Sorry for the lack of content lately. When I first started blogging six years ago, it was around the same time I hung up my office shingle for the first time. There wasn't a lot of work for awhile, and blogging was simply a way to kill time at the office between cases. I had always fantasized about being a pundit, and this gave me a way to pontificate to my hearts content, especially about issues on which I had opinions but little expertise.

Most of the other people who had taken up this hobby were conservative, hawkish, and otherwise indistinguishable, even to the point that it was assumed that "warblogging" was the de facto language of the new medium, so being a lefty blogger in the spring of '02 allowed me to stand out from the crowd. I have always been grateful to the people who, in spite of never having met me, still saw fit to write me and give encouragement about something I said at this site.

But my target audience was always my immediate circle of friends, and I think once I realized that most of my readers were either other bloggers, or were people who read hundreds of blogs a day, much of the fun went out of it. In the early days I used to write about a night at the pub with my pals, or the joys of eating a Dodger Dog at the Stadium, with a lot of sports recaps from the night before. Political opinions were much less frequent.

Now, it's been mainly politics, and I'm bored. Some time ago, I realized my voice was not an indispensible one in the blogosphere, that I could just save myself a lot of time and link to whatever Kevin Drum or Matthew Yglesias posted today, rather than trying to come up with anything original, and it would still encompass whatever it was I felt needed to be said (except for Yglesias' occasional [Jonah] Goldbergian-takes on basketball, a sport about which he knows precious little).

Not getting much in the way of links was also a killer. Blogging, like journalism as a whole, shares many of the same characteristics as high school, with cliques of popular kids, nerds, jocks and goths segregating themselves. I suppose it's human nature; we want to be with people like ourselves, and we can be quite ruthless when it comes to blowing off former buddies who turned out to be not as popular as we would have liked. The social gatherings that I used to enjoy, that were such a vital part of the joy of blogging, have now vanished, or at least as far as I am a part of same.

However, ennui cannot explain the dearth of recent postings. The collapse of the housing market, combined with the convoluted nature of the 2005 BARF Act, has made this an extraordinary time to be a bankruptcy lawyer, and my practice is not unaffected. Whereas I used to blog about as often as I generated billable hours, I am now working at full capacity, seven days a week. For the past three weeks, I have not left the office until 8 p.m. every week night, while putting in half-days on Saturday and Sunday. If I can help someone save their house, or at least extend their stay for a year, it's far more satisfying than anything I might write about here.

Of course, hard times can't last forever, and eventually the caseload at my office will return to the lethargic mean that is the life of any bankruptcy lawyer during a Democratic Presidency. It is my intention that once the economy starts to soar in the Obama Administration, and I am forced to scrounge for work again, my blog will focus on the very unique life that is mine, and not on the humdrum, banal goings-on inside the Beltway.

Food for Thought: Supreme Court justices and Mid-East entanglements aside, the mid-term election of 2010 is arguably more important than the Obama-McCain race this year. Those elections will determine who gets to draw the lines in most states for the next reapportionment, something which would give the Democratic Party long-term hegemony in Congress.

This could be further underlined if the party does well in the congressional elections this year, as seems likely even if McCain should win.* Since the party out of the White House tends to gain seats in mid-term elections, the Democratic Party would not only add to what is becoming a sizable majority in the House, but could even further marginalize the GOP in the Senate, where they would have to defend 19 of the 33 seats.

On the other hand, an Obama victory in November would put the Republicans in a more advantageous situation in 2010. It is not difficult to imagine that the new President's honeymoon would not be much longer than Clinton's was in 1993. A repeat of the 1994 debacle for the party would enable the Republicans to regain control of the state capitals, and with it the power to gerrymander the Democrats out of power in the House.

*Having an unsuccessful candidate at the top of the ticket is not always a death knell for the party. Presidential coattails were nearly non-existent in 1984, 1988, 1992 and 1996. In 2000, the Democratic Party actually gained four seats in the Senate while Bush was "winning" his first term. Going back even further, the Party picked up a pair of Senate seats in 1972, including knocking off four Republican incumbents, with George McGovern as the nominee; the ability of the man at the top to bring in new voters, then and now, seems to trump all other considerations.

A rhetorical gambit almost as profoundly futile as Godwin's Law is the Law of Appeasement: anytime someone feels the need to compare one's opponent to Neville Chamberlain, and/or to analogize the art of diplomacy with "appeasement," there really isn't much left to discuss. As it turns out, most people who appeal to the Law of Appeasement have no idea what "appeasement" is, why (or even, if) it led to World War II, or how, as a policy, it differs from, say, the US policy towards China since 1972, or the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1989, or even the British policy towards the United States between 1815 and 1917. They just know that hashing out differences with an enemy leads inexorably to the Final Solution and 9/11.

The "lessons of Iraq" will surely become the counterpoint to "Munich" in future debates on foreign policy....

Drum and Yglesias try to make sense out of why the home field (or, in this case, court) edge is much greater in basketball than it is in other sports. Unlike football, where the reigning Super Bowl champion had a .500 home record last season, the likely NBA winner will likely have a much better record at home than on the road.

The usual explanations get trotted out (the benefits of a friendly crowd, intimidated refs), but those seem to be common to all spectator sports. Ice hockey, for example, is played in similar arenas (often the same arenas), but the home ice advantage is slight, and hockey refs play a much more important role in determining the outcome of the game than their hoops counterparts.

And as far as accruing the benefits of the home crowd are concerned, then why don't college teams maintain the same edge when they play at a local, but not home, arena, as often happens during post-season play. Indiana U. has a much greater home court advantage when they play in Bloomington than when the play a few miles away at the Hoosierdome, even though the RCA is a much larger venue, and can thus hold more of their fans. And of course, other sports have loud, boisterous crowds, too.

My hypothesis is that depth perception is paramount in a game like basketball. The more you have a read on where the basket really is vis a vis the stands, the better chance you have of making shots. Since basketball is a sport of 12-2 runs, the more opportunities you have to make such runs, the higher likelihood your team has to win.

Hollywood's O.B.P.: I don't quite understand why no one in Hollywood has been smart enough to incorporate the principles of MoneyBall into film and TV production. Well, I take that back. Having read several weeks of Allison Hope Weiner's dispatches on the Pellicano Trial, I can see why the "star" mentality has, in spite of all the evidence that it does nothing to improve a film's bottom line, managed to take on nearly sacrosanct status in the "industry": the people who get hired to run studios don't exactly come from the top of the class from the Ivy League. A-students don't greenlight Speed Racer or Jumper, or spend years in court trying to put Napster out of business.

But you would figure at least one studio exec would figure out there are very, very few performers who can actually make a difference at the box office, and there are very, very many people with a SAG card out there who can do as good a job at a tenth of the cost. How many more bombs will George Clooney or Tom Cruise or Uma Thurmon detonate before someone realizes that the conglomerate's shareholders would get more value from Jon Hamm, to pick just one example? And it isn't simply the flops that produce the biggest wastes of money; does anyone believe that Gwyneth Paltrow, in her riveting portrayal of the "blonde sidekick" to the real star of the film, drew a single person to the multiplex to see Iron Man, or at least one more than would have gone if her role had been inhabited by Rebecca Romijn or Amber Valletta?

I suspect Hollywood is at the same stage that baseball was in back in the 1980's, when people like Bill James and Pete Palmer were just starting to attract a readership around the startling idea that the men who ran ballclubs didn't know what they were doing. On the diamond, it was the belief that batting average was the most important indicator of talent; in Hollywood, it's the equally stupid dogma that how famous a star is the determiner of how profitable a TV series or movie will be.

The suits who run TV networks already seem to have caught on to that. There are a great deal more networks than there are studios to divide the money, thanks to cable, and the willingness of the people who have run HBO and FX, to name two examples, to take risks on shows which initially feature no-name talents has produced extraordinary results. But film has been much slower to grasp the new reality. The next person to run Paramount or Sony who figures out that the type of movies that make a ton of money aren't star vehicles anyways, and that the cost of doing business will go way, way down once it is understood that screenacting talent is not a rare or limited resource, will revolutionize the business more than Louis Mayer.

