A(nother) tree falls in the forest

But is little heard.

Newsweek has just hailed the emergence of a booming market economy in Iraq as "the mother of all surprises," noting that "Iraqis are more optimistic about the future than most Americans are." The reason, of course, is that Iraqis know what is going on in their country while Americans are fed a diet of exclusively negative reporting from Iraq.

Instead, so-called reporters are obsessing on whether or not the only murderous 20th-century tyrant to be lawfully executed for subjugating and slaughtering his own subjects was perfectly respected in every detail on his way to the well-earned gallows. Feebs.

"Whatever happens, Iraq is Iraq," says a Kuwaiti businessman, building hotels in the south. "Iraq will always remain the country with the world's largest oil reserves and the Middle East's biggest resources of water."
One hears similar comments from local and foreign businessmen investing in real estate in Najaf and Karbala. Over 200 million Shiite Muslims regard the cities as holy. Najaf and Karbala have always been dream destinations for pilgrims. Under Saddam Hussein, however, few foreign pilgrims were allowed. With the despot gone, pilgrims are pouring in - and with them the fresh money.
...
The transition from a rentier economy - in which virtually the whole of the population depended on government handouts - to a free-market capitalist one entails much hardship for some segments of society. [...]
But, judging by the talk in teahouses and the debate in Iraq's new and pluralist media, most people welcome the switch to capitalism and regard it as an exciting adventure.

Expect to read endless stories about the hardships, and nothing about the welcome, for as long as the mainstream media can get away with it.

Then, of course, they'll drop Iraq reporting altogether.

Read. Think. Then Post.

An easy three steps that would (still!) keep a lot of people out of trouble.

Instapundit links this, apparently approvingly. "Drunk driving" kills, so why do cops mainly give out speeding tickets? Slogans and fallacious logic driving spending priorities, the linked editorial suggests (while Instapundit thinks it's all about revenue).

Many, many methodological fallacies permeate its five short paragraphs. Again, let us count the ways.

1) "Drunken drivers". Since these are NHTSA stats, numbers of "drunken drivers" are actually going to be "those whose blood-alcohol content levels are at or above .08%". Sorry, but for most people, the level of impairment after one or two beers is nowhere near "drunken". Bzzzt for unsubstantiated hyperbole.

2) "Distracted drivers". This category comes to us also from the NHTSA with some unknown contribution from VA Tech. While in the main I sympathize with attributing influence to this conceptual factor, as an empirical, measurable phenomenon it leaves quite a bit to be desired. Presumably data must be self-reported in many cases, and mixing self-reported with other data sources (passengers; post-accident circumstantial evidence) increases unreliability across the data pool.

All normal people multitask when driving, in part because driving requires multitasking in the first place: You must be able to check your speed and scan other dials and indicators, flick the turn signal, start/stop the wipers, hit the lights/brights, etc., without coming to a screeching halt every two minutes to adjust one of the functional driving controls. Thus, if you are driving along and fooling with the radio, are you a "distracted driver"? Maybe, maybe not. If you are driving along obsessing over the fight you just had with a random store clerk or loved one, are you distracted from driving? Maybe, maybe not.

Taking it one step further: There are bad drivers and good drivers. I'll posit that good drivers are ones who have a substantial foundation of automatic multitasking and learned reactions to smaller or more peripheral signals. Good drivers can take on significantly more distraction -- or apparent distraction -- than a less-experienced or a less naturally alert person, and/or can selectively tune in and out with respect to safety signals versus other 'noise' in the environment.

So, who are the "distracted drivers"? Those who report afterwards that they were talking to others in the car or changing the radio station, or those who report afterwards that they were distracted by talking to others in the car or changing the radio station? Or those whose passengers report the baby in the back seat was screaming (when we all know that parents can be astoundingly oblivious to the horrific noises their offspring make any time, any place)? Or the cop who finds a cell phone on the seat of a car after an accident? Is it methodologically defensible to use any of these criteria? Which? How has the validity of whatever measure was used been tested?

Philosophically, what traffic accident isn't caused at some level by a distracted driver? Is the theory that there is a significant class of accidents caused by people who are paying attention? Sure, occasionally a tire may blow out or cars can slide on snow. However, since those types of incidents don't invariably result in accidents, and in fact the skill, experience/knowledge, and attention level of the driver (and sometimes sheer luck) often avert damage to that car or others, wouldn't all drivers who have accidents also be drivers who were distracted, if only by their own thoughts or perhaps simple disinterest in the task at hand?

