marbury

corridors of power

The Treasury Secretary recently invited some influential economics bloggers to meet for a chat. One of the attendees, Tyler Cowen (of the wonderful Marginal Revolution), offers his - very Cowenesque - impressions:

1. Tim Geithner is very smart and he was conceptually stronger than one might have expected.

2. I believe that the long, L-shaped hallways encourage "visits to offices" rather than hallway conversations; this is a speculation and perhaps some reader can confirm or deny it.

3. The quality of the painted portraits of Treasury Secretaries declines as time passes.

4. The free cookies were good and fresh, with a warm, fluid chocolate interior.

Full list here.

the wake

National Geographic reports:

On September 23, 2008, Dorothy, a female chimpanzee in her late 40s, died of congestive heart failure. A maternal and beloved figure, Dorothy had spent eight years at Cameroon's Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center, which houses and rehabilitates chimps victimized by habitat loss and the illegal African bushmeat trade.... (Monica) Szczupider (she took the above photograph), who had been a volunteer at the center, told me:  'Her presence, and loss, was palpable, and resonated throughout the group. The management at Sanaga-Yong opted to let Dorothy's chimpanzee family witness her burial, so that perhaps they would understand, in their own capacity, that Dorothy would not return. Some chimps displayed aggression while others barked in frustration. But perhaps the most stunning reaction was a recurring, almost tangible silence. If one knows chimpanzees, then one knows that [they] are not [usually] silent creatures.' "

(via Cognition and Culture)

mark his words

Krauthammer on Tuesday's election results:

November ’08 was one-shot, one-time, never to be replicated. Nor was November ’09 a realignment. It was a return to the norm — and definitive confirmation that 2008 was one of the great flukes in American political history.

Hmm. Good luck with that one, Charlie. I still have a feeling that in November 2012 we may witness the second greatest fluke in American political history.

the announcement

As eccentric as she sometimes sounds in public, I suspect Sarah Palin is even stranger in person. You occasionally get glimpses of it. The authors of a new book about her 2008 adventure - a couple of reporters who seem to have had access to McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt - have turned up some interesting tidbits, including this one:

Palin couldn’t bring herself to tell her children she had accepted McCain’s offer to be his running mate. “The governor decided not to deliver the life-changing news herself. Instead, she asked Steve Schmidt to tell her children that their worlds were about to be turned upside down.” There’s no explanation for why this happened – but Conroy and Walshe do point out that the timeline means the children weren’t asked for their permission, as Palin suggested during the campaign.

Assuming this is true - why would she want her children to find out about this from a stranger? To absolve herself of responsibility in some way? To make it sound real serious?

trick and treat

into the valley

I love the Uncanny Valley. It's a theory of the future espoused by scientists working in the field of artificial intelligence and robotics. The idea is that as robots get more and more advanced and human-like, we will respond more and more positively to them. We will marvel at their motor skills, coo at their smiles, and be grateful for their ability to make us a ham and cheese sandwich any time we tell them to. But there will come a point at which we suddenly realize that they are too damn like us for comfort, and we will become suffused with fear and loathing. Thus do we enter the Uncanny Valley. Eventually, (this is the bit I'm not entirely convinced by) we will get used to these facsimiles, perhaps forget the difference between 'bot and human altogether, and climb out of the valley.

The Uncanny Valley is something that - whether they use the term or not - the designers of computer games, and the animators at Disney and Pixar are very aware of. Viewers find it easier to love cartoonish caricatures of human beings than they do more realistic representations of them.

Now, researchers at Princeton have discovered that monkeys also fall into the Valley...

rush bummed

The only good news for the Dems last night was that they won the normally Republican district #23 in New York. But these were, of course, very unusual circumstances, and this result can't be interpreted on purely party lines either. It seems to have mainly been a reaction against outsiders (Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and their followers) sticking their nose into New York business.

The conservative movement within the GOP lost this round, which may actually be bad news for the Democrats in the long run.

business as usual

Exit poll data from Virginia that indicates how much the 2008 Obama effect on turnout (of exactly one year ago) disappeared yesterday:

This electorate was older than in 2008. In 2008, young voters were 21% of the electorate, exit polls show that just 10% of voters in Virginia today were under age 30. In 2008, 20% of Virginia’s voters were African-American, compared with 15% today.

