Ben Casnocha: The Blog

Congressional Testimony as Literary Genre

What the hell is going on in Washington? (Other than a gang of thugs breaking into Arnold Kling's house.) It's hard to know, exactly. Dig into the primary sources and you find congressional testimonies near impenetrable.

There's a phrase for this, actually: oracular obscurity. Permit literary critic Harold Bloom to describe:

"Oracular obscurity combines the spoken traditions of Homer and Shakespeare with the writing style of postwar French pomposité grandiloquente and just a dash of Latin American magic realism to produce an entirely new phenomenon that has reinvented congressional testimony as a literary genre."

Hat tip to Alan Greenspan for inspiring this phrase.

Nuggets of the Day, Inauguration Special

Part me gets emotional and serious around events like a historic presidential inauguration. But I also find it all totally hilarious. The media coverage surrounding the event was ridiculously American in the best possible way. Here are some quotes and nuggets from the brave men and women on the journalistic front lines:

• "At the end of the day, I think a lot of people here, as excited as they were to see him inaugurated and take the oath of office, were so cold that they just wanted the inaugural address to end." - Jeremy Schaap, ESPN's coverage. (He went on to say there were "millions" of people in the mall.)


• On MSNBC, weatherman Al Roker implied that Chris Matthews sensed the infamous thrill up his leg because the new president looks good without his shirt on.


• On TV One panelist Al Sharpton lost significant street cred, in the moments before the ceremony, in mistaking Aretha Franklin for Barack Obama's mother-in-law.


• Tomorrow's inauguration special on Oprah features the dynamite trio of Forest Whitaker, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Jon Bon Jovi. They complement each other so well!


• Rick Warren's bizarre tonal emphasis on the names of Obama's children. Here's an excerpted clip of his pronunciation. It's like he was referring to some exotic Mexican spice. By the way I thought Warren sucked. As one commenter put it, we were all waiting for Warren to pull out a loaf of bread and feed the spectators.


• Ross Douthat has the best serious brief analysis of Obama's inaugural address.

And then of course there was the laugh-out-loud screw-up of the oath. Dhalia Litwhick has the transcription:

The oath is supposed to go as follows:

I (name) do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Most presidents traditionally add the words So help me God at the end, as did Obama.

Here's how it went down today:

ROBERTS: (working without a text, and also without an overcoat): Are you prepared to take the oath, Senator?

OBAMA: I am.

ROBERTS: I Barack Hussein Obama ...

OBAMA: (interrupting) I Barack ...

ROBERTS: Do solemnly swear ...

OBAMA: I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear ...

ROBERTS: That I will execute the office of president to the United States faithfully...

OBAMA: That I will execute ... (pauses, smiles, waits for Roberts to put "faithfully" in correct spot)

ROBERTS: ... The off ... faithfully the pres ... the office of president of the United States...

OBAMA: The office of president of the United States, faithfully ... (if you can't beat 'em, join 'em)

ROBERTS: And will to the best of my ability ...

OBAMA: And will to [the] best of my ability ...

ROBERTS: Preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

OBAMA: Preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

ROBERTS: So help you God?

OBAMA: So help me God.

ROBERTS: Congratulations, Mr. President.

Sundown for California?

 

"I believe the difference between the literature of California's past and the literature to come will be the difference of expectation. There are children growing up in California today who take it as a given that the 101 North, the 405 South, and the 10 East are unavailable after two in the afternoon."

- Richard Rodriguez's essay "Disappointment"

Joel Kotkin's cover story titled Sundown for California in The American magazine says: "The Golden State appears headed, if not for imminent disaster, then toward an unanticipated, maddening, and largely unnecessary mediocrity."

He marshals depressing data on slowing job growth (CA has third highest unemployment rate in the country), the collapse of the housing market (taken a drive around suburban Sacramento or Riverside recently?), and poverty rates in high-end cities like San Francisco which now lack a real middle-class. Out-migration statistics show residents are very aware of these problems: they're leaving. Read the whole thing.

