Ruling through fear - even when they are out of power

Richard Clarke writes about it here.

Jon Stewart - "If you don't stick to your values when they are tested, they're not values, they're hobbies."

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Froomkin

I enjoy Froomkin as a blogger on the Washington Post, smart people often have good ideas.  Here he is writing for the Nieman Journalism Lab

Acknowledging our Influences

From Andy -- who is actually quoting Sotomayor below.

The historical profession has been in an internal war of this sort for more then a century.  Early in the last century many historians actually believed that they could be objective.  And that those who were not were not seen by many as professional historians.  What seems like a simple concept, is often purposely misunderstood by absolutists.  The goal is to be as objective as possible, to overcome our prejudices, while understanding that we will never be able to do so.  Acknowledging our ultimate inability to so is not a sign of weakness.  It is a sign of our humanity.  Something I see as strength. 

“Judge Cedarbaum... believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law. Although I agree with and attempt to work toward Judge Cedarbaum's aspiration, I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases. And I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society.

Whatever the reasons... we may have different perspectives, either as some theorists suggest because of our cultural experiences or as others postulate because we have basic differences in logic and reasoning....

Our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that—it's an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others....

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.

Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases.... I am... not so sure that I agree with the statement. First... there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.”

Brooks you've done it again

Long voyage home

Best part:

But the Republican Party has mis-learned that history. The party sometimes seems cut off from the concrete relationships of neighborhood life. Republicans are so much the party of individualism and freedom these days that they are no longer the party of community and order. This puts them out of touch with the young, who are exceptionally community-oriented. It gives them nothing to say to the lower middle class, who fear that capitalism has gone haywire. It gives them little to say to the upper middle class, who are interested in the environment and other common concerns.

The Republicans talk more about the market than about society, more about income than quality of life. They celebrate capitalism, which is a means, and are inarticulate about the good life, which is the end. They take things like tax cuts, which are tactics that are good in some circumstances, and elevate them to holy principle, to be pursued in all circumstances.

Technorati Tags: Brooks, Politics

In a data driven world . . .

we are always trying to understand more about how people make decisions.  One of the unintended consequences is that you end up with a lot of answers that don't make a lot of sense.  Asking people about why they made a choice can easily lead you astray.  The fact is they often don't know why they did this or that.  But because you are asking, they feel compelled to give you an answer.  An answer that is often false, leaving the questioner less informed then when they began their questioning.  In fact, the very fact that people will have to explain themselves, effects the choices that they make. 

I write this because we seem to be in a quest for more of everything, even knowledge.  And too often we forget to ask ourselves what we are really learning from all this data collection.

Radio Lab (a great show, by the way) covers this well in an episode called Choice.

Here is an interesting blog post about the subject as well.

Rooting for the Republican Party

Those who know me may be surprised to read the title of this post, but I truly am. I can root for them, because the only way that they are going to be able to come back is to have better ideas. I want to have a choice as to who to vote for, and they have not given me one in quite awhile.

The link below talks about the start of a 3rd party -- an idea that at least seems intellectually plausible. But is it really necessary? When we look back at history we see that the party's have been very loose structures, with coalitions often crossing party lines. Regional differences often separated those within a single party. In essence, what our congress, and by proxy, what governed us were coalitions. They were not that different from the coalitions that permeate the governments of Europe. Hubert Humphrey (D) had a hell of a lot more in common with Everett Dirksen of Illinois (R) then he did with Richard Russell (D) from Georgia. See the breakdown of the regional votes for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 below as an example.