3) Unfortunately, the editorial links nowhere, so there's no way to assess whether or how the numbers presented in conjunction with these conceptually and empirically murky were constructed.

3a) In the days of Usenet, I researched official (USG) figures on drunk driving and drunk driving related statistics. It turned out at that time that accidents "caused" by drunk driving are, for the purposes of USG slogans and MADD proselytizing, any accident that includes a driver whose BAC is over the legal limit is deemed to have been caused by the "drunk" behind the wheel. Now, this is nutbar territory on the face of it. This means I could be in my lane, traveling at the safe and posted speed limit, with a BAC of .080%, and some idiot could run a stop sign or red light and ram into the side of my car, and the statistics would show that that accident was my fault. As I say, nutbar territory.

NB: It's a little jangly, but more dissection along these lines here, including one precious bit I'd forgotten from that long-ago Usenet debate: If a sober driver hits a pedestrian who has been drinking, that counts as an accident caused by "drunk driving". Another item I don't recall from back when: An accident involving a designated driver counts as one caused by drunk driving -- passenger BACs count as much as anyone behind the wheel. Well, that's one way to hit 40% "caused" by "drunks".

3b) Awareness of this feature of the statistical landscape raises my suspicions about the claim that "fully 80%" of accidents are (Warning!) "caused" by distracted drivers.

4) ObHyperbole Alert: "The latest data demonstrates that such drivers kill and maim far more people than speeders." Not in this editorial the latest data do not. "Fully 80%" of crashes does not exceed the unknown number of persons killed, which presumably is over twice the "nearly half" of all fatalities from crashes. If there are other data, the editorialist should have produced them, since otherwise this looks like a specious conflating of unrelated statistics (which are, see above, highly dubious and unreliable in themselves).

*****
And that's the first two paragraphs...
*****

5) I'll just note in passing the emotive language throughout the 'policy' grafs. A classic tool of demagoguery that editorials typically use, it's a dangerous and foolish way to make public policy. Its mixture with the bad numbers used badly does add to the bad odor of this piece.

6) Whether or not speeding is "more" important than drinking and distracting might be an interesting question, but not as this editorialist frames it. Public policy requires juggling interests and priorities along a number of dimensions, and in this editorial we are in the flat land of If It Saves One Life mob-raising talk instead. Not a single number is presented that distracted driving "causes" traffic deaths, even in the distinctly loose and ambiguous way "drunks" do. And surely no one can claim that people aren't upset enough about drunk driving, when the Constitution has already been impaired by legalization of checkpoints and current talk is of pushing legal limits down to .05%?

It appears that the editorialist has jammed together the largely unrelated issues of distraction with drinking in order to drive (heh) up the Deadly! Numbers! factor lacking on the distraction side and the Let's Get Serious About This Serious Problem which is clearly not lacking on the drunk-driving side. A little semantic sleight of hand and, boy, it really looks like the cops have everything all backwards!

But until we don't have speed limits, it just makes sense for traffic cops to give tickets for speeding. That seems at least more useful than parking tickets.

And what's the justification for not giving out speeding tickets? The editorial presents two: Speeding tickets are expensive, and giving speeding tickets at this time of year is scrooge-like. As to the first: Yes, dear, that is the point. The expense is part of the deterring structure of laws against speeding. The second: Totally unserious.

7) Furthermore, there's an eentsy problem with the idea that cops should stop writing so many speeding tickets and start "focusing" on drunks and distracted drivers. How?

Sure, we could set up more checkpoints. I'm against them in principle, but chasing speeders isn't preventing checkpoints. And there's all the extra manpower freed up by red-light cameras, too. Personally, I would consider Scrooge a pretty jolly, well-intentioned fellow by comparison with cops and cop administrators who feel increased intrusion into my private life and lawful business is justified on the theory that Something (More) Must Be Done about the non-zero probability that someone, somewhere, might be in hypothetical danger in the vicinity of a vehicle and BAC>.0-whatever.