Why is this decline "largely unnecessary"? In part because of years of breathtaking incompetency of State legislators in Sacramento especially on financial matters. Just in the last few days we've seen them argue over how to close this year's $11.2 billion deficit. This time the shitshow features a weak Arnold Schwarzenegger fighting Democrats so handcuffed by unions that they cannot accept rational modifications to the payroll system. As the Sacramento Bee editorialized, "California has seen epic failures of leadership before, but never over such an extended period and at such a perilous time."

This morning tech exec Jeff Nolan called for "massive civil disobedience" from Californians:

[T]he state is now saying that they will be paying their bills with IOUs come February. Taxpayers of this state should respond in kind with a massive civil disobedience campaign, let’s pay our taxes with IOUs to express our displeasure with the political leadership in Sacramento.

My question: Why aren't more Californians talking about the dire straits of our state? Why don't more citizens focus on local government?

Day-to-day, local politics and policies affect Americans as much as federal ones. Potholes, parks, schools: these are the issues of your city, county, and state government. Yet, most people follow politics only at the national level. This past election, lots of Californians flooded battleground states for Obama while ignoring pivotal issues closer to home. I know more than a few Obama volunteers who, stunned to return home to find gays stripped of rights, are wondering whether their efforts at progressive change should have been focused on their own community.

Obama and Washington D.C. will dominate the headlines the next few months. Let's not forget about working for change at the local level, especially in California. California needn't devolve into mediocrity. We still attract the best and brightest from all over the world, Silicon Valley and Hollywood are still engines of creativity, the weather still rocks, the culture / lifestyle still attracts misfits and rebels and people looking to find themselves. In other words, the ingredients that have made California the "Coast of Dreams" are still there. It's up to Californians themselves to tune in to local issues and fight to make sure this unique slice of paradise survives the next generation.

Michael Lewis and This American Life on Financial Meltdown

For those of you who enjoyed Michael Lewis's piece on "job vs. calling," and my follow up post Why So Many Struggle to Find a Job or Calling, I must alert you to another recent Lewis piece, this time on the Wall Street melt down.

It's titled The End of Wall Street's Boom in Portfolio magazine and it's absolutely essential reading for understanding the financial crisis. There's so much to read about on this topic -- one must be picky. I recommend reading Lewis's long, helpful chronicle of how we got here and why.

Interestingly, he opens by wondering why Wall Street entrusts 24 year-olds with no experience to dispense investment advice to grown-ups. Though he doesn't explore this particular angle too deeply, it is worth wondering how much responsibility a young, money-hungry, recent college grad should assume for understanding the work he is doing and how it fits in the total picture. Certainly, the willingness of young bankers to re-package and sell essentially fraudulent mortgage-based financial products up the food chain contributed to the overall systematic breakdown.

The other great piece of journalistic reporting on the financial crisis happened on This American Life radio program. Turn up the volume, kick back on a couch, and listen. Prepare to be deeply disturbed and dismayed, but also grateful for at least a few people's ability to explain what is going on in plain English.

Best Paragraph I Read Today

It's from Will Wilkinson, who read the New Yorker profile of Naomi Klein and says this:

Klein comes off as an incoherent bundle of reflexes. She has passions, prejudices, animosities, an appealing streak of punk nihilism, a cynical and savvy strategic sense, and no ideas. Klein and her husband, Avi Lewis, come off as so saturated in familial left-wing politics that their ideology, such as it is, seems less a set of propositions that might be true or false than an ethnic identity or tribal commitment that can neither be chosen nor forsaken. Bred-in-the-bone cultural assumptions rarely cohere when articulated; their logic is emotional. Which explains how Klein can bounce so blithely and unintelligibly from a milquetoast Canadian faith in government to a petulant, anarchic distrust of large institutions.

Ouch! Loyal readers know I'm no fan of Klein, either.

###

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, Tyler Cowen has a fascinating post speculating on why women study abroad more than men 2:1. The "expert" reasons are varying risk tolerances, gender ratios in fields more inclined to send students abroad, and females' concern about safety inducing them to particpiate in formal study abroad programs over independent travel. Then there's the more interesting explanation:

“The three main factors I found were motherhood, age and safety,” said McKinney, associate director of the Center for Global Education at Butler University. “Essentially, my informants shared with me that they really hope someday to be mothers and they can’t imagine being able to travel abroad and also be a mom. So if they’re going to have an overseas experience, they’re going to do it before they become mothers,” she said, adding that her informants “really felt plagued by the age of 30. They have a very long to-do list.”

