Many say Tina Fey in her 30 Rock pose.
Some say Mary McDonnell as Battlestar Galactica’s Laura Roslin. (Much more on the “BSG ticket” here.)
I’ve even heard Lara Croft Tomb Raider (not sure whether they meant the Angelina Jolie version or the video game version)
You decide.
P.S. I’m definitely not the only one engaged in this critical debate.
According to the national Libertarian Party (via Munger), Bob Barr is the only candidate who has met the legal requirements to appear on the presidential ballot in Texas.
Bob Barr is slated to be the only presidential candidate on the ballot in Texas after Republicans and Democrats missed the Aug. 26 deadline to file in the state.
“Unless the state of Texas violates its own election laws, Congressman Barr will be the only presidential candidate on the ballot,” says Russell Verney, campaign manager for the Barr Campaign and the former campaign manager for Ross Perot. “Texas law makes no exceptions for missing deadlines.”
The Texas Secretary of State Web site shows only Bob Barr as the official candidate for president in Texas.
“We know all about deadlines,” says Verney. “We are up against them constantly in our fight to get on the ballot across the nation. When we miss deadlines, we get no second chances. This is a great example of how unreasonable deadlines chill democracy.”
“Republicans and Democrats make certain that third party candidates are held to ballot access laws, no matter how absurd or unreasonable,” says Verney. “Therefore, Republicans and Democrats should be held to the same standards.”
Over the past several decades, Libertarians have spent millions of dollars, filed countless numbers of lawsuits while being sued countless numbers of times over their right to be on the ballot. Thousands of people have put in their time, energy, earnings and passion in an effort that, in the end, simply allows a voter to see a candidate’s name printed on the ballot.
Throughout every battle that we engage in each election season, we must dot every “I” and cross every “T” or face the consequences of failure for our ballot drives.
Even when we follow the letter of the law, as we did in Pennsylvania, we still face challenges that drain our financial resources and strain our staff.
Should we give Barack Obama and John McCain a pass in Texas and look the other way? Would they do that for us?
You know who would make sense for Barr to have as an ally here? Barack Obama. If McCain can’t win Texas’s 34 electoral votes, there’s no way he can make it to the 270 needed, which means even if Obama can’t get to 270 either it would just throw the election to the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives. Not a bad safety valve for Obama to have.
But even though the LP and the Barr campaign have a point, there is simply no way any of this will ever actually happen, so file it under “campaign oddity” and let’s all move on with our lives.
The Times‘ reviews of Thomas Frank’s latest book, The Wrecking Crew, are in some ways a tale of two stories. From Michael Lind:
“The Wrecking Crew” is a polemic, not a dissertation. With rare exceptions like John Kenneth Galbraith, conservatives — from Juvenal and Alexander Pope to H. L. Mencken, Tom Wolfe and P. J. O’Rourke — have been the best satirists. In Thomas Frank, the American left has found its own Juvenal.
From Michiko Kakutani:
In his new book, “The Wrecking Crew,” Mr. Frank turns to the question of “How Conservatives Rule” once they’ve gotten into office. Less humorous and far more hectoring than “Kansas,” this volume quickly devolves into a highly partisan, Manichaean-minded screed against conservatives and private-sector economics.
But there doesn’t seem to be much disagreement about what Frank is actually saying — just whether or not the book is partisan yet correct, or merely partisan. From Lind:
Frank’s portrait of the conservative movement, however, sacrifices complexity to caricature. “Conservatism has always been an expression of American business.” Conservatism equals libertarianism equals plutocracy.
And from Kakutani:
Mr. Frank comes across in these pages as a sort of parody of the liberal right-wingers love to hate — as someone in love with big government for the sake of big government and opposed to all manner of capitalism and entrepreneurial initiative.
Read both reviews. And read Todd Seavey, because he’s worth reading. Oh, and read the actual book if you’re interested. I probably won’t get around to it; I already get a regular dose of partisanship from blogs, the media, and pretty much everyone I know.
I’ve really got nothing to say about Obama’s VP choice that hasn’t already been said, so I’ll simply link to a few perspectives:
Via Caleb, a new film based on the classic Vonnegut dystopia. This looks like it has potential!
This is awesome, though I had to stop about a third of the way through because it was becoming a timesink. By the way, I feel like I’ve lost a piece of my childhood for recognizing more of the celebrities than the muppets.
Some survey results to chew on:
The latest Pew Research survey on the partisan make up cable news network viewership:
CNN: 51% Democrats, 18% Republicans, 23% independents
MSNBC: 45% Democrats, 18% Republicans, 27% independents
Fox News: 33% Democrats, 39% Republicans, 22% independents
Make of this what you will.
Apparently the U.S. has a laser gun now, and if this story is to be believed then it’s all kinds of awesome. Though I must agree that the idea of using it to achieve military objectives while retaining “plausible deniability” is a bunch of malarkey:
Maybe I’m missing something here, but if Achmed the Terrorist suddenly gets a perfect 2 inch hole that passes all the way through his head, with nothing but a sizzling noise, isn’t everyone going to know it was the US that done it?
Supreme Court ruling aside, my guess is this toy won’t be legal to own in D.C. anytime soon.
