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Do not buy. It’s a buggy piece of crap. Seriously. More TK.

UPDATE: This about sums it up.

Smeared if you don’t:

What the McCain campaign doesn't want people to know, according to one GOP strategist I spoke with over the weekend, is that they had an ad script ready to go if Obama had visited the wounded troops saying that Obama was...wait for it...using wounded troops as campaign props. So, no matter which way Obama turned, McCain had an Obama bashing ad ready to launch. I guess that's political hardball. But another word for it is the one word that most politicians are loathe to use about their opponents—a lie.

All campaigns are a little dishonest, but McCain campaign is really outdoing itself.

There’s a whole lot of New Republic bashing in the center-left blogosphere, some of which is perfectly justified, some of which seems a bit excessive and baby-and-the-bathwater-esque. But for a little while now they’ve seen fit to employ and publish a writer named Jamie Kirchick, who is essentially a concern troll, a neo-con performance artist of the written word who lives off of baiting other writers into feuds by mis-characterizing their work and accusing them of being appeasers or anti-semites. My colleague Eric Alterman had to correct the record recently in response to Kirchick smearing him over his views on Israel.

There’s really no point in wasting any time arguing with the guy. There’s nothing there to interact with. But Kirchick’s not really the issue, as Ezra rightly points out here. There’ll always be a market for dishonesty and viciousness in print. Some of it’s even entertaining in a grim kind of way. The question is why the The New Republic chooses to continue to associate themselves with it.

(cross-posted)

Ben Smith says I’m “yawning” at McCain’s $520 loafers. I can see why he said that. My post on the topic was excessively arch.

So let me take off my irony hat and say this earnestly:

John McCain is an insanely rich individual. He is insanely rich because he married a woman who was insanely rich, who in turn inherited that insane wealth from her parents. They own more houses than I have pairs of shoes. Seriously. They have a super fancy credit cards that they carry a $225,000 balance on. He wears expensive shoes. I’m sure his suits and ties cost a lot, too. Whatever. That is what it is.

But, importantly, John McCain simply has no connection to working people on a personal level, and most likely hasn’t for most of his political life. The only working class people he encounters are those who come to his campaign events, those who serve him at restaurants, and the small army no doubt employed to clean his ten houses. And, more importantly, he’s the head of a political coalition that while managing to win millions of working class votes, does not have any real representatives of working America calling the shots in the party’s upper echelons. His top economic adviser spent his entire career trying to stick it to the middle class and enrich the banking industry, which he later lucratively joined. Now that the very policies he pushed for helped create a massive ponzi scheme that is collapsing on the heads of the middle class he sniffs at the rubble and calls those people whiners. Whiners.

Now, if John McCain’s policies were crafted to aid working people, to restore some basic fairness to our economy at a time when inequality is undeniably growing, wages are stagnating and a perfect storm of disparate factors have blown lots of middle-class folks precariously close to the edge of real financial disaster, I wouldn’t really care that much about the fact that marrying a rich heiress has made him fabulously wealthy.

But John McCain’s policies have been crafted explicitly to enrich rich people like himself: he is going to take money from the government and put it in his wife’s bank account, and I mean that quite literally. (Look at this chart, via Matt Y) This has been the signature Bush/Norquist tax policy of the last eight years and the policy McCain wants to continue.

It is upwards redistribution. It is taking from the many and giving to the few. Under his plan you get a foreclosed home, an oil rig off the local public beach and some busted keds: he gets another house, another SUV and a shiny new pair of $520 Ferragamo loafers.

That may sound hyperbolic, but it’s true. My ironic point was that we have the perfect makings of a full-fledged campaign narrative here: you have a super rich guy who got super rich not through any of his own genius or hard work (obvious proviso here about his undeniable courage and heroism in Vietnam, but that has nothing to with his net wealth). This super wealthy guy who has married into a family of millionaires flits around in private jets to his many houses while campaigning on an economic policy that tells working people that the economy is great, and if they don’t think it’s great they’re whiners. Meanwhile he’s pushing a tax code that would make him, his wife and his rich donors much richer.