The biological clock strikes again.

The "Everyman" Caricacture Continues

I've blogged about my fascination with the "elites vs. everyman" dichotomy. Here's my post on D.C. pundits praising Sarah Palin for her supposed connection to everyday Americans. Here's my post on John Stuart Mill on elitism.

Culture 11 magazine today profiled New York state resident Greg Packer who apparently is the most quoted everyman in the country. Packer's life mission is to be the go-to "random guy off the street" for reporters on any topic. He's been quoted in hundreds of articles in the most prestigious newspapers. The most interesting two grafs of the profile:

Our "authentic" man on the street is in a sense our elitist notion of Everyman: he dresses sloppily, wearing rumpled tee-shirts and baggy, formless shorts as Mr. Packer does; he holds a bunched up newspaper, and speaks nothing like a spokesperson or a pithy sound-byte man, but punctuates his sentences with the ums and uhs of the American vernacular, imperfections reporters excise from Greg Packer quotes as a courtesy to our source and our readers.

The curse words that slip into Mr. Packer's sentences when he is exercised only aid his blundering seduction, which culminates in an uncanny ability to speak on any subject and articulate without fail whatever sentiment New York City reporters expect John Q. Public to express.

"Elitist notions of Everyman"? This is getting too meta for me.

(hat tip Andrew Sullivan)

Presidential Security Nugget of the Day

Always fun to read about the day-to-day operations of the White House, including the extraordinary security apparatus around the President. Here's just one of many interesting nuggets:

The President-elect will also have to get used to handing his glass to a Secret Service agent every time he has a drink outside the White House. The agent carries a small bag in which to pop the glass and later he destroys it. The idea is to ensure that no unauthorised person has access to the Presidential DNA, but it is not clear how an enemy would use it.

When All Your Phone Numbers End in 1776...

...you know you're a true American. In this late October profile of libertarian candidate for president Bob Barr, it's revealed that Barr's home, office, and cell phone numbers all end with 1776. If that's not a commitment to defending the timeless values then articulated, I don't know what is.

###

Here are some of my recent "tweets" on micro-blogging service Twitter. Assorted quotes, links, and quick thoughts. Chronology is only organizing principle:

• Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder: some of the best f-bomb usage in 40 seconds I've ever seen in modern cinema: http://tiny.cc/M1an4
• Receiving a nice compliment from someone you care about feels good. Anyone who says they're unmoved by a flattering comment is lying!      
• Unfortunately, the African American vote that came out for Obama also is the most homophobic -- and seems to have voted yes Prop 8 in CA.
• MLK was shot only 40 years ago. I simply cannot imagine what people who were alive then must be thinking right now. Simply inconceivable. 
• Though I voted for Bob Barr, I'm very proud to be an American tonight (Nov 4). No matter who u supported, America has re-invented itself once again.
• India is the default country named when referring to "cheap outsourcing place" but for most super cheap things India is too expensive.  
• Overheard: "I'm not going to the election party. For me, watching election results is like watching porn: I want to do it alone." WTF?
• My jeans are "Made in Jordan." This is the first pair of clothing I've ever worn that claims Middle East origin.
• San Francisco Proposition R seeks to re-name a sewage treatment plant in honor of George W. Bush.
• Casually open up to Genesis 19. Let's see...little bit of gang rape, God blows up couple cities, some incest. The usual Old Testament fare.
• "It's more likely you will be killed in a car crash en route to the voting booth than your vote actually making a difference." - G. Tullock
• Always amusing to see people do the fake hand-wash in public bathrooms: turn water on for 2 secs, no soap, no dry, walk out. 
• Marveling at Tobias Wolff's prose. Is there a living American writer with as deft a touch?  
• Only at In-N-Out Burger do you find in the parking lot a Jaguar, Prius, and Civic next to each other. All walks of life love da doubledouble. 
• There's a direct correlation between the # of times someone refers to him/herself in the third person and that person's ego.
• "There is such a thing as a pornography consumed exclusively by women ... it is the romance novel." - http://tiny.cc/ElREh  
• "The economy" has become the preferred catch-all excuse for any sort of inaction.
• Absolutely horrifying Yes on 8 ad from the religious nutjobs who are behind this campaign: http://tiny.cc/cH211    
• "National pride is to countries what self-respect is to individuals: a necessary condition for self-improvement." - Richard Rorty      
• Happiness is having "Billy Jean" by Michael Jackson come on on your iPod at minute 9 on the treadmill. 
• I find fascinating the mental jujitsu undergone by people who are against gay marriage but not, supposedly, against homosexuality.
• I admire s/he who can defuse potential in-person goodbye awkwardness btwn man/woman by proactively hugging or putting out the firm hand.    
• The Wall Street Journal has one million (!) more subscribers than the New York Times.  
• Imagine if this happened at your wedding (40 sec YouTube): http://tiny.cc/y9oo7  
• “The one thing you need to know about sustained individual success: Discover what you don’t like doing and stop doing it.“ - M. Buckingham  
• People who give you advice by starting, "Let me give you some advice," are usually assholes. (Obviously tone matters.)
• "The crucial diff btwn those who write non-fiction vs. fiction is that fiction writers have a sense for / talent around music." - C Hitchens
• Crude summary of the Old Testament: Don't mess with God. He'll fuck you up.  
• I call support, enter in all my account info on touch pad phone, then human rep asks me for it all over again. Yay CRM/IVR technology!
• "It's next to impossible to get someone to think hard about why he's not interested in something. The boredom itself preempts inquiry." -DFW
• "When John McCain chose Sarah Palin he told the United States of America to go fuck itself." - Leon Wieseltier, lit editor of New Republic   
• I admire people who can authentically use "chief" is casual convo. E.g., "How ya doin' chief?" It's hard to do right
• Someone sent me a book on leadership lessons via childhood toys. E.g. "What Mr. Potato Head Can Teach You About Communication." I kid u not.
•  Apparently you're not allowed to bid AdWords that are the name of your competitor.  
• Love the liberal bias in media. Article this morning: Obama's education plan is better because...he will spend more $ on education.
• Virgin America rocks. "B group, you are bold and beautiful and you chose VA, so go board the plane!" Even cheesy enthusiasm works.  
• October weather is about 300x better than August weather in NYC. Makes a big difference.  
• There are 70k more antelope in Wyoming than people.    
• Don't you love it when hotel rooms have an alarm clock left un-touched by housekeeping from prior guest that goes off in middle of nite? 
• Guy on plane says to flight attendant couple (husband/wife): "Look me in the eye and tell me you haven't 'done it' in the bathroom."
• Changing into my conception of "cold weather clothes": Giants fleece and shoes/socks not sandals. I cant handle weather east of Cali.
• Who came up with the idea for cold mini-corn in salad bars? It's my favorite topping.
• Peter Thiel on Charlie Rose: Human capital has been vastly misallocated - part of the crisis - too many people in real estate, finance, etc.
• Dear Person Coughing: Please cough into your arm and not your hands, so as to limit spread of germs. Love, Person Trying to Not Get a Cold    
• Who do u respect more, the person indifferent on an important issue or the prson on the wrong side of the issue but at least has an opinion?
• JS Mill on the importance of doubt / debate: "As soon as mankind have unanimously accepted a truth, does the truth perish within them?"
• If you were to ask me whether I am eating crunchy peanut butter right out of jar (real men only eat crunchy), I would reply, "No comment."
• "Strategies don’t move mountains, bulldozers do.” - Peter Drucker
• Once again, loyalty to my name precludes me from ordering any type of breakfast other than Eggs Benedict. I'm so helpless.
• "I view pride and self-image as the most important features in predicting the quality of an individual choice." - Tyler Cowen. Interesting.
• "Either your kids are at the center of your life, or they're not." - Calvin Trillin
• I wonder whether Americans will ever take to saying "mobile phone" like the rest of the world instead of "cell phone."
• ""There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it." - William James
• I'm positively inclined to those who know that the word "data" is plural and "none" is singular.
• The $$ in Bay Area is crazy. 265k+ households have net worth of $1M+. SF highest wealth density in world outside D.C. http://tiny.cc/sZVGN
• Men: Does anyone actually pee through the buttoned hole in the front of boxers? I don't and find it in general a useless feature.
• Watching a fat person stuff himself at a buffet is one of life's less pleasant moments.
• Employees forced to use a corporate email account for work should demand "lifetime forwarding" to personal address after they leave the co
• Frequent and/or high profile sushi consumption is not only about the food. It's a way to signal wealth and status.
• Most of the female P.E. teachers or athletic coaches I know are lesbian.
• People who preface replies to questions/requests with "Happy to do X" are usually trying to make it obvious they're doing a favor.
• It's obvious when someone is trying too hard to be casual / laid back. Either it's natural or it's not. I say, Just be you!

