Centerfield

TGI Open Thread F

Kinda says it all, doesn't it?

You know what to do.

Are We In A Coup Fantasy Silly Time?

Coup fantasies seem thick on the ground. In case you haven't read already, Martin Lewis at Huffington Post wrote it was General Pace' duty to arrest President Bush. No link - I refuse to link to Huffington Post. Philip Atkinson at Family Security Matters wrote that the President would be a traitorto the US if he didn't nuke those damned Iraqis and make himself dictator. Interestingly, Mr. Atkinson wrote that Caesar achieved safety for himself by taking over Rome, negleting the little detail of Brutus. Hat tip for (R) side, to John Quiggin at Crooked Timber.

I wonder if there's something about the last year or two of a lame-duck Presidency, because I have vague recollections of something similar toward the end of the Clinton Administration. Or is it just me (bwahaha)?

How Do You Choose Books To Read?

This post, on an experiment in choosing books purely by cover, inspired me to wonder, how do you choose your books?

My Algorithm:

Systematic Shortcomings of Broad Executive Power in Times of Crisis

Ilya Somin wrote a post that I think captures many of the problems with just trusting Presidents too much (hat tip, Instadude).

I'll add one additional shortcoming: executives put a premium on deciding questions quickly, and are often too reluctant to revisit hasty mistakes. Sometimes the best answers, though, only come with reflection.

Lincoln mostly only took powers because they were really needed. He really needed habeas corpus set aside because, quickly, at least half his bureaucracy and judges, and 2/3 of the officers were potentially traitors. Officers were mostly Southern, and a large fraction of civil servants drawn from near DC - Virginia and Maryland - would've tended to lean Southern. There was no time to treat them justly until the end of the war. Lincoln had alot of time to think about the coming crisis, though. He made mistakes, but his decisions were notably unvengeful.

Pearl Harbor and 9/11 came much more quickly. Roosevelt got lazy about the Japanese, and probably didn't want to think about politically defending them to make sure they were treated properly, On 9/11, we have the hasty annoyed Americans looking for vengeance and coming up with excuses for torture; it's no coincidence that US intelligence has been the comedy of errors you get from lying torturees since then.

And, in fact, Lincoln make hasty mistakes when generals surprised him with thoughtless crackdowns. He mostly made hasty decisions to be loyal; it took him awhile to think up more constructive responses.

Gonzalez Thread

I will forever argue that this was a capable man who is out not because of any wrong doing, but because he couldn't articulate what actions he took and why in front of Congress. He looked weak and incoherent and it allowed his opponents to throw gas on the fire.

Who was fired, how they were fired, and who was responsible, in my view, is a ridiculous conversation. The President is the President and he can terminate any political appointment for any reason at any time. Don't get me wrong, I think any man that fires John McKay is a damn fool, but that doesn't mean that he didn't have the right to do it.

Gonzalez was no Elliot Richardson, a hero of mine, but his resignation and how we got here is unfortunate.

Wimps!

Opus/Flatland failed to show up today in alot of papers (hat tip, slashdot) because they have Muslim jokes in them.

I'm especially disappointed in the Washington Post and Austin American Statesman, which I USED to think better of. The strips can be found at Salon, which I guess does have a ball or two. If your paper's Opus doesn't feature a Muslim Lola Granola, then your paper wimped, too.

Ultimate CPU Chiller?

I say, put that CPU heat to work. What we should really be doing with it is getting some power back into the system via Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion techniques.

Anytime you have a gap in energy levels, you can use that to generate energy. Think of OTEC devices as the reverse of a water heater. Instead of taking energy to make water hotter than it starts, you use a temperature differential to make energy. This is intended to be used in the tropics, where the top of the water is alot hotter than the bottom.

So, use a liquid-based CPU chiller, team it up with some tapwater or something sitting in a basement, and you have energy coming back to feed back into that CPU.

Nevermind that it's probably impractical until we have nanotype energy devices. Details, details. The idea's gotta be worth a million dollars. Zimbabwean dollars, that is.

My Dad once tried a particular proposal about using detergent properties to change do OTEC in a different approach from the normal one of using an ammonia-based heat exchanger. I probably remember it so well because I got a tour of the spare WW2 landing craft (LST(L), ISTR) (it was fun reading Churchill's account of their development).

