greenideas

September 29, 2005

Wow. No, really. Wow.

I certainly don't mean to get all Cold War crazy on you, but you've got to be at least a little creeped out by the fact that the Russian Orthodox Church has named a patron saint of nuclear-armed long-range bombers.

Also, speaking of weird things in Russia, monthly polls there by the Levada Center show approval ratings of the current government at 29%, but Putin's own approval number is 70%. That is in-sane.

Posted by matt at 04:25 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The beginning of the end

I'm giddy. I could do a little dance. I really couldn't be happier about this Delay thing. Between Delay, Frist, Safavian, and Abramoff, to say nothing of Bush getting it from both sides over the guy who's going to become who is now Chief Justice of the United States, and the compounding of failures in Iraq and the US Gulf coast, I'd say the conservative revolution of 1994 is over. I'd be a little more confident in saying that if this were all happening six months from now when we'd be in the thick of midterm election campaigns, but these are pains that will linger until then. Also, remember how Mr. Bush was going to reform Social Security? That an administration that used to have a preternatural ability to weather lackluster approval numbers has tanked so quickly is a surprise, but certainly a welcome one. At any rate, however unlikely it may be, I'll not look a gift lame duck in the... bill...? Sorry.

Then again, when I think of the people who are going to benefit from the Republican leadership crisis, it tempers my enthusiasm considerably. Despite my best attempts to lay back and think of England, I can't help but imagine the empty partisan caterwauling of Reid, Pelosi, Biden, and Schumer that's going to start, oh, in the next couple of hours, and continue until some time in 2008. How I wish the tone for the next decade of public debate could be set by Edwards, Specter, Leahy, and McCain. And let's not forget Bill Bradley. Oh Bradley, where art thou? Let's also not forget Best Ever.

Actually, now that I think more about it, I think this opinion piece about Germany's electoral deadlock from yesterday's FT isn't irrelevant to America's political future. Maybe the answer isn't to try to replace the conservative revolution with a liberal one. I dont know if the idea of a "technical caretaker government" espoused by the authors of that piece would qualify as a centrist "revolution" in the context of US democracy, but whatever label should be applied, the moral of drastic, lasting reforms ought to appeal to many. It certainly appeals to me.

At the very least, it's certainly a nice shot in the arm for me as I gear up for round two against the LSAT on Saturday.

Anyway, much love to David Brooks who really turned a corner somewhere (I'd link to his column today, which was an insightful contrast between Newt Gingrich and Tom Delay, but he's part of the new TimesSelect pay thingy at the NYT. The paper costs a dollar. Divest some HCA from your blind trust and pick up a hard copy).

Posted by matt at 09:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 19, 2005

Things happening all over the place!

A few quick thoughts on stuff happening near, and stuff happening far.

First, let's do far: So, there was an election in Germany yesterday, and it pretty much completely contradicted everything that everyone said would happen about two months ago. Back then, Angela Merkel and the Christian Democrats had what should've been an insurmountable lead in the polls (they led by 20% over the SPD). Instead, the CDU and the SPD ended up in an almost perfect stalemate.

Let's be clear: that sucks. It sucks mostly because the most likely result of the deadlock will be that the CDU and the SPD will form a "grand coalition" government which will be completely unable to move on sorely needed reforms. I was definitely hoping for a strong CDU win, but I would've settled for anything decisive considering how Germany is at 11.4% unemployment and around 1% growth rate. So, absent any reforms, they'll continue to tank, and drag the rest of the eurozone down with them (but that'll be okay since the EU is imposing new textile quotas on China, right? Right?). So yeah, bummer.

Now let's do near: I've got to say that, so far, pretty much all of the decisions related to oil or gas that have been made in the wake of Katrina have been spectacularly bad. Most recently, refineries have said that they plan to put off regular maintainence in order to keep output at its peak. Here's whay that's dumb: Even without catastrophic storms in the Gulf, US refining capacity is hopelessly tight due to our not having built any refineries in decades. Now take an extra 10% out of the total, as a result of Katrina. The idea now is to put all of our other refineries at risk (to say nothing of the lives of the workers who operate them) by foregoing routine maintainence. I mean, wow. That idea is so bad it's practically epic.

The other dumb thing people want to do is to temporarily repeal state gas taxes. Yes, gas is really expensive. You know why? Because there isn't enough of it. We can argue all day about what markets can and can't do, but the one thing markets do better than pretty much anything else is keeping people from using too much of scarce resources. Gas is usually pretty scarce to begin with, and it's even moreso now, with the havoc in the supply chain. There is less of it around, and so it should be harder to get (i.e. more expensive). When you muck with that, say by lowering taxes, you're interfering with the best mechanism we've got for keeping people from using too much of something we don't have enough of. Who needs carpools when you have short-sighted politicians?

Also, one lesson that we should take away from all of this is that having a strategic petroleum reserve doesn't do anyone a damn bit of good. A strategic gasoline reserve would be infinitely more useful. I'm just saying.

Posted by matt at 09:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 16, 2005

Unborkable!

Posted by matt at 09:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 12, 2005

The dumbest thing I've ever heard? Maybe.

This is something I just learned, and it's pretty much the worst. Go ahead and get mad:

Unfortunately, one of the populations that has been hit especially hard in Katrina's aftermath has been hospice patients. Making things far worse, however, is that federal law requires that a hospice patients' remaining medication be destroyed when they die.

So far, it's hard to think of anything about the response to Katrina that has gone in any way right. The destruction of perfectly good (and sorely needed) medications might be one of the surest indications of this.

Posted by matt at 11:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 09, 2005

Stop the presses?

If this turns out to be true, then the Wonkette has a helluva scoop.

Posted by matt at 12:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 08, 2005

Paying back with Interest

You know what I love? Policy journals. I really can't get enough of 'em. So it's great news for me that Adam Garfinkle, onetime editor of The National Interest and current State Department speechwriter, has a new one called The American Interest.

You really can't beat the mag's editorial board, which is chaired by Francis Fukuyama and includes Zbigniew Brzezinski*, Walter Russell Mead, and James Q. Wilson (who totally wrote my AP Government textbook from back in the day!), to name just a few. They've also got a "global advisory council," which i guess means the editors who aren't themselves American, and this has Niall Ferguson and Bernard Henri-Levy among many others.

A quick perusal of the masthead shows an impressively diverse collection of thinkers, but it's difficult to shake the feeling that the publication will have a conservative slant. There's certainly no question where Garfinkle is coming from, and Fukuyama is pretty far to the right, despite his criticisms of neoconservatism and of the Iraq war. Also, it can't be coincidence that the new journal pops up within a couple months of The Public Interest closing up shop.

If the first issue is any indication, AI will suffer at least a little from being unsure about whether it's supposed to be a magazine or a policy journal. Nonetheless, with a surprisingly comprehensive spectrum of opinions represented, and features like the Toolbox (this time around it was a memo to the president on seven things he can do today to improve port security), I know I'll be looking forward to the next issue.

