| Jun 26 | This Week in Blogs |
| Jun 25 | David Simon's Grand Scheme |
| Jun 22 | The Fuzzy Math of the U.S. House of Representatives (?!?) |
| Jun 21 | Yo-ho-ho and a Mug of Brew |
| Jun 19 | Ow |
| Jun 17 | Can We Talk About the Weather? |
| Jun 14 | Glug glug |
| Jun 12 | Two Comma Congressman |
| Jun 11 | No, seriously, Barack Obama for President |
| Jun 8 | Political Operative Geek Heaven, Part Deux |
| Jun 7 | My Life, Chapter 3 |
| Jun 4 | More great quotes from Robert F Kennedy. |
| Jun 2 | The Fuzzy Math of Matthew Yglesias and Edmunds.com |
| Jun 1 | Things I Never Expected To See |
Matt Yglesias and the folks at Crooked Timber want Democrats to stop following the polls and instead try and move them (the polls, that is) in a direction more suited towards Democratic leadership. I wholeheartedly agree.
Neil the Ethical Werewolf goes on the list of people to read for his high quality work over at Ezra's.
In an entirely apolitical vein, Ezra has some interesting thoughts on high school.
Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon has some thoughts on Riot Girl (or Riot Grrl, if you prever) and its seeping into pop elements through avenues such as Avril Lavigne. As a sometimes unapologetic listener to pop in a non-ironic manner, including ... yes ... Avril Lavigne and Alanis Morissette, as well as more "authentic" acts like Sleater-Kinney, Northern State, and to a lesser extent, Bikini Kill and maybe Le Tigre on a good day, I think it may take several more generations before all the barriers of cultural norms are taken down. Apparently Will Smith isn't allowed to date a white woman on camera; nor, for that matter, is anyone who's African-American unless you're going to make an entire movie about interracial dating. Also, you're always going to have to go outside of mainstream culture to get ... well, cultural views that are outside the mainstream. On a similar note let me say that her thoughts on the stifling nature of the roles given to women in film are spot on [Curse you, David Simon! Now every time I hear those words I will think of Jimmy McNulty getting snogged by two Eastern European call girls! Ahh!]and detrimental to the cause of good art. Though, here again it's always the case that you can find unstifling roles, they just don't get as much funding from the major studios.
Fafblog is on the money, more so than usual. Here's an update from the Hunt for Bin Ladin.
Kelo caused a lot of teeth-gnashing, but really Matt is right. This isn't even as bad as the Michigan case, where the city bulldozed an entire neighborhood to build a plant for GM. The mall will in theory benefit local consumers in addition to the net jobs gain it may provide. And the idea that the courts should start meddling in zoning laws is a bad idea -- pretty stoon they're stepping on rent control, regulations on affordable urban housing, and all other manner of nasty subjects. Having elected city council officials make these decisions, rather thaning unelected judges (working in hideosly overburdened courts) into zoning boards, is a more workable solution.
Goldy says we should go back to the drawing board on the Monorail again, and get both the funding and the plan right. In my book, the plan is close enough to what the voters really want -- commuter monorail connecting Ballard to West Seattle, opening four more neighborhoods to downtown access with a single no-transfer trip -- that the cost structure can be fixed later, either by not building a mile or two on each end, running trains slightly less frequently, or some other tweaks. We've had four votes on this infernal project, and there's just no need for a fifth. I should also say that the dwindling tax revenue is a reason to get behind the idea of rezoning large portions of Seattle for more multifamily housing with ... yes ... parking space for more than one car per housing unit. I'm not picky about where this happen -- it could be Sodo, South Lake Union, or Northgate, but there is plenty of land here that is ripe for infill, either Portland-style or a move to even more dense housing.
And I repeat, for the love of Lithuania, would you please bring back my summer!!
This week I snarfed down the last half of The Wire's second season. Thursday, the combination of the last few episodes plus a bit of work I had to do kept me awake until 4:15 in the morning. Around the solstice, that's only an hour or two before the sun starts to come up; I definitely remember hearing the birds chirping as I feel asleep. Season one was a carefully cooked onion, where each episode reveals a linear expansion of the case against the Barksdale crew, the faint corruption of the brass at the Baltimore Police Department, or another level of messed up intra-office politics. Season two, on the other hand, is that big knot of pasta that you forgot to drizzle with oil after draining. You try to pick up a few strands of it and instead you get the whole wad, which is too big to fit in your mouth at once, and if you try to bite off a piece you'll nearly choke trying to get it down. I don't want to go into too many details, lest I spoil the show for those who haven't watched it yet, but both seasons are definitely money well spent.
