No Oil for Pacifists

Following-up on last week's post of repeatedly read books, here's a list of plays I've seen most. I excluded Shakespeare (both because the frequent performances would dominate the results and because I wanted to highlight modern works) but included "teleplays" written for TV (e.g., Potter).

Here's the titles, author, year it was first staged, American awards (if any) and the site of my initial encounter:

1. Copenhagen, Michael Frayn (1998), Tony Best Play (Broadway)



2. The Singing Detective, Dennis Potter (1986), Peabody (PBS)



3. Assassins, Stephen Sondheim (1990), Tony Best Revival of a Musical (NoVa's Signature Theatre)



4. Chess (original version), Tim Rice, Björn Ulvaeus & Benny Andersson (1986) (London) (the Broadway re-write was significantly worse and justly closed a week after I saw it, a run of two-and-a-half months)



5. Les Misérables, Claude-Michel Schönberg & Alain Boublil/Herbert Kretzmer (English language opening 1986), Tony Best Musical (London)



6. Noises Off, Michael Frayn (1982), Drama Desk Outstanding Ensemble (Broadway)



7. The Norman Conquests (three parts), Alan Ayckbourn (1973) (Broadway)



8. Jersey Boys, Bob Gaudio & Bob Crewe (2005), Tony Best Musical (Broadway)



9. Amadeus, Peter Shaffer (1979), Tony Best Play (Broadway)



10. Our Town, Thornton Wilder (1938), Pulitzer (High School)

My count considered as a "view" reading the script (e.g., Frayn twice), concentrated (as opposed to casual) soundtrack listening (e.g., Gaudio), plus screening post-play derivative work films or TV translations (e.g., Shaffer, Ayckbourn) if, in each case, I initially saw the stage version.

I was surprised half my favorites were musicals, and half the playwrights English. Six on the list (numbers 1, 2, 3, 6, 7 and 10) employ some version of the "play-within-a-play" device, which always thrills me.

Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen offer the most depressing analysis of the Republican party's fortunes I've read (worse, even, than Fred Barnes' view). That doesn't mean it's not 100 percent accurate.

(via Instapundit)

Victor Klemperer, from his New Year's day 1942 diary entry, in volume 2 of I Shall Bear Witness, at 3 (1999):

It is said children still have a sense of wonder, later one becomes blunted. -- Nonsense. A child takes things for granted, and most people get no further; only an oldperson, who thinks, is aware of the wondrous.

UPDATE: below

As many as a hundred thousand may have died when Cyclone Nargis hit Burma (Myanmar) on May 2nd-3rd. At least 700,000 were left homeless and perhaps 1.5 million Burmese "are on the brink of a 'massive public health catastrophe,'" lacking water, food, and medicine.

Burma's military cabal got 48 hours notice of the storm's severity and trajectory, from India's meteorological department. The Junta did little to prepare. In the wake of the high winds and flood waters, the regime was worse:

Its soldiers, quick enough to respond to monk-led protests last September, were invisible for days as citizens struggled to cope with devastation, death and injury. And, as a horrified world offered help, the generals were obstructive. Aid workers waited for visas and the junta haggled about import duties on emergency supplies. This is criminal. The first few days after a disaster are, in terms of the lives eventually lost, by far the most important.

Despite a claimed willingness to accept aid, the Generals repeatedly blocked U.S. transports and humanitarian assistance, relenting only Monday--ten days after landfall.

What can be, or should have been, done? Last Wednesday, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner urged the United Nations to invoke its "responsibility to protect" civilians as the basis for a resolution to force delivery of aid to Myanmar, even if over the objections of Burma's military strongmen. London Times columnist Rosemary Righter agrees, calling the crisis a "test of the UN's moral authority":

So far the world has confined itself to pleading with the junta, and pleading has got nowhere. The driblet of aid allowed is slowly becoming a trickle, but for thousands it is already too late, and for millions more this is nowhere near enough. What little has got in has been impounded or, in the case of trucks of emergency plastic sheeting delivered from neighbouring Thailand by the UN Commission for Refugees, just dumped near a pagoda close to the frontier. This refusal of international humanitarian aid is, the UN laments, “unprecedented”. Unprecedented - or almost unprecedented - decisions are called for.

Governments with the power to help must insist on doing so, with or without the junta's co-operation - with the approval of the UN Security Council if they can, and without it if they must. Governments had the approval neither of Saddam Hussein nor the Security Council in 1991, when they airlifted aid to fleeing Kurds in northern Iraq. The idea that states can do what they please within their borders has been modified since 1945 by a growing acceptance that states have responsibilities as well as rights, and that gross violations of those responsibilities are an international concern. Forcing aid on the regime would be a risky venture; but to cite sovereignty as the reason why nothing can be done without its assent would be to let this foul regime get away with mass murder.