*Full disclosure: I can't spell Zbigniew Brzezinski off the top of my head.

Posted by matt at 09:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 01, 2005

No one who speaks German could be evil

From the Wonkette:

Bush invoked the memory of his father as a young Navy pilot shot down over the Pacific and of an optimistic Roosevelt calling on Americans to defend liberty. He portrayed Roosevelt's vision as similar to his own -- a commitment to spreading freedom even when U.S. allies were not convinced it was the best course.

"Franklin Roosevelt refused to accept that democracy was finished," Bush said. "His optimism reflected his belief that the enemy's will to power could not withstand our will to live in freedom."

Wonkette quoted this news item in a post called "Now What Poor Aide's Going to Have to Break the News that FDR Founded Social Security?" What might be a better question is: what poor aide is going to have to tell the president that Dan Bartlett has him quoting Nietzsche? You just know that some speechwriter totally wanted to be cute by obliquely referring to the Nazis by using the phrase "will to power."

Still, as long as the president's favorite "philosopher" is Jesus Christ, I wouldn't expect to hear anymore quotes from the guy who called Christianity "the one immortal blemish upon the human race."

Posted by matt at 12:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 29, 2005

Every cloud of stormy death has a silver lining

As terrified as I am that New Orleans literally might not exist anymore, I still couldn't help but find this FOX News segment (quoted by the Wonkette) hi-larious:

SHEPARD SMITH: You're live on FOX News Channel, what are you doing?

MAN: Walking my dogs.

SMITH: Why are you still here? I'm just curious.

MAN: None of your fucking business.

SMITH: Oh that was a good answer, wasn't it? That was live on international television. Thanks so much for that. You know we apologize.

[snip]

SMITH: "I'm watching two dogs drink out of a glass of ice water, and it's none of my business why they are still here."

Posted by matt at 03:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 25, 2005

Yes, I care about base closings, and so should you.

I know that the percentage of this weblog's readership that's concerned with the BRAC committee recommendations hovers somewhere around zero, but I wanted to say a couple of things about them nonetheless. Believe it or not, there's stuff in here that everyone should find illuminating.

For one thing, I can't for the life of me imagine why the NYT's reportage of this is so disastrously selective. This morning's article mentions that one of the commission's proposals involved sending 200 F-18s from Virginia Beach to Jacksonville, FL. It implies that this move is why Jeb Bush "came out of the room smiling broadly." What's puzzling is why the article references this situation so obliquely. The meeting was about base closings. They weren't talking about moving fighter jets from one state to another, they were talking about closing the Oceana Naval Air Station, thus sending about 12,000 jobs out of state. I really don't get why that number wasn't in there, or why Oceana wasn't once mentioned by name.

What's worse, is that this loss won't be mitigated in any way by Hampton Roads getting any of the 6,000 jobs that should be heading south from Connecticut and Maine but aren't.

Don't get me wrong. It's not so much that I'm bothered by Oceana closing, or at least not for any reasons other than sentimentality (For those of you just joining us, I grew up in Va Beach. Somewhere at my parents' house, there's a flight jacket patch I got when I was a kid and got to sit in the cockpit of an A-6 Intruder sitting in a hangar at NAS Oceana. There's no denying how cool that was). The Sword of Damocles has been hanging over NAS Oceana for pretty much as long as I can remember, so this doesn't come as a tremendous shock. What does bother me, is how shamelessly political the closing is. Let's see here: we're going to send 12,000 jobs to Florida. Wait, who's the governor there? Oh right. It's the president's brother. Well, I'm sure that's just an isolated coincidence. I mean, it's not like keeping the base in Groton, CT open was in any way a gift to a Democrat in name only who's been one of the president's biggest cheerleaders on pretty much every issue, right?

(While we're talking about the politics of this, how about how Bill Frist totally sold out the people of South Dakota by letting the hammer fall on Ellsworth AFB, despite promising to use his power to save it if voters rejected Senate Dem Tom Daschle in favor of Republican John Thune.)

Anyway, if you want to read something about the BRAC recommendations that goes into a lot more detail about the fate of Oceana, there's this Virginian Pilot article.

Posted by matt at 11:38 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 24, 2005

Old Man Week: Confound these so-called liberals

You know, I was starting to despair of ever being able to come up with a good set of topics about which to rant in a curmudgeonly fashion. I just haven't really been that cranky this week. It turns out, however, that I needn't have worried. Sure enough, there's a surefire blood-boiler that shows up right on my doorstep a couple of times every week, and I'm going to go ahead and grouse about it.

I'm speaking of course about Maureen Dowd's column in the NYT. It's something I've mentioned repeatedly, and will continue to mention as long as her marginally informed tirades against "W." continue to besmirch the Op-Ed page, and further drag down the level of public debate in this country.

(NOTE: At some point in writing this, my blood pressure elevated to the point where, perhaps as the result of a small stroke, I started writing in the second person. I'm not sure what that's about.)

First of all, whatever you call the president of the United States at your botox & self-congratulation parties, when you speak of him publicly or mention him in print, he is "President Bush" or "Mr. Bush." Look, I don't like him either. I think he's failed this country in just about every way he possibly could.

When you call him "W." or, for some reason, "Bikey W." (as in this weekend's column), it's obvious that you're just speaking to people who already agree with you, and hoping to give your readership something to snicker about at the MoveOn.org watercooler. Bully for you. Don't you think your time & energy (to say nothing of your column inches) might be better used in contributing something to the debate? Maybe new information, or a new argument?

I mean, I get that there are plenty of hateful, cynical people out there complaining about how "stupid" Mr. Bush is, or how Secs. Rice or Rumsfeld are "evil." These folks would clearly rather pat themselves on the back for having the keen eye to spot the iniquity than actually put any effort into thinking specifically about what's wrong with the country or planning better courses of action and ways to get people elected who can put those plans into effect.

So, say you were an opinion columnist in what is, for better or worse, the Paper of Record. Would you think the best way to use that bully pulpit would be to get people to laugh cruelly at the foibles of their elected official and the "ignorant" people who elected them? Would you encourage your readers to feel more disenfranchised, and that they just don't have anything in common with those "Red State" folks who got us into this mess? Hey if it moves books for Ms. Dowd, and papers for the NYT corporation, why not, right?

For a moment, let's consider an alternative. Maybe you tone down your rhetoric a little bit. Maybe you learn to refer to the man in the Oval Office respectfully, so someone outside of your coterie might acutally take your words as something other than fanatical hate-speech. Then you can do some research. Maybe come up with a new fact or figure to show that, hey, the president really is doing bad things to his country. There really are reasons to criticize him other than that you just don't like the guy or the people who voted for him.

