Food for thought: Do upper-income Americans lose more from the decline of social services and public investment than they gain in tax cuts? Apparently, on a strictly material level, they do. As we saw from the new bankruptcy law, where the credit industry ended up losing more as a result of the last-second filing panic then it could ever hope to profit from the new law, the long-term effect of the Bush Presidency may be to create a public demand for the sort of liberal politics beyond the dreams of even the most fervent progressives. Call it the Law of Unintended Consequences.

"I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered."

--George Best (1946-2005)

I wonder if this sort of heavyhandedness will ultimately lead to the establishment of an American Catholic Church. All it will take is for a high-profile bishop or cardinal to have a damascene flash of awareness about the contradiction in church teachings, between the lip service that is paid to serving the poor and needy versus the submission demanded to the authoritarian reactionary bigots in Rome. American Catholics (including myself, who was confirmed in the Church twenty years ago) deserve a religion that adheres to the ministry of Christ, not to the whims of Papal oligarchs and other neo-castrati that make up the Vatican hierarchy. [link via AmericaBlog]

Oh, and lest I forget, a Happy Thanksgiving to all !!!

ABC has finally pulled the plug on Alias. Perhaps the least-watched show ever to last five seasons on the air, with its ratings about to go further into the toilet during a long hiatus, thanks to the sins of its main star, the show will conclude next May. I haven't written about the show as much since the second season, but at its peak it was one of the most original programs ever aired on network TV: a weekly James Bond movie, except played completely straight. There had been rumors that J-Garn was set to leave at season's end, and the show really seemed to have been written to last only four seasons, as the abrupt cliffhanger in last season's finale seemed to indicate. After May, fans will have to settle for syndicated reruns, video games, and the inevitable movie a few years down the line, and J.J. Abrams can concentrate on the infinitely more successful Lost.

Prof. Althouse, on the Scalia whineathon this week about the cruel inconvenience a former Presidential candidate imposed on the Supreme Court:

Once the case had been set in motion, the Supreme Court had to take it, he said: "The issue was whether Florida's Supreme Court or the United States Supreme Court [would decide the election.] What did you expect us to do? Turn the case down because it wasn't important enough?"

I wonder if Scalia approves of the bracketed language! I should think he'd want something more like "The issue was whether Florida's Supreme Court or the United States Supreme Court [would resolve the legal questions raised by Gore's challenge]." He's right, isn't he? Once the Florida courts started interpreting their way toward upsetting the result, the Supreme Court couldn't sit by passively.

WTF?!? Why exactly couldn't the Supremes have "(sat) by passively"? Wasn't it the whole freaking point that the Scalians decided to intervene in a matter traditionally handled by state courts (that is, the tabulation of votes in a statewide election), and then did so in a way that would most intrusively prevent the completion of the vote count in Florida?

The federal courts refuse to intervene in matters traditionally left to the states all the time; in fact, it's pretty much their constitutional obligation under the doctrine of federalism. If Scalia doesn't believe that state courts should be involved in resolving election disputes, then why not say so. Why make their judicial handiwork such a blatant, authoritarian display of rank partisanship?

Scalia's complaint, that it was the Gore campaign that originally brought the dispute to the judiciary, so the Supreme Court just had to get in its ten cents, is not surprisingly disingenuous (as well as technically incorrect; it was the Bush campaign that first sought judicial intervention, only days after the election). Bush v. Gore wound its way to the Supreme Court because the Bush campaign, having been defeated on the merits in state court, and fearful of the possibility that after all the votes were finally counted, they would lose the state, twice appealed to the federal judiciary. It was the Bush campaign, not Gore's, that brought the issue to the Supreme Court. That Scalia even sat on the court during oral arguments is another sign of what a sleazy, corrupt whore he is; any judge with even a modiocum of ethical standards would have recused himself, since his son was a partner in the law firm that represented the Bush campaign. Recusal standards for federal judges are a joke, anyway, but I've always wondered what was so pressing about the Supreme Court having to intervene when they did.

Prof. Krugman (and most of the liberal blogosphere and punditocracy) aside, there is a decent chance that Bush would have won the recount anyway if only undervotes had been counted, and even if he hadn't won after the recount, in all likelihood the Florida state legislature, with its GOP-majority, would have overturned the result and sat the Bush electoral slate. Thereafter, Democrats would have had to focus their bile on the legislature, a democratically-accountable branch of government, and the voters of Florida could have made their voices heard in 2002 and 2004 about whether they approved that decision. The integrity and respect accorded the Supreme Court would have been preserved.

Instead, the Supreme Court, a non-democratic, unelected branch, made the decision. The election of 2000 will forever be known as the one in which the franchise of the American People was made less important in determining who shall be President than five Supreme Court justices. If anyone has any doubts as to how a Justice Alito would rule if Allen v. Clinton were to come before the high court in 2008, they should keep that in mind during his confirmation hearings.

T.J. Simers, LA Times sports columnist, on Our Thing:

From what I know about blogs, it doesn't appear you need much more than someone who likes to hear themselves talk, who knows how to type and who also owns a computer. It's not as if you have to interview anyone, or even attend a game, so long as you sound as if you know what you're talking about — you know, kind of like sports talk radio.

Well, he's got me pegged. I would point out for the record, though, that a) Mr. Simers is also a sports talk radio host; and b) that about half of what is on sports talk radio consists of the same type of puff-piece interviews that are so prevalent in sports sections across the country, including the one for which Mr. Simers writes.

Unlike Matt Welch, I'm a TJ fan. His toadying, ass-kissing columns, disguised most frequently as misanthropic rants, are always worth a chuckle, and I would love to see the Times op-ed section hire a regular columnist who was as readable as TJ. I doubt there isn't a Times reader who hasn't gotten a cheap laugh out of his "friendship" with USC Athletic Director Mike Garrett, who went from being the butt of his jokes to his "best friend", as a result of a widely denounced hiring decision he made five years ago.

Of course, the notion that you have to either attend games or interview jocks to "know what you're talking about", is telling. All too often, the sports pages embrace the cult of "character guys", to use Bill Plaschke's cringe-inducing phrase: if success at your job is defined by the interviews you obtain and the games you get to attend, of course you want the people you work with every day to be nice, polite, and speak the English language with some degree of comfort. An athlete, coach, or G.M. who doesn't give you the time of day can be a bloody pain to work with, so who can blame the scribe for wanting to see the "clubhouse snake" traded, while keeping the less-productive players who always make time to give you an interview, who always thank you for your time. It may not help the team when something other than merit is used to determine who gets to start, but the mentality of wanting to see the nice guy advance is one that is universal to all callings. Even if it does hurt the bottom line.

YBK [The Sequel]: One inevitable result of the pre-YBK panic was that new filings after October 17 would all but disappear. The Washington Post confirms that in the first month since the new law went into effect, the number of new cases went from nearly three-quarters of a million in the two weeks preceding YBK, including just under a half-million in the final week, to about 3,000 cases a week since then. Prior to the signing of the bankruptcy "reform" act, a typical week saw about 30,000 cases. After the run on the courts in October, it is a welcome break for those of us who make our living in this area; we are having a hard time just filing the amendments, attending the hearings, and, in the case of Trustees, adminstering the assets that are required under the old law, without having to think about what we should be doing with new clients.

The scuttlebutt around the local courts is that the new cases are being disproportionately filed in pro per (that is, without benefit of legal counsel), using forms that are out-of-date and without adherence to any of the new requirements, such as mandatory credit counseling, mandated by the new law. Therefore, many of the cases included in the total are going to get dismissed. That will lower the new total even further, but many of those debtors are still going to have a need to discard their debts, so I expect to see some of these people in my office next month. The end of the old law cleared the decks, as it were, but the problems with the economy remain.

Indeed, even now the numbers of new filings are beginning to go back up again. YBK motivated a lot of people who had been procrastinating to file at the last minute, most of whom never would even considering the need to file. The new law creates a few more hoops to jump through, and increases the paperwork to successfully file a new case, but it doesn't eliminate the problems of out-of-control revolving credit, or of delinquent mortgage or car payments. In a matter unrelated to YBK, monthly credit card payments are going to increase significantly in January, and the housing bubble has already begun to burst in certain areas of the country. Bankruptcy attorneys have had years to prepare for this lull, and the explosion in business last month has bought us time. And a fair number of people who didn't file in October now have the bug planted in their ears.

