Terry McMahon's Awesome Blog

I know you've been waiting as long as I have to turn this blog into a dating advice column as well as a left-wing political ranting mechanism, and it looks like now's the time. I found this gem in a very lengthy New York Times Magazine article by Maureen Dowd. ("Look, if you're just going to talk about dating in your political column, why don't you write a book about it?") Anyway:

I knew this before fashion magazines became crowded with crinolines, bows, ruffles, leopard-skin scarves, 50's party dresses and other sartorial equivalents of flirting and with articles like "The Return of Hard to Get." ("I think it behooves us to stop offering each other these pearls of feminism, to stop saying, 'So, why don't you call him?"' a writer lectured in Mademoiselle. "Some men must have the thrill of the chase.")

Now, I understand most chicks want an assertive guy who's not a wuss and who's not going to keep saying "I don't know, what do you want to do?" So if someone were to say, instead, that they'd only go out with a guy who made the first move, that's fine by me. It's your life. Because here's my concern: I couldn't even tell you what this thrill is. Maybe I'm just not hanging out with enough asshole jocks, but the best I can tell is that "the thrill of the chase" is either the thrill of calling a chick and not having her call back, or the thrill of getting turned down for dates until eventually she says yes. I admit, law school is continually revealing that I'm a huge idiot, so you may have to explain or clarify with monosyllabic words, because I'd really love to know. My email address is terrymcmahon -at- gmail.com, for those of you not interested in flaming and/or responding via the comments section. Feel free to comment on here too.

P.S. Before I get brought up in front of contracts class for my use of the word "chick," I must repeat my long-standing position that I will happily drop it in favor of any better female equivalent of "guy." (Yeah, didn't think so.)

Posted by Terry McMahon at 9:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Back to the Bernanke/baseball article:

[Bernanke] also mentioned that the Washington Nationals, his new favorite team, had lost 13 one-run games in a row. The odds of that happening, Bernanke wrote, were roughly 8,000 to 1.

I know what you're thinking: no, the easiest probability problem is the coin flip. Fortunately, that's exactly what we have. I first read the quote above as the Nationals having lost 13 consecutive games by one run each time, but if a streak that long and that heartbreaking had happened, I would know about it. It didn't happen. What Bernanke notes, I assume, is that in the subset of Nationals games that were decided by one run, at one point they lost 13 of them in a row. So what are the odds of that?

There are reasons for a team losing a bunch of one-run games that extend beyond mere chance - like a mediocre bullpen, or a team of rookies choking when it counts - but I figured I'd start by looking at your typical coin flip. In other words, what are the odds that a coin would turn up heads 13 times in a row? The answer is 2^13, which can be easily calculated by remembering 2^10 is 1024 (it's a kilo in computer terms, and the first two digits in the result are the same as the exponent, and ten's not a complicated number). So we continue:

2^11 = 2048
2^12 = 4096
2^13 = 8192

If you didn't spend your childhood memorizing these numbers, I can forgive you, but there's your "roughly 8000 to 1." So unfortunately Ben Bernanke's baseball probability-making is not as exciting as his proposed changes to ERA. He's right, I guess, about the chances of the Nationals losing 13 one-run games in a row, but those are the same odds of the Red Sox winning 13 games in a row, the Yankees losing 13 two-run games in a row, heads coming up 13 times in a row or a judge making the same ruling off the same precedent 13 times in a row. It's just multiplying by two a lot.

Next week: Imagine the infinite decimal 0.999999.... Is it equal to 1 or not?

Posted by Terry McMahon at 4:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Unlike Patrick Fitzgerald, I don't have just one trick up my sleeve: I've got yet another baseball-related compliment for a prominent Republican today. The New York Times shows that our next Fed chairman has his values in the right place:

The man nominated to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve knows of one policy he would like to change. Earned run average, he says, needs to be calculated in a way that is fairer to pitchers who leave runners on base.
...
[Ben] Bernanke, a Southerner by birth who stands well shy of 6 feet, became a Red Sox fan in the mid-1970's while he was a student at Harvard. After moving to Princeton as a professor, he kept his allegiance to the Red Sox. He also became fascinated by the way that statistics can capture the game or distort it, much as they can for the economy.
...
Pitchers unlucky enough to be followed by ineffective relievers, as the Yankees' Randy Johnson was in 2005, have unfairly high E.R.A.'s. Pitchers who are bailed out by their bullpen, as Roy Oswalt of the Astros often was this season, end up with artificially low E.R.A.'s.

