policy credit to President Obama.

US military budget

2012-01-08T16:33:00.000-05:00

The Future Military: Your Budget Strategy - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com

I found cutting the military budget in a way I found satisfactory surprisingly easy to get to the $450 billion goal, but surprisingly difficult to do much more. It's certainly an interesting exercise, as this sort of exercise by the NYT always is.

The plurality of the cuts I chose came from a 15% cut in the size of the military and an accompanying 20% cut in the civilian workforce. In the modern day and age, wars won't be won by sheer manpower. Technology will play too big a role in the next great power coalition war. And, should we ever find ourselves in a true tussle with, say, China, we'll no doubt feel forced to reinstate the draft anyway. Actually, I would like to see us reduce the number of career soldiers, if you will, by even more. But in exchange I'd like to see a form of conscription a la Israel introduced. Conscientious objectors could do the Peace Corps instead, and everyone else does, say, three years in the military. It'd cost more, but it'd be worth it. The option I chose on the NYT interactive feature is the next best to that, I figure.

The other two big chunks of the spending I chose through the NYT interactive feature were One: reduce increases in salaries and reduce benefits, Two: reduce the amount of money spent on bases located in the US for things that the communities around the bases can provide (such as schooling).

As much as what I chose to cut I felt what I chose not to even touch was important. I didn't select a single option in the" weapons" or the "nuclear, missile" sections. Technology is important, especially nowadays. The next war will likely have its outcome determined by technological advantage. That wasn't true in WW2 to the full extent it will be in WW3. And I'm convinced there will be a WW3, the only question is when. I see no reason to believe that great power coalition wars came to a halt. We just haven't had one in awhile. There was a century-long gap between the Napoleonic Wars and WW1, so the time between the end of WW2 and now isn't so very special. There will be another, and we must be prepared for it. Technological superiority is the key.

President Obama and his defense department under Secretary Panetta put out a Defense Strategic Guidance that's well worth a read. Unfortunately, it's too vague to make for good analysis material. In that regard, it'll be better as a supplement to their budget they'll put out in the coming weeks. But it lays out what the administration thinks of as the priorities in the coming years and decades for the US as viewed through the lens of out military and national security. I'll reserve judgment on what was written in the guidance until the budget proposal comes out.

Labor and its relation to government and small business

2012-01-08T02:36:00.003-05:00

We need from 1.2 to 1.8 million jobs to be created every year to keep up with the growth in the labor force. The private sector created 1.9 million in 2011. The various levels of government cut 300,000. Unemployment is down to 8.5%. A big chunk of what brought it down to 8.6%, before it fell to 8.5%, was actually not job creation being that good but rather people giving up looking for work, thereby falling out of the labor force and bringing down the unemployment numbers.

I bring this up because I watched a substantial part of the Republican debate from several hours ago. And I'm tired of watching Republicans insist time and time again to obvious, incredibly obvious, falsehoods.

One: government can't create jobs. Yes it can. As many as the private sector? No. But cutting government jobs doesn't help unemployment numbers. 300,000 people fired, handed pink slips, in the year 2011 which was the year the Tea Party first had its people in office. That's 2-3 months of the natural growth in the labor force. How does that help the economy? I'm not saying some or maybe even all of that wasn't necessary for reasons of fiscal discipline, but they hurt the economy in doing so. Austerity can and does hurt economic growth. Republicans can't have their cake and eat it too, but they tell themselves (and the rest of us) they can.

Two: small businesses create jobs. No they don't. The overwhelming majority of small business employ one person: the owner. Most of the rest employ only a very small number of people (1-5) aside from the owner. Big businesses create jobs, as do the very very small, tiny percentage of small businesses that become big businesses and the government itself. Politicians on both sides of the aisle tell this lie. The people believe them (it sounds so good and so fitting with our image of ourselves as a people and a country, doesn't it) but the experts on both sides of the aisle, the think tanks on both sides, know it's nonsense.

Ron Paul mentioned that you have to understand the economy itself, and the business cycle, to be able to properly help it. He's right. Even if his ideas are nonsense crackpot theories we can and have proven wrong. Sorry, booms and busts are a natural part of the free market. The government doesn't need to be involved at all for there to be a bubble that will burst. Thank you scientific studies and experiments for that knowledge. But he has a point, and the politicians don't. The people who don't know because the politicians they listen to don't know can't be trusted to ensure that only politicians who know better get elected to public office. This, by the way, and as a last note, is the main reason it's so great for the country and economy the Fed is so independent and insulated from politics.

The key point is... bullshit

2012-01-06T17:40:00.001-05:00

Kathleen Sebelius: Curbing health-care costs : http://wapo.st/wu1fwN

This reads like an attempt on the part of the administration to justify Obamacare should the Supreme Court strike down the individual mandate. There are three points on cost-control.

The 80-20 thing, if anything, incentivizes insurance companies to raise their premiums. The rules about making increases over 10% public, with a reason for it posted online, at best could mean 9% increases annually (far above inflation) and could also just mean no inhibition if they all do it anyway.

The markets may help a bit, but out-of-pocket expenses on health care are really low in this country, around 12%, so people have little-to-no idea of the true worth of various procedures, plans, etcetera.

Both of those,points, ironically, put a heavy level of trust in the free market with no justification for thinking a free market solution will work. Historically it hasn't. That's how Obamacare came about in the first place.

The third point, her main point, is that by emphasizing prevention Obamacare addresses and fixes the underlying cause of health care's spiraling cost. This one is pure bullshit. Prevention saves lives. But the money spent on all the extra tests for people who are perfectly healthy makes the money saved by preventing more illnesses a wash.

The main cost-control mechanism in Obamacare, and the only one we have any reason to believe will be truly effective, is the individual mandate. Unfortunately for the Obama administration, there's a decent chance it could be struck down by SCOTUS as unconstitutional. Which, if the rest of the bill stands but it falls, could well lead to skyrocketing costs. Leaving us, at best, little better off a society with Obamacare than without it. And many of us will be worse off.

Belarus, Russia, US

2012-01-06T17:28:00.001-05:00

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h112-515

Maybe this concern is a barn doors and horses kind of thing in my part. But this sort of pro-democracy intervention in Belarus (and Uzbekistan, for that matter) is exactly what caused them to tilt so strongly to Russia and away from Europe and the US. Belarus will be part of the Eurasian Union. Uzbekistan told us to leave our base there in 2005 thanks to our insistence on their following our style of government. There was a general feeling in that country that the US tried to stir up "trouble" (pro-democracy movements) in former Soviet countries during the time if the color revolutions in Georgia and the Ukraine. Our meddling in their internal affairs was and is not welcome, and we need to understand that. How about we take this as a lesson of the Arab Spring: the peoples of (most) countries will rise up if they truly want a different form of government. Not all of them will want Euro-American style democracy either. But we need to just grit our teeth, and stop being so naive and idealistic about who we make nice with in the world and cone back on down to reality.

Arab Spring: Overrated

2012-01-04T20:57:00.000-05:00

Libyan Leader Warns Militias Could Create Civil War - NYTimes.com

Libya may be the next Arab Spring country to regress from its high water mark as a part of a movement for freedom and democracy (not that that's what the movement was actually for, precisely, but in Western discourse and minds it was). Civil war there would be unsurprising. How many times have we heard that it's a tribal society? I don't know the number, but I know it's relatively high.

This makes the record in Arab Spring as follows: Islamists gain power in Tunisia and likely Egypt. Yemen is supposed to be seeing a transition. Syria is in the midst of major civil unrest and near-civil war. Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Sudan, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Morocco all make relatively minor concessions to their people. And Iraq now looks like it could be headed down a path that leads to renewed civil war there (though that has less to do with the Arab Spring and more to do with the pullout of US troops).

The record of the US is as follows: support for the Egyptian protesters and free and fair elections there which... is leading toward an Islamist victory, support for President Saleh to step down in Yemen which he intends to do, partaking in the NATO operation that aided the rebels against Qaddafi who are now skirmishing with each other in what could be a prelude to the second part of the civil war there, support (more or less) for the suppression of the protests in Saudi Arabia and especially Bahrain, and a pullout of troops from Iraq that allowed sectarian strife to rear its head again within days of our withdrawal.

The records are not positive ones with a few bumps. The Arab Spring and what has happened there in the past year has almost certainly not done the US more good than harm, and quite possibly done more harm than good. I would be remiss if I didn't also include in this listing and discussion the Palestinian protests the Israelis basically ignored when they weren't suppressing them.

The big winners: Islamists (especially the Muslim Brotherhood) and Iran (the weaker and more divided Iraq is, the better for Iran).