Fair Point

Patrick Ruffini points out that while righty bloggers have successfully expanded the discussion with the Save the Debate Coalition, lefty bloggers have succeeded in limiting it by getting the Fox News debate canceled.

I am not exactly a big flag waver for bloggers on the right or left, but I think his point is fair and lends itself to the arguments made here.

WIth the way that the Democratic candidates are running toward special interests and away from conservatives and DLC'ers, you would think they have this thing sewn up.

It's Friday!

So wheere's the open thread?

Oh, never mind, this is it.

More Encouraging Petraeus News (to me)

I read a Petraeus post, which included the following quote that encourages me.

Petraeus put it, using an Army phrase, “We are not letting the Shiite militias take a knee.”

Since we did exactly that for years, ignoring the gathering mistreatment of Iraqis by Shia militias, and feel that's maybe the biggest problem in Iraq currently, I find that encouraging.

The post is a little uncritical for my taste, and long, but interesting.

You know, I see no sign that Bush, or almost anybody else high in DC, would understand that comment. Rarther alarming. That has two bad consequences. First, it means that he has to play to his boss' misperceptions.

Worse is that the Bush public predictions of swift radical improvements aren't coming true. The improvments are slow, because the Shia militias grew horribly big and are taking time, whereas we've been taking a real toll on al'Qaeda and other opposing Sunni militias the whole time. He's losing Petraeus and the occupation alot of credibility with these mispredictions.

Mitt Romney: Bigot

Team Mitt has got a new ad:

"Immigration laws don't work if they're ignored. That's the problem with cities like Newark, San Francisco and New York City that adopt sanctuary policies... Sanctuary cities become magnets that encourage illegal immigration and undermine secure borders."

Get the connection... Too many non-white American's in the Big Apple equals 9/11 equals blame Rudy. Something says to me that the guy who sat in the Governor's mansion that was located in Boston, MA shouldn't be throwing stones from a glass house.

Romney goes further:

"Legal immigration is great," Romney says in the new ad. "But illegal immigration, that we've got to end. And amnesty is not the way to do it."

...equals Rudy supports amnesty. Give me a break. Is Amnesty the policy of the United States? Is it the policy of New York City? What bothers me most is that the son of George Romney, a true maverick and American heroe that tried to save the GOP from the far-right, is using such race bating southern strategy tactics. He knows better and continues to do it anyway, which makes him even more greasy in my book.

I agree with Mayor Mike:

"Let 'em come. . . . I can't think of any laboratory that shows better why you need a stream of immigrants than New York City."

Being an expert of business and management, and a member of a church that had to migrate west to look for religous freedom, nobody should understand that better than Mitt Romney.

Tully Bombs Kosville

Just becuse I like Tully and don't like Kos, I wanted to point out this, in response to this.

Tully says:

Because, of course, all Democrats are merely clones of the Kossian ideal, robotic "progressives" who regurgitate the nutroots agenda regardless of what the actual voting constituents they must answer to might want. As in the majority of actual district voters they must convince to return them to office. In any case, one does have to wonder how the Democratic Party is supposed to keep a majority in the House if the self-proclaimed cognitive elite insist on punishing those who give the party that majority. There seems to be a small mathematical disconnect there...

Were I actually a party animal, a true running lackey dog of the GOP, this is the point where I would offer to do my best to cheer Stoller and crew on, to encourage them, to back their to the hilt their plan to hand the House back to the GOP. All while quietly doing my absolute best to run GOP moderates against the battered targets of the Divine Flame of Kosville.

But when Rove left the White House someone switched off the mindrays, and I noticed that the cash and dancing girls I was promised have yet to materialize, so I think I'll just watch, and point, and laugh.

Amen, and in addition, if you check out the Blue Dog Coalition website, you will notice that it's members include some noteables, such as
Congressman Zach Space, Heath Schuler, Chris Carney, and Patrick Murphy, as well as Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand and Gabrielle Giffords. All Centrist Democrats, all big reasons that the D's have the majority in Congress, all individuals who the residents of Kosville enthusiastically supported while it served their purpose.

