Centerfield

WMD Inflation Sighted

An interesting bit from the clinic bombing on Friday. The suspect has been charged here, among oher things, with "use of weapons of mass destruction." The bomb consisted of some explosive powder and nails.

Well, so the Bush Administration was completely right, after all. I mean, is ANYBODY going to deny that Saddam had at least one grenade?

How long can the world live with the awful grenade threat? Maybe we need a new, "weapons of mildly mass destruction" category.

Get Your Mexico-Blogging Here

Here's what I saw beyond the all-important Churchill sightings (see the open thread for those).

Political Notes: We saw plenty of loud, peaceful demonstrations, good evidence they aren't discouraged; we even saw an ad for demonstrators. One protest we could figure out the reasons for included one against a corrupt ex-Governor who cracked down on violent extremists; we couldn't figure out what they wanted. Another was about a pending law legalizing abortion just in Mexico City.

There was news in the newspaper about a fight with the Catholic Church about that bill. Some local hierarchs apparently have threatened to excommunicate any Councilman who votes for it. They seem to have forgotten that the Middle Ages are over, and that today that's a great way to solidify support for the bill; after that, the bill had broad support, of course, and easily passed. Interestingly, the Profesora says Mexican priests weren't even allowed to vote between adoption of a constitution and 1910, because of fears about the Church' antidemocratic role.

Economic Impressions: It reminded me of writings about Victorian England or America. Most of Mexico's good jobs are industrial jobs. There was an utterly vast service-providing class, and though interiors were often well-polished, building outsides were sooty. Though the smog in Mexico City was no worse than LA.

Mexico should see a reduction in the service class and an increase of better-paid, more flexible, more cerebral jobs as it slowly goes post-industrial, just as the UK and the US have. But another post by another blogger there at the same time brought up another problem:

. . . Mexico needs more engineers, but that means they need both more students studying engineering and more jobs for those students once they graduate. The lawyer who was driving a taxi was an excellent example of those problems.

...plus, many of those potential engineers end up sucked north instead of starting their own companies.

The problem IS being worked on. Here in Austin I ran into a man from Tamaulipas, a Mexican state, who was trying to understand some of the mechanics of our venture infratructure and how to get it going. I hope it works out for them.

For more Latin American coverage, look here.

Open Thread

Just as it says.

The Expectations Game

Democrats play down debate expectations

Here's how it's played: Before a debate, rival campaigns build up the skills of their opponents while downgrading their own candidate's verbal abilities. That way, any bright moments make a performance seem like a home run.

For the Democratic hopefuls, the first major round of the Expectations Game came ahead of Thursday night's debate at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, South Carolina. The 90-minute event offers eight candidates their initial chance to distinguish themselves on the long road to the nomination next year.

"I've just got to make sure I don't trip walking on the stage," joked Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, who complained that the candidates get no opening or closing statements and that responses to questions are limited to 60 seconds. Illinois Sen. Barack Obama cracked, "It takes me 60 seconds to clear my throat."

Such self-deprecating comments before a debate are common in the Expectations Game. So is anonymous praise.

We're all pretty familiar with this from the Bush years, right? If Bush didn't wet himself, the GOP declared victory. It always rubs me a little bit the wrong way regardlless of which team is doing the lowering.

Granted, someone who freezes in the spotlight or stumbles over his or her words or looks unprepared or unable to connect several important ideas together might still be a good President.

But all other things being equal, it IS desirable for a President to be well-spoken, charismatic, thoughful, and intelligent. Right? We want our President to be capable of sophisticated thought on a wide range of issues. Right? And we want him or her to be able to communicate his or her thinking clearly and succinctly. Right?

To the extent that I buy into the lowering, it's mostly because some people are, well, quicker eaters than others, as it were. The first person to come up with a plausible answer may not be the one who is right. So there is something to be said for deliberation. That point notwithstanding, I'd like to give everyone out there permission to make a few conclusions about candidates on the basis of their debate performance. It's a matter of parsimony, aint it? The candidate who looks calmer, sounds more intelligent and thoughtful, and feels more cognizant of the needs of everyday folks probably is. If you have to guess. Nothing wrong with looking deeper if you want, but for those who don't have the time or inclination.... .