I suppose we all have our critics, but this one's a bitch.

Jeremiah Who? Obama may have timed this surge in the polls just perfectly....

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Kevin Drum has a contest. FWIW, my money is on MoDo....

How is it exactly that in the first decade of the Twenty-first Century, America still has colonies?

Kevin Drum, on the "power" of the blogosphere:

If the respective left and right blogospheres had any real say in things, would we be looking at a McCain vs. Obama contest in November? Or McCain vs. Hillary? We would not. It would be Giuliani vs. Edwards, or maybe Romney vs. Dodd. The blogosphere is good at raising modest sums of money, and it likewise plays a modest role at the congressional level, but its influence on the national stage appears to be pretty close to nil. That was true in 2004, when Kerry won the Democratic nomination, and it appears to still be true four years later.

I think that's about right. Obama didn't really excite any of the Kool Kidz on the left until Super Tuesday; Edwards was the candidate who made the most conscientious effort to woo bloggers during the run-up to Iowa. And I'm not aware of any popular conservative blogger who backed McCain; even now, most of them are more anti-Obama than enthusiastic backers of the presumptive Republican nominee.

However, there is more to the netroots than just the blogs at the top of the Technorati 100. Even if bloggers like Kos were slow to warm to Obama, other bloggers were much more enthusiastic; even if their daily hits were a fraction of Daily Kos or Atrios, their combined totals were more impressive. Obama has been the most effective in raising funds over the internet, in large part because he pursued a "long tail" strategy concerning the blogosphere.

Today is the Fifth Anniversary of the "end" of major hostilities in Iraq.

One of the beneficiaries of the President's stimulus plan: credit card companies. The IRS announced today that those $600 checks being mailed out this month will be considered property of the estate in all bankruptcies filed after the rebate was signed into law by President Bush.

A point well-taken, over at Volokh:

Friendship is not necessarily based on someone's political views, no matter how goofy or even hateful, especially if the person is not sticking their views in your face all of the time. It is also appropriate not to be friends with someone whose political views you abhore, especially if they are flamboyant about it. But whether someone holds mainstream political views is not the basis on which acquaintances are built. If you have a sincere affection for someone built up over many years, you tend to forgive their occasional lunacies. Especially if it is a person who you came to respect, admire, and befriend many years before, perhaps when that person was not nuts. To me, I don't necessarily see it as a flaw in Obama that he hasn't made a big show of denouncing Wright or Ayers until he was forced to. I do think that he probably is fed up with Wright from the standpoint that he has tried to treat Wright with the respect that he sees owed to a longstanding pastor who is now making a public embarrassment of himself. He has tried to be patient with Wright in hopes that Wright would sober up, but instead Wright just keeps pouring it on, at which point Obama says "enough." So it seems reasonable to me that Obama has been largely sincere through this whole process, first in trying to give Wright an opportunity to clean up his act but then to say "enough" when Wright refused to do so.

As I said, Obama seems like quite a decent guy. I'm not going to vote for him because of his policy views but he still seems like a decent guy. He has a lot of tolerance for nutty political views, but anyone who hangs around academia or any political movement will certainly have friend and acquaintances who have nutty political views. If you are a basically decent and compassionate person you try to look for the best in people and work with everyone, not throw aside friends just because you don't agree with their political views. Moreover, if you have a friend who has idiotic political views you don't run around adding to his embarrassment making a public spectacle out of denouncing those views, but instead I would think that you would hope that the guy would wisen up.

Amen to that. The writer, Prof. Zywicki, makes clear he isn't going to be casting a ballot for Sen. Obama, but does a nice job putting the whole issue into context. Read the whole thing.

Obama's Mulligan: Damn if he isn't the most gifted political figure of my lifetime. There's been a little criticism, mainly coming from white conservatives who weren't going to vote for a black man for the Presidency anyway, but the reaction this afternoon couldn't have plotted any better. He gets the best of both worlds: he gets to make the unselfish, non-political speech on race in Philly last month, refusing to knife his friend, and when his friend, in turn, shows his gratitude by throwing him under the bus (John Cole has a better analogy, here), he gets to play the aggrieved victim, spelling out exactly where he and Rev. Wright differ. From now on, all the You-Tube videos of Wright damning America or acting the buffoon won't define this issue; today's denunciation will.

A "Sista Souljah" moment that's better than the original, since this took courage. Anyone who doesn't hold McCain to the same standard with Hagee is a racist.

When Mariah Carey passed the King last month on the Billboard list of most number one songs, I was intrigued, since I hadn't heard of any of her hits. This writer in Slate tries to come up with some reasons as to why she's as culturally significant as Elvis or the Beatles, but when the top reasons include her vocal influence on "American Idol" contestants (another show I've never watched) and her mid-90's rivalry with Whitney Houston (which the writer facetiously compares with Biggie v. 2Pac), it's a losing argument. To use a sports analogy, she is to pop music what Larry Holmes, the 1980's N.Y. Islanders, the Bulls of the 90's were to their sports: bland, uninteresting champions that dominated when the competition was weak and the sport was dull.

Since the good Rev. Wright seems content on not letting his fifteen minutes expire, Barack Obama has been given a pretty sweet opportunity to go public with his position that, no, he doesn't believe AIDS was cooked up in some lab to kill blacks, and that the semi-crazy egotist who we've seen babbling for the last couple of days is not the same person who brought him to God, no more than the Pope who drowsed his way during the pedophilia scandals of the final years of his pontificate was the same John Paul II who brought the Soviet Union to its knees.

Obama's thoughtfulness, his ability to explain nuance, is the prime reason he is the presumptive nominee, and why he continues to lead McCain in most polls. To be given a chance to first give a speech putting Wright in the context of American race relations, and then a few weeks later to distance himself from some of the loonier conspiratorial ravings of the black pulpit, is better than your routine mulligan; it's a chance to dominate the agenda through the end of the primaries.

Newsweek has a new poll out showing both Obama and Clinton maintaining a three-point lead over McCain; a month and a half ago, before the controversies involving Rev. Wright and assorted members of the Weathermen, and before Senator Clinton began her "kitchen sink" strategy, Obama had a one-point lead over the presumptive Republican nominee. Other polls, including Rasmussen and Gallup, show essentially the same thing: there has been no change in the polls, and even a slight gain for Obama, over the last eight weeks. As long as McCain continues to shill for the Bush Administration's disastrous policies in the Middle East and the economy, the Democrats could nominate Michael Vick and win in November.

Finally, an explanation of the Isiah Thomas Era in New York that makes sense....

You're doin' a heckuva job, Saunders: Allison Hope Weiner lets the Federal Government have it with both barrels for its handling of the Pellicano Trial, here. Apparently, no one in the Bush Justice Department ever deigned to figure out whether one of the defendants had really filed bankruptcy (a copy of the forged petition can be found here), or if their star impeachment witness might herself be a scam artist:

And so, on Monday, the court noted that the witness will return and she will consider whether to declare a mistrial. It's really incredible that after six years of investigation, the government managed to call a witness to impeach a defendant's testimony without checking that witness' criminal history. Mr. Hummel has said repeatedly that his client denied having filed a fraudulent bankruptcy application. He said it five years ago when Mr. Arneson first spoke with the government and he said it before Mr. Saunders proceeded to seriously delve into the issue on cross-examination in his effort to prove to the jury that Mr. Arneson was a liar. And, despite all the times that Mr. Arneson insisted that the signature on the document was forged, the government refused to investigate his claims. Frankly, it makes one wonder what else they forgot or didn't bother to investigate.