Prediction: anticpate a sizeable increase after the holidays, and a restoration of the old weekly norms by the end of 2006.

After less than a week, the decision to rename Pajamas Media has been reversed. Why they wanted to ditch the original name has always baffled me. The siliness of naming a web business after clothing associated with childhood was inspired, and it's amazing no one in the company realized that. If people are laughing at you, that means they're also paying you a great deal of attention, which is absolutely essential for it to have any hopes of succeeding.

And of course, in the wake of last year's election, "pajamas" has enormous symbolic weight in the blogosphere; regardless of what you thought of the jujitsu that enabled the Bushies to change the debate from his avoidance of military service in 1972 to the typing font on otherwise-minor documents, it was a very clear sign that major media outlets were as lax with their due diligence as the typical blogger. One only needs to hear the pathetic producer of the 60 Minutes II segment, Marla Mapes, as she criss-crosses the country trying to sell her book to understand that. Here was someone who was ostensibly a journalist, who was presented with hearsay copy of a series of documents by a third party with a very public grudge, and she wasn't smart enough to ask the most elemental questions about the documents' authenticity before going to air. And of course, some very partisan bloggers, whose motivation wasn't in trying to "find the truth" (after all, these were the same bloggers who propagated a fraud of their own, the SBV's, the month before) but solely in trying to exonerate the President, amazingly, did find the truth.

Two and a half months after Hurricane Katrina, between six and seven thousand people are still missing and unaccounted for. The casualty totals right now are pretty much going to be limited to the bodies they've physically found, so it is harder to include in any counts people who may have washed out to sea on the Gulf Coast.

There's a meme, or a thread, or something going around the b'o'sphere suggesting that we list the 10 films that piss us off the most. I have a feeling that in about five years, it will be like compiling a list in 1950 of the 10 worst radio dramas. I just watched a twelve-part drama on HBO, featuring British actors I had never heard of three months ago, and there are three or four other series each week that I watch religiously.

And it's almost free, more or less. Why would I spend twenty bucks on a movie ticket and snacks to watch the Gay Cowboy Film, or a flick featuring a talking lion and a ten-foot albino witch? If those films are any good, I can always rent the DVD next year, or wait til they're shown on cable, and never leave my couch.

I do make exceptions, of course. A visual spectaculor, like The Lord of the Rings trilogy or any of the Star Wars films, has to be seen on the big screen. If I'm on a date, I'll spend the money to see whatever's playing. Documentaries, of course, because their topicality necessitates it. And, of course, comedies: nowhere is the communal aspect of seeing something with a group of strangers more evident.

So yesterday, I blew off the chance to witness the Peyton-and-Carson show, and went down to Encino to watch Jesus Is Magic. Sarah Silverman is certainly the most-talked about comedienne today, and she doesn't disappoint. Contrary to this blogger, the fact that most of the critics included some of her punchlines in their reviews isn't a problem, since what makes her panoply of politically incorrect humor work is her delivery. Without that, her humor would be nothing more than crude racial slurs and "jokes" about the Holocaust, something you notice when you try repeating her one-liners to others. She definitely has a future as an actress when the stand-up thing gets tedious.

Funny or not, though, I can't recommend the film. For one thing, it's barely an hour long. Intersperced with her one-liners are a set of some of the most excruciatingly bad songs and "skits", a reminder that she used to write for a TV show that featured Jimmy Fallon, Maya Rudolph and Adam Sandler. Without the filler, it's a forty-five minute set.

Secondly, and most importantly, it's still something that is being shown in a theatre. The ticket for a mid-afternoon weekend show was $9.50, and together with popcorn and a soda, that means you get to spend close to $20, all for the experience of being able to laugh, with others, at less than an hour's worth of jokes about "chinks" and the lack of Jewish porn stars. She ain't worth it.

Murtha for President: Mickey Kaus links to a remarkeably prescient interview given by Representative Jack Murtha in October, 2002, several months before hostilities commenced in Iraq. Murtha was clearly moving down the path from strident Cold War Scoop Jackson Democrat to skeptic of Pax Americana, long before the casualties began coming home from this war; reading this interview puts the anguish and dismay so evident in last week's now-historic press conference into a much more interesting context than the initial media reaction, which only served to paint him as a fair weather dove. If John Kerry had been able to make as cogent an argument back then against the rush to arms without due diligence, the 2004 election would have had a different result.

Episode 12: I guess the contract negotiations to bring back Ciaran Hinds for Season Two fell through....

You are, Number 6: Finally, a remake that's worth doing. [link via Democratic Daily]

Kudos to the Leland J. Stanford Jr. University, for becoming the first-ever college to lose to three different UC schools in the same football season. The school, located south of San Francisco in Palo Alto's bucolic suburbs, opened their season with a loss to Division II UC Davis, blew a three-touchdown lead with seven minutes to play to fall to UCLA, and capped their conference slate yesterday with a blow-out loss to CAL, 27-3, who was led by a quarterback starting his first game, Steve Levy. All three losses were at home; perhaps in response, the school fathers will demolish Stanford Stadium after their final game next week, against Notre Dame. No word yet if the diploma mill will try to break its record next season by scheduling Riverside, Santa Clara, or Santa Barbara State. Unbelievably, if the Cardinal win next week, they will become bowl-eligible.

It was bad enough they called Jack Murtha a coward, but now they have to dowdify him. The usually-sensible John Cole, in trying to justify that debacle yesterday in the House, writes:

Murtha stated he wants immediate withdrawal of the troops. His bill asked for deployment to be ‘hereby terminated.’ The GOP bill removes all the bullshit, and states that a vote of ‘aye’ means that you favbor exactly what Murtha said yesterday and proposed in his bill.

(snip)

So shut up, quit your damned whining, reach down between your legs and grab a pair of grapes, and vote on the resolution. It is as simple as it gets. Do you favor immediate withdrawal of the troops from Iraq? Yes or no.

Even an unnuanced simpleton like me can figure this one out.

Okay, I'll bite: since when is it up to the GOP to "remove all the bullshit" from the resolutions of Congressmen from the other party? It would be unacceptable if their editing didn't change the meaning of the proposal, but in this instance, they clearly did. Murtha's resolution called for the immediate commencement of the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, an event that would clearly take place over a period of time, and according to the resolution, only "at the earliest practicable date". The GOP resolution purports to simply order the troops home, yesterday.

Language is important, a fact reinforced by the circumstances by which the Bush Administration conned into this quagmire in the first place. Justifying the revision of a sitting Representative's resolution in an effort to embarass the other side is not only demogogic, it's wrong. One can just as easily argue that the President is correct when he says, “we don’t do torture”. Clearly, all the President, the Attorney General, the Defense Secretary and the rest of his thugs have done is taken the Geneva Conventions, as well as basic standards of human decency, and “removed all the bullshit” about the appropriate way to treat enemy combatants, etc. It's the same damn thing, and the lucky fact that Jean Schmidt dropped a turd in the punch bowl during yesterday's debate only shows that the Supreme Deity has a wicked sense of humor when it comes to striking back at those who have lost the Mandate of Heaven.

Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus have a new videoblog, which posts three-days-a-week conversations on assorted issue of topical importance. It's pretty addictive, even if you are not in agreeance with the two..

A good, cogent piece on why political bloggers can never expect to get rich off their little hobby, by DtheP. I wish nothing but success for OSM (heck, they've included me on their blogroll, which is quite a bit better than most of my so-called allies in the blogosphere), but I think it would be better for all concerned if the initial focus was on building a good website than on strategizing how they can market their project to high-end advertisers.

BTW, is there any explanation why they decided to kick off their project with a party in New York City rather than L.A.? Symbolically, it makes no sense. NYC may be the MSM Capitol of the World, but in terms of the blogosphere it is definitely an underachieving backwater. Not only do the two principal bloggers behind OSM live in the City of Angels, but the entire Southern California region is inarguably the deepest, broadest area for the format in the world (to wit, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here; and that's not counting other bloggers [ie., here and here] who started in SoCal before moving on to bigger and better things.).