One must wonder if a political movement can be taken seriously if it advocates for the election of certain individuals, only to tell everyone what a bad job they have done after they have been elected. Not exactly a strong rationale to spend anytime reading the nonsense that comes from their finger tips.

What is more laughable is that some in the media, shall we say Tim Russert and his partners at Meet the Press, actually treat Kosville's Mayor as if he is more important to the debate than other bloggers, or other citizen's for that matter. When in reality his actions are borderline dillusional and at best illogical. The other day he was preaching about his love for Senator Jim Webb and then calling him a "coward" for voting for the wire tap legislation.

We need to come to the realization that Kos is as inconsistent and as unbalanced in his daily rants as those on the far right. He should be taken with the same grain of salt that one should take when listening to say, Rush Limbaugh.

Bloomberg's Denials

Although my heart says the nominees of each party will be Giuliani/McCain and Obama, my mind says that the nominees will be Romney/Thompson and Hillary. The former, as a centrist, is exciting to me, the latter is down right depressing; furthermore, Mike Bloomberg doesn't help when he tells Dan Rather he doesn't have a shot.

However, Mike Shear raised my spirits a bit this morning:

So what's he up to? Most observers believe he's doing two things: First, he's avoiding the pitfalls of participating actively in a drawn-out White House campaign by fervently denying interest while leaving himself just enough wiggle room to change his mind later.

And second, he's sprinkling presidential pixie dust over all of his other actions and comments. As mayor of New York, he's pursuing an agenda involving guns, the environment and health care, and people are paying more attention to what he says because they think he might -- just might -- run for president in 2008.

In April of 2006, he told friends that he could "easily put up a half-billion" to run for president. Last month, he joked that the only way he could run for president was if "everyone else in the world was dead."

So which is it?

Both, it seems.

Mike follows with an excellent, political dork type graphic that shows Bloomberg's denials in comparison to signs that he really does intend to run. Some find Bloomberg's actions annoying, others might say they are a brilliant way to keep your name in the news while the media is dying to talk about McCain's faltering campaign, Obama's lack of experience, or the fact that Hillary is a *gasp* woman.

Here is my take. What does a bored billionaire do after he has made more money than he needs and successfully ran the most complicated municipality in the world? He runs for President. And you know what, I disagree with his statement to Rather. If the nominees are Hillary and Romney/Thompson, moderate Republicans and liberal Democrats are going to be looking to express their anger. I'm on board if the big two side with what is in my mind and not my heart.

Aren't Discovery and Deposition In Civil Trials Really Slavery?

It seems to me that slavery exists in the American courtroom today within two widely-used and widely-abused civil trial procedures, discovery and deposition, and that it is abused badly, as slavery tends to be.

Discovery and deposition are procedures in civil trials involving the judge ordering litigants to produce information or answer questions for the benefit of the litigants and court. This is a routine request that is often made by civil lawyers and usually substantially granted in the form of orders to the litigants about what they must produce. These often involve CEO and other executive appearances or questionings by lawyers, and lengthy or difficult sets of questions, sometimes expensive and hard for the litigants to produce. There is no standard evidentiary threshold forthese requests to be granted, meaning that defendants in abusive suits often must undergo major costs without any evidence being brought.

Thus, any civil trial can run to very high costs. There are plenty of abusive litigants who file cases with little or no evidence in the expectation that many defendants will rightly compute their costs as lesser if they settle. Discovery and deposition were instituted to try to reduce numbers of cases lacking evidence. They might be reasonable if requesters had to pay all costs of answering the request.

Sometimes payment for discovery costs is requested and granted, but it's rarely requested. Are lawyers lax about about telling their clients that it's a possibility? After all, the fees are so much higher otherwise, with no incentive to limit requests.

Clubbing Seal Cubs: SCO v. IBM

The case par excellence of this is SCO's various threats, legal maneuverings, and suits against Linux vendors and major Linux users. SCO claimed that they owned rights to the Unix Operating sytem and that Linux is infringing on its copyrights. At no time did they present any evidence that they either owned Unix rights or that Linux infringed on Unix. Nonetheless, they sent many letters to Linux vendors and users, requiring payments for Linux licenses. Some paid, no doubt feeling that settlement was cheaper than civil proceedings. Red Hat Linux countersued against SCO.