John Stuart Mill on Eccentricity, Elitism, and Sarah Palin

In the weeks ahead there will be many postmortems analyzing where McCain's campaign went wrong. For me, I stopped considering his candidacy after he selected Sarah Palin as his VP pick. Aside from her policy views, Palin's hatred of elites and insistence that small town America is "real America" rubbed me the wrong way. Palin will be part of the political scene for years to come. Below (and below the fold) I offer expanded thoughts on Palin in the context of a wonderful essay I just read - "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mill. Mill was a champion of eccentric elites and his view on this issue is worth considering and juxtaposing with Palin's.

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In a recent issue of The New Republic, Noam Scheiber notes how common it’s become for politicians to one-up each other in expressing their distaste for “elites.” From George W. Bush and Mitt Romney blasting the overeducated and entitled, to Hillary Clinton famously remarking that she wasn’t going to “put [her] lot in with the economists” during the gas price spike (she’d rather listen, presumably, to “real Americans,” whoever they are), conveying your common-man bona fides is essential to winning an election in America.

While both sides of the aisle shoo-shoo condescending elites, Republicans have championed this mode of rhetoric more in the last few elections. David Brooks recently observed that over the last 15 years most conservative pundits think “the nation is divided between the wholesome Joe Sixpacks in the heartland and the oversophisticated, overeducated, oversecularized denizens of the coasts.” At the Republican convention in Minneapolis Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, both coastal, well-to-do men, blasted the cosmopolitanism of liberal elites who are out of touch. It’s this constant rhetoric around “Two Americas” (contra John Edwards this bifurcation is between the coasts and the heartland), Brooks argues, that’s causing entire voting groups to turn blue -- tech executives, lawyers, doctors, the west coast, northern Virginia, etc. In other words, any geographic region or profession where a cultivated mind and taste for fine wine is nothing to be ashamed of.

No fact captures the contemporary Republican party’s distrust for urban elites better than their christening of Sarah Palin. Her arrival on the national stage (a stage she will be on for many years to come) represents the ultimate celebration of everyday America. Her resume boasts no fancy degrees and instead a small town mayorship and rural state governorship. Her passport, empty of stamps. Her accent is defined by a folksy twang. Her debate style involves winks, home-town shoutouts, and phrases like “doggone it” and “say it ain’t so Joe.”

What’s so wonderful about Palin is that it’s almost all real. (That this is remarkable says something about our current politics or at the least the cynicism of a generation whose introduction to D.C. came in the form of Bill Clinton lying about an oval office blow job.) Unlike Hillary Clinton, whose pathetic attempt at relating to small-town folk led her to down Crown Royal whiskey and pizza at a campaign stop, Sarah Palin can credibly drink Coors Light, watch a Nascar match, and shoot a gun. If Hillary and Sarah were to face off at a Town Hall meeting, and a questioner asked about gun-rights, it’s pretty easy to imagine Hillary becoming entangled in a wonkish explanation of the 2nd Amendment, with a chirpy Sarah responding, “Hey now, don’t ya think every old shmuck like me (wink) oughta be able to have a gun to keep the psychos of our lawns?”