The losers: Israel, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, the US (and, it should go without saying, Ben Ali of Tunisia, Qaddafi of Libya, Mubarak of Egypt, Saleh of Yemen). Syria, Yemen, and Iraq have all been weakened as countries by the Arab Spring and have seen some of the inviolability of their sovereignty eroded and third countries (mainly Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the US) work to influence internal events in all three. The US and Israel have seen an increase in Iranian influence in the region partially as a result of the Arab Spring and its consequences and are also seeing the rise of governments less friendly to their interests (it has long been known that democratic governance in the Middle East would lead to such an outcome, and now it's beginning to come true).

I've said the Libya intervention was a mistake. I remain convinced it was, for geo-strategic reasons if no others. But also because the opposition is not what we'd consider savory people who'll help us look out for our interests in the region. We've lost influence there, even with our intervention to help ensure that one of the rebel movements succeeded. If Libya does descend back into civil war, only this time between groups of militias, then the time and money spent was even more of a waste than it was already. And we may not have even saved lives when it's over and the dust clears.

Expectations game

2012-01-04T06:01:00.000-05:00

Analysis: Obama among the winners in Iowa | Reuters

I have to say I'm a little disappointed in Reuters and Gergen (who's quoted in that piece) for this analysis. There's two major problems with it. One: an overemphasis on the anti-Romney vote. It's there. But calling it that suggests the problem is Mitt Romney personally (which is, to some degree, true). However, that ignores the fact that the attempts to find a far right conservative to centre-right Romney is part of a normal primary campaign process. Nearly every political party in Western democracies have a conflict (or two) between moderate and extreme factions (even Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland does, and it's the extremist party in a system where the defining line between the four parties is nationalism vs. unionism, with one moderate and one extremist party on each side of that line). To what degree is the oft-cited "anti-Romney" vote simply an anti-moderate vote? I don't know, and I'm not sure it can be known or, even if it can be known, that the appropriate data has been collected to let it be known. But calling it all anti-Romney is misleading and inaccurate.

Two: falling victim to the expectations game. Romney wasn't expected to win in Iowa. The article takes care to mention Santorum's scant organization and money, but fails to mention the relatively little amount of time and money Romney spent there. He spent, like, 10 or so days in the state in the lead-up to the caucus. Retail politics may not be king anymore, even in Iowa, but it's not dead either. Romney made the tactical error of raising expectations in the two to three days leading up to the caucus, yes. And the other candidates in the field were perfectly willing to encourage that. The fact remains, though, that Romney beat everyone else in a state known to care more about social conservatism. It's not a coincidence that Huckabee won there four years ago.

If in fact President Obama's advisers (and maybe him) are celebrating the results, then more fools they. These results make it more likely Romney will wrap up the nomination quickly. If Santorum can last until South Carolina as a top tier candidate, he and Gingrich and Congressman Paul may well split the far right vote three ways: Tea Party types gravitating toward Congressman Paul, social conservatives toward Santorum, and Gingrich grabbing some of each with perhaps a little bit of stealing from Romney as well. That kind of splitting could bode well for Gingrich, if he can successfully get his foot in the door of each of those three constituencies. If he can't, then Romney could take South Carolina and that'd be the ball game. A candidate taking the first three states, including two that have the group most wary of him (social conservatives) as a significant factor? Florida will still get media attention and people won't be quite ready to declare the nomination fight over until it happens, even if Romney takes all three of the first states. The latest statewide polling in Florida had Romney and Gingrich tied with a huge number of undecideds (more than picked either of them, in fact). They won't be undecided anymore. And there in Florida, a swing state by any definition, it seems unlikely that the balance of the voters will go to Gingrich without a win from him in South Carolina.

This nomination fight may well be on its way to a relatively easy win for Romney. His standing could be clear by the first of February, and that'll leave him the likes of Congressman Paul and (maybe, we'll see how he does) Santorum to use as foils and pivot to the middle. Meanwhile, President Obama would have to engage a much earlier than they would in a bruising nomination fight, thus beginning the depletion of the war chest earlier than they were planning on.

Tonight could have been better news for Romney (of course, any politician's night would be better with a larger margin of victory). But it was plenty good enough to be getting along with.

Romney victorious

2012-01-04T02:26:00.004-05:00

Romney wins the state of Iowa and the first caucus. Santorum comes in second, Congressman Paul in third, followed by Gingrich then Governor Perry then Congresswoman Bachmann and then Huntsman at the bottom.

The most obvious thing to say is that Congresswoman Bachmann's done for. She can't win. She may not yet drop out, but she's not getting herself anything by staying in. Governor Perry and Gingrich can try to hang in until South Carolina and put in a good showing there. I find it likely that, if they both decide to try to do that, only one will make it past that. Certainly I find it unlikely that both will hang on into February. And maybe neither will. Huntsman is betting it all on New Hampshire, which we already knew. The polling had shown him in a statistical tie for third with Gingrich, behind Congressman Paul and Romney, in that state in the past week. And not a close third. A third with around 10% at that, with Romney at around 40%. If that's his showing, he'll only be able to keep going because of his personal wealth.

Congressman Ron Paul was never going to be able to win anyway. A strong third was a good showing for him, and he may continue to put in strong showings at states across the country for the next couple-few months. Rick Santorum's close second place vaults him into the top. Can he stay there will be the question. The other candidates, with the exception of Romney, have all surged to the top of the polls at points and have all, also, fallen from that perch. Santorum hasn't had to face the scrutiny and attacks that come hand-in-hand with top tier status yet. It's possible that he will not be as easy to dislodge as the others now that actual votes are in and he very nearly tied Romney for Iowa. The map of counties and who they voted for looks similar in many ways to the map from four years ago. Santorum has taken the place of Huckabee, and Congressman Paul took a few counties Huckabee had won four years ago and a few that Romney had won.

The conventional wisdom is that Santorum is the latest in a string of anti-Romney candidates. Romney won 25% of the vote, proving yet again unable to break the ceiling and lending credibility to that theory. But I think that oversimplifies things. Gingrich and Governor Perry, who both peaked and fell, could have been true viable alternatives to Romney if they had fared better. Both are multidimensional politicians who could be seen as able to have the various factions of the party rally around. Both of them were anti-Romney dreams, I'd argue. Congresswoman Bachmann and Cain were both tea party candidates. They were better examples of the far right looking for an alternative to the center-right candidate. Not out of some visceral hatred for Romney. But the standard far right versus center right fare that one sees, and is supposed to see, in a primary process. On the Democratic side you see far left versus center left politics play out too. That's the nature of a two-party system, a lot of the infighting occurs between the moderates and the extremists.

However, in a two party system, another major part of the battle that occurs intra-party is between the various factions that the party brings together under one banner. And that's where Santorum and Paul come in. Romney is a good representation of where the business Republicans are, the economic conservatives. And even where that faction is temperamentally. Pragmatic, willing to compromise, centrist (viewing Romney's flip-flopping in a more positive light than many, including myself, are inclined to. But even viewing it in a negative light, the reason his flip-flopping seems so egregious to me is because it feels like a businessman who doesn't care about his convictions on the issue but is slick enough to follow the money and support, one who hedges his bets). Rick Santorum, now, represents social conservatives. Even their tendency this last decade to be more populist. He's more uncompromising than Romney, but not (quite) as uncompromising as Congressman Paul. Congressman Ron Paul, on the other hand, is a good representative of where fiscal conservatives are (a term that can be easily, and mostly accurately, conflated with the Tea Party). He is uncompromising, having been praised for his "consistency" in all the media outlets and by voters and activists across the Republican spectrum.

Those three, then, seem likely to remain in the top tier unless he gets destroyed in the next week. Santorum will be the guy for Gingrich to beat in South Carolina. If Gingrich can't get in the top three in either New Hampshire or South Carolina he's probably out. Same applies to Governor Rick Perry. Though, with him having gone to Texas to "reassess", he could very well be out already.

It's interesting to note that only 122,255 voters turned out for the caucus. Which is only 3,067 more than what showed up in 2008. Given the amount of energy in the Tea Party, the visceral hatred of President Obama by Republicans, the energy that seemed to exist in the lead-up, that's a disappointing turnout.

Also, Romney got roughly the same number of votes this around he got last time around. Six less, actually. 30,015 instead of 30,021 in 2008. There is definitely an anti-Romney vote in the primaries, and he may well have won only by having so many theoretically viable rivals. It'd be difficult to know who those voters for Perry (in the two counties he won) would have gone to, for example.

Senator McCain is apparently supposed to endorse Romney now. And he was already endorsed by Governor Nikki Haley. She is no doubt on his VP short-list, and has tea party credentials. Her endorsement can't hurt, and will probably help, him in South Carolina. A state he won't be expected to win. But, if he somehow managed to, then the primary process probably will truly be able to be considered locked up. Not just nearly so, like now.