At this point it's become clear to me that Simon's point is not to show us the pointlessness of the War on Some Drugs When Used by Some People, nor the undiscussed consequences gentrification has for the city-living working class, or the failure institutions (be they gangs, police departments, or even the courts). Nor is is his point simply to tell a good story that we enjoy. No, he has much a much darker motive -- the creation of a new subculture of addicts, hooked not on heroin, cocaine, the money, or the intoxicating allure of political power, but on his dang TV show. By 2006, Simon will be pushing his product on hundreds of thousands if not millions of users, HBO and the cable companies will all be getting points on the package, and he will have successfully cowed television critics who view him as a mythic force unstoppable in his quest; no one will snitch on Simon and his crew. He will have become the Avon Barksdale of pay cable, which I can only assume was his intention all along.
Where's my season three, darnit. I need another hit. Simon better get his re-up soon or I'm going to have to go find someone with an inferior product.
Clearly I am missing something. The House passed the make Blue Dog Democrats look bad anti-flag burning amendment today. But here's the vote count:
The 286-130 outcome was never in doubt in the House, which had passed the measure or one like it five times in recent years. The amendment's supporters expressed optimism that a Republican gain of four seats in last November's election could produce the two-thirds approval needed in the Senate as well after four failed attempts since 1989.
By my count 286/435 is .657, which is not two thirds of the House of Representatives. Article V of the Constitution reads as follows:
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution ...
Now, by my reading, the Constitution mandates that two-thirds of the members of Congress vote to pass an amendment, not two-thirds of all members present. So either I am oblivious to something, or the Associated Press has been seriously bamboozled. Not counting matters of Iraq policy, I find the former more likely than the latter. What am I missing? Have I miscounted the number of members of Congress? Was there some later amendment which changed procedures for amending the constitution? Has the text been interpreted to mean two-thirds of all members present?
Update: It turns out that "two thirds of the House" means "two thirds of those members present". I'm sure this led to all sorts of games of political chicken back before the telegram or wide use of railroads.
I've noticed an increase in wrist pain, so I'm cutting down on typing for leisure purposes in the short term. Hence, no more blogging until I'm at least off the Vitamin I.
It's a real bummer, because public opinion on Iraq seems to have shifted in some non-trivial fashion, the gears are grinding towards a series of Social Security proposals from the GOP ranging between "really badideas " and "catasrophically bad ideas" that may or may not pass, Joe Biden has all but declared his Presidential candidacy (can someone please tell me the path to victory for Biden, either in the primaries or the general election? Hope Hillary doesn't run and be the East Coast Moderate? Does he want Democrats to take back the Senate and then investigate his way into the presidency?), Chuck Hagel has gone off the reservation again, there's an intra-liberal debate on health care, Dick Durbin is being called unpatriotic for pointing out that holding someone in a freezing room and letting them urinate on themselves does not qualify as "humane" treatment, local political races and ballot initiatives are heating up, Terri Schiavo was more or less brain-dead despite a diagnosis-by-television from Bill "cat killer" Frist.
But with the end of the Michael Jackson case, there aren't any celebrity trials pending. So, obviously, CNN doesn't have anything they can report on.
Dear God,
What the f*** happend to summer?!?!
Sincerely,
Nick
Why is it no one else in the Democratic Party can write a speech this good?
Have we failed at times? Absolutely. Will you occasionally fail when you embark on your own American journey? You surely will. But the test is not perfection. The true test of the American ideal is whether we’re able to recognize our failings and then rise together to meet the challenges of our time. Whether we allow ourselves to be shaped by events and history, or whether we act to shape them. Whether chance of birth or circumstance decides life’s big winners and losers, or whether we build a community where, at the very least, everyone has a chance to work hard, get ahead, and reach their dreams.
And while we're at it, why are we calling the class of 2005 "the 9/11 class"? Why isn't there any love for the class of 2002, the first set of young adults to graduate post 9/11?
We now have some new sources of information to crunch numbers surrounding the 2004 election:
Chapter three introduces “Daddy”, otherwise known as Roger Clinton, who is not Bill’s biological father, but who was the most consistent fatherly presence in his life. Clinton gives us several vignettes of life as a little kid with Roger, including both the highs and the lows. The highs consist mostly of the qualitiy time he got to spend with Roger, which was never enough. The lows, not surprisingly, involve Roger’s drinking and subsequent self-implosions. He spends the most time on a very traumatic fight between Roger and his mother, when Roger fires his pistol at the wall in between Virginia and Bill.
Chapter three is also the last of Clinton’s years in Hope, Arkansas, where he met his future chief of staff Mack McLarty (who was a prominent state legislator in his own right before moving to Washington), and fell in love with High Noon.