At what point does it begin to set in that this guy is just another business-as-usual, out-of-touch rich guy?

(cross-posted)

Honestly, the McCain campaign has become a kind of pathetic caricature of all of the worst elements of Rovian politics. This is their response to Obama’s response to their childish “celeb ad”. (I won’t dignify it with a link here):

This is a typically superfluous response from Barack Obama. Like most celebrities, he reacts to fair criticism with a mix of fussiness and hysteria," says McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds, before trying to link the attack back to offshore drilling."

“Fussiness and hysteria.” Roll that one around on your tongue.

These people are not good people.

(cross-posted)

If I were a right-wing blogger, and I found out that Barack Obama was wearing Ferragamo loafers that cost $520, I would spend about 50% of my waking hours making sure everyone knew this. I would mock him for being an out-of-touch elitist and make jokes like, “If you think that’s a lot, you should see how much his purse costs ” I would send the link to Drudge and wait for Instapundit to pick it up, and then watch gleefully as Fox News ran segments about how Barack Obama’s $500 loafers vitiate his entire economic platform.

But of course, I’m not a right-wing blogger. And the $520 shoes belong to John McCain. And frankly, I don’t think how much his shoes cost matters one whit for how he’d govern the country.

(cross-posted)

Matt Stoller makes some sharp observations over at TPM Cafe.

I thought this was particularly astute:

One other problem with understanding Moveon is that there is no measurement system in politics for success

This is, in one sentence, the heart of what makes political journalism so difficult and why the field of punditry attracts so many blowhards, cranks and bullshit artists. It is exceedingly difficult to untangle cause and effect in politics. People say all kinds of things about “why so and so won,” some of which is plausible some of which isn’t but almost none of which is cleanly testable. Clearly this applies to MoveOn or any organization working for progressive change. And I take to heart Matt’s point that MoveOn “does stuff,” that is: they’re active and energetic.

On a very personal note, I’m haunted by this all the time when I stop and try to measure my own effectiveness. Did this or that article make the world a better place? Did it advance the cause of just, did it incrementally . Almost always, I fear, the answer is no. But I know that that haunting fear extends beyond writing and journalism to all kinds of progressive work.

(cross-posted)

Oy. Last night Bill O’Reilly said: “It is not a stretch to say that MoveOn is the new Klan.”

This kind of rhetoric crafted to marginalize MoveOn is a mainstay of the right:

For movement conservatives and establishment centrists alike, MoveOn is just a new name for an old foe. Bill O'Reilly has called it "vicious," "radical," full of "fanatical left-wingers" who are blackmailing the Democratic Party. John McCain, not to be outdone, responded to the "General Betray Us" ad by telling a Republican audience this past fall that MoveOn "ought to be thrown out of this country." Ostensibly mainstream voices like CNN's Campbell Brown have referred to MoveOn as "American insurgents," while Peter Beinart, in a 2004 cover essay in The New Republic, suggested that MoveOn be purged from the center left just as communists once were. Democrats have gotten in on the act as well: Hillary Clinton told donors at a private fundraiser that MoveOn had "intimidated" her supporters in the caucus states, and Barack Obama took a veiled swipe at the group in his recent speech on patriotism.

O’Reilly’s such a ludicrous figure, it seems hardly worthwhile to respond to this sort of thing, but just as a brief historical primer:

So, yeah. It is kind of a stretch.

