Madrigal's quick take. More from yours truly later.
Month: November 2010
Republicans Against Palin Watch
Mark McKinnon, former advisor to John McCain, begs Palin not to run for president:
If Palin runs, I think the entire Republican primary process will be hijacked. With ardent fans and a rabid media, it will become Palin-palooza. A celebrity fest will follow with even more amplitude than the adulation and adoration that surrounded Barack Obama, who was so revered he was sometimes referred to in biblical proportions as “The One.” An all-consuming super nova, Palin will suck the oxygen out of every room, everywhere she goes. And one of two things will happen. Discerning conservative voters in early primary states will be offended by the circus-like atmosphere and the presumption that they could so easily fall for a “cult of personality.” And they will vote against her. And she will lose. Or, Republican voters will be completely swept up in the mania and nominate her as the GOP standard bearer to go up against President Obama. And she will lose—perhaps the only Republican nominee who could lose in 2012.
The Pentagon’s DADT Report
It should be released here any minute now.
Military Families Against DADT
Via Sargent, a crucial detail that will sadden the Christianists:
One of the key findings in the report is that a whopping 74 percent of spouses of military service-members say repeal of DADT would have no impact on their view of whether their husbands or wives should continue to serve.
The Big Lie, Ctd
Peter Suderman pushes back against the notion that the CBO has proven that the stimulus package worked:
The reports aren’t based on a detailed measurement of real-world output. Instead, they’re based on measuring the input (how much money was spent), and then using models to project how big the multiplier effect has been. Measuring spending and modeling output means that you can believe the CBO when it says that the stimulus turned out to be more costly than expected, but you should remain wary about any claims made using the “real-world effects” side.
Indeed, CBO director Doug Elmendorf has explicitly made this point, agreeing at a speech earlier this year that that “if the stimulus bill did not do what it was originally forecast to do, then that would not have been detected by the subsequent analysis.” So if in reality no jobs had been created, or only 10 jobs had been created, then the CBO’s reports would not reflect those numbers. It’s using the models that projected the stimulus would create lots of jobs to report that the stimulus did create lots of jobs. Color me unconvinced.
The Left, The Debt And The Dish
I sense a parting of the ways emerging between the Dish and most of our pro-Obama liberal friends. The president's proposal for a federal pay freeze seems to me to be a minor but symbolically important sign of the president's concern with the unsustainable debt. What alone worries me about it is the danger of replying to GOP small-bore measures and gimmicks with small-bore measures and gimmicks. In that game the GOP will, despite their appalling record on spending, stay ahead.
In my view, what Obama needs to do in the State of the Union is to leap-frog the GOP's piddling nips and tucks and refusal to sunset the fiscally disastrous Bush tax cuts – and present a real vision of a return to responsibility. (Rich Lowry, by the way, predicts this.) Maybe the spending/tax mix of the Bowles-Simpson proposal is too tilted to the right for him to endorse its gist in full (although I sure wish he would). But a clear, detailed plan to end long-term debt now – and a challenge to both parties to get it done – would, in one swoop, put Obama back where he belongs and where the GOP truly fear him, as a serious president trying to move the ship of state back from the looming iceberg of default.
So far, the left is reacting with dismal hostility even to this tiny measure. Ezra Klein is the least negative, providing three interpretations of the federal worker pay freeze – one positive, two negative. Bernstein thinks the freeze will backfire politically, and adds this Cheneyesque remark:
Hardly anyone actually cares about budget deficits, and one group of people—federal employees (and their families, and perhaps their friends) do care intensely about federal employee pay.
John Sides suggests a pathetic alternative for the president: giving up his salary and asking every other congressperson to do the same. Seriously? Sargent is underwhelmed. Adam Sorensen worries about federal job recruitment. Some left-liberal anti-debt measures do not trouble me too much: a hefty tax on Wall Street would be fine by me, for example, and obviously Obama is going to have to incorporate some more liberal debt-reduction measures. But it is clear to me that the only debt plan that can fly is one where the spending cuts-tax hike mix is at least 2 – 1. Much of that has to come from Medicare. And a great deal could be won by eliminating tax loopholes, while not lowering overall tax rates quite as much as Bowles-Simpson.