A better system would divide blame, depending on the base the runners were on when a pitcher departed and the number of outs, Bernanke argued.

Posted by Terry McMahon at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From my earlier posting (last April!):

Fans of the Michael Lewis baseball book "Moneyball" will know that taking a hard look at statistics can offer insights that the human eye cannot. According to Lewis and his subject, Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, baseball teams with limited payrolls can compete - and win - against overfunded franchises like the Yankees and Red Sox, if they have the creativity and determination to find inefficiencies in the game. On-base percentage, formerly a comparatively unheralded statistic, turned out to be just that kind of ineffiency. So the A's loaded up on undervalued players with major flaws but who walked a ton, and sure enough, Oakland was able to end up near the top of the league in runs scored - and in wins. That's Moneyball.

Here's what I've been wondering: could any of the lessons of Moneyball apply to the world of politics?

Could a secret of Republican electoral success be ... baseball? Actually, it's Moneyball, Michael Lewis' best-seller about how Oakland A's manager Billy Beane built a top team by picking players on the basis of their stats, not their reputations. Republican National Committee chairman and Baltimore Orioles fan Ken Mehlman is applying Moneyball's stats-centric strategy to his own game. "Politics, like baseball, for years was less effective than it could be because you didn't try to quantify things," he told TIME. Mehlman managed Bush-Cheney '04, which set "metrics" for making phone calls and knocking on doors, and tracked ads on spreadsheets. He obsesses over detailed data like turnout in Florida among newly registered Republicans who call themselves fiscal conservatives (91.2% last year), all new G.O.P.ers (75.7%) and overall (65.3%)--numbers that he says show the power of tax cuts. Mehlman sets goals for volunteer recruiting by state, county and precinct, and uses stats to pick his team: "The performance-based approach says that whoever produces the best results is the person you put in charge." One problem: figures don't always reflect rapid change or account for the element of surprise. But Mehlman is a believer. He's already crunching numbers for the next big game: the 2006 midterm elections.

Posted by Terry McMahon at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

SHOT . . .

"With the series scheduled to start Saturday in Chicago, the mood in and around Houston was positively giddy" (Houston Chronicle, 10/21/05).

. . . CHASER

Look, props to the guy. A lot of people were confused as to why Tom DeLay was smiling like an idiot for his mugshot. Those people didn't read this AP story:

Why is Tom DeLay smiling? After all, he's been indicted. Forced out of his job as House majority leader. And called into court for fingerprinting and a mugshot like a common criminal.

Answer: A photo of DeLay grinning from ear to ear doesn't pack quite the punch in a Democratic attack ad as one that looks more like the mugshot of, say, actor Hugh Grant.

So well done to the DeLay political team for realizing that a "positively giddy" mugshot will make it harder for Democrats to use it in campaign ads. That said, this is still not a huge problem. I see two things happening:

1. The mugshot becomes such a running joke that Democrats wind up using it anyway. This probably won't happen, but we didn't expect the president's "Mission Accomplished" event to become such a liability either.
   
2. We just go ahead and use photos like this:

   

   or this:

   
   

Not that there's any connection between the two.

Finally, here's the opening of a Tom DeLay speech from July 2003:

Good afternoon, or, as John Kerry might say: “Bonjour!”

(Thanks to National Journal's Hotline for the joke at the top.)

Posted by Terry McMahon at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's the AP headline: "Bill Clinton Backs Fellow Democrat, but Event Is Marred by Snags."

Here's the first mention of what those snags actually were:

Less than an hour before the event, people from Clinton's team and the Ferrer campaign stood shouting at each other in the middle of the blocked-off street, arguing about logistics. An area reserved for press was moved, reconfigured and pushed back several times.

Representatives from Clinton's office also vetoed the use of speakers and a small stage. Left without any way to hear Clinton and Ferrer as they spoke, many reporters handed their tape recorders and microphones to children who were standing closer.

Seriously, this should be a lesson: when the press complains about the organization of the event, usually the prime victim is the press. A falling rock could crush the local high school band, and it would be called a "slightly marred" event. Fuck with the press box though, and you're asking for trouble.

Posted by Terry McMahon at 1:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I need y'all to help me out here. I'm pretty sure there's a movie scene where a baseball player wins the lottery, everyone gets pissed at him for whooping it up, he asks a reporter why everyone's upset, and she says, "nobody likes the guy who wins the lottery twice."