This a more traditional voting demographic asserting their will and those lapsed voters can hardly complain. You've got to be in it to win it. Will it be the same people who turn out in 2010?

clear-out time

So: the Republicans score a double-whammy in New Jersey and Virginia, and have every right to feel pleased with themselves.

But when the dust clears it will be obvious that yesterday's results weren't anti-Dem or anti-Obama (though the fact that Obama campaigned for Corzine in NJ will hurt a bit) but anti-incumbency. If there's a common theme, it was about kicking the bastards out; the bastards who have messed up the economy and and the country. Anybody associated with big money (Corzine, a former banker and even, remarkably, Bloomberg, who came astonishingly close to losing against his Democratic rival for mayor) or with the political establishment had their cards marked.

Not a great night for Obama, then. But he'd rather witness this expression of rage now than in 2011.

the president and the unicorn

This is from a series  of paintings by artist Dan Lacey. All of them show Barack Obama, naked, in various poses with a unicorn.

I have nothing to add.

guru google

You know how when you start typing a phrase into Google, several suggestions pop up? That's a feature called Google Suggest. The suggestions are based on what others have been searching for recently - so they're an instant read on the global conversation. People ask Google all sorts of things, as you can see.

Slate's Michael Agger shows how you can have more fun with the Google search box than you ever thought possible.

go hoffman

The Atlantic's Chris Good explains very lucidly what's at stake in today's election for New York's 23rd district, an election that isn't as substantively important as the other two races ending today (for the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia) but one that has become symbolically important for the GOP.

If I were a Democratic strategist I'd be praying for a Hoffman win. The more that the conservative zealots in the Republican party become convinced of their own infallibility, the better the long-term prospects of the Democrats.

the past isn't even past

A fairly stunning piece of data:

Obama's favorability-unfavorability rating in the South is 28-67, while it is 68-23 in the rest of the country.

(via Daily Kos and Sullivan)

hillary as loose cannon

Hillary Clinton seems to be struggling a little with her role as nation's chief diplomat - or at least with the "diplomat" part.

The shrewd and level-headed Ben Smith points out that although Clinton hasn't been deeply involved with the MIddle East peace process, "she has provoked crises with almost every word." She has a tendency to go off script, to use the wrong language, and to send signals that she - and the administration - didn't intend to send. There's no discernible pattern to her gaffes - sometimes she swings to one side, sometimes to the other - so it's not a question of bias either way. It just seems to be a lack of diplomatic discipline, which is odd because discipline is the one quality Clinton has always had in abundance. It's becoming a problem, says Smith:

But in this most delicate, closely parsed of diplomatic arenas, her inexperience as a diplomat, and her tendency toward incautious statements (disguised by a campaign image of "competence") has really turned into a liability for the administration.

Perhaps Clinton should ask Joe Biden for advice.

baby face

If asked to define the most important physical aspects of Obama's political appeal, I'd probably point to two contrasting and complementary qualities: a youthful, almost boyish countenance (the skinniness, the smile, those ears) combined with a rich, naturally authoritative voice. A new study provides evidence that his boyish qualities might be particularly germane:

Media analysts have argued that a major factor in Barack Obama’s political success is his nonthreatening demeanor, to counteract the stereotype of the threatening black man. Researchers wondered if there might be a similar counter-stereotypical pattern for black CEOs, even on a purely visual level. They asked people to rate pictures of CEOs for baby-facedness, warmth, and competence. Relative to white CEOs, black CEOs were rated as more baby-faced - and, consistent with prior research on baby-faced stereotypes, seen as warmer and less competent. For blacks, being baby-faced meant earning more money, the study found, whereas white CEOs earned less money if they were baby-faced.

nice girls finish first

From a report on Paula Radcliffe's failure to win the New York marathon at the weekend:

By the halfway point only five women remained at the front – all of them mothers in their 30s – all playing some kind of edgy endgame... Radcliffe did not respond at once and it was the first sign that she might not have it in her. Tulu, the Ethiopian, sensed something was wrong and ran alongside her offering words of encouragement. "That's Derartu," said Radcliffe afterwards. "She's lovely. She knew I was in pain and across the Queensboro Bridge she ran alongside me saying, 'Come on, come on we can do it'. Even when the girls took off she waited with me."