France's plan was opposed by "China, Russia and, with Zimbabwe in mind, by South Africa"--as well as by Britain. Who is right?

Initially, I'm skeptical about principles grounded on the moral authority of the United Nations. Neither the General Assembly, nor the Security Council nor the organization's other organs are especially moral. I doubt they were established to be moral--and aren't pro-UN progressives the principal proponents of the "there is no cross-cultural, only situational, morality" theory? In any case, scorekeeping is simple:

when evaluating a club, look at its members: "In 2003, a majority of UN nations were classed (see page 23) as 'not free' or only 'partly free.'"

So, morality among UN member governments can't be presumed.

Second, though disaster relief is unquestionably moral, that doesn't make forced relief in derogation of sovereignty legal under international law. The "responsibility to protect" doctrine cited by France normally is invoked to shelter populations "from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity." General Assembly Resolution, Outcome of 2005 World Summit at 30 (Oct. 24, 2005) . It is true, as Norm Geras notes, that Article 6(c) of the Nuremburg Charter and Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court also refer to "other inhumane acts." (The US hasn't ratified the Rome Statute, but many nations--albeit, not Burma--have.) So Geras reasons that "It is hard to see why deliberately withholding, obstructing or delaying food and other aid to the victims of natural disaster in such a way that thousands of extra lives are lost in consequence should not qualify, under this wording, as a crime against humanity."

Geras is consistent; no indifferent isolationist or cultural relativitist, Geras was one of the few socialists to favor the Iraq invasion at the time (though he may have shifted since). Still, I suspect most progressives now promoting a UN right to disaster relief recoiled at removing Saddam--or, most relevantly, toppling the Myanmar generals today. Is the difference the motive? The prime mover? Is the legality of extending R2P to humanitarian aid conditioned on who pays, or whether one employs guns, as opposed to butter? Of course, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Coalition deployed both. . . So what are the neutral principles?

To me, the whole inquiry confuses the moral with the lawful. The Iraq invasion was just--whether or not lawful--and I'm still pleased it was accomplished, in part, "in my name." I'd guess Geras agrees:

irrespective of the state of international law, in extreme enough circumstances there is a moral right of humanitarian intervention. This is why what the Vietnamese did in Cambodia to remove Pol Pot should have been supported at the time, the state of international law notwithstanding, and ditto for the removal of Idi Amin by the Tanzanians. Likewise, with regard to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq: It was a case crying out for support for an intervention to bring the regime finally to an end.

But this suggests a third question: is sovereignty more subordinate to multilateral, as opposed to unilateral, intervention? I agree with AVI--no:

This is because nations have to actually eventually do something, and the UN does not. The UN will never do anything but talk, harbor spies, and spend money (see Part III). It is not capable of doing anything but talk, harbor spies, and spend money. It was designed that way, though not intentionally. The three things it is actually dedicated to preserving are the right of western intellectuals to talk like moral authorities, the right of dictators to use international organizations as espionage tools, and the right of rich people in poor nations to demand money. If one nation wishes to do anything, the UN can always counsel inaction, because it pays no cost for inaction. Nations do pay a cost. Nations, real actors in a real world, know that both intervention and nonintervention are unstable, calculated risks.

Besides, the UN can't run a one-car-funeral; even Time magazine wonders whether it could provide quick or effective relief. That being said, "collective action" isn't always wrong: allies are better than enemies. In practice, a bigger consensus may not change the legal or moral calculus--but it sure shaves the number of opponents.

Which raises a question for even the pro-UN crowd. Discovering new international legal, as opposed to moral, justification for forced humanitarian intervention has practical consequences, as Gareth Evans (who argues Burma intervention would be lawful) observes:

If it comes to be thought that R2P, and in particular the sharp military end of the doctrine, is capable of being invoked in anything other than a context of mass atrocity crimes, then such consensus as there is in favour of the new norm will simply evaporate in the global south. And that means that when the next case of genocide or ethnic cleansing comes along we will be back to the same old depressing arguments about the primacy of sovereignty that led us into the horrors of inaction in Rwanda and Srebrenica in the 1990s.

Put differently, not all nations will agree about any particular collective action. Should unanimity, or even a majority, be required when the cause is just? The slow-cooking of UN consensus is small comfort to the sick and starving.

Conclusion: Few acts are more selfless than aiding the needy. Especially given the actions of the Burmese Junta, cyclone relief clearly is morally right regardless of sovereignty. So is regime change.

