I previously promised a pair of non-endorsements; however, no doubt to the relief of OF Jay, even though I have a partially-drafted post that I’ve been kicking around for a week, I really don’t think there’s much point in posting it.

However, I will leave you with the general flavor of the piece, which basically was just a long-winded version of this statement by Alex Knapp: “in all perfect honesty, I wouldn’t trust George Bush or John Kerry to run a f**king McDonald’s, much less the executive branch… of the United States government.”

Apologies for the relative silence as of late; I am running a big project that comes to fruition tomorrow, and that has me rather busy (to say the least). I’ll have something more to say later today, probably.

In the meantime, scroll down and read Brock’s posts from the weekend, on such diverse topics as beer, bigots, and the Beatles.

Via Brad DeLong, Graeme Thomson at The Observer has a list of the ten worst cover songs ever.

Somehow he managed to make the list without including William Shatner’s awful spoken word rendition of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” Tiffany’s cover of “I Saw Her Standing There,” or Van Halen's cover of “Pretty Woman.”

Prof. DeLong asks about the best cover songs ever. Here’s the beginning of my list.

1. Twist and Shout, by the Beatles.
   
2. All Along the Watchtower, by Jimi Hendrix.
   
3. Midnight Special, by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
   
4. Hurt, by Johnny Cash.
   
5. Istanbul Not Constantinople, by They Might Be Giants.
   

On WEGR Rock 103 this morning, I heard an ad that began with a slight variation on the standard disclaimer: “I’m James Hart, and I approve this message for white workers.” The speaker then launched into an anti-NAFTA protectionist screed.

I first blogged about him back in August, when he was the only Republican candidate in the primary. Tennessee Republican leaders didn’t field a candidate, since the 8th is considered a safe district for Democrat John Tanner.

I bet they wish they had.

(I assume that WEGR could not legally refuse to run this disgusting ad, and so bears no blame for this.)

I just saw an advertisement in the Memphis Flyer for Anheuser-Busch’s new B^E, described in the ad as “beer with something extra,” i.e. caffeine, guarana, and ginseng.

Coming soon from Anheuser-Busch: Beerplus, with vellocet, synthemesc, or drencrom. It sharpens you up, and makes you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.

UPDATE: I bought, and consumed, a four-pack this afternoon. As I expected, it's a little pricey -- four ten-ounce cans for $4.99. And believe it or not, it's not bad tasting, once you get over the expectation that it should taste like beer, which it does not. At first I thought it was awful, but by halfway through the first can, I didn't mind it.

The alcohol content is not indicated on the can, but it seemed low compared to a twelve-ounce regular beer. The caffeine/guarana/ginseng does a pretty good punch as a stimulant, after a couple of cans. Overall, a pretty good beverage to drink while playing Dungeons and Dragons, which is what I was doing.

Steve Landburg, guest blogging at Marginal Revolution, writes:

Amid all the scaremongering about a nailbitingly close election with a disputed outcome, it is worth observing that if you really believe in democracy, and if the election is close, then it doesn't much matter who wins. The theory of democracy (stripped down to bare essentials, and omitting all sorts of caveats that I could list but won't) is that the guy who gets more votes is the better guy. Surely, then, it follows that the guy who gets only slightly more votes is only the slightly better guy. And if one guy's only slightly better than the other, then a miscount is no great tragedy.

Bullshit.

There are two things that make democracy the best form of government. First, democracy is a system under which ambitious men and women can compete for power without spilling blood. To depose a king, you must kill him; to depose a president in a America, you only need to get enough people in enough states to vote for his opponent. The aftermath of the 2000 presidential election was pretty ugly, and the aftermath of the upcoming election may be as well; but no one was killed over the 2000 election, and it’s fairly safe to say that no one will be killed over this one.

The second great thing about democracy, as Matthew Yglesias has pointed out, democracy has salutory effects on the behavior of office holders who will be seeking reelection in the future:

Democracy, they say, is the worst form of government except for all the others. But why would that be? Not, certainly, because of the superior wisdom of the voting public who, if you read any of the public opinion literature you'll swiftly see, have almost no grasp of substantive policy issues and only a very vague familiarity with what the different candidates stand for. And yet, it seems to work pretty well. This is, I think, primarily because the voters have a habit of kicking incumbents out of office when thinks don't seem to be going well, and reelecting them when things are going well.

This is often not a very sound analytic approach. Candidates get blamed for economic problems that are not really their fault (see, e.g., Jimmy Carter in 1980) or get praise beyond what they deserve for improvements in living conditions (see, e.g., Rudy Giuliani in 1997). Nevertheless, this crude approach has certain merits. In particular, it encourages officeholders to try and make things better. If an incumbent mayor knows that whether the crime rate rises or falls will seriously impact his electoral fortunes, he has reason to try and make the crime rate fall. If an incumbent president knows that a solid macroeconomic situation will benefit him on Election Day, he'll spend at least some time trying to make it come about.

Knowing what we do about the American electorate, it would seem highly dubious that the elections are in any way a reliable selection mechanism for selecting the best candidate, by whatever objective standards you might appeal to, and even more dubious that a close election would indicate that the two candidates are equally good. If an election happens to select the best candidate, it’s mostly by chance.

