Matt Yglesias

Fast Food Nation

It turns out that Hardee’s, where I’d never eaten before, serves a much better fast food burger than what you get at a McDonald’s. They’re also the subject of this fascinating/horrifying Portfolio story about the company’s efforts to make itself even more unhealthy than the competition, but I stuck to their normal-sized burger, eschewing items like the 1,400 calorie Monster Thickburger.

Phanton Disenfranchisement

Dana Goldstein reports from the Hillary Clinton rally outside the DNC meeting:

That’s not to say the rhetoric wasn’t a tad overheated. Dozens of people said they wouldn’t vote for Obama if he prevails. “Count me now, or don’t count on my vote,” read the sign carried by Cindy Malzan, a 51-year old from Buffalo, New York. “No.”

It seems to me that it’s one thing if Clinton backers from upstate New York want to argue on behalf of Clinton backers from Florida and Michigan that delegates selected in those states’ illicit primaries should be seated. But it’s really a bit bizarre for Malzan to be acting as if someone is casting doubt on the validity of her vote. Nobody is dispute Clinton’s right to her delegates from New York or California or any other state where the won a properly conducted primary.

Meanwhile, people who are seriously drawn to Hillary Clinton’s plans on health care, climate change but also think they might vote for John McCain in the fall rather than the candidate with plans that are very similar to Clinton’s are being a bit confused. People who are seriously drawn to Clinton on feminist grounds but are considering staying home in the fall so McCain can replace John Paul Stevens with another justice in the mold of Alito or Roberts really need to think harder.

Thanks!

Well, I’m back from North Carolina and the guest bloggers have gone away, so I’d like to say thanks to an excellent team for some excellent work. Hopefully those of you on the other side of the intertubes liked some of what you read and will follow these writers in the future.

Uncontacted Tribe

In a pretty fascinating story yesterday, a group called Survival International released aerial photography of an “uncontacted tribe” of indigenous people’s living in the Amazon jungle. The group is an advocacy organization on behalf of isolated tribal peoples and they say “We did the overflight to show their houses, to show they are there, to show they exist.”

And, indeed, I had no idea that any such groups existed until I saw these stories. But there are around 100 such groups in the world, with about half of them living in Brazil, then another large group in the western half of New Guinea, and then the rest living in other parts of the Amazon. You can learn more here. The tribes face dispossession from the usual suspects for deforestation, but are also extremely vulnerable to epidemic disease.

Research indicates that “primitive” hunter gatherers actually enjoy a higher average standard of living than have most people in historical times and, indeed, higher than in many of today’s poor countries. Agricultural techniques allow a given piece of land to support a much larger population, but at a lower standard of living.

“Soft Power”

Ilan Goldenberg wisely proposes that progressives ditch the term “soft power.” He focuses mainly on the marketing aspects of the particular labels “soft power” versus “hard power” but I would go further and say that the distinction Joseph Nye was trying to draw is a bit ill-conceived. People here those words and they think of two kinds of power — two kinds of means of coercion — some of which might be “hard” and others might be “soft.” In fact, what Nye is trying to draw a distinction between all forms of coercion (including “soft” ones) on the one hand, and then stuff that’s not coercive at all — qualities that make a country likable.

But that stuff — the fact that American political ideals are attractive to people whereas Chinese political ideals aren’t — isn’t really a kind of power at all. It’s important, but if you think of it as a kind of power you’re just going to wind up thinking of it as a kind of really shitty and second rate power, rather than simply as something that’s different and important in its own right.

Comfort Zones

A couple of days ago, Noam Scheiber noted that it seems strange for John McCain to be so eager to talk about Iraq considering that Iraq is a horribly unpopular fiasco, the issue on which he’s most closely associated with the horribly unpopular incumbent Republican administration. Noam thought it might reflect a baseline lack of adequate cynicism on McCain’s part:

My hunch is that McCain really wants to debate Iraq–he really, truly thinks it’s the most important issue facing the country, and thinks he can persuade people on the merits–and so his political advisers are doing the best they can with it. I guess I respect that on some level. And, politically, it does reinforce his truth-teller, “I’d rather lose an election than lose a war” image. But, assuming Obama is able to establish a minimum level of national security credibility, which I think he will, McCain may be making a strategic mistake.

