on the off chance

I doubt that anybody else besides Andrew and I cares much about the Whitewater debate (my side=whitewater was a desperate but clever right-wing attack on what republicans then saw as a dangerously popular and effective Democratic president. The plan was orchestrated by Newt Gingrich and implemented by Ken Starr, whose primary technique was to leverage Clinton's friends and associates with the threat of prosecution to get them to testify against Clinton, regardless of the truth or falsity of their testimony. And when Clinton came out clean from these approaches (only after many lives lay in ruins), Starr cynically exploited Clinton's sex-life to embarass him, again for obviously political purposes, and these events, at least the sex part, were overcovered by the media). (His side=Whitewater was a legitimate investigation, occasioned by compelling evidence of wrongdoing, carried out in a fair and professional way by Ken Starr, who aggressively but dutifully did his job, who uncovered substantial evidence that Clinton was engaged in criminal behavior, and who prosecuted those crimes that he came across during his investigation. Finally, the media under-covered these events due to their liberal bias.)
If, on the off chance you do care, I found an interesting interview with Susan McDougal, whose husband went to prison and died there, and who herself was inprisoned for refusing to testify against Clinton. In the interest of finding multiple points of view, read her version and decide for yourself if you believe her.

Goodness

There's some lively discussion in the comments section of the "Rover on the Media" post that's worth browsing, if at least, to see what works and what doesn't. I threw the past two posts up with the intent of sparking something, and was pleasantly surprised to see those comments brew. Initially I thought the post full of Drezner links had more to run with, and I put Rove up there mostly because it seemed amusing that this political operator could sound so apolitical (i.e. reasonable).

Of course there's a good chance the quotes tone was entirely the point. As with so many of the administration sound bites, Karl's no doubt had a hand in, it seemed designed to put him just above the fray. Rove is no less shrewd than Clinton (in fact, I'd say he's more), and put into that context, his statment became more interesting. It felt like he was goading me (or you, but mostly the press) into giving that blurb some strained meaning. The actual topic of Media Bias drifted away and became irrelevant (though you probably found some in that very article).

Maybe that's just because I'm biased.

Blogs have drastically changed my outlook on the Mainstream Media (MSM). The tendencies of poorly written material, which poses as news but oozes it's author's opinion, to survive and thrive in certain markets is pretty appalling. When I started looking, I couldn't help but find it everywhere. I don't have any examples, so don't take my word for it. Read your newspapers with a healthy dose of skepticism, then follow up on it. Read stories on the same subject from other publications, take in some undisguised editorial opinion, and think about where you stand.

Blogs make it infinitely easier to do that. On a personal scale, bias has turned into an annoyance, though on a broad, societal scale its presence will always be troubling no matter which side it comes from. In the end, I rarely dwell on it anymore as it hardly seems worth my time. If I'm reading a shitty article, once I become aware of it's shitiness, I know it's time to move on.

This seems as good a point as any to give a question of Joe's some air, and let it breathe:

"It occurs to me that all of the newspapers that Andrew cited as liberal are from liberal areas (new york, chicago, washington). What about the Indianapolis Star, and all of the thousands of newspapers from smaller markets all over the country. The Star's editorial page is much more conservative than it is liberal, and I at least detect a slight conservative edge to its reporting. I wonder if other smaller market papers, particularly in the midwest, are similar?"

It doesn't have to do with bias, but hopefully this article by Andrew Sullivan on "the fundamentalist threat to the conservative coalition" will stir up more conversation. I found the article terribly well done, so please, don't be put off by registering at The New Republic (if you even have to register it will be free) or the article's length. It's worth the while.

A lite kick in the Sachs

What I've read from Jeffrey Sachs can be found if you root around in the following links and find a response he writes to a critique from the Washington Post, which is to say, very little. However I've found some stuff from Dan Drezner that has me curious. He, Drezner, starts a worthy discussion on Sachs' The End of Poverty and has a pretty fair (the impartial kind, not the mediocre kind) review of it in the NY Times. If anything it makes me want to pick up Sachs' book and plug away, it's just that now I believe I'll have some things to think about while I'm reading it.

Speaking of foreign policy-ish books I'd like to read, "The World is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman looks, and I use the word a little loosely, exciting. For a good review of this book check this from Slate, For an example of a writer wanking with his keyboard in search of a "good clip" see Matt Taibbi battle Friedman’s use of metaphors and completely refuse to engage with a single idea.

