Andrew Sullivan links the debate between Steven Taylor and James Joyner over the merits, or lack thereof, of the Obama alternative for disaffected conservatives. From my point of view, which is a bit more apathetic than disaffected and libertarian than conservative, and thus theoretically (at least) a bit more analytical, things work out as being roughly outlined as follows:

• John McCain is, by all reasonable standards of analysis, more conservative than Barack Obama, across the issue space. (At worst on some obscure issue dimensions they may be tied.)
• All other things being equal, this means the expected policy outcome would be more conservative under a McCain administration than an Obama administration.
• Therefore, if you want to cast a instrumental vote, and you are conservative, you probably should vote for McCain.

Personally, I don’t think there are large, meaningful differences between Obama and McCain on the few issues that poorly map to ideology, like executive power, where there are few politicians of principle whose positions don’t reflect the partisanship of the executive officeholder. Obama is probably a bit more of a liberal internationalist than McCain when it comes to small-scale interventions, although I can’t see this making a huge difference or really being a useful voting criterion. By and large I think what’s happening in Iraq, rather than who’s in the White House, really matters when it comes to bringing the troops home sooner rather than later, although I suppose there may be a difference in the semantic game we’re going to play with distinguishing “the troops” who leave and those who remain. Afghanistan isn’t going to be fixed until the Pakistanis fix themselves, and I don’t see that happening any time soon. McCain as a hawk can probably more credibly produce a rapprochement with the various pariah states of varying degrees (Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela, etc.), but I don’t think there is a huge obstacle to Obama doing the same (he may just have to do less).

From an apathetic libertarian perspective, neither candidate is particularly appealing, although generally speaking I find critiquing Washington from the (Postrel-1990s Reason) economic classical liberal perspective more interesting than from the (Gillespie-current Reason) social/cultural left. As a future upper-middle-income government bureaucrat I suppose the Democrats are more likely to govern in support of my personal, short-term financial interests (throwing money at higher education, lower taxes on the “middle class” which seemingly tops out right at the peak Congressional salary, transferring more of my personal health care expenses onto the backs of Bill Gates and Mark Cuban), even if I have to balance that against the possibility that eight years of Democrats at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue could fuck up America economically to the point it becomes Britain circa 1978, and the billboards won’t even be as catchy.

All this is, of course, really just a boring way of saying that since my vote really won’t matter I’m having a hard time feeling all that motivated to care one way or the other.

On my flight from St. Louis to Denver today (not my final destination, mind you), I had the distinct displeasure of sitting right in front of three or four half-loaded idiots on their way to some sort of ski vacation in Colorado, who engaged in the following obnoxious behaviors, among others:

• Repeatedly hitting the flight attendant call button.
• Using the word “fuck” liberally in conversation, usually 3–4 times per sentence.
• Having an extended discussion of airplane crashes.
• Asking the flight attendant repeatedly if they could smoke aboard the aircraft.

While their level of obnoxiousness probably didn’t rise to the level at which I would have supported them being hogtied by an air marshal, hauled off to Gitmo, or forcibly ejected from the aircraft at altitude, in large part because my in-canal earphones and some additional volume on the iPod effectively muted them for about 3/4 of the flight, I can’t imagine I would have put up much of an objection to any or all of these actions—and idly contemplated taking such actions myself.

My former co-blogger Brock is having issues with the Commercial Appeal’s circulation department—this is the same division that managed to keep delivering the paper to my mother’s new house during her entire week-long honeymoon. If the circulation division is as slack-jawed as the motley collection of idiots/editors that have turned the paper into something I wouldn’t use as birdcage lining for fear of insulting the intelligence of parakeets, I don’t see Brock getting this mess straightened out any time soon.

Randy Barnett explaining why faith in government is a dangerous thing:

[G]overnment at all levels has obviously not lived up to its promise of being able to anticipate and react to disasters and other social calamities better than nongovernmental institutions. This should not be surprising. Governments are comprised of ordinary human beings with the same limitations of vision and self-interests as those in the private sector (and often, but not always, with far worse incentives)—that is, these human beings confront pervasive problems of knowledge, interest, and power. I have the same reaction every time there are calls for increased government oversight in the aftermath of some failure in the private sector. What gives anyone confidence that government institutions will act with any more prescience? Moreover, it seems often the case that the core functions that are most often used to justify the existence of governments—such as public safety, national defense, and public infrastructure—are often the very tasks that are given short shrift by real world politicians in search of more “elevated,” seemingly less pedestrian goals than these. This seems especially the case when the failure to provide these “essential social services” can so often be obscured from public view or, when revealed, responsibility for failure can be shifted to others.

Incidentally, anyone who can’t acknowledge that the fuck-ups that led to tens of thousands of New Orleans residents are the combined fault of a Republican-controlled federal government and Democrat-controlled state and local governments is responding in a fundamentally unserious manner. See, for example, Eric Muller and Glenn Reynolds, two smart men who (a) I didn’t previously believe were fundamentally unserious (hence why I am not calling out nitwits like Kos and Atrios—their behavior is par for the course) and (b) should know better.

