Crazy Vlad's Place of Automobiles
We can't possibly be the only people who think the right caption for Bush-Putin drive-around is "Put it in H," right?
UPDATE: In this version of the picture, Dubya would never be so unwise as to set a bad example for teen drivers by not having two hands on the steering wheel, so he must be giving the hand-signal for turning right. Has Rove suggested some new red meat be tossed to the base?
2nd UPDATE 11 MAY: It turns out that getting the car in gear was indeed the problem. Via Dan Froomkin in the Washington Post:
Elisabeth Bumiller writes in the International Herald Tribune that Bush "found himself struggling to get President Vladimir Putin's gleaming 1956 ivory-colored Volga into gear at the Russian president's dacha outside Moscow in a snafu that wasn't caught in the pictures of the two waving merrily from the windows of the vintage Russian sedan ... but he soon got hung up by the lever of the car's manual gear shift, mounted on the steering column, and, with a flummoxed but determined look on his face, fought to get the car into first gear.
"Soon enough Putin leaned over toward Bush, grabbed the shift lever and slammed it into gear. The car immediately took off, with no awful grinding gear sounds; Bush had evidently kept a good foot on the clutch pedal."
Now, if he had his foot on the clutch, the car wouldn't have taken off. Can Dubya actually drive a manual transmission car?
Monday, May 09, 2005
Sunday, May 08, 2005
Uncle George and Uncle Joe
If Dubya believes, as he said in Latvia:
The agreement at Yalta followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
then why, as we noted at the time, did his handlers play on Yalta imagery as the backdrop for his visit to Nova Scotia late last year?
If Dubya believes, as he said in Latvia:
The agreement at Yalta followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
then why, as we noted at the time, did his handlers play on Yalta imagery as the backdrop for his visit to Nova Scotia late last year?
Saturday, May 07, 2005
UK Election: 5
The election aftermath has already been extensively blogged elsewhere so just a couple of additional points here. First, we know that in the sports context it's taken for granted that everyone can talk about "giving 110%" and similar waffle but our inner sense of numeracy is a bit more disturbed when politicians do it. So in what looks like a clear downgrading of importance of the London Cabinet position dealing with Northern Ireland, the new Secretary Peter Hain will have responsibility for Northern Ireland and Wales. Or maybe it can be spun as an upgrade for Wales? But anyway, Hain does an unconvincing job of addressing concerns about dilution:
[BBC] The new Northern Ireland secretary has said that combining his job with that of Welsh secretary will not mean any diminished effort in his role.
Outgoing Leader of the Commons Peter Hain is replacing Paul Murphy in a prime ministerial cabinet reshuffle.
The DUP [Democratic Unionist Party] has said the dual portfolio means the job of Northern Ireland Secretary is being downgraded.
But Mr Hain said he would be talking to key political players at the weekend and be in Northern Ireland on Monday.
Perhaps the weekend chats are meant to free up some time later next week for Wales. Slightly more seriously, we wonder if the DUP is prepared for the possibility that they've arrived at the top just to find that the rest of the world might not care that much about Northern Irish politics anymore. We were struck listening to the DUP victory speeches on Friday with their references to how the "Irish, British, and American governments" need to recognise the new reality in Northern Ireland. Well, if the low key St Patrick's Day festivities in Washington DC didn't send a message about the American ranking of NI politics, maybe they should take note of the fact that Dubya's envoy to NI is doing it as a part time job:
Speaking at William and Mary College in Virginia, where he is vice-provost for international affairs, Mr Reiss said that he was receiving a "blow by blow account" of the election from the US consul to Northern Ireland, Dean Pitman.
Someone else giving 110%, it seems. By the way, we spent all of Friday listening to the results come in on Radio Ulster, and reading Slugger O'Toole, so the envoy could just as easily have spoken to us and spared the consul's time.
Finally, a little while ago we raised the possibility that Gerry Adams had missed some of the Biblical subtlety in a statement of Ian Paisley's. Granting that we might have been temporarily insane at that time, we nevertheless want to give Gerry credit for a subtle allusion of his own in his appraisal of Peter Hain's predecessor:
Paul Murphy was a safe pair of hands for the British Labour government here but he didn't break any Delft over the matters affecting us.
A lesser politician might merely have made reference to china or crockery, but Gerry goes for the historically literate reference to Delft. But could Gerry be playing an even wittier game? Here's what we find with a little research on the city:
The association of the House of Orange with Delft began when Willem van Oranje (Dutch for 'William of Orange'), nicknamed William the Silent, took up residence there in 1572.
From there of course a tumultuous sequence of events unfolded linking Dutch, British, and Irish history -- an essential part of the explanation of how Ireland got where it is today. Perhaps Gerry was trying to tell us that it's the Orange side of the equation which needs the biggest shakeup.
[Previous entry in this series]
The election aftermath has already been extensively blogged elsewhere so just a couple of additional points here. First, we know that in the sports context it's taken for granted that everyone can talk about "giving 110%" and similar waffle but our inner sense of numeracy is a bit more disturbed when politicians do it. So in what looks like a clear downgrading of importance of the London Cabinet position dealing with Northern Ireland, the new Secretary Peter Hain will have responsibility for Northern Ireland and Wales. Or maybe it can be spun as an upgrade for Wales? But anyway, Hain does an unconvincing job of addressing concerns about dilution:
[BBC] The new Northern Ireland secretary has said that combining his job with that of Welsh secretary will not mean any diminished effort in his role.
Outgoing Leader of the Commons Peter Hain is replacing Paul Murphy in a prime ministerial cabinet reshuffle.
The DUP [Democratic Unionist Party] has said the dual portfolio means the job of Northern Ireland Secretary is being downgraded.
But Mr Hain said he would be talking to key political players at the weekend and be in Northern Ireland on Monday.
Perhaps the weekend chats are meant to free up some time later next week for Wales. Slightly more seriously, we wonder if the DUP is prepared for the possibility that they've arrived at the top just to find that the rest of the world might not care that much about Northern Irish politics anymore. We were struck listening to the DUP victory speeches on Friday with their references to how the "Irish, British, and American governments" need to recognise the new reality in Northern Ireland. Well, if the low key St Patrick's Day festivities in Washington DC didn't send a message about the American ranking of NI politics, maybe they should take note of the fact that Dubya's envoy to NI is doing it as a part time job:
Speaking at William and Mary College in Virginia, where he is vice-provost for international affairs, Mr Reiss said that he was receiving a "blow by blow account" of the election from the US consul to Northern Ireland, Dean Pitman.
Someone else giving 110%, it seems. By the way, we spent all of Friday listening to the results come in on Radio Ulster, and reading Slugger O'Toole, so the envoy could just as easily have spoken to us and spared the consul's time.
Finally, a little while ago we raised the possibility that Gerry Adams had missed some of the Biblical subtlety in a statement of Ian Paisley's. Granting that we might have been temporarily insane at that time, we nevertheless want to give Gerry credit for a subtle allusion of his own in his appraisal of Peter Hain's predecessor:
Paul Murphy was a safe pair of hands for the British Labour government here but he didn't break any Delft over the matters affecting us.
A lesser politician might merely have made reference to china or crockery, but Gerry goes for the historically literate reference to Delft. But could Gerry be playing an even wittier game? Here's what we find with a little research on the city:
The association of the House of Orange with Delft began when Willem van Oranje (Dutch for 'William of Orange'), nicknamed William the Silent, took up residence there in 1572.
From there of course a tumultuous sequence of events unfolded linking Dutch, British, and Irish history -- an essential part of the explanation of how Ireland got where it is today. Perhaps Gerry was trying to tell us that it's the Orange side of the equation which needs the biggest shakeup.
[Previous entry in this series]
Themselves Alone
One of our mandates here at BoBW is to alert our Irish readers when some seemingly domestic matter attracts international attention. Therefore, while we normally don't have much use for the National Review Online, we note with relative approval the following item on Friday:
TOO MUCH DEMOCRACY [Andrew Stuttaford]
The Irish people once gave the EU Commission the ‘wrong’ result in a referendum. Such errors cannot be allowed to happen again:
[excerpt] The Irish government is considering amending the national constitution to allow for major future changes to EU rules to be made without a referendum, according to a report in The Irish Times on Friday.[end excerpt]
Indeed. It's consistent with the NRO's Euroscepticism to play this up as a Brussels machination and it's a fair point that the whole EU project often seems driven by a political-administrative elite that would be quite happy to ignore the public as long as they keep the taxes coming to finance the multilingual snouts at the trough.
But in this case, the instinct to limit Irish popular oversight of future EU decision-making springs at least as much from Dublin as from Brussels.* Because the Republic's natural party of government quite reasonably finds all that accountability and responsibility stuff rather annoying and would prefer a Bertie-knows-best model of decision-making.
Symptomatic of this is that on the same day that the government revealed the ambitious scope of its plans for ratifying future EU decision-making, and thus attracting the above attention, they were also ramming an amendment to the British-Irish agreement through the Dail. Their overall incompetence means that they spend a quite a bit of time passing emergency legislation to fix past f**k-ups -- and they speed up the process with guillotines on parliamentary debate.