When the Democrats take back at least one house of the legistature next year, it'll be because the Republican leadership has used their overwhelming power to overreach time and time again, and that the results have rarely been positive, and have at times been legitimately disastrous. I say this to preempt any celebrating by the left that any victories in the midterms, or subsequently in 2008, will be anything other than a vote of no confidence on those already in power.

The fact is, the way that Mr. Bush took the White House and his GOP colleagues took the legislature, was by appealing to our base nature. "You're scared? Vote for me." "I'm just like you. Vote for me." That's exactly the level that Ms. Dowd and those like her on the left seem to be working at. I'm saying that's wrong. It might work to get a democratic senate next year, or even a democrat president in '08, but the same pendulum effect will swing power quickly back to the right unless those gains are built on a solid intellectual, political, and rhetorical foundation.

I firmly believe that we have the facts on our side. We have nothing less than the full force of reason in our corner. The only way that we can possibly lose in the long run is to follow Maureen Dowd and those like her into pettiness and partisan intolerance.

Posted by matt at 09:08 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 08, 2005

There can be only one?

This guy's DVD copy of Highlander has nickel-sized holes worn through it from overviewing.

Posted by matt at 02:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Look on the sunny side

Those of you who didn't read the Times Magazine's cover story on end-of-life and palliative care yesterday, please do so. Not only is it informative and thought-provoking (even if the voice it's written in is a little inconsistent throughout), but my office is in it!

(ed. note: For those of you who weren't around this blog during the Schiavo controversy, I don't mention my employer or office by name so there's no search engine link.)

That's all I've got time to talk about right now. I'm taking a week off starting tomorrow, so I'll finally be able write a bunch of things that I've had on the back burner for a while, so expect big things in the near future. Today, just expect me to look tired and concerned.

Posted by matt at 09:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 04, 2005

Kudos to the NYT

Today is a great day for the NYT. I want very much to congratulate them on running an obituary for Dame Cicely Saunders, who started the modern hospice movement, and really pioneered the field of palliative care.

Also, the Op-Ed by the always insightful Jim Wallis is well worth reading.

More big-time anti-kudos go to the president for his decision to reassert that we're fighting a "war on terror" instead of a "global struggle against violent extremism." A handy tip: when you find yourself out-hawking Donald Rumsfeld (who has been very careful lately to say GSAVE instead of using the war rubric), it's time to come back from the precipice. Truth be told, I'm glad Bush is falling back on all of his greatest hits ('war on terror,' 'no timetable for withdrawl,' etc.). I was starting to worry that his recent even-temper would let people forget what a disaster his presidency has been by the time the midterms roll around next year. It's very considerate of him to step back up and poison the well for the Republicans who actually still have to get elected.

Posted by matt at 09:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 03, 2005

Yes, I will be a monkey's uncle, thank you.

Since last November, as a good political moderate, I've tried to extend numerous rhetorical olive branches to the Bush administration. I'm done with that now.

Up to this point in his second term, the president has made great and admirable progress, not just in rebuilding the diplomatic relationships that were destroyed by the unilateralism of his first term, but even in making concessions to quell the rancor of his democratic opponents in Congress. Now with the simple act of appointing John Bolton as US ambassador to the UN during the Senate recess, he's managed to undo all of that. It's hard to imagine one action that could so thoroughly undermine Bush's stature both at home and abroad. If any good will come of this, it'll only be that Bolton won't be able to cause any more damage in the State Department. Indeed, since he was plucked from his position there, we've seen the beginning of the end of the diplomatic freeze-out by North Korea (not that it'll do much good, but that's a whole other thing).

I mean, that really sucks, but that's not even the most infuriating thing the president has done this week. That dubious honor goes to his coming out in support of teaching Intelligent Design in schools. Kudos to whoever thought of the ID rubric as a way to make creationism not sound like creationism so people could get on board without sounding like dogmatic zealots, but rest assured that a zealot is a zealot is a zealot, no matter how soft spoken. The president should be ashamed to count himself in their number.

It's hard to imagine what's the worst thing about ID "theory." Is it the fact that it's unscientific? Could be. Is it that it's false? Maybe.

How about the fact that it's a total intellectual cop-out? People have been trying to pass off this kind of lazy thinking as a legitimate objection to evolution by selection since Darwin's time. Back then they said it was the eye that was supposed to be so complex ("irreducibly complex" in the contemporary parlance) that it must have been designed by God. Now the examples they give are of things that you can only see through microscopes. The technology may've been updated, but the argument hasn't, and it's as bogus as it ever was. Just because you can't figure out how something evolved the way it did, doesn't mean that nobody can or will, and it certainly doesn't mean that God had a hand in it--even if nobody ever figures out how it's supposed to work.

Take for instance the mechanisms of protein synthesis. I think it's incredible that such a perfect machine was able to arise from base chemicals a few trillion years ago. When I say it's "incredible" I mean that I think it's awe-inspiring--not that it's literally in-credible!

Say nobody ever proves Goldbach's Conjecture. Does that mean that every time a number greater than 2 turns out to be the sum of three primes, that God intervened to make it so? I'll bet you a coke that it doesn't.

Obviously that's a slight disanalogy since the standard of proof in math is different than in other sciences, particularly biological sciences. A scientific theory is confirmed by its instances, and disconfirmed by recalicitrant phenomena. Given that, even if nobody ever figures out how a particular biochemical process or structure was selected for out of a set of possible mutations, you have to show that it's impossible for that process or structure to come about in that way if you want to use it as evidence against evolutionary theory. What you don't get to do is assume that it got to be that way because of the Finger of God, and then reason circularly that it disproves anything. I shouldn't have to tell anyone that when your premise and conclusion are the same thing, you haven't achieved much at all.

The fact is that, concerning evidentiary hurdles and standards of proof, there is a bona fide mass of evidence that supports evolution by something like natural selection, and literally no evidence that undermines it.

Unanswered questions don't disprove a damn thing. Quantum mechanics and general relativity are both doing fine despite the fact that we have no idea how they fit together.

It occurs to me that I haven't even mentioned the argument that teaching ID in public schools would violate the establishment clause. I guess that's mostly because it bothers me considerably more that the president wants kids to learn something so egregiously unscientific than it does that teaching it to them would be unconstitutional (which it would be).

Obviously this discussion has been going on in some form or another since Darwin's time, but with the occasional exception (i.e. the Scopes trial), it's always on the fringe. By throwing his hat in the ring, Mr. Bush has pulled this subject right into the political mainstream. If it were at all possible to use this opportunity to kill the subject once and for all, I'd welcome the president's intervention. However, I don't see that happening. As such, I can't help but express my deepest disappointment that in addition to making it impossible for chlidren to achieve the already depressingly low educational goals we've set for them, the president now wants to eliminate those goals altogether by claiming that the high watermark of human inquiry was, in fact, created by the Noachian flood.