And one certainly doesn't have to hold to Landsburg's naive "theory of democracy" in order to "really believe in democracy."

UPDATE: Mark Kleiman makes a similar point:

Just remember: Watching democracy in action is pretty depressing if you think of democracy as a noble project of collective self-government. But it doesn't look nearly so bad if you think of elections as an alternative to civil war.

Economist Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution argues in favor of prison privatization in the Pasadena Star-News.

More than two decades of experience with private prisons in the United States, Great Britain, Australia and elsewhere attest to the fact that private prisons can be built and operated at lower cost than public prisons.

Cost savings of 15 to 25 percent on construction and 10 to 15 percent on management are common. These are modest but significant cost savings in a $5.7 billion state system that continues to grow more expensive every year.

Private prisons not only have lower costs than public prisons: by introducing competition they encourage public prisons to also innovate and lower costs.

Back in August I wrote

If one is of a libertarian bent (as I am) with regard to victimless crimes such as drug use and prostitution, the problem would seem to be that imprisoning people doesn’t cost the government nearly enough. After all, the marginal prisoner is a lot more like Tommy Chong than Charles Manson.

To put it another way: if California were to save 15% on the per prisoner cost of incarcerating someone through privatization, how much of that savings would be returned to California taxpayers (through lowered taxes or paying off California’s debt), and how much would be used to incarcerate even more people through “tough on crime” measures like California’s three strikes law?

About two weeks ago, a cedar bench on which an eighteen-year-old cadet at Brooks Air Force Base carved “Johnny loves Vivian” in 1951 was discovered on the San Antonio River Walk, in front of the La Mansion hotel.

“Vivian” was the seventeen-year-old Vivian Liberto, a student at Saint Mary’s Catholic School. The Air Force cadet was Johnny Cash. Vivian later became Cash’s first wife, for whom he wrote I Walk the Line.

Tonight I’m going to a Halloween party as the great Stupid White Man himself, complete with blazer, badly home-made “no-GM” T-shirt, a “Proud to be a Democrat” baseball cap I picked up for $5 at Wal-Mart last night, and a vague attempt at simulating Moore’s permanent bad facial hair day, based on two days’ growth of beard and lots of little hair clippings from my electric razor.

Like Sebastian Holdsclaw, I was pretty well convinced that Osama was worm food. I guess that’s what they mean by an “October surprise.” Damned if I know what it means, or how it will play into things on Tuesday. (I guess it’s possible Osama made several tapes with different Democratic opponents, so I wouldn’t call it completely dispositive on his survival into recent months, mind you. But Occam’s Razor suggests that, if it was Memorex, he’d have made some vague reference to a Democratic challenger instead of making multiple tapes.)

Henry Farrell unearths a tongue-in-cheek article from PS, and hilarity—at least for political science geeks—ensues (þ: Orin Kerr).

Update: Dan Drezner takes note of my approval (in comments at CT) of footnote 5 in the piece, which is simultaneously hysterically funny and completely true; next fall when (if?) I teach research methods, that one’s going in the lecture.

I spoke to the local Optimist Club at lunch today about the 2004 elections in Mississippi and nationwide; I had a few interesting questions and I think it well. Now if I can just get myself on TV I can be a media star like my personal hero Larry Sabato.

Scott Althaus and Devon Largio have an interesting article in this month’s issue of PS: Political Science and Politics that advances an alternative (and, in my mind, more convincing) explanation of why the public links Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks than the “Bush lied” meme. It’s only five pages, so, ATSRTWT.

Steve Landsberg asks:

How come a sandwich at the airport deli costs me twice as much as a sandwich at the deli down the block, but they’ll both sell me a newspaper for the exact same price?

My guess: the newspaper has a suggested retail price on its cover, and therefore if the airport vendor tried to take advantage of its capitive audience the consumer would object to the price inflation. Deli sandwiches don’t come with sticker prices, so consumers don’t mind the price variation as much. (I also suspect the profit margin for retailers on newspapers is somewhat higher than on sandwiches, but I’m not sure that matters as much in this case.)

Today’s Clarion-Ledger has an interesting story based on an interview with Judge Neal Biggers, Jr., who presided over the Ayers desegregation case. Interestingly, a shutdown of both MVSU and MUW was on the table in the mid-1990s, but Biggers rejected that as part of the solution because he doubted the College Board’s sincerity in planning to shut them down. He also echos a point that I’ve made repeatedly over the years (and which has been a major roadblock to finalizing the settlement):

“The remedy for the situation was not to enhance segregated facilities, but to desegregate the facilities. Some of the plaintiffs, it seemed, wanted equal, segregated facilities,’’ [Biggers] said.

Greg Ransom writes:

STEVE CHAPMAN opposes the war and opposes the death penalty, so he’s voting Democrat for President for the first time in his life. He also quotes David Boaz of the CATO Institute, “Republicans wouldn’t give Kerry every bad thing he wants, and they do give Bush every bad thing he wants.” Many anti-war and pro- civil liberties libertarians are refusing to vote for Bush. A good many of these folks have always voted a straight Libertarian Party ticket. Now some are switching tickets for John Kerry. Passing strange. All I can figure is that more than a few became libertarians out of the nightmare of the Vietman experience, and now some are Coming Home to anti-war leader John Kerry. That, at least, is a first try at a plausible hypothesis. Let me know if you have a better one.

