Month: July 2008

By Patrick Appel
James Pethokoukis cites a study by Macroeconomic Advisers:

The Macroeconomic Advisers, LLC (MA) Presidential election model predicts that Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama will win 54.8 percent of the two-party popular vote and Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain will receive 45.2 percent in the November election, given economic conditions expected through the fall…. The Presidential election model relies upon four political factors—candidate of the incumbent party, approval rating of the incumbent candidate (if running), party, and incumbent party’s term in office—and three economic factors—real income growth, the unemployment rate, and the change in energy prices. Together, these seven factors predict the share of the two-party popular vote garnered by the incumbent party. This model has correctly predicted the winning party 12 out of 14 times in our sample, and predicted the popular vote better than the original model developed by Ray Fair…. According to this model, an expected 47% increase in the price of oil (WTI) in the three quarters leading up to the election would reduce Senator McCain’s vote tally by 2.9 percentage points, while weak real disposable personal income growth over the same period would reduce it by 3.3 percentage points.

By Patrick Appel
Wiegel chuckles at anti-Obama conspiracy theorists who dug up third party evidence of Obama’s birth and thereby disproved their own theories. Even Ed Morrissey has had enough:

Unless someone wants to argue that the Advertiser [which ran a birth announcement] decided to participate in a conspiracy at Obama’s birth in 1961 to provide false citizenship on the off-chance that an infant from a union of a Kenyan father and a teenage mother would run for President, then I’d say the “mystery” is over.

by Chris Bodenner
Yesterday, for the first time in 15 years, Congress held a hearing  on "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell." Time revisits the debate:

Recently, conservatives have made the argument that if Americans like Stephen were allowed to serve openly, young heterosexuals from conservative families would stop enlisting. … But the Zogby poll has an answer to this: only 2% of respondents said they would not have joined the military if gays were allowed to serve openly. That translates to a loss of about 4,000 service members per year — the same number of gays and lesbians who decline to re-enlist because of "Don’t ask, don’t tell" or who are discharged under the policy. That calculation means keeping or repealing "Don’t ask, don’t tell" would be a wash in terms of numbers. It forces a question we have postponed for 15 years: Do we want a military where Americans are not forced to lie about their most important emotional bonds?

by hilzoy

John McCain tried to explain his claim that the surge, which was announced in January 2007, began the Anbar Awakening, which began in the summer of 2006. Here’s video:

Here’s my transcription of the relevant part (it begins at about 2:40):

“McCain: First of all, a surge is really a counterinsurgency strategy, and it’s made up of a number of components. And this counterinsurgency was initiated to some degree by Colonel McFarland in Anbar province relatively on his own. When I visited with him in December of 2006, he had already initiated that strategy in Ramadi by going in and clearing and holding in certain places. That is a counterinsurgency. And he told me at that time that he believed that that strategy, which is, quote, the surge, part of the surge, would be successful. So then, of course, it was very clear that we needed additional troops in order to carry out this counterinsurgency.

Prior to that, they had been going into places, killing people or not killing people, and then withdrawing. And the new counterinsurgency — surge — entailed clearing and holding, which Colonel McFarland had already started doing. And then of course later on there were additional troops, and General Petraeus has said that the surge would not have worked and the Anbar Awakening would not have taken place successfully if they hadn’t had an increase in the number of troops. So I’m not sure, frankly, that people really understand that a surge is part of a counterinsurgency strategy, which means going in, clearing, holding, building a better life, providing services to the people, and then clearly a part of that, an important part of it, was additional troops to help ensure the safety of the sheikhs, to regain control of Ramadi, which was a very bloody fight, and then the surge continued to succeed, and that counterinsurgency.

Q: So when you say ‘surge’, then you’re not referring just to the one that President Bush initiated; you’re saying it goes back several months before that?

Yes, and again, because of my visits to Iraq, I was briefed by Colonel McFarland in December of 2006 where he outlined what was succeeding there in this counterinsurgency strategy which we all know of now as the surge.”

So, if I understand this: the surge is part of a counterinsurgency strategy. This strategy has a number of components. Since the surge is part of the counterinsurgency strategy, you’d think it might be one of these components, but no: while the additional troops were a mere part of the strategy, the surge is the counterinsurgency strategy, in its entirety. This “counterinsurgency strategy which we all know of now as the surge” obviously did not begin when the additional troops arrived; it had been going on for months before President Bush announced it.