Rover on the media

I've read before that Karl Rove doesn't make many appearances outside of stumping for his man, so I found this piece in the Washington Post rather novel. Whatever you think of this guy, he's damned shrewd, so I'd assume most will take anything he says with a grain (or two) of salt. That being said, this quote was what got me: "I'm not sure I've talked about the liberal media," Rove said when a student inquired -- a decision he said he made "consciously." The press is generally liberal, he argued, but "I think it's less liberal than it is oppositional."

Taken at face value, this additude makes whole lot more sense to me than the conspiratorial blatherings I usually come accross on the topic of liberal bias. And, poof!!. Just like that, Rove seems less like he-who-must-not-be-named and more like reasonable human being. Weird.

awesome book

I'm reading an amazing book called The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs, a PH.D economist, now at Columbia, and head of the UN Millenium Development Project. It is blowing my mind. Everyone on the planet, but especially everyone in the United States, should read this book. He very briefly and cogently explains how the world went from fairly uniform poverty across the globe 200 years ago to its current state of vast inequity, a change that coincided with an explosion in global population. He shows how the rich countries got rich and why the poor countries stayed poor, and he shows how some countries have dragged, or are dragging, themselves out of poverty. He disects poverty, showing its different degrees and their distribution throughout the globe. Most importantly, he argues that extreme poverty, the 1 billion people (1/6 of the world) that lives on less than a dollar a day, can be eliminated by the year 2025 if the world's rich countries decide to take the necessary measures, which aren't even that strenuous.
This guy has a great deal of real world experience advising the governments of developing countries, and he has had a great deal of success. He is very much pro-free trade, but he is also very critical of the United States and other rich countries for their failure to prioritize international aid and debt relief. He is neither a starbucks brick-thrower nor an unqualified free-market Milton Friedman economist. In other words, he's awesome. If you have a chance, you owe it to yourself to take a look.

Believers

A lot has been made over the years about the inappropriateness of the religious right using institutions of faith to advance an ideological agenda. This co-opting of a fundamental and arguably necessary component of society to legitimize patently ignorant ideas such as creationism has had some success in causing the adoption of these ideas by parts of society but only at very high costs to the host institutions. Each time the religious right succeeds in getting "evolution is a theory" stickers on textbooks the event is rightly accompanied by loud and frequent discrediting by the media.

What hasn't been adequately challenged is the left's co-opting of another fundamental component of society. A recent study revealed that nationally 72% of college/university faculty identify themselves as being liberal while only a scant 15% identify themselves as conservative. While many college professors keep ideology outside of the classroom an increasing number do not. This has had a chilling effect on the free exchange of ideas keeping many that have been long discredited in circulation. The product of an educational institution unwilling to submit its curriculum to the rigors of challenge is ignorance.

Parents of soon-to-be college students are not blind to this and are becoming alienated by the pseudo-intellectual wankery that's now passing as curriculum in some colleges. As a left leaning college among left leaning colleges, Earlham is particularly susceptible to the culture of ignorance that can form in the absence of intellectual diversity. While the administration knew it needed to present a united front in condemning the 'pie' incident the reality of faculty opinion is anything but. Its clear many professors at the school believe their mastery of their discipline and their perspective of reality is so unassailable that subjecting their world view to dissenting opinion is at best a waste of time.

This is best demonstrated by SOAN professor Lyn Miller:
"Why would a Quaker college with a commitment to peace and non-violence invite a speaker who has been instrumental in building consensus for war to campus?" She ridiculed the notion of a need for dialogue with figures like Kristol. "Kristol has far more power by virtue of his access to the media and had a far less restricted platform for expression of his ideas than did anyone else in the room...Listening to Kristol...is akin to teaching you to sit quietly in kindergarten."
Martin stressed the importance of 'translation' of the act, referencing her research on social movements, "[which] attempts to read movements not from the center, from those who direct and speak for the movement, but from acts carried out by those who cultivate space at the limits of social movements...acts that generate disagreement and demand translation."

It's ironic that after long being critical of the dogma organized religion demands unquestioning acceptance of, academia is now producing its own.

Correction: Dan pointed out that I attributed the above quote to the wrong SOAN professor. The quote was from Earlham SOAN professor Jo Ann Martin. As for my interpretation of her comments regarding 'translation' I think she was simply saying that she believes that extremists are necessary to expand what ideas the mainstream finds acceptable to allow the center to shift. Stating the obvious with jargon just makes it easier for it to be mistaken for profundity.

my new alma mater

After much deliberation, I've settled on the home town favorite, Indiana University, for grad school. I'll be getting a Masters in Public Affairs, concentrating in international affairs/african studies and economic development. I may try to do another degree after the MPA at IU or somewhere else (which won't be a big deal, since it's incredibly cheap for me at IU), or I might do peace corp, or maybe I'll just start working.....there's a novel idea. I want to work on humanitarian/development/crisis management issues in developing countries, probably in Africa. A lot of places there need a lot of help, and at least some places speak English. And so what if I don't speak any of the hundreds of native tribal languages. Neither does anyone else in the U.S., so it's not a great disadvantage. Latin American development would be a bit tougher to get into, cause my spanish is very bad, and a lot of folks in the U.S. speak it very well. I may very well decide that I don't want to spend my life travelling around to far-away places, in which case my MPA degree would give me enough flexibility to do different kinds of work (domestic government, non-profit management, fundraising, politics, etc).