A Reminder as Coda to the Virginia Tech Massacre

In the wake of the tragic execution of innocents at Virginia Tech by a deranged loner, John Silber reminds us of certain realities that need some form of accepting in a free world. Sometimes we forget that tragedy is inevitable:

AMERICANS BELIEVE that for every problem there is a solution. If we think and work hard enough, we believe we can solve every problem. Of course, we also live with the obdurate presence of contingency and uncertainty. We know that too, for we believe in Murphy's Law.

But we rarely confront the absurdity of believing both. While the solution mystique is only an act of faith, contingency is a fact we prefer to deny....

...We cannot eliminate contingency from life. If we turn society into an armed camp and universities into virtual prisons, there will still be risks. Yes, we should repeal the Buckley Amendment. We should permit persons who are seriously mentally ill to be confined without requiring ironclad proof that they pose an immediate danger. We should restrict the sale of firearms, to the extent possible, to criminals and the mentally ill. But no matter how many laws are passed, they will never remove all contingency from life. Our peace of mind will not be attained by belief in the solution mystique but by having the courage to accept contingency and tragic loss as an unavoidable aspect of human existence.

Be sure to scarf and digest the entire enchilada, amigos.

Who Wins at Chicken?

Doug Schoen suggests the battle between Democrats and President Bush over Iraq war funding is A Dangerous Game of Chicken for the Democrats:

It's a dynamic I know well. In 1995, I was one of the political consultants who advised President Clinton during the government shutdown, which was brought on by another clash between another assertive Congress and an equally determined president. Then as now, the stakes were high. Had we failed, Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich would have become America's de facto prime minister. Instead, Clinton's presidency was restored.

This time, if Democrats insist on their policy and public sentiment rallies behind them, the GOP collapse on national security issues will be complete. If, however, the public blames Democrats for risking troops in Iraq, congressional Democrats will have committed a political blunder nearly as dramatic as the invasion of Iraq itself. So who should swerve first? The lessons of 1995 suggest that Democrats today are on the verge of a major mistake...

...Democrats should not be misled by polls showing that most Americans support the idea of cutting off funding for the war unless benchmarks of success are reached. Of course they do, in the abstract. But Bush's counterargument -- that Democrats are prepared to undermine troops in the field -- will be a powerful one, in part because it is far more concrete than Democrats' complex, poll-tested plan....

...The 2008 election is the Democrats' to lose. Attempting to usurp the powers of the commander of the chief -- or risking the charge that Democrats have abandoned troops in the field -- is one of the few ways the party could jeopardize its seemingly impregnable position.

Read it all. Definitely food for thought for aggresive Democrats. The President is the commander-in-chief, not congress. Those are the constitution's rules. Not mine. IMO, the Democrats are poised to overplay their hand.

At this point, I am drawn to contemplate the likelihood of the following outcome regarding Iraq: we eventually withdraw as something resembling the current stalemate endures. Both sides blame the other. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Distrust in the Air

H.D.S. Greenaway wonders what will come of the Iraqis who put their eggs in our promise basket

I learned from George Packer of the New Yorker that a similar betrayal is forming out of the fog of war in Baghdad. Iraqis who threw their lot in with us, many of them interpreters, are being treated as if the United States had no responsibility for them.

Never really trusted by the Americans, despised even by Iraqi government officials and politicians who see them as American lackeys, and excommunicated from normal life outside the Green Zone for being collaborators, they risk instant death when they go home at night, and yet the Americans can find them no room to live in comparative safety inside the zone. Even when they reach other Arab countries they are denied visas and are chastised for "betraying Saddam."...

...Whether you believe that the war is already lost, or can yet be won, it is becoming clear that no matter what faction or factions come to dominate Iraq, Iraqis who worked for the Americans are not going to be regarded as heroes in their own land. If that were ever a possibility outside of Kurdish territory, it is so no longer.

Greenaway concludes by acknowledging that the sense of shame he still feels from similar circumstances in Vietnam has never left him. Let's pray that such history does not repeat itself.