Each of the sites I've listed are among the most influential and/or popular blogs today, encompassing the whole range of political and cultural debate, and all are based or originated in the area between the Mexican border and the Kern River. There is no other area on this planet that even comes close. To put it another way, if you're going to open a play with the intent of making a fortune, you open it on Broadway or the West End, or failing that, off-Broadway or at the Fringe. You don't open it in Los Angeles unless you have a lot of kinks you need to work out first. Los Angeles has a good local theatrical scene, and has opened some fine plays, but you need to go elsewhere if you want the right people to take notice. Symbolically, starting OSM in the Big Apple really sends the wrong message.

Mike Pendo, who had spent the past decade as an HIV researcher in San Francisco, died this week of a heart attack at his home. He had been my friend since the two of us attended CAL in the early-80's, although, ironically, he spent the first year of my knowing him trying to kill me (literally) for having autographed/defaced one of his posters. Mike was the next-door neighbor of my best friend from high school in the Spens-Black dorm, and it was together with him and his roommate that we watched re-runs of Brideshead Revisited and became Phoebe Nicholls fanatics. He, the aforementioned roommate, and several other people from that dorm bought a three-story house in the Castro District in the early-90's, back when that was still possible off the combined income of schoolteachers and law clerks, and he lived there for most of that decade. I didn't get to see him much when I visited the house in recent years, but every so often he would drop by, and he would always ask me whatever happened to the PhoeNix. He was a sweet, funny guy, and he was just 41.

The Cronkite Moment: The Bushies don't know it yet, but today is going to go down as the Day the War Ended. After today, there is not even the pretense that the Iraqi Adventure can be considered to have bipartisan support. John Murtha, who in his thirty years on the Hill has one of the most hawkish records in Congress, made an eloquent case on national television to bring the boys home. The Pennsylvania Congressman, who as this critical blog notes, is not a Johnny-Come-Lately when it comes to calling the neocons on the carpet for their bungling ineptitude (two years ago he was demanding that a number of Administration officials resign for their botched handling and preparations for this war, obviously well before the President's approval numbers reached Nixonian levels), has now taken a position that would have been considered radical just a few months ago. Murtha, Hagel, Kerry; all Vietnam War vets, all men who didn't have other priorities when they were of age and their country sought their participation in a previously misguided adventure, now demanding, in one form or another, that the governing class set aside their collective egos and put an end to this folly at once.

Open Source Media, the long-anticipated website rising from the ashes of Pajamas Media, is up and running. It's list of contributors range from conservative to Jesus-can-you-keep-your-voice-down-there-are-children-present Wingnuts, but I also see that several of my co-conspirators in the Grand Cause to overthrow the guv'ment, including David Corn and Marc Cooper are among them as well. Perhaps even more significant in terms of blogcred, Max Sawicki (ie., MaxSpeak) is also among the heathens; Sawicki is probably to the left of Cooper and Corn, and an excellent debater.

I noted a few weeks ago a brief debate between Mr. Corn and James Wolcott about whether left-of-center types should be associating in blog ventures with miscreants like Charles Johnson and Roger Simon. Corn correctly noted that Mr. Wolcott's hands were not clean in such matters; it ill-behooves anyone to play the guilt-by-association card when you make your money writing for a magazine whose two recent covergals include America's Richest Porn Star and England's Most Gorgeous Crankskank. Nevertheless, Vanity Fair offers something for every discriminating taste, and if you don't like hard-hitting celebrity journalism (who knew you could be such a devoted mother and be snorting lines of primo at four in the morning) or Mr. Samgrass' bi-monthly apologias for Ahmad Chalabi and Paul Wolfowitz, there's always something else to read, including Mr. Wolcott's fine media column. And I'm willing to give OSM a shot as well.

UPDATE: Seems like the new venture is not entirely "open source", however.

OMIGOD !!! The LA Times cans Robert Scheer, but retains the beautiful mind that crafted this gem:

His name is Ned Colletti, and he's an old-time baseball guy, from his affection for snakeskin boots to his love of snake-free clubhouses.

He will be named as the new Dodger general manager in a morning news conference which, to be true to Colletti, should take place behind a batting cage.

That's where the guy has lived for the last two decades, first in Chicago, then in San Francisco, often in first place.

Since Colletti became the Giants' assistant general manager in 1997, the team has compiled the third best record in baseball with Barry Bonds and a bunch of character guys.

Colletti, 50, loves the character guys.

He helped build a 2002 World Series team with a lineup that featured Benito Santiago batting fifth, David Bell playing third and Shawon Dunston doing whatever.

Months after the last Dodger regime traded Paul Lo Duca, Colletti worked out a Giant contract for Mike Matheny.

While the last Dodger regime didn't see the value in Adrian Beltre, Colletti was signing Omar Vizquel.

While the Giants struggled with injuries, their first losing season with Colletti, they were still in the race in the final week, and Matheny and Vizquel won Gold Gloves.

That each "paragraph" above consists of exactly one short sentence isn't caused by any problems I'm having with Blogger; it's a Bill Plaschke affectation, enabling him to extend his prose into a full column on those frequent occasions when he doesn't have anything substantive to add to the conversation. It's the sportwriting equivalent of "Heh. Indeed."

But c'mon, "character guys" (attention, Mr. Plaschke: Mike Lupica wants his cliche back) ? A G.M. with an affection for "snakeskin boots" and "snake-free clubhouses"? A columnist optimistic about the future of the home team because the new G.M. viewed the aging Omar Vizquel and Mike Matheny (who?) as pennant insurance, or that his definition of the "character guys" who supposedly surrounded Barry Bonds en route to their occasional playoff chokes includes Jeff Kent? Who believes that DePodesta was to blame for Adrian Beltre signing with more money with Seattle?

I cannot understand why newspaper empires are content to allow sports sections to have lower standards than the rest of the paper. Newspapers everywhere are losing the eyes of readers to the internet, but the sports section may well be the last bulwark, the one reason why people will drop a quarter to buy it off the rack. So why does the local paper peddle crap like that?

What he said:

As the Iraqi government assumes more responsibility for governing Iraq, so too must Iraq’s forces continue to take on more responsibility to defend their country. The U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, underscored this point on October 25 when he told Gwen Ifill on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer that he believes that the United States is, “on the right track to start significant reductions [of U.S. military forces] in the coming year.” I believe the United States should begin drawing down forces in Iraq next year. U.S. military power is not a surrogate force upon which Iraq can indefinitely depend. The current Iraqi government’s announcement on November 2 to accept the return of junior officers of the former Iraqi army – reversing U.S. Ambassador Paul Bremer’s decision to disband Hussein’s armed forces – was a critically important development. Political confidence and military capability will reinforce and strengthen Iraq’s ability to govern and defend itself and sustain that confidence. We should not obstruct this development. The United States must encourage and expect demonstrations of new Iraqi independence and decision-making.

(snip)

The Iraq war should not be debated in the United States on a partisan political platform. This debases our country, trivializes the seriousness of war and cheapens the service and sacrifices of our men and women in uniform. War is not a Republican or Democrat issue. The casualties of war are from both parties. The Bush Administration must understand that each American has a right to question our policies in Iraq and should not be demonized for disagreeing with them. Suggesting that to challenge or criticize policy is undermining and hurting our troops is not democracy nor what this country has stood for, for over 200 years. The Democrats have an obligation to challenge in a serious and responsible manner, offering solutions and alternatives to the Administration’s policies. Vietnam was a national tragedy partly because Members of Congress failed their country, remained silent and lacked the courage to challenge the Administrations in power until it was too late. Some of us who went through that nightmare have an obligation to the 58,000 Americans who died in Vietnam to not let that happen again. To question your government is not unpatriotic – to not question your government is unpatriotic. America owes its men and women in uniform a policy worthy of their sacrifices. (emphasis added)

--Sen. Chuck Hagel [R-NE]

I admit to being confused by the Bushies' latest tactic, which is to justify the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that many "on the other side" believed the same thing. Yeah, I think we already knew that a lot of Democrats were just as cravenly idiotic on the subject as the President, and it helps to remember that in the run-up to all wars, including the aforementioned adventure, hawkishness has historically been a safe fall-back. In the almost 230 years of our national existence, no politician running for high office in America has ever lost his seat because he was too hawkish.