I mean, I suppose McCain does think that stuff, but honestly what else is he supposed to talk about? I don’t think it would serve the candidate well to talk about issues he doesn’t care about or doesn’t know anything about. And as best I can tell, that’s, um, all the issues. But even though a clear majority of the American people recognizes that endless war in Iraq is a bad idea, a large swathe of elites agree with McCain’s view that there’s no number of American deaths that would be too many to try to spare elites from the embarrassment of admitting that Iraq’s been a failure. This doesn’t seem all that promising to me as a campaign strategy, but it’s more promising than tired health care mumbo jumbo that McCain himself doesn’t seem interested in.

Tights Are Not Pants

I’m not sure if any of you have been around college undergraduates recently, but those of us who have (The Atlantic’s offices are right by the GWU campus) have noticed a somewhat distressing trend toward young women wearing tights as pants. Under the circumstances, I thought I might take the opportunity to plug the work of the good people at TightsAreNotPants.com who are trying to point out that tights are, in fact, not pants.

This comes to me via Nylon magazine which it seems also has a print feature on this in their May issue.

More advice from the worst presidential ticket in history, please

[Ta-Nehisi]

Well folks, it’s been thrilling being here. I want to thank Matt for letting me house-sit for the week, especially in such estimable company. Anyway I figured I’d go out on a humorous note, and what’s more humorous than Geraldine Ferraro these days? Via Balloon Juice:

As for Reagan Democrats, how Clinton was treated is not their issue. They are more concerned with how they have been treated. Since March, when I was accused of being racist for a statement I made about the influence of blacks on Obama’s historic campaign, people have been stopping me to express a common sentiment: If you’re white you can’t open your mouth without being accused of being racist. They see Obama’s playing the race card throughout the campaign and no one calling him for it as frightening. They’re not upset with Obama because he’s black; they’re upset because they don’t expect to be treated fairly because they’re white. It’s not racism that is driving them, it’s racial resentment. And that is enforced because they don’t believe he understands them and their problems. That when he said in South Carolina after his victory “Our Time Has Come” they believe he is telling them that their time has passed.

Whom he chooses for his vice president makes no difference to them. That he is pro-choice means little. Learning more about his bio doesn’t do it. They don’t identify with someone who has gone to Columbia and Harvard Law School and is married to a Princeton-Harvard Law graduate. His experience with an educated single mother and being raised by middle class grandparents is not something they can empathize with. They may lack a formal higher education, but they’re not stupid. What they’re waiting for is assurance that an Obama administration won’t leave them behind.

Get it? When you think an Ivy-educated black couple is elitist, but think an Ivy-educated white couple is the salt of the earth, you aren’t a racist you just resent black people racially. Big Difference. I mean, you wouldn’t attend a Klan rally or anything, but elect Barack and soon they’ll be marrying your daughters. I would offer a rebuttal, but Colson Whitehead closed the book on this months ago:

I’m confused, myself. For years, they said you can’t have this because you’re black, and then when you get something the same people say you got that only because you’re black. I mean, here I am, The Guy Who Got Where He Is Only Because He’s Black, and yet the higher up you go in an organization, the less you see of me.

It’s as if Someone Out to Prevent Me From Getting What I Worked For is preventing me from getting what I worked for. If only there were something — a lapel pin or other sartorial accessory — that would reassure people that I can do the job.

Some people say Barack Obama and I get everything handed to us on a silver platter. But we don’t let it bother us. We’re taking those silver platters and making them our canoes. Then we’ll grab our silver spoons and paddle to a place where people get us. North Carolina, maybe. Or Indiana. I hear Oregon is nice this time of year. We’ll paddle on, brother, paddle all the way to the top.