Attorneys like me bear part of the blame for turning everything into a legal issue. In a given civil regime, the immoral can be either lawful or not, depending on the constitution and legislature. International law is different. Over time, morality and necessity can create new customary norms. As England demonstrated when its Royal Navy ended the slave trade, it works when morally-correct governments deploy force for the benefit of all mankind. In opposing France's plan for superseding the sovereignty exercised by Burma's paranoid dictators, modern Britain seems to have recognized that distinction.

I won't claim it's clearly legal today. But, my point is, we shouldn't have to. Saving lives and cyclone relief shouldn't depend on a committee or await debate by a toothless talking forum.

MORE:

Thursday's New York Times:

The directors of several relief organizations in Myanmar said Wednesday that some of the international aid arriving into the country for the victims of Cyclone Nargis was being stolen, diverted or warehoused by the country’s army.

(via Austin Bay)

UPDATE: below

On Friday, John McCain correctly called Barack Obama's foreign policy naïve:

Senator Obama continues to say he would sit down and negotiate with the president of Iran who yesterday called the state of Israel a stinking corpse. That’s a dramatic difference between my view of the relations with a state sponsor of terror that is exporting lethal explosive devices into Iraq killing Americans and I would not give them the respect or the ability to enhance their prestige by sitting down and talking to the head of the state sponsor of terrorism who repeats his country’s dedication to the extinction of the state of Israel.

Reporter Larry Rohter defended the Illinois Senator in the next day's New York Times, in part by quoting an Obama advisor:

Susan E. Rice, a former State Department and National Security Council official who is a foreign policy adviser to the Democratic candidate, said that “for political purposes, Senator Obama’s opponents on the right have distorted and reframed” his views. Mr. McCain and his surrogates have repeatedly stated that Mr. Obama would be willing to meet “unconditionally” with Mr. Ahmadinejad. But Dr. Rice said that this was not the case for Iran or any other so-called “rogue” state. Mr. Obama believes “that engagement at the presidential level, at the appropriate time and with the appropriate preparation, can be used to leverage the change we need,” Dr. Rice said. “But nobody said he would initiate contacts at the presidential level; that requires due preparation and advance work.”

The Times' defense is nonsense, as both the campaign and newspaper know or should have known. Look no further than Obama's own website:

Obama is the only major candidate who supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions.

The candidate said the same when interviewed by--wait for it!--the New York Times:

Senator Barack Obama said he would “engage in aggressive personal diplomacy” with Iran if elected president, and would offer economic inducements and a possible promise not to seek “regime change” if Iran stopped meddling in Iraq and cooperated on terrorism and nuclear issues. . .

Making clear that he planned to talk to Iran without preconditions, Mr. Obama emphasized further that “changes in behavior” by Iran could possibly be rewarded with membership in the World Trade Organization, other economic benefits and security guarantees.

The Senator's plainly proud of this position--he touted it during the July 23, 2007, Democrat debate:

QUESTION: In 1982, Anwar Sadat traveled to Israel, a trip that resulted in a peace agreement that has lasted ever since.

In the spirit of that type of bold leadership, would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries? . . .

OBAMA: I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them -- which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration -- is ridiculous.

I'm aware the media quit fact-checking lefty pronouncements years ago. But how tough would it have been for Larry Rohter to dig-out the paper's past editions? Or, as Wolf Howling suggests, search on Google? Simple--for anyone but Rohter. Couldn't another NYT editor, assistant or flunky do the research? No need when publishing--as Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs sees it--a partisan "advocacy piece."

Which covers nearly every print article and electronic story. Electing Democrats is the mainstream media's full-time job. Even in service of Obama's naïve and dangerous foreign policy.

MORE:

Mark Levin on National Review Online:

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

Well, Senator Obama, would you have met with Adolph Hitler in 1939? Based on your stated policy, I think you would have. If not, how do you differentiate that situation with your stated position that you would meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea without preconditions (July 2007)? And in your statement today, responding to President Bush's brilliant speech in Israel (which was apparently not directed at you, but you assumed it was), you did what you've done in the past, i.e., claim past presidents share your unique view of diplomacy. But the question remains, would you have met with Hitler in 1939 — without preconditions?

(via Wolf Howling)

Clinton family pitchman James Carville on the Democratic rivals, quoted by Eleanor Clift in Newsweek on May 2nd:

If she gave him one of her cojones, they'd both have two.