The Opposition is not happy and Labour leader Pat Rabbitte had some numbers:
"It may come as a surprise to the House that since the foundation of the Irish Republic in 1919, the guillotine has been used 575 times. But since the current combination of parties [Fianna Fail and Progressive (sic) Democrats (sic)] assumed office in 1997, it has been used 191 times, 33 per cent of the total number," said Mr Rabbitte.
And this is not because of any US Senate style filibusters, it's simply a truncation of the normal process of passing legislation -- the rushed job perhaps contributing to further mistakes that get mended in the same manner sometime later. You'd think that self-styled Irish Republicans would have at least a little shame about the guillotine, since as we explained a while ago, it was brought in to curb the effective parliamentary tactics of Irish nationalists in the House of Commons. The deeper problem is that, unlike our neighbours north of the border, voting patterns in the Republic have yet to show enough a realignment to change the people in charge.
*UPDATE 11 MAY: In the interest of pursuing the above thread, we should note that the government has since dropped the proposal that the EU Constitution referendum would have been a "super-referendum" obviating the need for any further ones. Monday's Irish Times (subs. req'd):
The Government now plans to rewrite its proposed wording for the EU treaty referendum to exclude a clause that would give the State power to sign up to a wide range of EU policy changes without referendum ... [Labour leader Pat Rabbitte] said this change, known is EU jargon as a passerelle provision, was not required by the European constitution and "would give rise to the perception, at least, that major changes to the European constitution could in future be made without any reference to the people".
In a note on the matter yesterday, the Government said it believed this provision was reasonable, and did not allow for any extension of the EU's competence or power. "However, the Government is sensitive to the political argument that the scope of the procedure might be exaggerated in a referendum campaign, and is now tending to the view that arrangements for ratification, even of such limited treaty change, should remain as at present - namely a decision would be taken on a case-by-case basis as to whether a referendum would be necessary."
One of our mandates here at BoBW is to alert our Irish readers when some seemingly domestic matter attracts international attention. Therefore, while we normally don't have much use for the National Review Online, we note with relative approval the following item on Friday:
TOO MUCH DEMOCRACY [Andrew Stuttaford]
The Irish people once gave the EU Commission the ‘wrong’ result in a referendum. Such errors cannot be allowed to happen again:
[excerpt] The Irish government is considering amending the national constitution to allow for major future changes to EU rules to be made without a referendum, according to a report in The Irish Times on Friday.[end excerpt]
Indeed. It's consistent with the NRO's Euroscepticism to play this up as a Brussels machination and it's a fair point that the whole EU project often seems driven by a political-administrative elite that would be quite happy to ignore the public as long as they keep the taxes coming to finance the multilingual snouts at the trough.
But in this case, the instinct to limit Irish popular oversight of future EU decision-making springs at least as much from Dublin as from Brussels.* Because the Republic's natural party of government quite reasonably finds all that accountability and responsibility stuff rather annoying and would prefer a Bertie-knows-best model of decision-making.
Symptomatic of this is that on the same day that the government revealed the ambitious scope of its plans for ratifying future EU decision-making, and thus attracting the above attention, they were also ramming an amendment to the British-Irish agreement through the Dail. Their overall incompetence means that they spend a quite a bit of time passing emergency legislation to fix past f**k-ups -- and they speed up the process with guillotines on parliamentary debate.
The Opposition is not happy and Labour leader Pat Rabbitte had some numbers:
"It may come as a surprise to the House that since the foundation of the Irish Republic in 1919, the guillotine has been used 575 times. But since the current combination of parties [Fianna Fail and Progressive (sic) Democrats (sic)] assumed office in 1997, it has been used 191 times, 33 per cent of the total number," said Mr Rabbitte.
And this is not because of any US Senate style filibusters, it's simply a truncation of the normal process of passing legislation -- the rushed job perhaps contributing to further mistakes that get mended in the same manner sometime later. You'd think that self-styled Irish Republicans would have at least a little shame about the guillotine, since as we explained a while ago, it was brought in to curb the effective parliamentary tactics of Irish nationalists in the House of Commons. The deeper problem is that, unlike our neighbours north of the border, voting patterns in the Republic have yet to show enough a realignment to change the people in charge.
*UPDATE 11 MAY: In the interest of pursuing the above thread, we should note that the government has since dropped the proposal that the EU Constitution referendum would have been a "super-referendum" obviating the need for any further ones. Monday's Irish Times (subs. req'd):
The Government now plans to rewrite its proposed wording for the EU treaty referendum to exclude a clause that would give the State power to sign up to a wide range of EU policy changes without referendum ... [Labour leader Pat Rabbitte] said this change, known is EU jargon as a passerelle provision, was not required by the European constitution and "would give rise to the perception, at least, that major changes to the European constitution could in future be made without any reference to the people".
In a note on the matter yesterday, the Government said it believed this provision was reasonable, and did not allow for any extension of the EU's competence or power. "However, the Government is sensitive to the political argument that the scope of the procedure might be exaggerated in a referendum campaign, and is now tending to the view that arrangements for ratification, even of such limited treaty change, should remain as at present - namely a decision would be taken on a case-by-case basis as to whether a referendum would be necessary."
Friday, May 06, 2005
The supporting cast in the Global War on Terror
While Dubya surveys the pleasing vista of his allies Tony Blair and John Howard secure in their PM jobs despite their electorate's unhappiness with the Iraq invasion, there'll have to be some adjustments regarding the Irish branch of the GWoT. Because David Trimble, who had maintained the closest links with the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy, is going to lose his seat in the House of Commons today and will apparently soon resign as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party.
But step forward Ian Paisley as eager interlocuter for the GWoT on the island, with the only real awkwardness being that Paisley likes to emphasize the bible-thumping fundamentalism all the time, whereas Dubya's spinners like to keep that as a card that's only played before selected audiences.
For what it's worth, the moderate nationalist SDLP, which has avoided synergies with the GWoT, is holding up a lot better against Sinn Fein than Trimble's party against Paisley's. Trimble will doubtless do well on the VRC tour circuit, which has provided a nice sinecure for Jose Maria Aznar, for instance. But maybe a little less time on that circuit while he still had a political career, and a little more looking after local business in Northern Ireland, might have saved his current job.
But step forward Ian Paisley as eager interlocuter for the GWoT on the island, with the only real awkwardness being that Paisley likes to emphasize the bible-thumping fundamentalism all the time, whereas Dubya's spinners like to keep that as a card that's only played before selected audiences.
For what it's worth, the moderate nationalist SDLP, which has avoided synergies with the GWoT, is holding up a lot better against Sinn Fein than Trimble's party against Paisley's. Trimble will doubtless do well on the VRC tour circuit, which has provided a nice sinecure for Jose Maria Aznar, for instance. But maybe a little less time on that circuit while he still had a political career, and a little more looking after local business in Northern Ireland, might have saved his current job.
UK Election: 4
A follow up our pre-election mystification with the presence of US Democratic strategists in the Labour campaign: New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney had gone to Rochdale to report on former Dean strategist Karen Hicks who was working with Labour candidate Lorna Fitzsimons. She had advised, it was said, a Rovian approach of playing to the base -- don't waste time on voters whom "research" says are not likely to vote Labour.
Well, Lorna Fitzsimons lost. By 444 votes to the Liberal Democrats, with several thousand votes scattered across the other candidates. Did the strategising come with an American style no-win, no-fee arrangement?
UPDATE: WeUs and the substitute Josh Marshall are thinking along the same lines.
A follow up our pre-election mystification with the presence of US Democratic strategists in the Labour campaign: New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney had gone to Rochdale to report on former Dean strategist Karen Hicks who was working with Labour candidate Lorna Fitzsimons. She had advised, it was said, a Rovian approach of playing to the base -- don't waste time on voters whom "research" says are not likely to vote Labour.
Well, Lorna Fitzsimons lost. By 444 votes to the Liberal Democrats, with several thousand votes scattered across the other candidates. Did the strategising come with an American style no-win, no-fee arrangement?
UPDATE: We
Perhaps it is time to blame Canada
We commented earlier on the odd presence of the Canadian flag looming in the background during Fox News Sunday. Tonight we noticed the tagline at the end of The O'Reilly Factor, explaining that Bill's clothes are provided by Arnold Brant. Ring a bell? Not here, either, so we looked it up. From the "about us" section on the Brant website:
Arnold Brant, Canada’s newest designer, is sold in over 200 of the finest stores in North America.
His lifestyle collections answer contemporary attitudes. The garments are crafted with “old world” quality tailoring, complimented [sic] with modern technology.
Canadian designers? "Lifestyle collections"? " 'Old world' quality"? Next they'll tell us that Shep Smith is really a metrosexual...
We commented earlier on the odd presence of the Canadian flag looming in the background during Fox News Sunday. Tonight we noticed the tagline at the end of The O'Reilly Factor, explaining that Bill's clothes are provided by Arnold Brant. Ring a bell? Not here, either, so we looked it up. From the "about us" section on the Brant website:
Arnold Brant, Canada’s newest designer, is sold in over 200 of the finest stores in North America.
His lifestyle collections answer contemporary attitudes. The garments are crafted with “old world” quality tailoring, complimented [sic] with modern technology.
Canadian designers? "Lifestyle collections"? " 'Old world' quality"? Next they'll tell us that Shep Smith is really a metrosexual...