Why am I writing a post about this? Because I've been obsessing about it for 5 months! And listing my reasons helps build my confidence that I'm making a good decision.

Pie continued

I just want to vent some more about this pie incident. It really pisses me off on many levels, so many that I don't even really know where to start. In fact, it pisses me off that I have to be pissed off about it. I don't want to feel sorry for Bill Kristol, and I sure don't want to have to admire his poise and perseverance, but the pie thrower has put me in that position. As Michael Wood says in his recent Word article (which is usually found online, but for some reason the server's down), I never thought I'd be caught dead clapping for Bill Kristol. (There are many other good responses to the pie incident in the recent edition of the Word, as well as some idiotic ones).

Yes, there are many things that bother me about it: the laziness, the idiocy, the damage to my and every Earlhamite's reputation, the obvious counter-productiveness, the egregious liberal hypocrisy. But more than anything, it's the self-righteous arrogance of the act that makes me seethe, that makes me visualize myself kicking the pie thrower in sensitive areas.

Bill Kristol is not Ann Coulter. He is an experienced political operative and journalist who very seriously advocates conservative policy and ideology. He has connections and experience at the highest levels of government, and his opinions are grounded in these experiences. I want to say to the pie thrower and to his far-left allies, "Isn't it possible that this guy might know something that you don't? Do you really think, in your infinite wisdom derived from your 20-odd years of life, none of which was spent actually making policy decisions, that you have the intellectual and moral clout to interrupt a legitimate presentation of ideas? Don't you understand, you sniveling, lazy, self-absorbed idiot, that fully HALF this country thinks that you are completely full of shit and that the guy on stage is right? Are they all morons? Have they all been brainwashed?

I can't wait to throw a pie in Walter Wink's face. When I'm criticized, I'll be happy to downplay my inappropriate behavior by noting how pacifism is an insidious, immoral philosophy that slavishly stands by while innocent people are killed, just as many people defend the pie thrower by criticizing Kristol as an imperialist war-monger. Ask the Iraqi Kurds who's more of a purveyor of death, Bill Kristol or an anti-war activist?

Ann Coulter is an inflammatory moron who doesn't deserve my attention. When she came to Earlham, I didn't go see her. I had that right, just as the pie thrower had the right to stay home. People in the audience had that right too, and they chose to listen instead. The pie-thrower violated their right to make that decision, and he should be punished for it.

If you want to change the world, you have to be smart and you have to work your ass off for it. The pie-thrower and his ilk, in addition to being wrong, are lazy. (That's not to say that Bill Kristol is right, but at least he has put his money where his mouth is and has worked to actualize his moral vision). I'll fight both groups tooth and nail; at least with the pie-throwers, I know I'll win.

Super Sketchy

Clinton's former National Security advisor found guilty of "not inadvertently" walking off with and shredding classified material.

Earlham Drudged

If I experience any more shadenfreunde I'm going to burst.

Karl Rove has a drug problem

How else do you explain how the Republican party stupidly, stupidly jumped head over heels into a lose-lose situation that now allies them with Jessie Jackson!?! Yes, it's an absolute freak show that Terri has all the lights on but no one's home but does that really mean you need to flush pretty much all classic liberal (libertarian) ideas down the crapper? Republicans give me the supply side economics and almost indescriminant use of force I crave, but cramming government into the realm of morality is not cool.

UPDATE: These are the classy folks Bush and the GOP sold the farm for.

sick and tired

I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.

First CBS now ABC? Thank God for GE

The same guys who recently brought CBS to it's knees are taking a keen interest in another potential phony document ostensibly created by democrats to discredit Republicans. This case isn't remotely as clear- cut as the National Guard docs, but there seems to be enough evidence to suggest that something fishy is going on. Is the MSM really this biased, dumb or both?