But it ignores the more fundamental problem: Bush is the President of the United States. He can't use, as justification for his policies, the fact that other people were also conned. He's not only supposed to be a leader; he occupies a unique position, a perch from which the nation expects to follow his lead. Americans typically don't like to assume that their President might be telling the truth, depending on his whims. On an issue like whether to send our young off to battle, we need to have that confidence, especially coming from a President who avoided military service in his youth, and who has kept his daughters out of harm's way in theirs'.

Thus, it leaves a rather stale taste in our mouths when the President tries to argue that he didn't really lie in this instance, since the other side believed the same things. He was the one getting intelligence briefings telling him that Saddam's WMD capacity was vastly overstated, that stories of Iraq's role in 9/11 and its efforts to purchase yellowcake from Niger were false, that the cost, in both blood and money, in rebuilding and stabilizing Iraq was going to grow at a geometrical scale. The kindest interpretation of that is to say that Bush ignored the intelligence he didn't want to hear; the less kind interpretation is that he out-and-out lied. In either case, he and his advisors, almost all of whom to a man had avoided serving in Vietnam even though they also supported that adventure, treated the spectre of war too casually, and that shame cannot be palmed off on the Democrats.

This is apropos of nothing, of course, but there has been at least one drop-dead gorgeous debtor at every Chapter 7 meeting of creditors I've attended in the San Fernando Valley division of the bankruptcy court since the beginning of October. Cultural interpretation: as it did with so many others, the spectre of the new law caused many a potential starlet and model to seek a fresh start after their initial attempts to earn a SAG card fell short; the Valley is where many an aspiring movie star lives until they can hit it big, as well as being the Capital of the Adult Film Industry; waitressing and bartending, while nice character-building life experiences until the Big Break happens, don't do much to help pay off student loans and credit card bills in the interim.

I guess the most interesting aspect of this is that so many of these new debtors are quite young. Since they're not from around here, they haven't begun to make serious incomes, they're living in one of the priciest neighborhoods on the planet, and, without the option of living with their parents when times are tough, they are giving up the struggle to pay their debts with less of a fight.

The Two-and-a-Half Percent Solution:

Which is why I suppose Reiner's guy in Iowa --Howard Dean-- fell flat on his face despite the fact that Reiner did the primary eve bus thing with Dean, and why Bush won overwhelmingly in 2004, and why the elections in January and October and those forthcoming in December saw enormous turnout.(emphasis added)

--Hugh Hewitt, GWB's Walter Duranty

Instapundit links approvingly to this Scotty McLellan press release, where the White House flack attacks the only surviving Kennedy brother:

It is regrettable that Senator Kennedy has chosen Veteran's Day to continue leveling baseless and false attacks that send the wrong signal to our troops and our enemy during a time of war. It is also regrettable that Senator Kennedy has found more time to say negative things about President Bush then he ever did about Saddam Hussein. (emphasis mine)

Perhaps it's me, but isn't it the duty of every American statesman, especially the leader of the opposition, to be more critical of our own leader than some random foreign dictator. I bet George Bush has found more time during his political career to say negative things about the opposition in his own country than he has about Saddam Hussein; he certainly has said nastier things about the other side more frequently than he has about the man actually responsible for September 11, Osama bin Laden.

Nor is this some unique aspect of our current partisan age. Clement Atlee probably mentioned Winston Churchill more often (and not always in a nice way) than he did Tojo, Hitler and Mussolini combined after WWII. It is an historical fact that Republicans during WWII spoke more critically of FDR than they did of any Axis leader. Certainly, there was more criticism of Bill Clinton from the likes of Newt Gingrich and Tom Delay than there was of Slobadan Milosevic, or even of Saddam Hussein. And although I may not agree with the factual basis of their criticism, any sincere partisan would have been right to do so; indeed, it was the patriotic obligation of Clement Atlee, Bob Taft, Newt Gingrich and Ted Kennedy to do so, and not to preface their opposition by saying that some deposed ex-dictator was worse.

It seems there is the whiff of the authoritarian underlying the White House's (and Prof. Reynolds') worldview....

The dirty little secret of American liberal politics is that we are much more tolerant of losing elections than conservatives are. Some of the reasons, of course, are obvious; for example, our historic agenda is already in place, so we can afford to spend some years in the wilderness while the GOP chips away at the margin. But it's also been true historically. Liberal epochs in American history are few and far between, confined to the Age of Jackson (1829-37), Lincoln and Reconstruction (1861-76), the Progressive Era (1901-18) and the New Deal/Fair Deal/Great Society period (1931-66). The original Constitution, which was drafted in large measure to protect the power and interests of slaveholders, is a conservative, anti-democratic document, and American politics has pretty much reflected that.

If you're a liberal in the U.S., or for that matter, any western democracy, you therefore accept, and respect, the fact that you are going to play on the losing team in most elections. It is in anticipation of those few occasions when we win nationally that makes progressive politics so much fun, because we realize that when it's our turn, we will change things more dramatically in the short time given us, and in a more permanent manner, than our adversaries could ever dream of doing. When one realizes that the most conservative Presidency since Coolidge must now settle for confirming Supreme Court justices who will not overturn Roe v. Wade, regardless of how they feel about that decision, as its only significant domestic accomplishment, is a testament to the power of an ideology that is usually on the losing end of elections.

Not surprisingly, there are people, including one of my dinner companions last night, who state that they are "tired of playing for the loser." This usually manifests itself in strident attacks on the Democratic Party, how the party is too liberal (or not liberal enough) which I believe misses the point entirely. What we believe in, as liberals, can never be defined by the fortunes of a political party, and should not be altered one iota by its electoral prospects. The Democratic Party is a useful vehicle, indeed, the only real vehicle at the moment, for electing like-minded politicians within our Constitutional system. But its fortunes are not tied to our own, we have no right to expect any ideological conformity from the it, and any problems it has at the moment should not be our paramount concern. If a better vehicle comes along, we should buy it instead.

For it has not always been true that the interest of liberals was served by the Democratic Party; in its first hundred years of existence, the Democrats were the party of slavery and limited, straitjacketed government at the federal level. Ironically, the period of the greatest prolonged dominance in the history of the Democratic Party came between 1800 and 1860, when the party's core tenet was the expansion of slavery. It didn't really become the nations's liberal party until Bryan and the Populists emerged at the end of the Nineteenth Century (or rather, until the party coopted the Populists, who were threatening its political base) , while the Republicans continued their shift to being the party of Main Street and Big Business.

What this means is that we have more important things to worry about than whether the party is winning elections: namely, whether we are winning elections (or, if not winning elections, whether we are having enough influence to make those who are winning elections take notice and respect our numbers). Let's face it, other than a few of the bozos and hacks who pal around with the "Reverend" Al Sharpton, is there any liberal in New York City who is brokenhearted over the landslide win by Mayor Bloomberg, a Republican, over Mr. Ferrer last Tuesday? Probably not. By the same token, when Joementum wins reelection next year, as a Democrat, for his Senate seat, will any liberals rejoice? Only if it gets us to 51.

But whether the party wins or loses in 2006 or 2008 has nothing to do with what I believe, or the values I profess. I'm not going to compromise or trim my sails just to make things easier for a Democratic politico in Oklahoma or South Carolina. They're on their own. Nor do I expect them to become Southern California liberals. American political parties are not designed to impose ideological conformity, and thank god for that. The Democratic Party, like the Republican Party, is what it is, an institutional structure designed to build coalitions and win elections. It has not had a great deal of success at that lately in flyover country, but there you have it. Tomorrow is a new day.

Wonderful evening, to cap off what was otherwise a bleak and depressing day: a salon of bloggery, hosted by Mr. Armed Liberal, at Ocean Seafood in Chinatown. No fisticuffs, a little politics, some gossip, and a lot of dim sum.

I got to Chinatown from Sherman Oaks using "high speed" public transportation, a novelty in the city of Los Angeles, which extended what would normally be a half-hour to forty-five minute drive into an hour-and-ten minute commute. The Valley leg was spent on the brand-spanking-new Orange Line, a dedicated bus line that they're still working out the kinks. Last week a septuagenarian driver, allegedly talking on a cell phone, ran a couple of red lights and collided with an oncoming bus, injuring about a dozen people, and as a result the buses have to travel at ridiculously slow speeds at intersections until the locals can figure out the rudimentary elements of defensive driving.