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Honourary Oirishmen
In a thought process perhaps similar to what was going on at Fáilte Ireland (Irish Tourist Board), we had wondered if the Irish Republic was slipping down the list of preferred corrupt junket destinations with all the focus on Tom DeLay's lobbyist-financed trip to London and St Andrews. Imagine our joy therefore when it turns out that other American Republicans couldn't resist a little of the Oirish Republican Culture:
[via Washington Post] yesterday, the Hill newspaper reported that five members of Congress traveled to Ireland in 2003 at the expense of a lobbying firm, which could be a violation of congressional rules. The paper said disclosure forms report that a lobbying firm, Kessler & Associates Business Services Inc., paid for travel to a four-day international trade seminar by Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), then-Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) and Reps. Howard Coble (R-N.C.), Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) and E. Clay Shaw Jr. (R-Fla.).
These dudes certainly put the 'R' in corruption. Today's NYT has other details from the Hill story:
The trip, a four-day international trade seminar at Ashford Castle in Ireland's County Mayo, took place in August 2003, the newspaper said.
Disclosure reports for the five lawmakers show that Kessler & Associates footed the $25,000 bill, even though congressional ethics guidelines bar lobbying firms from paying for lawmakers' travel.
So the 5 pols-for-hire spent $5,000 a head; lucky the dollar was a bit stronger back then or it could have been even more. Did the Senators get a bigger room than the House members? You know how these hierarchies have to be maintained even on the road. But is it lèse-majesté for non-Bush Republicans to stay in the Presidential Suite (yours for 1,000 euro this summer)?
In a thought process perhaps similar to what was going on at Fáilte Ireland (Irish Tourist Board), we had wondered if the Irish Republic was slipping down the list of preferred corrupt junket destinations with all the focus on Tom DeLay's lobbyist-financed trip to London and St Andrews. Imagine our joy therefore when it turns out that other American Republicans couldn't resist a little of the Oirish Republican Culture:
[via Washington Post] yesterday, the Hill newspaper reported that five members of Congress traveled to Ireland in 2003 at the expense of a lobbying firm, which could be a violation of congressional rules. The paper said disclosure forms report that a lobbying firm, Kessler & Associates Business Services Inc., paid for travel to a four-day international trade seminar by Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), then-Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) and Reps. Howard Coble (R-N.C.), Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) and E. Clay Shaw Jr. (R-Fla.).
These dudes certainly put the 'R' in corruption. Today's NYT has other details from the Hill story:
The trip, a four-day international trade seminar at Ashford Castle in Ireland's County Mayo, took place in August 2003, the newspaper said.
Disclosure reports for the five lawmakers show that Kessler & Associates footed the $25,000 bill, even though congressional ethics guidelines bar lobbying firms from paying for lawmakers' travel.
So the 5 pols-for-hire spent $5,000 a head; lucky the dollar was a bit stronger back then or it could have been even more. Did the Senators get a bigger room than the House members? You know how these hierarchies have to be maintained even on the road. But is it lèse-majesté for non-Bush Republicans to stay in the Presidential Suite (yours for 1,000 euro this summer)?
Does this make me look thin?
Dubya's Mother's Day Proclamation: By raising children to be responsible citizens, mothers serve a cause larger than themselves ...
Dubya's Mother's Day Proclamation: By raising children to be responsible citizens, mothers serve a cause larger than themselves ...
The honourable member for Adams-Morgan and Provincetown
[Andrew Sullivan] I wish the Tories had offered a more decisive alternative to Labour - especially on taxes and spending. They've botched several elections without even laying down a clear ideological direction for the party. And the trouble is: their ranks are thin. The younger generation of potential Tory MPs have either emigrated to America, (cont'd p94)
[Andrew Sullivan] I wish the Tories had offered a more decisive alternative to Labour - especially on taxes and spending. They've botched several elections without even laying down a clear ideological direction for the party. And the trouble is: their ranks are thin. The younger generation of potential Tory MPs have either emigrated to America, (cont'd p94)
The other royal shoe drops
One of the services we like to provide here at BoBW is followup on some seemingly long-forgotten posts from the web's finest pundits. So in his relentless pursuit of reasons to bash the New York Times, Andrew Sullivan was concerned that it was doing the old nudge, nudge, wink, wink, on Prince Albert II of Monaco:
[11 April] EUPHEMISM WATCH: I think I know what the NYT is trying to tell us here:
[NYT excerpt] Prince Albert, meanwhile, has been linked to a long list of high-profile women known for appearing on the arms of middle-aged bachelors. There have been no signs of anything like a romance ... So reticent has Albert remained about marriage throughout the years of public speculation and private pressures that his father sought changes to the Constitution three years ago to allow the crown to pass to one of the princesses or their children if Albert abdicated or died without a child. [end NYT excerpt]
Take a wild guess.
So, if your wild guess was that the apparent lack of women belies an affair with a Togolese flight attendant that has produced a son, you'd be right! Or at least, that's what the woman in question says and her allegations in Paris-Match have produced only a cagey non-denial from the Grimaldis*. The bizarre thing is that Albert's family and his fellow European royals probably preferred the other assumption about his private life.
UPDATE 5 JULY: That cagey non-denial was indeed an indication that the story is true. A formal admission is coming this week, it seems.
One of the services we like to provide here at BoBW is followup on some seemingly long-forgotten posts from the web's finest pundits. So in his relentless pursuit of reasons to bash the New York Times, Andrew Sullivan was concerned that it was doing the old nudge, nudge, wink, wink, on Prince Albert II of Monaco:
[11 April] EUPHEMISM WATCH: I think I know what the NYT is trying to tell us here:
[NYT excerpt] Prince Albert, meanwhile, has been linked to a long list of high-profile women known for appearing on the arms of middle-aged bachelors. There have been no signs of anything like a romance ... So reticent has Albert remained about marriage throughout the years of public speculation and private pressures that his father sought changes to the Constitution three years ago to allow the crown to pass to one of the princesses or their children if Albert abdicated or died without a child. [end NYT excerpt]
Take a wild guess.
So, if your wild guess was that the apparent lack of women belies an affair with a Togolese flight attendant that has produced a son, you'd be right! Or at least, that's what the woman in question says and her allegations in Paris-Match have produced only a cagey non-denial from the Grimaldis*. The bizarre thing is that Albert's family and his fellow European royals probably preferred the other assumption about his private life.
UPDATE 5 JULY: That cagey non-denial was indeed an indication that the story is true. A formal admission is coming this week, it seems.
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
An honourary Oirishman
The evidence becomes ever clearer that the genius of the Irish Republic's natural party of government, Fianna Fail, was to find a synergy between their own propensity for dodgy dealings and the desire of people around to the world to have a scenic venue for the same activities. Because, not for the first time, the Republic's lax corporate regulation is showing up as a bit player in the AIG scandal.
Today's Wall Street Journal (subs. req'd) reports on the state of the corporate divorce between Maurice Greenberg, ousted supremo of AIG, and the company -- complicated both by the amount of his personal stuff that he kept in his office, and the fact that he still controls private entities that have significant influence over the main company. So AIG is looking into how it might gain control of the private entities, named for the company's founder C.V. Starr. But:
According to Starr documents, if the Starr businesses are ever liquidated, the assets -- to avoid certain taxes -- would transfer to an Irish charity initially and then to the Starr Foundation. The chairman of the Starr Foundation? Mr. Greenberg.
It's not inconceivable that Irish regulation of charities is tougher than its regulation of financial corporations. If we were AIG's lawyers, we'd be looking closely at that portion of Irish law to see whether the specified transfers to and from the charity are legal.
UPDATE 17 JUNE: The Irish charity is called Starr International Charities. It seems to be owner of the Starr entity SICO which Greenberg used as a compensation vehicle in running AIG. And as for its charitable activities, a New York Times article noted:
Other than a contribution last year to Dublin's Abbey Theater, the charity has yet to make substantial local contributions, but SICO representatives said it plans to do more this year.
The evidence becomes ever clearer that the genius of the Irish Republic's natural party of government, Fianna Fail, was to find a synergy between their own propensity for dodgy dealings and the desire of people around to the world to have a scenic venue for the same activities. Because, not for the first time, the Republic's lax corporate regulation is showing up as a bit player in the AIG scandal.
Today's Wall Street Journal (subs. req'd) reports on the state of the corporate divorce between Maurice Greenberg, ousted supremo of AIG, and the company -- complicated both by the amount of his personal stuff that he kept in his office, and the fact that he still controls private entities that have significant influence over the main company. So AIG is looking into how it might gain control of the private entities, named for the company's founder C.V. Starr. But:
According to Starr documents, if the Starr businesses are ever liquidated, the assets -- to avoid certain taxes -- would transfer to an Irish charity initially and then to the Starr Foundation. The chairman of the Starr Foundation? Mr. Greenberg.
It's not inconceivable that Irish regulation of charities is tougher than its regulation of financial corporations. If we were AIG's lawyers, we'd be looking closely at that portion of Irish law to see whether the specified transfers to and from the charity are legal.
