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Comes from that wise bird, Tyler Cowen: 11. If someone is pushing conclusions and not identifying the potential weak points in his or her arguments, be suspicious. Also beware of anyone pretending to offer you simple answers. He's referring to the current finanical crisis, but of course this is broadly true of any public policy question.
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Dedication. Humanity. Good Sense. Fine virtues all. But enough to win an election? Jimmy Carter hopes so in 1980.
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Ben Brogan suspects the financial crisis is an advantage for Gordon Brown. Perhaps it is. In the short-term. Make that in the very short-term. But in the medium to long-term it's another millstone dragging him to the bottom. Danny Finkelstein is, I believe, correct: This election will not be fought in the middle of a crisis. It will be fought in the depressed aftermath that results from the crisis. The politics of these two moments are quite different. In a crisis people will be small 'c' conservatives, clinging to experience. They fear losing what they have got. But the literature on loss aversion suggests that in the depressed aftermath, when things are already bad, they will take a risk, and plump for change.
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Radley Balko is right. If this story isn't the sort of cheery goodness you've been craving in these troubling, turbulent times then, well, what the hell's wrong with you? It's the sort of tale that restores your faith in the power of free enterprise and, frankly, the United States of America. To wit: State attorneys say John LaVoie should be forever barred from the massage business because he ran a house of prostitution camouflaged as a church. But in his latest court argument, the Tucson man says he hired women at Angel's Heaven Relaxation Spa — near University Medical Center — not to sell sex but to comfort the afflicted through the religious act of "laying on of hands." ...LaVoie is now citing constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion.
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This time we're going back to 1956 and this short, but to the point, Adlai Stevenson advert. More than anything else, it reminds one of how long Richard Nixon was at the centre of affairs. He's the dominant political personality between FDR and Reagan. Nixonland indeed.
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I really don't know enough to tell whether it was a good thing that the bailout plan failed yesterday or not. Mebbes aye, mebbes naw as a great man was fond of putting it. But the absurdity of a dozen Republicans changing their votes because wee Nancy Pelosi was mean about their daddy can only confirm the public's low opinion of Congress and, in the end, damage the Republican "brand" still further.
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I wish they still made ads like this one for Gerald Ford in 1976. Check out the jaunty music and the fab 70s kitsch of it all. Not a bad message either.
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Notice what's missing from this Guardian scoop? A third runway at Heathrow airport would be scrapped by a Tory government that would instead build a £20bn TGV-style high speed rail link between London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. In one of David Cameron's boldest moves on the environment, the party will today unveil plans to cut 66,000 flights a year from Heathrow by tempting passengers on to the first new rail line north of London in more than a century. Well, working on the dubious presumption that this track will actually be built (let alone that it will be delivered on time and on budget), you'll notice that these new lines don't run as far as Glasgow and Edinburgh.
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Via, Mr Eugenides, I see that, despite what you may think, it's not all doom and gloom. Just occasionally good and wholesome news slips through the clouds, spreading sweetness and sunshine all around: Every person flying into Britain will be offered a free cup of tea and a biscuit in an ambitious, if eccentric, plan to make the country more cheerful. The hope is that tourists, and travellers returning from holidays, will be able to banish dark thoughts of a delayed flight, poor weather, and global financial meltdown if confronted with a free cup of English Breakfast tea and a plate of Jammie Dodgers. Apparently it's an idea first proposed by Waitrose's MD, Mark Price who had this to say: "What could be more welcoming that a cuppa and jammie dodger or Garibaldi?
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Well, here we go again campers. And this time it might even matter, though without the presence of Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo, Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards and Joe Biden it's not likely to be as much fun - ie, witless - as the primary debate season. Competence kills these things. So too, sanity. Anyway, the expectations game is almost over; now there's just the debate itself to endure. Yes, for the first time John McCain and Barack Obama are debating a live, non-certifiable member of the opposite party. The debate is notionally about foreign policy, but John McCain will be given time to explain his behaviour of the past 48 hours. Equally, expect blather on the financial crisis' impact on national security. So: what's the format?