I know many want Obama to become a liberal partisan firebrand to defeat the crazed Tea Party rhetoric. I reiterate my view that this would be a terrible mistake, and a massive over-reading of the mid-terms. Obama has to recapture those in the middle, especially Independents (like yours truly) who really do want to see a grown-up in Washington offer a serious plan for eliminating the long-term debt. If Obama can do that – and fight for it more aggressively and specifically than he did for health insurance reform – a slowly reviving economy, bolstered by more long-term confidence, will win him a landslide (and save the country's economic future too).
(Photo: Andrew Harar/Pool/Getty.)
The View From Your Window Contest: Winner #26
A reader writes:
Another cruise ship? Are you trying to make sure only retirees win this contest?
Another writes:
Wow – that could be just about anywhere with a deep water port. I’ll go with San Juan, Puerto Rico. I doubt I’ll win, but hopefully I’ll at least be closer than my wife (we have a weekly household contest and I’m down by one right now).
Another:
I’ll guess that’s the cruise ship dock at George Town, Grand Cayman. The photo would be from the second floor of the build north and east across Church Street. I haven’t been there in almost ten years, but I think that’s it.
Another:
That’s the Spirit of Tasmania at Station Pier in Port Melbourne, Australia. The window would be in the Beacon Cove development across the road. Williamstown in the background.
Another:
That appears to be the passenger terminal at Xingang Port in China outside Beijing. My partner and I sailed from there on a 15 day cruise around Asia. It’s a huge old building with some art deco flourishes, and is badly in need of renovation.
Another:
It’s a port city. Or to be more precise: taken from inside of a building or a structure, with a window directly facing a port on a sea or an ocean, in an area where the climate is sometimes sunny.
Another:
Completely stumped, especially since I am not cruise-savvy. But I did determine that the ship is the Crystal Serenity – which, unhelpfully, goes all over the world.
I Google-Earthed every almost every port of call. Most harbors are protected by breakwaters, which I see no evidence of. Many smaller ports have docks to which cruise ships slide up sideways. Ports in the Caribbean, South Pacific, and Asia did not have sturdy cruise terminals, as pictured. Best guesses: somewhere in the Mediterranean, Adriatic, or Aegean Seas, per the Grecian balustrade; around coastal UAE cities, since the terminal and bus in front look relatively new; or a port on the Black Sea – cruise terminal looks vaguely Soviet in style.
Time spent investigating (huge amount) vs. ability to make an intelligent guess (negligible) = most out of whack so far.
Another:
Piece of cake: San Francisco. I will never forget that berth, because its where PlanetOut, Inc. welcomed the Queen Mary II, the world’s largest ocean liner, for a PR luncheon. That would be the Queen Mary II/RSVP voyage across the frigid North Atlantic, which cost PlanetOut $5 million and consequently sunk the company.
Another:
All right, the fact that I’ve searched every square inch of the Embarcadero and then some in SF, multiple times, and haven’t found this spot, should convince me that the intelligent, face-saving maneuver is to pick a random spot somewhere in the center of the Mediterranean and call it a day. And yet, nothing looks anywhere near as much like San Francisco as this shot. Nobody else builds customs houses like that that I can find. So that’s my choice.
Another:
This is a cruise ship at dock at the foot of Market St in Charleston SC. There is a glimpse of the Custom House at the left of the picture.
Another:
I’m guessing that it is along the European shore of the Bosphorous, just above the Golden Horn in Istanbul – at Beyoglu, near the Istanbul Modern museum and not too far south of the Dolmabahce Palace.
Another:
The ship is the Crystal Serenity, which would seem like a dead giveaway. But man that ship has been EVERYWHERE! After poking around Google maps on Tenerife and Las Palmas, Canary Islands (the blue sea and mountains in the back made me think I should start there), I finally found a current schedule for the Crystal Serenity that says
it left Lisbon on Monday, Nov 22. So I tried the next destination (I’ve been to Lisbon – it is nowhere near clean enough to be this spot): Cadiz, Spain. The architecture on the balcony seemed Spanish enough, but I couldn’t find a port that has the parking area so close to the ship’s dock.