UPDATE 17 JUNE: The Irish charity is called Starr International Charities. It seems to be owner of the Starr entity SICO which Greenberg used as a compensation vehicle in running AIG. And as for its charitable activities, a New York Times article noted:
Other than a contribution last year to Dublin's Abbey Theater, the charity has yet to make substantial local contributions, but SICO representatives said it plans to do more this year.
Taxation is terrorism
Yes, it was only a matter of time before a Vast Rightwing Conspiracy version of Proudhon's dictum worked its way into the mainstream, and so it is with the Wall Street Journal Online's James Taranto on Tuesday. The context is Dubya's Social Security reform "plan" and one option up for grabs to generate additional funds for the program is to raise the cap at which Social Security taxes are paid. (Our Irish readership should think of PRSI, which has a very similar structure.) Taranto explains by way of criticising one such proposal:
The Social Securty [sic] tax is a levy of 12.4% of income up to (currently) $90,000. It is designed this way for a reason: to create the illusion that the taxpayer is getting a benefit for his money rather than being on a losing end of an income transfer. This, however, offends [Washington Post columnist Richard] Cohen's sense of fairness, and here's his solution:
[Cohen] Whatever the merits of personal investment accounts, they would do nothing to alter the dismal math of Social Security projections. But raising the cap would. Why $90,000? Why not $140,000? Better yet, why not raise it to $140,000 and then raise it to confiscatory levels on obscene payments such as Michael Eisner's $575.6 million back in 1998 ... [end excerpt]
Raising the cap to $140,000 would amount to an increase in marginal rates of roughly 40% to 45% for taxpayers whose incomes are in the low six figures--a huge tax increase targeted at the most productive Americans. The logic here is similar to that of suicide bombing: It's worth making a big sacrifice for the sake of making the enemy suffer even more. Somehow, though, we doubt most Americans view Michael Eisner as the enemy.
It would be tough to find a better example of the debased and deranged rhetoric that now has currency on the right: they can't even spell the program's name correctly; we've stared at that "illusion" sentence for 5 times and still can't figure out what it's supposed to mean, and the logic of Cohen's utterly unremarkable proposal is not to go all Hamas on the rich, but to raise more money for the program.
In fact, all that removing the cap does is move the Social Security Tax to a flat tax -- all incomes pay the same percentage rate. Isn't the Wall Street Journal supposed to love the flat tax? And by their free market philosophy, "the most productive Americans" aren't those poor dears in the low 6 figures. It's people like Michael Eisner, who is already being suicide-bombed by the rest of the nation's income tax system. And who is the shadowy leader of this homicide-bomber lift-the-tax-cap movement? George W. Bush. The snake begins to consume itself.
Yes, it was only a matter of time before a Vast Rightwing Conspiracy version of Proudhon's dictum worked its way into the mainstream, and so it is with the Wall Street Journal Online's James Taranto on Tuesday. The context is Dubya's Social Security reform "plan" and one option up for grabs to generate additional funds for the program is to raise the cap at which Social Security taxes are paid. (Our Irish readership should think of PRSI, which has a very similar structure.) Taranto explains by way of criticising one such proposal:
The Social Securty [sic] tax is a levy of 12.4% of income up to (currently) $90,000. It is designed this way for a reason: to create the illusion that the taxpayer is getting a benefit for his money rather than being on a losing end of an income transfer. This, however, offends [Washington Post columnist Richard] Cohen's sense of fairness, and here's his solution:
[Cohen] Whatever the merits of personal investment accounts, they would do nothing to alter the dismal math of Social Security projections. But raising the cap would. Why $90,000? Why not $140,000? Better yet, why not raise it to $140,000 and then raise it to confiscatory levels on obscene payments such as Michael Eisner's $575.6 million back in 1998 ... [end excerpt]
Raising the cap to $140,000 would amount to an increase in marginal rates of roughly 40% to 45% for taxpayers whose incomes are in the low six figures--a huge tax increase targeted at the most productive Americans. The logic here is similar to that of suicide bombing: It's worth making a big sacrifice for the sake of making the enemy suffer even more. Somehow, though, we doubt most Americans view Michael Eisner as the enemy.
It would be tough to find a better example of the debased and deranged rhetoric that now has currency on the right: they can't even spell the program's name correctly; we've stared at that "illusion" sentence for 5 times and still can't figure out what it's supposed to mean, and the logic of Cohen's utterly unremarkable proposal is not to go all Hamas on the rich, but to raise more money for the program.
In fact, all that removing the cap does is move the Social Security Tax to a flat tax -- all incomes pay the same percentage rate. Isn't the Wall Street Journal supposed to love the flat tax? And by their free market philosophy, "the most productive Americans" aren't those poor dears in the low 6 figures. It's people like Michael Eisner, who is already being suicide-bombed by the rest of the nation's income tax system. And who is the shadowy leader of this homicide-bomber lift-the-tax-cap movement? George W. Bush. The snake begins to consume itself.
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Well, he's certainly not doing it with his head
Duyba, at a Social Security Abolition rally in Mississippi: I exercise and all that, try to do -- make smart decisions with my body.
UPDATE: A day later, and the line gets weirder:
It's why I'm making right choices about what I put in my body,
What would an off-colour comedian like Laura Bush make of a line like that?
Duyba, at a Social Security Abolition rally in Mississippi: I exercise and all that, try to do -- make smart decisions with my body.
UPDATE: A day later, and the line gets weirder:
It's why I'm making right choices about what I put in my body,
What would an off-colour comedian like Laura Bush make of a line like that?
Overpollstered, overpaid, and over here
The caricature of citizens of just about any nation when abroad is that they spend hours if not days trying to reach some exotic locale, and then once they get there, they want to know where the familiar things from home are. For the Irish, it's the Irish pub, for the English, it's the er... Irish pub, and for Americans, it's McDonalds. Or for all three, it's their compatriots.
And so it is for New York Times journalist Adam Nagourney, who has that Angleterre au Printemps gig covering the UK election for the New York Times. As if to amplify our theme of yesterday about the infestation of Democratic pollsters (/strategists), his entire article today is about their role. God forbid that there be too many British people in an article about the British election. The featured pollster is Karen Hicks, who worked for the Dean campaign in New Hampshire, and therefore like Joe Trippi was against the Iraq war before she was for it.
Our point here is that these pollsters can't have it both ways. The fact that they are working for Dems and Labour suggests that in their mind, there is a common 'liberal' thread linking their hired-gun work, but in fact the policies and environment between the Dems and Labour are quite different. Karen Hicks and Joe Trippi are in the same business as Greg Stevens (the dead dude in Princess Leia's bedroom), although one assumes that they'll have the good sense to turn down consulting jobs with Togolese dictators.
And what would an electoral consultant article be without mention of Bob Shrum?
... a senior adviser to Senator Kerry's campaign, is a friend and sometime adviser to Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the Exchequer and almost certain successor to Mr. Blair eventually.
No doubt Shrum can take advantage of his visits to England to see another client -- Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who'll need advice on the latest rabble-rousing policy proposals to disguise the abject incompetence and cravenness of his government.
One of many ironies here is that for a while Labour was trying to stir up a controversy about the Tories' use of overseas election consultants, especially Aussie Lynton Crosby. Crosby is a lightning rod for criticism on the grounds that his techniques are polarising. Which brings us to the alleged wisdom of the American pollsters working for Labour:
Labor officials said the critical lesson learned from Americans was the need to study everything from voter history to consumer buying patterns in order to identify voters inclined to support Mr. Blair. Ms. Fitzsimons said when she first ran in 1997, her supporters knocked on every door, a practice that she soon realized was as likely to remind Labor opponents as Labor supporters of the need to turn out.
Instead, Labor workers are going only to the homes of people who might actually vote for Labor, a particularly important consideration in a campaign in which time is limited and spending restrained.
So Democratic pollsters go to Britain and advise that the best strategy is to only play to "the base." Can Karl Rove sue for patent infringement?
[For filing purposes we should have titled this post UK Election: 3 but we like our current title better. And (update May 5) Atrios sounds even less enamoured with the Democratic pollster/strategist love-in with Labour than we are.]
And so it is for New York Times journalist Adam Nagourney, who has that Angleterre au Printemps gig covering the UK election for the New York Times. As if to amplify our theme of yesterday about the infestation of Democratic pollsters (/strategists), his entire article today is about their role. God forbid that there be too many British people in an article about the British election. The featured pollster is Karen Hicks, who worked for the Dean campaign in New Hampshire, and therefore like Joe Trippi was against the Iraq war before she was for it.
Our point here is that these pollsters can't have it both ways. The fact that they are working for Dems and Labour suggests that in their mind, there is a common 'liberal' thread linking their hired-gun work, but in fact the policies and environment between the Dems and Labour are quite different. Karen Hicks and Joe Trippi are in the same business as Greg Stevens (the dead dude in Princess Leia's bedroom), although one assumes that they'll have the good sense to turn down consulting jobs with Togolese dictators.
And what would an electoral consultant article be without mention of Bob Shrum?
... a senior adviser to Senator Kerry's campaign, is a friend and sometime adviser to Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the Exchequer and almost certain successor to Mr. Blair eventually.
No doubt Shrum can take advantage of his visits to England to see another client -- Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who'll need advice on the latest rabble-rousing policy proposals to disguise the abject incompetence and cravenness of his government.