Beyond that point, how the heck are cops supposed to focus in on distracted drivers? There are already laws against driving-and-talking in many (most?) places [NB: I don't have a cell phone, so I don't pay attention to those laws], and all sorts of things distract (bad) drivers. Food, non-alcoholic beverages, conversation, life, love, the universe, and all that. Distracted-while-driving status can't be determined by a test, so even checkpoints won't help. Rip out radios and CD players, criminalize Ipods and crying babies -- or all passengers, require No-Doz before trips over 15 minutes? But most accidents occur close to home! And society wants folks to carpool! Wow, this social engineering stuff is Hard.

8) Wrt revenue: A red herring to the editorial's central point, that we should care more about nabbing, prosecuting, and penalizing drinkers and distractables (whence could cometh, presumably, a whole lot more revenue) than we do about poor ol' speeders. Revenue is an outcome of nabbing whomever. Which miscreants public policy targets for the revenue extraction (as penalty or deterrent) is the question. Sure, other questions can be raised, but ultimately that's not "why" we do it.

In sum: Drunks, cell-phone users, people with kids, people who get sleepy (or tired or enraged [and whatever happened to activism drumming up Concern about road rage?]), and just plain bad drivers -- heck yeah, get 'em all off the road. And I admit, speeders don't bother me at all unless they're tailgating me, which is a different problem. I'll even admit that I recently got a speeding ticket, which was pretty much a big PITA. So, I suppose I should be on the editorialist's side.

But I'm not. I'm never on the side of the sloppy pseudo-factoid argument. I don't want cops' priorities determined by the loudest whiner -- not MADD, true; but not this writer either. I don't want public policy determined by the Nanny-est of the Nanny State attitudes. People die. People get killed unfairly. Speed kills, drunk driving kills, cell phones kill (for all I know). Even if I disagree with the mania against doing anything but sitting still in a chair until every .000001% of alcohol content has left your blood, I see no advantage in that attitude being displaced by some other irrational phobic mania.

Policy should be informed by facts, and still will involve hard choices and trade-offs on principles and/or resources. Even if that's not how it works, it's how we should try to make it work. The fanatic fighting the shrill demonizing the hysterical only means we'll all end up disrespecting everything.

How far are we from that now?

Let me count the ways

1. Patronizing
2. Braindead
3. Out-0f-touch
4. Disinterested
5. Unimaginative
6. Passive
7. Ludditean
8. Narrow-minded
9. Apathetic
10. Lazy

And those are just my reactions to the attitude conveyed by the 'news' cited here (first item), not even touching on the atrocious paucity of seriousness, profound lack of engagement, and risk aversion revealed by the choice itself.

Gaaawlee, it's the internerd, har har. Them geeks are funny weirdos, not wanting to plop down on the couch and make like a potato. Why, those goofy folks are thinking, and it seems like they're working hard, and they're doing it for free??? Great balls o' fire, what's the world coming to?

Over the past week, I've probably spent 11 or more hours fooling around with various programs in order to convert a video file and a text file into a series of files suitable for burning into a DVD that will play on a standalone player with selectable subtitles. This will not make me any money. This will not make me any friends. This will not advance my career. This will not impress anyone I know or love. No one will understand how challenging it was or how many dead ends I explored before I got the steps of the process (I hope, I hope!) in order and operating.

At the same time, it wasn't 11 hours wasted watching TeeVee (although the tube was probably running in the background for at least half of the time). It didn't keep me out of the 70-degree sunshine blessing us in the middle of December. It didn't keep me from doing laundry, vacuuming, scrubbing the stove, paying bills, or cooking a few meals. It didn't cost me a dime.

As a matter of fact, I had fun. I tested a half dozen things and figured out where problems lie. I'm further along the production curve than I was a week ago -- more creative self-production, even, if I feel like it sometime. I communicated with a number of people I'll never meet. If what I figured out last night works (it's running at home while I'm at the office now), I'll share it with people I'll never meet -- potentially contributing to strangers' happiness and ability to accomplish tasks around the globe, or maybe ultimately read by no one, anywhere.

Maybe in three weeks someone else will come up with some tool to do what I've done with much effort and using all the ingenuity I can muster after, as noted, a long day at work. Many long days at work. I myself, if this works, will be able to explain how to do it in five minutes. But I've figured out how to do it myself. If not all by myself, all on my own. People who don't get why that's a buzz don't understand much about life, what makes it fun, what builds its meaning.

I feel sorry for people who see no value in engaging the world and mastering even a tiny piece of it this way.

And Pull Up Your Pants

"Want a job? Try a bath, a shave and a haircut."