(cross-posted)

Conservatives had a tendency to attribute the all of the reduction of violence in Iraq to the increase in US troops. But one of the most overlooked stories of Iraq is the massive outflow of refugees, 4 million by the latest estimates. Basically Iraq has gone through its own Big Sort, whereby Sunni and Shia simply don’t live near each other, hence a diminishing amount of sectarian violence. Bobby Allyn attended a hearing on Iraq’s refugees and sent this missive:

The Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs held a hearing on the Iraq Refugee Crisis yesterday. Jonathan Finer, Washington Post correspondent, testified with former Washington Post interpreter Nasser Nouri about the plight of over two million Iraqi refugees who are struggling for permanent resettlement. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, over 4.7 million Iraqis have been displaced since the 2003 US invasion, with more than two million living in Syria and Jordan. The US has committed to accept 12,000 refugees by September. So far the US has only accepted 6,463, allowing three months for another 5,537. "The question isn't will the US meet the 12,000 mark; it's why only 12,000?" said Finer. "We took in several hundred thousand Southeast Asians after the Vietnam war, more than a hundred thousand Bosnians in the mid '90s, 12,000 doesn't seem like a very ambitious target." Nasser Nouri told the harrowing story of how Al Qeada tried to capture his youngest daughter after word got out that he worked for The Washington Post, highlighting the dangers faced by Iraqi journalists who work for US news outlets. "In Iraq you don't tell people you work for the United States because your life then could be in danger," Nouri said. Finer told of how Nouri acted more than just an interpreter, helping him avoid death in many circumstances. "No journalism would come out of Iraqi if it weren't for the Iraqi staff," he said. "Their importance is only gonna grow. We're gonna be more reliant on people like Nasser."

The numbers here, really are outrageous. We’ve taken a total of 5,537 refugees out of 4 million from a war that a war we started. Syria alone is now home to more than a million. With a population of 16 million, that’s a 6% increase. The equivalent number in the US would be 18 million. Can you imagine the political turmoil that ensue here if 18 million foreign refugees were to flood into the country over a period of just a few years?

(cross-posted)

So John McCain now says the “surge” means all of the counter insurgency techniques deployed in Iraq and not just the increase (or “surge”) in troops. This not only does violence to common sense (and insults the intelligence of voters), but, as Matt deftly alludes to here, puts him in direct opposition to one of my heroes, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who famously argued that the notion of a private language is incoherent.

As a committed content externalist, I am deeply offended.

(cross-posted)

So I’ve been on a bit of a jag about how awful flying is. I’ve flown four of the last eight weeks and every single return trip has had some very significant problems: three cancellations and one flight delayed long enough we would have missed our connection. What gives?

Megan McArdle made some good points on the general topic of complains about air travel, which Matt added to here.

I decided to email my super secret source inside a major air carrier, and I’m pasting in his response below, which I found pretty fascinating. The subject of my email to him was “Why does flying suck so hard?” His response:

Actually, people have been asking me this question for the entirety of the ten years I have worked in this business. I think the best thing I can do is to basically give you the answer I gave ten years ago, and then take you through the ways in which that answer has changed (or, really, gained additional layers and nuance) as 1) the tech bubble burst, 2) 911 and aftermath 3) the current fuel crisis happened. First off, flying today *doesn't* suck so hard. There, I said it. Flying today, however, is often racked with numerous small frustrations and irritations, and on occasion is a complete pain in the ass. What is the difference? Well, you are still getting pretty good value for your money -- in inflation adjusted dollars, fares are still unbelievably low... even with recent increases (more are coming). But over the past three decades, lower airfares have dramatically reshaped the quality and tenor of life in the United States -- from frequent trips to see family even though they may be far away, to commuter relationships, to college students being able to go to school further away from home but still come back for holidays. These are just a few examples -- I'm leaving aside growth in business travel, and the too-numerous-to-list ways in which exploding intercontinental air travel has transformed our world. Sure -- there's no more chateaubriand on flights from JFK to LAX. But getting from NY to LA is no longer only the province of the super rich. The Southwest Airlines slogan "You are now free to move about the country" has more than it's share of accuracy *and* meaning -- it's right-on, and it speaks to the dramatic democratization of air travel since deregulation. That's why President Carter signed it into law, and it has been a huge success. This success has come about, however, with a cost: complete and constant change in our industry. Mao called it "permanent revolution." Second -- four trips, four cancellations -- a bad run, no doubt. The last one -- DCA-AUS via CLT -- four legs total, leaving from and returning to the notoriously delay and weather-prone NE Corridor. Also, this trip was in the middle of the delay-prone summer season, when thunderstorms wreak havoc, and planes are full. When were your other three trips, where were you going, and what was your routing? You touched on one point -- full planes makes reaccom a headache. You're right, but the culprit isn't that schedules are smaller (not yet, really), it's that it's summer and everything is packed to the gills. This point is really, really hard to overstate: O'Hare Airport in Chicago has *worse* delays in the summer from thunderstorms than it does in winter from snow. Plus everything is full, so there's not a lot of recovery opportunity when you run late or cancel.

