Tag: New Yorker

A Kind of Relief

George Packer made several excellent points last night, one of which seems to be this morning’s emerging “serious person” consensus on the Giffords shooting and the political motivations (and their sources) that all-too-clearly underlie it:

It would be a kind of relief if Loughner operated not out of any coherent political context but just his own fevered brain.

Emphasis on coherent. Because it’s plain there are a number of right-wing talking points in this guy’s spew. Gold standard, government takeover, and other usual suspects have already emerged from his internet wake without the official investigation even getting started. But because the spew was most definitely a spew, and one that somewhat rarely qualified as English, well, those were just coincidental ravings of a lunatic and not something he heard repeatedly and then acted on. Just a lone nut, and both sides do it anyway.
Well, Cokie, Packer is ready for you:

…even so, the tragedy wouldn’t change this basic fact: for the past two years, many conservative leaders, activists, and media figures have made a habit of trying to delegitimize their political opponents. Not just arguing against their opponents, but doing everything possible to turn them into enemies of the country and cast them out beyond the pale. Instead of “soft on defense,” one routinely hears the words “treason” and “traitor.” The President isn’t a big-government liberal—he’s a socialist who wants to impose tyranny. He’s also, according to a minority of Republicans, including elected officials, an impostor. Even the reading of the Constitution on the first day of the 112th Congress was conceived as an assault on the legitimacy of the Democratic Administration and Congress.

Absolutely right. Just absolutely goddamned right. It is no coincidence that the entire week’s House agenda was instantly sidelined. Boehner and the rest knew the whole purpose of it was to create a hateful political sideshow. Sound and fury signifying nothing, but most certainly working to gin up some more fury. What’s the point of continuing with it if you can’t go before the microphone to talk about the coming tyranny? So that will just have to wait till next week. Because the Beltway media culture steadfastly refuses to learn from anything, least of all repeated, targeted domestic terror attacks. Time and time again, whether it be against the IRS, a member of Congress, government buildings, what have you, these are each dismissed as lone nuts operating on some incoherent babble and most definitely not taking marching orders from other lunatics that are routinely given the microphone on the most popular media outlets in the country. Don’t worry your pretty little head over the fact that their manifesto contains extensive quotes from Beck, Limbaugh, Bachman, Palin, whomever. That’s just incoherent ramblings. Both sides are equally guilty, and here’s an anonymous DailyKos comment that proves it.

We’ll Always Have Venice

Anthony Gottleib reports on the electoral process of the Venetian Republic:

Thirty electors were chosen by lot, and then a second lottery reduced them to nine, who nominated forty candidates in all, each of whom had to be approved by at least seven electors in order to pass to the next stage. The forty were pruned by lot to twelve, who nominated a total of twenty-five, who needed at least nine nominations each. The twenty-five were culled to nine, who picked an electoral college of forty-five, each with at least seven nominations. The forty-five became eleven, who chose a final college of forty-one. Each member proposed one candidate, all of whom were discussed and, if necessary, examined in person, whereupon each elector cast a vote for every candidate of whom he approved. The candidate with the most approvals was the winner, provided he had been endorsed by at least twenty-five of the forty-one.

And yet I feel like that would still work better than today’s Senate.

South of the Border

Very fine piece on the foolishness of our current immigration debate:

Two days earlier, Senator John McCain, of Arizona, in a floor speech defending his state’s newly passed law requiring local officers to investigate individuals’ immigration status, described “an unsecured border between Arizona and Mexico, which has led to violence, the worst I have ever seen.” He went on to cite numbers for illegal immigrants apprehended last year “that stagger.”

In fact those numbers are surprising: they are sharply down, according to the Border Patrol—by more than sixty per cent since 2000, to five hundred and fifty thousand apprehensions last year, the lowest figure in thirty-five years. Illegal immigration, although hard to measure, has clearly been declining. The southern border, far from being “unsecured,” is in better shape than it has been for years—better managed and less porous. It has been the beneficiary of security-budget increases since September 11th, which have helped slow the pace of illegal entries, if not as dramatically as the economic crash did. Violent crime, though rising in Mexico, has fallen this side of the border: in Southwestern border counties it has dropped more than thirty per cent in the past two decades. It’s down in Senator McCain’s Arizona. According to F.B.I. statistics, the four safest big cities in the United States—San Diego, Phoenix, El Paso, and Austin—are all in border states.