Is it possible that there is all kinds of other evidence that the government overlooked in their desire to prosecute these few, rather insignificant Pellicano associates who were so down on the ladder that they scored truly pathetic financial benefits from their alleged criminal activity? Is it possible that in questioning Mr. Pellicano's clients, the government didn't bother to really ask them really hard questions because the government was focused on charging this truly bottom rung of Pellicano associates and not any of Mr. Pellicano's powerful and influential clients? And given what's happened with this prosecution, can you blame them? Did the government really even want to charge Mr. Pellicano's wealthy clients given their deep pockets and endless resources? Did they go after people like Mr. Arneson and Mr. Kachikian and even Mr. Turner because it was easier? And if so, can you even imagine what's going to happen in the courtroom when Mr. Saunders and Mr. Lally finally prosecute Mr. Christensen and they face off against a defendant with not only deep pockets, but an arsenal of attorneys ready and able to research any legal issue at a moment's notice? Even with over thirty tapes of Mr. Christensen chatting away with Mr. Pellicano about wiretapping Lisa Bonder Kerkorian, you've still got to wonder how that one is going to play out given what happened today.

Read the whole thing, and while you're at it, read some of Ms. Weiner's prior posts from the courtroom about the trial, which really should be placed in a time capsule for the way they account for the entire above-the-law mentality that exists in Hollywood.

Working Class Heroes: From this morning's local paper of record:

Some analysts question whether Democrats need to make big inroads among blue-collar voters. Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said that Clinton's focus on the working class is a distraction, because Republicans tend to win among such voters.

Democrats John F. Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000 lost with that group by more than 20 points, he said. Even former President Clinton did not win among white men. "Obama doesn't have to win the working class," said Richards, referring to white voters without college educations. "He just has to cut Democrats' losses."

And this, from a 2006 article in the liberal American Prospect:

The key weakness of the progressive coalition can be summarized easily: very weak support among white working class voters (defined here as whites without a four-year college degree). These voters, who are overwhelmingly of moderate to low income and, by definition, of modest credentials, should see their aspirations linked tightly to the political fate of the progressive movement. But they don't.

Leaving aside the truthiness of the above passages, I've noticed that definitions of "working class" or "blue collar" used by the punditocracy in this country have tended to be based not on what a person does (ie., "work") but on what they didn't do (ie., attend college, or earn a degree, for that matter). There are a few high-paying jobs (baseball player, supermodel, etc.) for which a college education is superfluous, while many union jobs either require a college degree (like teaching) or some amount of post-high school continuing education; in neither instance does this new definition of "working class" seem to fit. Are we to surmise that those terms have now become euphemisms of a sort, a way that the media and pols can condescend to the less-educated without actually calling them "stupid"?

Clinton Wins PA: By rounding off, an illusion of a ten-point win is created, but the real margin is 9.32%(54.66%-45.34%). The difference right now between a "double-digit", decisive victory for Clinton and a mere single-digit, superficially close moral victory for Obama (after rounding down) is less than 3,800 votes, out of more than 2.3 million votes cast.

UPDATE [4/24/]: With all the votes counted, the actual margin of victory ended up being 9.1%. Had a mere 1,200 votes switched, her margin would have sank below 9%, and after rounding down, the headlines would have been that she won by "8%."

I wonder if Hillary Clinton realizes that even if her rival for the nomination was to announce that he had engaged in a threesome on 9/11 with Louis Farrakhan and Bernardine Dohrn, and that henceforth he would refer to the white working class as the "potato-eating lumpenproletariat," she still isn't going to be the nominee. There's a slim chance the SuperDelegates might put the kibosh on Obama's bid for the nomination (after all, we tend to forget that Obama needs an actual majority; if enough Supers vote for George Clooney or Tiger Woods, they can tie the Convention up forever). But even if they screw Barack, Hillary isn't going to be the beneficiary. She's finished.

If we could all be so gracious when we err:

If you want to know if anyone is reading your stories, make sure you insert a mistake about George Washington.

Oh, if only I could claim it was all a ploy by Calendar editors to gauge readership. But when I wrote in Saturday's story about HBO that George Washington stepped down from the presidency after serving only one term, it was just a stupid, blind error, the sort that leaves you smiting your forehead, literally and repeatedly, the moment it is pointed out to you.

For the six or seven people living in the Los Angeles Basin who did not e-mail to correct me, he served two terms, not one. And my daddy was a history teacher! Ever since the first e-mail hit my box (on Friday afternoon, about two seconds after the story went up on the website), I have been bathed in hot shame. But I want to thank you, well, most of you, for the gentle tone you took -- most clever subject line award goes to: Is a TV Critic Smarter Than a 5th Grader? -- though I certainly deserved all those incredulous exclamation marks as well. And yes, I did go to college. Graduated even.

Also, for the record, we entertainment writers are held just as accountable for flubbed historical references as any other journalist. The correction runs today online and in tomorrow's print edition, and I will try to comfort myself with the knowledge that a good, strong dose of humility is always good for the soul. Especially the soul of a critic.

My criticism Saturday was aimed more at the Times for letting that howler through than it was at poor Ms. McNamara. We all make mistakes, and, unlike President Bush, I certainly do not pretend omniscience about what I do not know. But a good newspaper (unlike a blog) is supposed to have people whose job it is to catch that sort of thing, and having a staff with diverse interests and backgrounds should mean that someone who knows how many terms Washington served is around to catch such mistakes.

Kaus goes the fanshen route, here, and admits that he might also have latent tendencies towards snobbery. From his argument, I don't see how any political advocacy could ever be separated from the tendencies he criticizes: we engage either in "Vulgar Marxism," where people only act in the political sphere based on their perceived self-interest; or "social inequality-based snobbery," where you attempt to convince others that you have a more refined view of what their actual self-interest is than they do.

American History X: From this morning's LA Times, in an article about the resurgence of HBO:

In his portrayal of our second president, Paul Giamatti creates a man perpetually dissatisfied, disgusted by the preening ambition of politics even as he is infected by it. If his relentless crankiness was a bit hard for some of us to take in early episodes, in the second half of the series it makes much more sense. While exhorting angry men to throw off the shackles of tyranny offers many opportunities for rhetorical fabulousness, setting up a new government is a bureaucratic nightmare, with oversized personalities disagreeing over things both petty and fundamental. George Washington (David Morse) so quickly tired of the infighting among his Cabinet and vagaries of public opinion that he stepped down from the presidency after a single term.

ARGH !!! ARGH !!! ARGH !!!

Sweet Jesus that's amazing. George Washington served two terms. Period. It's in the history books. It's also in Wikipedia. Moreover, his second term is even alluded to in the aforereferenced Adams miniseries: for example, Abigail has to convince PigVomit at one point that despite his somewhat truculent reservations, he should continue to serve as Vice President in Washington's second term. Serving two terms is one of the things Washington is famous for.

It's enough to make a lefty sympathetic to Patterico. Does the fact-checker at the Times have to regularly drink water out of the toilet or lose their back teeth from subsisting on a diet of rocks to get that job?

UPDATE [4/20]: A classy correction by the writer, here.

The tone is sometimes off-putting (I could do without the "Stupid/Evil" ratio), but the creator of Alicublog has a pretty good run-down of the Far Right blogosphere. An example:

MICHELLE MALKIN (michellemalkin.com)

ORIENTATION: Nativist

TONE: Very, very angry

FUN FACT: In 2004, attacked Wonkette's Ana Marie Cox and her protégée, Washington call girl Jessica Cutler, as "the female Beavis and Butt-head" and "skanks"; was thereafter subjected to years of mercilessly mockery by Wonkette scribes, including doctored photos of Malkin frolicking in a bikini, which were strenuously debunked by her ("updated: tracking the source of the bogus Flickr photos . . .
Wonkette editors demonstrate further malice . . .").