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/2005_03.php#009953

First, an alert reader pointed out that the copy of the memo that was leaked to a left-wing web site does not quite match the "exact, full copy of the document" as quoted by ABC News. ABC News identified four errors in the document, each noted with a (sic). The first such error is in the very first word, a misspelling of Terri Schiavo's name. (Interestingly, ABC did not note as an error the fact that the memo got the number of the Senate bill wrong.) But in the scanned version of the memo itself, as now leaked to the web, three of the four typographical errors have been corrected. So, what is going on? Is the memo now being presented as authentic one that was fabricated or, more likely, cleaned up after the fact? Second, our Washington sources tell us that a number of Republican Senators say they did not receive, and have never seen, the memo. This contradicts the implication that the memo is some kind of official Republican document that was circulated to all Republican Senators.Third, the only clear evidence as to the origin of the memo is that it was circulated by Democratic staffers. Tom Maguire, author of Just One Minute, wrote to point out this story from yesterday's New York Times: As tensions festered among Republicans, Democratic aides passed out an unsigned one-page memorandum that they said had been distributed to Senate Republicans. "This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue," the memorandum said.So the memo has been traced to a group of Democratic staffers. What evidence is there that its origins go back any farther? None, that we're aware of.

Something completely different

I still think Bobby Knight is the greatest, congrats to Texas Tech for making it to the Sweet 16!

It's difficult to describe in mere words, but this clip makes me terribly nostalgic for some reason.

White House VNR?

I heard a story about this on NPR and then my bro mentioned he read about it in the New York Times. I searched every which way on Google, and couldn't find any genuine footage from these things. If anyone can point me in the right direction I would be thankful.

I should note, that I find it strange that I can't find this stuff. It would seem that if it is so controversial, and improper, the footage would be widely available. Is this reason to be skeptical?

Paul Krugman Gotcha

As many of you may already know, Paul Krugman is one of my least favorite people. Ever since Bush got elected he’s written books and columns in the NYTimes that breathlessly foretell a grim future where the US dollar collapses like the Argentinean peso because of the “unjust” tax cuts. Well those tax cuts which certain media outlets would like to portray as completely discretionary might be the biggest factor behind the current economic growth we’re now seeing. As this guy will likely be as close as progressives will get to winning a Nobel in Economics it should come as no surprise that virtually everything Krugman has written over the last 5 years has been completely wrong.

enjoy:
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2005/03/happy_anniversa.html

Roll the tape from March 11, 2003, please; his lead:

With war looming, it's time to be prepared. So last week I switched to a fixed-rate mortgage. It means higher monthly payments, but I'm terrified about what will happen to interest rates once financial markets wake up to the implications of skyrocketing budget deficits.

Well. Per the Federal Reserve, I see that mortgage rates were 5.67% on March 7, and 5.61% on March 14, 2003.

Today, despite the war, financial markets continue to slumber - as of March 3, 2005, the Federal Reserve tells me that fixed rate mortgages were at 5.79%. Robert Samuelson puzzled over this a few days back.
Perhaps the Earnest Prof is a bit stronger when forecasting equities? Let's check his stock market call of June 20, 2003; with the S&P 500 closing at 994.7 on June 19, 2003, Krugman wrote this:

The big rise in the stock market is definitely telling us something. Bulls think it says the economy is about to take off. But I think it's a sign that America is still blowing bubbles — that a three-year bear market and the biggest corporate scandals in history haven't cured investors of irrational exuberance yet.
Or, to put it another way: it's hard to find any real news to justify the market's leap. Instead, investors seem to be buying stocks because they are rising — which is pretty much the definition of a bubble.

As of this writing on March 4, 2005, the S&P is at 1221, up 11 on a good jobs report.

Would they rather rule in Hell…..?

Over the past few weeks I’ve been chagrined at the “unspinnably” good news coming out of the Middle East. So irrefutable is the progress that even the New York Times editorial page can’t find a way to knock it. Despite this, there seems to be a sizable contingent on the left that still wants to minimize any progress that has been made, dreads the accelerating democratization of many Arab nations and wants nothing more than the US to fail in potential future endeavors in Iran and Korea.

Here’s a transcript from a recent Daily Show interview with Clinton Aide Nancy Soderberg about a book she wrote with contributions from Clinton and Albright.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110006362

Stewart: He's gonna be a great--pretty soon, Republicans are gonna be like, "Reagan was nothing compared to this guy." Like, my kid's gonna go to a high school named after him, I just know it.

Soderberg: Well, there's still Iran and North Korea, don't forget. There's hope for the rest of us.

Stewart: [crossing fingers] Iran and North Korea, that's true, that is true [audience laughter]. No, it's--it is--I absolutely agree with you, this is--this is the most difficult thing for me to--because, I think, I don't care for the tactics, I don't care for this, the weird arrogance, the setting up. But I gotta say, I haven't seen results like this ever in that region.