The last thing I'll say is that President Obama and his staff were probably hoping for a different outcome. They won't be eager to have the general election effectively start by February 1. Romney will also probably be the most effective challenger to his re-election among the current Republican field. They probably wouldn't have been sad to see the likes of Ron Paul win the nomination. But they're prepared for it. The machine the Democrats will bring to bear on Romney in the coming months will be formidable. Romney's machine will, likewise, be quite strong. The utter decimation of Gingrich by SuperPAC ads in Iowa was impressive and can mostly be attributed to Romney and his allies. Nevertheless, I have trouble seeing a Romney win unless the economy worsens (the most likely cause of which, Europe, would be nearly entirely out of President Obama's control). He could do it though. President Obama is quite unpopular, and Romney will likely be able to pivot off of Congressman Paul and Santorum to move to the center. It could be an interesting race. But I see the most likely scenario being an equivalent experience for the right in this country to the 2004 race for the left. Both disappointments coming, coincidentally, from Massachusetts.

Hamas's fraternal order in Egypt

2012-01-02T00:54:00.001-05:00

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood plans to put treaty with Israel to a referendum - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

Well, that shouldn't take anyone by surprise. And if it does, you were just being naive and idealistic. Hamas is a chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood. It says so in their charter. Hamas is a terrorist organization that refuses to recognize Israel and continues to lob rockets into Israel from their power base in Gaza. It's true, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is notably more moderate than would be indicated by all of that. But that's like the way the Senators Collins, Snowe, and Brown are more moderate because they're from New England. But in the end, when push comes to shove and the big votes and sacred issues are on the floor, they're all three rather reliable Republicans.

The Arab Spring, as I believe I've written here before, is not necessarily a movement for Western-style democracy. In fact, it almost certainly wasn't and isn't. President Obama and Secretary Clinton and the rest of the administration were trying to stay ahead of history in the level of support they gave the Arab Spring, even when it meant moving against longtime allies like President Mubarak. I'd like to say unequivocally and without hesitation that that was either the right or wrong choice on the part of the administration. But it's not clear, among other things, if Mubarak could have stayed in power if we whispered in the ear of the military to crack down on the protesters in support of him. It's not like the military couldn't use non-lethal means to subdue the protests. We do so in this country. And it's not as if we haven't supported more violent crackdowns in the recent past either. I would say, though, as I thought at the time, that the administration did as well as could be expected with such a fluid set of circumstances and supporting Mubarak's ouster was likely the best alternative. Now, though, it's time to wake up to reality (assuming the administration isn't already ahead of me) and realize that democracy isn't always preferable to the alternatives, most especially when it comes to our national interest. We can't back out of support for the system entirely because we don't like the (apparent and quite predictable) winner. But the military (with whom we and the Israelis both have had ties for years) has been seeking to retain a fair amount of power even after the election process is completely through. We should encourage it. They may not have control. But perhaps we could deal with an Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood that isn't too much more wary of Israel and isn't too much further to the right than Turkey is under Prime Minister Erdogan.

Sudan vs. South Sudan: The Rising Risk of a New Confrontation - TIME

2011-12-13T23:02:00.000-05:00

Sudan vs. South Sudan: The Rising Risk of a New Confrontation - TIME

If these two do end up at war with one another, something that's been a looming possibility since even before South Sudan officially voted to become its own state (as everyone knew they would), nevermind this most recent provocation by the north, then the international community at large, the African Union, the UN, the UNSC, the US, and maybe even the Arab League will all have to decide what to do about it. There's a fair amount of oil in the two countries (especially South Sudan) and so there could be an argument to prevent/intervene in an actual armed conflict between the two (rather than the current proxy war) on the part of other nations. The United States is, I hope, monitoring the situation carefully. We were lucky to have the vote turn out as well as it did and the results of said vote accepted to the extent that they were. However, this is all still a part of the struggle for independence. Some of the conflict between the now-two states is over what cities, areas, and regions are in which country.

If it comes down to armed conflict (which would be unfortunate but unsurprising), the United States should do all in its power to help ensure a just result (by which I mean one where South Sudan retains its independence and isn't choked off by the north nor cheated out of their oil or the regions/etcetera that rightfully belong to the south). The man leading the northern state out of Khartoum, al-Bashir, has a warrant by the ICC for his arrest. He was responsible for the brutality of the north during the civil war with the south and also for the (it seems forgotten) genocide in the western region of Darfur that only ended last year. So, for humanitarians, there is reason to fear what he'd do in a renewed war. I am myself concerned about the effects on oil production and prices, and thus the economy of the world. As much or more than that though, I do not care for the precedent of a country that agreed to a referendum on the issue of independence (with the validation and encouragement of the international community and the UN in particular) and then proceeded to do all it could to thwart the new state. If the international community lets something happen to South Sudan that either eliminates it, shrinks it, or sees its viability taken out from under it, then what will the independence movements in states around the world think and do in response? That would have to be a boost for the more violent wings of the movements. And increased violence from independence-minded peoples does no one any good. It is for that reason most of all that I think the US must seriously consider rallying the world for another intervention (or, more accurately, being prepared to if it comes to that). The US should do what it can to work with international organizations, or course. Most especially the UN and the AU. But if it cannot, then the US should not hesitate to do what it must to restore peace in a just manner over there. We may not want to be the world's police officer. We may not think we can afford it. But we are, for better and for worse, the most powerful state on the planet and are likely to remain so for a long time to come. If we do not step in, who will? The answer: probably no one.

I am not an interventionist in all situations. I have always felt the intervention in Libya was a mistake. Some of the opposition to Ghaddafi was and is unsavory, and our involvement kept European states, most especially the UK, from being forcibly confronted with how much weaker they've made their military. A geo-strategic problem. However, an intervention in a Sudan-South Sudan conflict has a more easily applied and more narrowly tailored reason for intervention: the protection of independence movements' legally and peacefully acquired gains, especially ones had under the auspices of the UN.

Pro-Democracy Protests Put Putin, Russia at Turning Point | News | English

2011-12-09T20:10:00.001-05:00

Pro-Democracy Protests Put Putin, Russia at Turning Point | News | English

I will be the first to admit my knowledge of Russian politics could be broader and deeper than it is. However, the headline in this VoA story, and the lede, are part of this fallacy Western media has, intentionally or not, fallen into. Simply because people are protesting the government they have, or fraudulent elections, doesn't turn them into pro-democracy of the Western style advocates. Thomas Hobbes's theory laid out in The Leviathan had little use for democratic governance and yet there's a reason the picture on the cover was what it was. A ruler whose body is made up of the people. So Mubarak and Ben Ali and Assad and Qaddafi and Saleh and Putin have/had lost legitimacy in the eyes of their subjects. What of it? That doesn't necessarily mean the people have turned into budding democrats. Tunisia and Egypt both have seen major victories for Islamists at the polls. The party with the second most impressive results in Egypt has been the Salafists. The largest minority party in Russia is the Communists. They're also the party that gained the most in this election compared with the previous one four years ago. These should be obvious signs to Western observers. Yes, the people are rejecting their rulers. But they aren't turning to Western-style democracy. The US and the rest of the West are in danger of inaccurately perceiving the meaning of the actions of people across the Middle East and now in Russia too. Maybe supporting the opposition is what's best for us. But, then again, maybe not. Neoconservatives may be warmongering when they talk about the "hidden hand of Islam" that permeates the so-called Arab Spring, but that doesn't make them wrong.

We helped overthrow the leader in Libya, and may just well have set everything up to allow a more implacable foe come to power there, as in Yemen and Iraq and Egypt. In the cases of Yemen and Egypt, we backed opposition to leaders more or less friendly to us and our interests. We may have hurt those interests now for the sake of our "values" that, it would appear to an admittedly confirmed cynic like me, the opposition we have backed don't even share. In the long run it was all maybe necessary and much of it unavoidable. But we didn't bother gaming it out properly, or discussing it as a citizenry, because we (at last!) were able to marry out interests with our values (or so we told ourselves, at any rate). My point is that there is some protesting of the unfair election in Russia and of Putin's rule in general. Possibly this means a move back toward democracy (as that country has been moving away from that for the past decade). I wouldn't count on it though, and neither should the media and most especially neither should the movers and shakers in the West.

BBC News - Euro crisis: Eurozone deal reached without UK

2011-12-09T12:47:00.000-05:00

BBC News - Euro crisis: Eurozone deal reached without UK

Prime Minister Cameron is potentially making a big mistake here. If reports are true and all 26 of the other EU countries are prepared to sign onto the pact, then that would leave the UK the only odd one out. The UK is, sadly, not the power it once was. By itself it has only so much power. The EU is now likely going to see notably deeper integration, and the UK will be the only one not a part of that. There's a reason that France eventually rejoined NATO after leaving it for a time. The UK will find, if it lets Europe integrate without it, that it is no longer the world power it so fondly still imagines itself. This is true both militarily and economically. Brazil and India will overtake the UK's economy. By mid-century, it wouldn't be surprising if Britain was no longer one of the eight largest economies in the world. And, militarily, the UK is already fallen to an unacceptably low level (from the perspective of a citizen of an allied state, that is).