One of many ironies here is that for a while Labour was trying to stir up a controversy about the Tories' use of overseas election consultants, especially Aussie Lynton Crosby. Crosby is a lightning rod for criticism on the grounds that his techniques are polarising. Which brings us to the alleged wisdom of the American pollsters working for Labour:
Labor officials said the critical lesson learned from Americans was the need to study everything from voter history to consumer buying patterns in order to identify voters inclined to support Mr. Blair. Ms. Fitzsimons said when she first ran in 1997, her supporters knocked on every door, a practice that she soon realized was as likely to remind Labor opponents as Labor supporters of the need to turn out.
Instead, Labor workers are going only to the homes of people who might actually vote for Labor, a particularly important consideration in a campaign in which time is limited and spending restrained.
So Democratic pollsters go to Britain and advise that the best strategy is to only play to "the base." Can Karl Rove sue for patent infringement?
[For filing purposes we should have titled this post UK Election: 3 but we like our current title better. And (update May 5) Atrios sounds even less enamoured with the Democratic pollster/strategist love-in with Labour than we are.]
UK Election: 2
It's a measure of how little we care about what Christopher Hitchens has to say that it took us a week to get around to reading his endorsement of Tony Blair in Slate. But it's no less revealing of Hitch's pathology for being a week old. First, there's the following element of his past rationales for not voting Labour:
though in the 1979 election the Callaghan regime had become so corrupt and incompetent and reactionary that I didn't vote at all.
This is a language and logic that would embarrass even the scruffiest second year college radical; poor "Sunny" Jim Callaghan was indeed a reactionary -- if one defines the term as meaning someone who, like, reacts to events. Such as by not doing much of anything in the face of out-of-control trade union militancy. Since Jim died recently, we can go to the London Times obituary for the accurate summary sentence:
It was his fate to have to stand impotently on the sidelines as the organised muscle of British trade unionism put on a display of such brow-beating and bullying that the public resolved to keep the political wing of the labour-industrial movement out of office for the next four general elections.
Some "regime." And in this topsy-turvy world, we find that the best line about Callaghan with contemporary relevance came from William Rees-Mogg, also in the Times:
One measure of an unsuccessful Prime Minister is the length of time it takes for his party to get back into a majority after he has left office. In Jim Callaghan’s case, after 1979, that was 18 years, the longest period of any Prime Minister of the 20th century, unless one includes Lloyd George [Liberal], whose tally is 82 years and still counting.
A verdict well deserved for the man who expertly moved Ireland along from one crisis to the next: World War I conscription, then a War of Independence, and Partition -- bequeathing a mess that Callaghan found himself trying to clean up 50 years later.
We learn one other thing about Hitch's political fervour. In that election in which he saw himself as above participating, Callaghan's opponent and victor was Maggie Thatcher. So even long before Hitch's more obvious descent into the reactionary mire in 1990s America, here is someone who couldn't lift his arse to vote against the conservative revolution in Britain, and yet could spend the next 15 years getting all worked up about the malign influence of Mother Teresa and Diana Spencer. 20 years later, it's Bill Clinton and Al Gore who earn the contempt while another conservative revolution unfolds under the old leftie's nose. It must be about time for a screed against Martha Stewart.
[Previous entry in this series.]
It's a measure of how little we care about what Christopher Hitchens has to say that it took us a week to get around to reading his endorsement of Tony Blair in Slate. But it's no less revealing of Hitch's pathology for being a week old. First, there's the following element of his past rationales for not voting Labour:
though in the 1979 election the Callaghan regime had become so corrupt and incompetent and reactionary that I didn't vote at all.
This is a language and logic that would embarrass even the scruffiest second year college radical; poor "Sunny" Jim Callaghan was indeed a reactionary -- if one defines the term as meaning someone who, like, reacts to events. Such as by not doing much of anything in the face of out-of-control trade union militancy. Since Jim died recently, we can go to the London Times obituary for the accurate summary sentence:
It was his fate to have to stand impotently on the sidelines as the organised muscle of British trade unionism put on a display of such brow-beating and bullying that the public resolved to keep the political wing of the labour-industrial movement out of office for the next four general elections.
Some "regime." And in this topsy-turvy world, we find that the best line about Callaghan with contemporary relevance came from William Rees-Mogg, also in the Times:
One measure of an unsuccessful Prime Minister is the length of time it takes for his party to get back into a majority after he has left office. In Jim Callaghan’s case, after 1979, that was 18 years, the longest period of any Prime Minister of the 20th century, unless one includes Lloyd George [Liberal], whose tally is 82 years and still counting.
A verdict well deserved for the man who expertly moved Ireland along from one crisis to the next: World War I conscription, then a War of Independence, and Partition -- bequeathing a mess that Callaghan found himself trying to clean up 50 years later.
We learn one other thing about Hitch's political fervour. In that election in which he saw himself as above participating, Callaghan's opponent and victor was Maggie Thatcher. So even long before Hitch's more obvious descent into the reactionary mire in 1990s America, here is someone who couldn't lift his arse to vote against the conservative revolution in Britain, and yet could spend the next 15 years getting all worked up about the malign influence of Mother Teresa and Diana Spencer. 20 years later, it's Bill Clinton and Al Gore who earn the contempt while another conservative revolution unfolds under the old leftie's nose. It must be about time for a screed against Martha Stewart.
[Previous entry in this series.]
Monday, May 02, 2005
Raise taxes, Save lives
[WSJ, subs. req'd along with secrecy from the editorial page]: The prevalence of obesity is growing three times faster among Americans who make more than $60,000 a year than it is among their low-income neighbors, said a study being presented Monday at a meeting of the American Heart Association.
[WSJ, subs. req'd along with secrecy from the editorial page]: The prevalence of obesity is growing three times faster among Americans who make more than $60,000 a year than it is among their low-income neighbors, said a study being presented Monday at a meeting of the American Heart Association.
Send pollsters, guns, and money
Even though our readership is probably still dizzy from the insights into Washington's weekend social/political whirl provided by this blog's other world, we'd like to bring to your attention a few disparate news items over the last few days that highlight a new plague: that of overseas election spinners and pollsters applying their recipe to just about any election, anywhere. We don't know what's more dispiriting: the election consultants who see no clash between their home and foreign ideologies, such as American populist Bob Shrum whose firm consults for the Oirish elite in Fianna Fail, or those who have convinced themselves that there is a seamless but lucrative web linking their domestic and overseas activities.*
Let's deal with the latter first. Sunday's New York Times Arts and Leisure section (tellingly, not the politics section) had a lengthy story on Greg Stevens, a longtime Republican spinner who had some weird stories to tell about his international election consulting. Long years of dissolute living took its toll on his body and he died in the home of Carrie Fisher a day before this year's Oscars. Stevens is symptomatic of a breed that David Brooks, in a rare moment of lucidity, referred to as "sleazo-cons" -- right-wingers who see no conflict between promoting their ideology and stooping to any level to make a buck at the same time. A product of the Oliver North era of deals with repressive governments and murderous "rebel" movements: Iran, Honduras, Angola -- he went into election consulting in the early 1990s with a client list that still haunts the world today:
There was that time in Togo, when Mr. Stevens had to tell President Gnassingbé Eyadéma that he was going to lose an election. "So the president told him to get the hell out of the country, and then he canceled the election," said one of Mr. Stevens's colleagues in international political intrigue.
That would be the same dictator who dropped dead of a couple of months ago, the military installed his son as replacement, and then an apparently rigged election was just held to validate his accession. No word on whether butterfly ballots were used in that election, but there was plenty of other fishy stuff. And old rolodexes die hard:
At the time of his death, Mr. Stevens represented Pink Films International, a television production company in Serbia and Montenegro, and had solicited American producers to shoot cheap remakes of 1950's B-movies in Belgrade. One deal, with the Hollywood producers Craig Baumgarten and Lou Arkoff, fell through, Mr. Baumgarten said, because he suspected Mr. Stevens's Serbian partners had ties to Slobodan Milosevic.
Note, by the way, this issue of links between Slobo and Republicans is one that never quite goes away -- it's also come up as a thread in the Tom DeLay scandals. And of course the gay-Republican-White House-drugs aspect of Stevens' life has some familiar echoes. ** (update) And the NYT gets a quote from Roger Stone about Stevens, but did they ever Google Stone in his own right?
But while Stevens hopefully rests in peace, let's turn to the other breed, the dinner-party centrist pollster. Adam Nagourney has been doing the "compare and contrast" reporting for the New York Times on the UK election and we can only ruefully laugh as his wonderment at those different elections in the UK and his analysis thereof omits any role for hacks like himself on why the two elections are so different. His skill at "opinions differ on shape of earth" journalism and receptivity to Rovian talking points has even earned him a mocking website, but anyway, his latest piece is a catalog of late Spring junketing for Democratic pollsters:
STANLEY GREENBERG, an American pollster, was reading the morning British papers the other day when he saw something unusual among the torrent of articles about the coming national election here: a full-page photograph of a naked woman ... Mark Penn, an American pollster who, like Mr. Greenberg, has advised Bill Clinton and is now aiding Mr. Blair ... Joe Trippi, an American political consultant who has advised the Labor campaign and who worked for Howard Dean ...