One last question. I was only nine when Ferraro ran in 84. Was she really this much of an idiot then? Or has time done a number on her?

Summer Mixtape, Delayed

[Alyssa]

I know I promised ya’ll a summer mixtape, but I do have a day job, and I haven’t had time to sort through all your suggestions yet. So I’ll ask Matt if we can put one up as soon as I can get it together, by the first day of summer at the latest. And feel free to keep the selections coming.

The joys of niche journalism

[Alyssa]

So, I think it’s probably fair for me to guess that almost all of you have no idea what my employer, Government Executive, does. I didn’t either, until I started freelancing for them, and discovered that this magazine catering to federal employees had almost 80,000 subscribers and web traffic growing in the direction of half a million unique visitors each month. I just had no idea the audience was out there, because I never really bothered to think about it. But since I started covering federal workforce issues full-time, I’ve learned two things, one about journalism, and one about government.

1) Niche publications may be an increasingly important part of journalism’s future, as long as the niche is of reasonable size. There are 1.8 million civilian federal employees, not including Postal Service workers. That’s a huge market, and those readers are incredibly hungry for information about the conditions that govern their jobs.

And by narrowing down our beats, we get to do much deeper reporting than we might if we were at a publication that had a broader mandate. For example, my colleagues Robert Brodsky and Elizabeth Newell took the New York Times’ story on AEY Inc., ran with it, and figured out the backstory behind how AEY got labeled a disadvantaged business, a status that proved crucial to the firm’s success. The Times had the story of what happened, but Elizabeth and Rob figured out why.

2) What’s going on in the federal workforce right now is drastically under covered. Huge numbers of career federal employees are about to retire, especially in senior leadership ranks, and hiring freezes in the 1990s mean there aren’t enough people to move smoothly up the ranks to fill those vacancies. These circumstances are prompting a reform boom: federal agencies are working to streamline the hiring process, adopting alternate work schedules and telework policies, and developing programs in coordination with nonprofits like the Partnership for Public Service to reach recruits of all who wouldn’t have considered federal service before.

But those efforts may be too late to prevent disruptions to federal services and federal agencies. Wonder why your plane is late? It’s partially airport capacity, but it may also partly be due to a mass exodus of air traffic controllers. Has it taken forever for you to get a passport? The State Department had to shift junior employees to process applications. Upset about the U.S. Attorneys scandal? The complexities of the relationships between political appointees and career federal employees provides key context. More stories than I ever realized come back to the people who work in government.

Going to Iraq

[Matt]

Obviously, a political gimmick is what a political gimmick is, but there’s really something very strange about the conceit that flying to Iraq and taking a guided tour courtesy of the U.S. military is the best way to learn about the country. I went to Spain for a week once, saw the central parts of Madrid and took some day trips to noteworthy towns that were easily accessible by train, but to answer even very basic question about Spain like “how wealthy is this country?” or “how many immigrants live here?” you need to look up the data not wander around. The McCain approach leads to a lot of incidents like this, “McCain’s claim that Mosul is “quiet” was disproved earlier today in grim fashion. Three suicide bombings — two in Mosul and another in a surrounding town — left 30 Iraqis dead and more than two dozen injured, according to press reports.”

Of course we can expect to hear more about this and about related things like McCain using General Petraeus in fundraising appeals, since turning MNF-Iraq into an extension of the McCain is a pretty appealing tactic. Active duty officers will try to avoid getting dragged into the political fray, but the Bush administration has repeatedly shown that it can be done easily enough, and active duty generals are hard surrogates for Obama to push back against.