Okay, so maybe Germany is where the Israelis learned their manners. And there's the whole Prussian warmongering dicatorial tendency that doesn't tend to endear them to me.

But they're on the right track here:

Two days later, Frank lopped off his locks, shaved his dark beard and removed his nose rings. Then he organized a news conference.
“I am ready to change,” Frank said, saying he was fed up with handouts. “I’ll take any job.”

Good for you, buddy.

h/t Jules Crittenden

with special credit to Denis Leary's Lock 'n' Load for the title of this post

Hard to say

No telling what this means, if anything of significance or merely a(nother) flash in the pan, but it is a reminder that -- no matter how attractive it may sound sometimes -- we really don't want to nuke Iran.

Sorry, Mom.

My mom and I disagree, passionately but most often politely, about almost everything in politics. Sometimes I come around to her way of thinking on some topic after a couple of decades, and this weekend she came around for the first time ever to my hawkish take on what we might call "the Arab problem". I am tired of their 'hurt feelings' and very, very, very tired of the consequences of their acting on blind hatred of Jews and of anyone, anywhere who doesn't hate Jews just as much as they do. Just because your leaders manipulate you doesn't mean you have to stay ignorant, certainly not in this modrun whirled -- as the students above amply demonstrate.

Ob.Sig:
--
"Up to a point, a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes it to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, this I am today; that I shall be tomorrow. The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds."

Louis L'Amour, The Walking Drum

House of Mirrors

Sometime way back, it seems to me that I heard an explanation of the difference between psychosis and neurosis -- Neurotics blame every problem that arises on themselves, while psychotics blame all of their problems on everyone except themselves.

I think we know which brand of nutjob certain Persons of Heads of Rag are, but it's always pleasant to have a diagnosis so compellingly confirmed. Why, exactly, is it that they hate the Joos? What drives their self-destructive behavior?

It’s because we always lose to Israel. It gnaws at the people in the Middle East that such a small country as Israel, with only about 7 million inhabitants, can defeat the Arab nation with its 350 million. That hurts our collective ego.

Hm. As Denis Leary likes to say: "Life is hard. Get a helmet."

h/t the inimitable Tim Blair

Confusion

Wow, this is one big mess. First of all, google is getting to be worse than Micro$lothtard. I don't want my entire life linked around google/gmail/gwhatever muckety-muck. It's fine with me if all you companies buy each other and brand everything to absolute death and so forth, but stop screwing with my account IDs and so forth. Just stop it. Now.

Freaks.

Let's rev this baby back up

Give 'em an inch, and...

A British-listed mining company, the first to invest in bankrupt Zimbabwe since the political crisis began, was ordered off its valuable diamond claim yesterday.

... a.k.a., the usual.

Most hilarious comment: "I don't believe Zimbabwe would allow illegal seizure of claims without due process." I hope Andrew Cranswick's a comedian, because he sure has no business being the CEO of African Consolidated Resources plc. Must be a misprint.

Interpretation

I was looking here, and as usual had serious qualms not only about the validity (are we measuring what we intend to measure?) but the interpretations.

Most serious, however, are the validity concerns. I will be absolutely frank and say that if I were asked, "3. Generally speaking, in your opinion is the United States headed pretty much in the right direction these days or is it headed off on the wrong track?, I would say right track, without equivocation. In reality, in my heart of hearts, I have serious misgivings about the idiocies and vacant wank fodder swirling through the countrysides -- or universities, pseudoprofessional classes, and city-sides, to be more accurate. There's no rule that the Supreme Court must be "balanced" and that Sandra Day O'Connor should be replaced by a swing voter (not to be confused with swing dancers). There's no incontrovertible imperative that US tax dollars have to be handed over to a bunch of terrorists just because they won an election, and the fact that the guys before were pretty much terrorists too doesn't make it binding precedent for the next gang of sociopaths. "Pretty much" may be a nod and a wink from "really", but it's still a far cry from "hysterical commitment to violent annihilation of a neighboring country". People who believe in God are not lunatics, not even if they have faith in a loving God in the face of hatemongering nutbar humankind -- or even merely crippling incompetence, obliviousness, and profoundly self-centered insincerity -- all around us.

But I digress. Let's imagine for a moment that I answer the poll honestly, and 50 percent of the respondents agree exactly with my take on the subject, and also answer honestly. We have serious concerns about the shrieking asshattitude that's seemingly taken Very Seriously in Serious Institutions such as Papers of Record, Halls of Decision-Making, and Ivied Towers of Higher Learning, for instance, although the examples above are a trivial listing.

