Month: July 2008

by Chris Bodenner
"It sure is nice having a little more time on my hands, and I’d love to spend some of it with you. Would you like to join me for dinner?  [We can] talk about whatever you’d like" – Hillary Clinton, in a fundraising email sent today.  (She, ya know, just wants to continue the conversation.)

(And this part would surely make Andrew’s heart skip a beat: "My staff has been calling this my ‘retirement dinner’ — not because I’m retiring, of course, but because we’re working on retiring the debt we owe to small vendors all over the country.")

By Patrick Appel
A reader writes:

The fallacy of the McCain position as well as the Bush position is that "conditions on the ground" will dictate both strategy and tactics going forward in Iraq. However, the one thing that certainly may be said about this war is that conditions on the ground have had little impact on our policy toward Iraq.  Conditions on the ground did not slow the drive for invasion, it did not change how the war was waged, they — seemingly — had little to do with the implementation of the surge.  Arguably, domestic politics and NeoCon ideology has always had more influence.  The surge itself became the tactic of choice because Bush could no longer ignore the disaster that he had created AND Congress was slipping away from his control.

Now, defining the position as one of both patriotic and strategic superiority, we hear brave words about how we may withdraw if "conditions on the ground" permit. But McCain, in his historic embrace of the totality of the Bush policy (he has never rejected it in spite of the emergence of facts disproving the case for war), has never been swayed by conditions on the ground in his policy pronouncements as well as his tactical and strategic suggestions. "Conditions on the ground" is this year’s "stay the course" it is a meaningless phrase for all intents and purposes because it is devoid of a definition of what constitutes "victory" as it is empty of a realistic vision of what has happened in Iraq and where Iraq and the region is heading.

By Patrick Appel

Hertzberg on Obama’s trip:

There has been much discussion of whether it will prove politically advantageous for Obama to have addressed a mile-long crowd of two hundred thousand happy Berliners in the golden early-evening sunlight. Berliners are Germans, and Germans are foreigners, and since well before John Kerry was demonized for knowing how to speak French it has been axiomatic that heartland Americans don’t like foreigners piping up about our elections, however much brainland Americans may disagree. Obama gained nothing in the polls during his nearly flawless, arguably triumphant grand tour. Still, after seven years during which, even among our closest allies, contempt for Bush bled into resentment of the country that returned him to office, one would have to be an awful grouch not to be gratified by the sight of a sea of delighted Europeans waving American flags instead of burning them and cheering an American politician instead of demonstrating against one.

By Patrick Appel
Rep. Louis Gohmert [R-TX] just introduced H.R. 6615. The summary:

To provide for the transport of the enemy combatants detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to Washington, D.C., where the United States Supreme Court will be able to more effectively micromanage the detainees by holding them on the Supreme Court grounds, and for other purposes.

Here’s some of the bill’s text:

If either the Secretary of Defense or any justice of the Supreme Court refuses to carry out their duties under this Act, then their respective department or court shall receive funding for the next fiscal year at half the level of funding appropriated for the current fiscal year, or until such time as the Supreme Court no longer desires to micromanage the prisoners who have sworn to destroy our way of life.

Words fail.

By Patrick Appel
Mark Penn is still slicing and dicing demographics. His new insight: "in the relentless quest to find the soccer moms of this election, perhaps the answer will be found in the ‘active granny’ vote."

By Patrick Appel
Bruce Bastian pledges $1 million to stop prop 8.

By Patrick Appel

Ben McGrath reports on the life of gay solider Alan Rogers.

After Rogers’s death, it emerged that there were a number of people who considered him to be their closest friend, and who felt that they were in a position to discern how he would have wished to be remembered. Their differing notions may have said more about the richness of Rogers’s friendships than about his beliefs. Nearly everyone, in recalling Rogers, talked about his great strength as a listener—his habit of drawing people out and making them feel as though their best selves had been understood. Only in retrospect did they realize that he never revealed much of himself.

Andrew wrote about Rogers here and here.

by Chris Bodenner
"I am using the computer more and more every day," – McCain, defending his tech savvy to campaign donors yesterday (at a luxury hotel in San Francisco, mind you).

By Patrick Appel
Marc has the latest. He says Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, Gov. Tim Kaine,  and Sen. Evan Bayh are under serious consideration and that Biden is also under consideration but not experiencing the same level of vetting. Marc’s analysis:

Sebelius and Kaine are both governing choices, not campaign choices. They’re not going to match Obama’s enthusiasm levels; they’re not going to do all that well at the VP debates; they’re not even going to solve political problems (even Kaine).  But they are solid; they are centrist-in-style; they are Washington outsiders; they know how to balance budgets and deal with Republicans. As an historical analogy, think Clinton’s choice of Gore.

Choosing Biden or Bayh would put in the White House strong and knowledgeable legislators who would be expected to do heavy lifting with allies and adversaries. both would do well at the debates; Biden is flashy and might upstage Obama, but he’d be the best sheer campaigner and his selection would bring a jolt of enthusiasm to the Democratic ticket (as if it needed more).  The downside here is the same as the upside: the focus will be on the ticket and not on Obama, per se.  Bayh and Biden would call attention to Obama’s manifest lack of engagement with American foreign policy. And Biden, in particular, would face a prolonged period of press recapitulation. (And could Obama trust him to keep his mouth shut?)

By Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

It never fails to impress me the fact that people see a journal article and then turn their critical reasoning skills off. Looking through the actual paper in question, it’ll be figure 1 that’s giving the headliner quote of 86% fat by 2030. Except that this is wrong on two fronts.

First, the 86% is actually for obese *plus* overweight. The actual obese projection is only 50% by 2030. OK, somewhat nit-picky, but I expect precision on a blog at the Atlantic.

Now the kicker: these are *linear* extrapolations, taken out well beyond where they actually tell us anything. The tell-tale hint? Take those projections out another 15 years and they say the overweight plus obesity fraction will be 100% before 2045. Yes, that’s right. Not a single healthy person left alive in the US. Marathon runners? Triathletes? Starving supermodels? Richard Simmons? All of them obese. Presumably from the fresh vegetable blight of 2040, forcing every last one of us to subsist entirely on Chicken McNuggets and Spam.

Oh, and that trend they’re talking about is extrapolated from 3 data points. Sure, it’s suggestive, but I wouldn’t scream bloody murder from these stats.

What’s particularly galling is that this is appearing in the *epidemiology* section of the journal, since epidemiologists have very nice models and methodologies for dealing with saturating disease spread.

Yes. Chalk this one up there with, "According to current trends, housing prices will keep rising, allowing us to take on LOADS of bad debt!"

(gets off soap box)