Oh, and brava to Sela Ward for laying the smackdown on Kanye West’s idiotic "FEMA hates blacks" meme (speaking of the fundamentally unserious) on Larry King Live tonight.

Finally, George Lucas has done something that doesn’t fuck up the franchise. Revenge of the Sith is far, far better than the other prequels and I would put it ahead of Return of the Jedi simply because there are no Ewoks. One downside: he places a gratuitous shot of Jar-Jar Binks in towards the end. Anything to frustrate the fans…

Christie Todd Whitman gets it:

A clear and present danger Republicans face today is that the party will now move so far to the right that it ends up alienating centrist voters and marginalizing itself.

On the other hand, the eternally vapid Kathryn Jean Lopez proves her need to stick to pimping subscriptions (☣) rather than attempting to make political commentary, while the new-to-me Ed Driscoll apparently also needs to make the steep investment in a copy of Downs. Barring such expenditure, at the very least they should realize that telling moderate Republicans to go fuck themselves until their votes are next needed in November 2006 is a bit rude. (þ: memeorandum)

In re this post:

Well, I watched the debate tonight. Random thoughts after brief reflection follow.

To those of you who want to take my advice below on refusing to be “spun”—don’t click on the “Read More” link.

Is it just me, or does it seem odd that someone is far more exercised about the First Amendment rights of a potty-mouth than the odious McCain-Feingold bill? The First Amendment was intended, first and foremost, to protect the rights of citizens to freely debate politics—that its interpretation has (correctly, in my opinion) been broadened, over the years, to protect my right to say “fuck,” is nice, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that McCain-Feingold was purposely designed to further protect incumbent legislators from fair and open debate of their actions. Compared to that, making Howard Stern’s bosses open their checkbooks for Stern’s misdeeds is chump change. (And I say that as something of a fan of Howard, although I tend to agree with my mom’s assessment* that “a little Howard goes a long way.” And, for that matter, as a fan of Jeff.)

I’m now starting to accumulate rejection letters at a not unreasonable pace.

Wow, finally a Democrat has figured out why most libertarian-leaning Republicans won’t defect to the Democrats:

The fact that this bullshit upping the fines for “indecent” radio broadcasts passed 391–22 shows a good deal of what’s wrong with today’s Democrats. The Democrats are never going to convince anyone that they’re really the better anti-“fuck”, anti-fag party. At the same time, by refusing to ever stand up for liberal principles whenever doing so might be mildly unpopular, they manage not to gain any votes from folks disenchanted with conservative frumpery.

It’s amazing how the Democrats only seem to act like an opposition party when it comes to either abortion or taxes… highfalutin’ rhetoric to the contrary.

Update: Matt Yglesias has more here, in response to Jim Henley; Will Baude also wistfully hopes for Democrats who are serious about their professed liberalism.

Wonkette has the exit poll numbers:

Kerry 38
Edwards 33
Dean 17

Maybe we will have a real contest after all…

Taegan Goddard has the exit poll roundup from five states, duplicated below:

South Carolina: Edwards 44, Kerry 30, Sharpton 10
Oklahoma: Edwards 31, Kerry 29, Clark 28
Missouri: Kerry 52, Edwards 23, Dean 10
Delaware: Kerry 47, Dean 14, Lieberman 11, Edwards 11
Arizona: Kerry 46, Clark 24, Dean 13

If these results hold up (a big if, given the poor exit polling performance in New Hampshire), predictions of a delegate-free Tuesday for Howie look strong and—realistically—Edwards is the only candidate who can claim to have a shot at unseating Kerry, although Clark may have an outside chance depending on how he does in the caucus states.

Update: Wonkette! reports that the Columbia Journalism Review is throwing a hissy fit:

Political Wire did the same thing in New Hampshire, though nobody raised a peep. Some readers have written in to suggest that since National Review's The Corner, and Political Wire, are blogs, rather than more traditional news outlets, and since they likely did not have contracts with the poll organizers, they're bound by different rules than, say, The Washington Post. By the standards of contract law, that may be true. But in terms of journalistic ethics, it's a copout. Once the numbers are out there, they're out there, and possibly influencing voters who haven't yet made it to the polls.

And that the culprits are blogs, and not networks, doesn't let them off the hook.

WHO THE FUCK CARES? Ahem. Thank you, I just needed to get that off my chest. (Dan Drezner has the sober response more properly befitting an academic.)

Why bother going through the whole pretense of a campaign? I already know how I’m going to vote in 2004, more or less.

I think Michele and Dean have it covered.

Me? I’m going to try to do a bunch of things that would piss Osama off. That is, if he wasn’t worm food already (even those bozos in Lebanon who kidnapped hostages back in the 80s knew how to get newspapers to prove the video was recent). Among them:

• Go to work.
• Eat some pork products.
• Watch some college football.
• Work on my dissertation.
• Live.