Let’s rewind to, oh 1999/2000—I’m new to the industry, and I’m joining at a good time. Things have been going pretty darn well in the industry for a while, so the airlines are relatively flush with cash, holding a pretty big portfolio of aircraft, and generally well-staffed. (Labor will always contend that last point, and there’s a lot to contend there—for the sake of this general argument, let’s assume that I’m right). Everything you fly makes money, so as you take new aircraft, you don’t exactly rush to retire your older planes—you have them already, even if they are old and gas-guzzling, demand is strong and gas is cheap. Everyone is growing.

Here’s the problem—if your airline is planned properly, you are already flying your best routes, and the stuff you are adding is, by definition, your most marginal capacity. Even more telling: those extra flights you add on at the beginning and end of the day, increasing your capacity but not requiring you to have any more aircraft on the property? The big costs are sunk already—all you need to do is cover your variable costs: some crew cost (although not much since you are already well staffed), gas, landing fees. That flying covers its incremental costs to the airline, but isn’t exactly gangbusters, and wouldn’t make sense if it had to justify buying an airplane to fly it. But everything is OK—it’s 1999 and demand is good, so you ratchet up the airline as much as you can.

Skip forward to fall 2000—the bubble bursts, demand starts to dry up. Not a whole hell of a lot, but just enough for all that marginal capacity to start to be awful for the industry. Capacity needs to decrease… but with gas being cheap, it’s not really in any one airline’s interest to cut back. It’s the classic “Tragedy of the Commons” problem. It’s in everyone’s interest for the industry to shrink, it’s in no one’s real interest to make the cuts.

At this point in the story, the DC Editor of The Nation sits up, bright eyed, and says “But if this is a “Tragedy of the Commons” problem, why doesn’t it make sense for the government to intervene?

1. Yep, gov’t regulation works for things like car emissions—but that’s not reversible at all, and the private sector needs to have its hand forced on that stuff. Throughout all the tumult of the early 00s in the industry, the vaporization of any one major network carrier would have solved all of the industry’s ills.

2. The health of any one airline is not in the national interest of the government, even though individual regions/states/cities may well be primarily dependent on the access provided by one carrier. If someone vaporized, there would be backfill—I promise you.

Now 9/11 hits, demand tanks, and the network airlines respond by aggressively parking their oldest fleets (less fuel effecient, and in many instances having three-man cockpits instead of two). Massive layoffs, and a truly psychotic couple of months until the “new normal” of demand is determined (I have anecdotes from this era that are outstanding and I’ll share them over a martini; inclusion here would destroy my anonymity in an already incestuous industry). In the meantime, the airlines (including my employer at the time) lobbied hard for federal bailouts to ensure that they survived, all the while hoping that a competitor would fall by the wayside and solve everyone’s problems. The industry whines, and DC responds with silly federal largesse that rivals that which Sen. Stevens brings back to AK, the criminal Archer Daniels Midland subsidies, and the sinfully wasteful Essential Air Service program.