Here’s an interesting Slate piece questioning how journalists should treat dissent from a “consensus” view, based on a similarly-themed editorial in the Columbia Journalism Review and with special attention paid to global warming.
Essentially, the challenge is that journalists often see themselves as defenders of the little guy or the untold story, but it seems intuitive to many journalists that some ideas are so patently “false” that they don’t deserve sunlight. But on the other hand, how certain are we about the truth, and if it is even possible to achieve certainty then who gets to decide? Slate writer Ron Rosembaum argues in favor of caution:
Faced with conflicting studies, [CJR writer Cristine Russell] tells us, “scientists look for consistency among several reports before concluding something is true.” This is, frankly, a misunderstanding or misstating of the way science works.
She seems to be confusing consensus among scientists and scientific truth. They are two different things. The history of science repeatedly shows a “consensus” being overturned by an unexpected truth that dissents from the consensus. Scientific truth has continued to evolve, often in unexpected ways, and scientific consensus always remains “falsifiable,” to use Karl Popper’s phrase, one any science reporter should be familiar with. All the more reason for reporting on scientific dissent, one would think. Yet when I read her description of how science proceeds, it seems to me she is suggesting science proceeds by a vote: Whoever who has the greatest number of consistent papers—papers that agree with him or her—”wins.” As in, has the Truth.
In fact, the history of science frequently demonstrates that science proceeds when contradictory—dissenting—studies provoke more studies, encourage rethinking rather than being marginalized by “the consensus” or the “consistency” of previous reports.
The piece discusses different ways journalists ought to handle the situation, and in particular whether the “consensus view” always deserves the last word. One possibility is to proceed as though the debate is over and deny “nationally known skeptics” any hearing at all. Another is to grant dissenters time, but avoid equal time in favor of a clear majority hearing to the “correct way to think.” A third option is to lean toward equal time for dissenting viewpoints when possible.
I suppose the best corrective mechanism here is a strong diversity of media sources on the part of the consumer. Even if I have a preference for the perspective in newspaper/channel/blog A, it’s advantageous for me to give serious consideration to the positions of newspaper/channel/blog B. It’s not a solution, and it places quite a burden on the consumer, but short of some sort of weird massive regulation of the media industry I’m not sure what else to actually do about the problem.
But even as I oppose a top-down solution, I do think the journalist bears a significant burden to do more than just believe they’re checking their biases at the door. One reason major news sources are consistently biased is because of a tendency we all have to surround ourselves with like-minded people and then assume we’re not biased because we’re not an outlier. It seems as though journalists should rely heavily on their professional training (for those who bothered to get any) and on their intellectual toolkits, and to be extremely careful about attributing mythical powers to “The Government” or “The People” or “The Global Consensus” or “We” or “They.” (Topic for another day: ambiguous pronouns are not a good journalist’s friend, even if they do help Obama’s poll numbers.)
Journalists also seem under pressure to find a victim and a villain to compose a good story, which sets up a huge clash between good reporting and our mental models. Why would any journalist intentionally write a story that presents their preferred villain as the marginalized perspective or their preferred victim as the position of unsettled righteousness? And as a relevant aside, when did we start believing that the “consensus view” is the little guy in need of all the protection the Fourth Estate can muster?
I do personally believe that media bias, regardless of its political or ideological roots, is extremely concerning. But what worries me even more is consensus bias because of its tendency to mask the unseen and stifle the true little guy: the remarkable ideas and innovations and discoveries that require competition on an open and equal playing field in order to have a chance at rising to the top.
The seminar I directed last week was at the University of Maryland, and we received an interesting call on Thursday warning us to be on the lookout for a stray cougar on campus.
Many days and lame jokes later, it turns out that it wasn’t even a cougar at all! Lame!
Essentially, the story is that the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to ban the opening of new fast food restaurants for a year. The details are:
The ban covers a 32-square-mile area for one year, with two possible six-month extensions.
The area contains about 500,000 residents, including those who live in West Adams, Baldwin Hills and Leimert Park.
The law defines fast-food restaurants as “any establishment which dispenses food for consumption on or off the premises, and which has the following characteristics: a limited menu, items prepared in advance or prepared or heated quickly, no table orders and food served in disposable wrapping or containers.”
I didn’t see much of the commentary on this because I was out of town, but according to William Saletin, Klein and Yglesias have taken the conservative position by saying this is nothing new. Or, if you prefer, they’ve taken the liberal position by defending the government’s right to impose really dumb choices on everyone.
Here’s the issue I take with this law. Even if you accept that Los Angeles has an obesity “problem,” some parts of Los Angeles also have a crime problem, unemployment problem, education problem, drug problem, and poverty problem. You help reduce crime, unemployment, and drugs by making sure people have access to JOBS. You can ensure that people can survive in spite of their education problem by making sure they have access to LOW-SKILLED JOBS. And you can ensure that people can survive in spite of their poverty problem by making sure they have access to AFFORDABLE FOOD.
Why a bunch of Los Angeles do-gooders want to make it as difficult as humanly possible for employers to provide jobs and affordable products to their residents is beyond me. There are unintended consequences to stupidity. Memo to obesity warriors: priorities!