More time gets wasted transfering to the subway (Red Line) and train (Gold Line) legs of the trip. Since the beginning of each line is also the end of the other, it would seem logical that the transit system would have it timed so that you could disembark from one and embark on the other within minutes, but that would require a level of competence heretofore not found in local government. At each stop, I waited a minimum of ten minutes for the next train to leave the station, reducing whatever time-saving benefits that would accrue if I were to use the system during rush hour.

In short, the MetroRail is going to have to elevate its game if it is going to achieve its goal of getting significant numbers of commuters out of their cars and off the freeways. Until then, the people who are going to use this system will be either residents who don't own cars, those who have time on their hands, or those who, like myself, would rather do the sudoku puzzle in the morning than sit in traffic for an hour.

Just as it would be foolish to dismiss the future electoral prospects of Ahnold Ziffel in light of the last Tuesday's electoral debacle, so too would it be a mistake to draw too many comparisons with the comeback made by his ally and advisor, Pete Wilson, a dozen years earlier. In 1993, Wilson was:

1) an even more unpopular Governor; and
2) trailed the likely Democratic nominee, the State Treasurer (Kathleen Brown), by a significant margin.

Wilson, of course, came back the following year and won a landslide over Brown, who, besides being a scion of California's great political dynasty, was also a well-known public figure in her own right.

The big difference, however, is that Wilson had no career outside of politics. As such, he was pretty much defined by whether he could win public office, and once successful at that, whether he could win reelection. Other than his adoption of xenophobia as an electoral ideology, it would be hard to state what he stood for.

Ahnold, of course, has a life that doesn't revolve around winning the next election. He can always go back to Hollywood if things don't work out in Sacramento, or smoke cigars at his restaurant in Venice. He ran as a "reformer", and staked much of his political capital on the recent initiatives that the voters decisively defeated. With the defeat of Proposition 77, which sought to re-reapportion the districts legislators run in, the Democrats will continue to maintain their large majorities in both houses. California will remain a state of the deepest Blue variety until at least 2012.

He must now realize that even if he wins reelection next year, he will be little more than a figurehead, no different than the governor of Texas, with the ability only to veto and to occasionally make speeches. The agenda will be set by the Democrats in the state legislature, no matter how decisively he wins his own election next November. He knows that, and I suspect that's not why he got into politics.

I predict he won't run in 2006.

Thought for the day:

California!
On our rugged eastern foothills
Stands our symbol, clear and bold.
"Big C" means to fight and strive
And win for Blue and Gold.
Golden Bear is ever watching.
Day by day he prowls.
And when he hears the tread of lowly
Stanford Trojan Red
From his lair he fiercely growls!

This evening, the lamentations gloating of BFT and Kevin Drum shall permeate the nightime....

UPDATE: U.S.C. 35, CAL 10: Never talk smack about an opponent when your QB's last name rhymes with "A Boob"....

Post-YBK: Here's one group that is profiting from the changeover to the new law almost as much as bankruptcy lawyers (and more so than even the credit card companies): corporate debt collectors. They buy delinquent accounts from the original lender, combine tough talk with amenable compromise, and make a profit from collecting not the entire amount due, but enough to cover their original investment. The most successful of the corporate "repo-men", Portfolio Recovery Associates, collects more than three dollars for every dollar it spends purchasing bad debt. Sweet gig, is that....

In fifteen words or less, can someone explain why I should care about this? Or rather, can someone do so without using the canard that spending money is somehow tantamount to the expression of "free speech"? Speech is speech, bribes are bribes "campaign contributions" are "campaign contributions", and never the twain shall meet.

Mark Steyn is one of the few writers who can make you sympathetic to the goals and aspirations of Al Qaeda, even after a horrific day like yesterday. You may dislike the fact that Osama sends terrorists into our country, flies planes into the Pentagon and WTC, casually murders innocent bystanders, pursues a radical fundamentalism that would make even some Red Staters cringe, and taunts our hapless government and our ineffectual leaders from his cave, but after Steyn lets loose with one of his bigoted, xenophobic rants against the A-Rabs and the French, you understand that maybe the Wassabists, in their twisted, perverted way, have a point. When the choice is between someone who desires, subconsciously or not, the extermination of all Muslims, and someone who may kill a few thousand every decade in wanton acts of futile terror, I'll go with the latter. They're both awful, but sometimes it just makes more sense to go with Stalin when the alternative is Hitler.

Juan Cole, who actually thinks for a living (Go Blue !!), flushes the Canadian Kleagle back down his hole with this post, about this week's uprising in France.

As of midnight, all eight initiatives are losing in California, although two of the measures are still too close to call. That would be Prop. 73 (mandating parental notification for minors before abortion) and 75 (prohibiting the expenditure of public employee union dues without prior consent of member). I voted against both, as well all of the various Schwarzenegger referenda save the redistricting measure (Prop. 77, which is losing decisively). The most important proposal, Prop. 76, which would impose a spending cap on the budget, is getting whomped, as are the two progressive-backed measures (limiting pharmaceutical costs and re-regulating electricity).

With half the vote counted, but almost all of Los Angeles County still to be heard from, it's going to be a very bad morning for Ahnolt Ziffel. He came into office two years ago as a "reformer" who claimed to stand above politics, but now the people have rejected his proposals, in an off-year special election that he called, and which was timed to reduce the turnout of those most likely to oppose him. Even if he wins reelection, he goes into 2006 knowing that is certain that an overwhelmingly liberal, Democratic legislature will also be elected means he would spend the next four years as a figurehead.

The magic is gone. Don't be surprised if Variety publishes a production listing for the shooting of Terminator 4 in 2007.

UPDATE: As of 1 a.m., Prop. 75 is pretty much done, trailing by 5%, with about half of L.A. County and a quarter of Alameda County (two of the biggest liberal counties in the state) to be counted. Prop. 73 is hanging in there; it is perhaps the only initiative that hasn't lost significant ground since the absentee ballots were counted, but it's still going to lose after all the ballots are counted. Good night.

Doesn't plagiarism usually entail the unauthorized passing off of another's work as one's own for pecuniary or material benefit? In this case, if the blogger in question gives its usage the old retroactive thumbs-up, how is it different than Ronald Reagan or JFK taking credit for the oratorical creations of Peggy Noonan or Ted Sorensen, respectively? Or, more to the point, the retelling of a joke one hears from a third party? Bloggers, like speechwriters, are crafting their work for a larger audience, and not only expect that our ideas are going to get ripped off by others higher up the food chain, we need that to happen to feel like we're making a difference.

The Bill Bidwill of Politics:

Bush isn’t going to make a comeback. He’s fallen and he can’t get up.

A comeback presupposes substance and ability. A worthy character who has suffered some setbacks, bad luck or simple human mistakes can make a comeback because he has it in him. Tom Brady of the New England Patriots, Michael Jordan, the Boston Red Sox can mount comebacks. The Arizona Cardinals are not making a comeback this season. They don’t have the team and the ability to straighten out what has gone wrong. They will continue to lose until the end of the season.

George Bush is the Arizona Cardinals. His team is terrible and he refuses to change any of his players. He doesn’t have the personality suited for making necessary changes. Quickly adjusting to changing circumstances is not his forte, stubbornness is. Even if he had the inclination to make a change, he doesn’t have the ability. He simply doesn’t know what the hell he is doing.

(snip)

He is lazy, uninterested and incompetent. He views the presidency as homework. He seems to enjoy politics (at least while he’s up), but he doesn’t enjoy policy. He is detached from decision making and his decision makers have led him dangerously astray. Finally and most importantly, he doesn’t care to get it right.

George W. Bush will never put in the long hours to make sure we have the right policy in Iraq, in the war on terror, in the budget or anything else that concerns actual governing. He finds these things to be tedious. In reality, they are essential to the job of being President. He is overmatched.

And when you’re overmatched, you don’t put together second half comebacks. You get crushed.