Consolidation and Quality

Robert McChesney and John Nichols write:

Recently we have seen an acceleration of the collapse of journalistic standards. Veteran reporters like Walter Cronkite are appalled by the mergermania that has swept the industry, diluting standards, dumbing down the news and gutting newsrooms. Rapid consolidation, evidenced most recently by the breakup of the once-venerable Knight-Ridder newspapers, the sale of the Tribune Company and its media properties and the swallowing of the Wall Street Journal by Murdoch’s News Corp continues the steady replacement of civic and democratic values by commercial and entertainment priorities. But responsible journalists have less and less to say about newsroom agendas these days. The calls are being made by consultants and bean counters, who increasingly rely on official sources and talking-head pundits rather than newsgathering or serious debate.

The crisis is widespread, and it affects not just our policies but the politics that might improve them. There are two critical issues on which a free press must be skeptical of official statements, challenging to the powerful and rigorous in the search for truth. One of them is war–and in the case of the post-9/11 wars, our media have failed us miserably. (Even former White House press secretary Scott McClellan now acknowledges that the media were “complicit enablers” in the run-up to the Iraq invasion). The other issue is elections, when voters rely on media to provide them with what candidates, parties and interest groups often will not: a serious focus on issues that matter and on the responses of candidates to those issues. Instead, when the Democratic race was reaching its penultimate stage, the dominant story was a ridiculously overplayed discussion about Barack Obama’s former minister. Before the critical Pennsylvania primary, studies show, the provocative Rev. Jeremiah Wright got more coverage than Obama’s rival for the nomination, Hillary Clinton. And forget about issues–the most covered policy debate of the period, a ginned-up argument about whether to slash gas taxes for the summer, garnered only one-sixth as much attention as Wright.

I find these complaints about quality plausible, but the alleged connection of these problems to mergers and consolidation is hard for me to see. Preventing firms from assembling chains of newspapers (for example) wouldn’t alleviate the declining revenue issues that are driving papers to cut their budgets. What preventing consolidation would do is make it difficult for newspaper firms to realize efficiencies (does every big city newspaper really need its own set of film and television critics? do the LA Times and Chicago Tribune need separate Washington bureaux?) that might let them still produce a decent product in the new economic climate.

What does seem true to me is that really excellent journalism is probably not compatible with strict adherence to a profit-maximizing imperative. It’s not a coincidence that the most interesting newspapers and magazines in the United States tend to be run as private or family-controlled or non-profit enterprises, thus allowing managers to pursue ideals other than the pure pursuit of profit. That’s long been the case and will presumably continue to be the case, and the issue is largely one of whether or not an adequate number of new people and families can be persuaded to step up, as some old players (like the Bancroft’s) decide to abandon journalism.

But it’s difficult for me to see how enhanced FCC scrutiny of proposed mergers is going to compel news organizations to become more substantive in their coverage. And it’s very difficult for me to see how enhanced FCC scrutiny of proposed mergers is going to compel news organizations to become more skeptical of official claims. It seems to me that such scrutiny would make news organizations more inclined to shade their coverage in order to curry favor with the powers that be.

The Partisans

[Matt]

Via Larison, some interesting polling from GQR for NPR. They test some different Democratic and Republican messages head-to-head. And they do them two ways. In one round, each message starts “Democrats say…” or “Republicans say…” whereas a different batch of people get the message test with just “some people say…”

In all instances, the Democratic message beats the Republican message fairly badly. But identifying the Democratic message as “Democrats say…” uniformly results in a slight decrease in its popularity whereas identifying the Republican message as “Republicans say” slightly increases the message’s popularity. I’m not 100 percent sure how to interpret that — on the one hand, it speaks to some enduring strengths of the GOP brand, but on the other hand the Republican messages poor very poorly overall so their brand is hardly in good shape.

Against Rice-a-Roni

Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO)’s ongoing campaign against San Francisco continues to amuse:

There was some controversy last time around about whether or not “San Francisco” just means “gay” but this time I think there can be no doubt. Perhaps his opponent will be able to get Dockers to finance a ferocious pushback.

Iraq Forever

[Matt]

Thousands joined a Sadrist rally to protest the Bush/McCain vision of a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq, but thanks to recent operations to gain military control over Sadr City it was possible for Iraqi Security Forces to reduce the ability of anti-government protestors to peacefully assemble (progress!). Also of note, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim also issued a statement in opposition to this idea.