(via The Economist)

John Hawkings of Right Wing News polled right-of-center bloggers to rank the 25 most influential people on the right, the top five of which were:

1. Rush Limbaugh

2. Michelle Malkin

3. (tie) Sean Hannity & Mark Steyn

5. Ann Coulter

I was among the bloggers polled; my top twelve votes were:

1. William Kristol



2. Rush Limbaugh



3. Glenn Reynolds



4. James Taranto



5. Michael Barone



6. Mark Steyn



7. Charles Johnson



8. Jonah Goldberg



9. Ann Coulter



10. John Kyl



11. Thomas Sowell



12. John Hawkins

Ronald Reagan is tied for 21st on Hawkins' list. I limited my vote to the living; as I told Hawkins, my top ten conservative influences who are now dead were: Buckley, Reagan, Hayek, Friedman, David Ricardo, Adam Smith, Whittaker Chambers, Hamilton, Lincoln and Martin Luther.

Hawkins' Top 25 is available here.

Barack Obama campaigning last Friday:

It is wonderful to be back in Oregon. Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii, I was not allowed to go to even though I really wanted to visit, but my staff would not justify it.

Video here; lapel pin here.

If John McCain had said it, Democrats and the media would be trumpeting the slip as evidence of senility.

(via Instapundit)

Work has been hectic and blogging thin. So this post is both atypical (for me) and relatively brief. It's a list of my favorite books (both novels and non-fiction, but not short stories or text/reference books), ranked by the number of times re-read. Such an approach is biased toward older works, but--apart from science and science-fiction--I read few books until after law school:

1. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (1999), first read 1999, eleven times (SF)



2. The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes (1995), first read 1996, eight times (history of science)



3. The Annotated Alice by Lewis Carroll and Martin Gardner (1960), first read 1975, seven times (children's lit, political crit, puzzles)



4. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein (1966), first read 1972, seven times (SF)



5. The Last Lion by William Manchester (2 volumes); Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932 (1983) and Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932-1940 (1988), first read 1988, four times, six times (biography)



6. Ball Four by Jim Bouton (1970), first read 1972, six times (autobiography, sports kiss-and-tell)



7. Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady by Florence King (1985), first read 1986, five times (autobiography)



8. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis (2003), first read 2004, four times (economics, sports)



9. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (1938), first read 1980, four times (gothic)



10. Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky (1997), first read 1997, four times (history)

By the way, tied for eleventh--i.e., read about three times each--would be: all seven Jane Austen novels (gothic), all seven Raymond Chandler novels (detective), the remaining Robert Heinlein novels written between 1948-1973, plus Friday from 1982 (SF), as well as Isaac Asimov's The Gods Themselves (1972) (SF).

Thoughts?

UPDATE: below

London Times "American View" columnist Gerard Baker:

Whatever happened to the Great Depression? Not the real one from 70 years ago, the lost decade of unimagined misery and Steinbeckian angst, the worst period in the history of modern capitalism. I mean the replay we were promised this year. The one we were told was the inevitable counterpart to the greatest financial crisis since a couple of medieval Italians first sat down on a Florentine bench and invented the word “bank”.

I don’t know about you but I feel a bit cheated. There we all were, led to believe by so many commentators that the sub-prime crisis was going to force the United States into a new era of dust bowls and breadlines, a slump that would call into question the very functioning of the capitalist system in the world’s largest economy. Carried away on the surging wave of their own economically dubious verbosity, the pundits even speculated that this unavoidable calamity might presage some 1930s-style global political cataclysm to match.

Well, it’s early days, to be fair, but so far the Great Depression 2008 is shaping up to be a Great Disappointment. Not so much The Grapes of Wrath as Raisins of Mild Inconvenience. Last week the Commerce Department reported that the US economy – battered by the credit crunch, pummeled by a housing market collapse and generally devastated by the wild stampede of animal spirits – actually grew in the first three months of the year.

(By the way, the unemployment rate dropped a 10th of a point in April, to 5 % and the number of initial unemployment insurance claims dropped by 18,000 last week; continuing claims have been falling for three weeks. Based on futures trading at Intrade, the odds of a recession this year slipped from 75 % to 25 % since mid-January. Does that matter?--I'm not sure. My financial guru is MaxedOutMama.)

Still, I'm sure about Ken Braun's analysis in comments on CARPE DIEM:

Maybe We Should Sell T-Shirts? --

"The media promised a depression and all we got was yet another lousy quarter of economic expansion."

MORE:

James Pethokoukis in US News & World Report:

It's not just the 1Q number that gives me hope. The jobs numbers—both initial unemployment claims and monthly payroll numbers—are also way below levels commonly seen during recession. Plus, corporate profit growth outside of financials and housing remains strong. Simply put, the recessionistas—to borrow a classic Kudlow zinger—are running out of time with both monetary and fiscal stimulus (bleh!) kicking in gear and the credit markets on the mend. If 2Q isn't negative, then what quarter will be negative, if any? Even the NBER doesn't declare recessions when the economy never actually has a single down quarter.