McCain is arguing as follows: find some X, of which what we normally think of as the surge is a part. Define all of X as “the surge”. Argue that since X is responsible for some development Y, a development which preceded what we normally think of as the surge, “the surge”, understood to mean X, is responsible for Y. This is a delightful argument, and it yields all kinds of fun results. For instance:

The surge is part of American history, and American history has a number of components. And this American history was initiated in some sense by Captain John Smith, and when I visited with him in 1607, he had already initiated that history at Jamestown, by going in and clearing and holding in certain places. That is American history. And he told me at that time that he believed that that history, which is, quote, the surge, part of the surge, would be successful. [Ed. note: Did you catch that crucial move?] So then, of course, it was very clear that we needed additional troops in order to continue our history. And so I’m not sure, frankly, that people really understand that a surge is part of American history [Ed. note: there it is again!], which means the settlement at Jamestown, declaring independence, winning the Civil War, emancipating the slaves, the New Deal, deciding to invade Iraq, and then clearly a part of that, an important part of it, was additional troops to help ensure the safety of the sheikhs, to regain control of Ramadi, which was a very bloody fight, and then the surge continued to succeed, and that American history.

Q: So when you say ‘surge’, then you’re not referring just to the one that President Bush initiated; you’re saying it goes back several centuries before that?

Yes, and again, because of my visits to Virginia, I was briefed by Captain John Smith shortly after he established the settlement at Jamestown where he outlined what was happening there in American history which we all know of now as the surge.

I could go on and show that the surge is responsible for the invention of the calculus, the birth of Christ, the extinction of the dodo, and the hula hoop craze. After all, you can prove virtually anything once you adopt the Humpty Dumpty principle:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that’s all.”

(Crossposted at Obsidian Wings.)

by hilzoy

Last month, the Center for Tax Policy put out a report (pdf) on McCain and Obama’s tax proposals. At the time, I noted that some of the assumptions they made about McCain’s policies, which they got from the McCain campaign, did not match what McCain was himself was saying in campaign appearances. Now they’ve come out with a revised version, in which they refine their original calculations, but also note discrepancies between what both candidates’ campaigns say and what the candidates themselves say, and try to cost out both.

The short version: over ten years, the proposals McCain actually makes on the stump would cost $2.7 trillion more than the policies his campaign describes, for a total cost of nearly $7 trillion over ten years. Over the same ten years, the proposals Obama makes on the stump would cost $367 billion less than the policies his campaign describes, for a total cost of a little under $2.5 trillion. (The main difference between what Obama says on the stump and what his campaign describes is his proposal to levy Social Security taxes on income over $250,000/year.)

Here’s a chart showing the effects of both candidates’ tax proposals (the ones they describe on the stump) on people in various income brackets, from p. 46 of the report. Note that while this graph shows taxes going up for people in the top quintile under Obama’s plan, a more detailed breakdown (p. 45) shows that taxes only go up for the top 5% (incomes over $226,918/year.) People in the 95th-99th percentiles ($226,918-$603,402/year) would pay $799 more a year, on average.

Just something to keep in mind the next time you hear John McCain say: “Senator Obama wants to raise taxes; I want to keep them low. Somebody who wants higher taxes, I’m not your candidate. Senator Obama is.”

A longer excerpt from the report at Obsidian Wings, since I can’t figure out how to put things below the fold on this site. (An html goddess I am not. Sigh.)

by Chris Bodenner
Are Nike and Snickers running anti-gay advertisements?

By Patrick Appel
A description of photographer Lia Halloran’s work:

Light is used to form the drawing line while Halloran skateboards at night through different venues. The resulting images are each a trajectory of the artist’s movements over time. The photographs pair urban environments with lines of light which behave as physical objects or break apart into flurries of abstraction.

Halloran’s use of the long-exposure reminds me of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photographs of movie screens, where the exposure was the length of the movie. Another image of Halloran’s after the jump:

by Chris Bodenner
"[H]e does really attempt to understand the points of view of other people who look at the world or a particular issue differently than he does. He’s much more intellectual, much more thoughtful, much more interested in discussion, debate, and dialogue than the typical politician. And that gives me some confidence about him, even though from my perspective he’s much too liberal. I’ve never voted for a Democrat in my entire life. He’s the first one I might vote for," – Daniel Fischel, Univ. of Chicago law professor and former colleague of Barack Obama.

Spanish pilot Alfonso Lubian inflates his hot air balloon as he prepares to lift off by Compostela beach in Vilagarcia de Arousa, northwestern Spain on July 22, 2008. Image by Miguel Riopa/Getty.

By Patrick Appel
Ross questions the wisdom of Obama’s Berlin speech:

…photo ops are one thing, Beatlemania-style rallies are quite another – and having your candidate appear in front of tens of thousands of adoring European fans when your campaign’s biggest problem, as John Judis puts it today, is that "Obama remains the ‘mysterious stranger’ rather than the ‘American Adam’ to too many voters who are put off rather than attracted by his race and exotic background" strikes me as the height of political folly. The Berlin rally probably won’t hurt Obama – voters aren’t really paying attention to anything election-related right about now, and it’ll be forgotten by the time the fall campaign begins in earnest. But it could do some minor damage, and it certainly won’t help him.