CANDIDATE: None—McCain's too liberal

STUPID/EVIL RATIO: 97/3

HISTORY: In the early '90s, reporter and editorial writer for the Los Angeles Daily News; later wrote for the Seattle Times, became a Fox News commentator, and joined Creators Syndicate, which currently distributes her columns. Has published books about the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II (pro), illegal immigration, and "Liberals Gone Wild" (both con). Columns have focused on culture-war subjects ("Voices From the Womb") from a more-right-wing-than-thou
perspective (e.g., citing "President Bush's cave-in on government funding of embryonic stem-cell research"). Illegal immigrants get special attention, as do nefarious nonwhite Americans, be they of Asian ("Asian-Americans milking 9-11"), Arab ("myth of the Muslim hate crime epidemic"), or African ("Sept. 11 brought home the lesson that vile ideas have bloody consequences—no matter how 'daggone funky' they may sound to mush-headed music critics") descent. Began blogging in
2004, mainly bringing Internet-response speed to the usual subjects, plus a few new tropes, including frequent accusations of "dhimmitude" against parties insufficiently hostile toward Muslims, including YouTube ("JihadTube").

MODUS OPERANDI: Parses news feverishly for offenses to her worldview. Has been enraged by the D.C. networking group Professionals in the City (for holding an event at the Cuban embassy), Jessica Alba (for "making pro-assimilation remarks"), and Google (for bias in news-site affiliate selection, logos, and search results). Doesn't spare conservative outlets ("P.C. at the Washington Times") or the Republican Party ("Is the GOP Lost?") when they run afoul of her on doctrinal matters, especially regarding immigration. Attacks
McCain on this subject, often without the benefit of hyphens ("I don't want another George W. Bush open borders type in the White House").

WHAT TO EXPECT: Barring a dramatic reversal on immigration by McCain, will wash her hands of the whole election and concentrate on everyday liberal- and foreigner-bashing.

(link via Winds of Change, who apparently believe that Obama is trailing McCain in the polls)

I don't care what Obama says, chronic unemployment and regional economic emasculation cannot excuse this sort of thing...so far, the polls aren't showing much of an impact, which shouldn't be surprising. First, the overwhelming majority of voters pretty much have decided on who they will support, and something that is perceived as a slip of the tongue isn't going to weigh as heavy as, say, getting out of Iraq or what to do about four dollar gas.

But more importantly, I don't think the "elitist" label really hurts Obama, the same way it has hurt other Democrats in the past. Perhaps the biggest personal attribute Obama is selling is his intelligence; after eight years of a failed Presidency helmed by someone widely perceived to be dumber than a bag of hammers, having a candidate who speaks in complete sentences and who actually seems to think about what he's saying may be precisely what swing voters are demanding. After Katrina, Iraq and the real estate bubble, why not give the A-students a chance to run things for once?

Moreover, Mickey Kaus may be on to something when he says that Clinton and McCain may be making a huge mistake by focusing too much on the "bitter." Voters are angry, and over the last thirty years neither party has offered the voters Obama was addressing much in the way of policies that would actually improve their lives. That may be why The Speech last month resonated so deeply: rather than doing the politically expedient thing, which was to throw his friend overboard, he used the opportunity to recast the debate as one about how race continues to affect our perceptions. Voters didn't see a politician treating them with condescension; they saw an intelligent person speak to them as adults, put their feelings into words, and define a problem we would all rather avoid talking about in an honest fashion. It was most unexpected, which may be why they are willing to cut Obama some slack here.

Did you know that you have a better chance of being killed in a terrorist attack than you have of seeing a good movie that opens in more than 2000 theatres? Well, not exactly, but the inverse relationship between movie quality and Hollywood release strategies is explored, here.

Tony Pierce, on why we should go to the Olympics:

although i believe in making it tough for a torch to get from one end of frisco to another, i dont believe in not going to olympic events out of protest.

i believe in having jesse owens go to nazi germany to win gold right there in front of hitler and his beliefs about the master race.

i believe in going to mexico city and raising the black power salute while they play the star spangled banner

i believe in beating the russians with kids because yes al michaels i believe in miracles

and miracles dont happen unless you play the game.

A number of points should be made about any decision to boycott. First, there is absolutely no reason for the President to attend the opening ceremonies. President Ford didn't attend the opening ceremonies in Montreal, nor did LBJ go to Mexico City. And those Olympics were held next door, so to speak, not halfway around the globe. Neither tradition nor necessity requires George Bush to make a trip that did he didn't make four years earlier.

Second, the rationale for boycotting the Games was the same now as it was when they were originally awarded to China, in 2001. I don't think it can be plausibly argued that things are worse now in China than they were back then. The IOC had reason to know what it was getting into when it made the selection, and it seems unfair to punish the athletes at this late date.

Third, the notion that Olympic boycotts accomplish nothing is one that is belied by history. The boycott of the '76 Games by African nations upset by New Zealand's defiance of an international anti-Apartheid blockade thrust that issue into the public spotlight, ensuring that future friendly contacts with South Africa would be fraught with risk. The boycott of the Moscow games by the U.S. was arguably the most constructive act in opposing Soviet imperialism in Afghanistan (obviously, it finishes ahead of "arming the Taliban"), and minimized the propaganda value that full attendance at those games would have had for that regime. It was also a very popular move at home, a way of signalling our anger over the Soviet invasion without shedding blood.

Conversely, the non-boycott of the '36 Games in Berlin should now be seen in the context of other decisions made by Western political leaders not to challenge the rising Nazi tide. The notion that Jesse Owens "discredited" Aryan supremacy reminds me of that great Peter Cook line about the importance of the Weimar cabarets in stopping the rise of Hitler and preventing World War II. Owens did indeed win four gold medals in the center of Nazi Germany, Joe Louis did destroy Max Schmelling in less than two minutes, and yet Hitler still managed to nearly destroy civilization. Since Leni Riefenstahl found the time to make a propaganda film about the games anyway (even including the stories of Owens and other black athletes in the version shown internationally), it's safe to say that Hitler, who didn't like sports to begin with, wasn't challenged in any way by the occasional victories of "non-Aryan" athletes at his games. It's hard to see how not boycotting the '36 Olympics made the world a safer or more humane place.

Egghead, heal thyself.... Concerning the anvil-tongued remarks of Senator Obama on the connection between chronic unemployment and various pathologies of small-town white Pennsylvanians, Mickey Kaus requests that Obama should:

Rather than trying to spin his way out, wouldn't it be better for Obama to forthrightly admit his identity? Let's have a national dialogue about egghead condescension!

Fair enough, I say. Liberals have had a bad habit of explaining away such things in the past as rooted in the negative environment of the subject, and it ends up giving us a tone deafness to issues like crime. Chronic unemployment should no more be an excuse for anti-immigrant sentiments than it is for gang violence.

But no sooner does he make that sensible point, then Kaus lobs this back at his readers:

Ann Coulter is reading Obama's autobiography and comes up with a not-implausible interpretation of the famous Racist Grandma incident:

As recounted in Obama's autobiography, the only evidence that his grandmother feared black men comes from Obama's good-for-nothing, chronically unemployed white grandfather, who accuses Grandma of racism as his third excuse not to get dressed and drive her to work.

Obama's full quote about his grandmother, above, described her as "a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe." So Coulter's excuse, which Kaus finds "not-implausible," for grandma having palpitations everytime a black man walked by, or for her using the word "jew" as a verb, was the behavior of her unemployed husband? Sounds like "egghead condescension" to me....

Don't Snitch-- Sue !!! Anthony Pellicano is not the only high-profile case being heard in the Roybal Federal Building in downtown L.A. The courthouse also plays host to the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of Suge Knight, former hip-hop empressario who is now attempting a comeback on reality TV:



He also has several pokers in his double-toothpicks filing, such as a lawsuit against Kanye West for allowing someone to shoot him (and steal a 15 carrot diamond earring) at West's pre-MTV Music Awards party in 2005.* A copy of the complaint can be reviewed, here.

Among the highlights: that Kanye West negligently ignored the possibility that the East Coast-West Coast feud would flare up at the party, and that the identity of some of the guests "...were known not to be friendly to Mr. Knight," and thus negligently failed to pat down and do complete metal detection searches on the guests. As a result, an innocent victim of all this feuding, Mr. Knight, was nearly killed. Not surprisingly, the former Death Row Records honcho has "no idea" who did this to him, just as he had "no idea" who whacked Tupac. But thanks to civil discovery, he now has the opportunity to find witnesses who will snitch out the perp.