So the U.S. congress and Iraq’s two largest political parties are both opposed and of course naturally this means Bush will press ahead without congressional approval. And I assume that whatever Hakim or anyone else has to say about it now, as long as Bush is commander in chief of a 130,000+ thousand strong occupying army, he’ll be able to persuade Iraqi politicians to sign off on his plan.

“How Sex and the City are we right now? I’m Samantha, you’re Charlotte and you’re the lady at home who watches it.”

[Alyssa]

I am just as horrified as anyone by the idea that someone would pay $19,000 for a ticket to the Sex and the City premiere and “experience” in New York. Sex and the City was a very good show, and I watched a lot of it during one post-breakup summer with one of my best girlfriends (who I’m going to see the movie with tomorrow morning), but it is not the Bible.

On the other end of the spectrum, though, lies an equally annoying person: the critic who doesn’t understand that most Sex and the City fans understand that the show is not the Bible. I’m not going to see the movie to get life cues from Carrie Bradshaw any more than I went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to learn about South American archeology from Indiana Jones or the Star Wars movies for helpful hints on how to run a political movement (though not setting up your base of operations in an ice cave is probably a good idea).

The movie is a big, dumb summer fantasy. And while actually not accumulating savings because you buy too many designer shoes and running the risk of losing your apartment would be a very bad thing in real life, I think most women are not going to actually make that kind of mistake. I guess I don’t really understand why wanting a lightsaber makes someone a harmless geek but wanting a closetful of Jimmy Choos makes someone riddled with avarice. Getting either one is really equally unrealistic for most people. It’s just wishful thinking. In my fantasy life, I’d take one of each.

Update: Hey, to defend my geek cred, I never said that the Hoth fortress wasn’t awesome. Awesome, however, is not the same as practical. I’m pretty sure that making the place warm enough for humans to live in, lubricant not to freeze in X-wings, etc. would leave a huge, detectable heat signature. Also, building your fortress of material that’s prone to cave-ins, etc., especially when your military equipment presumably isn’t terribly easy to replace (it’s not like they can waltz into the Coruscant shipyards and order up a new fleet of planes stat) doesn’t seem like a very good idea, at least to me.

Cottle on Pelosi

I’m an unabashed Nancy Pelosi admirer. She’s the most influential real liberal in Washington, DC and depending on how things turn out in the Obama administration will either retain that title or else will have been the one who blazed the trail he walks down. Her elevation to become top House Democrat was thought by centrists likely to doom the party to the “McGovernite wilderness” for a generation, but instead she led them to victory only to be met with a weird boomlet of enthusiasm for dumping her in favor of Rahm Emmannuel. But she’s done a good job as Speaker, and the excitement around Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has often made me wonder why there hasn’t been more excitement around her rise to power — a rise which actually fits the model of a smart, tough woman making it in a male-dominated world without compromising her principles much better.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I really enjoyed Michelle Cottle’s appreciation of Pelosi in the new TNR and encourage others to check it out.

Clinton Campaign Takes a Turn For The Weird

[Isaac]

Andrew flags a Hillary Clinton interview where she says the following about the state of her campaign:

“You can’t tell how far a frog will jump until you punch him.”

Okay then. But her other comments were even stranger:

“I am tired,” said Clinton with exasperation. “I am tired of politicians and people in the press saying we cant do things. We are the can do nation.”

Clinton was asked Wednesday night if she really wanted reporters to be more vigorous and aggressive – she said that she does, but on the “right things.”

“I really do,” insisted Clinton. “I really do. On the right things. On things that are important to the future of our country. On things that really matter. I would love that.”

For more Clinton weirdness on the trail, check out Mark Liebovich’s piece in today’s Times.