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So who won? And does it matter? Only up to a point. John Kerry won the first of his debates with George W Bush and won it handsomely. That is to say, he won in conventional terms, demonstrating a keener grasp of the issues and, indeed, the complexities of being President. But in another, perhaps more important, sense Kerry lost. Not because he didn't know what he was talking about but because he failed to project an air of authority or, for that matter, personality that seemed Presidential. He lacked the necessary aura. I don't know if Obama quite has it yet. That is to say, at its best his style is an old-fashioned one of a type we've not seen in some time: sophisticated, knowledgeable and, yes, professorial. But tonight he was, on balance, clear, poised, professional and in command.
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The contrast between this jaunty, jolly ad and what we know of Richard Nixon's character and temperament is quite striking. "Nixon Now", from 1972, is mesmerising. Amazing stuff.
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The Yorkshire Ranter explains why this matters and why we should all be grateful to this Soviet Air Force colonel.
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Well, yesterday actually. Sheep graze under an oak tree at twilight. Looking east towards Selkirk.
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No-one ever accused LBJ of being a soft touch. This ad, "Confessions of a Republican" from 1964 is brutal. And brilliant. Four hideous minutes for Barry Goldwater. Yet it still seems almost quanit, viewed from the perspective of 2008. Of course, it also assumes the voters have an attention span of more than 12 seconds. I love the cigarette at the end too...
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Norm has the details, of course: Why do you blog? > To lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society. (1) What has been your best blogging experience? > Have just finished correcting the last sheet (49th) of the book [Volume I of Capital]... So, this volume is finished. I owe it to you alone [Engels] that it was possible! Without your self-sacrifice for me I could not possibly have managed the immense labour demanded by the 3 volumes. I embrace you, full of thanks! (2) What has been your worst blogging experience? > Constant labour of one uniform kind disturbs the intensity and flow of a man's animal spirits, which find recreation and delight in mere change of activity.
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So, no deal in Washington. NYT account here; WaPo here. Politico's story contains this detail that, unsurprisingly, has been making waves: According to one GOP lawmaker, some House Republicans are saying privately that they’d rather “let the markets crash” than sign on to a massive bailout. “For the sake of the altar of the free market system, do you accept a Great Depression?” the member asked. Well. I hadn't realised that was the choice. House Republicans are obviously being blamed for the impasse, but I rther think there are plenty of Democrats who will be content enough with the current state of play. They don't like this either. Certainly they don't like it enough to risk going ahead without GOP votes to give them political cover.
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Some additions to the blogroll.
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Sure, his conference speech tried to meld elements from both the McCain and Obama campaigns, but the Prime Minister's micro-management and control-freakery is more reminiscent of the poor old Georgian peanut farmer. Consider this telling anecdote from Martin Kettle's column in the Guardian today: And then there's the dysfunctionality in Downing Street itself. The briefing and counter-briefing these days make journalism easy. A few weeks ago, one official confided an extraordinary story to me. Four years ago, ministers decided that Britain's South Atlantic island possession of St Helena needed to have an airport. If planes could land on the tiny island, more than 1,200 miles from the nearest continent, its economic and demographic decline could perhaps be turned around.
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Amusing comment left on this post that dared to observe that Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric was less than wholly impressive: what do you know. english marxist hates palin. she did better than biden. Well, it's a point of view. What's more interesting is the question why Palin has been so poor. The easy answer, of course, is that she's just not up to it and certainly that's the obvious, immediate impression one gets from her Couric interview. So much so, in fact, that one can't help but feel rather sorry for her. Yet my sense is that, while she's clearly no foreign policy maven, she's dramatically under-performed the (quite low) expectations even folk predisposed to give her a chance were prepared to grant.