MORE & MORE:

Assistant Village Idiot in comments:

Even our depressions are prosperous now.

(via reader O'BloodyHell, CARPE DIEM, Instapundit)

From the May 10-16th Economist:

In cartoons there is often a moment when a hapless character, having galloped over a cliff, is still unaware of the fact and hangs suspended in the air, legs pumping wildly, until realisation dawns, gravity intervenes and downfall ensues. Hillary Clinton's campaign looks a bit like that this week.

BTW, the same article says:

Mr Obama's main problem with white voters may have more to do with class than race. To the white working man and woman, he has been seen too often as an aloof elitist, who can't drink whisky, displays a suspicious familiarity with the price of an arugula salad and memorably bowled a deplorable 37 in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

Despite my data, the middle-class may be shrinking after all--in Europe. Preposterous?--"our source was the New York Times," on May 1st:

The European dream is under assault, as the wave of inflation sweeping the globe mixes with this continent’s long-stagnant wages. Families that once enjoyed Europe’s vaunted quality of life are pinching pennies to buy necessities, and cutting back on extras like movies and vacations abroad.

Potentially more disturbing — especially to the political and social order — are the millions across the continent grappling with the realization that they may have lives worse, not better, than their parents.

“I have this feeling that there is a wall in front of us,” said Axel Marceau, a 41-year-old schoolteacher living outside of Frankfurt. “We’re just not going to get any further.”

His concerns are well-founded. A study by the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin found that the broad middle of the German work force, defined as workers making from 70 to 150 percent of the median income, shrunk to 54 percent of the population last year, from 62 percent in 2000. . .

To be sure, Europe’s middle class is still larger than the number of people at risk of falling into poverty — and, by many measures, more protected than the American middle class. But policy makers worry that could change as the European economy starts to feel the drag of an American slowdown and high inflation.

Anyone want to research whether Sweden's still "poorer than Alabama with more crime than Mississippi"?

(via Instapundit)

Conservative Cat:

The Democratic Party's rules for nominating a President are controversial, confusing, and biased toward the powerful. Consider that, and then try to imagine what would happen if these same people designed your health care system.

MORE:

Sunday's WaPo decried poor medical care provided to captured illegal immigrants before they're deported:

Osman's death is a single tragedy in a larger story of life, death and often shabby medical care within an unseen network of special prisons for foreign detainees across the country. Some 33,000 people are crammed into these overcrowded compounds on a given day, waiting to be deported or for a judge to let them stay here.

The medical neglect they endure is part of the hidden human cost of increasingly strict policies in the post-Sept. 11 United States and a lack of preparation for the impact of those policies. . .

The most vulnerable detainees, the physically sick and the mentally ill, are sometimes denied the proper treatment to which they are entitled by law and regulation. They are locked in a world of slow care, poor care and no care, with panic and coverups among employees watching it happen, according to a Post investigation.

The investigation found a hidden world of flawed medical judgments, faulty administrative practices, neglectful guards, ill-trained technicians, sloppy record-keeping, lost medical files and dangerous staff shortages. It is also a world increasingly run by high-priced private contractors. There is evidence that infectious diseases, including tuberculosis and chicken pox, are spreading inside the centers. . .

Nurses who work on the front lines see the problems up close. "Dogs get better care in the dog pound," said Catherine Rouse, a contract nurse at an Arizona detention center who quit after two months last year because she saw what she regarded as "scary medicine" in the prison: patients taken off medications they needed and nurses doing tasks they were not qualified to do. "You don't treat people like that. There has to be some kind of moral fiber," Rouse said.

The WaPo story was intended as another Bush Administration exposé. This misses the real message, as Right Wing News' John Hawkins observes:

So what happens when the government takes over YOUR CARE and "Dogs get better care in the dog pound?" What happens when all of us, except the richest people who can go elsewhere, are stuck in a "system teetering on collapse."

Liberals can promise anything that they want, but what you just read is the reality of what happens when you put an organization as incompetent as the federal government in charge of health care.

(via Wolf Howling)

Stephen King plainly doesn't read this blog:

I don't want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV, but the fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don't, then you've got, the Army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that. It's, it's not as bright. So, that's my little commercial for that.

This is flatly wrong. Further, as Right Wing News' John Hawkins remarks:

[T]here is a subtext here that you often see on the Left; many, but not all, liberals look at our troops as dumb, thuggish, violence prone, deranged, immoral brutes.

Will they admit that?

Answers:

1) Like love, lefty snobbery means never having to say you're sorry.

2) They won't even concede their math doesn't add-up.