--Cenk Uygur, HuffPost

An election-eve poll (from an outfit called "Survey-USA"), shows each of the four Schwarzenegger-backed initiatives going down to defeat, albeit by narrower margins than in other polls. Since earlier versions of the same poll had the measures comfortably ahead, the trend ain't good for the Governor. Proposition 73, which will mandate parental notification before a teen can obtain an abortion, has a slight lead. [link via Daily Kos]

Marc Cooper hits the right notes in urging a Yes vote on one of the Schwarzenegger initiatives: Proposition 77, which will transfer the power to draw legislative and Congressional districts from the State Legislature to a panel of retired judges. It is a flawed plan: retired judges tend to skew conservative in California, which has mainly had Republican governors for the past twenty years; and the suggested guidelines under the proposed law could make it easier to limit the influence of urban residents by squeezing them into "compact" districts.

But it beats the status quo. The current lines were redrawn in 2001 with the intention of protecting incumbents of both parties (the large Democratic majorities in both houses of the State Legislature and in the Congressional delegation were inherited from the previous lines, which were also drawn by a judicial panel), with two underlying goals: defend the seat held by Democrat Gary Condit (remember him?); and save Representative Howard Berman from a primary challenge by a Latino opponent. The net result was a one-seat pick-up for the party in 2002, while the partisan margin in both state houses was essentially unchanged.

Berman has been a terrific Congressman, and I certainly do not wish him any misfortune in his future political career, but the result has been a disaster for the Party. In the 2004 election, Barbara Boxer, arguably the most liberal member of the Senate, won reelection by 20 percentage points, over a moderate-conservative Republican who had won several previous statewide elections. In terms of vote count, it may well have been the largest margin of victory in any contested Federal statewide election in American history. And as I've mentioned before, she lost by very small margins in the districts of two Republican congressmen of note, Duke Cunningham and Christopher Cox. John Kerry, of course, kicked the President's ass here as well, winning by ten points.

Any fairly-drawn set of districts that are designed to produce competitive races should be able to give Democrats at least 3-4 more Representatives. Of course, in a year when the Republican tide is running strong in this state, it will also benefit that party as well. Those should be the breaks in a democracy.

UPDATE [9/7]: Kash (of Angry Bear) and Kos also support 77, while Prof. Kleiman is an emphatic no. Kevin Drum is also opposed, but is not unsympathetic to the reformist argument. Of all the reasons to vote against Prop. 77, the possibility that it will create "compact" districts that will favor Republicans (besides being untrue in California, which has become a decidedly lopsided Blue State in the past fifteen years) is the least persuasive. Partisan gerrymandering should be no more acceptable if it's done to benefit Democrats then when it's done in states like Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas to benefit the GOP. And personally, I don't give a flying santorum if California's Democratic incumbents actually have to campaign in competitive districts in 2006, or even have to figure how to appeal to suburban and exurban voters in the O.C. and San Berdoo to win a swing district. This is a democracy, not the freaking Politburo.

Nothing turns me on more than the use of the term "patriarchy" by an older woman...Pandagon gives great ad for Abercrombie & Fitch. FWIW, I like the "Freshman 15" t-shirt !!!

Hasta la vista, maybe? With less than five days to go, Ahnold's "reform package" in the special election the taxpayers are spending millions on is apparently stiffing across the board. The Field Poll, which has had the best local rep in California for accurately predicting election outcomes, has every initiative trailing, including the one's (such as the requirement for parental notification before teenage girls can have abortions, and two different prescription drug measures) that are only piggy-backing on the Governor's slate, while the latest LA Times poll shows only the parental notification initiative passing, albeit by a slight amount. Both Field and the Times show Ahnold Ziffel losing head-to-head match-ups with his likely Democratic opponents in next year's election, an amazing result considering no one has ever heard of the guys.

Moreover, it appears that the biggest difficulty these measures are having is their association with the Governor. Another set of polls conducted last month had the same initiatives passing overwhelmingly, after respondents were read a brief (albeit misleading) summary. As soon as the propositions get tied to their sponsor, though, the voters seem to recoil like children from a bowl of leftover brussel sprouts. In fact, Schwarzenegger has not only been the kiss of death for his own proposals, he's also killing off the initiatives he has nothing to do with, including the two diametrically opposite propositions dealing with prescription drug reforms (one sponsored by Big Pharma, the other by consumer groups), as well as the parental notification initiative.

If things stand, not an auspicious start to his reelection campaign....

A lot of people talk about a constitutional right of privacy, but no one seems to want to do anything about it. Until now. So what would an amendment contain?

This article is rather typical of the "analysis" we're hearing in the debate over Alito's prospects in the Senate, so I think it bears repeating that whether the Democrats can successfully block the nomination has absolutely nothing to do with whether Mike DeWine or Lindsay Graham, or for that matter, any Republican member of the "Gang of 14" decides to support a filibuster. If this proves to be a particularly unpopular nominee (as polls from Gallup and ABC-Washington Post already are beginning to show), there will be plenty of other Republicans in the Senate who will be more than happy, when push comes to shove, to defend the prerogatives of the Senate.

The key is whether Harry Reid can keep 41 members of his caucus on the reservation. Then, if Bill Frist (or whoever the Majority Leader will be next January) wishes to invoke the Nuclear Option, we'll see how much support the President, who's approval rating is now hovering in the area Nixon's was at the time of the Saturday Night Massacre, has within his own caucus. If he has the votes, Alito will be confirmed, but the death of the filibuster will be at hand, and a longstanding progressive goal will be accomplished. If he doesn't have the votes, no one will care which side DeWine or Graham falls on.

UPDATE [9/7]: Rick Hertzberg comes to much the same conclusion about why an attempted filibuster may be worthwhile even if the Nuclear Option is imposed, but with bigger, fancier words, in the New Yorker.

Since I read this post on Saturday, I have been searching for something, anything, to write in response. Words just aren't adequate to describe the debt bloggers in Southern California owe to Cathy Seipp; she has been one of the prime movers (infiltrators?) within traditional media to open that institution up to bloggers, and the frequent seminars/parties/wine swigs that the LA Press Club hosts under her auspices (as well as Amy Alkon and Emmanuelle Richard) have enabled bloggers to network with those who write for a living, and vice versa. Everytime someone like myself, or Brady Westwater, or "Patterico", gets a piece published in the Sunday opinion section of the LA Times, it is the subtle influence of Ms. Seipp at work, playing a role behind the scenes to open up the Fourth Estate to freelancers, bloggers, and other miscreants throughout the Greater Los Angeles-Long Beach-Orange County metropolitan area.

She is loyal to her friends (and, as evidenced by the rollicking comments section to one of her typical blogposts, no collection of friends was ever so wildly divergent on the political spectrum as hers), a devoted mother to "Cecile", who has inherited her mother's literary gene, and is also wicked funny, both in print and in person. There aren't many websites that have this humble endeavor on its blogroll, much less websites whose politics are as politically dissimilar to mine as Cathy's World. But there is no website on which I'm prouder to be linked.

Cat Fight !! James Wolcott, on David Corn deciding to sully his good name by associating with conservatives:

...I don't understand why someone as politically keen as The Nation's David Corn would lend his name to the editorial board of Pajamas Media, the greatest assembly of conservative deadbeats since Jonah Goldberg's last fondue party. What an illustrious roster of ideological utensils make up Pajamas' masthead: Michael Barone...John Podhoretz...Tim Blair...and this inveterate stirpot, whose presence all decent men and women should shun until proper disinfectant can be found. By allowing his name to be slated on the editorial board, Corn is letting himself be used as a figleaf enabling Pajamas to pretend that it's a bipartisan effort instead of what it so flagrantly is, a neocon popstand.

David Corn, in response:

...I look forward to a new Internet enterprise that seeks to promote varying views, even if the idea came from conservatives. And if James Wolcott, whose work I admire and respect, can bring himself to be associated with a magazine (which I admire and respect) that makes mucho bucks by placing Paris Hilton's jugs in front of our mugs, perhaps I can see if being associated with rightwingers will benefit this blog, my work, and my readers. If not, I'll be happy to chuck it all for a column at Vanity Fair. James, thanks for the vote of confidence.

I'm on Corn's side on this issue. The whole notion that one should not associate with, befriend, or do business with people you disagree is offensive to me. Liberals should not fear engaging the enemy with civility.