As for E.J. Dionne’s column today on Hillary’s angry female supporters, I agree with Te-Nehisi’s point that–in essence–the plural of anecdote is not data, and thus that we should be wary of extrapolating a larger meaning out of quotes from individual women. But I do take issue with his juxtaposition of these two sentences:

I don’t think there’s much of question as to whether gender/sexism affected the election. The need for pundits to comment on Hillary’s appearance has always seemed bizarre to me.

One can agree with the assertion in the second sentence without thinking it has anything to do with the first sentence. Sure, sexism affected the election, and sexism affects how people treat Clinton’s physical appearance, but listening to HRC supporters (like the ones quoted by Dionne) can almost lead one to believe that Clinton lost to Obama because of some Drudge photographs and a Washington Post article that mentioned cleavage. Please.

Go West, Young Party

[Matt]

Tom Schaller on the Southwestern strategy:

Because both John McCain and Barack Obama have been touring the Interior West, I’m getting a lot of calls this week about regional strategies for the Electoral College and reaching the magical 270 threshold. I’m relieved analysts are finally discovering that, among other things, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico combined have almost the same number of electors (19) as Ohio (20) and that adding those to John Kerry’s 252 total from 2004 would put Obama over the top, however narrowly.

This is really what’s exciting about Barack Obama having raised a ton of money. John Kerry perceived a need to really choose between a focus on Ohio and a focus on that Southwestern trio and decided in the end that Ohio was the more promising choice. But a flush Obama campaign has money to do both and some left over to play in Virginia and the big (cheap) empty square plains states where Democrats have elected a lot of governors and senators.

McCain’s Mighty Understanding

Here’s a good one, John McCain smacks Barack Obama around for not realizing that force levels in Iraq are already down to pre-surge levels. This shows, according to McCain, how Obama’s not having taken a recent guided tour of Iraq makes him unqualified. But of course McCain’s wrong about how many troops are in Iraq! It’s almost as if being a cranky and arrogant old man isn’t the same as possessing actual understanding. Here’s the video:

I think the general idea is that if McCain asserts loudly enough that Obama doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that people will believe it.

In defense of Scott McClellan

[Kathy G.]

With the publication of his bombshell book, Scott McClellan is getting it pretty hard from both sides. Predictably, many on the right are outraged at his alleged perfidy — at Pandagon, Pam Spaulding does one of her periodic, always entertaining forays into the demented parallel universe that is Freeperville, and comes up with some beauts. The Freepers throw every name in the book at poor Scottie, calling him a "lowlife," "a backstabbing bum, and "a little worm;" he’s also unfavorably compared to "a turd on a stick," and that’s just for starters. They also offer such awesome political advice as "I wish W had chosen Ann Coulter to be his press secretary," and my personal fave, "One reason W is in trouble and legacy is in jeapordy IS the fact that he DID NOT SELL HIS VIEWS ENOUGH."  (Triple bonus points to the latter for the all caps and the spelling!).

With a few exceptions, the response on the left has not been a whole lot warmer. Ezra Klein refers to the book as

the tinny bleatings of a man who abetted a lying, disastrous presidency
because it seemed like a good gig, but doesn’t want his name maligned
by the historians. . . This doesn’t come close to clearing his name.

dnA at Too Sense is also having none of it:

McClellan has every reason to lie or twist events: making himself a
sympathetic character helps him sell books and he wants to minimize the
role he played in one of the most flagrant violations of the public
trust by the office of the President in history.

At Daily Kos, Bill of Portland Maine had this to say:

If there was any justice in the world, Scott McClellan would have to
travel to the home of every family member who lost a loved one in Iraq,
get down on his knees, and beg forgiveness. But he won’t. Instead, we
get 341 pages of, Hey, I was just following orders.

The only thing that Scott McClellan should collect from his book is dust.

But unlike most liberal journalists and bloggers, I think McClellan deserves quite a bit of
credit for going public with this, even at this late date. Writing this kind of book could not have been easy for him. He has undoubtedly lost friends. Many of his former colleagues will never speak to him again. If he’d written the kind of anodyne snoozer that Ari Fleischer did, then surely he’d be set for life on the wingnut welfare circuit. But now? Well, let’s just say he’ll never eat lunch in that town again. And it’s not like the liberals are eager to embrace him with open arms, either.