Amen, Andy

Harry Reid has called the war in Iraq lost, and pro-war GOP folks are eating through each others butts to call him a traitor to the troops for saying this, a surrender monkey. Andrew Sullivan asks the question I've kept asking, but better and to the point:

Here's my question: Is there any imaginable point in any imaginable conflict where Mark Levin would admit that the United States had lost a war? I don't mean to be flip, and I say this as someone who generally thinks that the U.S. hasn't necessarily lost in Iraq; we probably have, but the outcome is still sufficiently in doubt and the stakes sufficiently high that I want to give the "surge," however ineffectual it may prove (or may already be proving), at least a Tom Friedmanesque six months to work. But even allowing that Reid shouldn't have said what he said, it's still the case that the United States can lose wars, like any world power; that we may well lose this one (in some sense, at least); and that at some point, in this struggle or another, some American politician will say "we've lost the war" and be entirely correct. Given this reality, I wish Levin (and many of his fellow "till the last dog dies" Iraq War backers) would clarify whether there's any situation in which they would greet a U.S. defeat abroad with any response save a rote invocation of the stab-in-the-back narrative.

I really wanna know. This is a question that inevitably meets silence from many pro-war folks.

Smoke Em if Ya Got Em...

...but plan to keep your mouth shut about it if you expect to be a first round NFL draft choice... candid private admissions about misadventures with the chronic may get leaked. College students firing up a doob, WATFO?

Anyway, open thread.

Fred Gets Insta-Plumped

Instapundit is featuring this sensible quote from Fred Thompson:

Whenever I've seen one of those "Gun-free Zone" signs, especially outside of a school filled with our youngest and most vulnerable citizens, I've always wondered exactly who these signs are directed at. Obviously, they don't mean much to the sort of man who murdered 32 people just a few days ago.

Good point. Nice to hear from someone with a smidgen of guts, IMO. Especially against the backdrop of the predictable blatherings that gun control is the answer.

Over at Stubborn Facts, Simon has pointed out that David Frum's already written Romney's 2008 obit. Simon says it's premature, and it may well be, but what sort of boost will the grandfatherly Right-Said Fred get from this well-timed insta-plumping? Whatever he gets is likely to come at the further expense of the floundering Mittster Flipster. Fred's too sexy for the Mitt.

I agree with Simon that Fred's enjoying the honeymoon treatment...we know this character....the honeymooner who hasn't tossed his hat in yet, has not gotten much scrutiny, and meanwhile some pining group without a champion invests their positive hopes in the comparative tablua rasa. Sorta goes like this:

"We don't know this guy, but he's said some things we like, so let's fill in all the blanks with our fondest wishes."

Hey, what's good for the Obama is good for the Fred, right?

Oh, and look, Obama gets tossed under the insta-bus just a couple posts below: Glenn says Obama's a great big gasbag. That's not a very nice thing to say...in fact its a pretty effective poison meme if you want to paint Obama a librul ivory-tower blatherer. Let me add though that I'll give Glenn conditional credit without even checking the clip...I'm sure there's evidence Obama is guilty of this from time to time. It's gonna happen when interested crowds are dying to hear you speak, and you're tired, and so on.You can't have your good stuff every day. Not every speech will be "I have a dream," right?

Postal English Major Thread

My proposed legislation for putting down this pernicious threat:

A War on English Majorism is to be declared. English majors will all be jailed for their own protection. Bias note: the author is an engineer, and knew in his heart since college that it would come to this.

The media are having way too much fun. Any journalist spotted with a less than fully respecful expression will be shot. Any assigning blame to anybody other than the actual shooter will be sent to Singapore for caning.

Anybody proposing stupid, useless legislation will be shot^h^h^h^h given a million dollars.

I'm not sure whether to be sad or glad that UT's long-time record with our fine Tower Shooter has finally been beaten. Interestingly, Charles Whitman's house went on the market just recently.

Some Nice Light Reading: Warsaw Tragedy Due To Stalin

This comes from the volume of Churchill's ungodly long 6-volume WWII history (some days it feels like he couldn't be bothered to write in less than six volumes, because that was also his approach to both WWI and one Marlborough).

Many people know about the tragic Warsaw Ghetto Rebellion against the Germans, put down by the Nazis with unbelievable difficulty for a rebellion with hardly any resources atall.

I don't remember reading before about the tragedy of the Warsaw Underground Rebellion before. This happened when the Soviets were near taking Warsaw. The Warsaw Underground, a decidedly bigger and better-equipped outfit than the Ghetto Kews, revolted.

The plan had been for the Allies to fly supplies to them and support them using Allied airpower. They were reckoning without Stalin, though. Stalin didn't just fail to help them himself, he also denied permission to British and Americans to land or even overfly Russian-held turf. Of course, without artillery or air help, they were overcome in a few nasty weeks.