However, all of that being said, concerns for their sovereignty are understandable. The more Europe integrates, the more sovereignty is given up by the member states to Europe. That's simply part of the process. And this pact hardly even gives out a carrot in exchange for the transfer of sovereignty. The carrot is more the lack of a stick than an actual item itself. The UK is weary of giving up its sovereignty to European technocrats who are unduly influenced by France and (especially) Germany. Something has to keep them in line, and the UK's strategy of letting them keep each other in line has worked up until now. That's difficult to deny.

The question, then, is how much clout, influence, power will the UK lose (or simply pass up on the opportunity of gaining) in exchange for the sovereignty they get to keep. The mere fact that they may be the only member state in isolation on this question may well be an indication that the answer is too much. If the eurozone collapses, then the UK would be wise to be as removed from that as practical. In the non-expert opinion of this blogger, the chances of the eurozone collapsing are quite low. I've never believed all the hype regarding the alleged likelihood of a collapse in the eurozone. It simply would cost everyone (especially but not limited to the 17 eurozone countries themselves) too much. The politicans across the group would be more likely to keep their seats and positions of power if they make an unpopular deal (or series of deals) transferring funds to Italy/Greece and sovereignty to Brussels than if they preside over the collapse of their currency which would also almost assuredly lead to a recession that'd touch the entire world. And, though it'd be called a double dip, such a recession could very well be worse than the first one was that we're still crawling our way out of. Thus, it's in the interest of the decision-makers involved to save the euro.

Which brings us back to the question, how much influence and clout and power will the UK deny itself for the purposes of maintaining its sovereignty? PM Cameron doesn't think it'd be enough to make it worth being part of the deal. But is he looking at the EU in the right light? Just as France and Germany can use the EU to increase their power, not just over their neighbors but in the world at large, the UK could do this as well. On that score, the question before the ruling coalition is similar to a question facing Scotland: Will the UK be better off and more influential as a diminished power by themselves, or as a part of something like the EU? Given their population, the answer may well be that going it alone (with some ties, as ever, to the eurozone countries, most importantly as part of the single market) is a better bet. Even now, their population is lower than that of France and Germany. And it's not much higher than Italy (if the pro-independence SNP with FM Salmond at the helm have their way, it'd be lower than Italy's). It's clout within Europe would therefore be, at best, as one of three strong states.

President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel may just well be hoping that PM Cameron opts to keep the UK out. They want more Europe, yes, but they don't like having to ensure the other one is on board. Adding a third party to the list of powers that, unofficially, have veto power within the EU may not be what they want. Germany is gaining more and more power the more the EU integrates (which has provoked some concern from its neighbors off and on for the past half century and more) and France has been able to increase its own power through the EU as well. France is also pushing for, among other things, a more united military and foreign policy front among EU countries. This will be difficult enough with just Germany's different vision to deal with. The UK and her "special relationship" with the US has been a roadblock towards this goal for many years. France would prefer an integrated EU military command structure to counterbalance NATO (which it has long thought to be too US-dominated). So, it may well be that what appears to be happening, an isolated UK with the other 26 states moving forward, is exactly what France and Germany want.

I'm ideologically supportive of the EU "experiment". I think it could very well lead to, if not a federation in Europe, at least a confederation. This pact is a bigger step towards that than critics and eurosceptics are willing to concede. Giving up any amount, and degree, of sovereignty when it comes to tax and spending policies is breaching a wall. Taxes and the military are what has kept the EU as an international organization more than something approaching a state (or super-state, of some sort) in its own right. When it comes to sovereignty, those are arguably the two most important parts for a state, and one of those barriers has sprung a leak.

The UK needs to look at its position now, its likely position in a couple of decades' time, and the likely position of the EU in a couple of decades. It must then decide if it wants to become part of the EU which may well become a power in its own right in the world, and have regional hegemony over that continent, or if it would prefer to (mostly) sit it out and hang onto its sovereignty in a diminished capacity. If I were PM Cameron, I'd probably sit out this pact. Which is what he had chosen to do by the time he'd asked for a protocol to protect financiers in London as a condition of the UK's participation. He had to know the chances of that happening were unlikely. But maybe, just maybe, in doing so he was able to throw a bone towards those in his country and party that are lukewarm toward the EU but ultimately satisfy the increasingly loud eurosceptics on the Tory backbenches. It's good politics and it's quite possibly the right thing for his country. A combination like that is hard to beat.

Health Secretary blocks easier access to morning-after pill | Reuters

2011-12-07T18:09:00.000-05:00

Health Secretary blocks easier access to morning-after pill | Reuters

A betrayal of his promise and the women who put him in office. Nothing else but. Sec. Sebelius should be ashamed of herself. Overruling scientists because he is afraid of a controversial issue as an election year approaches. Politically astute, maybe (possibly), but cowardly. First time HHS political appointees have overruled the FDA. Good precedent to set, no doubt.

How dumb can they be?

2011-12-07T17:49:00.003-05:00

In Ohio, certain anti-abortion groups are trying to push through a bill, HB 125, which has already passed the House and has been introduced into the Senate, that bans abortions once there's a heartbeat. They hope to provoke a legal challenge that would go to the SCOTUS and lead to the reversal of Roe v. Wade. This is just stupid, and makes me want to tear out my hair and scream. Never mind which side is right or wrong on the issue of abortion. Have these people paid any attention whatever to the rulings from the Supreme Court over the course of the past 38 years? Of the current justices on the Supreme Court, four are liberal, four are conservative, and one is the swing vote. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Ginsburg, and Breyer will all vote to uphold Roe. Justices Thomas, Scalia, Roberts, and Alito will likely all vote to overturn Roe. Which leaves Justice Kennedy. Who voted back in '92 to uphold Roe in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The swing vote on the Supreme Court already has a record on this issue, and it's against what the anti-abortion groups are looking for! That should be an obvious red flag. But somehow it isn't. Just plain stupid.

Yes, it's possible by the time such a lawsuit worked its way up to the Supreme Court the membership of SCOTUS will have changed. But what's to say that it'll change in a way that favors them? The current president is a Democrat. Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Ginsburg are the three oldest. One liberal, one conservative, and the swing vote. There's no reason to think that a change in court membership would go their way. As I said, just dumb. A sign of how poorly informed, or perhaps just blindingly ideological and partisan, these activists are.

Starting back up

2011-12-07T17:46:00.002-05:00

I stopped writing this blog partially because no one read it and just apathy in general. However, it made a good outlet for when I see political stories, etcetera that just make me want to scream, shout, and pound shoes on tables. So I'll begin to write again whenever I see a news story like that (practically every other day) and feel like it (less often than that).

Moving

2009-07-10T15:05:00.001-04:00

I've moved my blog to firesideblogging.wordpress.com.

Ahmadinejad vs. Mousavi and President Obama

2009-06-28T19:27:00.003-04:00

The Iranian elections had quite the lead-up. Rallies with thousands of participants held in the streets made the news all over the world. Polls showed statistical ties and landslides for Mousavi or Ahmadinejad, depending on the poll. This is a country whose theocracy has been around for only 30 years, and before that had a US-backed shah.

Even if it did try for a pure democracy, 30 years is hardly long enough to guarantee no problems. Let us not forget that the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed 15 years after we won the war that gained us independence from the United Kingdom. And 135 years following victory in the American Revolution, and 127 years after the ratification of the Bill of Rights, the Sedition Act of 1918 was passed, which banned the use of "whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States, or the flag of the United States, or the uniform of the Army or Navy of the United States into contempt, scorn, contumely, or disrepute." This country has gotten better over time, but we cannot forget our history. We've only had the secret ballot throughout the entire country since 1891. Think about that. Over a century after we had first tried to create this republic, and we just all agreed that the secret ballot was the way to go. That's one of the problems this country has when dealing with the rest of the world's systems of governance. We don't take history and habituation into account.

I'm not excusing any fraud on Ahmadinejad's part, if there was any. But we have to be realistic. This isn't even a democracy or a republic. It's a theocracy. We would do well to remember that fact. Should the people who handle elections be independent of Ahmdadinejad? Definitely. It should be an independent part of the government. But it's not, and so if there was electoral fraud, it should surprise no one. Ahmadinejad is said to have the backing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei too. If the religious head of this theocracy supports the incumbent, his victory is also unsurprising. The Guardian Council announced a recount, but I doubt the outcome will change. Half of the twelve people who are there can be dismissed by the supreme leader if he so chose, so their independence is definitely in question.

The other dimension of this fiasco is President Obama's reaction, which was late in coming and not altogether informative of his opinions. He bent over backwards to make sure it didn't look like he was interfering in a sovereign state's election. And what happened? He said little and Ahmadinejad accused the US of interference anyway. Imagine if this country were as touchy as Iran about foreign countries "interfering" in our elections. There'd have been an outcry when Europe made it rather clear they preferred a President Obama to a President McCain. But we didn't scream and shout and pull our hair. There was no wailing and gnashing of teeth. It was accepted as reality that everyone else would have a preference, and this country saw nothing wrong with them expressing their opinion. Senator McCain never once complained about it. And President Obama should've been willing to say that having a preference is not a kind of interference that is unacceptable in a free world.