Consider just Joe Trippi's inconsistency: having worked for Howard Dean and now Tony Blair, it seems that he was against the Iraq war before he was for it. Perhaps at the expense of indicating that we don't really understand elections, we fail to see what a parachuted-in consultant from a different political system really has to offer -- other than quotes for parachuted-in political correspondents. Along this dimension at least, globalisation sucks.
*UPDATE: As we read this post again, we're not even sure there's a difference between the two types of pollsters. The only distinction is self-styled liberal or conservative, but they both have an equal lack of principles.
Let's deal with the latter first. Sunday's New York Times Arts and Leisure section (tellingly, not the politics section) had a lengthy story on Greg Stevens, a longtime Republican spinner who had some weird stories to tell about his international election consulting. Long years of dissolute living took its toll on his body and he died in the home of Carrie Fisher a day before this year's Oscars. Stevens is symptomatic of a breed that David Brooks, in a rare moment of lucidity, referred to as "sleazo-cons" -- right-wingers who see no conflict between promoting their ideology and stooping to any level to make a buck at the same time. A product of the Oliver North era of deals with repressive governments and murderous "rebel" movements: Iran, Honduras, Angola -- he went into election consulting in the early 1990s with a client list that still haunts the world today:
There was that time in Togo, when Mr. Stevens had to tell President Gnassingbé Eyadéma that he was going to lose an election. "So the president told him to get the hell out of the country, and then he canceled the election," said one of Mr. Stevens's colleagues in international political intrigue.
That would be the same dictator who dropped dead of a couple of months ago, the military installed his son as replacement, and then an apparently rigged election was just held to validate his accession. No word on whether butterfly ballots were used in that election, but there was plenty of other fishy stuff. And old rolodexes die hard:
At the time of his death, Mr. Stevens represented Pink Films International, a television production company in Serbia and Montenegro, and had solicited American producers to shoot cheap remakes of 1950's B-movies in Belgrade. One deal, with the Hollywood producers Craig Baumgarten and Lou Arkoff, fell through, Mr. Baumgarten said, because he suspected Mr. Stevens's Serbian partners had ties to Slobodan Milosevic.
Note, by the way, this issue of links between Slobo and Republicans is one that never quite goes away -- it's also come up as a thread in the Tom DeLay scandals. And of course the gay-Republican-White House-drugs aspect of Stevens' life has some familiar echoes. ** (update) And the NYT gets a quote from Roger Stone about Stevens, but did they ever Google Stone in his own right?
But while Stevens hopefully rests in peace, let's turn to the other breed, the dinner-party centrist pollster. Adam Nagourney has been doing the "compare and contrast" reporting for the New York Times on the UK election and we can only ruefully laugh as his wonderment at those different elections in the UK and his analysis thereof omits any role for hacks like himself on why the two elections are so different. His skill at "opinions differ on shape of earth" journalism and receptivity to Rovian talking points has even earned him a mocking website, but anyway, his latest piece is a catalog of late Spring junketing for Democratic pollsters:
STANLEY GREENBERG, an American pollster, was reading the morning British papers the other day when he saw something unusual among the torrent of articles about the coming national election here: a full-page photograph of a naked woman ... Mark Penn, an American pollster who, like Mr. Greenberg, has advised Bill Clinton and is now aiding Mr. Blair ... Joe Trippi, an American political consultant who has advised the Labor campaign and who worked for Howard Dean ...
Consider just Joe Trippi's inconsistency: having worked for Howard Dean and now Tony Blair, it seems that he was against the Iraq war before he was for it. Perhaps at the expense of indicating that we don't really understand elections, we fail to see what a parachuted-in consultant from a different political system really has to offer -- other than quotes for parachuted-in political correspondents. Along this dimension at least, globalisation sucks.
*UPDATE: As we read this post again, we're not even sure there's a difference between the two types of pollsters. The only distinction is self-styled liberal or conservative, but they both have an equal lack of principles.
Sunday, May 01, 2005
So glad we didn't go out and buy a new dress
Okay, so this is our post about the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, the annual make-nice-with-the-prezzie bash where painfully geeky Washington journalists rub elbows with big-name Hollywood types. And once again, it drove home the central, hideous point about Washington reporting: that most successful reporters become way, way too close to their subjects, so that you get the scene of the entire press corps toasting the president, giving him standing ovations, etc. We even overheard Martha Raddatz--a seemingly grounded, intelligent reporter for ABC--exclaim maniacly to a tall, well-medaled military fellow, "I'm in heaven! Aren't you in heaven?" This was just before she hugged Paul Wolfowitz.
However, we were able to take some lessons from our attendance at tonight's festivities:
Barack Obama: hot. very, very hot. He could be, like, not only our first black president, but our first really hot president.
Andrew Sullivan: not hot. (disclaimer: we're not even sure it was him, but if it was, he looks terrible.)
While Constantine from American Idol and Richard Gere were both swarmed with autograph-seekers, a stunning Helen Mirren was free to eat her crab hush puppies in peace. And we're pretty sure almost no one at all was talking to Salman Rushdie, sitting at a back table sans the famously babely wife. It's the eye job, Sal; not even the jihadi recognize you any more.
Okay, so this is our post about the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, the annual make-nice-with-the-prezzie bash where painfully geeky Washington journalists rub elbows with big-name Hollywood types. And once again, it drove home the central, hideous point about Washington reporting: that most successful reporters become way, way too close to their subjects, so that you get the scene of the entire press corps toasting the president, giving him standing ovations, etc. We even overheard Martha Raddatz--a seemingly grounded, intelligent reporter for ABC--exclaim maniacly to a tall, well-medaled military fellow, "I'm in heaven! Aren't you in heaven?" This was just before she hugged Paul Wolfowitz.
However, we were able to take some lessons from our attendance at tonight's festivities:
Barack Obama: hot. very, very hot. He could be, like, not only our first black president, but our first really hot president.
Andrew Sullivan: not hot. (disclaimer: we're not even sure it was him, but if it was, he looks terrible.)
While Constantine from American Idol and Richard Gere were both swarmed with autograph-seekers, a stunning Helen Mirren was free to eat her crab hush puppies in peace. And we're pretty sure almost no one at all was talking to Salman Rushdie, sitting at a back table sans the famously babely wife. It's the eye job, Sal; not even the jihadi recognize you any more.
Saturday, April 30, 2005
He's not from Brighton
When we read Andrew Sullivan on Friday grappling with a dialectic of agreement with and dislike of National Review writer John Derbyshire by saying "Maybe it's our common English roots (although I have a very hefty dose of Irish genes)" we realised that at some point we need to formally outline our Iron Law of Sully which is that he invokes his Irish ancestry when he's feeling alienated from his American conservative friends. We also planned on digging up an old link where we had made this observation but then the fine people at Sullywatch did it for us. So just a couple of things to add.
There's a corollary to the above law which is that his self-identification as an English Tory also ratchets up at these crises of faith -- not withstanding his sharp reaction when his American critics bring up his English background. Sometimes he's explicit about this as in his blitz of UK election posting, and sometimes subtle, such as an approving reference to Lord Palmerston that we noted a while back.
Now in fairness, he's correct that British conservatives do depart from their contemporary American namesakes on moral issues. But there's another important factor that he could have used the London Times article to which he linked as a hook to explore -- but didn't, so we'll do instead. The writer Matthew Parris (a pal of Sully's) joins a couple of Tory candidates on the campaign trail in Sussex: Nick Boles, the gay pal of Sully's running in Hove, and Nick Herbert, not known to be a pal of Sully's, running in Arundel & South Downs (Parris gets the two constituencies mixed up at the start of the article).
The latter Nick is only there because Tory leader Michael Howard canned the incumbent MP Howard Flight for telling an off-the-record meeting that the Tories had secret plans to slash government spending far more than they were saying on the campaign trail. Which gets to the core of what we think is Labour's biggest success over the last decade: their ability to convert any debate about the level of taxes into a debate about the level of public spending. This has reached the point where a tax-cut promise is almost a liability, because Labour have convinced enough people that any such cut must imply a reduction in public services.
The contrast with the US could not be starker -- Democratic candidates continually find themselves running against Republicans offering free tax cuts, with no day of reckoning on when public spending will have to adjust. One rhetorical crock after another -- Laffer curves, elimination of "waste, fraud, and abuse," "deficits don't matter," gets trotted out, and the moral values voters buy it. We don't know whether this reflects more rational voters, or less margin for massive public borrowing, but Howard Flight's sin was to air the downside of tax cuts within this constraint. Just too easy for Labour to exploit, hence the arrival of Nick #2.
So yes, the conservative voters on the Sussex doorsteps don't mind if one of the Nicks is gay. It would be Bush/DeLay style economics that they can't stand.
There's a corollary to the above law which is that his self-identification as an English Tory also ratchets up at these crises of faith -- not withstanding his sharp reaction when his American critics bring up his English background. Sometimes he's explicit about this as in his blitz of UK election posting, and sometimes subtle, such as an approving reference to Lord Palmerston that we noted a while back.
Now in fairness, he's correct that British conservatives do depart from their contemporary American namesakes on moral issues. But there's another important factor that he could have used the London Times article to which he linked as a hook to explore -- but didn't, so we'll do instead. The writer Matthew Parris (a pal of Sully's) joins a couple of Tory candidates on the campaign trail in Sussex: Nick Boles, the gay pal of Sully's running in Hove, and Nick Herbert, not known to be a pal of Sully's, running in Arundel & South Downs (Parris gets the two constituencies mixed up at the start of the article).