When I searched the maps for Casablanca and Agadiz, I also couldn’t find the type of layout this picture indicates. Finally, I found a picture of this lighthouse in Casablanca. That same lighthouse seems to be in the very far left of the picture. It looks like it’s the Phare D’El Hank. But it’s pretty far from the port, and the Mosque Hassan II is in between. So that could also be the minaret for the mosque, except that minaret is square, and the tower in the picture looks more rounded.
But I couldn’t find any other clues to narrow it down. So that’s my guess. I’m sure you’ll find someone who has been on that ship and in that port, but this was a fun one – usually I have no clue where to start!
Another:
According to the Crystal Cruise line, the Serenity is currently docked in Gran Canaria. The topography seems to corroborate this, so I’m going with it. Only concerns: (1) the photo may be old; (2) the Serenity ship has a string of lights attached to from the bridge to the bow and I don’t see that in this picture.
Another:
Looking at cruise ship terminals for a second week in a row has failed to inspire me; please don’t turn next week into a trilogy. I’m sure I could grind this out – after all, there are only 178 ports of call for the Crystal Serenity – but I just can’t muster the gumption. Going with my ten-second gut intuition, how about Rome’s port, Civitavecchia?
Another:
So, in what ports were the Crystal Serenity and a small Silversea (Silver Wind or Cloud?) ship together during 2010? Piraeus on June 18, Venice on June 24, Istanbul on Sept 3, Portoferraio (Elba) on Sept 22. But none of those ports have that layout of docks/terminals. Very frustrating. I think I looked through all the possible ports that these ships had in common (at least in 2010). Maybe this photo wasn’t taken in 2010? Arrggh. Oh well, because of the relatively unspoiled coastline, I’ll go for Portoferrario, Elba, Italy. Good enough for Napoleon, good enough for me.
Another:
It looks to me like the port of Naples (Molo Beverello), Italy from where I take a hydrofoil to Ischia every August. The building on the left would be the old fascist era passenger terminal.
Another:
I initially thought that this was Italy and now after much self-doubt and research I am certain. This photo was taken looking out from the right side of Starhotels Savoia Excelsior Palace, Riva del Mandracchio 4, 34124 Trieste, Italy. My fiancee and I began by attempting to decipher names on the cruise ships, the one in the foreground the Crystal Serenity, and the one in the background we guessed as a Silversea vessel. This only resulted with looking for hours at images of innumerable ports and consequentially, blurred vision. Finally, we looked to the SAF bus in front of the terminal. A simple google image search of Trieste’s port retrieved a website that revealed the terminal. Then google maps and youtube were used to find the exact hotel.
Another:
While there were a number of fascinating clues in this week’s “View” (one of which lead me to read the entire Wikipedia entry on “Greek revival architecture”), it was strangely the blue parking lines that tipped me off to the real location. A simple Google search of places with blue parking lines, took me to Italy, which took me to a Google image search for ports in Italy, which lead me here: a shipping tour company based in Trieste, Italy. With a little Google Earth magic, I think I may have found the photographer’s location at the Starhotel Savoia Excelsior Hotel looking out on the Stazione Marittima:
Also, I should mention that I did most of this research on my iPhone on the way to San Diego for a baby shower. Pretty impressive, right??
Another:
I’m getting addicted to this contest. The license plates on the cars and general feel of the area suggest southern Europe, possibly the Mediterranean. The ship directly ahead is the Crystal Serenity, which called at a number of Mediterranean and Adriatic ports in 2010. After some searches on Google Images and confirming the lay of the land on Google Maps, I determined that the port was Trieste. The attached photo that I found gives the side view from higher ground further away. The date given for the photo is 22 August 2010 (this is consistent with the published itinerary):
Another:
I was able to figure out the ship’s name from the photograph (having bad handwriting makes it easier to read blurry writing on photographs). Then I basically just perused Flickr bridge cam photos from the Crystal Serenity until I came upon a docked photo that matched the distance from the shot. Then a quick Google Maps check on the Trieste shoreline gave me pictures of the Consorzio Promotrieste, and I was certain that was it. Here is the link to the bridge cam photo – the blue lined parking spaces in both the VFYW and the bridge cam are also dead giveaways.