*The party in question took place on August 28, 2005, one day before Hurricane Katrina would give Kanye West a chance for more mainstream exposure.

John McCain sure knows how to sweet-talk the ladies....

On the subject of the Clintons' wealth, Kevin Drum notes "Have we ever asked this about any previous presidential candidate? Reagan? Bush Sr.? Bush Jr.? Kerry? (Actually, that's a genuine question. Have we?) ."

To answer his question, the issue about whence came the candidate's money played a major role concerning LBJ, who was a millionaire in spite of never having worked a job (besides brief careers as a school teacher and elevator operator) outside of the public sphere; Nixon, whose ties to Howard Hughes played a major role in the 1960 campaign (after having earlier dealt with a similar controversy involving a black & white cocker spaniel named Checkers); and to a lesser extent, Reagan, whose affluence stemmed from his rather hazy relationship with people like Henry Salvatori and Alfred Bloomingdale. Each had to overcome questions as to the somewhat dubious nature of their wealth before winning the Presidency, so we don't have to resort to Somerbian paranoia about media double standards here.

heckle [vt.]: to annoy or harass (a speaker) by interrupting with questions or taunts.

Can anyone seriously view this clip and say that the girl in question is "heckling" Senator McCain? Back in '82, I was Milton Friedman give a lecture at the college I was attending at the time (Reed College), and the event consisted almost entirely of students lobbing verbal grenades at the stage, and Friedman batting them back as if it was badminton. I saw Jeane Kirkpatrick give a lecture in '83 at CAL where she literally had to abandon her speech due to student taunts. Now, that was heckling.... [link via Digby]

Nicholas Kristof has been on a roll in the New York Times recently, with several astute columns on race, gender and how they impact the 2008 election. On the subject of the controversial Rev. Wright, he wrote:

It’s true that conspiracy theories are a bane of the African-American community. Perhaps partly as a legacy of slavery, Tuskegee and Jim Crow, many blacks are convinced that crack cocaine was a government plot to harm African-Americans and that the levees in New Orleans were deliberately opened to destroy black neighborhoods.

White readers expressed shock (and a hint of smugness) at these delusions, but the sad reality is that conspiracy theories and irrationality aren’t a black problem. They are an American problem.

These days, whites may not believe in a government plot to spread AIDS, but they do entertain the equally malevolent theory that the United States government had a hand in the 9/11 attacks. A Ohio University poll in 2006 found that 36 percent of Americans believed that federal officials assisted in the attacks on the twin towers or knowingly let them happen so that the U.S. could go to war in the Middle East.

Then there’s this embarrassing fact about the United States in the 21st century: Americans are as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution. Depending on how the questions are asked, roughly 30 to 40 percent of Americans believe in each.

(snip)

Only one American in 10 understands radiation, and only one in three has an idea of what DNA does. One in five does know that the Sun orbits the Earth ...oh, oops.

“America is now ill with a powerful mutant strain of intertwined ignorance, anti-rationalism, and anti-intellectualism,” Susan Jacoby argues in a new book, “The Age of American Unreason.” She blames a culture of “infotainment,” sound bites, fundamentalist religion and ideological rigidity for impairing thoughtful debate about national policies.

Ecce Homo !!!

Of course, ignorance is not necessarily the basis for conspiratorial thinking, nor do conservatives have a monopoly on the subject; besides the numerous wackjobs who continue to support the Kennedy and King assasination industries, you still encounter people who believe the 2004 election resulted from computer hacking, who assert that the Reagan campaign in 1980 made a side-deal with the Ayatollah on the hostages just before the election, and who insist that the documents Dan Rather shilled for concerning Bush's absence from Guard duty in 1972 were authentic. There are good reasons for believing in each of the above, just as it is not unreasonable to believe that AIDS and crack cocaine are part of a racist plot. It isn't ignorance so much as it is an unwillingness to apply reason to those subjects that fuels conspiracy thinking.

Smile: In which the worlds of a college hoops phenom and a musical genius intersect.

The only problem I have with this map is that doesn't include the region south of the Mason-Dixon line in the new "United States." Also, the Pacific Coast should be a part of the commonwealth directly to the north.

UPDATE: The Anchor Baby wins.

Code Pink: Mickey Kaus nails Stanley Crouch and Christopher Hitchens on some rather unsubtle sexist language in some recent attacks on Hillary Clinton.

Shorter Kos: None of the problems the Democratic Party is having with the potential disenfranchisement of the voters of Florida and Michigan would be happening if Howard Dean was still the party chairman.

The Speech[Pt. 3]: Obama's oratory appears to have paid off big-time, according to the polls:

More than eight-in-ten supporters of Obama (84%) who have heard about the controversy over Wright's sermons say he has done an excellent or good job of dealing with the situation. Reactions from Clinton supporters, and Republicans, are on balance negative; however, 43% of Clinton voters and a third of Republican voters who have heard about the affair express positive opinions about Obama's handling of the situation.

The survey finds that, in general, Obama has a highly favorable image among Democratic voters, including white Democrats. But while Obama's personal image is more favorable than Clinton's, certain social beliefs and attitudes among older, white, working-class Democratic voters are associated with his lower levels of support among this group.

In particular, white Democrats who hold unfavorable views of Obama are much more likely than those who have favorable opinions of him to say that equal rights for minorities have been pushed too far; they also are more likely to disapprove of interracial dating, and are more concerned about the threat that immigrants may pose to American values. In addition, nearly a quarter of white Democrats (23%) who hold a negative view of Obama believe he is a Muslim.

The same poll, done by the Pew Foundation, shows him increasing his lead over Hillary Clinton and maintaining a steady margin over John McCain. The road to the White House is still bumpy for the Senator, as the last paragraph shows, and as I discovered when I appeared at a 341A Meeting of Creditors in a bankruptcy I was handling on Friday.

While my client and I were waiting to be called in by the Chapter 13 Trustee, I overheard another attorney tell his African-American client that he couldn't vote for Obama, since he had heard from an unimpeachable source that one of his "best friends" was a former member of the Weather Underground who continued to support terrorism. The person he was no doubt referring to, William Ayres, is a "best friend" of the Senator's in the same sense that someone whom you met once more than ten years ago, or who once contributed the grand total of $200 to a past campaign, is your "best friend." Whispering campaigns concerning Obama's religious and political leanings are going to play an increasing role the closer we get to November, so it's incumbent on the presumptive nominee to be as aggressive in batting back each attack as he was on the issue of Rev. Wright.

With due deference to Mr. Frey, here's a clip of one of the funniest satirists of the 1960's, Tom Lehrer:

Lions and lambs, sleeping together:

The very morning that she came to the Trib, our editorial page raised questions about her campaign and criticized her on several other scores.

Reading that, a lesser politician -- one less self-assured, less informed on domestic and foreign issues, less confident of her positions -- might well have canceled the interview right then and there.

Sen. Clinton came to the Trib anyway and, for 90 minutes, answered questions.

Her meeting and her remarks during it changed my mind about her.

Walking into our conference room, not knowing what to expect (or even, perhaps, expecting the worst), took courage and confidence. Not many politicians have political or personal courage today, so it was refreshing to see her exhibit both.

Sen. Clinton also exhibited an impressive command of many of today's most pressing domestic and international issues. Her answers were thoughtful, well-stated, and often dead-on.

--Richard Mellon Scaife, erstwhile leader of the VRWC, on Hillary Clinton, today. His reference to "a lesser politician" is perhaps a swipe at the current holder of the Presidency. [link via TPM]

Quickie NCAA Trivia: Name the last 16-seed to win a game at the men's NCAA basketball tournament. While you're guessing, here's a rare live recording of a song that Bob Dylan wrote but did not release until well after this band covered it:



Cheers.