More »« Less

Further Paterson-blogging

[Alyssa]

Today’s New York Times has a good short history of the Governor’s history on gay rights in the wake of his decision to declare that New York will recognize the marriages of gay couples who get hitched elsewhere. Unsurprisingly, this anecdote leads the piece:

When David A. Paterson was growing up and his parents would go out of town, he and his little brother would stay in Harlem with family friends they called Uncle Stanley and Uncle Ronald.

Uncle Stanley and Uncle Ronald, he said, were a gay couple, though in the 1960s few people described them that way. They helped young David with his spelling, and read to him and played cards with him.

“Apparently, my parents never thought we were in any danger,” the governor recalled on Thursday in an interview. “I was raised in a culture that understood the different ways that people conduct their lives. And I feel very proud of it.”

It’s always interesting to hear about the personal places that politicians’ stances come from. That this story illustrates a pretty basic principle–that people who get to know gay people usually end up supporting their rights to live in full equality with everyone else–doesn’t make it any less compelling.

Talking Points

Henry Farrell:

Stephen Hayes was on NPR a few minutes ago complaining about how Scott McLellan wasn’t very interesting, because he was just delivering ‘left wing blogworld talking points.’ This complaint itself, of course, being itself a re-iteration of a Karl Rove talking point.

Ironic, yes. More broadly, this line of response to McClellan simply consists of repeating what’s so damning about McClellan’s new book but saying it as if this discredits him. But the point is this: Scott McClellan, longtime George W. Bush press flack, is now talking like a left-wing blogger. Right-wing flack talking like a right wing flack — not news. Left-wing blogger talking like a left-wing blogger — not news. Right-wing flack talking like a left-wing blogger — news. It’s as if a man is biting a dog in the middle of the street. Is this enough penitence to redeem McClellan for his sins? Not in my book. But it’s still an extraordinary turn of events.

We are all shrill bloggers now.

All I Really Need To Know About The Governor Of New York

[Ta-Nehisi]

Folks, I’ve done my best to restrict my maniacal affections for great hip-hop from leaking out, while guesting here; somehow I’m thinking we don’t have to many MF Doom fans in these parts. But I do want to note that David Paterson pardoned Slick Rick, a man to whom I owe some measure of my career as a writer. Good for the Gov.

UPDATE: For the Doom fans we do have here, this is Gnarls Barkley on Fresh Air. Nuff said.

Prison Reform in California Locked Up

[Alyssa]

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that California Senate Republicans have blocked a plan to build new health-care facilities in the state’s prisons and are going to block a proposed settlement of a prison overcrowding lawsuit. These are, in every possible way, pretty terrible ideas. The prison system is in receivership, and the receiver says he’ll raid the state coffers to pay for prison hospitals, if he has to. Without the settlement, the lawsuit will go to court, where the judges have the option of freeing large numbers of prisoners, which the Republican Senators have said they will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Look, I like a Howe & Hummelesque mass-prisoner-release-on-a-technicality story as much as anyone, but letting one happen in this case seems to serve not puckishness but political grandstanding. And it’s particularly disturbing given that the $7 billion the court receiver wants for prison hospitals would be aimed at providing beds for prisoners with long-term medical problems and mental illnesses.

While the Bush administration has always insisted that there are clear distinctions between prisoners being held in Gitmo and those in the general prison population, I wonder how the existence of Gitmo and prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan affects American prison administration. Even before the administration started playing by a very different set of rules for war on terror prisoners, jail in the United States sounded like a terrifying place to be in any capacity. But I wonder if Gitmo’s existence and use have made it easier for prison administrators to draw a harder line on prisoner treatment–or if our treatment of prisoners of war has made domestic incarceration look good by comparison, and blunted prison reform as an issue.