The Dish

A Southerrner against the Iraq war – on conservative grounds.

A reader writes:

You’re right: There does not seem like much can or will be done. The quanta of our political dynamics leaves everything in place for another year … No legitimate, mindful levers on the horizon, so it seems that we have few choices but to endure as they play out this course — it will play itself out — then try to clean up, patch up, move ahead when he is gone from office.

It’s put me in a T.S. Eliot mood,

         …human kind
cannot bear very much reality.

And a bit of East Coker for a chaser:

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God.
…

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
    You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
    You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
    You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
    You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

Aix-En-Provence, France, 8.15 am.

The days of acoustic guitar masses appear to be fading. One word: hallelujah.

Some data from Canada on why same-sex couples get married:

According to the census, nearly one in four lesbian married couples in B.C. (24 per cent) have a child living with them, compared with just 13 per cent of lesbian couples living common-law.

Gay men are far less likely to have children than lesbians.

But they, too, have a big marriage gap, with 6.8 per cent of gay married men living with kids, compared with just 0.5 per cent of unmarried gay couples.

How does this undermine civil marriage for heterosexuals? How does it harm society? Isn’t it better for children of gay couples to have the legal and social security of a marriage? Isn’t legitimacy better than illegitimacy? And doesn’t this pattern actually enhance the conservative argument that marriage is primarily for the benefit of children? I guess that argument doesn’t count for much with some when lesbians make it.

Behold the full interactive DNA of Craig Venter – online and zoomable.

It struck me I should say that I watched Bush in high-definition, and on regular TV, he didn’t look so exhausted. But others saw a similar affect:

As you noted, the President’s presentation last night was surprisingly disjointed for "a major policy address" – at one point his verbal tone and eye movements prompted my impression that the teleprompter had malfunctioned.

What came to mind was a line I remembered from the late, great Hunter Thompson’s classic Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72.  In describing the doomed tone of Ed Muskie as his campaign unraveled, Thompson wrote that Muskie

"talked like a farmer with terminal cancer trying to borrow money on next year’s crop."

One can only shudder in anticipation (dread?) of how he will look and sound when he announces the air strikes on Iran.

I haven’t commented on MoveOn.org’s anti-Petraeus ad. Maybe I should have, but figuring out the actual issues and decisions on Iraq seems to me to take priority over domestic mud-fights. But of course it was unforgivable. It’s one thing to criticize the general – because the president has placed him directly in the cross-hairs of politics. It’s one thing to worry that he’s too wedded to his own project in Iraq or too easily coopted by the partisan right. But impugning his patriotism is vile and does nothing but discredit the smearers. And whatever worries many of us had, his testimony before Congress this week struck me as honest and candid and restrained. Petraeus and Patrick Fitzgerald are examples of public servants in intense political squalls who managed to keep their heads and their integrity intact. I’m relieved such men still exist in government. We need many more.

The only thing to add is that the hard right should perhaps take out the beam in its own eye on the question of impugning others’ loyalty before tackling the deficiencies of others. If the anti-war crowd must disown Moveon, why is Ann Coulter still on Fox?

My review of Bush’s national address last night can be found here.

An economist explains the analogy: one of the best things I’ve read on the subject. Money quote:

Economics professors have a standard game they use to demonstrate how apparently rational decisions can create a disastrous result. They call it a "dollar auction." The rules are simple. The professor offers a dollar for sale to the highest bidder, with only one wrinkle: the second-highest bidder has to pay up on their losing bid as well. Several students almost always get sucked in. The first bids a penny, looking to make 99 cents. The second bids 2 cents, the third 3 cents, and so on, each feeling they have a chance at something good on the cheap. The early stages are fun, and the bidders wonder what possessed the professor to be willing to lose some money.

The problem surfaces when the bidders get up close to a dollar.

After 99 cents the last vestige of profitability disappears, but the bidding continues between the two highest players. They now realize that they stand to lose no matter what, but that they can still buffer their losses by winning the dollar. They just have to outlast the other player. Following this strategy, the two hapless students usually run the bid up several dollars, turning the apparent shot at easy money into a ghastly battle of spiraling disaster.

Theoretically, there is no stable outcome once the dynamic gets going. The only clear limit is the exhaustion of one of the player’s total funds. In the classroom, the auction generally ends with the grudging decision of one player to "irrationally" accept the larger loss and get out of the terrible spiral. Economists call the dollar auction pattern an irrational escalation of commitment. We might also call it the war in Iraq.