That response will be interpreted as a resounding rejection of everything Bush is doing, has done, or ever will do. Doubt me? Read the commentary at the link. It's all about what's negative versus favorable for Bush, despite the fact that only one question mentions the man, complete with "scare quotes" for anything that can be mocked for having a possibly slightly positive connotation. They congratulate themselves on bending over backward not to be partisan by saying

Our "wrong track" direction of the country numbers are much more favorable to the Bush administration viewpoint than those of other polling firms.

By "favorable" they mean fewer respondents claim the country's on the wrong track. Polls from the other side of course do the same thing.

So, politically astute respondents will not respond honestly to that question, or most others. They will, if things are going really well all around them and as far as they can see or imagine in the great wide world, say "wrong track" if they hate Chimpretzler McHitlerburton, and vice versa as I have indicated above.

Methodologically speaking, in a self-aware world, any potential for validity in broadly generalized impression questions is terminally gutted where interpretation demonstrates bias in data use.

Back

Well, why not? Too many passwords and too much discombobulation. We'll see if some continuity can be created.

Prudence and Frugality

Now that I have a good job (knock on wood) with an excellent salary, and my mortgage paid off, I seem to have more money concerns than ever. Stuff that hangs over my head and I never seem to get done. Consolidating a jumble of accounts scattered everywhere. Figuring out the stock market. Getting my insurance straight. Fixing up the house. Getting payments that the payee lost put back on the record somehow when the bank can't dig up the check from six years ago.

And just plain worrying about the future.

This stuff never seems to get any easier. Maybe it's just me.

Durbin the Aider and Comforter

Senator Durbin:

I am writing to express my outrage and disgust with respect to your comments on the Senate floor about our military.

I have been to S-21, personally. If you do not know what I am talking about, you certainly do not have any business comparing our military to Pol Pot's regime. I have pictures I cannot bear to review. I have seen instruments of torture. They do not consist of a few hours or even days of discomfort. They maim, disfigure, and terrorize for life -- although only 7 people survived Tuol Sleng. If you think that is even remotely comparable to, much less the equivalent of, wet trousers or no air-conditioning, then you have a serious disconnect from all proportion and any reasonable capacity to evaluate inhuman indecency.

I have read the reports of our military's behavior. To compare the well-considered tough decisions of our men and women in service and in leadership positions, and even their mistakes and errors in judgment, to the amoral behavior of sadists like the people who implemented terror in Cambodia is an ignorant and wicked distortion, and the fact that you have made it from a position of authority -- ignoring the benefits, aid, and comfort you bring thereby to people who already think chopping off random civilians' heads is just fine and dandy -- truly sickens me.

Whoever runs against you in your next campaign will receive my donation dollars.

Sincerely,

ObPileOn

Me, not the link, which goes to (one of) the original speculator(s) as to the peanuttiness of last year's Dim Dem candidate for the Presidency.

I was particularly struck by this passage:

"My point wasn’t that Kerry’s performance at Yale proved that he was intellectually inferior to Bush. My point was that there was absolutely no reason to believe that Kerry was an intellectual giant. Intellectual giants leave footprints indicating as much. Bill Clinton, for instance, didn’t receive four D’s during his freshman year at Georgetown and this was in spite of coming from Nowhere, Arkansas, where[as] Kerry had attended a series of the country’s (and Switzerland’s) finest prep schools."

(my emphasis)

You know, there is something about this that is just so despicable that I can hardly stand it. It's not the grades, obviously, although to be perfectly frank, as someone who never had any trouble in any school or any class on any subject if I may be so immodest -- despite, like Prez #42, growing up in the benighted South -- I will admit to feeling some contempt for four frickin' Ds in a year (semester?). But the constant deception and dismissal of skeptics while skating and embellishing a reputation he knows he doesn't deserve ... and if he didn't personally & publicly pontificate on his own mental prowess compared to M. George, he certainly did with interviewers in private and never discounted the "nuanced" assertions of others ... it's almost pathological.

As much as I never liked anything about TeRAYza, she never seemed to lack brains -- lack of sense, yes, but not fundamental brainpower. I wonder if she's content with the bargain she's ended up with, now. I'd hate to be a servant in that house.