Posted by matt at 09:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 22, 2005

I love the smell of newsprint in the morning

Man oh man. It's a great time to be a newshound. Here are some brief thoughts on a few of the huge things going on right now:

On John Roberts: I'd totally love to have him and his wife over for dinner, but I'm still not sure I want him on the Supreme Court (possibly) for the next 40 years. Even if it was someone I was sure I liked, I still wouldn't want to have a Bush appointee with that kind of longevity. He doesn't deserve a legacy like that.

On China's revaluation of the renminbi: It's a good first step, and hopefully it will shut Chuck Schumer and his protectionist colleagues up for a while. Still, since China has opened the monetary door a crack, they need to throw it way the eff open so as to avoid a bubble from an inflow of speculative foreign currency. Basically, China is at a precipice where they can choose to either fall into a debt crisis or to assume the responsibilities of a world economic leader.

What this is going to mean for the US is further monetary tightening. Markets had thought that the overnight rate would top off at 4.25% in November, but since China no longer needs to prop up the dollar, a sell-off of their US debt holdings and currency reserves is likely (which I said a while ago), and as China goes, so does the rest of Asia, as Malaysia showed when they abandoned their peg yesterday.

Whatever happens, the bottom is going to fall out from underneath the US bond market, and is unlikely to gain any ground in the forseeable future. Expect equity to soundly outpace debt in the US until something really cataclysmic happens.

Personally, I think a better reform move for Chinese currency would've been to take Mao's picture off of it.

On Corporate Tax: John Kerry (you remember him) has an opinion piece in today's FT (paid subscription required) in which he argues that the answer to America's gloablization blues is to remove tax incentives for companies to send jobs abroad, and to extend incentives and remove disincentives for them to repatriate their earnings. He's right as far as he goes (and should go farther in the latter case), but he misses the point on what the problem will be for the US in the global economy of tomorrow. The main problem isn't corporate tax structure (although that could be a huge part of a necessary short-term band-aid that would also dramatically increase tax revenue), the problem is education. Until we get serious about closing the massive education gaps in this country, then we're hurling ourselves towards global serfhood. We can keep teaching our kids just enough to be able to drive a forklift or assemble a chassis, but those jobs are going, going, gone, and they're never coming back (no matter how many tariffs we want to impose on China, or India, or Venezuela...). Unless we can get our kids to start performing in math, science, and technology, it's going to be a long, miserable century.

On The Sox!: Despite the emotional rollercoaster that is Curt Schilling's comeback so far, Boston is 1/3 of the way to showing the undisputed AL Central leaders who the real Sox are.

Okay, that was a mouthful. I promise I have fun things to talk about, too, but there's a lot going on right now, and it needed to be mentioned.

Posted by matt at 09:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 21, 2005

I leave you alone for an hour, and what do you do?

Wow. A lot happened while I was underground from my commute this morning: There were three more bombing 'incidents' on London's tube, and news broke that China announced a 2.1% revaluation of the renminbi. That's an action-packed 45 minutes.

Posted by matt at 09:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 19, 2005

Why yes, I am surprised. What's it to you?

Well, I'm sorry to say that all of the credit that I had been giving the president regarding his likely SCOTUS nomination(s) was misplaced. Maybe John Roberts is a gift from the president to his base, or maybe the idea is to create a nomination fight to take the heat off of the White House staff.

I guess I'd be able to summon more indignation over this if I wasn't so blissfully engrossed in Shark Week.

Posted by matt at 09:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 18, 2005

Schadenfreude, Inc.

The hits just keep on coming for the Bush administration with Scooter Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, now being implicated in the leak scandal.

As much as I'd like to kick up my heels in celebration over this, there's reason to be a little more guarded. Now that someone lower on the administration's totem pole has been thrown into the mix, it's possible that he'll be served up to prosecutors as a scapegoat in an attempt to take the heat off of Karl Rove.

On the one hand, I'd be happy to see Libby go, since he's one of the only actual avowed neoconservatives in the White House (contrary to popular belief, most of Bush's staff are more foreign policy realist than neocon--although Charles Krauthammer says they're a little of both).

On the other hand, sacrificing him to save Rove would be a cheap way out of this for the administration, since despite the mealy-mouthed defense that Ken Mehlman (the RNC chair) and other Republicans are offering, Rove's actions seem now to have violated the conditions for his security clearance. On Meet the Press yesterday, Mehlman maintained that the fact that Rove allegedly learned of Valerie Wilson's identity from a reporter is sufficient to exhonorate him. Unfortunately for the administration, it doesn't matter how Rove got the information. If he subsequently gave that information to another reporter without its having been declassifed, then it was illegal. He could've read it in his tea leaves, but it still would've been illegal to tell Matt Cooper about it.

Independently of whether or not anybody broke the law, the fact that Rove might not have been the only source could lend support to the theory that the leak was designed by the White House to discredit Joseph Wilson. So while we're a long way from closure in the investigation, the view from here doesn't look great for the Bush administration. I guess I don't care that much whether the fallout is legal or political, as long as Rove, Libby, and everyone else involved is held accountable.

Posted by matt at 11:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 12, 2005

Pick up the phone!

Hey, real quick: Harry Reid is leading a "conference call" today at 4:30 to talk about this morning's breakfast discussion with the president concerning Supreme Court nominees. Sign up here if you want to be on it.

Posted by matt at 01:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Stuck in the middle

I'm pretty sure that I've mentioned before how much I like Matt Miller, he of The 2% Solution, the clarion call of the dynamic, sensible political center. What I may not have mentioned is how awesome his radio show, Left, Right, and Center is. The show features commentary on the issues of the day by Bob Scheer (Left) and Tony Blankley (Right), moderated by Miller (who holds down the center). Arianna Huffington is also on the panel, and she represents what Miller calls "the fourth dimension of political time and space," which I think is a nice way of saying that she's an obnoxious dilettante who's never managed to justify to anyone why they should pay attention to a single goddam thing she says (Vot iz zee Huffington Post? Hell if I know, but anything involving Deepak Chopra is suspect at best).

At any rate, it's worth checking out if only to hear Tony Blankley not be a dick--or at least just be dick who knows how to use his indoor voice.

The best news is that the show is available as a podcast, which will go nicely with the new update of iTunes you just downloaded.

Posted by matt at 11:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 11, 2005

Karl Rove is going down

Good morning, everyone. It's time for a healthy breakfast: what was the worst kept secret in Washington as of Friday afternoon, thanks to Larry O'Donnell, is now headline effing news. KR actually outed Valerie Plame, presumably to punish her husband for criticizing US policy in Iraq.

If I were him, I'd get Michael Jackson's lawyers on the phone tout de suite.

Posted by matt at 09:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 07, 2005

Out of respect, I will not make a pun based on things her name rhymes with

Note: I actually wrote this yesterday, but kind of forgot to publish it. Hrm.