One thing I won’t be doing: this:

A vigil, sponsored by the UM Activist Coalition, will also be at 6:15 p.m. on the porch of the Croft Institute for International Studies building.

“It will mostly be a silent-type vigil,” Greg Johnson, member of the coalition and blues curator, said. “It's just in honor of all those who died on Sept. 11 and all those who died in resulting policies that have occurred.” [emphasis mine]

Following the vigil, a panel discussion, co-hosted by UMAC and the Croft Institute, will explore “September 11: Two Years Later. What has Changed – where do we go from here?”

Moderated by executive director of the Croft Institute, Michael Metcalf, the panel discussion will include Nirit Ben-Ari, an Israeli peace activist, Omar Bada, a Palestinian peace activist and UM economics professor Katsuaki Terasawa.

(a) What in the fuck do Israeli and Palestinian peace activists have to do with 9/11? I honestly could give so little of a shit about people who celebrated in the streets when they learned about the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. (b) I’m not participating in any vigil in honor of the Taliban and Ba’ath Party (two groups many of whose members who have—most deservedly—died as a result of said “policies”). What an amazing display of questionable taste by Croft to have any involvement in this crapfest.

Stephen Green points out that two of the authors of the dopey Berkeley piece (you know, the one that basically resurrected a discredited fifty-year-old theory by selectively mining the literature for bivariate correlations) have decided to take to the pages of the Washington Post in defense of their pathetic excuse for a journal article. Except their defense is basically impenetrable garbage that lacks even the minor benefit of the nicely-formatted tables with pretty stars that adorned their original piece. Try this paragraph on for size:

It’s wrong to conclude that our results provide only bad news for conservatives. True, we find some support for the traditional “rigidity-of-the-right” hypothesis, but it is also true that liberals could be characterized on the basis of our overall profile as relatively disorganized, indecisive and perhaps overly drawn to ambiguity—all of which may be liabilities in mass politics and other public and professional domains. Because we assume that all beliefs (ideological, scientific and otherwise) are partially (but never completely) determined by one’s needs, fears and desires, we see nothing pathological about this process. It is simply part of what it means to be human. Our “trade-off” model of human psychology assumes that any trait or motivation has potential advantages and disadvantages, depending on the situation. A heightened sensitivity to threat and uncertainty is by no means maladaptive in all contexts. Even closed-mindedness may be useful, provided one tends to have a closed mind about appropriate values and accurate opinions; a reluctance to abandon one’s prior convictions in favor of new fads can be a good thing. The important task for social scientists is to identify the conditions under which each of these cognitive and motivational styles is beneficial, rather than touting one or the other as inherently and invariably superior.

If you actually understand this paragraph or can figure out what the hell these blithering idiots are talking about, feel free to explain it to me. Bonus points if you can actually relate this assertion to the actual contents of the article, which lacked such a noncommittal attitude toward conservatism.

And, in my humble opinion, the important task for these social scientists is to learn how to do proper research (or—better yet—original research!) instead of cherry-picking results from papers that agree with their research hypothesis and apparently discarding the rest. It might also help if they figured out that correlation is not causation, since they have presented absolutely no evidence that (for example) either “fear of death” or “lower cognitive complexity” is causally prior to “conservatism.” They uncritically accept that the articles they cite in favor of their arguments measured the things they purport to measure accurately. Nor do they explain how they concluded that Paul Krugman—a man not known for having either nuance or psychological training—was an authority on the relative cognitive abilities sophistication of conservatives and liberals.

But the note at the end is priceless:

Arie W. Kruglanski is distinguished university professor of psychology at the University of Maryland. John T. Jost is an associate professor in Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. This article was written in collaboration with Jack Glaser and Frank J. Sulloway, both of the University of California at Berkeley.

I guess that answers the age-old question of how many professors it takes to fuck up a journal article or a WaPo op-ed.

I tend to agree with Stephen Green’s take on the meaning of the appointment of Abu Mazen as Palestinian prime minister; on the one hand, there’s the concern that it’s all another Arafat shell game, but on the other it’s fairly clear that the intifada just ain’t working. The presence of over 200,000 U.S. personnel within a 400 mile radius of Ramallah may also have also had a strongly clarifying effect on the minds of the Palestinain Authority higher-ups—it probably doesn’t hurt that a lot of people have the (IMHO wrong) impression that there’s a cabal of bloodthirsty neocons in Washington just waiting for an excuse to wipe the PLO, Hezbollah, Hamas, and PIJ from the face of the earth.

I largely agree as well that the main problem isn’t so much the Palestinians as their enablers in the European Commission, most notably Chris “I used to be for the rule of law, but fuck it” Patten. If the EU can get its own house in order, I suspect the Palestinians, once faced with the full economic consequences of their leaders’ stupidity, will fall into line in short order.

Previously blogged here.