In 2003 and early 2004, SCO filed suit against Linux vendors IBM and Red Hat, and Linux users AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler. The next year, SCO filed suit against Novell, the actual holder of Unix rights, for daring to say so. Despite the lack of evidence, SCO v IBM, SCO v Novell, and Red Hat v SCO all remain pending four years later.

I've been watching this trial since 2005 via the informative legal blog site Groklaw. Most of the delay in the case came from SCO asking for tons of discovery. Because there's no standard for minimum evidence, most of the non-impossible requests were granted (including plenty of tough requests). Remember, again, SCO never presented ANY hard evidence to support them even owning Unix copyright, much less of copyright infringement. That didn't stop those requests from being granted. The various defendants and Red Hat must've wasted well over $100M on this case. All wasted, unless you're fortunate to be a lawyer on the case.

More Evidence

Many civil lawyers warn their clients that discovery and deposition costs can grow high when going against big pockets. Thus, people without big pockets are discouraged from suing even when they have good cases, and people with big pockets are encouraged to sue even when they have no case.

I've been directly involved with one patent infringement case that had no evidence of infringement, and was solely filed to try and force a startup to spend more than it could afford. I've been an employee in another company that was sued over patent issues to try to raise fear and uncertainty from deterring the market and Wall Street from noticing our better and more innovative product line.

Another case is of John Ousterhout, one of the world's best computer researchers, being forced to spend over a year mostly answering discovery requests on behalf of UC Berkeley related to a course he taught. There was no evidence of UCB wrongdoing - it was purely a fishing expedition. He probably would otherwise have accomplished something pretty important in that time.

Conclusions

So, if you're a lawyer, I hope you'll think about this a bit.

Are Hospitals Unhealthy Places To Stay?

After our first night when we had our kid, an old Instapundit article came swiftly to mind. I decided he was right. We had to have a C-Section, and Mom had to recover from it for a couple of days.

Instapundit / Glenn Reynolds has been doing alot of hospital-blogging over the years. His wife and relatives have been unlucky about having to make lots of hospital visits. These two posts had an interesting thing up about the near-impossibility of getting sleep in US hospitals. The first pointer is to a long post he did on the subject.

First, I want to praise our hospital, because except for this one thing, they did great things for us. I left impressed as hell and thankful for their professionalism. And, of course, with a perfectly healthy kid. The c-section was so fast, thoughtfully and professionally done it left me amazed; she's had no complications. And their professionalism and watchfulness kept the kid from choking, (often happens to c-sectioned kids), and Mama from most of the consequences of a nasty fall that she had due to low blood pressure.

About 3/4 through the second night, I started yelling at people who came in who were interrupting my wife's virtually nonexistent sleep. And, although the c-section was, as I said, done well, my wife recovered pretty slowly at the hospital.

Plus, of course, as Reynolds' long article noted, there are also chances of catching other problems in hospitals, contributed to by the physician culture of ignoring sleep as a problem for internists and other medical staff. For this stay and my tonsillectomy, long ago patient sleep was far and away the biggest problem. But I did also have a concussion head cut sewed up by a long-sleepless internist, retrospectively pretty spooky. *I* can't function for more than 18ish hours in a row, and he'd been awake either 23 or 33 hours.

It seems to me like they oughtta only check vital signs once a night. And, they should coordinate ALL a patient's awakenings to happen just once a night. Measure baby's vital signs, bathroom visit encouragement, fiddling with drugs and devices, AT THE SAME TIME. The other side is that, because of the hospital sleep deficit problems, hospital days should start later. We DID want to talk to all the doctors that mostly came by first thing in their day, and we're glad the room was cleaned, but the timing ended any possibility of catching up on sleep.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instalanchers!

A dose of honesty?

Congressman Brian Baird who represents the 3rd District of Washington, and is by all accounts a liberal who voted against the war, has had a change of heart.

From the Seattle Times:

"We're on the ground now. We have a responsibility to the Iraqi people and a strategic interest in making this work," Baird told The Olympian newspaper after a recent trip to Iraq...

"People may be upset. I wish I didn't have to say this," said Baird, who is under pressure from liberal-leaning groups in his southwest Washington district to support a troop withdrawal.