Soviet forces pooled up around around Warsaw until a few days after their finish, to make sure the Nazis would bear the primary guilt of their suppression.

Why, you ask? Well, they weren't Communists. Or, at least, not his kind of Commie. Stalin had his own Committee of puppets that he put in charge of Poland after the war. The Underground was a different story.

Nice man, huh?

Bring Out Yer Dead

Open Thread. It's all good.

I know some of you folks are out in the midwest and southwest. Word to the wise that the superlative genre-bending guitar instrumentalist Johnny A is coming out that way. He's in Arizona this weekend, and will riff his way through Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas over the next week or so. Check out some samples if you want. He gets my highest rating. The CDs are good, and they only barely touch on the quality of the live show. If you like rock, blues, and jazz, if you like Jimi Hendrix _and_ Chet Atkins _and_ Stevie Ray _and_ Joe Maphis _and_ Wes Montgomery, you'll love this. Truly, the guy is a delight...he rocks, he swings, he screams, he cries. Do a youtube search for "johnny a" in quotes to get various tastes of the genres he deliciously crosses.

A Much-Needed Laugh on the Imus Remarks

Wanda Sykes on Don Imus.

"Since when did I become the spokesperson for nappy-headed hos?"

Read it all, it's short and funny.

Update: Wait, there's more, both satirically funny in initial conception and then movingly to the point: Jason Whitlock calls for Sharpton and Jackson to Step Down

Their leadership is stale. Their ideas are outdated. And they don’t give a damn about us.

We need to take a cue from White America and re-elect our leadership every four years. White folks realize that power corrupts. That’s why they placed term limits on the presidency. They know if you leave a man in power too long he quits looking out for the interest of his constituency and starts looking out for his own best interest. We’ve turned Jesse and Al into Supreme Court justices. They get to speak for us for a lifetime....

...None of this over-the-top grandstanding does Black America any good. We can’t win the war over verbal disrespect and racism when we have so obviously and blatantly surrendered the moral high ground on the issue. Jesse and Al might win the battle with Imus and get him fired or severely neutered. But the war? We don’t stand a chance in the war. Not when everybody knows “nappy-headed ho’s” is a compliment compared to what we allow black rap artists to say about black women on a daily basis.

Read it all.

The Black Candidate's Burden

Months back Tully warned us about the special minefield a Black Candidate would be asked to navigate. As usual, he was right.

Exhibit A? Notice the special standard Barack Obama gets held to in relation to Don Imus's ugly reference to a primarily black women's basketball team as "nappy-headed ho's."

His first reaction was criticized for being too late and too temperate. A "lost opportunity," I recall some black community leader saying. I guess if you are the Black Candidate, you're too late and not nearly self-righteous enough if you simply say the ugly comments were something that all Americans know are wrong and find deeply disappointing. Silly me. When I heard his first comments, I thought, "that about covers it." Personally, I hope black folks are not so certain that there are no white Americans capable of finding Imus's comment as disturbing as black folks undoubtedly do.

Now I notice that Instapundit has plumped Don Surber's Opportunistic Attack on Obama in the wake of Imus's ugly comments:

Am I alone in being disturbed by Barack Obama’s call for firing a broadcaster over something he said? This off-with-his-heads mentality is unpresidential. Imagine if President Bush said someone should be fired. He called Adam Clymer an asshole and that caused a stir. The message is chillingly clear: A President Obama would call for the firing of his critics.

Whuh? How is THAT message chillingly clear? Sounds like a giant leap to me. The message I got is that Obama would fire any of his own folks who said nasty racist things.

What did Obama say? "I Hope NBC has the same attitude."

"I understand MSNBC has suspended Mr. Imus," Obama told ABC News, "but I would also say that there's nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group. And I would hope that NBC ends up having that same attitude."

Sounds to me like Obama understands that the decision about firing ultimately rests with Imus's employers. So what if Obama thinks Imus deserves firing? If he was my employee, I'd fire him too. Lots of folks think that. Saying you feel someone deserves firing is different from CALLING for their firing.

But here's the thing. How come Obama is the only candidate who is currently being required to respond in a way that every person on the planet feels is appropriate? What is THAT about, exactly? Is anyone going to complain that Clinton, McCain, Guiliani, Gingrich, and Romney have not come up with official positions? Or if they have, that no one has bothered to talk about them?