Another:
First time entering the contest. Once I was able to decipher the writing on the cruise ship, all I had to do was go through that nice gentleman’s gallery of saved webcam snaps from the ship’s bridge until I stumbled upon something that looked like it could be your window. Then I was able to confirm by finding (courtesy Google maps) a picture of the port looking in the other direction. I also found a link to a time lapse video of the ship arriving in the port on June 12th, 2009:
Another:
This is how well I know that building: because I’ve stood right there on the side of it you can see. Here‘s a pic of my partner standing on the upper outside terrace; behind him is where the ship is moored in your photo. My mother was born in Trieste, to a family of seafaring captains (and chefs); and here is an article of mine about a collection of 19th-century food trademarks registered there, a reflection of the historic importance of this very port, one Austria’s entrepot.
Another:
The shot is taken from a room in the Starhotel Savoia Excelsior Palace hotel on the Riva del Mandracchio, opposite. This is the hotel’s website image gallery. Using the facade picture on the hotel’s website, it looks like your photo was taken from one of the fourth floor balconies (counting from ground, first, second). Based on the positions of the street lights and the shape of the balcony, I would say it’s the second balcony/fifth window in from the left, as indicated by the red arrow in this shot of the hotel:
This reader was the first to guess the floor/window, so he gets the prize this week. See everyone else on Saturday!
The DADT Report: “92 Percent Find Fighting Alongside Gays Fine”
The WaPo has leaked details. According to the WaPo, the full report is due out at around 2:30 pm ET today:
According to a survey sent to 400,000 service members, 69 percent of those responding reported that they had served with someone in their unit who they believed to be gay or lesbian. Of those who did, 92 percent stated that their unit's ability to work together was very good, good, or neither good nor poor, according to the sources. Combat units reported similar responses, with 89 percent of Army combat units and 84 percent of Marine combat units saying they had good or neutral experiences working with gays and lesbians. At the same time, the report found that 30 percent of those surveyed overall — and between 40 and 60 percent of the Marine Corps — either expressed concern or predicted a negative reaction if Congress were to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" law, which allows gays and lesbians to serve in the military on the condition that they keep their sexuality a secret.
Spencer Ackerman looks ahead:
There’s a Pentagon presser at 2 p.m. Thursday and Friday the Senate Armed Services Committee will hold hearings. First day is Gates, Mullen and the Defense Department report authors, Jeh Johnson and Gen. Carter Ham. Second day is all the service chiefs. Expect that to be when repeal opponents try to garner their talking points.
John Cole zooms out:
I get the sense that the gay rights battles are all going to end with a collective yawn, and one day we will look back and wonder what all the fuss was about. This doesn’t mean that I think we should stop fighting for ENDA, marriage equality, etc., just that I think there is not going to be a BIG SYMBOLIC victory and then the next day everything will be different. It just seems like people my age and younger simply do not understand the divisions based on sexual orientation nor care. As we become the majority and the new normal takes root, these things will inevitably change and we will begin to recognize the full spectrum of rights for LGBT citizens. I also recognize that my positions have become more liberal as time goes by, as I once thought civil unions were a fair compromise, but now will settle for nothing less than full marriage rights. A decade ago, I would have laughed at you if you said I would have donated money to the defeat Prop 8 groups.
“I kiss slower to feel more, here, longer.”
An anonymous illegal immigrant senior at Harvard mourns the DREAM Act. She has been in the country since kindergarten:
Will these next seven months be the last I spend in the United States? It is November and I have already lost the ability to think in the future tense, as if my heart had anesthetized my mind in preparation for the possible disappointments of the next several months. I sleep without setting any alarm clocks. I speak faster in hopes that I might get more English words in. I kiss slower to feel more, here, longer. I’m at a road that bifurcates into continents and I am terrified because I know I might once again have to live with a decision that is not mine to make. It would hurt to be forced to leave, but it hurts to stay the way I’m staying now. I belong to this place but I also want it to belong to me.
Debating Wikileaks
A riveting BBC debate on the matter between Carne Ross, a former British diplomat, and Bill Keller of the NYT. I must say I find Ross's passion in getting to the truth of what is done by democratic governments in our name seemed much more in line with the spirit of journalism than Bill Keller's defensive qualifications. Meanwhile, Shep Smith once again shines (along with Andrew Napolitano):
The Dish 