South of the Border

Optimistically assuming that demand for [helium] continues to grow only a few percent each year, and that the entirety of the globe’s remaining natural gas reserves will be processed for their helium, the NRC report estimates there will only be enough to last another 40 years.

Lee Billings, writing for Seed.
Articles like this make me think we are going to be back to living in caves and trading hides along the riverfront inside of a century. It sounds like apocalyptic science fiction, but perhaps there is a narrow window of opportunity for any global civilization to either figure out how to efficiently get off its particular rock (and access vastly greater industrial resources that (hopefully) reside nearby) or be stuck there, forever.
Seems like we’re deep down in the slowness more every day.

It has never been serviced or cleaned other than blowing out the dust with a service station hose. … I have typed on this typewriter every book I have written including three not published. Including all drafts and correspondence I would put this at about five million words over a period of 50 years.

Cormac McCarthy, on the Olivetti Lettera 32 he purchased at a pawn shop for $50 in 1963, which sold at auction for $254,500. Yes, he’s got another one.

(via Daring Fireball)

True Lies Wide Shut

Every now and then a statement rolls in front of your eyes that you stop and re-read, then think about, and then read again. But it’s the same information every time. Rest assured, I am not making this up:

After he finished making “True Lies,” [director James] Cameron called [Stanley] Kubrick, by then a recluse, and invited himself over. They spent a day, in the basement of Kubrick’s house in the English countryside, watching “True Lies” at Kubrick’s flatbed editing station.

I imagine some of the conversations went like this:

“Yeah, Stan, that 2001 was okay, but, man, take. a look. at this. You are goddamned right I had Schwarzenegger and Jaimie Lee Curtis kiss in front of a mushroom cloud. You are goddamned right I did that. Nobody does that but Cameron! ”

I admire the man for his brass balls (read all about them in the source article in the New Yorker). Coulda been a salesman. (Tough racket.) Also for this:

Cameron was born in Canada, and grew up in a small town not far from Niagara Falls. (He revoked his application for American citizenship after Bush won the election in 2004.)

It’s a great profile. Especially since the author, Dana Goodyear, saw fit to include this gem:

As an instance of feminist iconography it perhaps leaves something to be desired.

Get away from Aliens, you bitch!

End of Days

Rick Hertzberg and I agree on three out of four things:

1. The Beck-Limbaugh purification of the Republican Party will continue apace.

Populist nihilism—increasingly the default position within the G.O.P., especially on national level—still has a lot of energy left in it. As the party’s core shrinks (a process that will continue even if its share of the vote increases relative to the Democratic share), the resentful right’s stranglehold will grow stronger.

2. The Republicans will gain seats in next year’s midterm election.

The party holding the White House always loses seats in a new President’s first midterm, the only exception being the special case of 2002, the year of Bush-Rove post-9/11 electoral terrorism.

3. The right, and much of the commentariat, will discover a cause-and-effect relationship between No. 1, above, and No. 2.

They’ll figure it this way: post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

Then we diverge. He offers:

4. President Obama will be reëlected.

He’ll be the safe choice. Having been elected on hope, change, and adventure, he’ll be reëlected on reassurance, stability, and … experience.

I think it’s more like:

4. If unemployment is below 10% nationally, Obama may be reelected, depending on opponent. If it’s below 8%, he will win in a landslide regardless of oponent.

It’s really as simple as that.

We’re back in agreement on the bonus Fifth Thing, which is presented more as a prayer:

5. The number of Americans who realize that more of our problems stem from structure (especially the Senate, and most especially the filibuster) than from politicians’ lack of moral fiber will reach the cusp of a tipping point.

Amen.