Some choice quotes:
I’m sure Daddy didn’t mean to hurt her and he would have died if the bullet had accidentally hit either of us. But something more poisonous than alcohol drove him to that level of debasement. It would be a long time before I could understand such forces in others or in myself. - On what he though of Roger shooting at himI later learned that Mitzi was developmentally disabled. The term wouldn’t have meant anything to me then, but when I pushed to expand opportunities for the disabled as governor and President, I thought often of Mitzi Polk. - On the people behind the funding numbers.
As for me, all I knew was that he was good to me and had a big brown and black German sheperd … - on meeting Roger Clinton
I’ve yet to scratch the surface of the good parts, which start with Clinton’s days as in Arkansas politics (and if you think 1993-1994 were bad years for Clinton, they were a walk in the park compared to 1979-1980) and his time as President.
Overall, My Life is a good book if you’re a policy nerd, if you want a sense of what White House operations are like on a day-to-day basis (on this score I also recommend Bob Rubin’s In an Uncertain World), or if you like Clinton’s meandering storytelling ways. Otherwise, it’s not necessarily worth slogging through all 900 pages.
Check out these pearls of wisdom. My favorite:
People say I am ruthless. I am not ruthless. And if I find the man who is calling me ruthless, I shall destroy him.
You gotta love it.
Well, it looks like I get a chance to burnish some Enviro-cred, something I need a great deal of out here in the Northwest. Matthew "Drill in ANWR" Yglesias points to a press release by a car wonk magazine that claims buying a hybrid car doesn't make good money sense.
Let's point out that the major advertisors on Edmunds.com are car manufacturers, note that the press release focuses on the maximum price difference rather than the minimum, then roll up our sleeves and run through the numbers with a bit more depth. There are two questions you must ask about any statistic: (1) Does it convey the proper information? (2) Are the assumptions used to arrive at the final result reasonable? In the case of the Edmunds study, we'll use Edmunds.com Total Cost of Ownership calculator, which is a really handy device, will be our main estimates. Let's make some comparisons.
| Make & Model | TCO | TCO (less fuel) |
|---|---|---|
| Civic Hybrid | 30,132 | 25,990 |
| Civic LX | 27,737 | 22,077 |
| Marginal Hybrid Cost | 2395 | 3913 |
(you'll notice that mathematicions don't put commas in four digit numbers. Why? I don't know)
Wow. Before we even get to questioning the statistic's merit, we have to question their arithmetic. Already, the $2000 clean fuel car tax credit, if it were refundable, would almost completely eliminate the cost advantage of the non-hybrid car.
The marginal cost of other hybrids except for the Prius is similar; the Escape hybrid costs about $2800 more than the AWD Escape. The Accord hybrid is about $3600 more than the Accord V-6, but Honda has intentionally made the hybrid a better car -- so they try and upsell you both on fuel economy and horsepower when you get to the dealership. The Prius is in fact over $5100 more than the Corolla, but only $600 more than the Camry, so it's tough to get a good head-to-head comparison.
Now that we've fixed the math, how are the good folks at Edmunds' making an ass out of you and umption? Well, for starters, they assume you're going to sell the car after five years. In practice, that's a realistic assumption; though I'm having trouble getting the average lenth of time a new car owner holds onto their care, the age of the overall vechicle fleet is around eight and a half years. But there's a difference between the average consumer and any given consumer. After all, Bill Gates and I have an average net worth of around $20 billion, though neither of us has a net worth within shouting distance of $20 billion. So if you are car shopping , you know whether or not you plan on keeping your car for two, three, or six, or ten years. That makes a big difference in the marginal cost; every year the hybrid saves you another $220 in gasoline, plus it probably depreciates at a slower pace. So you'll need to hold the civic hybrid for about seven yearsbefore it pays for itself. In addition to assuming you'll sell the car in short order, Edmunds also assumes you drive 15,000 miles a year. Those of you with commutes of 30-miles each way will laugh at this number. Drivers who log 20,000 miles in a year will make up for the hybrid premium within five years rather than seve.Finally, Edmunds assumes that if you don't buy a hybrid, you'll buy the equivalent non-hybrid car. But car shopping doesn't work like that; you may have your eye on the Civic Hybrid, the gas guzzling Ford Mustang, the Dodge Neon, and the sensible Toyota Camry, all at the same time. Because the non-hybrid Civic is already a fuel efficient car, you don't save that much money on fuel. But you save a boatload in comparison to other cars of roughly the same quality.
So, what are the conclusions:
And now I'm off to ponder whether I'd rather get a Cadillac CTS or a Subaru Outback and a hypothetical semester of grad school. Your thoughts are welcome.
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updated by Nicholas Beaudrot on 06:15 20 September 2005