Matt Labash in the May 5th Weekly Standard:

Each of us had his own reason for coming to the Superdome on April 11-12. Renamed "Super Love," the stadium that became a national symbol for violence and neglect during Katrina was now hosting the 10-year anniversary extravaganza of V-Day, the annual vagina-themed observance to end abuse against women, the capstone of which features Eve Ensler's ubiquitous play, The Vagina Monologues.

Some of us probably came after we heard the ruckus that resulted when Monologues regular Jane Fonda dropped the c-bomb while publicizing the event on the Today Show. Others might have been drawn by Mayor Ray Nagin, ever game to embarrass his city, who welcomed Ensler and company by christening himself a "vagina-friendly mayor. I am in!" Still others just wanted to see Oprah, even if Oprah ended up bagging the event, leaving attendees settling for Oprah's best friend, Gayle.

But if there's one reason we all came, it was to celebrate our vaginas. Not me, necessarily. I don't have one, strictly speaking. But I know a lot of people who do. And I came to celebrate theirs.

Senator Barack Obama, quoted by Matthew Continetti in the May 12th Weekly Standard:

* "These days, [Obama] says, he attends the 11 a.m. Sunday service at Trinity . . . every week.. . . His pastor, Wright, has become a close confidant." (Chicago Sun-Times, April 5, 2004)

* "'Senator Obama is proud of his pastor and his church.'" (Obama campaign statement reported in the New York Times, April 30, 2007)

* "[Wright] is like an old uncle who sometimes will say things I don't agree with." (February 25, 2008)

* "I don't think that my church is actually particularly controversial." (March 2, 2008)

* "I can no more disown [Wright] than I can disown the black community." (March 18, 2008)

* "I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened over the spectacle that we saw yesterday.. . . The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago." (April 29, 2008)

Washington in the Spring was never as delightful as yesterday, which I spent at Nationals Park up-close-and-personal to a 5-2 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates. Watching the Sunday night ESPN game was less pleasurable, mostly due to the expected, but always awful presence of analyst Joe Morgan, a Hall-of-Fame second baseman (mostly for the Reds circa mid-70s), but a first-class idiot (how many times can someone say a batter is "sitting dead red"?). It got better today when a friend mentioned a great website: FireJoeMorgan.com.

The site's not just Morgan-hating--it covers idiocy in sports journalism generally. Though liberally profane, it provides important correctives; an example, "Fisking" uber-sports writer Frank Deford (of SI), with Deford bolded and "Ken Tremendous's" take in normal type:

Anti-modernization tracts are pretty much our bread and butter here at FJM. Rarely are they this multi-grained and buttery. Hit it, Frank Deford.

Possibly because I'm scared of technology, I'm not always pleased by what are called "advances" in our society. Sometimes I think we were better off in more innocent times -- which is, to say, back when I could understand stuff better.

At least he admits it. One point for admitting it. Deford 1, Sanity 0.

Actually, I consider myself secular Amish.

Admitting it again doesn't get you a second point.

Synthetic rackets pretty much ruined the beauty of tennis. Children have no business swinging lethal aluminum baseball bats. Now there's even talk that a new bathing suit made by Speedo, in which all sorts of swimmers are setting world records, constitutes "technological doping."

The tennis racket argument is one to which I weirdly subscribe. I used to follow tennis fanatically. The first time I ever voluntarily woke up early was to watch Breakfast at Wimbledon when I was like 7. But the other things...aluminum bats is a cost issue, I think, for little leagues and colleges and stuff. The bathing suit thing...? Never heard of it. How much of an advantage can a speedo be? Does it have an outboard motor attached to it? (Hope it's not an inboard motor! Hey-oooo!) (Ouch! Now that's what I call a "close shave!" Heeeyyyyy-oooooo! )

What were we talking about? Oh yes. The Unabomber was giving us an anti-tech panegyric.

You know what's even worse? Technology has made it so there are so few surprises left in the world. Is that really an advance? Parents know whether their baby is a boy or girl long before it's born.

Yes, we should all be like the peasants, and birth our babies in the fields, and decorate our nurseries in gender-neutral yellow. (You do know you can opt not to learn the sex, right? It's a choice. Choices are usually considered good things.)

You can tell who's calling you on the phone before you answer.

I'm calling bullshit louder than I've ever called bullshit in my personal history. Is there a single person on this crazy blue marble we call "Earth" who does not like caller ID? Caller ID is the greatest thing in the universe. How many unwanted calls have been avoided thanks to caller ID? A hundred billion? Does Frank Deford not know the specific pleasure one has when one looks at one's phone and sees "Work" and rotates one's Blackberry toggle wheel thingy to "ignore?" Does Frank Deford prefer -- when awaiting an important call -- to answer his ringing phone and hear the voice of a representative from Wachovia Bank who wants to know if all of his investment needs are being met? I ask you, people -- does Frank Deford not have one crazy ex-girlfriend?