So Sarah Vowell is the newest addition to the parade of guest contributors who have temporarily taken Maureen "Why be informed when you can be catty?" Dowd's space on NYT's op-ed page. This shouldn't come as a shock to anybody, but I think that a pretty stupid idea. Now, don't get me wrong here, I like Sarah Vowell a whole lot. In fact, I've liked most of the people who've been in that spot since Dowd left to work on her next worthless book (I especially liked that one guy). And it's certainly the case that all of the op-ed temps are infinitely preferable to the full-time owner of that column. My beef is just that the NYT has this chance to turn their op-ed page into a forum for new and challenging ideas instead of the usual lefty cheerleading offset by David Brooks's pseudo-provocatuer sniggering. Do I think they should get another legitimately right-leaning voice over there? Maybe, but that's not the only answer, as Matt Miller so expertly proved.

No, when you get right down to it, the main problem with the NYT's op-ed page is exactly the problem with the American left: namely, a complete lack of actionable ideas. All we ever get from Tom Friedman or Paul Krugman (both of whom I respect, and whose columns I enjoy) is a statement of what's wrong with whatever it is they're talking about. While it's important to know what the problems are with, say, our policy in Iraq or healthcare funding, what's missing from these columns, and from the debate in general, are progressive solutions. If Sarah Vowell is going to offer some, then bully. But I somehow doubt that that's why she's there.

By the by, if you're so inclined, you should pick up today's FT. It has a fantastic piece by Martin Wolf wherein he asseses the merits of both sides of the African aid debate. He is much smarter than me.

Posted by matt at 10:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 01, 2005

Why Bob Geldof is an idiot
--or--
If everyone is going to talk about this, let's talk about it.

Eight of the most powerful men in the world are about to get together for a couple days of missing the point. At the same time, Bob Geldof has set up 9 massive concerts all over the world where people will get together in solidarity to also collectively miss the point.

Look, I appreciate the impulse to say "hey you G8 guys, the eyes of the world are on you, so you'd better do what we want," but if you're going to do that, you need to have a better idea of what you're asking for. The fact is that throwing more aid money at developing African countries is only going to make things worse.

For one thing, economists have known for a long time of an effect known as "Dutch disease" where aid flowing into a country causes wages to rise, which begets inflation, which hurts exports, thus curbing growth and further depressing the local economy.

Further, recent studies (some as recent as this week) by IMF economists suggest that increasing aid does not necessarily increase growth. There's more work that needs to be done in this area in order to disentangle the effects of humanitarian aid (such as disaster relief, which isn't supposed to help economic growth) and development aid (which is supposed to foster growth), so we can be clear on what exactly the studies are saying. Nonetheless, the discussion around the recent work raises two important points.

First of all, it doesn't matter how much money you throw into a economic/political vacuum. Most of the countries at the forefront of the development agenda simply don't have the economic infrastracture to make effective use of the money that's pouring in now, so why should anybody think that more money is the answer? At the same time, since many of these countries lack stable governments, we shouldn't be thinking that such infrastructure is forthcoming. This is what the G8 leaders need to address. Their development aid is going to be useless without economic infrastructure that can effectively mobilize cash and captial, and there's no way to get those mechanisms in place unless there is some assurance of political stability. Stable governments also have the benefit of being able to attract direct foreign investment which takes the development burden off of governments to deliver aid (but we're a long way off from that).

If the Gleneagles gang wants to get serious about development, the answer simply isn't more aid. The best thing that large economies can do to help smaller ones is to stop the shameless subsidizing of their own local producers. It'll be impossible for anybody who we're ostensibly trying to help with aid money to actually develop their own economies if our markets are de facto closed to them due to subsidies that keep prices on domestically produced goods artificially low. We thereby price out foreign competitors, including some of the resource-rich but economically devastated nations we're supposed to be helping with our aid money.

Of course, doing anything remotely like that is political suicide, since Angolans don't vote in US or UK general elections, but these are the kinds of changes that must be made in order to stop throwing good money after bad (well-intentioned) in Africa and elsewhere.

If you want to put political pressure on these guys to do the right thing, you'd better know what the right thing is before you ask for Beyonce to help. Push hard, but push in the right place.

Slight clarification: In addition to the things that Geldof has campaigned for that are stupid and pointless, he has also pushed for debt forgiveness for African countries. That's not stupid or pointless.

Posted by matt at 10:25 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 23, 2005

Unconventional Wisdom (Updated)

I swear to god, I'm not making this up. In an interview on CNN just now, Richard Branson unveiled his plan to end malaria throughout Africa: we need to wrap each and every person in their own mosquito net. Naturally, that net must be "impregnated" with some sort of mosquito-killing chemical.

Also on CNN this morning, I learned that one of the lessons of the whole ordeal with that missing Cub Scout in Utah is that children should be encouraged to talk to strangers. When I think of all of the awesome candy I missed out on when I was a kid... aww dammit.

Lastly, since Bill Hemmer seems to be on vacation, Miles O'Brien is co-anchoring American Morning with Soledad O'Brien. Heh, they're both named 'O'Brien.' Cute, right? Somebody thought so, and they decided that it would be a good idea to put the anchors' names on the screen underneath them like this:

      Miles O'Brien Soledad

The thing I like about that is that it's not at all creepy. It reminds me of those three-faced guys from the Planet of the Sharktacons in Transformers: The Movie. "We are Miles O'Brien Soledad. Stand before us and be judged." "Guilty. Guilty. In-no-cent."

Update: In this entry's comments, "Young" Jon Dixon tells us the terrifying truth behind Bill Hemmer's absence.

Posted by matt at 08:27 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

June 20, 2005

Why the Times Kind of Blows

Busy as I've been all effing day, I've been stewing on this since the paper came this morning:

In an editorial entitled "Missing the Big Picture in Brussels," the Times demonstrates just how poor their own coverage of the current crises (those concerning the constitution and the budget) in Europe has been. The writer of this piece claims that, by using the current summit to debate the British refund, EU leaders are neglecting to address the more pressing problems facing the Union.

What problems does the Times have in mind?

Instead of squabbling about the budget, the leaders should have been talking about, for one thing, the huge amount the E.U. spends on agricultural subsidies.

Not a bad idea, actually. If only some European leader, say Tony Blair, were to take Jacques Chirac to task over the CAP subsidies to France. Why, one supposes that Blair might even do this by demanding either that the UK, which receives virtually no agricultural subsidies, get a bigger refund from the EU, or that France should take a cut in the outrageous subsidies that it receives. Can you even imagine?

The writer also takes the EU leaders to task for not endeavoring to settle the larger crisis of identity that has rocked the EU since the French and Dutch rejections of the constitutional treaty. Specifically, s/he mentions the split between those countries that favor the "social" model and those that view the EU's future as an integrated and expanding free-trade zone.