Should we expect that every time during the campaign for the 2008 presidency a public issue arises that involves race, Obama and Obama alone will get put under the bare lightbulb in the hot seat? That'd be a shame for all of us.

Whiskey Tourism

Is there a cooler idea than whiskey tourism?

The distillery is considered a gateway to the American Whiskey Trail, which includes historic sites along with working distilleries that are open to the public, like Jim Beam and Wild Turkey in Kentucky and Jack Daniel's in Tennessee.

The Mount Vernon distillery "will become the equivalent of a national distillery museum," said Frank Coleman, spokesman for Distilled Spirits Council, which paid for the reconstruction.
"Whiskey tourism is growing around the world, just like tourists go to Bordeaux or the Napa Valley to visit wineries. This sort of helps us level the playing field with winemakers," Coleman said. "There could be no better representative for America's distilling heritage than George Washington."

Frontier stills, George Washington brewing up a mean batch, moonshiners outrunning the revenuers. Now THAT, my friends, is heritage. Screw the Californians with their Europe-wannabeeing wine pooftery. Bourbon is an american tradition. It's what a patriot would drink!

Can I get an AMEN?

No More Bitter-Coated Sugar Pills

Kurt Vonnegut has died. I am a big fan, and read much of his work. I was always taken by one critic's desription of his work as bitter-coated sugar pills. Which struck me as exactly so.

No More Bittter-Coated Sugar Pills

The author of at least 19 novels, many of them best-sellers, as well as dozens of short stories, essays and plays, Vonnegut relished the role of a social critic. He lectured regularly, exhorting audiences to think for themselves and delighting in barbed commentary against the institutions he felt were dehumanizing people.

"I will say anything to be funny, often in the most horrible situations," Vonnegut, whose watery, heavy-lidded eyes and unruly hair made him seem to be in existential pain, once told a gathering of psychiatrists.

A self-described religious skeptic and freethinking humanist, Vonnegut used protagonists such as Billy Pilgrim and Eliot Rosewater as transparent vehicles for his points of view. He also filled his novels with satirical commentary and even drawings that were only loosely connected to the plot. In "Slaughterhouse-Five," he drew a headstone with the epitaph: "Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."

He will be missed. He had a Twainesque acerbic quality sorely missing in much of modern writing. As Twain once said, a patriot supports his country always and his government when it deserves it. Vonnegut knew this, and while he always saw the dark side, he knew there could be sweet. If anyone decides to pick up some of his work but has already read some of the more celebrated stuff (Shaughterhouse 5 is brilliant, IMO). check out his first, Player Piano. Interesting premise, especially in that day,that the world would get more and more automated and free us from work, but that we might not like that.

Chavez, Caudillo de Venezuela

A Crooked Timber post reminds me that I wanted to do a Chavez post. I feel he's a dictator. The post asks,

why all the hating on Hugo Chavez? . . . I have regretfully come to the conclusion, after much soul-searching, that actual Venezuelan voters ought to be in charge of choosing their nation's leader . . .

This Chavez-hater hates Chavez because I agree that the Venezuelan people should choose who run them, and don't think they're in the loop in Venezuela.

It seems to me that it's hard for the people to stay in good charge when their constitution is twisted into pretzels.

It seems to me that it's hard for the people to stay in charge when reporters writing articles Chavez doesn't like are hurt, and opposition TV stations shut down.

It's hard for the people to stay in charge when opposition leaders and voters are intimidated.

Like in most of the US, the Venezuelan voting system is an unverifiable digital voting system. There is no possibility of tracking fraud in that kind of system. We have no idea how accurate the count was since that was adopted in 2004, just in time for a referendum on his rule. Very handy for caudillos. Not so handy for the people, either here or in Venezuela, sigh.

To be fair, There is some evidence that Chavez has some real popularity at the moment. But there's little fair about his rule. And one wonders what the figures would be like if the press could speak freely and Chavez' political opponent had access to the TV stations Chavez shut down.

Death Threat Kerfuffle Causes Tim O'Reilly To Propose Blog Code of Conduct

The usually-thoughtful Tim O'Reilly perturbed by recent incivility and death threatsagainst friends of his, has proposed a draft blog code of conduct. It includes such gems as not tolerating anonymous or incivil comments, and assuming legal responsibility for comments.