The original House version:

* Southern Democrats: 7-87 (7%-93%)
* Southern Republicans: 0-10 (0%-100%)

* Northern Democrats: 145-9 (94%-6%)
* Northern Republicans: 138-24 (85%-15%)

The Senate version:

* Southern Democrats: 1-20 (5%-95%) (only Senator Ralph Yarborough of Texas voted in favor)
* Southern Republicans: 0-1 (0%-100%) (this was Senator John Tower of Texas)
* Northern Democrats: 45-1 (98%-2%) (only Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia opposed the measure)
* Northern Republicans: 27-5 (84%-16%) (Senators Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa, Barry Goldwater of Arizona, Edwin L. Mechem of New Mexico, Milward L. Simpson of Wyoming, and Norris H. Cotton of New Hampshire opposed the measure)


The Gaucho Politico: At What Point is a Third Part Viable

friendfeed please . . .

bring back your drop-down options  -- the following is quoted from: The Inquistr

Did someone send out a memo about hating dropdown lists and I missed it?

Everywhere it seems in Friendfeed, including its bookmarklet, dropdown lists have been banished to some netherworld. Instead we have some fancy combination of a text entry box and a auto complete dropdown. What this means is that if you don’t want the item that is displayed in the text area you click on the little ‘X’ to make it go away. Then you start typing the name, group or whatever in the text area and magically a dropdown list will appear with a list of items Friendfeed thinks you mean based on the letters you have typed in.

Gee, thanks. Good luck figuring that out all you new users as it was it took me a minute or two to figure about what the hell was going on. so tell me – other than being a way to show off some ninja javascript skill WTF is the point? Are proper dropdown lists so un-cool, even though they are simple to figure out and use, that they need to be replaced with a ridiculous option. C’mon give me a break.

In the end

Friendfeed has lost some of the best things that made it attractive and as a result it has become more work. I have always said that Friendfeed was one of the best tools out there for people need to keep their fingertips on the pulse of what is happening.

Couldn't agree more

Pelosi, Bush, . . . whoever was involved, no matter what party.  I don't necessarily want criminal prosecution, but we need to investigate. I wouldn't rule it out. 

Buckley

I enjoyed this article by Christopher Buckley -- I may pick up the book.

In a way I miss the arguments from the right from someone like Buckley.  While I did not often agree with him, at least the arguments were interesting.  And he certainly was a character.  I can't say that anybody has filled that void.

I enjoy Brooks and Andrew Sullivan, but the problem is that they both (at least I know Sullivan did) voted for Obama in the last election. 

I am posting this using Scribefire, seeing how it works.  So far so good.

Friendfeed

I added some Friendfeed Widgets on the right side of the page -- feel free to comment or even join my rooms.

I enjoy and get Friendfeed more then I do twitter, though I understand how twitter is more useful in some circumstances. What I like most about Friendfeed is that I have a little button in my browser that allows me to feed any of the ten or so "rooms" I am a member of. It is easy to then embed those "rooms" in other blogs, or nings or whatever. It is also easy to have information automatically post to these friendfeed. In my "Joe's Blogs" widget I have Eschaton, and Andrew Sullivan, as well as others to come, publish there.

Populist Anger

I do think that people can go too far in their anger toward those who earn money and have done well. It is important to remember that elements of capitalism require that people attempt to obtain wealth.

Earn is the operative phrase here. Anger is justified towards those who whine about what they should get, no matter the circumstance. This Matt Taibbi piece about the AIG executive who published his resignation in New York Times captures this perfectly.

I really enjoy Gram Parsons songs . . .

, in fact I often enjoy covers of his songs more than the original. Raul Malo's version of Hot Burrito #1 is one of the my favorite songs. Tribute albums very often disappoint, Return of the Grievous Angel does not. It is an Emmylou Harris project, and she really matches the songs to people who get the most out of those songs.

Norah Jones is not on the album, but this rendition of She is really quite good.

I don't know what he is doing with the guitar . . .

but I love it. It's a Daniel Lanois song (it may be him playing the guitar), producer of Emmylou, U2, Peter Gabriel, and you can actually hear common elements between all of them, even though the music itself is very different. And by the way, this album Teatro is amazing.

Featuring Derek Trucks . . . named for

the album from which this song came

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