Soderberg: Well wait. It hasn't actually gotten very far. I mean, we've had--

Stewart: Oh, I'm shallow! I'm very shallow!

Soderberg: There's always hope that this might not work.

And another attempt by Matt Yglesias to minimize the signifigance of Lebanon's shift towards democratic self rule:

I don't think that's a reason not to hope for the emergence of real democracy in Lebanon, but it's a bit of a sticky situation. More to the point, there simply doesn't seem to me to be any major geopolitical windfall we could possibly reap from any outcomes in Lebanon. It's a country that's very important to Syrian interests, pretty important to Israeli interests, and not really important at all to the United States. It just happens to be kinda-sorta near the strategically important Persian Gulf region. But nothing really bad has happened to us thanks to Syrian control, and nothing really good will happen to us if it ends.

Video-Blogging... of a sort

This is the abreviated version of spiel I have been storing up for a while and plan to elaborate upon soon. In an effort to easily and effectively distribute media, I came accross a website called Internet Archive. It is exactly what it sounds like, and opens up some very interesting conceptual doors for the average Joe, which I will prattle-on about later. For now, check this out. It's viewable on Quicktime and features Mark (in front of the camera) and I (behind the camera) testing our mettle.

Schadenfreunde

For most of my childhood, growing up near Madison, WI meant hearing weekly sermons (daily if I listened to WPR) about how much better certain European nations were for having social programs and economic regulations not present here. Repeated mentions of 10%+ unemployment and stagnant GDP didn’t matter – to these Europhiles some maddeningly inconsistent and subjective concept of “quality of life” was all that mattered. During my last visit over Christmas to extended family who live in a neighborhood festooned with signs warning about the risks of angering the neighborhood “eco-team” if unsatisfactory recycling takes place, I was lectured on how irresponsible US social and fiscal policies are in comparison to the EU’s. Well, I’m glad I’ll probably live to see their positions proven otherwise.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn27.html

CIA analysts predict the collapse of the EU within 15 years. I'd say, as predictions of doom go, that's a little on the cautious side.
But either way the notion that it's a superpower in the making is preposterous. Most administration officials subscribe to one of two views: a) Europe is a smugly irritating but irrelevant backwater; or b) Europe is a smugly irritating but irrelevant backwater where the whole powder keg's about to go up.
For what it's worth, I incline to the latter position. Europe's problems -- its unaffordable social programs, its deathbed demographics, its dependence on immigration numbers that no stable nation (not even America in the Ellis Island era) has ever successfully absorbed -- are all of Europe's making. By some projections, the EU's population will be 40 percent Muslim by 2025. Already, more people each week attend Friday prayers at British mosques than Sunday service at Christian churches -- and in a country where Anglican bishops have permanent seats in the national legislature.
Some of us think an Islamic Europe will be easier for America to deal with than the present Europe of cynical, wily, duplicitous pseudo-allies. But getting there is certain to be messy, and violent.
Until the shape of the new Europe begins to emerge, there's no point picking fights with the terminally ill. The old Europe is dying, and Mr. Bush did the diplomatic equivalent of the Oscar night lifetime-achievement tribute at which the current stars salute a once glamorous old-timer whose fading aura is no threat to them. The 21st century is being built elsewhere.

Jimmah!!!

It still blows me away when even steadfast Republicans respond with “well he was a good man” when discussing the ineptitude of the Carter administration. I’m absolutely amazed at how he’s managed to transform losing badly into political sainthood. He won the Nobel prize and now he’s even getting a sub named after him.

Do you think the Navy knows about this? Screw Soviet expansionism Jimmah needs to win!!!

Soviet diplomatic accounts and material from the archives show that in January 1984 former President Jimmy Carter dropped by Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin's residence for a private meeting.
Carter expressed his concern about and opposition to Reagan's defense buildup. He boldly told Dobrynin that Moscow would be better off with someone else in the White House. If Reagan won, he warned, "There would not be a single agreement on arms control, especially on nuclear arms, as long as Reagan remained in power."
Using the Russians to influence the presidential election was nothing new for Carter.
Schweizer reveals Russian documents that show that in the waning days of the 1980 campaign, the Carter White House dispatched businessman Armand Hammer to the Soviet Embassy.
Hammer was a longtime Soviet-phile, and he explained to the Soviet ambassador that Carter was "clearly alarmed" at the prospect of losing to Reagan.
Hammer pleaded with the Russians for help. He asked if the Kremlin could expand Jewish emigration to bolster Carter's standing in the polls.
"Carter won't forget that service if he is elected," Hammer told Dobrynin.