Tulu went on to win the race.

In what other competitive sport can you imagine something like this happening? Is this a marathon thing, or a female thing, or a Tulu thing?

running man

(From the White House flickr stream)

a different look

The NYT has a long magazine piece by Jodi Kantor, one of their senior political correspondents, on the Obamas' marriage. As you'd expect, it's a well-researched and skillfully written article but there isn't much in it we don't already know (although that didn't stop the Observer here devoting its page 3 to a summary of Kantor's piece - and I thought blogs were meant to be parasitical?). I liked this moment:

On an autumn day in 2006, the Obamas sat in the Chicago office of the consultant David Axelrod, surrounded by advisers, weighing whether Barack should move forward.

“What do you think you could accomplish that other candidates couldn’t?” Michelle asked, according to Axelrod. The question hung in the air. Clearly, an Obama agenda would not look very different from that of Hillary Clinton or John Edwards.

“When I take that oath of office, there will be kids all over this country who don’t really think that all paths are open to them, who will believe they can be anything they want to be,” Barack replied. “And I think the world will look at America a little differently.”

You see with some clarity here the extent to which Obama's campaign, at least at the pre-general stage, really was all about identity rather policies.

thanks john

David Plouffe explains why he was delighted by John McCain's pick of VP candidate at the time and is even more delighted now:

Visit msnbc.com for

The artist and writer Maira Kalman visits the Capitol to investigate the nation's democracy in action and sends back one of her incomparable reports for the NYT.

As you know, I love Joe Biden. Here he is responding to a question about his thoughts on Dick Cheney's latest criticism of the administration:

Who cares what … Well, let me put it maybe … Yeah, yeah, I know. I can see the headline now. I'm getting better, guys. I'm getting a little bit better, you know what I mean?"

Not sure who the "guys" are, but I like to imagine he's appealing to Rahm and Ax...

The acrostic is a weapon too infrequently deployed in politics. This letter from the Governor of California vetoes a bill sponsored by Tom Ammiano, a San Francisco assemblyman. Ammiano is a vociferous critic of Schwarzenegger: he recently shouted "You lie" (a la Joe Wilson) at him during a public meeting. The first letters of each main paragraph in this letter are being interpreted as Schwarzenegger's rejoinder. "My goodness. What a coincidence," said the governor's spokesman, on being asked about it.

Language Log for one thinks it very unlikely this was an accident.

In the mid-nineteenth century a Londoner called John Leighton published a scheme to divide London in a number of hexagonals, a plan aimed at preventing cab drivers from taking advantage of London's chaotic complexity to overcharge their passengers. This is as far as it got, obviously.

Visit Strange Maps for the full explanation and a larger image.

The Prime Minister's endorsement of Tony Blair for president of Europe seems to have had the desired effect, and within 24 hours.

Like all successful politicians, Obama has a ruthless streak, and an acute sense that he is the most important person on the side. As the Reverend Wright and Tom Daschle will testify, he won't hesitate to dispense with a former ally if they've become too much of a drag on the brand, or - as even the ultra-loyalist David Plouffe makes clear in his new book on the campaign - pin the blame for a mishap firmly on his colleagues. Plouffe, telling the story of McCain's announcement of his vice-presidential choice, recalls how he and Gibbs put out a very critical statement about Palin immediately her nomination was announced:

Our statement immediately received an enormous amount of attention because it went right at her experience. The press clearly sensed heat and was eager to help drive the fight. Seeing the reaction, I began to think perhaps we had misfired. Obama clearly thought so. He called me from the air. "Listen, I just told this to Axelrod and [communications director Robert] Gibbs," he began. "I understand the argument you guys were trying to make. And maybe we should make it someday. But not today. We shouldn't have put out the first part of that statement. I want to put out another statement that simply welcomes her to the race, and I'll call her and congratulate her when I land."