Travels With Sinbad: Turns out Hillary had a good explanation....

The Speech [Pt.2]: Of all the passages that have received attention from last week's speech, none have generated more discussion, or controversy, than these:

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

(snip)

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

The latter portion emphasized above, the reference to his beloved grandmother, was the portion that moved me the most, almost to tears. It reminded me of people in my own family, people that I loved, who said callous and insensitive things about people of other races and ethnicities. It brought to mind friends, people who have been generous and kind to me, but whose opinions on occasion have been narrowminded and extreme. It's no wonder that The Speech seemed to overwhelm writers as disparate as Andrew Sullivan and Peggy Noonan. Even a lapsed Catholic like myself has deeply engraved in his psyche that adage best-suited for our morally complex world: "love the sinner, hate the sin." It was a Christian speech, in the most positive sense of the word.

But it's also the portion that has made Obama's critics and foes the most uncomfortable. How dare he draw a moral equivalence between his aging pastor and his octogenarian grandmother, they say. Or, on the other hand, they argue that there's nothing wrong with a white woman muttering cringeworthy "racial or ethnic stereotypes" to her young, black grandson, whether they be about African Americans, Jews, Chicanos or any other non-white group. In fact, more than a few quite disingenuously omitted the last portion (about the racial and ethnic stereotype utterances) in order to stack the deck against Obama, changing the context of the speech.

It's clear that the same portion of The Speech that I found so moving made others protest a little too much. We cannot have an honest dialogue about race in this country unless we are willing to shine the spotlight on ourselves, and our own engrained beliefs. For a woman to subconsciously fear a black man who passed her on the street may well be grounded in a rational fear of crime, but it's also based on the same belief system that in the youth of Obama's grandmother forced African Americans to drink from different fountains and to be redlined from suburban neighborhoods.

It's the nightmare vision preached by the Dixiecrats of yore: if given freedom, black men will rape white women and steal your wallets. It should sound just as ugly coming from Barack's grandmother as it does coming from a James Eastland or a Norman Podheretz. But it was also a sentiment shared not long ago by Jesse Jackson, a fear of young black men, of street gangs and drive-by shootings. Without recognizing both facets, one can't begin to have an understanding of the issue.

In the end, no one ever believes that the stereotypes we possess of others are bogus. There is always some way to rationalize, to believe that while others are irrational bigots, we argue in good faith. The easiest thing for those who don't want to have our prejudices challenged is to caricature, to say that Obama "threw his grandmother under a bus," to use the right's favorite cliche, or that he drew a false "moral equivalence" between the two sets of prejudice, to use the odious stalinoid phrase most favored by those who wish to stifle any debate (since, after all, nothing can ever truly be the "moral equivalent" of anything else).

It is to his credit that Obama chose the examples he did to illustrate the dilemma. Had he ditched his pastor, as some have suggested, and only repudiated the paranoia of some African-American pulpits, it might have played better among swing voters in Ohio and Florida and what-not. But The Speech would not have moved anyone, and it have been just another cheap "Sista Souljah" moment, an attempt by a pol to play to the middle. Sometimes, it's "the middle" that's the problem, and by evenhandedly addressing the issue, rather than skirting it, he nailed his landing.

The Pot Calls the Kettle: Is there anyone with less credibility in attacking Barack Obama for his relationship with his pastor than Christopher "David Irving is not just a fascist historian, he's a great historian of Fascism" Hitchens? I suppose if Rev. Wright had denied the Holocaust, Hitch would have been right on board...after all, wasn't it Hitchens who asserted just four months ago that Hanukkah "celebrates the triumph of tribal Jewish backwardness"?

Last Week: I took last week off, for the most part. Every year, I take a break during the four days that comprise the first two rounds of the NCAA Tourney, and this year, I had two major deadlines at work that had to be completed at the beginning of the week, so no blogging got done. That meant perhaps the most discussed speech by an American politician in my lifetime was not covered on this blog, and my two cents weren't added to the national debate. I suck.

Looking back, it's clear The Speech was an unqualified benefit to Obama's candidacy, at least in the short term. After a campaign where he didn't seem to be doing much to challenge the American voter, beyond the fact that his very existence is a "challenge" to the majority, and where his strategy seems to be mainly focused on running out the clock and winning on points, Thomas Dewey-style, in his battle for the nomination, for him to give a speech on the Great National Issue which exposed him on many different levels to future attacks was ballsy. The momentum in favor of Hillary Clinton which was manifesting itself in sizable leads in Pennsylvania appears to have waned. He is the presumptive nominee again.

The Speech also accomplished another important step, one that could have caused long-term bleeding in the Fall: it innoculated him from any subsequent revelation concerning the controversial statements of his pastor. You may recall that the big to-do in the days just preceding the Speech was whether he had been in attendance when Rev. Wright had made one of his more controversial statements. It turned out he'd been in Miami at the time, but the use of YouTube would have made it inevitable that speculation over his attendance at other gatherings where Rev. Wright had let fly with one of his stemwinders would have harmed his campaign.

Admitting he had been in the audience on other occasions where his pastor had made controversial statements that he disagreed with lessens the impact that such speculation will have. And if it's a question about whether it's appropriate for Senator Obama to have a minister who is also a sharp critic of America, the same question would have to be asked of some of the religious leaders who are close to Senator McCain, such as John Hagee. It is undeniably racist to have one standard that punishes a black politician for belonging to a congregation led by an angry jeremiah, and not one that subjects white conservative politicians to the same standard for associating with gay-bashing extremists who see the current war in the Middle East as a precursor to the extermination of all non-Christians.

Obama's gift, in his eloquent sermon last week, was to allow us to put all of our own relationships into context. If it is racist to judge Obama, and certain black churches, by one standard and McCain and white fundamentalists by another, it is also incumbent on liberals to accord the same dignity to people like Hagee and Robertson, to look beyond the words and deeds we find objectionable and to attempt to see why it is others are inpired by them. In sum, we should give the same benefit to those we violently disagree with that we give to those we love whose sentiments are equally objectionable to us. For those of us who had become skeptical of Obama as an "engine of change," last week gave us a refreshing chance to reappraise his candidacy, and in a way favorable to him.

Annette Summersett Speaks: America's Number 1 Yooper Singer-Songwriter breaks her silence on Brett Favre:



Hilarious !!!

The Other:

Does anyone believe a long association with Jerry Falwell's church would have done anything but help McCain in the Republican primary, and gotten Democrats tagged as anti-religion when they tried to point out Falwell's nuttiness in the general? It's fine to be a Christian extremist in America. It's fine to believe, and say publicly, that everyone who hasn't accepted Jesus Christ into their heart will roast in eternal hellfire, fine to believe that the homosexuals caused Hurricane Katrina and the feminists contributed to 9/11, fine to believe we must support Israel so the Jews can be largely annihilated in a war that will trigger the End Times, fine to believe we're in a holy battle with the barbaric hordes of Islam, fine to believe that we went to the Middle East to prove "our God is bigger than your God." What you can't believe is that blacks have suffered a long history of oppression in this country, that they're still face deep institutional discrimination, and that a country where 100 percent of the presidents have been rich white guys is actually run by rich white guys. More to the point, even if you do believe those things, you certainly can't be angry about it!

Ezra Klein, on what he describes as the "normalized extremism" of white religion in America, whether it be Christian or Jewish. The stalinoid ritual of denouncing and disavowing the non-p.c. (whether it be politically, or patriotically, correct) remarks of an ally seems to be in full bloom right around now; first it was Geraldine Ferraro (and until last week, who even knew she was still alive?!?), now it's the septagenarian retired former pastor of Sen. Obama's church, Rev. Wright.