The latter Nick is only there because Tory leader Michael Howard canned the incumbent MP Howard Flight for telling an off-the-record meeting that the Tories had secret plans to slash government spending far more than they were saying on the campaign trail. Which gets to the core of what we think is Labour's biggest success over the last decade: their ability to convert any debate about the level of taxes into a debate about the level of public spending. This has reached the point where a tax-cut promise is almost a liability, because Labour have convinced enough people that any such cut must imply a reduction in public services.
The contrast with the US could not be starker -- Democratic candidates continually find themselves running against Republicans offering free tax cuts, with no day of reckoning on when public spending will have to adjust. One rhetorical crock after another -- Laffer curves, elimination of "waste, fraud, and abuse," "deficits don't matter," gets trotted out, and the moral values voters buy it. We don't know whether this reflects more rational voters, or less margin for massive public borrowing, but Howard Flight's sin was to air the downside of tax cuts within this constraint. Just too easy for Labour to exploit, hence the arrival of Nick #2.
So yes, the conservative voters on the Sussex doorsteps don't mind if one of the Nicks is gay. It would be Bush/DeLay style economics that they can't stand.
Friday, April 29, 2005
Enough about me. What do you think about me?
It's so unlike us to even read the Taste columns in the Wall Street Journal, but to read one and agree with it--that's crazy talk! Still, we can't help but give a nod to Michael Steinberger, who writes today of the media's absorption with Harvard University:
Perhaps; there's certainly a strong Harvard mafia out there, and those kids do a darn good job of advertising themselves. But that doesn't explain why the many Princeton-run pubs (Time and the New Yorker, to name just two) aren't rife with P.U. stories. Or take Steinberger's own alma mater, Haverford College, which he shares with former and current Time, Inc. bigwigs Gerry Levin and Norm Pearlstine. Why, then, don't we read more about undergrad hijinx on Philadelphia's Main Line?
Clearly there's more at work here. We see the effects of that specific personality disorder which almost universally accompanies the Harvard degree. As described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV):
Sound familiar? We thought so, too.
It's so unlike us to even read the Taste columns in the Wall Street Journal, but to read one and agree with it--that's crazy talk! Still, we can't help but give a nod to Michael Steinberger, who writes today of the media's absorption with Harvard University:
So why does Harvard continue to get so much more press than Chicago or any other American university? One possible explanation: Harvard graduates are disproportionately represented in the upper echelons of American journalism. Harvard far surpasses any other university when it comes to cultivating journalistic talent, and all those Harvard-trained reporters and editors do an excellent job of keeping their alma mater in the news.
Perhaps; there's certainly a strong Harvard mafia out there, and those kids do a darn good job of advertising themselves. But that doesn't explain why the many Princeton-run pubs (Time and the New Yorker, to name just two) aren't rife with P.U. stories. Or take Steinberger's own alma mater, Haverford College, which he shares with former and current Time, Inc. bigwigs Gerry Levin and Norm Pearlstine. Why, then, don't we read more about undergrad hijinx on Philadelphia's Main Line?
Clearly there's more at work here. We see the effects of that specific personality disorder which almost universally accompanies the Harvard degree. As described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV):
The essential feature of Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy that begins by early adulthood and is present in a variety of contexts. Individuals with this disorder have a grandiose sense of self-importance. They routinely overestimate their abilities and inflate their accomplishments, appearing boastful and pretentious.
Sound familiar? We thought so, too.
Straight Outta Houston
Today's Washington Post:
The U.S. military staged the interrogations of terrorism suspects for members of Congress and other officials visiting the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to make it appear the government was obtaining valuable intelligence, a former Army translator who worked there claims in a new book scheduled for release Monday.
Former Army Sgt. Erik Saar said the military chose detainees for the mock interrogations who previously had been cooperative and instructed them to repeat what they had told interrogators in earlier sessions, according to an interview with the CBS television program "60 Minutes," which is slated to air Sunday night.
"They would find a detainee that they knew to have been cooperative," Saar told CBS. "They would ask the interrogator to go back over the same information," he said, calling it "a fictitious world" created for the visitors.
Which is just an old Enron trick, (link via BBC):
Enron created a fake trading room in order to impress Wall Street analysts, a former top executive at the firm has admitted.
Four years ago [1998], the company built a command centre for its Enron Energy Services (EES) power supply arm, and ordered staff to pretend they were doing deals as analysts gathered in Houston for their annual meeting with the firm ...
Mr Phelan said that staff were brought in from other floors to the EES "war room", and telephone calls into the centre were scheduled in order to create a buzz. The whole operation was carefully choreographed in order to provide the most buoyant impression on analysts.
Today's Washington Post:
The U.S. military staged the interrogations of terrorism suspects for members of Congress and other officials visiting the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to make it appear the government was obtaining valuable intelligence, a former Army translator who worked there claims in a new book scheduled for release Monday.
Former Army Sgt. Erik Saar said the military chose detainees for the mock interrogations who previously had been cooperative and instructed them to repeat what they had told interrogators in earlier sessions, according to an interview with the CBS television program "60 Minutes," which is slated to air Sunday night.
"They would find a detainee that they knew to have been cooperative," Saar told CBS. "They would ask the interrogator to go back over the same information," he said, calling it "a fictitious world" created for the visitors.
Which is just an old Enron trick, (link via BBC):
Enron created a fake trading room in order to impress Wall Street analysts, a former top executive at the firm has admitted.
Four years ago [1998], the company built a command centre for its Enron Energy Services (EES) power supply arm, and ordered staff to pretend they were doing deals as analysts gathered in Houston for their annual meeting with the firm ...
Mr Phelan said that staff were brought in from other floors to the EES "war room", and telephone calls into the centre were scheduled in order to create a buzz. The whole operation was carefully choreographed in order to provide the most buoyant impression on analysts.
They misunderestimated the power of the dark side
Google's unofficial philosophy is "Don't be Evil." Hence our concern at seeing this item in Friday's Wall Street Journal (subs. req'd).
Google recruits Bush ex-aide Dan Senor to aid competition with Microsoft in China and elsewhere.
Yes, that Dan Senor.
UPDATE NOV 8 2005: This link-rich item from Sourcewatch says that the deal with Google quickly fell through, Senor's VRC connections being too hot to handle.
Google's unofficial philosophy is "Don't be Evil." Hence our concern at seeing this item in Friday's Wall Street Journal (subs. req'd).
Google recruits Bush ex-aide Dan Senor to aid competition with Microsoft in China and elsewhere.
Yes, that Dan Senor.
UPDATE NOV 8 2005: This link-rich item from Sourcewatch says that the deal with Google quickly fell through, Senor's VRC connections being too hot to handle.
Euphemism of the evening
Dubya: activity and action
Meaning that even though the War on Terror has coincided with increased global terrorism, the victims are not American and therefore don't figure in his culture of life. Full quote:
Q Mr. President, your State Department has reported that terrorist attacks around the world are at an all-time high. If we're winning the war on terrorism, as you say, how do you explain that more people are dying in terrorist attacks on your watch than ever before?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we've made the decision to defeat the terrorists abroad so we don't have to face them here at home. And when you engage the terrorists abroad, it causes activity and action ...
Dubya: activity and action
Meaning that even though the War on Terror has coincided with increased global terrorism, the victims are not American and therefore don't figure in his culture of life. Full quote:
Q Mr. President, your State Department has reported that terrorist attacks around the world are at an all-time high. If we're winning the war on terrorism, as you say, how do you explain that more people are dying in terrorist attacks on your watch than ever before?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we've made the decision to defeat the terrorists abroad so we don't have to face them here at home. And when you engage the terrorists abroad, it causes activity and action ...
Thursday, April 28, 2005
UK Election: 1
Our quick summary of where stands the controversy over the legality of the Iraq war as far as Britain was concerned: Blair's position is that the 2003 invasion was covered by the UN resolution authorising the eviction of Iraq from Kuwait in 1991.
Here is the legal advice of 17 March 2003 given to Blair. Note the card-trick shuffling of 3 different resolutions -- (i) the Kuwait resolution, (ii) the ceasefire resolution, and (iii) the WMD resolution. The advice says that (ii) caused the authority for force under (i) to lapse, unless (ii) was breached by Iraq, and that (iii) declared that (ii) was breached, therefore (i) was reactivated. Got it?
Note, by the way, the complete absence of any goal of bringing democracy to the Middle East in this rationale.
Our quick summary of where stands the controversy over the legality of the Iraq war as far as Britain was concerned: Blair's position is that the 2003 invasion was covered by the UN resolution authorising the eviction of Iraq from Kuwait in 1991.
Here is the legal advice of 17 March 2003 given to Blair. Note the card-trick shuffling of 3 different resolutions -- (i) the Kuwait resolution, (ii) the ceasefire resolution, and (iii) the WMD resolution. The advice says that (ii) caused the authority for force under (i) to lapse, unless (ii) was breached by Iraq, and that (iii) declared that (ii) was breached, therefore (i) was reactivated. Got it?