The pain continues. UA, US, NW and DL all take a trip through the dry cleaners of Chap 11 bankruptcy. Major progress in streamlining cost structures is achieved at all four; but all four bankruptcies are not created equal by any means. Labor takes a pretty dramatic and painful haircut, but from pay rates and work rules that are completely unsustainable.

The overcapacity problem continues, with better and worse points. The bankrupt carriers are insulated from some of the financial pain of the capacity decisions; at one memorable point Continental issues a press release calling for the industry to shrink by another 6% or so, and follows it up the next day with a press release announcing capacity adds. Thanks, Gordo, for doing your part.

And. Then. Fuel. Prices. Start. To. Rise. Slowly at first… and then faster and faster. At one point, fuel expense eclipses labor expense for the industry. That’s huge… and it’s the solution to the problem (although the medicine is going to really burn going down).

Fuel costs are variable, so marginal flying doesn’t have the cover that it once does. You can’t limp along flying stuff that doesn’t work anymore, because the gas bill just makes you pull out the mechanical pencil and start cutting flights that can’t cover their variable costs, let alone overhead.

We are in late spring 2008, oil is sitting around $125 a barrel, and the industry has its come-to-Jesus moment—and starts announcing their capacity pulls for the fall. (Remember my earlier point about seasonality: a whole bunch of stuff makes sense June-August and then becomes useless in September, so if you’ve got the planes and the people on the property, you announce cancellations effective after Labor Day). The industry is poised to shrink about 16% overall: that’s (at least) one percentage point more than the industry contracted after 9/11. UA announces that after its fall layoffs, its overall staffing on the property will be the same as it was in 1980. Or, rephrased, the vaporization of all its deregulation growth. Ouch.

But the big lesson is that the major structural flaw of the industry (high fixed costs, low variable costs leading to every incentive to produce too much capacity) has been righted—alas, by pushing up the fuel price input.

So what’s going to happen? Fewer flights, higher fares, emptier planes (yeah, fares are going to drive down demand, not consolidate fullish flights onto each other), fewer air traffic delays. In short, the fuel price will accomplish just about everything that reregulation could hope to do. It’s exactly the same reasoning as why anyone concerned about climate change needs to see $5/gallon gas in the US and cheer, because it’s the only way to change consumer behavior. (Yes, it sucks that the working poor and working class folks who are car-dependent for employment are disproportionately hit by this. My dad is one of them—and now for the first time he’s cursing his big stupid 1997 Jeep Cherokee, which he does not need to negotiate the wilds of Nassau County. I digress.)

Less flying is going to make some huge differences in air traffic control, and that slack is going to make delays drop pretty dramatically across the US system. The FAA is working on some pretty important advances in air traffic management that it will be implementing over the next several years—also good news. The whole experience is about to change. For the better? Well… that depends. It’s almost guaranteed to be more pleasant, and it is guaranteed to be more expensive. The best thing the Federal government can do to help the situation? Ease off on the crazy deficit spending and get the budget in order so that the dollar starts to climb some against foreign currencies.

Domestic manufacturers would disagree pretty strenuously with this last point.

Bono said that after being hit the pedestrian was "splayed up onto the windshield and hood." The driver then turned right onto the K Street service lane, and the body rolled left. Bono took off after the vehicle, yelling out his license plate -- BY9430 -- to other witnesses as he attempted to catch the car. Bono said he overtook the car just before 17th Street, on K Street. Bono said he pulled his bike in front of the car. The driver, still seated in the vehicle, asked: "What happened?"

Bono is a partner at a law firm who was biking to work when he witnessed the incident. If his account is accurate, Novak is in pretty deep trouble.

Ta-Neihisi explains

Living up to his name with a hit and run. You can’t make this stuff up!

I was on Countdown last night to discuss Iraq and the politics of withdrawal, now that the Iraqi government has repeatedly endorsed Obama’s decision. (A number of smart people have had things to say on this score, which I essentially just recapitulated on air.)