I didn't disagree but thought backtracking would only add to the sense in the press that perhaps Palin was a brilliant game-changing pick that had scrambled the race. Even the famously disciplined Obama campaign can't get its story straight — this would be the blowback. "Look," I told him, "simply say that you're adding your own personal voice, one principal to another." He acknowledged that he understood and would watch his words. "We'll send out a personal statement from you and Biden," I said, "but it's important you not suggest we misfired on the original statement. Don't throw the campaign under the bus."

But when he took a few questions from the press later that day, he proceeded to drive the bus right over us. "I think that, you know, campaigns start getting these hair triggers, and the statement that Joe and I put out reflects our sentiments," he said. Great, I thought, already imagining the heat we'd take on this.

Which gives me an excuse to quote from a Saul Bellow story:

It's usually the selfish people who are loved the most. They do what you deny yourself, and you love them for it.

(via Ben Smith)

(via Urban Cartography)

Endism never ends does it? Everyone loves predicting the end of things, whilst competing to see who can come up with the most shocking estimate of when that end will come. Slate's Daniel Gross provides a useful counter-weight to those predicting - with glee or panic - that the newspaper business will be defunct within fifteen years. It may be in decline, it may be readjusting its model, but it's not dead yet:

This is the new emerging model—cutting costs, raising prices. It may still fail in the end. But we shouldn't act as if the online-only crowd has it all figured out. Every month, several million Americans pay to have newspapers and magazines delivered to their homes—a trick most online publications have yet to pull off. In fact, in some regards, print-online hybrids like newspapers and magazines have outperformed online-only publications. The Web operations of the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal aren't exactly slouches when it comes to selling online ads. And as poorly as the stock of the New York Times has performed over the past decade, most people would have preferred owning it to the stock of Salon.com, or TheStreet.com.

Joe Lieberman the former Democrat, now Independent Senator from Connecticut, has come out and said he will try and sabotage any healthcare bill that includes a public option. Nate Silver is baffled:

Would voting to filibuster the Democrats' health care bill (if it contains a decent public option) endear Lieberman to his constituents? No; Connecticutians favor the public option 64-31. Would it make his path to re-election easier? No, because it would virtually assure that Lieberman faces a vigorous and well-funded challenge from a credible, capital-D Democrat, and polls show him losing such a match-up badly.

Would it buy him more power in the Senate? No, because Democrats would have every reason to strip him of his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee. Is Lieberman's stance intended to placate the special interests in his state? Perhaps this is part of it -- there are a lot of insurance companies in Connecticut -- but Lieberman is generally not one of the more sold-out Senators... What Joe Lieberman wants, in all probability, is attention.

Silver may well be right on this last point and  in fact I tend to think he is. But having discounted all these other reasons isn't it rather ungenerous not to at least conceive of the possibility that Lieberman is doing what we're always accusing those senators who are prisoners of the interests listed above of never doing - ie, acting on principle?

The Onion reports:

Claiming that the president was preying on the public's fear of contracting a fatal disease last week when he declared the H1N1 virus a national emergency, Republican leaders announced Wednesday that they were officially endorsing the swine flu. "Thousands of Americans—hardworking ordinary Americans like you and me—already have H1N1," Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele said during a press conference. "Now Obama wants to take that away from us. Ask yourself: Do you want the federal government making these kinds of health care decisions for you and your family?"

How can you not love Joe Biden?!

Yes, he shoots his mouth off. Yes, he's prone to boasting. Yes, his judgement can be erratic.

But is he as arrogant as Cheney? As uptight or aristocratic as Gore? As green as Quayle?

Most importantly: could he ever tell a lie? No, of course not. I mean, even if persuaded himself to do so, he's be crap at it; everything he thinks goes straight to his mouth without passing Go (or rather Stop). Joe's a let-it-all-hang-out kind of guy, for better or for worse - and I think, in this age of distrust, for better. He is innately honest. That quality - along with his often underestimated (though never by him), genuinely vast knowledge of the world and its governance - makes him one hundred times the man his critics are.

So please America - take those approval numbers back up. Give thanks for Joe.