The United States needs to continue with its current "surge" of military troops "at least into early next year, then engage in a gradual redeployment," said Baird, a five-term lawmaker. "I know it's going to cost hundreds of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars..."

His comments are based on two beliefs, Baird said:

"One, I think we're making real progress. Secondly, I think the consequences of pulling back precipitously would be potentially catastrophic for the Iraqi people themselves, to whom we have a tremendous responsibility ... and in the long run chaotic for the region as a whole and for our own security."

Hmmm... I think this brings up all sorts of interesting questions.

Is Queen Nancy going to pull out her bull-whip? Is Baird on to something politically?

The Democrats biggest gamble is that the surge isn't going to work, but Bush's persistance, no matter what you think of it, has created the scenario that in order for Democrats to win elections, Iraq has to continue to be a failure. In the long term, is that really the smartest political strategy? Sure it worked in 2006, but would that be the case if Republican corruption had not been another piece of the pie? It isn't as if the poll numbers for Congress are any higher than the President's.

Are more Democrats going to come to Baird's opinion? What then becomes of the current political landscape?

Michael Deaver Passes On

Since Ronald Reagan passed away a few years ago, we have seen several members of his inner circle follow him once again. Lyn Nofzinger, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and Cap Weinberger all helped craft and carry the Reagan message of hope, optimism, and freedom. But no helped the American people see Reagan’s sunny disposition and love of America more than Mike Deaver. No one helped the country get to know Reagan the man than Mike Deaver.

-Krempasky

Why the Democrats will lose...

A few weeks back our buddy Kos debated centrist favorite Harold Ford on Meet the Press. Did anyone see it?

Something occurred to me in that debate... the Democrats are going to lose the White House in 2008.

Here is why:

1. The Kos movement, although I agree with him that he doesn't deserve that much credit, has taken control of the Democratic Party. Liberalism isn't something Democratic candidates are running from anymore, as is evident by the countless debates before special interest groups and the fact that they all completely ignored the recent DLC convention.

The trouble is that this "movement" is forgetting what has given Democrats electoral success in the past. For instance, Kos loves to claim with that awkward grin of his that 2006 Senate candidates Jim Webb, Claire McKaskill, and Jon Tester won using "storming the gates" type methods and running as "proud Democrats." Yet, the fact of the matter is that candidates like the three mentioned, and others like Heath Schuler in North Carolina, won because they softened their approach on gun control, spending, taxes, and social issues, only running to the far left on the unpopular war.

Kos himself knows this and realizes that "proud Democrats" aren't going to win national elections which is why he himself has declared that it isn't really about liberal versus moderate, *gag*, but rather about being authentic as opposed to, well, the Clinton’s. I wonder if he actually reads his own posts?

2. They have got to nominate the second most polarizing political figure next to George W. Bush in order to win. Don't get me wrong, I am a huge Obama fan and have warmed up to Edwards; however, Democrats don't win without disciplined campaigns and Hill is blowing her opponents away in that regard. She simply is smarter, more articulate, more disciplined, and overal a better candidate for national office. They keep swinging, and she keeps going up in the polls. Furthermore, she is the only candidate in the race that has a shot at the nomination that can also lay any claim to the middle, which is a must if Republicans nominate Giuliani, McCain or Romney.

Note: I like Mike Huckabee, but second place in Iowa when nobody of significance with the exception of one candidate is in the race, just isn't as big a deal as the media would like us to believe, and Fred Thompson's window has closed shut.

The problem is with Hillary is that while she proves to be an exceptional campaigner, she has to come off as rigid, handled, and down right plastic in order to to do it. Kos is exactly right, this plays to her weaknesses, and as her chances of winning the Democratic nomination go up, her chances of winning over the general public go way down. This is why top-tier Repubilcans are either close or ahead of her in most national polls, while the President from their own party sits in the low 30's.

3. On February 3rd, Hillary Clinton will be the nominee of the Democratic Party. That means for nine months it will be just her. There will be no talk of Obama's foreign policy gaffes, no talk about whether or not Edwards's money contradicts his message... it will be just Hillary and thoughts about why she will not open up her personal records that are being archived in the Clinton Library, images of her husband and memories of Monica Lewinsky, and political ads that show her ruling out nuclear weapons and then being critical of her opponents for doing the same exact thing.