He rarely takes a chance with lottery tickets, but, on a whim, Senator Judd Gregg, a notorious fiscal conservative, plunked down $20 for 20 Powerball tickets Monday night when he stopped at a gas station on his way to the Capitol for a vote.

That small, random investment won a stunned Gregg $853,492 yesterday, when he learned that he was one of 49 people to get a piece of the Powerball Lottery jackpot.

Thank you Boston Globe. In fairness, it's not like he grew up easy with his dad being a former president or anything. Actually, Judd Gregg's dad Hugh was governor of one of the smallest states in the country, well before it became the center of the presidential primary (incidentally, the shit is about to hit the fan on that one). So to imply that Judd Gregg doesn't deserve what he openly acknowledges is only about $500,000 after taxes is ridiculous. He's only held major elective office - U.S. House or higher - since 1980.

P.S.: I hate being somewhat honest. The Globe article also mentions this: "He added that he would give an unspecified portion of the cash to his family's Hugh Gregg Foundation, which helps local charities in New Hampshire." On the one hand, it is his money, but on the other hand, I mean, come on. Read the above imaginary movie scene.

(The image above is pretty sweet: it's three taps and foot-operated. Why hasn't anyone come up with this before? Thanks to fellow Elizabethtown moviegoer Katy Hight for the pickup.)

Posted by Terry McMahon at 12:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

OK, so I haven't been updating my blog a whole lot lately. You should already know I went to NYU to have a life, and now I've got one.

Nonetheless, some things are still worth mentioning. E.J. Dionne wrote in the Washington Post last week on National Review founder William F. Buckley, generally considered the primary intellectual basis of the modern conservative movement. It's a fascinating column on a fascinating man: there's a New York Times Magazine article on him (already TimesSelect!) from a couple weeks ago, and there's a mini-scandal going on in Team Democratic Blogosphere about whether Joe Lieberman's appearance at Buckley's recent big birthday bash constitutes an endorsement of racism. (National Review has never repudiated its own anti-civil rights position in the 1960s.)

It's the Joe Lieberman issue I'm going to focus on here. Dionne's article is complicated, since he starts off admitting it's unusual for a liberal like Dionne to spend so much time complimenting such a passionate conservative. So that takes up most of the column, but he also says this:

And it's not easy for any liberal to agree with Buckley's support long ago for Joe McCarthy. (His novel about McCarthy was better). It's hard to credit his views in the civil rights era or to identify with his many knocks on that courageous liberal Republican, former senator Lowell Weicker.

Why does any of this matter? Well, 18 years later, we may have a rematch. That's right, the now-Independent Weicker is considering a run against Joe Lieberman in 2006. I'm not sure who I would support in that race (Weicker would almost certainly caucus with the Democrats, like Jim Jeffords does now and Bernie Sanders does in the House) but it would certainly be a hell of a race, not least from the rampant irony.

Now, I really have no point here, mostly because I'm not sure what's going on. I can't believe Dionne would bring up Weicker for one of a list of only two crappy things William F. Buckley has ever done (and there are hundreds) if he weren't thinking of the 2006 Connecticut Senate race as much as the one in 1988. But what's his point? Weicker's such a great guy that we should get rid of a conservative Democrat like Lieberman? If so, then why in a column that's basically an ode to a conservative Republican? I don't get it. Maybe Dionne just hates Lieberman? I may not understand subtleties, but I know 'em when I see 'em.

Anyway, my last conspiracy theory got me written up (almost as if I had a point) in the National Journal's Hotline, so apparently this one is true too. I always knew I was the next Drudge.

Also, I just discovered the Flying Spaghetti Monster today. This is both hilarious and completely apt in the context of an issue that really shouldn't be an issue. Anyway, this link reaches "you owe it to yourself" status, so give it a look.

Posted by Terry McMahon at 10:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Democratic Party infrastructure is really missing out these days by not understanding the wonderful innovations of the Howard Dean campaign. I konw it's easy to reference the Scream and dismiss Dean as crazy, but his campaign was astonishingly successful in so many ways. So while I understand that kind of reaction in general, I am both shocked and amazed by how many dedicated and active Democrats still refuse to acknowledge just how awesome the Dean campaign was. This is a quote from the Washington Post, about a progressive group in Colorado trying to reproduce the grassroots energy of Dean for America:

ProgressNow said it has encountered some resistance from local Democratic Party officials who fear the effort will siphon people and money from their activities. Patricia Waak, who heads the state party, acknowledged that some see the group as little more than unwanted competition. She said that she wished it would somehow work through the party, but that she nevertheless supported its efforts.