(via the Daily Dish and Indexed)

David Brooks doesn't refer to directly to his paper's report on Maurice Greenberg but his column might be read as a commentary on it. He argues that the over-confidence which led to the crash is in danger of simply being transferred to Washington:

Every great action can be done in a spirit of humility or in a spirit of overconfidence. Regulating pay in a spirit of humility would mean rebalancing the power between shareholders and executives, without getting government involved in micromanaging individual pay decisions.

But this is not a moment of humility. Treasury officials are now making individual pay-package decisions across an array of different companies — and they must have really big brains to understand the motivational psychology of all those different people. The Federal Reserve, meanwhile, has decided to police banks and veto pay deals that lead to excessive risk. Those experts must have absolutely gigantic brains if they can define excessive risk years before investments pay off.

e pluribus unum and all that

The artist and writer Maira Kalman visits the Capitol to investigate the nation's democracy in action and sends back one of her incomparable reports for the NYT.

getting better all the time

As you know, I love Joe Biden. Here he is responding to a question about his thoughts on Dick Cheney's latest criticism of the administration:

Who cares what … Well, let me put it maybe … Yeah, yeah, I know. I can see the headline now. I'm getting better, guys. I'm getting a little bit better, you know what I mean?"

Not sure who the "guys" are, but I like to imagine he's appealing to Rahm and Ax...

arnold says FY

The acrostic is a weapon too infrequently deployed in politics. This letter from the Governor of California vetoes a bill sponsored by Tom Ammiano, a San Francisco assemblyman. Ammiano is a vociferous critic of Schwarzenegger: he recently shouted "You lie" (a la Joe Wilson) at him during a public meeting. The first letters of each main paragraph in this letter are being interpreted as Schwarzenegger's rejoinder. "My goodness. What a coincidence," said the governor's spokesman, on being asked about it.

Language Log for one thinks it very unlikely this was an accident.

hexagonal london

In the mid-nineteenth century a Londoner called John Leighton published a scheme to divide London in a number of hexagonals, a plan aimed at preventing cab drivers from taking advantage of London's chaotic complexity to overcharge their passengers. This is as far as it got, obviously.

Visit Strange Maps for the full explanation and a larger image.

thanks gordon

The Prime Minister's endorsement of Tony Blair for president of Europe seems to have had the desired effect, and within 24 hours.

under the bus

Like all successful politicians, Obama has a ruthless streak, and an acute sense that he is the most important person on the side. As the Reverend Wright and Tom Daschle will testify, he won't hesitate to dispense with a former ally if they've become too much of a drag on the brand, or - as even the ultra-loyalist David Plouffe makes clear in his new book on the campaign - pin the blame for a mishap firmly on his colleagues. Plouffe, telling the story of McCain's announcement of his vice-presidential choice, recalls how he and Gibbs put out a very critical statement about Palin immediately her nomination was announced:

Our statement immediately received an enormous amount of attention because it went right at her experience. The press clearly sensed heat and was eager to help drive the fight. Seeing the reaction, I began to think perhaps we had misfired. Obama clearly thought so. He called me from the air. "Listen, I just told this to Axelrod and [communications director Robert] Gibbs," he began. "I understand the argument you guys were trying to make. And maybe we should make it someday. But not today. We shouldn't have put out the first part of that statement. I want to put out another statement that simply welcomes her to the race, and I'll call her and congratulate her when I land."

I didn't disagree but thought backtracking would only add to the sense in the press that perhaps Palin was a brilliant game-changing pick that had scrambled the race. Even the famously disciplined Obama campaign can't get its story straight — this would be the blowback. "Look," I told him, "simply say that you're adding your own personal voice, one principal to another." He acknowledged that he understood and would watch his words. "We'll send out a personal statement from you and Biden," I said, "but it's important you not suggest we misfired on the original statement. Don't throw the campaign under the bus."

But when he took a few questions from the press later that day, he proceeded to drive the bus right over us. "I think that, you know, campaigns start getting these hair triggers, and the statement that Joe and I put out reflects our sentiments," he said. Great, I thought, already imagining the heat we'd take on this.

Which gives me an excuse to quote from a Saul Bellow story:

It's usually the selfish people who are loved the most. They do what you deny yourself, and you love them for it.