Instead, he bowed out according to the wishes of Ahmadinejad. I'm all for engagement, but the president must make it clear that we are still the most powerful and advanced country on the planet. We keep treating these countries as if they actually were on our level. Iran is a regional power on its way to becoming a world power. But it is nowhere close to our superpower status. President Obama should've criticized everything the Iranian government did that smelled undemocratic, like trying to shut down Facebook. It shouldn't have taken violence perpetrated on protestors and the dramatic video of the 27-year-old woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, being shot in the chest to prompt a response by President Obama.

Unless he is unconcerned about who the leadership is in Iran, and it trying to be pragmatic. Which is good, in some respect. However, I'm tired of President Obama constantly doing this. As the leader of the free world, the president of the most powerful country in the world, he must respond to situations and crises with more speed than he could afford as senator. He's not always going to be right, and that may hurt his reelection chances. It is his responsibility though. He did the same thing when Georgia and Russia had their brief war 10 months ago. Senator McCain made his views immediately clear. Then-Senator Obama waiting until nearly all other players on the stage had mage their statements clear. It's easy to do nothing but evaluate other people's responses, or put one's own response in context with theirs. He is no longer the guy throwing rocks at the house though, he's the guy in the house. It's time we saw some leadership from him that reflects that. Compromise and pragmatism are good, but he must genuinely lead on something. The closest he's come to that thus far has been to announce that he's going to work with Congress on some reform or other and he expects a bill by a certain deadline. But then he defers to Congress for the actual, you know, work. It's been over six months. It's time President Obama leads as a president should.

Qui bono?

2009-06-10T00:28:00.002-04:00

The newly elected Nick Griffin, head of the BNP, attempted to hold a press conference on the College Green at Westminster with his fellow new MEP Andrew Brons. He was going to claim his party's victory in the European elections. But all he had time for was the start of an attack on the press for treating his party unfairly. Then numerous protestors came onto the scene, shouting chants like "Nick Griffin: Nazi scum" and "Nazi scum, off our streets." A couple of eggs were also thrown, and people hit the newly-elected MEPs and their bodyguards with their fists, feet and placards. The bodyguards hustled him and Brons to their cars, clearing a path for Griffin perhaps a little violently.

I must say, I applaud the spirit of the protest. I've already made clear my disgust with their election. But the eggs? That's a little much. Violently protesting fascists is a bad idea. The last thing anyone needs is for Nick Griffin to be able to make the BNP victims fighting against heavy odds placed on them by the power structure. Plus, as this BBC interviewer (Eddie Mair) points out when he's interviewing Sarah Kavanagh, they are democratically elected. I don't like it, nor do any of the mainstream political parties, but it's a fact. Ignoring legitimate election results got the US in trouble when Hamas won in Palestine, and it'll get the Unite Against Fascism group in trouble too.

If, however, they continue these protests and they remain peaceful, then the PR damage done will likely outweigh the benefits Griffin can manage to grab. I've read that some of these protestors intend to come out every time he tries to hold a press conference there. I wish them the best of luck. I disagree with Eddie Mair on that, as he seems to think they should simply organize and go to the ballot boxes and defeat them there. Free speech is best when it's disruptive. They just need to refrain from violence next time. If the bodyguards are as aggressive next time as they were this time and the protestors manage to not engage in violence themselves, then they can paint themselves as the victims, thus winning a double-victory.

Post-partisan politics?

2009-06-09T22:54:00.002-04:00

President Obama has announced that he wants to install a pay-as-you-go regime in Congress. He claims that this will help keep deficits down, and it showcases his "fiscal responsibility."

So, first of all, is anyone in doubt as to the true purpose of this? A Gallup poll came out this week which said that 51% of people disapprove of the president;s job "controlling federal spending." I must say, it takes some nerve to put forth a budget that would mean the largest deficit in history, push through a stimulus package of $787 billion (which isn't even as much as he originally wanted), and then declare that his predecessor has left him a huge fiscal mess and Congress needs to fix it by having a PayGo policy. The AP wrote, "The federal deficit is on pace to explode past $1.8 trillion this year, more than four times last year's all-time high." I mean, really? The president does that, then claims that his predecessor spent recklessly and insinuated that Democrats are more fiscally responsible than Republicans? The truly sad part is, there are still lots of people who think of him as post-partisan or at least bipartisan.

But he said, "And it is no coincidence that this rule was in place when we moved from record deficits to record surpluses in the 1990s -- and that when this rule was abandoned, we returned to record deficits that doubled the national debt ... The reckless fiscal policies of the past have left us in a very deep hole." Now, I don't mean to spend too much time defending former President Bush, of whom I was not and am not a fan. However, even the AP gently corrected him, "In fact, the surpluses of the late 1990s were largely due to a huge influx of tax revenues from a booming economy." And that booming economy was not due to former President Clinton's policies. It was part of the boom and bust cycle of capitalism.

And that brings me to loopholes. Among exempted items are former President Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, increasing payments to Medicare physicians and discretionary spending (which in 2010 will be $1.4 trillion dollars, or %40 of the overall budget). All told, Kent Conrad, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, estimates that there's $3.5 trillion in exemptions. The president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Maya MacGuineas, has said, "This is like quitting drinking, but making an exception for beer and hard liquor." I rather like that analogy.

Can there be any doubt as to what's going on here? The president and the Democrats on the Hill are playing politics. This measure is meaningless and hypocritical, but they'll scream, shout, jump up and down and stamp their feet during elections to make sure everyone understands that they supported a pay-as-you-go policy, and were in fact on the forefront of it. Never mind the details, they supported a measure that related to fiscal responsibility. What a pity it is that President Obama is such a skilled politician and rhetorician. Because lord knows Republican lawmakers outmaneuver Democratic lawmakers a lot more often than the other way around. With such a majority on President Obama's side though, I'm not sure how much of a difference that'll make.

Fascists in Europe

2009-06-07T18:34:00.007-04:00

I'm far from the only one saying it, but it's a sad day for Europe. The British National Party has won at least one seat in the European Parliament. They are a racist and fascist. A fascist being elected to the parliament of the European Union is a sad day indeed. This is a party that literally doesn't accept black membership and wants to provide "incentives" while keeping it voluntary for immigrants and their descendants to leave the country. They are a disgrace, and opposed by the other major parties in the United Kingdom. They've been gaining for a while electorally, but this is their first MEP seat. Hopefully it's just backlash against Labour and we'll see a retreat from here.

EDIT: The BNP came away with two seats in the European Parliament. Their leader claims that the people the BNP represents are being treated as second-class citizens in their own country. Does anyone else think that that isn't a ridiculous statement? With luck, there won't be any major scandal just before the next EU elections that drives British voters to such an extreme. Two fascists in the European parliament; I doubt many people could've predicted that thirty years ago.

In defense of Sotomayor

2009-06-07T06:37:00.003-04:00

In the nearly two weeks since Judge Sotomayor's nomination for the Supreme Court by President Obama, the Republican Party has understandably, and to no one's surprise, looked for a way in which to attack her. It would obviously difficult. She has years of experience, a touching life story, and will be, if confirmed, the first Hispanic SCOTUS justice on top of that, a constituency the Republicans would like to have.

One of them has been her affirmative action case I've previously mentioned. But that is not nearly enough by itself to justify holding up a nominee. I've also read that Judge Sotomayor has ruled against incorporation of the Second Amendment, which is a position I oppose. But her position on that won't sway anything.

It seems that the main attacks on Judge Sotomayor will come as a result of some comments she's made, the two most well-known of which she said outside the courtroom. One of them is her comment saying, "Court of appeals is where policy is made." Her critics are saying that such a quote, which I actually pulled out of a much longer paragraph-size quote, is a sign of judicial activism. But I must disagree about the interpretation. The context helps here:

"The saw is that if you're going into academia, you're going to teach, or as Judge [Carlos] Lucero just said, public interest law, all of the legal defense funds out there, they're looking for people with court of appeals experience, because it is -- court of appeals is where policy is made. And I know -- and I know this is on tape and I should never say that because we don't make law, I know.[audience laughter] OK, I know. I'm not promoting it, and I'm not advocating it, I'm -- you know. [audience laughter] [Sotomayor hesitant laughter] OK. Having said that, the court of appeals is where, before the Supreme Court makes the final decision, the law is percolating -- its interpretation, its application. And Judge Lucero is right. I often explain to people, when you're on the district court, you're looking to do justice in the individual case. So you are looking much more to the facts of the case than you are to the application of the law because the application of the law is non-precedential, so the facts control. On the court of appeals, you are looking to how the law is developing, so that it will then be applied to a broad class of cases. And so you're always thinking about the ramifications of this ruling on the next step in the development of the law. You can make a choice and say, "I don't care about the next step," and sometimes we do. Or sometimes we say, "We'll worry about that when we get to it" -- look at what the Supreme Court just did. But the point is that that's the differences -- the practical differences in the two experiences are the district court is controlled chaos and not so controlled most of the time."