"The fact is that they're going on a premise here that worked for Howard Dean when he was running and was pretty effective for him," Waak said. "But in the end, it still only picks up a certain group of people. There are still tons of people out there who don't even have a computer and who could care less what blogs say."

But let me comment on those two remarks I boldfaced above:

she wished it would somehow work through the party,

But here they don't. Think of where the Howard Dean campaign would be if it worked closely with the rest of the Democratic Party and asked permission before they did anything. The reason the Dean campaign succeeded was because it was bold and unafraid to challenge the party establishment. If the folks at ProgressNow tried working through the state party, they would be put on the phones to do fundraising or persuasion calls within hours, and in a few days only the diehards would remain. But by trying to be an independent group doing new things, the members are free to be fun and creative, and like the Dean campaign, they're likely to stumble upon something that works.

I would understand if the establishment Democrats in Colorado didn't see that logic. I don't understand how this was the biggest campaign story of 2003, and yet they completely missed it.

in the end, it still only picks up a certain group of people.

But again, that attitude above misses the larger point. Sure these groups only get upper-middle-class Internet-connected activisits. So what? Can those people do anything? Answer: you better believe it. Besides the manpower they provide, if you get those people to start chucking in $50 donations every few months, and if you keep them feeling empowered in the politics of their state and country, you've got a donor for life. I have no idea how this doesn't resonate. And even if it doesn't, at the very least you've got a more and more well-informed electorate who can go out into the world with ammunition to counter Republican misinformation. So yes, these campaign groups will only take in a certain group of people, who could make a really big difference.

(I think I've seen it before, but the title and image come from a list of ready.gov Homeland Security warning signs and what they actually mean. Courtesy of, believe it or not, bentickner.com.)

Posted by Terry McMahon at 1:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Quoting John McCain at an American Society of Magazine Editors conference:

On partisanship, McCain waxed nostalgic for the days when "Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan would fight all day and then he'd come down and it'd be two Irishmen telling corny jokes over drinks...We need more of that today."

Compare and contrast:

Reagan and Tip O'Neill scrapped like tigers during the day, but after 5:00 P.M., they were two Irishmen topping each other with jokes. [Eyewitness to Power, David Gergen, p.191.]

Posted by Terry McMahon at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I think I'm about ready to give up on Nancy Pelosi as House Democratic Leader. I found this press release from a few days ago, and a couple things I saw give me pause.

First is the headline:

Pelosi: ‘What You Saw on the House Floor This Afternoon Was a Shameless Display of the Republican Culture of Corruption’

Unfortunately, that's a terrible way of framing the issue. "What you saw on the House floor today" was NOTHING. No one saw what happened on the House floor. Maybe the 15 or so reporters who have to watch this, or everyone who watches C-SPAN. Those groups, together, add up to zero of the United States voting population. No one who has anything non-political driving their lives saw anything on the House floor, and they probably wouldn't give a shit if they did. Don't get me wrong, you can frame the issue to speak to people, but it has to be point #5 as to why the Republican agenda is ruining our country: (wait for applause to die down) "Not only that, but the Republicans in Congress will routinely hold a five-minute vote, realize they don't have enough votes, and then turn a five-minute vote into twenty, thirty, even forty-five minutes desperately begging, cajoling, and even threatening their own Republicans to vote for a bill that most people in the House know is a sham." See, that's not too bad.

Unfortunately, Pelosi seems to think that the vote itself is the issue. This is her statement:

Democrats have proposed guidelines for how we think the House of Representatives should operate, a Minority Bill of Rights. Included in this document is the declaration that ‘No vote shall be held open in order to manipulate the outcome.’ When we take back the People’s House, we will heed that declaration.

You guys know I think Paul Waldman is great, and not just because he's my former Mass Media professor. Last week a report by a couple of prominent consultant-class Democrats came out saying Democrats were in danger if they moved too far to the left. Waldman, writing over at Gadflyer, properly eviscerates the report, but in doing so crystallizes a point I had only rarely remembered in my three years in politics:

The ugly fact of American public opinion is that most people know next to nothing about politics. They don't have a clear understanding of where the parties stand on most things, and they don't have a meaningful grasp of exactly what it means to be "liberal" or "conservative." Tweaking your issue positions just won't register with them.

Similarly, until 1992 the NES asked respondents which party is more conservative on the national level. This may be the most basic fact about American politics one could imagine; if you don't know that the answer is "the Republicans," then you really don't know anything. The last time the proportion of people answering this question correctly cracked 60% was 1968; the last time it was asked, in 1992, 57% got it right (and they had a 50-50 chance by guessing, after all).

But I'm not just flailing wildly here: there's another thing about this Pelosi press release that pissed me off. The top of the release has a heading, which seems to appear on every other release too, which reads, and this is good:

Democratic priorities are clear: we will fight to get the economy back on track, we will create jobs, and we will help unemployed workers.

But that's not the real issue. I know I've said this before, and I will be more than happy to say it again, but Democrats will not win nationally in this country until we are taken seriously on terrorism. Republicans are tanking on this issue (uh, no pun intended), but terrorism still can lead the Democrats to losses in 2006 if we're not chickenshit about speaking out on it. That's right, I said it: we can actually lose more ground in 2006 if we don't start speaking out on terrorism. Here's a bold statement: The American people realize the Republican policy on terrorism has failed, and they desperately want an alternative. I suspect, honestly, that the public would buy any plan at all from the Democrats on Iraq, from "withdraw now" to "come up with benchmarks and stick to them," even if they proposed nothing else. But we don't even have to do that. If Democrats started speaking of terrorism in broader terms - my personal favorite is to say that accounting for and securing nuclear weapons should be our top priority, but, oh, I don't know, shutting down al-Qaeda might be a good one too - I honestly believe the Democrats could become the party of national security within only a few years.

I desperately want Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats to succeed, but just as A-Rod can't hit a hanging curve in the playoffs, sometimes you can blow even the easy ones. Here's hoping our team comes through.

(P.S. That picture's from Germany. There's an actual bridge of water over a river. Here's the Snopes entry.)

Posted by Terry McMahon at 3:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today on CNN's Late Edition:

"The elimination of Roe v. Wade won't stop abortion. Abortion's a private decision. But I just think it shouldn't be federalized."

Posted by Terry McMahon at 7:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I like Tony Graffanino. Don't start.

Posted by Terry McMahon at 12:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

• Some folks over at DailyKos are hashing out an illuminative discussion on what it is Democrats should stand for. You can sum up the Republican philosophy, the saying goes, in eight words: strong defense, family values, low taxes, small government. What do Democrats stand for? I would argue you can't really say, since the premise of a conservative vs. liberal political system is that one party wants things to stay the same (so they have a static value set) and one party wants things to change, to various extents depending on the person.

  In any event, while I enjoy "Not leaving people to die" as a good slogan, the Kossacks seem to be around "Strong Families. Strong Communities. Strong Nation." which I find not as vague as some stuff that's come before, but still pretty nondescript.. It's a work in progress.

• Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado does not have a chance of winning the presidency in 2008, but that won't stop him from running if the other Republican candidates aren't saying enough about illegal immigration. Tancredo is apparently getting terrific reactions to his anti-immigrant stump speech, and he recently challenged another likely 2008 candidate, Bill Richardson, to a debate on immigration. Apparently Richardson's on the other side of the illegal immigrant debate. Whether this turns into a debate or not (i.e. it won't) this issue won't be going away.

• It sounds cool to say it now, but I really don't think recent flavor-of-the-month George Allen is going to make a very good presidential candidate. Whereas Bush talked about compassionate conservativism in a way that revitalized the Republican Party, Allen looks like he's got nothing new to say, and his "common-sense conservativism" doesn't work when you think about it. In other words, isn't "it's common sense" the last stand of a defeated argument? If it's so blatantly obvious, why can't you prove your case another way? Frankly, most of what he says just seems like warmed-over early-'00s conservative mush. You know, the stuff that's been demonstrated not to work?

• If you didn't know it already, his new book should be proof that Al Franken is readying himself for a serious run for the Senate in 2008. Quick refresher: Franken, from Minnesota himself, was a huge fan of Paul Wellstone and devoted the most effective (and most poignant) chapter of his last book towards disproving the notion that Democrats politicized Wellstone's death (and showed just the opposite). So Franken had been rumored to be gunning for that Senate seat (now held by Norm Coleman) for a while, and it looks now like he's going for it. Note first the cover: very serious. That looks like a politician. Then note the title, an attempt to transition seamlessly from bombthrowing pundit to credible visionary. As opposed to Lies (and the lying liars who tell them), we now have The Truth (with jokes). He's still funny. And now he's advocating a positive message. I say that's really smooth.

• Katie Holmes is pregnant. I point you again to the Wikipedia entry on Xenu.

• My favorite political writer is Matt Bai of the New York Times Magazine. He writes really long articles that are unbelievably fascinating, and I eagerly await his book on the state of the Democrats. In last weekend's NYT Magazine he has an article on the present of future in an article he calls "Mrs. Triangulation." (He never explains, though, what triangulation is. Thank goodness for this blog.)

• I don't hate Texans. I really don't, either individually or en masse. Well, maybe one or two Texans. But a lot of Texans seem to have a hard time figuring out why everyone doesn't love them, and I think I found a story that might help explain why.

  This is a column from Fox News correspondent Brian Wilson, unfortunately not the former Beach Boys impresario, who wrote, apparently, on the sole topic of how great Texans are, as evidenced by their awesome reaction to Hurricane Rita. Now, see, I would say that the impression I got from most Texans about the hurricane was that we should all be impressed it happened to them, but that's not what Brian Wilson says:
  

  Never ask someone if they are from Texas. Because if a person is from Texas, they will tell you in short order. If they are not from Texas, asking will only make them sad that they had the poor fortune to be born someplace else.
  ...
  Even though I haven't lived in my home state for more than 20 years, this is why I still want to be known as a Texan. The people are just the kindest, friendliest, most decent people you are likely to find anywhere. Sure, as a group, we're a little loud. We love our pickups and our SUVs and, Lord knows, we love to talk trash about how great we are. "You can always tell a Texan," the old saying goes, "but you can't tell 'em much."

  But in times of trouble or despair — it's the Texans you want standing at your back.

  
  I will assume that last quote is true. But someone do me a favor and clarify something for me. How is the rest of that quote above (especially "we love to talk trash about how great we are") any different, or any better, from that northeastern elitism that supposedly precludes the viability of any of our presidential candidates? Seriously. I want to know what we're doing wrong here. Is calling people elitist snobs nicer than calling Texans cowboys or dumb or right-wing Christians? I really would like to know this. (That said, I can't believe how much Texas-trashing goes on in my Big Apple law school, even in front of proud Texans. I assume none of the reverse happens at schools like Baylor.)

• Do you remember currently incarcerated former Congressman Jim Traficant? I don't really either. But this collection of his quotes will make you wish you did. My favorite is this one:
  

  Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Speaker, the endangered sucker fish is living up to its reputation, sucking the livelihood from 1,400 farmers in Oregon. That is right. This protected bottom feeder now has more rights than farmers out there. If that is not enough to fry your mackerel, this region has now been without irrigated water since April, turning 200,000 acres of farmland into near desert.

  Beam me up. Stop this sucker fish crusade. Free these farmers.

  I yield back the fact that this sucker fish sucks.

• I really couldn't tell you whether Paul Hodes is going to beat Charlie Bass in New Hampshire's 2nd congressional district on his second try in 2006, though I suspect the national climate and Hodes' increased experience will help. So I'm not inclined to say it's necessarily bad that he's getting a challenger, but I just don't like the idea of the scion of a prominent New Hampshire Democratic family moving back to the state just to run for Congress. I even understand the idea of people moving somewhere, or moving back home, to run for office, and I certainly understand how people who grew up in politics would be into it. The combination, especially for a seat somebody else in the party is already running for (and has been for two years) is not so cool. I can't say I'm really cool with this. But good scoop by all-star James Pindell, the first reporter I ever went to dinner with.

• The Alabama governor's race next year is shaping up to be about as interesting as it gets. Incumbent Bob Riley, a wicked conservative Republican, got a bit of fame in 2003 for trying to pass an ultimately failed voter referendum on a big tax increase. At the time, he said caring for the poor is the Christian thing to do (which is true) but it failed, and now he's in trouble. There are two interesting Democratic challengers: the lieutenant governor is a woman, and frankly I'm always intrigued when a Democratic woman has a real shot at winning a major statewide office in the deep south. The second Democrat is former Gov. Don Siegelman, who some say was robbed of an election victory in 2002, and Riley's not even a legitimate governor at all.

  Now, for a political dork like me, that would suffice for a good race: see who wins a neat past-vs.-future Democratic primary, then see who can beat a semi-innovative but embattled Republican incumbent. Why should you care? Well, Riley's getting a Republican primary challenger. And, that's right, it's Roy Moore. If you thought that issue about the Ten Commandments in the courtroom was dead, you're completely wrong. This one's going to get wild.

• Apparently it's really buggy still, but AOL is coming out with a massive update of AIM (currently in beta) that lets you do IM, email (two gigs of storage), voice chat, video chat, and text messaging. Plus tabbed IMing! That last one is really going to help. Keep an eye out for this one.

• I know I harped on this yesterday, but the GOP blowback on Harriet Miers is astonishing. As recently as last week I never would have expected this kind of open revolt within the party. I mean, even Trent Lott says he's leaning against supporting her. When the Manchester Union Leader starts an editorial about a Bush decision with "America is not supposed to work this way," you are in deep shit. The UL then says that Miers "is no more or less qualified to sit on the Supreme Court than thousands of other attorneys with similar career highlights. What separates her from the others is a single attribute: friendship with the President."

  But the really good stuff is from George Will, who is a huge conservative and yet just gets really brutal. Here's one choice quote about Bush:
  

  He has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution.

  
  Here's another:
  

  In addition, the president has forfeited his right to be trusted as a custodian of the Constitution.

  
  Wow! The whole thing reads like it's from an alternate universe. I mean, I knew Republicans were good at pretending they all got along until after election years, but this is just amazing.

• Speaking of New Hampshire's conservative paper of record, the Union Leader is not subtle about its support for Steve Forbes' flat tax. In fact, they say in an editorial the other day that "It should go without saying that a flat tax makes sense."
  

  For those familiar with the flat tax argument, there is not much new in Forbes' new book. The big twist is that this time he would have the federal government offer Americans a choice: Pay taxes under the current system, or pay under the flat tax — whichever benefits you most.

  
  Doesn't that just make it a flat tax for everyone above the flat tax percentage (Forbes says 17%) and keep it the same for everyone else? Why would anyone in the rich tax bracket pay more than the flat-tax rate? I don't get economics.

• In the past 20 years, Rhode Island, despite being one of the most Democratic states in the country, has had a Republican governor for all but four of them. The one exception was Bruce Sundlun, a former businessman who was governor from 1990 through 1994, back when that was two terms. Certain pregnant sisters of mine have taken Sundlun's subsequent class on politics at URI, but you know what he's up to now? He's trying to become the next town manager of Coventry. The former governor! Now a town manager! And no, he's not from Coventry, and he's never lived or worked there. Seriously, why isn't he trying to run for U.S. Senate or something?

  While I have the opportunity, I have to mention the last time I mentioned town managers, because it was at a bar the other night. I was getting approached by a beautiful woman, per usual, but this one was different. That's right, she wrote her thesis on South Kingstown and Narragansett, Rhode Island (and something about the water systems thereof.) I asked her if she met with the town manager; she hadn't. (Look, I was curious.) Am I the only one who thinks it's crazy that I met a chick at a bar who wrote her thesis on my hometown?

• 70s songwriter Andrew Gold (you owe it to yourself to check out "Lonely Boy") comes through in the clutch.

• The nice thing about Bush's collapsing presidency is that reporters are finally getting a spine. Look at this great WaPo article on Karen Hughes' assertion that Bush is the first president to advocate for a Palestinian state, and the copious and lengthy ways in which that is demonstrably false, and how the Bush administration has said it's not true.

Posted by Terry McMahon at 10:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Understand that I'm not convinced we can know what a SCOTUS justice is going to do until they're on the court, so I mostly love this nomination for the boatloads of political intrigue. All the following stories are individually fascinating, and they're only going to develop in the next few weeks.

1. Conservatives are wicked pissed. The RedState.org summary says flatly, "Harriet Miers is unqualified for the position," and David Frum at the National Review has this fantastic opening:

   I believe I was the first to float the name of Harriet Miers, White House counsel, as a possible Supreme Court. Today her name is all over the news. I have to confess that at the time, I was mostly joking.

   None of that is necessarily false, or even out of the range of conservative thought. What's surprising is that the wheels have come off the once well-oiled conservative message machine. Seriously, does anyone remember the political climate in early 2003? Could you imagine conservatives teeing off on a Bush Supreme Court nominee the day she got nominated? What the hell?

   UPDATE: I actually just found this: "There is now talk of among some conservatives about a filibuster of the Miers nomination." Oh wow.
   

2. The cronyism is outstanding. Miers is the first non-judge to be nominated to the Supreme Court since Rehnquist in 1971, and, as you probably know, her main qualification is being Bush's current personal lawyer. The idea of this president actually giving someone a job for which they're not qualified is pretty shocking, I know, but this pick in light of Brownie, the Tom DeLay-Jack Abramoff fountain of free golfing trips and lobbyist connections, and whatever the hell Karl Rove and Cheney's chief of staff were really doing about Valerie Plame, makes the corruption argument harder for Democrats to screw up by the day.
   
3. Harry Reid specifically requested Miers for the nomination. Seriously, on a blogger conference call last week, Reid related his conversation with Cheney in which he said, "I think that rather than looking at the people your lawyer’s recommending, pick her.” Regardless of whether or not that was a smooth move, how are Democrats going to oppose a broadly unqualified nominee when their own leader announces on the first day of her nomination that it was his idea? The upcoming developments within the Democratic Party on Miers should be fascinating.
   
4. Is she even conservative? Personally, I don't think it's a big deal that she donated to Gore in 1988 and Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas (Dukakis' running mate!) around the same time; pretty much all Texans were still Democrats then. But check out this nugget from the New Republic:
   

   For instance, she apparently submitted the following report to the ABA's House of Delegates. Here are two of the report's recommendations:

   • Supports the enactment of laws and public policy which provide that sexual orientation shall not be a bar to adoption when the adoption is determined to be in the best interest of the child. ...

   • Recommends the development and establishment of an International Criminal Court.

   
   Wow. She is, apparently, hugely pro-life (remember Roe?) but she also voted for a property tax increase whilst on the Dallas City Council, so apparently she once exhibited some independent thought. Maybe she's not that bad for us after all.
   
5. More from National Review: "She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met." Handsome, too. And while President Bush certainly is the smartest man in America, will this just convince everyone she's an idiot? Last night David Letterman did "Top Ten Signs Your Supreme Court Pick Isn't Qualified." That's gotta hurt.

I'll leave you with this awesome impression from some anonymous White House official, with a shout to Wonkette:

She's a nit-picky micromanager who failed upwards at the White House: "She failed in Card's office for two reasons," the [former White House] official says. "First, because she can't make a decision, and second, because she can't delegate, she can't let anything go. And having failed for those two reasons, they move her to be the counsel for the president, which requires exactly those two talents."

Posted by Terry McMahon at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The Red Sox and Yankees tied for the AL East championship this year with identical 95-67 records, and don't let anyone tell you different. (Incidentally, the Angels had the same record too.)

Also, thank goodness, the Red Sox are playing a team that nearly blew a 15-game division lead, and the Yankees are playing a team who are 14-2 in their past 16 games.

Personally, I'm just thrilled that we're not playing the A's, Angels, Yankees or Indians in the first round; believe it or not those are the only four teams we've ever played in the playoffs. Seriously - the League Championship Series didn't start until 1969, and this is the list of Boston playoff opponents (in the AL) since:

1948: Cleveland (one-game playoff)
1975: Oakland
1978: New York (one-game playoff)
1986: California (i.e. the Angels)
1988: Oakland
1990: Oakland
1995: Cleveland
1998: Cleveland
1999: Cleveland, New York
2003: Oakland, New York
2004: Anaheim (i.e. the Angels), New York
2005: Chicago, ???

And since the AL playoff breakdowns are Red Sox-White Sox and Yankees-Angels, here's hoping we face Los Angeles in the ALCS, to make three playoff series against the Angels, with the Angels claiming to be from a different place - but actually being from the same place - each time.

All in all, things are looking good.

Posted by Terry McMahon at 12:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

"In truth, I am nothing but a plodding mediocrity--please observe, a plodding mediocrity--for a mere mediocrity does not go very far, but a plodding one gets quite a distance. There is joy in that success, and a distinction can come from courage, fidelity and industry." -Supreme Court Justice and noted first-year law school opinion writer Benjamin N. Cardozo

Also, Newt Gingrich is a smart guy, here's his look at the next few years in Republican politics.

Posted by Terry McMahon at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)