(via Ben Smith)

total eclipse of the chart

(via Urban Cartography)

newspapers: the end is not nigh

Endism never ends does it? Everyone loves predicting the end of things, whilst competing to see who can come up with the most shocking estimate of when that end will come. Slate's Daniel Gross provides a useful counter-weight to those predicting - with glee or panic - that the newspaper business will be defunct within fifteen years. It may be in decline, it may be readjusting its model, but it's not dead yet:

This is the new emerging model—cutting costs, raising prices. It may still fail in the end. But we shouldn't act as if the online-only crowd has it all figured out. Every month, several million Americans pay to have newspapers and magazines delivered to their homes—a trick most online publications have yet to pull off. In fact, in some regards, print-online hybrids like newspapers and magazines have outperformed online-only publications. The Web operations of the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal aren't exactly slouches when it comes to selling online ads. And as poorly as the stock of the New York Times has performed over the past decade, most people would have preferred owning it to the stock of Salon.com, or TheStreet.com.

maybe he actually believes this stuff

Joe Lieberman the former Democrat, now Independent Senator from Connecticut, has come out and said he will try and sabotage any healthcare bill that includes a public option. Nate Silver is baffled:

Would voting to filibuster the Democrats' health care bill (if it contains a decent public option) endear Lieberman to his constituents? No; Connecticutians favor the public option 64-31. Would it make his path to re-election easier? No, because it would virtually assure that Lieberman faces a vigorous and well-funded challenge from a credible, capital-D Democrat, and polls show him losing such a match-up badly.

Would it buy him more power in the Senate? No, because Democrats would have every reason to strip him of his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee. Is Lieberman's stance intended to placate the special interests in his state? Perhaps this is part of it -- there are a lot of insurance companies in Connecticut -- but Lieberman is generally not one of the more sold-out Senators... What Joe Lieberman wants, in all probability, is attention.

Silver may well be right on this last point and  in fact I tend to think he is. But having discounted all these other reasons isn't it rather ungenerous not to at least conceive of the possibility that Lieberman is doing what we're always accusing those senators who are prisoners of the interests listed above of never doing - ie, acting on principle?

republicans endorse swine flu

The Onion reports:

Claiming that the president was preying on the public's fear of contracting a fatal disease last week when he declared the H1N1 virus a national emergency, Republican leaders announced Wednesday that they were officially endorsing the swine flu. "Thousands of Americans—hardworking ordinary Americans like you and me—already have H1N1," Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele said during a press conference. "Now Obama wants to take that away from us. Ask yourself: Do you want the federal government making these kinds of health care decisions for you and your family?"

america! what are you thinking?

How can you not love Joe Biden?!

Yes, he shoots his mouth off. Yes, he's prone to boasting. Yes, his judgement can be erratic.

But is he as arrogant as Cheney? As uptight or aristocratic as Gore? As green as Quayle?

Most importantly: could he ever tell a lie? No, of course not. I mean, even if persuaded himself to do so, he's be crap at it; everything he thinks goes straight to his mouth without passing Go (or rather Stop). Joe's a let-it-all-hang-out kind of guy, for better or for worse - and I think, in this age of distrust, for better. He is innately honest. That quality - along with his often underestimated (though never by him), genuinely vast knowledge of the world and its governance - makes him one hundred times the man his critics are.

So please America - take those approval numbers back up. Give thanks for Joe.

tmi

(via the Daily Dish and Indexed)

too clever for their own good

David Brooks doesn't refer to directly to his paper's report on Maurice Greenberg but his column might be read as a commentary on it. He argues that the over-confidence which led to the crash is in danger of simply being transferred to Washington:

Every great action can be done in a spirit of humility or in a spirit of overconfidence. Regulating pay in a spirit of humility would mean rebalancing the power between shareholders and executives, without getting government involved in micromanaging individual pay decisions.

But this is not a moment of humility. Treasury officials are now making individual pay-package decisions across an array of different companies — and they must have really big brains to understand the motivational psychology of all those different people. The Federal Reserve, meanwhile, has decided to police banks and veto pay deals that lead to excessive risk. Those experts must have absolutely gigantic brains if they can define excessive risk years before investments pay off.