Perhaps on this score too, the Times' writer should look at what's actually going on in Brussels. If one looks at where the battle lines are in the refund debate, with the UK on one side, and France & Germany on the other, it seems less obvious that the refund is all that's at stake in the this debate.

Of course, if the writer of this piece only got her/his news from the paper by which s/he is employed, then s/he may be forgiven for her total ignorance of anything that's gone on in Europe so far this year (save for anything involving a visit by a US governmental offical, or Bono).

The way I see it, there is going to be no progress on the budget or on a constitution while Chirac and Schroeder are helming their ships of state. Let's talk again when they've been replaced by Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel (respectively).

Seriously though, the Times really needs to get their act together on Europe.

On the bright side, they had an article about a possible new Billy Jack movie. I really hope everyone knows how cool that would be.

Posted by matt at 03:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 15, 2005

I Am Officially Creeped Out

It's not like I spend a lot of time imagining what it would be like to have a subarachnoid hemmorhage, but if I did, I'd be willing to bet that it feels a lot like I felt when I went on the Mission Space ride at Disney's Epcot center (I was in Orlando recently for work. Remember?).

As it happens, such thinking might not be too great a flight of fancy, as a four year-old boy died on the ride on Monday.

That officially gives me the jibblies. Still, one has to wonder why the boy's mother let him go on the ride without testing it out first. Presumably he had some sort of congenital defect which rendered him especially vulnerable to the 2Gs to which riders are subjected.

Still, before I went on the thing, I'd never seen so many warnings outside of an amusement ride. I totally thought it was hokum, but it turns out it's the real deal. Spooky.

Posted by matt at 09:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 14, 2005

...And That's Why I Turned to a Life of High Finance

I meant to share this with you guys yesterday, and then I didn't. Anyway, this is from the letters page of yesterday's Financial Times:

From Mr. Simon Walker
  When I was growing up, my father insisted on wrapping our tortoise, Alexander, in the Financial Times for his five-month hibernation.
  He insisted that the pink paper provided a warmer environment over the winter months.
  I do not know if this is true.
  One year, however, we could not find an FT and wrapped Alexander in The Times.
  Although he eventually woke up, he disappeared shortly afterwards and was never seen again.
    Simon Walker
    London W6 7BD, UK

Posted by matt at 04:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 06, 2005

Radio Free Bradley

Great news for those of you with a Sirius satellite radio and a political conscience: Bill Bradley's radio program, American Voices, premiered yesterday. The bad news, however, is that it doesn't look like he's planning on talking about politics (or really anything else that matters very much). The show's subtitle, "Bill Bradley speaks with extraordinary Americans," and the description of yesterday's guest line-up don't exactly fill me with hope that this show will be a launching pad for another presidental bid.

Speaking of which, Al Gore can bite me so hard. He's not half the man, the politician, or the power forward that Bill Bradley is.

The other bad news is that Sirius doesn't seem to be archiving Bradley's past shows for downloading or podcasting. It's almost like they're running some sort of paid subscription service...

Anyway, I know a certain someone about whom I've been (intellectually) swooning lately who does archive his broadcasts.

Posted by matt at 01:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 24, 2005

The Slow Descent into Crackpot-ism

What's the surest sign that you're losing your grip on reason? When you start writing letters to the editor, of course! From the inside, it looks to you like you can't keep silent on your personal crusade anymore, and just have to say something for the good of the people/country/universe. Make no mistake, however, you're just nuts.

It's with that in mind, and great regret in my heart, that I admit that I have indeed heeded the siren's song of addle-brained letter writing:

To: letters@nytimes.com
CC: liberties@nytimes.com, mattmiller@nytimes.com

Subject: Miller v. Dowd

To the Editor:

Matt Miller's columns are a welcome addition to your publication's
Op-Ed page. His insights into the manifold complexities of cross-party
debate have been sorely needed in the Times and by the nation as a
whole.

Mr. Miller's contributions are made all the more praiseworthy given
the fact that they appear in the same space that Maureen Dowd has
consistently turned into little more than a gossip column--Page Six's
home on the Times's Opinion page. To be sure, a liberal peppering of
her column with "W"s does not a political opinion make.

Whereas Ms. Dowd consistently keeps debate at the level of sandbox
name-calling, Mr. Miller engages difficult ideas with clarity and wit,
and challenges readers of all partisan stripes to critically examine
their political prejudices.

For a publication with a responsibility to raise the level of public
debate, there is but one way to proceed: give Matt Miller a permanent
home on the Op-Ed page, and send Maureen Dowd to the Style section.

Sincerely,
Matthew W. Henry

So yeah. I'm officially nuts now. If anybody could spare some change, I need to build an aluminum foil hat to keep the government from stealing my alpha waves.

Speaking of the Op-Ed page, though, go look at Niall Ferguson's piece today. Love him, hate him, or something intermediate, he's a Very Smart Man.

Posted by matt at 10:28 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 23, 2005

So Um, Yeah

Make no mistake, this was the worst case scenario.

Posted by matt at 11:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What to Care About This Week.

Heya, gang. I know you're all busy people, and don't necessarily have a lot of time to follow every little news item you see, so here are a couple of things that are worth speding a minute or two thinking about this week.

The Senate Filibuster
Yes, this is (or should be) obvious. I mention it only because the story has been somewhat protracted, and some people might be losing interest. Now's definitely the time to tune back in. We're probably going to see a vote on the rule change tomorrow.

Why is it important? God, where to begin? There are plenty of things at stake here:

One of the most important is that this whole saga, meaning the tenor of the debate thus far, as well as the result of tomorrow's likely vote, will set the stage for the battle over the next Supreme Court nominee (expected to happen this summer/early fall).

The most important reason is that the outcome of the vote could fundamentally change the character of American democracy. If the filibuster is disallowed, minority parties in this country will be pushed squarely into the margin. It's important to realize that, barring a re-establishment of the procedure, this marginalization will ever be thus. The Senate will be a simple extension of the House, and ours will be a purely winner-take-all democracy. Regardless of how one feels about Priscilla Owen, it behooves everyone to be mindful of the real potential causalty of this vote.

The French Referendum on the EU Constituition
On Saturday, the people of France are going to go to the polls to vote on whether or not they want to ratify the EU's constitutional treaty. If the vote goes the way opinion polls are showing that it will, France will reject the treaty.

Why is it important? France is one of the founding memebers of the EU, so its rejection of the treaty would mean a severe crisis for the Union, if not its imminent collapse (as would a Dutch 'No' when they vote on June 3). The trick in this vote, however, is that the anti-constitution campaign has made what should be a vote on the political unity of Europe into a vote of no confidence for President Chirac and Prime Minister Raffarin. So, if the French vote 'Non' this weekend, they'll be doing so for the wrong reasons.

What are the 'right' reasons to reject the treaty? Well, French Europhobes (rightly or wrongly) fear the following things:

• 'Ultra-liberal' 'Anglo-Saxon' free-market principles will cripple the French economy.