She was simply stating reality as she saw it when she said that in 2005. She said specifically that she wasn't promoting or advocating it. Her reasoning is even explained in that paragraph. I personally am encouraged by those sentences. I don't particularly like judicial activism, but a justice unaware of the impact of their decisions is dangerous. I haven't seen anyone refuting what she said, people simply think that the fact that she said it is a sign of something else. She may be an activist judge, I don't know. But this quote is nowhere near evidence of it.

The second quote has garnered far more attention. She said in 2001, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." People from Rush Limbaugh to Newt Gingrich have said that she's a racist, though Gingrich retracted his statement. Once again, looking at context is helpful:

In our private conversations, Judge Cederbaum has pointed out to me that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women. I recall that Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Connie Baker Motley, the first black woman appointed to the federal bench, and others of the NAACP argued Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Justice Ginsburg, with other women attorneys, was instrumental in advocating and convincing the Court that equality of work required equality in terms and conditions of employment.

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

I'll address the specific wording of the last sentence in a moment, but the main thrust of that actually seems to be as much about perspective as anything else. And I don't know many people, if anyone, who doesn't think that perspective shapes what we think reality is and what we think reality should be. An acknowledgement of that truth, regardless of the wording it's couched in, is not something I have a problem with. The other major part of the statement was in the first paragraph, discussing the role of the races/genders in major decisions impacting race/gender relations.

Now, the wording of the last sentence is a little peculiar. I think that "a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences" would be able to be more accurate regarding certain matters. I do not, however, think this a universal. But I'm not so sure Judge Sotomayor does either. It's all over the news that she frequently mentions her race and background. But this may just be an issue of perspective and how it affects our thoughts, as I already mentioned. And we have to remember that the context of that sentence includes the first paragraph of that quote, which is about SCOTUS decisions regarding race. Does anyone think that, if more minorities who had experienced a hard life were on the bench at the time, the Plessy v. Ferguson decision would have ever been handed down like it was? And we can never forget the possibility that her phrasing was not all it might have been to get her message across. In other words, she might've misspoken. Public officials do that. After all, former President Bush's regular crucifixion of the English language became a running gag for many comedians and even the populace a large.

Maybe Judge Sotomayor does have some counter-racism going on, and perhaps she is an activist judge. But the quotes that the GOP and its vocal and public supporters are attacking her for are evidence of neither.

Wise Latina woman?

2009-05-31T13:46:00.003-04:00

Now that it's been a full week since President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, I think enough information has been presented for me to have an informed opinion.

I should note first that neither a liberal or a conservative was likely to get my full-throated support. So when I say that I have reservations about Sotomayor, that doesn't mean I think she's a poor choice. As a matter of fact, I like her, on the whole. She certainly has the experience for the job, no one is contesting that. Her opinions are known to be extremely thorough and detailed. And some are questioning he temperament, saying she's too aggressive on the bench. But I like the idea of a justice who doesn't sit idly by while lawyers present their cases. Pressing the lawyers is a good thing. And I suspect that most of the lawyers who are quoted in news articles as having a problem with her style are people who were ruled against. I don't know that for sure, but it would surprise me if that weren't the case.

Her stances on various issues are not ones I would agree with, though. I don't like her ruling that cost-benefit analyses aren't part of the protection of the environment companies are required by law to engage in. And her stance on affirmative action is way too extreme for my taste. Throwing out a test for promotion because only one Hispanic and no blacks qualified for it is ridiculous. That is exactly the sort of thing that causes whites to resent affirmative action, because it sometimes has the feeling of disadvantaging white people simply because their ancestors, or ancestors' neighbors, were unkind to other races of people. In a country where that supposedly doesn't matter, being disadvantaged for it is hard to accept.

My other problem with the Sotomayor nomination is the factors taken into account. President Obama was under heavy pressure to select a minority woman. Someone who went by the name Ken Stevens wrote a comment on a Politico blog that said,

"This is not some kind of game where all that matters is gender or ethnicity. We're talking about someone whose decisions can affect our lives for many years. Ideology is what matters most of all here. If there are no Hispanics on the court, there are five Catholics. Do we need six? That's not to say that all Hispanics are Catholics, because I know that's not the case. At any rate, I'll take a good atheist or, unlike the aforementioned five, someone who I know for sure cares about the separation of church and state."

This Ken Stevens brings up a good point. It turns out that Sotomayor is a Catholic. So we do have five Catholics on the Supreme Court. This is not to say that Catholics vote as a block. But, then again, neither do minorities or women, necessarily. But if we're going to start worrying about representing minorities and women enough to make that a criterion for a candidate, why do we stop at the racial and gender line. Perhaps it is time we had an atheist. To my knowledge, we haven't had one sitting on the high court. Or we might desire a gay man. Maybe, just maybe, we need someone who was born in a different country, ideally one where oppression is rampant, and moved here during their childhood. That would truly give someone perspective on America that the others don't have. But we don't worry about those differences, just race and gender.

In fact, we shouldn't be concerned about any of them. President Obama should pick whomever he thought was best for the role. Since I'm not a court watcher, I don't know if there is a better person out there for the job. But it would seem that some people were automatically excluded and had no chance due to their gender/race. Over the course of the past several weeks, I saw one comment appear over and over again. I have no idea who originated it, but it read, "Funny how we can't racially profile for criminals but we can for SCOTUS candidates."

Kim Jong-Il: neighborhood bully?

2009-05-27T16:06:00.007-04:00

A second nuclear test on the part of North Korea, followed within a week by a couple of missile test launches. And the world is angered. The UN Security Council unanimously passed a resolution condemning the nuclear test. Ambassador Susan Rice has said that "they will pay," and President Obama has urged the world to "stand up to this behavior." And I'm sure Kim Jong-Il is hiding under his desk in fear of what all that may mean. He will undoubtedly apologize and agree to come back to the negotiation table, but will first unilaterally disarm as a show of good faith. Then again, perhaps not.

There are several items that should be discussed in relation to this second test. Firstly, and most quickly, is the language we use. I'm sorry, but for the leader of the most powerful country in the world to say the world must "stand up" to North Korea is ridiculous. Yes, that country and it's less-than-warm leader have nuclear capabilities, limited though they may be. But to talk about North Korea as if it's the neighborhood bully is ridiculous. We must not lose track of proportion. North Korea has perhaps a half dozen nukes and no way to lob them at it's enemies. America has enough nukes to destroy the world several times. Who is likelier to be the bully here? We should oppose North Korea's nuclearization, but language which takes the situation out of proportion only inflates the Dear Leader's ego and goes partway to accomplishing his goal.

The second issue is what we think of Kim Jong-Il himself. I'm not going to delve into the question of how much power he has in his country right now. North Korean internal power struggles are a closed book to nearly everyone. But on the world stage, we think of him as a deranged man desperate for attention and respect. He's completely nuts, a lunatic. No one can guess his next move. Now, that last is more true than anyone would care to admit. But the rest of that description is simply not accurate. This is a man who has manipulated the entire world to give him carrot after carrot, whilst never following through on his end. He has brought his small impoverished country into the nuclear age. In his 15 years of rule he has seen two US presidents and is just beginning his third. His father was also a man who knew how to handle international politics, and was playing the Soviet Union and China off of one another for years. To think of him as a madman is to underestimate him, and underestimating one's enemies is never a good idea.

But we should realize that a trait he likely has is an utter lack of care for the majority of the people over whom he rules. And this is a problem we should recognize, for our Western notions of rulers often includes the idea that they care about their people's well-being. Kim Jong-Il might care for the glory of North Korea, but not for the welfare of the North Koreans. His regime is one of the most brutal on the planet, and he's unapologetic about it. This does affect how we can deal with him. Economic sanctions don't work. Not caring about his people, and with them already in abject poverty, what does the West think it's going to do? Rile his people up into a revolution? Not likely. The government and soldiers are well-fed, and the people don't exactly see lots of tourists who can make them understand that the rest of the world is better off and they shouldn't have to deal with that. Besides, North Korea's industrial capacity is incredibly low. They have plenty of empty factories all over the country. Their economy is not held up by trade.

Rather, North Korea's economy is sustained, barely, through drugs, counterfeiting, and weapons. All three of which, it should be noted, are not what one would call legitimate activities. We can impose all the sanctions we want. It's not going to change much of anything for the DPRK. If we wanted to spend the men/equipment on it, a blockade is a possibility I suppose. But, let's be honest here, how well is that likely to work? Smugglers don't seem to have difficulty getting their goods into and out of countries all over the world, including America. There's no reason to believe that they would be unable to smuggle drugs, weapons, and counterfeited money out of North Korea.

That takes us back to square one. What can we do about North Korea? For something must be done. I mentioned earlier that we are exaggerating Kim Jong-Il's power, and we are. But the concern is mainly that he'll pass on nuclear materials to those who have the capability to use them, especially non-state actors. The world doesn't want nuclear material in the hands of terrorists. Quite frankly, I'm surprised they haven't managed yet to get their hands on enough to use a dirty bomb in NYC or Chicago or Tel Aviv. Countries like North Korea increase the likelihood of that occurring. So what is there to do? Sanctions will be ineffective, a blockade would be ineffective, and resolutions are meaningless if the country being condemned doesn't care (which North Korea, by all signs, doesn't). And no one wants war. America doesn't want to be embroiled in a second Korea War, especially not now that Iraq is calming down and withdrawal is on the horizon. And the countries of Northeastern Asia rightly fear a nuclear North Korea less than a collapsed state where there's enough nuclear material for half a dozen bombs. Anything but a peaceful transition of power post - Kim Jong-Il would likely mean that. When Saddam Hussein was toppled, the world essentially saw a collapsed state until the surge over four years later. North Korea has factions too, they're inevitable. And unlike Iraq they have a bigger prize: control of a nuclear arsenal, however small.

So perhaps the US just needs to go along with ineffective international sanctions and resolutions for a little longer. Kim Jong-Il is nearing 70 and he suffered a stroke less than a year ago. His reign cannot be much longer lasting. Hopefully we can work with his successor, whoever it turns out to be. In the meantime, we can but pray that before that day comes he doesn't pass any technology to other enemies of America in a better position to do damage and they don't advance fast enough themselves to be a full-fledged nuclear power.

What to do about Proposition 8

2009-05-22T22:55:00.004-04:00

It was announced today that the California Supreme Court will be making its decision on Proposition 8 Tuesday. I don't avidly follow the courts, especially not state courts, so I don't know it's chances of being overturned. I assume it won't be, but I know there's a distinct chance it could be.

Now, I support gay marriage for all states. I oppose the so-called Defense of Marriage Act. Proposition 8 is the majority taking away a right of the minority. Whether or not you think every citizen across the country has the right to marry, in California the supreme court has decided that they do. So all Californians have that right. California wanted to be closer to a pure democracy than it was previously. Indeed, it wanted to be closer to a pure democracy than any other state. This is the price they pay. Pure democracy invites tyranny of the majority. That's one of the reasons this country is a republic. And that's a major reason for requiring the rigorous process for constitutional amendments this nation does.

And it is precisely because it is a constitutional amendment that I sincerely hope the California Supreme Court decides against overturning Proposition 8. I've been told, and I've read, that there's a difference between an amendment and revision, or some other wording like that. But, I must say, even if it's true, it's a weak argument. And while I loathe the slippery slope argument, there is such a thing as precedent. And the precedent of a court overturning a constitutional amendment is nothing short of terrifying. Therefore, I will be watching the news on Tuesday and hoping that the California Supreme Court, which I know favors gay marriage, sees the problem of invalidating Proposition 8 and agree with me in terms of the magnitude of the problem.

O'Reilly making sense ... must be an apocalyptic sign

2009-05-21T22:52:00.005-04:00

There are some people out there who I have such a level of distaste for that I question myself doubly anytime I agree with them. Bill O'Reilly is one such person. Though I really don't watch his show, I do read what he says on the internet sometimes, and even occasionally watch a YouTube video of him. I find myself agreeing with him more and more lately. Now that he's not blindly agreeing with and backing up the government, it seems to me he has a more solid understanding of what's what. Whether this is actually the case or not, I couldn't begin to guess. But I'll provide a couple of examples.

I watched his show after President Obama's 100 days press conference. There was no actual Republican response, and this seemed the next best thing. I was astonished by how much I agreed with O'Reilly on, from his complaints about the softball question the reporter from the New York Times gave to President Obama's less-than-perfect defense of his stance on torture. I agreed with O'Reilly that the reporters weren't near harsh enough and a couple of the questions downright laughable. The "press conference" did indeed seem to be nothing more than a speech with a slightly different format. And President Obama's defense on torture wouldn't have swayed me if I thought we should torture (my opinion on that topic is an entirely different subject). Using the United Kingdom in WW2 as a shining example of someone who doesn't torture was not, perhaps, the wisest move he ever made.

Then I was surprised when O'Reilly said that if the president said Pakistan's nukes were safe, he'd believe him. O'Reilly said that it would be impolitic for President Obama to state openly that the CIA and special forces were guarding them, but that he thought they were. I don't know if they are, and I'm not nearly that trusting of authority on such a matter, but it speaks well for O'Reilly that his trust extends even to those whose politics he doesn't like. Patriotic, is what it is.

President Obama announcing last week that he is going to reform and revive military tribunals for Guantanamo detainees reminded me of what O'Reilly said awhile ago. He commented that once the president saw the full information regarding those kept at Guantanamo Bay, he'd be much less inclined to follow through on not having military tribunals, closing down Guantanamo, etc (President Obama's 180 on releasing pictures can fit into that etcetera). Lo and behold, it would seem he was right.

O'Reilly still reeks of badly hidden conservative bias, and he still yells too much, but he may not be as bad as many who dislike him think either.x

How low can they go?

2009-05-06T22:15:00.002-04:00

No, I don't mean that as an insult. A quote at the end of a Politico article caught my eye.

"Our main motivation at this point is to not throw Republicans off of committees." That quote is from a Republican aide. My question, therefore, is one regarding the power, or lack thereof, Senate Republicans now command.

Before the Specter defection Democrats had 58 seats, 59 if the count includes Al Franken (which is probably a safe bet). One vote shy of a filibuster-proof majority, the Democrats didn't look like they'd be easy to stop. Only the filibuster was going to prevent them from riding roughshod over Republicans (thus proving the benefits of the filibuster). Specter makes 59 soon-to-be-60 once Franken finally gets seated. But people were saying this isn't a filibuster-proof majority, so there's not much to worry about. The balance of power won't change all that much. And indeed, Specter won't vote for cloture on a variety of issues including the Employee Free Choice Act (for which I'm thankful, but that's another issue).

However, people who are singing that tune are forgetting that the committees are the workhorses of Congress, as probably every AP US Government textbook out there would tell you. And I must admit that I'm far from crazy about the idea of the Democrats' advantage swinging by two votes on five committees, including Judiciary and Appropriations. But the Republicans seem stuck between dropping members from the committees simultaneously, which they are (with reason) loathe to do, and swallowing the two-vote swing.

I dearly wish they had enough power to get the Democrats to drop one member from each of those committees, whether it Specter or someone else. I say this not only as a registered Republican, but someone wary enough of both parties that there'd ideally be at most 55 members of one party in the Senate, and similar proportions in the House. For now, it appears the Democrats have at least 20 months in which to push through as much of their agenda as possible.

The only good thing about this is that they no longer have any excuses with which to feed the American people as to why they couldn't get their jobs done satisfactorily, which politicians on both sides like to have. So maybe the midterm elections will see a shift back toward Republicans.

Framing reality

2009-05-03T21:32:00.005-04:00

For those who know me, this may come as a surprise, but as time goes by I become increasingly weary of discussions regarding domestic politics. I still find the topics fascinating, and will discuss issues with the right people and in the right settings. But, on the whole, I've just grown tired of it. And the reason why may be linked to a host of other problems.

It's quite simple. I can argue with someone for days about the way the world should be. That kind of argument is interesting and good, and theoretical in large part. But people in this country have two major problems when it comes to discussing domestic issues.

For one, we can't agree on the framing of the nature of our disagreements. The easiest and most prominent example of that is the abortion debate. On one side is the "pro-lifers" (they really did get the better label in this debate) and the others are "pro-choicers." But both those names are misnomers because they both suggest that they other side is against their particular value. It's just ridiculous. The debate is not whether or not it's okay to take the life of "unborn children." Nor is it about whether or not a woman has the right to do what she wants with her body. Those are both stances the people on either side use to pump up a group of people and get them involved. The real question in the abortion debate is "when does life begin?" If everyone thought human life began at conception, or if everyone thought human life began once they baby is fully out of the womb, there'd be no debate. None. But because we can't frame the debate properly we can't have a proper discussion about it. That's a real problem. This topic has been an issue for decades, and there really is no reason for that.

The other problem with domestic policy debates is people cannot agree on what reality is. This was made glaringly obvious when Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina called the Matthew Shepard murder, specifically the idea that it was a hate crime, a hoax. She actually used that word. The majority of the country believes that he was targeted for his homosexuality. But I discovered that day that there is a significant minority of people who think otherwise. Citing an ABC 20/20 report, these people say it wasn't a hate crime, and simple a robbery (which I suppose they thought just got out of hand). It should be noted here that that report exists, and they aren't wrong that it clearly says the idea of a hate crime was invented to try to get the murderers a lesser sentence. It claims they wanted money for drugs. And the report gives all the appearance of being legitimate, because it likely is. But that doesn't make it accurate. The two people were convicted of the murders, and the motive was understood to be because Shepard was gay.

My point is, we simply can't decide what reality is. Lewis Black commented on that during his Red, White & Screwed HBO special regarding President Bush and Hurricane Katrina. He said, "There has to come a point where democrats and republicans, where we see a piece a footage, and we just agree on what the fuck reality is. And the fact is, you cannot show video of a land rover running over a cat and then say, 'uh, the cat was trying to kill itself.' I'm going to need at least three days to find the note that he left."

But that's what's become of domestic debate in this country. We can't agree on what torture is, the already-established motivation of convicted murderers, or even, this past week, what sexual orientation is. And I don't see how, given this problem, we can ever really fix or solve or properly handle anything. America needs to stop doing whatever's necessary to be right and worry more about actual solutions. We are a country of idealogues, and there are few exceptions. Burke is turning over in his grave.

Influenza panic

2009-05-03T20:41:00.003-04:00

Swine flu has made its way around the globe, with several countries now having confirmed cases. The outbreak came at a rather bad time for the Obama administration, which surely already had enough on its plate. People are panicking, Vice President Biden advised his family to not use public transportation, and the Egyptian government carried out a mass slaughter of pigs. It's about time someone made a couple of points regarding this "pandemic." I'm sure I'm not the first to say them, nevertheless, they bear repeating.

The first point is that people need to calm down. Yes, people have dies from this new flu. Just over 100, in fact. And, what is more, all but one of them were in Mexico and the number is much lower if you use confirmed numbers. Using confirmed numbers nets 17 deaths, one of which was in the US and the other 16 of which were in Mexico. There is no need for panic. Mexico's government is taking steps to prevent the further spread of the virus. I won't comment on that because they do have a serious problem with it. Over 100 deaths in so short a time in a single country from something that spreads like influenza is nothing to be ignored. But the rest of the world, including America, needs to stop acting like it's an outbreak of the small pox. It's just the flu. For 17 confirmed deaths from the flu there's absolutely no need to close the border with Mexico, as was suggested by a member of the press at President Obama's news conference Wednesday. And Egypt slaughtering 300,000 pigs would be a staggering overreaction even if the flu was spreadable through pork products. It's time for everyone to get a grip, calm down, and go about their day. By all means, wash your hands (which, as we all know, people should be doing anyway). But it's really not that big of a problem. Public panic does nobody any good, and governments need to be careful about inflaming such.

My other point is more a note of concern for the future. The key to this is to not draw the wrong lesson from it. I would be willing to bet quite a bit that the number of flu vaccinations next year will shoot up. Never mind that the swine flu isn't stopped by our vaccines this year. People are going to vaccinate themselves all the more as a result. What this should teach us is that flu vaccines have limited usefulness. We can't always predict which strain of influenza will be a problem in any given year. Some people absolutely should get vaccinated. Anyone who has an extraordinarily weak immune system, for example. Mainly the old and incredibly young. People in this country do not need to vaccinate their 10-year-olds necessarily. They have good strong immune systems. This is the twenty-first century. In developed countries influenza doesn't, by any stretch of the imagination, necessarily turn into pneumonia and end in death like it all-too-often did centuries ago. All this constant vaccination will accomplish is the breeding of a super-virus of sorts. And our immune systems will be so out of use that we won't be able to cope with it. Less vaccination next year, not more, is what we should learn from this.

Opportunity knocks ... and the door is slammed in its face

2009-04-21T16:55:00.005-04:00

The 2001 World Conference against Racism was little more than an excuse for leaders in the Arab/Persian world to bash Israel and show off their anti-Semite credentials. The Canadian government said of the 2001 conference, "that conference degenerated into open and divisive expressions of intolerance and anti-Semitism that undermined the principles of the United Nations and the very gals the conference sought to achieve." That was why Canada was one of the nine countries that completely boycotted this year's conference. It stood shoulder to shoulder with Australia, Germany, Israel, Poland, Italy, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and America. Several countries, including Britain, France, Denmark, and Sweden, sent low level delegates only. That's what the US did eight years ago.

This was the Arab world's chance to have a worldwide PR victory, practically a novelty. If they could just mention their dislike of Israel (not even doing that much would cause PR problems at home) and then move on and talk about other issues such as the trans-Atlantic slave trade or racism against blacks or even refugee and indigenous peoples problems outside of any alleged Middle Eastern examples. They could spin that for weeks, and make it look like the West truly is unreasonably against them. The US was widely criticized, even domestically, for walking out eight years ago. This was a chance on a golden platter for the Arab/Persian world to gain the moral high ground on something, no matter how insignificant or brief.

But President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad felt it necessary to attend the conference. He was, in fact, the only head of state in attendance. Everyone else who sent high level delegates sent ambassadors, foreign ministers, etcetera. He could've, and should've, done the same. Then what I wrote last paragraph would've been workable. But he's facing a tough election this June, and he knows it. He came to power with populist messages, and thanks to both economic sanctions and the state of the world economy, people aren't getting what they thought. A nuclear weapon does help an individual state's security. But that's all mainly in the abstract. In the meantime, his constituents are hungry. Aristotle thought people had to be fed and be freed of want for necessities before they could think in the universal. That's likely not an absolute truth, but I think we can assume it represents a strong tendency.

So, as I say, he's facing a touch election. He seemed to use this conference as both a way to get out his (rather unpopular) message on the world stage and to boost support on the home front. Because much of the Arab/Persian world is in competition with each other (like so many regions of the world) but most of them can agree on the Palestinian issue. There's no escaping it. By attending, he necessitated that. If he had only sent Manouchehr Mottaki, his foreign minister. As a result of his speech, the Czech Republic walked out permanently, and many other delegates also left.

It is such a missed opportunity. It's good for America directly, that this mistake was made. After all, we now prove to have been right this time and even last time we walked out. Indirectly, though, this also creates a major PR problem for the UN, which, suffice it to say, is an organization America supports. It'll be interesting to see if we ever have another one of these racism conferences again, because this appears to be headed in the same direction as the 2001 version.

Enough is enough

2008-10-06T11:01:00.003-04:00

Palin with Couric on SCOTUS

Palin with Cameron on SCOTUS

Palin with Couric on news she reads

Palin with Cameron on news she reads

This has gotten to the point of ridiculousness. I intended for my next post on this blog to be about media bias, but it needs a lot of editing and what I’m writing about instead has gotten under my skin and I must say something about it.

Anyone following politics knows that prior to the debate Sarah Palin had interviews with three people: Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and Katie Couric. She stammered her way through the interviews with Gibson and Couric, and Sean Hannity was, unsurprisingly, widely seen as soft on her. I say unsurprisingly because he’s blatant about his conservative bias, that being the whole point of Hannity and Colmes. So nothing too drastic there. But Carl Cameron’s most recent interview with her was nothing short of an insult to proper journalism.

There can be no denying that Palin is a good speaker, and she has rallied conservatives, completely overshadowing Biden. I don’t want anyone to think I have a bias here, so I’ll put it out there that I am currently completely up in the air regarding my vote for the upcoming election. I agree with both candidates on several issues, though perhaps Obama on a couple more. But McCain undoubtedly has more experience than Obama, and that matters to me too. I also fall in line with McCain a little more on the issues that really matter to me, hence why I’m a registered Republican. The vice president choices are in many ways the opposing candidate running on their tickets. So that negates the experience argument from McCain a little, and the change argument from Obama a little. I have a lot of reading and thinking to do over the next couple of weeks so I can fill out an absentee ballot. But, as I said, I am undecided for now.

However, when a candidate messes up, they have traditionally spun the story to make it sound like they didn’t. Witness Obama’s clinging to guns and religion comment and McCain’s fundamentals of the economy are strong comment. For Palin though, Fox News gave her an essential redo. Oh, you made a mistake, here’s your chance to fix it. There won’t be second chances like that in the White House. But, come on, what objective observer honestly is reassured by her suddenly knowing Supreme Court cases or being able to come up with three well-reputed news sources that she reads regularly? No one who saw the original Katie Couric interview will be fooled. But that’s just it. Many, if not most, of the people who watched Cameron’s interview of Palin didn’t see the original interview. So they’ll be convinced that she did know. Fox News is creating a false reality for its viewers. This is irresponsible, and not fair and balanced journalism. All Palin had to do was memorize some note cards during the two to three day span separating the interviews and she could look like she knows what she’s talking about again. (As a side note, anyone who actually does read The Economist, as I do, or the Wall Street Journal, which I don't, is proud to say so. Actually, they have such prestige that many people claim to read them who don't.) It’s disgraceful and despicable, and they need to either never do another one of these faux interviews or stop pretending to be journalists. Enough is enough.