Certainly, some portion (though as we learned on Nov 4 not most) of the population responds favorably to the latter style of answer. But others shrivel up – like me. Her overbearing folksiness rings hollow. Then again, I’m not her audience. By Palin’s calculus, I’m one of the coastal elites who’s too stuck up to listen to a hockey mom. A deep-rooted class resentment has been part of Palin’s worldview and identity for as long as she’s been in the public eye.

The larger question to ask about Palin and her style and history is whether it’s the only way to engage Nascar-loving middle Americans. By picking her, the Republican party seemed to think so. Their losing 2008 playbook read: extol the virtues of the common man, celebrate the simple life of the marginally educated, and insult pointy heads’ polysyllabic phrases. I, for one, find it patronizing to think that a factory worker will respond only to relentless plain speak and not an even mildly cerebral argument. But there’s a deeper concern beyond the condescension of party strategists who underestimate (and indeed create a kind of self-fulfilling prophesy around) the mental horsepower of someone who works with his hands and reads the Bible: it is the disregard of the idea of intellectualism and the work of professional intellectuals.

John Stuart Mill can defend these disregarded intellectuals better than anyone. Mill more than most cherished the contributions of geniuses, of eccentric personalities, of original thinkers. Mill more than most sounded the alarm at societal pressures to “normalize” these types rather than harness their energy for broader good. And so it is Mill more than most who would be dismayed at Palin’s near-proud anti-intellectualism and the Republican party’s broader elevation of the everyman-over-refined-man strategy.

Prop 8 on California Ballot: Gay Marriage

A couple weeks ago I had dinner with a friend who delivered an impassioned critique of the most visible item on California's ballot in November -- Proposition 8 -- and asked for support for the No on 8 campaign. I told him I'd study the issue and blog what I learned. Even if you do not live in California, if you believe in civil rights it is something you should be following because its passage or defeat will affect the momentum of similar initiatives around the country. If you do live in California but are not gay (like me) and think it doesn't matter, think again.

Here's what the Initiative is:

• Changes the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in California.
• Provides that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

Currently, gay marriage is legal in California thanks to a State Supreme Court ruling in May. It is also legal in Massachusetts and Connecticut. If Prop 8 passes in November, the State Constitution will be amended to ban gay marriages and undo existing benefits currently offered to same-sex, married couples.

Some people oppose gay marriage because they oppose homosexuality. There's no point arguing with people about gay marriage if, at their core, they believe being gay is a sin (or even a choice or "lifestyle decision").

Then there are those who do not oppose homosexuality but oppose gay marriage. I've heard three main arguments from these people:

1. Gay marriage harms the institution of marriage (and children). "Once we abandon marriage to the whims and desires of adults seeking validation of their sexual lifestyles, we denigrate children and their needs – legally validating relationships that would deliberately leave them motherless or fatherless." Say what? The idea that homosexual marriages threaten heterosexual couples is just absurd. Gays have married legally in California, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, and I don't see any straight couples' lives falling apart. The most coherent point in this vein is that children who are raised by gay couples are harmed by not having a daddy or mommy. Yet data around kids being worse off when raised by a mother-mother or father-father couple are questionable at best.

2. Gay marriage will lead to polygamy. Here's the logic. Currently marriage rests upon two assumptions: it's man and woman and one-to-one. Ie, one man and one woman. If you re-define the "man and woman" part (man and man or woman and woman) why can't you re-define the one-to-one part? Who says one man and two women who all love each other dearly shouldn't be able to marry? Here's a good Charles Krauthammer column which explains this logic. A longer Weekly Standard article is subtitled "Plural marriage is waiting in the wings." I have to study this more, but I'm sympathetic to William Saletan's response to Krauthammer (and others) which is that one-to-one is not arbitrary but rooted in human nature -- hence the frequency of polygamous unions breaking up. I would also imagine that the abuse so common in polygamous unions would produce society-wide negative externalities in ways gay marriages do not.

3. Children will be taught about gay marriage in schools. This issue has grabbed the headlines in the California Prop 8 campaign. The Yes on 8 side (again -- this is "yes" to ban gay marriage, not "yes" to gay marriage) has been bombing the State with TV ads such as this which say Prop 8 will make it so even elementary school kids will learn that men can marry men. It's true that California's education code says that if sex ed is taught to students in the classroom, it ought to include curriculum on marriage and cannot discriminate on sexual orientation (ie, must list gay marriage as an option). But it's also true that if a public school is going to teach sex ed, they must notify parents beforehand, show the content that will be taught, and allow parents to opt their child out of sex ed. So -- gay marriage can be taught in sex ed, but since parents can opt-out nothing is being forced on children. Hence, Yes on 8's scare ads are deceptive.

Those who support gay marriage -- and therefore oppose Prop 8 -- have their own set of arguments. The two that most resonate with me are:

1. Keep government out of private life. Good libertarians would say, "Why is the government amending the constitution to regulate individual behavior that does not negatively impact others?" It's a little more complicated of course. Here are two pages which more clearly define this position (and distinguish between civil and religious law), and here's an amusing satirical video ad about the government becoming "gender auditors."

2. Maintain California's -- and America's -- competitive advantage by welcoming all people and promoting a culture of tolerance. Richard Florida has somewhat famously used openness to gays and gay culture as one proxy for predicting the overall competitiveness of an area: "When [talented entrepreneurs or engineers] are sizing up a new company and community, acceptance of diversity and of gays (and lesbians) in particular is a sign that reads 'non-standard people welcome here.' " Here's an op/ed that has more. I suspect this is one reason why California's governor and the mayors of the three biggest cities, as well as many Silicon Valley CEOs I know, all are voting No on 8.

There are far better analyses and articles on this issue. I'm simply relaying what I've learned and letting you know which side I've come down on: No on 8! Unfortunately, No on 8 lags in financing. Much of the other side's money has come from out of state and from Mormons. Another twist is Obama's candidacy -- it will likely bring blacks and other minorities to the polls in record numbers, but these groups also tend to be the most homophobic. Current polls suggest Prop 8 is in a dead heat.

Bottom Line: Vote No on Prop 8 if you live in California. If you live outside of California, contribute financially or by emailing your California friends. It's important to keep out actively homophobic and discriminatory language from our constitution and keep in the state the people and culture which make this place so great.

"I Support Obama Picking Sarah Palin"

A couple weeks ago I said that if you're not informed on political issues, don't vote.

Listen to this MP3 clip from a recent Howard Stern show. A guy goes to Harlem and asks people who they're voting for. All three say Obama. He then attributes McCain's views to Obama and asks whether they agree with it. For example, "Do you agree with Obama's pick of Sarah Palin? Do you agree with Obama that our troops should stay in Iraq? Do you agree with Obama that stem cell research should be banned?" To all, they say yes.

And in this 20/20 clip there's some nice footage of John Stossel asking people off the street some very, very basic questions about the world and getting blank stares.

God Bless America.

(Hat tip to Bryan Caplan for both links.)

D.C. Elites: Middle America Loves Palin's Folksiness!

Reconciling the attitudes of the wise Few and the uneducated Masses -- the elites and common folk -- has been a point of contention throughout American political history. In the early days, John Adams was famously wary of an overly democratic democracy, whereas Thomas Paine championed every man's voice.

This issue has once again come to the fore with McCain's pick of Sarah Palin as Vice Presidential candidate. Political commentators mostly agree that McCain chose Palin not because of her qualifications to be VP or President, but rather to shore up the conservative base and reinforce ties with "everyday" Americans. Palin, a hockey mom and evangelical Christian with no fancy degrees, is uniquely suited for this role.

To this end, folksiness underlies all of Palin's rhetoric. Oftentimes, her overarching attempt at sounding like an everyman robs her statements of substance. In the VP debate the other night, here's what she said on education policy:

Say it ain't so, Joe [Biden], there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced [sic] your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? I say, too, with education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving. Teachers needed to be paid more. I come from a house full of school teachers. My grandma was, my dad who is in the audience today, he's a schoolteacher, had been for many years. My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the debate.

What do people make of this?

Here's what we don't know: what "real" people in middle America think about it.

Here's what we do know: the "media elites" (read: educated people who live in big cities) think that middle America loves it. Here's what David Brooks said after the debate:

To many ears, her accent, her colloquialisms and her constant invocations of the accoutrements of everyday life will seem cloying. But in the casual parts of the country, I suspect, it went down fine.

In other words, we have latte-drinking, high-income intellectuals finding their own inner-Joe Sixpack and declaring, on behalf of casual America, "You go girl!" To speak on behalf of "real Americans" and imply that those voters place such vapidness at the center of their concerns -- and indeed are swayed by the hometown shout-out or "doggone it" references -- strikes me as patronizing.

By focusing on how middle America will take to Palin's rhetoric, these conservative intellectuals get to dodge how they actually feel about it. For the entrenched partisan, it's understandable. Any thinking person with a brain would find Palin's inarticulate, anti-intellectual, and embarrassingly ignorant (middle east, supreme court, news media, any type of foreign policy) rhetoric perhaps cute for a small town mayoral race, but horrifying when delivered by the possible President of the United States.

Don't Vote! No, Seriously, Don't Vote

Chris Sacca just pointed me to this new YouTube video with tons of A-list celebrities urging us, "Don't vote!" They each talk about different important issues in America and why none of it matters and why you should just not vote.

It's a clever and funny reverse-psychology tactic to encourage voting. I think it's Forest Whitaker who sums it up nicely: If you care, vote. At the end it displays information on how to register to vote. I suspect this video will obtain wide circulation.

But why do we so quickly accept the argument that anyone who cares ought to vote? The better advice is: If you know what you're doing, vote. See Bryan Caplan's recent three minute interview on CTV where he articulates this point.

Caplan says we don't insist that everyone drive a car -- we demand proof of driving ability first. We don't want everyone performing surgery unless he/she has familiarity with anatomy. Why do we insist that everyone vote? The usual response is that uninformed voters balance each other out, but as Caplan shows in his excellent book The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, this doesn't actually happen. Illogical policies get passed -- oftentimes, I would add, policies that work against the self-interest of the person who innocently voted for them.

So, if you read up on the issues, please vote in November. If you aren't informed, please voluntarily step away from the voting booth and keep your hands where we can see them!

The Best Three Paragraphs I Read Today

They're from Freeman Dyson's article titled The Question of Global Warming in the New York Review of Books. Andrew Sullivan called this the best piece on global warming he's read in months. I skimmed it but slowly read the last three paragraphs, which I think are spot-on.

In a sentence: Some members of the environmental movement think the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet is fundamental to environmentalism in general, and this is not necessarily so. Many global warming skeptics are passionate environmentalists.

There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.

Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.

Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate. Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true. Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues deserve to be heard.

In a Revolution, People Get Hurt

So says Tom Friedman in this email exchange he has with Fareed Zakaria on the Amazon.com blog about Friedman's new book. He says we're not having a green revolution because no one is getting hurt:

What I always say to people when they say to me, "We're having a green revolution" is, "Really? A green revolution! Have you ever been to a revolution where no one got hurt? That's the green revolution." In the green revolution, everyone's a winner: BP's green, Exxon's green, GM's green. When everyone's a winner, that's not a revolution--actually, that's a party. We're having a green party. And it's very fun--you and I get invited to all the parties. But it has no connection whatsoever with a real revolution. You'll know it's a revolution when somebody gets hurt. And I don't mean physically hurt. But the IT revolution was a real revolution. In the IT revolution, companies either had to change or die. So you'll know the green revolution is happening when you see some bodies--corporate bodies--along the side of the road: companies that didn't change and therefore died. Right now we don't have that kind of market, that kind of change-or-die situation. Right now companies feel like they can just change their brand, not actually how they do business, and that will be enough to survive. That's why we're really having more of a green party than a green revolution.

Elsewhere in the exchange Friedman's genius at coining memorable phrases comes through, such as: "Change your leaders, not your light bulbs." Friedman has never really advanced original ideas. He has, however, given everyday folks catchy phrases and simple frameworks for thinking about important issues (middle east, globalization, now energy issues).

I have to confess that while I intellectually "get" all the talk about why we need to go green, I'm not emotionally fired up yet. (With the exception of water issues, mainly because I drink so much water -- about 20 liters last week alone.)

From an entrepreneurship perspective, the hot thing to do is to go start a green-related company, which is precisely why I'm not terribly interested in doing it.