• EU labor laws will lead to 'Social Dumping.' That is, workers from countries with less stringent labor laws will take French jobs.


• The EU is becoming too non-European. Adding Turkey as a member (Turkey's formal accession talks are set to begin in October) is emblematic of the dissoultion of a Europe whose borders are based on culture and history.


• Voting 'Non' will provoke a 'salutary crisis' in the EU, which will allow France to negotiate a better deal in a future version of the treaty.

Those aren't great reasons (all but the third are baseless), but they're considerably better than the "'No' of the people" malarkey that's being peddled by some anti-treaty folks.

At any rate, the outcome of the vote will have huge implications well beyond France. For instance, much of the dollar's massive gains on the euro recently have to do with the collapse of the latter currency that will likely ensue should the EU disband. Also (and this entry has gone on long enough, so I'll not explain this), the Czech Republic needs a strong, unified Europe even though they're likely to reject the treaty, too.

That should keep you busy. Speaking of busy, though...

Posted by matt at 09:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 09, 2005

A Question for the Ages

A California couple were ticketed last month when one of their chickens escaped from its coop and impeded traffic by, yes, crossing the road.

As of yet, the chicken hasn't commented on its motives.

Posted by matt at 10:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 04, 2005

Getting Hit from All Sides

If you didn't already know this, Trent Lott is the very worst kind of Republican. That is to say, he genuinely and actively dislikes the economically disadvantaged. For once, however, that's actually working in favor of the Good Guys.

The president, who's still stumping for his plan to privatize (read: "dismantle") Social Security, was on Senator Lott's turf in Mississippi yesterday. The Senator used the opportunity to express his displeasure with the president's newest formulation of the plan, which would index benefits to wages for low-income workers and to prices, which generally rise more slowly than wages, for high-income workers, and would pretty much just fuck the middle class (but that's another topic for another day).

Lott said that he's "not overjoyed" with the new plan, since because it gives more money to the people who actually need it most, "it does begin to move it toward a welfare system." You can see his problem since it was during Senator Lott's tenure as majority leader that the Democratic Party laid down and died in order to let Republicans finally end the welfare system.

So the bad part of all this is that Trent Lott is really bad guy, but we knew that already so it's no real problem for us today. The good news is that the president's plan is being attacked from the left and now from the right as well. The upshot of this is that the centerpiece of the president's second term agenda, and a huge part of his party's credibility is about to get "Harry and Louise"d.

So, thank you Senator Lott for hating poor people so much.

Posted by matt at 01:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 03, 2005

Laura Bush > Elayne Boosler?

Yes. Laura Bush's routine at the White House Correspondents' dinner was funny. That was on Saturday night, and here it is Tuesday morning and it's still on the news. I don't want to seem like a news snob (even though I really am an insufferable snob about news and many, many other things), but aren't there better things for us to be thinking about this week? There's a general election in England in two days. I know Tony Blair has it locked up, but does everybody know what issues are at stake over there? How about the French referendum about the EU constitution? The EU is on the verge of collapse (as is the euro, for that matter). But forget all of that, because the president just got zinged!

More than anything else, I wonder why the First Lady got all the attention when Dick Cheney did a brilliantly bittersweet mime/clown performance that totally eclipsed Marcel Marceau (take that, frenchie) and Emmet Kelly.

Also, I really hate Maureen Dowd. She should have a botox accident.

Posted by matt at 10:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 19, 2005

Habemus Papum

So we have a Pope. The College of Cardinals elected John Ratzenberger, who is most famous for his role as Cliff Clavin on the popular sitcom, Cheers.  This is surprising, since Ratzenberger is not widely known to have been a Catholic Cardinal, or even an ordained priest. As they say, The Lord works in Mysterious Ways. In any event, we can only have faith in the church and trust that the newly minted Ponitff will grow into his role as the Vicar of Christ and lead us into a new era of spritual enlightenment.

Also, please let us use condoms.

Posted by matt at 01:01 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 05, 2005

Dawn of the Dork

The other day, I was walking through the West 4th St train station when something struck me. It was some guy in a big hurry to get to his train. But once I'd recovered, I noticed something weird about all of the ads I saw in the hallway to get to the stairs. There were ads for the new PSP handheld, tons of posters for the new horror films coming out, and also a poster for Sin City. Could it finally have come to pass, as Huey Lewis did prophesy 20 years ago, that it's hip to be square?

Look at the facts: Media types are talking about how the PSP is the new iPod. This year, there's a new Star Wars coming out, along with at least five (!) comic book adaptations, and more horror films than would be worth counting. Vin Diesel openly admits to playing Dungeons & Dragons. He and Bono both own video game companies. My parents know what 'blogging' is, and that Chris Matthews does it.

This isn't like the bullshit emo fetishization of nerdy trappings that percolated through hipster culture. Nobody is insisting on horn-rimmed glasses and cardigans this time around. This is something completely different. Instead of glorifying 'The Nerd' as an archetype (with the requisite ironic detachment), we're celebrating the very things the nerd holds sacred. Somehow, it's cool to play video games, read comic books, and recite Simpsons and Family Guy references at will. Nobody's trying to be a nerd anymore, we are nerds.

Posted by matt at 11:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 04, 2005

A Trend Devlops

Just one day after Bill Kristol got pied in Indiana, there was another food-attack on a conservative media figure when Pat Buchanan was assaulted with a heaping helping of salad dressing while giving a talk at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. Although there is no word yet on whether the dressing was Thousand Island or Creamy Italian, one thing is for certain: Pat Buchanan has never looked so delicious.

Now if only someone would launch a lasagna at Tony Blankley. Man, I hate that fucker.

Posted by matt at 11:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 31, 2005

Pie Meets Face. Let's Watch What Happens.

This is entirely too funny to let pass without comment. While giving a speech at Earlham College in Indiana, William Kristol, arch-conservative editor of the arch-conservative Weekly Standard, was hit in the face with a pie. To his credit, Kristol had a sense of humor about it, wiping the pie off and saying, "Just let me finish this point." No, pieface. Sit down.

Now that's what I call getting your just desserts... Yeah, that sucks. I am somebody's dad.

Posted by matt at 10:38 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 25, 2005

Editorial: Terri Schiavo, The Media, and Palliative Care

I should warn you right now: this post is going to be exactly no fun at all.

Like I said the other day, I want to stay out of this whole Terri Schiavo thing. Still I feel like somebody needs to point something out about how this stuff is being covered, specifically about who the media have picked to be their medical experts on this right-to-die stuff [Disclaimer: I'm not going to mention the experts being interviewed, or the institution with which they're affiliated, mostly so this doesn't show up in that institution's media tracking (some of which I'm currently doing)].