Let's face it: if you spend any time inside a house of worship, you're frequently going to hear some crazy shit coming from the pulpit, stuff that's uncomfortable to listen to, both because (like much of what Rev. Wright has said) it's uncomfortably true, if worded in an extreme manner, and because the sort of person who makes a livelihood as a Man of God is somewhat eccentric to begin with. But because it now fits the campaign strategies of his opponents to make Obama (and African Americans in general) seem un-American, we will now get to enjoy several weeks of stories about what spooky places the churches in the black communities are. And in a nation that once conducted experiments on African American males to study how untreated syphillis effected its subjects, and has facilitated the spread of AIDS in the Third World by defunding family planning and birth control programs, we can denounce someone for having the wrongheaded audacity for believing the same thing happened here.

UPDATE: This story has now officially jumped the shark.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

There are going to be some who spot mere rank partisanship in the Spitzer investigation, but I could really care less. There is a much higher standard we set for holders of power in any executive branch, be they President or governor, since that person is charged with ensuring that the law is enforced equitably and fairly. David Vitter or Barney Frank might violate the same laws, but as legislators, they are mere political actors, charged with debating and enacting the laws that go into effect. Spitzer's duties were different, so the consequences that follow are exponentially changed.

My favorite attempt at rationalizing this debacle within familiar blogospheric parameters has to be Jane Hamsher, who innocently asks:

Why would the bank tell the IRS and not Spitzer himself if there was a suspicious transfer? Spitzer is a longtime client, a rich guy and the governor. We're talking thousands of dollars here, not millions. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense that they spotted a "suspicious transfer" made by the governor, and that this is how things began. It's possible it was just ordinary paperwork the bank had to file with the government whenever some particular flag was raised, but if that's the case, why did the DoJ go to DefCon 3?

Why, indeed? If the bank had just asked the Governor why so much money seemed to be floating around from shell company to shell company under various pseudonyms that were connected to him, I'm sure he would have just told them not to worry, these weren't bribes or kickbacks he was hiding, just payments for concubinage. It's not like Spitzer wouldn't have given the same benefit of a doubt to any Wall Street honcho back when he was the A.G. of the state of New York. Nothing to see here....

Let's not treat this as being on the same level as the persecution of Dan Siegelman. If you want to argue that prostitution should be legalized, or that what Spitzer does outside of marriage is a personal matter, fine, but you still have the matter that he is charged with executing the laws, all of the laws, even those he disagrees with. If Spitzer had libertarian leanings on this issue, he could have simply asserted that the state wasn't going to be in the business of prosecuting victimless crimes anymore, and urged the legislature to change the law. Former Illinois Governor George Ryan, a Republican, took much the same approach to the death penalty a few years, and helped change the public debate on that issue. Unfortunately for Spitzer, he chose to prosecute others for what he was doing privately. He deserves what he's going to get.

The Tribute Vice Pays to Virtue: Did you know the federal law the Justice Department will use to prosecute Governor Spitzer was the same law used to incarcerate former heavyweight champ Jack Johnson? And in both cases, it involved the purchase of train tickets for la belle...Charlie Chaplin also ran afoul of the same law, leading to his exile from America for over twenty years.

It turns out that the "little girl" in Hillary Clinton's now-infamous, "It's 3:00 a.m." ad, is actually a month shy of her eighteenth birthday, and an avowed Obama supporter. [link via TPM]

From Allison Hope Weiner's sassy, hilarious coverage of the Anthony Pellicano trial over at HuffPost:

The key thing that Ms. [Tarita] Virtue explained today in only an hour on the stand (she's set to return on Tuesday) was that Mr. Pellicano had the ability to have five computers running at the same time, recording calls in the office, as well as computers running at off-site locations. The office computers could only listen in on calls in the 310 area code--a code that covers most of West Los Angeles and Beverly Hills. If you wanted to wiretap someone in the valley, it was going to cost you more because according to Tarita, Mr. Pellicano would have to rent out an apartment and set up computers near his target phone. So, finally a good reason to actually live in the valley.

She doesn't say which "valley" she's referring to, and I don't wish to speak for the residents of the San Gabriel, Antelope or Simi Valleys, but up here in the 818, being relatively safe from the machinations of the "Detective to the Stars" is something that every homeowner took into account at the time he purchased his home. No doubt the incarceration of the wiretapping detectice has reduced the "Pellicano Edge" that San Fernando Valley residents had come to rely on, leading to the current wave of foreclosures and bankruptcies. Damn you, Anita Busch !!!

Yet another reason why the Pellicano Trial should matter, contrary to this vapid piece in the local paper of record on Saturday. The "insider" voice that comes forth in that article is reminiscent of the Beltway mentality that excused the crimes of Scooter Libby during his trial, and is probably Exhibit 1 as to why the new media, especially the blogosphere, may be the best journalistic method for covering trials of this sort. Having a knowledgeable and opinionated writer, like Ms. Weiner, Jeralyn Merritt or Marcy Wheeler at Firedoglake, take on the task of sifting through the testimony and evidence each day and putting it all into perspective, removes the story-killing mentality of a newspaper editor or TV producer who is only interested in whether a celebrity is named who can sell newspapers or garner ratings. Freeing good writers from that constraint leads to better journalism.

Spens-Black Rules the World: Former Unit 3 resident (and NBA great) Kevin Johnson tosses his hat into the ring up to become the next mayor of CowTown. FWIW, KJ is an Obama supporter, and, as I recall from our days at Berkeley, a fan of Camus. Our rise to prominence continues inexorably....

The de la Hoya Candidate: Remember the first time Oscar de la Hoya lost? It was to Felix Trinidad in 1999, when both men were undefeated; it was boxing's last "Battle of the Century" of the 20th Century. Most observers, including myself, felt that the Golden Boy was an easy winner, and by almost any objective criteria, such as punches landed, he should have won. But the ringside judges didn't agree, and gave a split decision to Trinidad, who was the aggressor from start to finish. It was a disputed outcome, but not, truth be told, a surprising one: judges have always preferred the boxer who carries the fight to his opponent over the one who dances and piles up the points. And it certainly didn't hurt that Trinidad was managed by Don King.

I thought of that today in the context of the Wednesday post-mortems of the Ohio and Texas primaries yesterday. The Golden Boy of the Democratic Party has built up a comfortable lead through a series of decisive victories last month, but now discovers that he still has a few rounds to fight. His campaigning in the week before was sluggish, and he got clocked by his opponent on some nondescript punches. So his first instinct is to rest on his laurels, dance out the final rounds of the fight, and win on points.

Bad idea. For one thing, like de la Hoya after the ninth round of the Trinidad fight, he's not up by as much as he thinks he is. Thanks to the ridiculous distribution of delegates in states like Texas, the meme that the nominating process is not particularly democratic is starting to catch on. Just being ahead slightly in what have come to be known as "elected delegates" isn't going to win the nomination, particularly if Obama closes on a losing streak that includes Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina (and, Kobe willing, any revotes in Michigan and Florida).

SuperDelegates are not an amorphous mass that can be bullied or cajoled into supporting a nominee in August just because he did well in February. The entire reason they exist is that the rank-and-file Democratic primary and caucus participant does not have an astute track record in choosing nominees. They will look to what their constituents want, as reflected in the actual voter preference of their states and districts, and that math is not unfavorable to Ms. Clinton.

Obama needs to close strong. A win in Pennsylvania would help, but bagging North Carolina and either Michigan or Florida would be just as good. There is no reason to believe that party insiders and pols overwhelmingly favor Clinton; in fact, the opposite is probably true.

But most of all, he has to start acting like he has a pair. Only a string of defeats to close out the primaries will convince the Supers that he isn't a viable nominee, so he should stop coasting, and finish off his opponent, the way de la Hoya didn't do against Trinidad.

Requiem for February:

An average of 3,960 bankruptcy petitions were filed per day nationwide last month, up 18 percent from January and up 28 percent from a year earlier, according to Automated Access to Court Electronic Records, a bankruptcy data and management company.

February was the busiest month for filings since Congress overhauled the bankruptcy law in 2005. Bankruptcy experts said the rise was particularly worrisome because those changes made filing for bankruptcy more complicated and expensive.