Note, by the way, the complete absence of any goal of bringing democracy to the Middle East in this rationale.
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Plutonium-eating fission monkeys
It took a while, but Dubya has found something about France that he likes:
Unfortunately, America has not ordered a new nuclear power plant since the 1970s. France, by contrast, has built 58 plants in the same period. And today, France gets more than 78 percent of its electricity from safe, clean nuclear power.
It took a while, but Dubya has found something about France that he likes:
Unfortunately, America has not ordered a new nuclear power plant since the 1970s. France, by contrast, has built 58 plants in the same period. And today, France gets more than 78 percent of its electricity from safe, clean nuclear power.
Something much more important
When Tory leader Michael Howard says "... I'm sure we can do it," we're delighted to report that it's not evidence of electoral delusion, but in fact of one of his redeeming qualities, his support for Liverpool Football Club:
The capacity crowd [for Chelsea vs Liverpool] includes Conservative leader Michael Howard, a Liverpool fan, who told BBC News 24: "We're just two games away from the final and another game away from the Champions' League trophy and I'm sure we can do it."
When Tory leader Michael Howard says "... I'm sure we can do it," we're delighted to report that it's not evidence of electoral delusion, but in fact of one of his redeeming qualities, his support for Liverpool Football Club:
The capacity crowd [for Chelsea vs Liverpool] includes Conservative leader Michael Howard, a Liverpool fan, who told BBC News 24: "We're just two games away from the final and another game away from the Champions' League trophy and I'm sure we can do it."
France/EU: 1
We had hoped to soon bring our legion of French followers the exclusive BoBW voter guide to the EU Constitutional referendum there on 29 May. Tempting as it would be to get our keenly-awaited position out, we've realised that the underlying issues are, like, complicated, so holding forth now would make us too much like the many know-nothing right-wing bloggers out there.
As indicated a couple of days ago, we're leaning towards the No side in France, but we'd like to spend a few posts, beginning with this one, to think through our position. We also encourage you to visit other blogs that are taking the issue seriously, such as Fistful of Euros and Dan Drezner.
Anyway, here's observation #1, crystallised by an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal Europe (subs. req'd). In the company the Journal keeps, the referendum doesn't have many well-wishers, but the editorial confines itself to praising the French decision to ratify it with a popular referendum as opposed to ramming it through the Assembly -- which they say has prompted a more informed public debate:
... myths and misconceptions can be debunked, or at least called into question. Listen to Nicolas Sarkozy, the ambitious head of the ruling party, who last week told students at Paris Dauphine university: "Why am I pro-European? Because I think it is a powerful lever to force France to modernize and reform. If France has twice as much unemployment as other countries it is not because we are too liberal, it is because we have the 35-hour week, which is not a creation of Brussels." It's about time someone said that.
But Sarkozy's tough words seem to mean that the EU is good because it forces France to do things that domestically the populace wouldn't vote for. We'd like to think that the case for EU is more than, as the Americans say, something that makes you eat your spinach.
We had hoped to soon bring our legion of French followers the exclusive BoBW voter guide to the EU Constitutional referendum there on 29 May. Tempting as it would be to get our keenly-awaited position out, we've realised that the underlying issues are, like, complicated, so holding forth now would make us too much like the many know-nothing right-wing bloggers out there.
As indicated a couple of days ago, we're leaning towards the No side in France, but we'd like to spend a few posts, beginning with this one, to think through our position. We also encourage you to visit other blogs that are taking the issue seriously, such as Fistful of Euros and Dan Drezner.
Anyway, here's observation #1, crystallised by an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal Europe (subs. req'd). In the company the Journal keeps, the referendum doesn't have many well-wishers, but the editorial confines itself to praising the French decision to ratify it with a popular referendum as opposed to ramming it through the Assembly -- which they say has prompted a more informed public debate:
... myths and misconceptions can be debunked, or at least called into question. Listen to Nicolas Sarkozy, the ambitious head of the ruling party, who last week told students at Paris Dauphine university: "Why am I pro-European? Because I think it is a powerful lever to force France to modernize and reform. If France has twice as much unemployment as other countries it is not because we are too liberal, it is because we have the 35-hour week, which is not a creation of Brussels." It's about time someone said that.
But Sarkozy's tough words seem to mean that the EU is good because it forces France to do things that domestically the populace wouldn't vote for. We'd like to think that the case for EU is more than, as the Americans say, something that makes you eat your spinach.
Wanted: An Irish Government
Because, when the current one is not lying and not improving our airports, it's not doing anything at all. In particular, they're not reading memos, and not showing up to the Dail (parliament) -- except maybe the bar:
[ireland.com news, subs. req'd] Former Health Minister Micheal Martin's special advisor admitted today that it was "exceptional" that he didn't read crucial briefing notes on the illegal nursing charges before a major department meeting in December 2003.
...[advisor] who has 30 years experience as a civil servant, said: "I personally didn't read it before the meeting. "It would have been emailed to me on the Monday evening but for whatever reason I didn't access it before I went to the meeting.
Committee member, Senator Mary Henry asked if it was "exceptional" not to read a briefing document before a meeting. Mr Mannion replied: "It was, yeah" and agreed that, with the benefit of hindsight, he should have read it.
and:
[Irish Times, subs. req'd] Taoiseach Bertie Ahern last week reprimanded Government TDs over their low attendance in the Dáil when he is answering questions.
Despite this, the Government benches were sparsely populated yesterday afternoon as he answered questions.
Yesterday there were less than 20 Government TDs, less than half of whom were backbenchers, in the Dáil ... "Punchestown [horseracing] is on," said one TD as an explanation. "There are no votes in Dublin on a Tuesday afternoon," said another.
UPDATE 29 April: A story that embodies the Oirish Punchestown culture of Dail attendance: Jim McDaid is a TD and MD who got busted for drunk-driving on Tuesday -- driving the wrong way on a dual-carriageway. His narrative of the events:
Dr McDaid said yesterday that when in the Dáil on Tuesday a friend had phoned him inviting him to travel with him by helicopter from City West to Punchestown racecourse.
"I drove out to City West and then we travelled to the races together. My friend had a box there and I was offered a glass of white wine.
"In those corporate boxes they just keep topping up your glass."
2nd UPDATE 3 May: Fintan O'Toole in the Irish Times (subs. req'd) says it better than we can:
This confection of cynicism and incompetence is what we call government. Political strokes, administrative chaos and professional self-interest creates a system in which public money is thrown at anything except social justice. But don't worry - the good news is that no one is responsible.
Because, when the current one is not lying and not improving our airports, it's not doing anything at all. In particular, they're not reading memos, and not showing up to the Dail (parliament) -- except maybe the bar:
[ireland.com news, subs. req'd] Former Health Minister Micheal Martin's special advisor admitted today that it was "exceptional" that he didn't read crucial briefing notes on the illegal nursing charges before a major department meeting in December 2003.
...[advisor] who has 30 years experience as a civil servant, said: "I personally didn't read it before the meeting. "It would have been emailed to me on the Monday evening but for whatever reason I didn't access it before I went to the meeting.
Committee member, Senator Mary Henry asked if it was "exceptional" not to read a briefing document before a meeting. Mr Mannion replied: "It was, yeah" and agreed that, with the benefit of hindsight, he should have read it.
and:
[Irish Times, subs. req'd] Taoiseach Bertie Ahern last week reprimanded Government TDs over their low attendance in the Dáil when he is answering questions.
Despite this, the Government benches were sparsely populated yesterday afternoon as he answered questions.
Yesterday there were less than 20 Government TDs, less than half of whom were backbenchers, in the Dáil ... "Punchestown [horseracing] is on," said one TD as an explanation. "There are no votes in Dublin on a Tuesday afternoon," said another.
UPDATE 29 April: A story that embodies the Oirish Punchestown culture of Dail attendance: Jim McDaid is a TD and MD who got busted for drunk-driving on Tuesday -- driving the wrong way on a dual-carriageway. His narrative of the events:
Dr McDaid said yesterday that when in the Dáil on Tuesday a friend had phoned him inviting him to travel with him by helicopter from City West to Punchestown racecourse.
"I drove out to City West and then we travelled to the races together. My friend had a box there and I was offered a glass of white wine.
"In those corporate boxes they just keep topping up your glass."
2nd UPDATE 3 May: Fintan O'Toole in the Irish Times (subs. req'd) says it better than we can:
This confection of cynicism and incompetence is what we call government. Political strokes, administrative chaos and professional self-interest creates a system in which public money is thrown at anything except social justice. But don't worry - the good news is that no one is responsible.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Indeed, it must
New York Times, today, headline on page D2:
About the Oceans, He says Firmly, Attention Must Be Paid
New York Times, today, first paragraph of different story on page D3:
A peregrine falcon dive-bombing at several hundred miles an hour to knock a pigeon out of the sky would seem to be a study in single-mindedness. At those speeds, attention must be paid.
New York Times, today, headline on page D2:
About the Oceans, He says Firmly, Attention Must Be Paid
New York Times, today, first paragraph of different story on page D3:
A peregrine falcon dive-bombing at several hundred miles an hour to knock a pigeon out of the sky would seem to be a study in single-mindedness. At those speeds, attention must be paid.
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