So far, on the O'Reilly thread's comments, feeling runs about 200:10 against, so I don't think we need to worry just yet. Until the Congressional hearings, of course, bwahahaha....

I posted one of those 200 comments. Here it is:

First, I want to express my sympathy for you, your friends, and everybody else recently threatened.

But, that doesn't mean this is going to help. What's going to help is understanding that some people are edgy and abusive, talking to police about threats you have reason to take seriously and deleting off-boundary posts personally. Or disabling comments for your blog, which plenty of people do. These are tools we already have.

Over the years, I've seen too many insightful, informative, anonymous comments that could never have been made with IDs to be willing to go along with any policy that will ban them.

And sometimes I feel it serves my purposes to keep offensive comments. Trolls, spam, and threats are different, of course, and we all use the tools we have.

And a polite Internet would be intolerably stiff and unfunny. How many good jokes are polite?

Principled Anti-War Criticism That Leaves You Speechless

I'm of course talking about this breathtaking piece by Tish Durkin, over at the Huffington Post. I'm a war supporter, so I probably wasn't in her target audience (even though I'm a liberal), but Durkin offers up some of the most principled criticism of the Iraq war that I've read. You must read the whole thing, but I'll excerpt a few bits:

Don't get me wrong. If I felt that this post were going to be read by a bunch of war apologists, I would take them angrily to task for the manifest, manifold failures in Iraq, and the criminally self-indulgent fictions on which those failures were based. But since this post is presumably being read mostly by war critics, I will devote it to challenging anti-war activists on their apparent belief that everything they say about Iraq is, always has been, and ever shall be true.

It is not, for instance, true that it was the American-led invasion that opened season on the slaughter of innocent Iraqi civilians. Whatever else the Bush administration made up about Iraq, the rank murderousness of Saddam Hussein was not one of them. Amid the gunfire and giddiness of Baghdad right after its fall in April 2003, it was common to find people converging onto bits of infrastructure, manically fueled by the rumor mill: someone had said that there was a torture chamber underneath this stretch of highway; a secret prison built into this wall. People had no time to be interviewed; if they talked at all, they'd keep going as they panted: "My husband/brother/son disappeared twenty odd years ago; he could still be alive; I have to get him out." I remember going to a mass grave; a "minor" one, not far from Hilla. People were digging there, too: for bones, which were piled everywhere, a sickening canine bonanza. Close by there still lived a man who had seen what had happened there in the days after the war with Kuwait, but kept his mouth shut for years: busloads of innocent Shi'ites, screaming 'God is Great' at the top of their lungs, had been unloaded, rung around pre-dug graves, and shot.

And this one, which ought to be put on a t-shirt, and passed out at every anti-war rally in the country:

Finally, what depresses me, and makes me despise so much war criticism even when I agree with it, is that so many of those positing it seem so happy about what's gone wrong. They seem to relish the probability that Iraq will get worse and worse so that they can be righter and righter.

Like liberals - and thinking conservatives, and sentient beings -- everywhere, I gravely doubt that the troop surge - so little so late -- will do anything to save Iraq. But for the sake of the Iraqi people, I sure hope it does - even if that helps the Republicans.

This may sound crazy, but if the only path to victory in Iraq and the larger GWOT meant a hundred years of GOP victories, I'd pay that price, and I'm sure Durkin would too. Of course, most of us know that such a trade isn't even remotely neccessary, or helpful for that matter. Such fairy-tale either/or dilemmas exist only in the minds of party-line partisans. We don't need to elect Republicans to succeed in Iraq and the GWOT. We just need those in both parties to get their heads on straight.

Hat tip: Instapundit

P.S. Wow, it's been a while since I've last posted. I had to make a comeback with something good.

High Density: Bad Economics

I've read several people writing that high-density living is cheaper than low-density / sprawl. The reverse seems to be false in regions with reasonable real estate prices (e.g., Austin).

This post is a result of my consistent failure to find an apartment in my city remotely as cost-effective as a house. In the category we're looking for, a condo is about 40% more expensive than a house.

I had a dream of never mowing another lawn. But 'tis not to be. You'd think that dream was pretty reasonable, since apartments take less average space. But they must cost alot more to build.

So, why is this bad? Well, it's good if you're in construction. For the rest of us, it means, though we do take action to make subsidized housing available, if we all moved to to apartments or condos, we'd spend plenty more on real estate and less on other stuff, like computer games, books, kids, and education.