For some reason, media outlets are pursuing experts in the field of palliative medicine to speak on Terri Schiavo's condition. Whoever's idea that was (maybe David B. Caruso at the AP, who did the first such interview) made the wrong call. Palliative care has little if nothing to do with the issues in this case. In fact, if Terri had been in a good palliative care program from the beginning, it's entirely likely that the present issues would not have arisen. True, palliative care involves medical treatment at the end of a patient's life, but it also incorporates the counsel of social workers, clergy, and others to make sure that all parties involved in end-of-life care decisions can arrive at a mutually agreeable solution to the difficult problems such situations pose.

The emerging field of palliative care is poorly understood as it is. Even some doctors still feel that PC physicians are some kind of death dealers, and that transferring a patient to a PC program is effectively signing their death warrant. The present media situtation will only serve to make that worse. As a result, many more people than is necessary or morally justifiable will continue to live their last moments in needless pain and discomfort. I promise you that that isn't hyperbole. It's true, and it's deeply disturbing.

I admit that I'd love to point a partisan finger at conservatives and conservative media for the subtle but potentially devastating tarring and feathering that palliative care is getting. But the fact is, that's just not how it breaks down. In fact, while the New York TImes, CNN, and MSNBC always refer to the experts as professors of palliative medicine, only Fox News and New York Daily News refer to them only as professors of geriatrics and internal medicine. Also, one of the healthcare lobbying groups with which Bill Frist is associated has done a good deal of work in promoting the field of palliative care. Whether, in the case of Fox News, the omission is due to the network's estimation of their viewership's ability to understand the word "palliative," I'll suspend judgment.

All of this is just to say that I sincerely hope that nobody out there is influenced by the way in which palliative care is being portrayed in the media. To be sure, Terri Schiavo's condition has heated the blood of many of us on both sides of the issue. That said, we can't forget about the many other patients and families who benefit from having access to the right kinds of treatment and support in their final moments.
 

Posted by matt at 11:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Politics are bad, m'kay?

If you ever wanted to know why Paul O'Neill (the ousted Treasury Secretary--not to be confused with the former Yankees outfielder) is a fucking badass, you must read The Price of Loyalty. From said work, Ron Suskind describes a meeting between O'Neill and Alan Greenspan, early into the former's cabinet tenure. The two are concoting a plan to ease President Bush away from his fiscally profligate tax cuts:

And so it was hatched: a secret pact. What they were doing felt perfectly natural. Two men with nearly ninety years of experience in and around Washington, colluding to prevent an elected president--with virtually no experience in setting national economic policy--from acting in a way that they were convinced was ill-conceived. He'd thank them later.

Seriously. Badass.

Posted by matt at 10:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 23, 2005

What a Revolting Development

Well, I wasn't really going to use this space to weigh in on the whole Terri Schiavo thing, but now I think maybe I can't use this space for that. My boss (or maybe my boss's boss) is all over the news advocating Terri's right to die with dignity, and I'm going to be fielding calls all afternoon from panicky media-types.

So, it'd probably be wholly inappropriate for me to say that the actions by conservatives in the White House and on the Hill over the weekend are some of the most egregious attacks on the rule of law and basic prinicples of federalism in the history of our union. It'd also be out of line for me to point out that said actions defy all sense and logic by being both shameless and shameful at the very same time. As such, I won't say those things.

Posted by matt at 10:05 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

A Major Milestone

My how the time flies. Today is Richard Grieco's 40th birthday, and he doesn't look a day over 60. If you'd like, you can sign the virtual birthday card at one of the master thespian's surprisingly many fansites. In fact, I suggest you do. If you'll recall the passages in the Dead Sea Scrolls that described this event, it's on his 40th birthday that Grieco will reveal his true form, with leathery bat-like wings sprouting from his back and a halo of black flame surrounding him that will burn the flesh off of the unclean. Best to keep him happy on his special day.

Posted by matt at 09:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 09, 2005

Take That, Diplomacy!

Admittedly, this is well covered ground since it's the lead editorial in today's NYT and Financial Times (and probably several other papers), but I'd be remiss if I didn't say something about what a spectacularly bad idea it was to nominate John Bolton to replace John Danforth as US Ambassador to the UN.

So far, President Bush's second term has been full of a surprising number of good foreign policy moves: The seeds have been planted for an effective diplomatic solution to the problem of Iran's nuclear program (a multilateral one, no less!); The administration has rightly made efforts to stem the backslide into Soviet-style authoritarianism in Putin's Russia and a handful of former Soviet republics (Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, etc.); Pressure is being brought to bear on Beijing to soften the so-called 'One China' policy towards Taiwan; The diplomatic situation with North Korea is not nearly as bad as it could be, and the US is right to be using China as an intermediary.

Granted, many of these nascent successes are the result of the administration having painted itself into a corner on many of these fronts during Bush 43.1, but even recognizing that fact is a huge step away from the neoconservative heyday of the first term.

Given all of that, I can't for the life of me imagine what would make the president choose one of the most vocal exponents of US unipolarity to be the nation's envoy to the primary forum for global diplomacy. John Bolton has made it abundantly clear that the only factors that should weigh on foreign policy decisions are US interests. For instance, what should be done about the Taiwan Strait? Tell China to back off! Sure, they'll invade Taiwan, but they won't really attack us despite their avowal that support for a sovereign government in Taipei would be seen as an act of war. Honestly, if there were one decision that could, in one stroke, undermine all forward diplomatic movement since January, it would be giving Bolton this job.

The explicit reasoning for the decision is that putting such an outspoken critic of the UN straight, as it were, into the belly of the beast, will spur broad reforms in an agency the US sees as thoroughly corrupt. Maybe it will. Even so, the current administration, at its most conciliatory, has still made it quite clear that it has no use for the UN. So, isn't it in the president's interests to see the organization fall apart under the weight of scandal after scandal? For just this reason, I'm left a little cold by the suggestion that the US is suddenly interested in reform.

Just so nobody can say I'm just criticizing without offering an alternative, here are two individuals I'd be happy to see fill Danforth's empty chair (at least one of whom would enjoy strong bipartisan support): Brent Scowcroft and Bill Clinton. The latter, while he might be a tough sell for confirmation, has a long track record of fostering diplomacy. He would be wildly popular within the UN, and would thus be the perfect "catch more flies with honey" weapon for advancing US interests. Scowcroft clearly has the policy chops, as well as the conservative cred, having been National Security Adviser to Bush 41. In addition, he is committed, not just to multilateral diplomacy, but to the UN as the main venue for such diplomacy. Also, I guarantee that he'd sail through the confirmation process.

The worst kind of disaster is the kind that could be completely avoided. The fallout from appointing John Bolton as our ambassador to the United Nations is exactly that kind of disaster. When there are clearly much better candidates, moving forward on this would be, at best, an indication of blatant disregard for diplomacy. At worst, it's reckless endagerment of America's national security.

Posted by matt at 10:06 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack