Corey Mull's Evil Urges

‘Um, all of them”

Throwing a quick post in the hopper on the latest snippet of Sarah Palin’s CBS interview.

ThinkProgress:

COURIC: And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this — to stay informed and to understand the world?

PALIN: I’ve read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media —

COURIC: But what ones specifically? I’m curious.

PALIN: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.

COURIC: Can you name any of them?

PALIN: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news.

I’m not sure if “terrible politician” is an insult, but it certainly applies here. I’m sure not all politicians are avid readers of the news, and I’m sure there are a few who just don’t give a shit. Not terribly important; that’s what they have staffs for.

Palin is not only doesn’t read newspapers, she doesn’t even have the skills to extemporaneously make up a list. 

For the record, I read the Wall Street Journal and  the Washington Post, and I scan the headlines of the New York Times and the Richmond Times-Dispatch, in addition to around 70 blogs. I’d be the best vice president ever. 

The Bailout Fails

Via NPR:

The Dow Jones industrial average plunged as much as 705 points early Monday afternoon investors as the House failed to approve a proposed $700 billion U.S. bailout aimed at stabilizing the nation's ailing banking industry.

On one of the worst days in memory on Wall Street, the Dow briefly fell more than 700 points before rebounding slightly. The NASDAQ fell about 6 percent, while the S&P 500 was down more than 7 percent.

The politics are simple: the Republicans agreed to the compromise, then either couldn't deliver the votes or double-crossed the Democrats.

I don't have the economic background to understand what this will do to the markets; I don't think anyone does. I know that I opposed the original Paulson request, mostly for constitutional reasons, and that the bill that just failed was substantially better.

It's going to be a wild ride on the markets for the next two hours...

Edit: Unbelievable. Boehner is on television blaming the collapse of the agreement on Pelosi's floor speech that he deemed "too partisan". Let's review: the Republicans are saying that the bill is necessary, that intervention is needed to protect the American people, but a sharp floor speech from the mean old Speaker is enough to throw off the entire thing. Now Eric Cantor, a massive douchebag who used to be my congressman, is echoing the same sentiment. And he's blaming the Democrats on an unproductive session when the Republicans have used the filibuster a record number of times to stop deliberations.

Chart of the Day

John McCain, and by extension legions of dittoheads and Hannity listeners believe that removing the red piece of this graph would fix the nation's financial crisis:

Incentives and Idealism

In reference to last week's NYT article on Roland Fryer, EduWonkette's Comment of the Week:

The soul-crushing aspect of Fryer's theoretical framework....is that it lets the curriculum and the teacher and the school entirely off the hook. It's not a matter of creating learning experiences that connect with a child, her culture, her community; or creating curriculum that intrigues her or teaching that respects her and her family; or about creating schools where families and communities can find support and education and develop skills of active citizenship....No, it's a much more cynical view on students living in poverty. They don't care, they are only motivated by material objects that they don't have, they have to be bribed into "learning" (or at least learning to get a better score on a bubble sheet)....RRRRR! Get me out of here.

The "theoretical framework" mentioned in the comment is nothing but basic, empirical economics. Fryer's Educational Innovation Laboratory is experimenting with material incentives for students in low-performing districts; namely, he wants to pay kids for getting good grades. He's piloting the program in New York, Washington, and Chicago, and the main criticism has been the idea that students are being "bribed" for good grades.

This shows a basic lack of understanding of how human beings work. We are material animals and we respond to incentives. I enjoy my job, but I come to work every morning because I know that every two weeks I will be rewarded with a paycheck. If the paychecks stop coming, then I stop working, and I think there are very few adults who could truthfully say otherwise. No one characterizes this relationship as "bribery".

Incentives don't have to be monetary. I could probably get a higher-paying job in another field, for instance, but I don't respond to that incentive because I enjoy my current job and I probably wouldn't enjoy the higher-paying ones as much. There are tons of people who work for peanuts in the non-profit sector; their compensation comes in not only dollars but in job satisfaction and the knowledge that they are doing good for their communities.

Why should it be any different for kids? Students in upper and middle-class families, by and large, are compensated by their parents for good grades, whether that's through an allowance, through praise, or through privleges. One of the first things most kids figure out is that if he gets good grades, his parents are happy; and if he gets bad grades, his parents get upset.  It's a simple calculus and helps kids form the habit of achieving in school, so that doing well becomes the norm. Incentives have nothing to do with poverty or socioeconomics - every student has the

This calculus is broken in many inner-city families. We can debate the reasons why; the reasons are irrelevant. The only worthwhile short-term exercise is to try and restore the incentive structure that most families create on their own.

What scares teachers the most, I think, is Fryer's idea that education can be distilled into empiricism. The aura of the teacher is one who exhibits "soft" skills - connecting with young people, instilling in them a love of learning and of the subject matter, and serving as a role model. And those things are necessary facets of education. But they are not working on any large scale without student incentives. Washington, DC has an adult illiteracy rate of 36%; that includes the entire District, even highly-educated, technocratic Northwest. Wards 7 and 8, where DC poverty is concentrated, have adult illiteracy rates approaching 50%. It frightens me that teachers can in any way defend a system that leaves 50% of its students unable to function in the real world.

Incentives are among the basic building blocks of public policy. Why is education different?

Rail in Richmond

Today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch has a great article about Main Street Station, a turn-of-century train station in my old neighborhood of Shockoe Bottom. The article explores the reasons why Main Street carries only about 5% of rail passengers in Richmond, despite the fact that it’s much more convenient to downtown and most of the things that people come to Richmond for. The verdict: inadequate rail service (only 4 trains come to the station every day) caused by a freight bottleneck north of the city, inadequate transportation options from the station itself to other destinations in Richmond, and a general budget shortfall that makes it hard to pay for those things.

I think all the points raised in the article are valid, but I wonder if folks aren’t missing the forest for the trees here. The question in the Times-Dispatch seems to be “Why isn’t the service at Main Street and Staples Mill (the suburban station that handles the vast majority of Richmond rail traffic) equivalent?” I don’t think the two need to be equivalent at all, and in fact are not suited to equivalency.

The station in the suburbs is in a fairly low-density area, with tons of room for parking, and enough room to handle big long haul trains. It’s ideal for someone who’s travelling to a city outside of this immediate area, and planning to stay overnight.

Main Street Station, however, is located in the middle of downtown Richmond. There is a parking area, but it’s pretty small, and it’s definitely not big enough for the station’s ridership goals. It is, however, convenient to a wide variety of gentrifying neighborhoods, filled with people more likely to have connections across the urban areas of the region, and to be unsatisfied with the range of career options available in Richmond – think creative class types, people who would inhabit the renovated old tobacco warehouses and turn-of-century rowhouses that characterize the neighborhoods around the station.

What I’m driving at here is, why not preserve the suburban station for true inter-region travel, and keep Main Street station as a commuter rail stop for people travelling to Charlottesville, DC, and Hampton Roads? VRE already has plans to expand into Caroline County, parts of which are Richmond exurbs; why not go whole hog into downtown Richmond itself? The Richmond-to-DC trip can be made in an hour and a half, which is about the standard exurban commute in the DC area; I have co-workers who ostensibly live in the metro area but commute longer. That kind of commute is made even more practical by the popularity of four-day workweeks and telecommuting – a three-hour round trip commute isn’t a bad proposition if you only have to do it a few days a week, especially for all the benefits of living in Richmond, lower cost of living being chief among them. The same is true along the east-west corridor: greater mobility between Charlottesville, Richmond and Hampton Roads can bring only good things for these areas.

Of course, anything like this has to be met with improvements elsewhere: more track has to be laid to get the trains to Main Street in the first place, the VRE needs more trains and more operators, the few Richmond cabbies that exist have to start taking fares at the station, and a truly regional transit system needs to shape up in Richmond that is effective at transporting people throughout the area. But these things cost money, and with the crew of primates running the House of Delegates that money isn’t likely to be appropriated soon (indeed, the article states that only about a third of existing rail costs are met). I don’t know what can be done to meet that shortfall, but it seems to me that  increased gasoline taxes and expanded toll roads are probably the key.

A Few Meandering Thoughts on Sports

• Troy Aikman shouldn’t call Cowboys games, period. Actually they shouldn’t let him call any NFC East games. It’s like Bill Kristol being a New York Times columnist, or Karl Rove a contributor to a cable news network. Oh, wait.
• I’m not sure I could’ve kicked a game winning field goal the day after burying my three-month-old son, but I guess everyone deals with tragedy in their own way.
• ESPN.com’s “blogs” are really no such thing.
• The AFC is wide-the-hell open. Who are the best teams in this conference? Not who you’d have thought in early August: in my opinion it has to be Denver, Tennessee, and Buffalo on top of the heap. My Steelers would be up there too if the o-line hadn’t been manhandled by the Eagles’ front four last Sunday. Legitimate playoff teams include, of course, Indy, New England, and San Diego. The AFC will be a wild ride this year.
• The NFC sucks, as usual, except for the East which is just smack-your-grandma good. This is one of these divisions, much like the AL East in baseball, that should be broken up. Yeah, it makes for an entertaining divisional schedule, but the NFL is sacrificing a lot of postseason drama by keeping these teams in the same division.
• Speaking of the AL East: the Baltimore Orioles, my baseball team of choice, has the 7th-most productive offense in the American League, ahead of division rivals New York, Tampa Bay, and Toronto, all of which finished ahead in the standings of last-place Baltimore. Offensive production was also ahead of the LA Angels, who won their division, and was comparable to that of the Chicago White Sox, who finished the season a half game out of first place in the AL Central. The Orioles were 4th in team batting average, 5th in OPS, and 4th in strikeouts. Brian Roberts, Aubrey Huff, and Nick Markakis finished second, third, and fourth in the majors in doubles hit, behind only Dustin Pedroia; this is the first time three players from the same team have made it in the league’s top five. Offensively this is a borderline-playoff team. Pitching, however, is a different story: the O’s were second-to-last in the AL in pitching, allowing almost five and a half runs per game, a team ERA of 5.13, and 181 home runs, second worst in the league. Daniel Cabrera led the league by a substantial number in wild pitches and HBP’s and allowed the second-most walks. If that doesn’t illustrate how the pendulum has swung back to pitching in baseball’s post-steroid era, I don’t know what does. There’s absolutely no hope for this team if they don’t find quality starting pitching.
• Driving to Baltimore is fun for Orioles games, but the worst part about them is the fact that M&T Bank Stadium is across the street and I’m subjected to Ray Lewis’ smirking face on billboards all along I-95 and in the parking lot of Camden Yards. Ray Lewis, in case you’ve forgotten, is a loudmouth douchebag Ravens linebacker who was indicted for murder in 2000. The Steelers play them on Monday and it will be an ugly game; they will be looking to avenge their utter humiliation on MNF last year. Our offensive line worries me and I hope they’re able to protect Ben against what will surely be a nasty Ravens pass rush. Willie Parker is out and Rashard Mendenhall will be the starting halfback, which is either good or bad, considering how ineffective Fast Willie has been against the Ravens in the past.

Broder, Confirmed

It turns out that David Broder is just a stenographer for the McCain campaign. Their newest ad, via Andrew Sullivan:

I expect McCain to take his opponent’s remarks out of context; the Dean of the Pundit Class should not. More flailing from a desperate campaign.

The Simplicity of Palin

This is hilarious:

Sarah Palin told a customer at a Philadelphia restaurant on Saturday that the United States should “absolutely” launch cross-border attacks from Afghanistan into Pakistan in the event that it becomes necessary to “stop the terrorists from coming any further in,” a comment similar to the one John McCain condemned Barack Obama for making during last night’s presidential debate.

It’s clear now to all but the most partisan of observers that the Palin choice is an utter disaster for the Republican ticket. She possesses nothing but the most basic Republican/theocon rubrics of understanding, which says Terrorism Bad, Unilateralism Good, and therefore she comes down on the side of Attacking the Terrorists when asked.

Please note that I am not being hypocritical, and that I don’t like Obama’s position on this any more than I do Palin’s. But it’s obvious that prior to her selection, she knew nothing about the contours of the debate, as Obama’s assertions on Pakistan have been an issue since last summer and were discussed in every Democratic primary debate since then. McCain has released ads attacking Obama’s stance and has mentioned it in speeches. It has been one of the major foreign policy themes of the campaign so far. And she doesn’t know it.

Sunday Musicblogging – Ted Leo and the Pharmacists’ “Bottle of Buckie”

 

Nothing like Ted Leo to fix a quiet Sunday evening. And they’re coming to DC in two weeks!

In Which High Broderism Makes Me Break a Promise

I said yesterday that I wasn’t going to write about the debate. And really, this was my intention – I think debate post-mortems and debates themselves are vapid exercises not worth wasting perfectly good words on.

I didn’t take into account, though, the inevitable Beltway Village chatter that will probably dominate TV and newspapers today. The first Establishment volley comes from the High Priest of I-495, David Broder.

Today’s missive from on high analyzes the debates and declares McCain the “alpha male”. Why? Because Obama followed the direction of the moderator and spoke directly to his opponent, and because McCain was uncivil to his debating partner [bolding mine]:

It was a small thing, but I counted six times that Obama said that McCain was "absolutely right" about a point he had made. No McCain sentences began with a similar acknowledgment of his opponent's wisdom, even though the two agreed on Iran, Russia and the U.S. financial crisis far more than they disagreed.

That suggests an imbalance in the deference quotient between the younger man and the veteran senator -- an impression reinforced by Obama's frequent glances in McCain's direction and McCain's studied indifference to his rival.

Whether viewers caught the verbal and body-language signs that Obama seemed to accept McCain as the alpha male on the stage in Mississippi, I do not know.

But it reinforced my impression that McCain was the more aggressive debater. He flung the adjectives that stick in a listener's mind, calling Obama "naive" and therefore "dangerous."

A couple things about this. Broder does not mention that in each of the occasions that Obama expressed initial agreement with McCain’s statements, he followed up the agreement with an attack, either on McCain specifically or on Republican principles in general. The agreement was a way to introduce an attack. Very “deferent” of him.

Also, note the way in which Broder chooses to describe the candidates. Nothing false here, but his diction is notable – a generic adjective clause (“younger man”) for Obama and one loaded with superlatives for McCain (“veteran senator”), recalling both his long history in the Senate as well as his military service. Barack Obama is a senator too, High Priest Broder – why not show a little respect?

But let’s get back to the thesis of the column: that McCain proved himself as the Alpha Male on the stage on Friday. Let’s visit Wikipedia and find out what an alpha male is:

In social animals, the alpha male is the individual in the community to whom the others follow and defer.

Fair enough. In this campaign, who has been leading and who has been following? Which candidate is now embracing elements of populism that enrage his conservative base? Which candidate is talking about “taking on the oil companies” even as the sitting president and his colleagues in Congress agitate for a bill that would give them free reign to drill along the coasts? Which candidate is denouncing “greed on Wall Street” even as the principal financial regulators in the current Republican administration are ex-investment bankers?

Moreover, how does McCain’s passive-aggressive behavior on the debate stage qualify him as an alpha male? Do alpha males eviscerate their rivals in speeches but refuse to look them in the eye while doing so? Do they show revulsion when asked to confront their opponents directly, as McCain did throughout Friday night? Alpha males know that they rule their communities and exhibit complete confidence in their abilities. Like him or not, who could call the McCain of Friday night “confident”? The smirks, the unwillingness to engage directly, the under-the-breath comments after an Obama attack, the way he bounced like a little child after landing the occasional punch – how could these things be described as “alpha” in nature?

All the debate really did, though, was confirm an impression Broder had of the two candidates that he already held. It’s okay to hold impressions of people, but let’s review: this is the first debate between the two men, and yet Broder already has an impression about how they will debate each other. Clearly it’s not one that’s based on any kind of fact, as there have been no instances in which the men have debated each other prior to this. It’s just a convenient caricature in which to place complex individuals, and it makes for a much easier time writing columns: the Democrat is weak and vaguely effeminate, the Republican is strong and manly, regardless of actual circumstances.

Broder clearly has the right to his own opinion, as ridiculous, elitist, and simple it may be. But that doesn’t mean we have to take him seriously.