Category: The Dish

by Reihan

The late Tom Lantos memorably referred to former Gerhard Schroeder, the former German chancellor, as a "political prostitute" for his hilariously corrupt dealings with Russian gas giant Gazprom.

One wonders what Lantos would have to say about Bill Clinton. You may have missed last month’s excellent New York Times story concerning Clinton’s close ties to a Canadian tycoon named Frank Giustra. It seems that former President Clinton helped Mr Giustra secure an extremely lucrative mining deal with Kazakhstan’s government, and that Mr Giustra offered very graciously repaid the favor with a donation of $31 million to the former’s president’s charitable foundation and a pledge of $100 million more.

But of course the Clintons expect to be compensated for some of their good deeds.

As Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign has intensified, Mr. Clinton has begun severing financial ties with Ronald W. Burkle, the supermarket magnate, and Vinod Gupta, the chairman of InfoUSA, to avoid any conflicts of interest. Those two men have harnessed the former president’s clout to expand their businesses while making the Clintons rich through partnership and consulting arrangements.

Clearly the Clintons are a remarkable pair, capable of spinning dross into gold. But wouldn’t it be nice if they tried to find a more honest, less Abramoffian way to make a living, one that didn’t rope in the rest of us into acquiescing while they play the government the way some of us play the slots?

[Peter Suderman] The earmark crusades of the last few years have made fairly clear how politicians use earmarks to reward friendly businesses. What tends to get less attention, however, is that regulation, especially environmental regulation, is often used in a similar fashion.  Perhaps not surprisingly, it looks like Hillary Clinton may be as guilty as anyone, and Tim Carney’s got the goods.

(Bonus TAS angle: Reihan, always ahead of the curve, has noted the role this sort of regulatory gaming played in the War on Light Bulbs.)

New York, Upper West Side, 8.15 am.

New York, Harlem, 9.30 am.

New York, Chelsea, 10 am.

[Patrick Appel]

"I’d love to carry Texas, but it’s usually not in the electoral calculation for the Democratic nominee. Florida and Michigan are," – Hillary Clinton, laying the groundwork for why Texas doesn’t count and pressing to seat Florida and Michigan delegates.
 

[Jim Manzi]

Here are three amazing math, science and technology blogs that I think more people should read:

1. Understanding causality in economics and social science (e.g., People who go to college make more money than those who do not – is this because college improves their subsequent performance or because people who are more likely to do well anyway tend to go to college?) is an obsessive interest of mine.  Andrew Gelman is a statistics professor at Columbia, and his blog is the place to go on this topic.  Killer post: What’s the matter with Connecticut?

2. Somebody who starts a successful technology company is usually either smart or lucky.  Somebody who does it twice is usually smart and lucky.  Marc Andreessen is both, and his blog is a running commentary on how to succeed in the new economy.  Killer post: Why there’s no such thing as Web 2.0.

3. The integration of genetics with evolutionary theory to create the Modern Synthesis plays the same role today that the integration of relativity and quantum mechanics did a half-century ago.  Gene Expression is the place to go for a conversation about its social and political implications that is simultaneously highly technically informed and completely politically incorrect.  Every time I go to this site I am offended by something and learn something.  Killer post: 10 Questions for Heather Mac Donald.

[Patrick Appel]

Pete Abel urges everyone to withhold judgment on the McCain Iseman scandal:

In closing, let me be painfully clear. I’m not dismissing the NYT story. I’m not screaming about liberal media bias. All I’m attempting to do is offer perspective, some of it based on personal observations of inside-the-Beltway life, in order to raise legitimate questions and thus encourage all of us to resist the temptation to believe there’s fire behind these wisps of smoke, until said fire is indisputably proven. We owe all of the leading candidates — McCain, Clinton, and Obama — the benefit of such doubt, the same benefit we would want, if we found ourselves in a similar situation.

The Iseman scandal coverage has been dizzying. The left jumped (at first, anyway) at the opportunity to skewer McCain, while the right equally cherished the chance to condemn the Times. If there isn’t more to the NYT’s research, if these allegations of an affair are false, this story could be the paper’s biggest mistake since Judith Miller’s faulty reporting on Saddam’s WMDs.

If the affair is real, then this will hobble McCain. He is already dragging the weight of an unpopular president and an unpopular war. Adding a sex scandal to his load may be one handicap too many.

Like Pete, I am trying to reserve judgment until we have more than wisps of smoke.

[Patrick Appel]

Reports are starting to leak out about Obama’s fundraising numbers for February. Marc says it will be over $50 million, Patrick Ruffini says it will be over $60 million. Either way, those are some massive numbers. It doesn’t look like Obama’s money advantage is going away anytime soon.

[Peter Suderman] I was thinking about writing something on the Oscars, but that’s now completely pointless. Why? Because Chris Orr has written everything I wanted to write, but better. I agree with every single thing he says in the piece except for his "Ought to Win" for Best Cinematography, which I would’ve given to Roger Deakins for the breathtaking pinhole-camera look he created for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.  Otherwise, Orr’s article is the final word on predictions about this year’s ceremony.

[Patrick Appel] Scott Horton looks at the media coverage of the Guantánamo trials:

But while the American mainstream media presented the story with the main spotlight on the Pentagon and its announcements and some trivial sideshows in which bickering lawyers raised quibbles about vexatious technicalities like the hearsay rule, access to exculpatory evidence and the ever-present torture, overseas the Guantánamo proceedings got a different treatment. Outside of the United States, “Guantánamo” is a by-word for torture, authoritarian abuse and injustice. And the fact that the U.S. had elected to put these six detainees on trial before a military commission in Guantánamo drew a predictable review. “There will not be six persons on trial, but seven,” editorialized the predictably pro-American German newspaper Die Zeit. The seventh, of course, is the Bush Administration and its hopelessly corrupted concept of justice.

…the military commissions crafted by the Bush Administration are an embarrassing stain compared to Nuremberg. One of the main reasons is that they have been crafted by political hacks out on a partisan agenda, and the experts who could have done a credible job–first among them the military lawyers in the JAG corps–have been ignored or overruled at each turn. The ability of defense counsel to conduct a meaningful defense has been impeded, with gains coming grudgingly only after the Supreme Court overturned the first, colossally incompetent structure in Rasul. Most menacingly, the specter of torture hovers over the current military commissions proceedings, with the acknowledgement that many of the defendants were subjected to techniques which the entire world (excluding only the Bush Administration) considers to be torture.