“This number of bankruptcies may be under-representative of the true financial distress consumers are feeling because of the steps Congress has taken,” said Jack Williams, a scholar in residence at the American Bankruptcy Institute and a professor at Georgia State University.

The latest figures show the financial pain is spreading from states like California and Florida, which exemplified the housing boom and subsequent bust, to those along the Eastern Seaboard like Maryland, Virginia and Delaware, which were among the 10 states with the largest percentage increase in filings in January and February. “You are seeing a good-size uptick everywhere,” said Mike Bickford, president of Automated Access.

Bankruptcy experts caution, however, that data from just one or two months can be misleading.

“The monthly bankruptcy filing rate has a lot of cyclicality,” Robert M. Lawless, a professor of law at the University of Illinois College of Law, wrote on Tuesday on the widely read bankruptcy blog, Creditslips.org. Some experts, for example, say bankruptcies often seem to rise in February as debts from the holiday season come due. Even so, the trend is definitely upward, Mr. Lawless wrote. States as disparate as Kentucky and Rhode Island joined the top 10 list, and the absolute number of filings rose significantly.

--N.Y. Times (3/5/2008). In fact, the cyclicality mentioned above normally increases even more in March, April and May, with the X-mas holiday and summer months being the slow time for filings. People like to hang on through the holiday season, max out their credit cards to insure that a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year is had by all, then file after they get one or two bills behind (something like that also happens during the summer, when it's vacations and weddings for which debtors go all-in).

On the other hand (you knew that was coming), the fact that the number of filings reached a post-YBK peak last month is not particularly interesting. Almost every month since BARF went into effect in October, 2005, has seen an increase; the most noticeable thing YBK accomplished was that it created a panic before the new law went into effect, leading many people who hadn't planned on filing, or even desired filing, to head to the Bankruptcy Court to get their bankruptcy done before the change occurred. In the twenty-eight months since, it has taken the toxic combo of a collapsing real estate market and a massive credit crunch (brought on, in no small part, by YBK) leading to recession that has returned the monthly level of filings to its historic, pre-BARF norms.

My Two Cents: Hillary has to win Ohio and Texas tomorrow. Losses in either state, and Barack is the presumptive nominee. That's obvious, and I don't think there's any credible way the junior Senator from New York can maintain a viable campaign without a sweep.

That said, what happens if Clinton does win the Buckeye and Lone Star States, along with Rhode Island, where she has a clear lead in the polls? It's unlikely she will make much of a gain in the pledged delegate gap, regardless of how well she does tomorrow night. Moreover, due to the byzantine structure of the Texas delegate selection, it is almost certain that Obama will win a majority of delegates in that state, even if he loses the primary. Aren't we talking about a race that is already a foregone conclusion in favor of Barack Obama?

My counterintuitive take is that a pair of primary wins tomorrow trumps any delegate math, and for that reason, Clinton still has a shot if she wins. It's already pretty certain she isn't going to catch Obama in terms of the delegates elected in primaries and caucuses, no matter how well she does tomorrow or in the remaining contests. When all is said and done, Obama will have won more delegates in the contested battles after the last primary on June 2, but will not likely have a majority unless he has a breakthrough win in one of the four large states left, in Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. So it then goes to the SuperDelegates.

Since she won't have the mandate of the voters in Democratic contests, she has to have another argument. And I think that argument is going to be that the arcane rules the party has for delegate selection are undemocratic and anti-majoritarian, and that the SuperDelegates have to intervene to ensure that the true interests of the party are served.

That's where the potential for mischief in Texas will enter into the equation. If, as I suspect, Hillary Clinton wins the primary but fails to capture the lion's share of delegates tomorrow night in Texas, she has a perfect argument to illustrate the screwy manner in which the delegates have been chosen in this campaign. If the will of the Democratic voters in Texas isn't reflected in the delegate allocation, how can it be less fair for SuperDelegates, many of whom actually have to win a majority of votes to earn public office, to craft a more equitable solution? Since, in all likelihood, Hillary will not significantly reduce Barack's lead in the delegates even if she somehow wins a plurality of delegates from Texas, winning the vote but losing the delegates tomorrow night may be win-win for her, since it underlines the one good argument she has left.

But she has to win both states....

Charlotte Allen, the columnist whose WaPo piece yesterday on "Why Women Act so Dumb" has managed to unite both Atrios and Captain Ed in astonished rancor, was also the lady who recently penned this idiotic column in the LA Times.

On why acting skill and political awareness are not shared attributes:

In the interview, given to French TV show Paris Premiere, [Marion] Cotillard appears to suggest the attacks on the World Trade Center were staged to avoid the expense of refurbishing them.

"We see other towers of the same kind being hit by planes, are they burned?" she asks. "There was a tower, I believe it was in Spain, which burned for 24 hours.

"It never collapsed. None of these towers collapsed. And there [in New York], in a few minutes, the whole thing collapsed."

The Twin Towers, she claims, were a "money sucker" that would have cost much more to modernise than to destroy.

The actress goes on to cast doubt on the Moon landing of 1969. "Did a man really walk on the moon?" she asks.

"I saw plenty of documentaries on it and I really wondered. In any case I don't believe all they tell me."

Okay, so this year's Oscar winner for Best Actress is dumber than a bag of hammers. What of it? I'm resigned to expecting my favorite golfer or baseball player to have reactionary political views; what's important is what he does between the lines. Were it to turn out that Phoebe Nicholls is a Trotskyite or a Tory, I'd still scan IMDB every day for updates. Athletes and actors aren't paid to be policy wonks, so anyone who takes their political views seriously is playing a fool's game.

David Leonhardt has a good analysis of the history of immigration as a political issue in the United States. An excerpt:

Immigration has a fantastically complicated political history in the United States. It has produced enough populist anger to elect Know Nothing mayors of Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington and San Francisco, all in the 1850s and, more recently, to help Lou Dobbs reinvent his television career and become a best-selling author. But when national politicians have tried to seize on such anger, they have usually failed — and failed quickly. “While immigration has always roiled large sections of the electorate,” said Eric Rauchway, a historian at the University of California, Davis, “it has never been the basis for a national election, one way or the other.”

That appears to be truer than ever in 2008. Mr. McCain will all but clinch the Republican nomination on Tuesday with victories in the Ohio and Texas primaries. In the Texas campaign, except for a couple of obligatory questions about a border fence during a Democratic debate, immigration has been the dog that didn’t bark. The candidates who would have made an issue of it exited the race long ago.

There is, however, one more historical parallel to consider: as a political matter, immigration probably won’t go away on its own. The anti-immigration movements of the past may not have created presidents, but they did change the country. The Chinese Exclusion Act helped cut the immigration rate by more than 40 percent at the close of the 19th century. The Nativist movement of the 1910s and 1920s had even more success passing laws to reduce the flow.

I think the reason it fails as a political issue, but not as a matter of policy, has always been about the inherent decency of the American voter. The bigots and xenophobes who are most obsessed by the "illegals" can stir up a hornet's nest for awhile, but as with the issue of welfare reform thirty years ago, it's hard to get a voting majority behind candidates motivated to do something about it. It wasn't Ronald Reagan and his racist talk of "welfare queens" driving Cadillacs that changed the system; it was Bill Clinton and a generation of neo-liberals who approached the issue pragmatically, disassociating the debate from its genesis as a wedge issue.

The same thing, I believe, will ultimately happen with immigration. The nation is entitled to have control over its own borders, and to establish a policy concerning who may enter the country. But voters tend to recoil from the ugly language that is often used in the debate, with "illegals" replacing "wetbacks" as the code term du jour. Immigration reform will only come when the wonks make their voices predominant on this issue.

Josh Marshall reverts to his pre-9/11 form, when a high percentage of his posts were about Chandra Levy and Gary Condit, with this bit o' snark. Seems to me if you're going to summarize a column in that fashion, it would have helped if the columnist had actually made Joe Lieberman the point of comparison. I guess we all have bad days.