You can't win them all? This seems to have pissed off Chris Matthews for its alleged anti-Italian undertones, but reading this, together with Alito's bizarre dissent cited below gives me the feeling that the new nominee may combine the moderation of Antonin Scalia with the cluelessness of Harriet Miers:

Federal law enforcement agencies sustained a major rebuff in their anti-mafia campaign with the August 1988 acquittal of all 20 defendants accused of making up the entire membership of the Lucchese family in the New Jersey suburbs of New York. The verdict ended what was believed to be the nation’s longest federal criminal trial and according to the Chicago Tribune, dealt the government a “stunning defeat.” Samuel Alito, the US Attorney on the case, said, “Obviously we are disappointed but you realize you can’t win them all.” Alito also said he had no regrets about the prosecution but in the future would try to keep cases “as short and simple as possible.” Alito continued, “I certainly don’t feel embarrassed and I don’t think we should feel embarrassed.” (emphasis added)

Jeez, why not nominate Marcia Clark next time? [link via TownHall]

More on Scalito: John Cole threatens to hold his breath if the opposition to the nominee gets too vehement:

If I hear one more person state that Alito is in favor of strip searching 12 year olds, or in favor requiring women to notify their husbands if they intend to have an abortion, or in favor of racial discrimination, or whatever, I am going to blow a gasket.

I don't know of anyone who has stated that Alito favors "strip searching 12 year olds" (actually, the referenced case involved the strip-search of a ten-year old girl), or "requiring women to notify their husbands if they intend to have an abortion", or "racial discrimination, or whatever"*. The problem with Bush's latest sacrifical lamb to the high court is that he supports a legal process that permits the strip-searching of children, that forces women to notify their husband before terminating a pregnancy, and that makes fighting racial discrimination harder for our society. Liberals should have no hesitancy in opposing that sort of judicial activism.

*"whatever", although undefined by Mr. Cole, may well be in reference to his eloquent dissent in Riley v. Taylor (3rd Cir.2001) 277 F.3d 261, in which he drew an analogy between a prosecutor excluding black jurors during voir dire in a death penalty case that involved a black defendant, and the election of left-handed Presidents:

According to the majority, however, the "sophisticated analysis of a statistician" is not
needed to interpret the significance of these statistics. "An amateur with a pocket calculator," the majority writes, can calculate that "there is little chance of randomly selecting four consecutive all white juries."

(snip)

The dangers in the majority's approach can be easily illustrated. Suppose we asked our "amateur with a pocket calculator" whether the American people take right- or left-handedness into account in choosing their Presidents. Although only about 10% of the population is left-handed, left-handers have won five of the last six presidential elections. Our "amateur with a calculator" would conclude that "there is little chance of randomly selecting" left-handers in five out of six presidential elections. But does it follow that the voters cast their ballots based on whether a candidate was right- or left-handed?

Ibid., at 326-7. And thus, we get to the core of the conservative argument against civil rights: preventing blacks from sitting on juries is about as worrisome as electing left-handed Presidents.

Sloppy Seconds: Well, this nomination is going to generate some fun...you can tell what a party of stiff, white men the GOP has become by the fact that they're already trumpeting the fact that Alito is a "son of immigrants" as his principal qualification, rather than defend his odious reactionary views. What should be interesting is not how many Republican Senators vote against the nominee, but how many signal their opposition before the hearings.

Fill in the Blank: The Los Angeles Dodgers will not win another World Series until Bill Plaschke _____________.

It is always a bad idea to allow sportswriters to run your team. There is an inherent conflict of interest: a good GM needs to find the players best suited to win games, while a sportswriter, not bound by the traditional journalistic tenets of strict objectivity, has a vested interest in protecting players who are polite to him in the locker room, and/or give "good copy". Most sportswriters, and particularly baseball writers, are white, so they have a cultural bias in favor of white players over non-whites, who tend to be "moody" and disrupt "team chemistry", especially if they are like (to quote Mr. Plaschke this morning) the "malingering Odalis Perez".

When the scribe is as stupid, as intellectually dishonest, and as bound to the use of hoary cliches and racial code as his guiding philosophy as the aforementioned Mr. Plaschke, who occupies the seat in the LA Times Sports section that Jim Murray used to hold, it can be a nightmare for all concerned. Murray, of course, won bushels of journalistic awards, including the Pulitzer, as a witty vox populi, until old age and illness turned him into a golf writer at the end of his tenure. Plaschke, an all-around know-nothing, has used his pedestal to conduct fatwas against whomever in the Dodger organization expresses a disinterest in kissing the great man's ring, including, it appears, Paul DePodesta.

DePodesta had been the GM for exactly two seasons, one of which they actually managed to win a division title and their first playoff game since 1988. He inherited a team that hadn't seen the playoffs in eight years, with almost no offense (other than the occasional Paul LoDuca single or Shawn Green solo shot), but with a solid rotation and perhaps the most dominant stopper in baseball history. He traded for Milton Bradley, signed Jose Lima, had the good fortune to witness one of the great fluke seasons in baseball history by Adrian Beltre, then acquired Steve Finley with a month to go in the season. And he traded LoDuca, a favorite of the beat writers and fans, and the principal reason Dodger fans eventually got over the Mike Piazza trade,
that same weekend, for Brad Penny and Hee Seop-Choi, neither of whom played much of a role down the stretch in 2004. Finley, of course, did, hitting one of the most dramatic home runs in franchise history to clinch the division.

The 2004 Dodgers were clearly a project assembled for one year, tops; unlike the 1996 Yankees or the 2002 Angels, the players on that team, other than Gagne, Beltre and (maybe) Cesar Izturis, were not going to be a factor on any Dodger team the day they enter the Promised Land of a World Series. LoDuca, while a quality major-league catcher, is not the type of backstop who will turn a loser into a winner; trading him wasn't as stupid, as, say, trading Pedro for Delino DeShields, or Paul Konerko for Jeff Shaw (to name two trades in which Tommy Lasorda, the McCourts' new factotum at the top, played a pivitol role). The McCourts blundered in not resigning Beltre, but the players they did sign in the off-season (Kent and Drew) were more than acceptable substitutes, especially considering the disappointing year Beltre had. Then Gagne pulled up lame in June, followed by Drew and Odalis Perez, and the Dodgers collapsed.

The Dodgers were going to have to start a rebuilding process, pronto, based on the fruits of their minor league system, if they were going to avoid the problems afflicting the team since 1996. But any GM who follows such a philosophy is bound to have problems with the media, since, again, sportswriters have an institutional bias towards players/sources they know, rather than kids playing in some far-off minor league town that they don't. Because free agency is a viable option with large-market teams, that problem will be exacerbated in a town like Los Angeles.

The Dodger farm system has consistently been one of the most productive in all of baseball, as evidenced by the major league-leading total of Rookies of the Year awards its players have won, but if there has been a recurring theme in our local media, it's that our farm system doesn't produce, and our prospects always flop. Ironically, Lasorda, who first drew attention managing one of the all-time great minor league teams, the Albuquerque Dukes, in the early-70's, was a proponent of this view, and he normally wouldn't play a rookie unless management held him at gunpoint. After it took him two years to make Pedro Guerrero a full-time player, the GM at the time, Al Campanis, finally decided that the only way to give a kid a chance was to take the decision out of Lasorda's hands; some of the oddest, most one-sided transactions in team history came when the Dodgers dismantled their great but aging team from the '70's, in order to give time to players like Mike Marshall, Orel Hershiser, and Steve Sax. A similar process happened in the early-90's, when Mike Scioscia, Eddie Murray, Alfredo Griffin and the aforementioned Mr. Hershiser were cast off to give their spots to another generation of players, including Mike Piazza and Hideo Nomo.

And each of those moves was unpopular with the local media. And every time a rookie didn't immediately produce, there were demands from the likes of Mr. Plaschke to trade the loser. The aforementioned trades of Pedro Martinez and Paul Konerko were cheered locally, since it meant the Dodgers were picking up a known quantity, and not risking their future on some unproven kid. For all the goodwill he brought the franchise over the years, Tommy Lasorda's impact on the organization as a whole was akin to a viral pandemic. The talents of a great motivational speaker are not the same as a great baseball mind.