Not that there's anything wrong with being a rich and powerful person who wants a boytoy around, but a pretentious, inept, and mildly cursed Lurch of a boytoy? Not exactly the deal of the day.

Zowie!

James writes the best stuff:

"But if an infidel touches the book with the wrong hand and people react like a two-year-old whose peas are touching the mashed potatoes, well, I understand why this matters, but when measured against the sins of headchoppery and carbombs, it pales to an evanescent translucence."

Surrounding yourself with leaders

Found the linked post above via Carnival of the Capitalists, and it got me thinking. Not only is this more-or-less how things seem to work on this new team here at my new job -- with a soupcon more of classic leadership provided by our fearless semi-leader -- but I'm also slightly surprised to find that I think I might like it much better than being, myself, In Charge.

However, I think Strange Brand does miss the boat on a few key elements. Maybe it's just because I don't like it when I don't know who's in charge, having been burned far too many times in my last two jobs on things I thought I was doing only to find out I just wasted two weeks (or months) of my life working on something that someone else takes away, or has handed to them. Not because I was doing a poor job, or at least I've never been given that explanation. Just because lines of authority and/or communication have never been clarified and some arbitrary decision gets made at some level where they may not even have known I'd already done the legwork, or some "manager" decides an effort needs a "team" but the personalities and politics of that team mean someone else is going to make all of the decisions ... unless I wanted to choose that battle, which of course I never (well, hardly ever) did.

So that's a long digression to say that I may still be reacting to those experiences as opposed to the reality of the situation here, which I'm still sussing out after just two months, anyway. But, to the extent that it seems vestigially true here, I'll sum up my difference of opinion with the author of the linked piece by saying that the distinction between leader and led is a false dichotomy, in at least two ways off the top of my head:

(1) Any successful organization has a division of labor. If the putative leader of the overall thing does not defer to the, for example, technical leadership of the legal guy, or the financial guy, or the supply guy, when the questions at hand are in their areas of expertise, the putative leader will be very sorry when he's in court, out of business, or doesn't have any paper for the copy machine. So, the mixed-bag-o-leaders the author holds out as a unique solution isn't, very.

(2) I also don't buy this description, at all:

There are a lot of talented people who need to be supervised, and there are a lot of people who get a thrill out of micromanaging.

Supervision isn't the same thing as management, and management isn't the same thing as micromanaging. At. All.

At the first project, we had three 'bosses'. The first one was a nuclear-strike manager. Very hands-off until she felt like making command, and I do mean command, decisions. That was the first time I ever had stuff yanked out from under me to the total disregard of whatever I may (or, toward the end, may not) have put into the work already. We actually formed a little support group to go out for coffee and whatever to boost ourselves back up after some of her blitzkrieg 'management' incidents.

The second was laissez-faire to the point of a truly invisible hand. We splintered away from supporting each other until we moved offices and had a nice little suite to compare notes more easily, and although it was much kinder and gentler I will say the work surely suffered through the total absence of management.

The third (after a 3 or 4 month interregnum vacillating between micromanagement and no management) was the classic micromanager nightmare: Totally did not trust anyone to be able to do any aspect of their jobs, despite the fact that we had been doing ours for 5-7 years and she had been doing hers for 20 minutes. I don't want to dwell on her because she was such a terrible, terrible boss.

Nor will I get into the bosses at the second project, since there was actual malice and deliberate damage inflicted there, which is a problem of an entirely different order.

But I think these few examples trivially demonstrate that his dichotomy is not a useful one. Yes, there are a few people who like to dictate, command, and control. They don't make good bosses and they make terrible managers. There are also people who like to be strictly organized by others and only accountable within the scope of whether or not they followed orders. They can only be classified as high-maintenance drones, who make pretty lousy employees in my experience.

Normal Earth People like flexibility in how we do our jobs. Whatever our own level of work, we like peers to consult when we have functional or tactical questions, higher-level folks to consult when we have operational or strategic questions, lower-level folks to help us get things done. Sometimes we like to make decisions, sometimes we like to build consensus, and sometimes we like someone else to put their neck(s) out. We like to know when it's our call and when it's not, even if we don't always like the division of decision-making. Personally, I like to know who's accountable for task X, so that if it's me I'll sweat the details but if it's not I'll save my sweat for something else. I love sharing credit with folks who've shared the work, or even subordinates who haven't done much but could benefit from the confidence or status boost. Just don't ask me to do the work for someone who won't acknowledge my contribution.

Jah rule

An intriguing profile on the WSJ's free site:

He was outraged when a liberal white radio personality called Condi Rice an "Aunt Jemima" for embracing Republicanism, and even angrier when top black Democrats stood silent. He founded ABE--American Black Elephants--a group that so far has 10 members. At a recent L.A. County Republican Party meeting, Mr. Hayes erupted into "God Bless America" after watching slides from a soldier who'd just returned from Iraq. Less emotive Republicans, though startled, joined right in.

A Rastafarian Republican who tells urban layabouts to stop blaming racism for blacks killing blacks with guns and drugs? That's a California miracle.

Priming the pump

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

I just don't get this question. What's the significance of being in the fire? Should you pick a book you love, or hate? Or just one that would be likely to have been pitched onto the burning pile? Seriously, I get no handle here at all. So, I pick Lad, A Dog, for no reason at all.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Yeah, this one is kind of creepy, too. A crush. I don't think so.

The last book you bought is:

Well, the most recent books coming into the house include Life with Jeeves, a collection of PG Wodehouse; The Pump House Gang, by Tom Wolfe; The Hollow Hills, Mary Stewart; and Vamps and Tramps, Camille Paglia's next-to-latest. All of those, however, I picked up at the surplus shed, i.e. dump.

The last book you read:

The last book I completed was a book-on-tape, Year of Wonders. I don't remember the author, but it was really gripping. Death, plague, and so forth. It was all pretty awful but so well written and read that I couldn't stop listening to it. In retrospect, I do wish I had -- I don't need that junk in my head.

What are you currently reading?

Two books, plus the four aforementioned, but really nothing. A stack of Wall Street Journals. WSJ crossword puzzles.

I really need to get more sleep on a more regular basis.

Five books you would take to a deserted island.

Oh, I don't know. Some big fat ones, I suppose -- history. The Bible. Maybe that one on How the Scots invented the modern world (could be some good tips in there). Some kind of mechanical/agricultural how-to guide. A hollowed-out book with a firearm and some ammo inside instead, heh heh. And something very, very cheerful -- deep thoughts but cheerful - PG Wodehouse springs to mind.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

No one.

Long time no blog

:: how jedi are you? ::

Bottom of the barrel

Liberals officially out of ideas.

Chris Matthews just had a panel segment comparing Hilary "Empowered" Clinton to Laura "Housewife" Bush. The consensus was that Laura would not run for President. Quelle shocque. That's some uber-insight right there.

Along the way, Matthews made sure to disparage Laura not only for her lack of ambition to be President, but her lack of forethought and preparation in not having acquired the credentials to run for President.


ObSpeechless: ...

Back on the horse

Post-election and post-Thanksgiving and post-I-Really-thought-a-new-job-was-just-around-the-corner.

Ready for my morning dose of bile from Chris Matthews and whatever gang he's scrounged up this AM. I've watch a couple I think I didn't blog about -- the one immediately post-election with four whiny pathetic Democrats, including Maureen Dowd. What is wrong with that woman? More importantly, what is wrong with the world that she is employed for whatever it is people think she contributes to the NYT op-ed page, for Jeebus' sake (it's not thought, and it's not insight, and it's not information -- does someone in the universe find her "entertaining" or does she have J. Edgar Hoover's blackmail files?)?

Another one was more balanced, and included David Brooks, a fave of mine.

Today:

Matthews has an awful new haircut -- not a Ratboy, but heading toward Bangs.
Today's line-up: Andrea Mitchell, Joe Klein, Campbell Brown, Deroy Murdock (Scripps-Howard/National Review).
Hm, the token black guy is the token conservative. The time's they have a-changed.

Why haven't we been hit again?

Mitchell: Just because al-Qaida hasn't struck, doesn't mean we shouldn't worry. They could be a victim of their own success, trying to beat 9/11. Otoh, we've broken them down somewhat. (Gee, funny how no one noticed this prior to the election.) But the affiliates spawned by al-Qaida are more threatening.

Klein: NY's still the big target, we do have better intelligence, heavy duty former CIA covert action people, now providing info out of mosques that might be breeding trouble, but otoh no one knows why the next attack hasn't come yet.

Brown: Intelligence is getting better, here and abroad, French, Spanish, Pakistan, Saudis -- and their intel services don't play by the rules we do.