After nine months, are the American people really going to elect another Bush or Clinton? I doubt it.

Unbeatable

This article suggests Giuliani-McCain or McCain-Giuliani isn't out of the realm of possibilities.

Dream ticket... 'nuff said.

BTW, it is awful quiet around here :/ ...

New Generation?

We need some new people. I'm doing most of the posting, and my life doesn't allow for more than posting 2-3x/week (the new baby certainly doesn't help), not enough to keep traffic up. Without some more involvement, we're dead.

I'm going to ask 2-3 people if they're interested in joining the poster list. challenge you to help me with this. If you're reading this and interested in posting, or have some idea you want to share, please email me.

Suggestions on the proper relationship between StubbornFacts and Centerfield would probably also be a good thing for this thread.

Slashdot

Cory Doctorow points out to Hollywood the danger of failing to adapt. He points out that Napster was the Recording Industry's last bright spot on their charts. Ever since then, it's been doom and gloom. So, maybe suing Youtube/Google isn't such a smooth move for Viacom. Mebbe they should be negotiating, instead. Slashdot thread here.

Unlike Doctorow, I thought Napster's strategy was unnecessarily confrontational, but there's no question that the recording industry was stupid (suicidal?) to refuse to negotiate and instead go into bunker mode.

Karl Rove Departure Thread Here

I think he's leaving because he wants to jobhunt. His gig, after all, is elections, not doing things in power.

I've been predicting for year now that, based on what happened to his chosen historical predecessor, Mark Hanna, Rove's going to have little impact on the '08 election. It's because he's now a Kingmaker. He's been the brains behind making a President and reelecting him. That had two bad consequences for Mr Hanna's personal trajectory. First, Hanna's successes electing and reelecting President McKinley had made him arrogant. And Teddy Roosevelt, Mckinley's successor (McKinley was assassinated, leaving Veep TR in power), feared Hanna wanted to control him, and had nothing to do with him. TR built up his own GOP wing just to avoid that. I don't see how Rove will fare any better.

Open Thread

Tully did come by. We talked about blogs, kids, and books.

People Fuel More Expensive Than Automobile Fuel

Tyler Cowen had a post joining in on a discussion about fuel cost dimensions of walking vs biking vs walking. Somebody was claiming that the auto uses less carbon than walking.

I've been comparing biking and car commute fuel costs myself, and, for me, the biking is clearly IS more expensive, fuel-wise, 50-100%. I pay more for both more human food and rehydration stuff than for car food, since I have much higher standards than the car does.

If you can manage to have fewer cars (mostly, I have), then my math says the bike wins overall, cost-wise. It's not a big interest of mine, but I suspect the pollution comparison is likely to be not too far off the way the cost comparison goes.

One claim that shows up in comments is that people who walk or bike will weigh less than otherwise because now they're exercising and thus see little gain in food consumption. Except, a sizeable part of the population already exercises, and thus will see no reduction from that. I'm having trouble thinking of people I know who don't even walk regularly. I exercise whether or not commuting is involved, and my food consumption DOES go up.

Chavez Wants To End Those Annoying term limits in Venezuelan Constitution

See here

Renters' Assurance?

I was reading a comic strip today grumbling about displacement via legal takings for luxury condos (it had the strip's space replaced with luxury condo ads...).

I've long thought of renters being one of the capitalistic weak spots in areas where property values are rising. Owners mostly get paid well to move (except for said taking case and some oher rare cases). But renters can get lost in the crossfire. They get paid nothing, and sometimes have very little warning, and have sometimes been there for decades. They may face a much harder commute or other problems.

Should we have some kind of social help for renters displaced when their landlords sell or renovate?

If so, what, and should it come from landlords or the gummint?

Open Thread: More On Bottle Caps And Whatever Else You Wanna Discuss

California Voting Machine Audit Results

The State of California finally got around to conducting a thorough audit of voting machines.

Bruce Schneier wrote:

The report was issued last week, and the researchers were able to compromise all three machines -- by Diebold Election Systems, Hart Intercivic, and Sequoia Voting Systems -- multiple ways.

Much more here.

Putin Youth and Mafiya

A good article about the Putin Youth.

And, while we're talking about Russia, here's an article by Gary Kasparov, titled Don Putin