Is Obama Starting to Welcome Their Hatred?

For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.

 For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.

 We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace--business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

 They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

 Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me--and I welcome their hatred.

 I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.

- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Halloween, October 31st, but except for the decades-old linguistic style couldn't you picture Barack Obama saying that sometime soon, in conjunction with the Occupy Wall Street protests?

I've been liking to draw a parallel between the Barack Obama Presidency and the Presidencies of Harry Truman and Bill Clinton, respectively, in the aftermath of the 2010 midterm elections. My argument, as regular readers (if any exist) may recall, was that Obama should start out sounding like Clinton, wanting to move to the center and compromise, but then anticipate an eventual and necessary shift to a more "Give 'em hell!" Trumanesque strategy once the Republicans refused to compromise. But honestly, for the first time in a few years I'm noticing the parallels between Obama and Franklin Roosevelt. Part of that is because of Obama's new behavior, and part of it is from being reminded about FDR's first time.

Death Penalty Weirdness

From a couple of recent polls on the death penalty, presumably inspired by the Troy Davis fiasco: in a CNN/Opinion Research Co. poll, people are split on the appropriate punishment for murder, with 48% favoring death and 50% favoring life without parole. But, in that same poll, 72% think an innocent person has been executed in the last five years. Meanwhile, a Gallup poll finds 61% saying they favor the death penalty for murder (not specifying life without parole as the alternative always gets a higher support level for capital punishment), but 64% don't believe that the death penalty deters murders. They also find that 52% believe the death penalty is administered fairly. If I assume all of these are valid percentages, and if I line the numbers up so that no one who takes an nth-percentile anti-death-penalty position on one issue will take a position less than the nth-percentile on any other question, then I get the following distribution of American citizens. 23% believe that the death penalty deters murder, and is applied fairly, and that no innocents have been executed in the last five years, and accordingly support the death penalty, even over life without parole. 9% are like those 23%, but they do think we've killed some innocent people recently. The next 16% are like the last 9%, but don't think the death penalty deters murder. They do think it's applied fairly, however, and therefore support it completely. Another 4% follow that 16% in thinking that the death penalty is applied fairly, but would prefer life without parole. Finally we have 9% who don't think the death penalty deters murder, do think it sometimes kills innocent people, do not think it is applied fairly, and do not support it when given the alternative of life without parole, but do support it when not prompted with that alternative. Then we have 35% who oppose the death penalty on every possible measure.

Expansion: A Quantitative Approach

Baseball has apparently decided to destroy all numerical elegance in the structuring of the leagues and the post-season, starting next year. That's a shame, because they could've decided to make the game considerably more elegant. I get that a recession probably isn't the best time for this, but for a good many decades the game of baseball had sixteen teams, eight in each league. The neat thing about this is that the entire league was on a power of two. Then we had fifty-or-so years of expansion, which took us from a sixteen-team world to... a thirty-team world. So close to thirty-two, the next power of two up, and yet so far. So, we have unequal leagues and awkward divisions, or at least we had those things until next year, when we'll have odd-numbered leagues and awkward playoffs. There are also certain teams that struggle mightily to attract attention and attendance in their current cities. So, which current teams seem to be most inopportunely located, and which cities lacking a team seem most like they could add one? Let's take a look!

On Accuracy

I just went to the The Ides of March, George Clooney's new political thriller/drama/whatever movie. Now, of course, I'm not going to say anything about its plot, or anything, but the movie's been getting some discussion in political blog-y circles so I thought I'd address a certain criticism of it, namely that it does not accurately represent the aspects of the political process that make up its setting. As best I can tell, being not a political insider myself but knowing a fair amount about how politics actually works, second- or third-hand, this is basically true. But I found that I didn't mind that at all watching the movie. Basically it's willing suspension of disbelief: because I was interested in the story and the characters, I didn't care that the setting was not 100% realistic. Maybe it wasn't even 80% realistic, or 60% realistic. But that's okay, because the point is how the setting affects the plot and the characters. That's just a personal opinion, but I don't feel like the lack of accuracy to the 'real world' detracted from the actual stuff of the movie, even remotely.

Uncharacteristic David Brooks Rebuttal

Unlike a lot of liberal bloggers (who are all many orders of magnitude more famous than I am), I don't often write posts responding to David Brooks columns. And I'm not going to respond to very much of his latest, but there is one line I'd like to address:

Liberals see it [tax policy] as a way to punish the greedy and redress the iniquities of capitalism. Conservatives see tax increases as an assault on the enterprising class perpetrated by arrogant central planners.

The latter half of that statement is true. Hell, the latter half of the former half of that statement is true. Liberals do, indeed, see the tax code as a tool to smooth income inequality. Because it is. Maybe it's not the best one, but it'll get the job done. But, uh, punish the greedy? That's really not the point. Yeah, it's about redistribution, but it's about redistribution because a thousand dollars each in the hands of a thousand poor people will create a lot more well-being than one-million dollars in the hands of one multi-millionaire banker. It's because we want to take care of the less fortunate, and the only way to do that is to ask the more fortunate to pay a numerically, though not philosophically or ethically, disproportionate share. Progressive taxation is a pretty direct way to get there.

Prove It

Apparently Paul Ryan and Haley Barbour have endorsed Herman Cain's nonsensical 9-9-9 plan. This would appear to be a sign of the non-joke nature of the Caindidacy. (Oh, lame Herman Cain puns will not go away until he does.) This is very surprising. But it is not at all unwelcome. Here's my message to the Republicans, and in particular to the Tea Party Republicans, about Herman Cain:

You know how we liberals keep saying that y'all just oppose Obama because he's black? And you keep saying that we're the real racists and it's all about small government principles? Prove it. Make Herman Cain your nominee in 2012 and I will officially admit that your opposition to Obama is not a cipher for racism. And then I will laugh, very heartily, during the months of the general election campaign, while Obama tears through your woefully incompetent candidate. Go ahead, I dare you.

Realignment Lunacy

(Warning, this is going to be a little bit of a rant.)

So, apparently the Houston Astros are going to move from the National League to the American League, negating the impact of the 1998 move of the Milwaukee Brewers from the American League to the National League in order to allow for the two new expansion teams, the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, to reside one in each league without having, uh, fifteen-team leagues. Oh well, even-numbered leagues were nice while they lasted. Which was from 1871 through 2011, apparently. Meanwhile, we're apparently about to have ten-team playoffs, five in each league.

Look, do you people just not get how numbers work in this context?