Murdock: See something, say something; good tips coming forward and e.g. subway plot nipped in bud.

Mitchell: They have prevented some things. But we have also become more protected.

Klein: Iraq has been a huge recruiting poster for al-Qaida and the other assorted groups.

Mitchell: There are only two people who can approve US/UK hits from al-Qaida, and one is in jail. Their replacements aren't as Westernized, not as adept, as their predecessors.

Murdock: The more spectacular the better, but the next attack doesn't have to be big numbers, could be something in the middle of Macy's, that would have a big impact. One reason we're safer is the Patriot Act and its dismantling of the wall between intelligence services and police. (Cut off by Matthews)

Matthews: The real danger is the suitcase bomb.

Klein: Let's plug Graham Allison's new book about nuclear threat.

Matthews: are we safer or simply a fatter target?
Brown: Safer, you can't ignore the basic stuff, everything that we've done, dispersion of al-Qaida, going down that list one by one.
Klein: Safer but facing a more intense enemy.
Matthews: More diverse
Klein: More diverse and more intense enemy.
Mitchell: Which is harder to get at and ... Safer marginally but we don't know what we don't know.


Commercial break: This is the second show where I've actively noticed that Campbell Brown seems to be jiggering ever so slightly away from the left-left mainstream Democratic liberal-near-anti-American line. She doesn't couch every single statement with how bad things are, or that how bad things are is of course Bush's (Republicans') fault, and she seems to be consistently hewing the factual line, reasonable things ("can't ignore the basic stuff").

Back: Eeeeeeew. Edwards' bye-bye NC tour o' pointlessness, plus Billary and so forth.

2008, will Hilary run? Klein says no. It's a very personal thing. She *loves* being in the center, not being attacked/anger/vitriol, won't go for it.

Brown: She still has huge obstacles to overcome. She has HUGE negatives.

Matthews: Look at the map Kerry just lost on, where does she see herself winning, West Virginia, Ohio, Missouri, anything?

Klein: She could win; she's a Midwesterner (Matthews: Not lately) and a Southerner. (!!!)

Mitchell: No one thought she could win the Senate seat in NY.

Matthews: She's a charmer when you're with her.

Murdock: Come to Daddy is I think what many people on the right are thinking. Hilary's the Republicans' dream candidate. She'll say what her husband said, who said he'd finish up his term, and then ran for President anyway.

Brown: Well, she is putting a team together. For either, for both.

Who's has the best shot at giving Hilary the hardest run for her money in the primaries?

Brown: Edwards. He has the ability to run as an outsider. (Matthews: because the voters rejected him) Well, yeah. Biggest problem: has no platform from which to run.

Klein: He doesn't have a sense of humor. There's a there there; I don't know where, where.

Mitchell: Not yet presidential material. I wouldn't say that he couldn't be.

Murdock: [Evan Bayh] I don't know if he's a strong threat but does represent something other than a liberal like Hilary who's a blue state and more than a one-termer like Edwards who didn't even deliver his own state.

Matthews: What's almost as good as a governor? A veteran having run for President before. Kerry will run again.

Klein: I think he's suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Look at the big sloppy governors. What the Democrats really need is someone who doesn't need to prove that he's the smartest guy in the room.

Brown: They need somebody with National Security Credentials, and that's what none of these people except Kerry which ended up being a sinkhole had.

Murdock: I doubt [Kerry will run again]. I think what the Democrats really have to do is come up with an agenda. There's a lot of stuff they're against, they need to determine what they're for.

Matthews: But anyone who beats Hilary in the primaries is God. And he can win the general election.

Mitchell: One of Kerry's big advantages is, he sat on all that money.


Tell me something I don't know

Brown: Dems will start beating up on Hollywood because they can't touch abortion and they need something on their side, to deal with on the morals issue.

Klein: Senator Harry Reid has a giant portrait of Mark Twain in his office. And I think that's really cool.

Mitchell: Paul Wolfowitz would like to be the UN Ambassador.

Murdock: NY State has just been ranked at the bottom (50) of all states in terms of economic freedom. Weak economy, anemic Republican performance in last election, and Pataki's Presidential aspirations are summarized in one word: Fergeddaboudit. Regulations, union control of things, not much growth.


Note: She's a Southerner? O.M.G. Speaking of not clear on the concept.