There's much more. And, as the URL suggests, the site's particularly good at torching Morgan, especially regarding Morgan's weekly ESPN Internet chats; here's the first part of the same Ken T's April 21st story:

I have invented a name for the ESPN intern whose job it is to type in/clean up/invent Joe's answers to these chats. It's Bill Fremp. He's 22, he went to Conn College, but he's originally from Edgewood KY and is a diehard Reds fan, which is why he's covering for Joe by judiciously editing Joe's comments and stream-of-(lack of)-consciousness ramblings, and entering semi-coherent versions of same into the record. Let's see how Bill does today.

Joe Morgan: I may be the only one that feels this way, but I still believe the weather has had an adverse affect on some of th ebest hitters in the game.

Nicely-placed typo, Bill. You can't fool me. Joe's not typing this.

In places like Detroit and Boston, hitters are struggling. But you have to give credit to the guys who have persevered and fought through the cold weather. But as it warms up, there will be more offense coming from some of the best hitters in the game.

You've studied old chats, haven't you, Billy m'boy? You remember that sometimes Joe says "but" at the beginning of every sentence. You're good, I'll give you that. You're very good.

Randy(Knoxville,TN): Good morning Joe!! My question for you is about Alfonso Soriano...what are your thoughts on him as the lead-off man for the Cub offense? While he can provide instant offense with the long ball, he also strikes out a bunch and doesnt draw many walks. Last year he struck out 99 more times than he drew a walk(130 K's vs 31 BB). I love him as a hitter, but not at the top. What do you think?Thanks, Joe.

Joe Morgan: I have never felt like he should be a leadoff hitter, but both Torre and Piniella used him there because he felt more comfortable. But if I'm paying a guy millions of dollars, I'm going to hit him where he can serve the team the best. His on-base percentage is not where a good leadoff hitter's should be at.

Oh, Billy. Billy Billy Billy. You've already screwed up. The real Joe would have talked about how Soriano can steal bases and make things happen. The real Joe would never admit that there is such a thing as "on-base percentage," because the real Joe thinks "on-base percentage" is a made-up stat relating to Quidditch matches. The real Joe could not recall off-hand two teams Soriano has played for, much less their managers. This is far too good an answer. Ease off. . .

Jeff (Columbus, OH): Joe, what effect do losses like the ones the Indians have suffered against the Angels and Red Sox have on the team? As a manager, can you keep sending a closer out there that no one (other than yourself apparently) has faith in without damaging the team? Thanks

Joe Morgan: Their pitching has not been up to par. Teams like the A's were expected to be last in the west, but they're overachieving right now. The Indians and Tigers are underachieving, so you have to keep things in perspective.

There we go. Doesn't answer the question, makes a weird comment about the A's overachieving (and "teams like the A's [being] expected to be last in the west," which = ???), then drags the Tigers into it, and never mentions the issue of Borowski at all. There's your template, Bill.

There's much more juicy "inside-baseball" at FireJoeMorgan.com. I'm thrilled to learn it's not just me.

MORE:

Via reader OBH, from USA Today:

The broomsticks they hold between their legs can't help them fly. The Snitch is not a winged golden ball but a young man who sprints across the field at lightning speed. And at times, the game looks like the mongrel offspring of rugby, dodge ball and soccer. But somehow it all works.

The first intercollegiate Quidditch match was held here this month, and though this version of the game is earthbound, it's taking off. Originally played by wizards darting about on broomsticks in the Harry Potter novels, the game is now taking root on college campuses. . .

Quidditch surfaced at Middlebury two falls ago when a handful of students gathered to play a rudimentary form of the game on Sunday afternoons, making up rules extrapolated from the books.

By this month's Intercollegiate Quidditch World Cup Fall Festival, there were banners, team processions worthy of Olympic opening ceremonies, halftime entertainment and 12 seven-person coed Middlebury teams vying for the chance to play the visiting team from Vassar College.