Well, if your choice is between two nanny-statist fucktards, but only one of them (in one’s mind) cares about civil liberties, I’d go for the pro-civil-liberties fucktard personally. At least, if I were confined to voting for a fucktard, or were the sort of person who used that word in casual conversation.

Paul Glastris at Political Animal floats a plan for National Service.

Dammit, if there’s one issue* that we liberals should be in 100% agreement with the libertarians on, it’s conscription. Unlike taxation, conscription (whether or not it offers non-military service as an option) really is tantamount to slavery.

If we really have the need to fight another damn war, the fair thing to do is to raise military salaries until we have enough volunteers, and raise taxes and/or cut other government services to pay the increased salaries. One generation should not be expected to bear the entire burden.

Jeff Quinton notes that an investigation shows that around 60,000 voters appear on the voter rolls in both North Carolina and South Carolina.

One thing that always strikes me about the “double registration” stories is that most of the issues are clerical ones; for example, I registered to vote down here when I moved to Jackson, and I don’t have the faintest clue whether or not the county clerk bothered to tell the folks up in Oxford to invalidate my registration there. For that matter, I might still be on the voting books in Florida or Tennessee.

The University of Florida has fired the entire Gator coaching staff, effective at the end of this season. I knew the Zookster wasn’t exactly popular, but I’m somewhat surprised that he is getting the boot only halfway through the season.

Radley Balko and Tyler Cowen both explain why they won’t be voting for Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik. Balko:

I’m sorry, but I’m just not convinced that either Badnarik or the LP speaking on behalf of libertarianism to a national audience with limited exposure to the ideology would ultimately be good for libertarianism, the philosophy.

This is a guy who gives seminars advocating that the federal income tax is optional, who refuses to use zip codes, who says he’d blow up the UN building “after giving occupants a week to vacate,” who has equated FDR to Hitler, and who suggested we chain convicted felons to their beds until their muscles atrophy.

It gets worse. For more, check here and here.

I’ll gladly cast my ballot with the LP when the LP offers a candidate who isn’t an embarassment to libertarianism.

Cowen:

Nonetheless I must offer p = 0 when I ponder the chance that I vote for Badnarik. If I don’t like a picture, I’m not going to hang it on my wall. I gladly supported Ed Clark in 1980, let’s hope that the LP once again puts up a serious candidate.

The National Weather Service has a point forecast service that works for any location in the United States. It’s quite slick, and the best part: there are no ads.

Eric Muller notes that Michelle Malkin doesn’t talk to David Neiwart (who generally strike me as white-collar versions of LGF and Atrios, respectively).

In other news, I hear John Kerry doesn’t have George Bush on speed dial. Go figure.

From the Miami Herald:

Authorities are seeking to extradite a Tennessee man - wanted for failing to pay child support - after learning that he underwent surgery in Colorado to donate his kidney to someone he met on the Internet.

Rob Smitty, 32, faces charges of failing to pay his ex-wife $8,100 in child support and medical payments, and a warrant is out for his arrest. He was recovering in a Denver hospital following surgery Wednesday to donate his kidney.

Smitty’s ex-wife apparently wishes that Mr. Smitty had not donated a kidney and saved a man’s life:

But Angie McCoy, Smitty's ex-wife, said she didn't think Smitty was acting out of altruism.

“It’s unethical, and it’s not right,” she said.

Others are also accusing Mr. Smitty of having non-altruistic motives, according to this Knoxville News-Sentinel story (registration or BugMeNot required).

In 1992, Smitty was sentenced to 12 years in prison for possession and conspiracy to distribute LSD. He served less than six months at a boot camp before being put on probation.

The criminal background only raises ethical questions surrounding the exchange, including worries that Smitty was paid for giving up a kidney.

“Why would someone give up a kidney to a stranger?” said Cathy Paykin, transplant programs director for the National Kidney Foundation in New York. “To get a sentence reduced? To look better in the eyes of the law? To get money? It’s so hard to manage motivation even under the best of circumstances.”

My take: let’s set aside the question of whether a free and open market for live organ donations would be a good thing. (See Tyler Cowen's thoughts on ths matter.) Mr. Smitty gave up a kidney and saved another man’s life. Whether his motives were altruistic or mercenary are irrelevant to assessing the morality of his action. At worst, his kidney donation was unwise from the perspective of self-interest.

If indeed he was paid for the kidney, I doubt that Ms McCoy will be complaining if she gets her cut.

A pointed non-endorsement of two candidates for president of the United States, and an announcement of the slate of electors for president this half of Signifying Nothing will—despite grave reservations—be voting for. And, perhaps most importantly, a disclaimer that should be attached to all serious scholars’ endorsements or non-endorsements of candidates for political office.

The only thing the letters NSF meant when I was in grad school were “non-sufficient funds.”