This year, the decision to go with the untried was made easier for the Dodgers. There were so many injuries from Day One that the manager had to use untested players, or else he couldn't field a team. When DePodesta decided not to gut the farm system at the trade deadline in order to give a team that was already ten games below .500 a shot at catching San Diego, he made the right move for the long haul.

The wisdom of playing for the long haul, in order to build something lasting and good, is hard to grasp if you are a sportswriter less interested in the pursuit of the truth than in getting your column into print three times a week. Matt Welch has a good summary of Mr. Plaschke's greatest hits, but I have my own favorite, which of course had to do with a code-filled tirade of his against an African-American player for the Angels, Garret Anderson, during the 2002 World Series. Local fans are inclined to blame the owners, the McCourts, for this incompetent move, and I can't say there isn't some merit to that, but the real blame has to go to the moron, who, from his prominent perch, created the atmosphere that made this firing inevitable.

Miers Out: Looking back, the thing that sank her nomination was the release of her correspondence with the President, which reinforced the argument that she wasn't simply a crony of the President, but a particulary sycophantic one. Her response to the Senate Judiciary Committee's written questionnaire didn't help either; the net result was that she seemed like the female Abe Fortas, without the brains. And that was a shame; her resume indicated that she was someone who had risen to great heights within her profession in spite of many obstacles, including overcoming an extremely sexist culture, both in her home state and in her profession, to helm a top lawfirm, and later to become White House Counsel. The worst news about the defeat of Harriet Miers is that future Presidents will be reticent about nominating anyone to the high court outside the insular club of Ivy League graduates, law professors, former Supreme Court clerks, and appellate litigators and judges. What we will gain in intellectual quality we will lose in having people on the court with different life experiences and perspectives; no more Lewis Powells or John Marshall Harlans.

But the best news about her defeat is the simple fact that Democrats didn't have to lift a finger on this one. Credit goes entirely to the far right punditocracy on this one. It was they who decided to ditch every argument they ever made in the past to justify the silence of any of their stealth nominees, dating back to Clarence Thomas, who decided that suddenly the public had the right to know about conversations with the President that he deemed privileged, who felt that litmus tests on issues ranging from abortion to gay civil rights to the right of privacy were suddenly appropriate. Everything is now back on the table for Democrats. Assuming that O'Connor doesn't do the wise thing at this point and withdraw her resignation, we should run out the clock until the next election, using the conservatives' own playbook to oppose any inapt pick.

I think we can safely stipulate that Andrew Sullivan, champion of the Bell Curve, is probably the last person who should be denouncing something as "racist", no matter how ugly or detestable the post in question may have been. Even so, Dr. Sullivan got it wrong. An African-American blogger who calls his foes "Toms" and photoshops them to look like minstrels may have all the subtlety of a beerfart in a crowded elevator, but he can be no more called a racist than a Jewish blogger who labels his ideological adversaries as "self-hating Jews" or "objectively pro-terrorist" can be labeled "anti-Semitic". Buffoonish? Yes. Racist? That's a bit of a stretch....

YBK [The Bloody Aftermath]: Good article in this morning's New York Times about the visitation of the Law of Unintended Consequences on the credit industry. Apparently now, they realize they got scammed by their lobbyists:

For more than eight years, big banks lobbied aggressively to make it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy.

Now that the new bankruptcy law has taken effect, was the investment worth it? The early data suggest that sometimes, you have to be careful what you wish for.

Bankruptcy filings were supposed to snowball in the months before the tough new law went into effect on Oct. 17. But the avalanche of petitions, and the lines of debtors streaming out the courthouse doors caught even the credit card issuers who supported the new law by surprise.

In recent days, the five biggest bank issuers of credit cards have said that the unexpectedly large flood of filings shaved hundreds of million of dollars off their earnings in the third quarter.

But with tens of thousands of petitions still being processed and Hurricane Katrina's impact on cardholders still being sorted out, the bankruptcy rush is likely to result in well over a billion dollars worth of losses by the end of the year.

"We thought it would cause a bubble," James Dimon, the president of J. P. Morgan Chase, said last week. "The bubble is just bigger than we thought."

Sallie L. Krawcheck, the chief financial officer for Citigroup, said, "It's clearly done some short-term earnings damage to the card industry."

Of course, most banks projected a tidal wave of filings in anticipation of the new, more restrictive rules. They weighed the long-term benefits of a bankruptcy overhaul against the short-term costs of the expected surge of bad, uncollectible debts. What they misjudged, however, was the extent.

More than 500,000 Americans filed for bankruptcy protection in the 10 days before the law took effect on Oct. 17, according to estimates by Lundquist Consulting, a research firm in Burlingame, Calif. That is roughly a third of the total number of bankruptcies filed in 2004. And though the number is expected to soon slow to a trickle, some bankruptcy courts were so inundated with filers that thousands more could be counted this week.

As a result, many banks have found themselves warning that the bankruptcy rule changes would have a big impact on fourth-quarter profits. And executives concede the bottom-line benefits of the new law will now take longer to materialize.

Understand, the estimate that it will cost "well over a billion dollar in losses" is definitely on the low side. The overwhelming number of late filings included many debtors who would have otherwise continued making payments on their past-due bills, and would have never contemplated taking the steps necessary to file bankruptcy, were it not for the sense of urgency set by the October 17 deadline. Since the average amount of credit card debt in Chapter 7 cases is approximately $20,000, the flood of last-minute filings (btw, it will be weeks before all the new petitions are counted by the undermanned courts) will probably push the immediate losses over the $10 billion mark. As I noted last week, YBK may have created the greatest transfer of wealth from the haves to the have-nots since the Great Society.

Rosa Parks, R.I.P.:

She was the perfect test-case plaintiff, a fact that activists realized only after she had been arrested. Hardworking, polite and morally upright, Parks had long seethed over the everyday indignities of segregation, from the menial rules of bus seating and store entrances to the mortal societal endorsement of lynching and imprisonment.

(snip)

"I thought back to the time when I used to sit up all night and didn't sleep, and my grandfather would have his gun right by the fireplace, or if he had his one-horse wagon going anywhere, he always had his gun in the back of the wagon," she wrote. "People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

I first heard of her protest years later. I couldn't have been more than seven at the time, but it stunned me that in the recent history of my country, another human being, an adult, an American, was legally required to give up her seat on a bus so that someone else could sit there, and that the only way she could protest was break the law. That probably shaped my worldview more than any other single historical event.

Professor Balkin, on the Miers' nomination:

I have left the most important reason for Democrats to oppose the Miers nomination until the last. It has little to do with strategic political considerations. Democrats, like all Americans, should want the Supreme Court to be staffed with the best possible candidates-- candidates who have the legal skills and expertise to handle the issues that come before the nation's highest Court and who have the experience, judgment and gravitas to make good decisions when the law is unclear or unsettled. The Court needs and deserves judges who are both excellent lawyers and judicial statesmen. As of now, Harriet Miers, for all of her admirable qualities, does not seem to be that sort of person. Perhaps she will convince us otherwise in the upcoming hearings, but if she does not, the Democrats should oppose her. It is true that Bush may nominate someone even more conservative if Miers is not confirmed, but in one important sense this is beside the point. Democrats who care about the institution of the Court, and who care about the future of the Constitution, should want good people on the bench even if their views about the Constitution differ in important respects from their own. That is what it means to act in the public interest and for the public good: to safeguard and protect the vitality and the quality of the key institutions of American government-- whether they be the Congress, the President, or the courts.

I'm inclined to agree with the professor. At this point, it's going to take an unexpectedly impressive performance by the nominee before the Senate Judiciary Committee to overcome the presumption that she is not well-qualified for the Supreme Court. I have not been impressed yet by the accusations made most frequently by my ideological cohorts on the left, that she is either unprecedently unqualified or that she is ethically suspect (one blogger even went so far as to make a ludicrous comparison with Kenneth Lay because her law firm represented a client in activities that were "potentially abusive or illegal", a practice that would disqualify every tax attorney in the country from future high court consideration), but I still haven't seen anything that would lead me to believe that she is a good choice for the Court. If she seems to be as out to sea before the Judiciary Committee next week as she has been the last two weeks, the only principled course to follow should be to work to defeat her, and take what follows on its own terms.