The only even modestly dense and cheap condos in Austin were built in the early 80s, right before a bust, which means the original developer may've gone out of business, and it probably went at fire-sale prices.

For some other time: are high-density apartments cheaper or more expensive than medium-density?

What Day is Today?

Oh yeah, FRIDAY. I can't believe I can tag the open thread this late in the day.

Saint George and his Faithful Wallet Bearer

Clooney Gives Kids $20 for Lemonade

Golly, what a great guy. Encouraging youthful entrepreneurship and all.

Sometimes The Enemy of our Enemy is NOT Our Friend

This is terribly reminiscent of the Reagan Administration's approach to raising opposition in Nicaragua. Peraonally, I think supporting opposition to the Sandinistas was a good idea. But choosing to fund the few people in Nicaragua LESS popular and LESS interested in helping their people than the Sandinistas was just dumb. Many Nicaraguans felt betrayed.

Won't the inevitable publicity of helping the simply tribal Jundullah cause doubt among pro-democratic Iranians? Can we trust Jundullah to not commit terrorist acts? Can we trust information that they give? Won't they be tempted to make things up to save time in the field, especially about the WMDs they know we love to hear about?

Sometimes dealings with scum make sense. In WWII, working with Stalin was a good idea. I think dealing with scum in Afghanistan in the 70s and 80s was a good idea, too. But you have to be getting some good out of it (keeping a strong front against Hitler and putting the USSR into a Vietnamesque strategic trap). What are we getting here? What kind of good?

In fact, thus far, I'd bet most of these little, tribal anti-Tehran groups' activities net to a win for Tehran. Reading about Nazi Germany, the USSR, and other autocracies suggests to me that autocratic rulers win from little conflicts that don't threaten them. They have bodies to show on TV that they can label as being CIA-caused, and people inclined to opposition are embarrassed by hopelessly minor attacks. They tend to feel that the deaths are wasted, and feel discouraged.

How are scum going to get the trust needed to recruit a group big enough to be effective? If they do, won't that be as bad as the old theocracy?

Shouldn't we be encouraging and supporting democratic revolutionaries instead? The memo about democracy doesn't seem to have made it down to Goss or whomever's idea this was (is this one reason he's gone?).

Guiliani Concedes

Guiliani Concedes

No, not really. He just defends the idea of public funding for some abortions. Same thing?

A video clip of the then-mayoral candidate issuing a similar declaration in 1989 in a speech to the "Women's Coalition" appeared recently on the Internet.

"There must be public funding for abortions for poor women," Giuliani says in the speech that is posted on the video sharing site YouTube. "We cannot deny any woman the right to make her own decisions about abortion."

When asked directly Wednesday if he still supported the use of public funding for abortions, Giuliani said "Yes."

If you read it all, you find that he left an out for the possibility that the law could change. He's basing his view on the fact that currently abortions are constitutionally protected in the eyes of the law. I wonder what percent of social conservatives will care about that fine point... .

Stratfor Grumble

Why I don't trust Stratfor as a source. Even though Stratfor is here in Austin.

This post was inspired by this Stubbornfacts post of Pat's. The post itself is fine; I'm just grumbling about the Stratfor article in it.

Zillions of paras, with some truth there, and so much NOT there. The Constitution, Chirac's downfall, and rather a kay item in the anniversary politics, is hardly explained; the one sentence on its defeat is at most 1/4 the story. The UK / French rivalry is badly misexplained. The way I'd characterize Chirac is that (like de Gaulle before him) his foreign policy was bashing the Anglos, while domestically mostly actually reforming his country's workings in Anglo directions. And, contrary to Stratfor, Chirac only dominated the EU in hopes.

And what're the rest of the European leaders? According to Stratfor, apparently potted plants, hardly worth mentioning. Merkel's interest in restarting the Constitution (the big reason for the agreement problems on meeting text) is apparently not worth mentioning, either.

Back when I was paying attention to them, their facts and predictions were often wrong rather more often other sources I trust (OK, they were as good as the Big 4 evening news).

Google announces free in-home wireless broadband service

"Dark porcelain" project offers self-installed plumbing-based Internet access

Google announced the end of broadband access worries today (hat tip to slashdot). Fiber to the toilet! Install guide here.

UPDATE: Missed the web page and, of course, the FAQ.