Having at one time hung out with Gordon "How to Write a Novel" Lish after gaining an undergraduate degree from a school that employed Carver and worshiped Bukowski, lately I've been reading British fiction (Middlemarch last week; started Oliver Twist yesterday), while listening to Dave's True Story [from the Sex Without Bodies album], in particular, the jazzy I'll Never Read Trollope Again:

I've an appetite for fiction
No post-modern work can slake
I refuse to buy a book
Unless it's thicker than a steak
Now Gordon Lish and Barry Hannah
Have their partisans and shills
But I prefer Victoriana
For my literary thrills

And of all the British authors
Who were writing at that time
There's one special British author
I find especially sublime
Now Austen is awesome
And Dickens is a kick
But no one packs a wallop
Quite like Trollope
Yes Trollope is the one I most adore
But my days of reading Trollope are no more

I was sitting in a quaint cafe
With a favorite tome and some cafe au lait
But my luck ran out when you came my way
Now I'll never read Trollope again

You spied the cover as you slithered near
And said "The 1800s--that's my favorite year."
And then you sat right down and now I fear
That I'll never read Trollope again

Armed with Trollope and a cup or two
I could while the day away
Now just a dollop
Makes me think of you
And that's too high a price to pay

I'll read Kafka's tale about that lonely vermin
I'll read every Jonathan Edwards sermon
Hell, I'll read Emmanuel Kant in German
But I'll never read Trollope again

I used to read him with a friend or two
I used to read him by myself
But to read him now only makes me blue
So I've tossed him from my shelf

I'll read Don Quixote five or six times through
I'll read Jackie Collins till my face turns blue
Hell, I'll even read Bukowski too
But I'll never read Trollope again
No I'll never read Trollope again

From the May 3-9th Economist :

Over the past 60 years the Netherlands has been one of Europe's biggest success stories. The Dutch are among the richest (and tallest) people on earth. Their social tolerance is widely admired. Yet immigration and the rise of Islam have triggered a backlash. Rotterdam may soon become the EU's first big Muslim-majority city. The meteoric political career of Pim Fortuyn, a populist who was assassinated in 2002, followed two years later by the murder of Theo van Gogh, a film-maker, by a (Dutch-born) Islamist radical has left scars on a society that once took pride in its embrace of multiculturalism. The Netherlands is a place that is now palpably fretful about its future.

A recent Harvard study found that "Average life expectancy in the United States has increased steadily in the past few decades, rising by more than 7 y for men and more than 6 y for women between 1960 and 2000." Between 1983 and 1999, "Men nationally saw life expectancy rise 3.1 years to 74.1 years. . .[and] Women nationally saw life expectancy rise by 1.28 years . . . to about 79.6 years." The study also reported that, during that same period, "life expectancy declined significantly in 11 counties for men (by 1.3 y) and in 180 counties for women (by 1.3 y)." The authors blamed localized declines in general on "increased mortality from lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), diabetes, and a range of other noncommunicable diseases" compounded by--among men--"[h]igher HIV/AIDS and homicide deaths."

So what's the New York Times lede?: "Gap in Life Expectancy Widens for the Nation". Which is at least accurate, if biased; again, life expectancy for all income levels rose. But the Times downplays that fact in a follow-up story:

Throughout the 20th century, it was an American birthright that each generation would live longer than the last. Year after year, almost without exception, the anticipated life span of the average American rose inexorably, to 78 years in 2005 from 61 years in 1933, when comprehensive data first became available.

But new research shows that those reassuring nationwide gains mask a darker and more complex reality. A pair of reports out this month affirm that the rising tide of American health is not lifting all boats, and that there are widening gaps in life expectancy based on the interwoven variables of income, race, sex, education and geography.

Further, the Times fingered lack of health insurance and the asserted unavailability of high-quality medical care among the poor. But the declines were primarily regional, and "weren't strongly associated with race or income."

Rather, the study pointed elsewhere:

Researchers said they don't think poor access to health care can be blamed for all of the declines in life expectancy. "Even if everyone were insured, we'd still be seeing most of the pattern that we're seeing here," [study co-author] Dr. Murray said.

Indeed, the study blamed smoking and obesity, i.e., un-constrained individual choice--according to the Washington Post, "About half of all deaths in the United States are attributable to a small number of "modifiable" behaviors and exposures, such as smoking, poor diet and lack of exercise." Then there's criminal homicide, and death from HIV/AIDS (declining for a decade, the authors admit). So most factors retarding longevity are independent of health care or insurance.

Still, the Times is a model of objectivity compared with the leftist AmericaBlog. There, political consultant Joe Sudbay called the study's results "[a]nother proud legacy of the Bush administration." One problem: the study's data covered "every year between 1961 and 1999." That can't be Bush's fault, except among deranged Democrats viewing politics via a "flux capacitor".

(via EconLog)

From the May 3-9 Economist :

When the Fed helped JPMorgan Chase to rescue Bear Stearns, it sent a signal to the markets—a kind of “No Bank Left Behind” Act. If the Fed was willing to save an investment bank, without any retail depositors, then the system would not be brought down by a "plumbing problem", such as the collapse of a counterparty in the derivatives market.