I Heartily Concur: John Cochrane

Too depressed after last night, when the Cubs lost and Sarah Palin didn't, to write up either my evening watching Grant Achatz or the cool new piece of software I've been playing with. Hope to get to both of those next week.

(UPDATE: Friends have pointed out that, in fact, a consensus is forming that while Palin exceeded expectations, she didn't win. So that's good. I'm waiting for a similar article to appear about the Cubs game.)

In the meantime here's a long, involved, and well-written article arguing against the bailout. The money quote, from the conclusion (and by "money quote" I mean "quote that agrees with exactly what I think but haven't been able to articulate"):

"Yes, we need to do something. But 'doing something' that will not work — with potentially dire consequences — is not the right course, especially when sensible and well-understood options remain."

John Cochrane on Why the Bailout Plan Would Be a Disaster

Five Years Gone

5 Years Of War Vigil
Front & Market Streets
7:00 PM tonight (Wed 3/19/08)

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"I believe in this beautiful country. I have studied its roots and gloried in the wisdom of its magnificent Constitution. I have marveled at the wisdom of its founders and framers. Generation after generation of Americans has understood the lofty ideals that underlie our great Republic. I have been inspired by the story of their sacrifice and their strength.

But, today I weep for my country. I have watched the events of recent months with a

heavy, heavy heart. No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper. The image of America has changed. Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned.

Instead of reasoning with those with whom we disagree, we demand obedience or threaten recrimination. Instead of isolating Saddam Hussein, we seem to have isolated ourselves. We proclaim a new doctrine of preemption which is understood by few and feared by many. We say that the United States has the right to turn its firepower on any corner of the globe which might be suspect in the war on terrorism. We assert that right without the sanction of any international body. As a result, the world has become a much more dangerous place.

We flaunt our superpower status with arrogance. We treat UN Security Council members

like ingrates who offend our princely dignity by lifting their heads from the carpet. Valuable alliances are split. After war has ended, the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America's image around the globe.

The case this Administration tries to make to justify its fixation with war is tainted by charges of falsified documents and circumstantial evidence. We cannot convince the world of the necessity of this war for one simple reason. This is a war of choice.

There is no credible information to connect Saddam Hussein to 9/11. The twin towers

fell because a world-wide terrorist group, Al Qaeda, with cells in over 60 nations, struck at our wealth and our influence by turning our own planes into missiles, one of which would likely have slammed into the dome of this beautiful Capitol except for the brave sacrifice of the passengers on board.

The brutality seen on September 11th and in other terrorist attacks we have witnessed around the globe are the violent and desperate efforts by extremists to stop the daily encroachment of western values upon their cultures. That is what we fight. It is a force not confined to borders. It is a shadowy entity with many faces, many names, and many addresses.

But, this Administration has directed all of the anger, fear, and grief which emerged from the ashes of the twin towers and the twisted metal of the Pentagon towards a tangible villain, one we can see and hate and attack. And villain he is. But, he is the wrong villain. And this is the wrong war. If we attack Saddam Hussein, we will probably drive him from power. But, the zeal of our friends to assist our global war on terrorism may have already taken flight.

The general unease surrounding this war is not just due to "orange alert." There is a

pervasive sense of rush and risk and too many questions unanswered. How long will we be in Iraq? What will be the cost? What is the ultimate mission? How great is the danger at home? A pall has fallen over the Senate Chamber. We avoid our solemn duty to debate the one topic on the minds of all Americans, even while scores of thousands of our sons and daughters faithfully do their duty in Iraq.

What is happening to this country? When did we become a nation which ignores and berates our friends? When did we decide to risk undermining international order by adopting a radical and doctrinaire approach to using our awesome military might? How can we abandon diplomatic efforts when the turmoil in the world cries out for diplomacy?

Why can this President not seem to see that America's true power lies not in its will to intimidate, but in its ability to inspire?

War appears inevitable. But, I continue to hope that the cloud will lift. Perhaps Saddam will yet turn tail and run. Perhaps reason will somehow still prevail. I along with millions of Americans will pray for the safety of our troops, for the innocent civilians in Iraq, and for the security of our homeland. May God continue to bless the United States of America in the troubled days ahead, and may we somehow recapture the vision which for the present eludes us."

-- Senator Robert Byrd, "The Arrogance of Power," March 19, 2003

I Heartily Concur: Benjamin Barber

Dr. Benjamin Barber's new book, Consumed, just shot to the top of my must-read list (I think I'll check it out from the library instead of buying it, though). Here's an excerpt from an interview with Bill Moyers:

"Part of the problem here is that the capitalist companies have figured out that the best way to do their job is to privatize profit, but socialize risk. That is to say, ask the taxpayer to pay for it when things go down. The banks now that have just screwed up so big, not one of those banks is going to go under because they'll be bailed out by the feds. 'Cause the feds, the federal government will say we can't afford this gigantic multi billion dollar bank to go under. Happened with Chrysler 20, 30 years ago. And, therefore, it's impossible to fail if you're a business. You never get punished. Now the whole point of profit is to reward risk. But what we've done today is socialize risk. You and I, and all of your listeners out there, pay when companies like sub-prime market mortgage companies and the banks go bad. We pay for it. They don't.

Now, he's simplifying things a bit; it is possible to fail if you're a small or medium business. It's just the huge corporations that get shielded by the government, and not even all of those (ask Enron or Andersen Consulting), but overall I think his point is dead on. In fact, I was just saying the same thing to Daryl in my best cranky-old-man voice the other day. "Companies these days," I said, "there's no risk of failure for screwing up or doing something wrong!" It's not just the sub-prime screw-up, it's all the lead in children's toys, too. And (As I mentioned last week) it's the energy bill, too. Are there any substantive penalties for the car manufacturers not reaching the new emissions levels outlined in the bill? I seriously doubt it.

Barber has a history of getting it right before the fact. His best-known book, Jihad vs. McWorld, was eerily prescient. As New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani wrote, it "depicted the post-cold-war world as a place simultaneously subject to the fragmenting forces of religious and ethnic fundamentalism and the homogenizing forces of global capitalism: forces, he suggested, that were threats to democracy, and that were on a dangerous collision course with each other." That's easy for us to see now, but Barber wrote that in 1995.

The whole interview with Barber is worth watching or reading. Here are a few more of his insights:

* "Capitalism is no longer manufacturing goods to meet real needs and human wants. It's manufacturing needs to sell us all the goods it's got to produce."

* "Here in the United States, the cola companies, which couldn't sell enough cola, figure out, why sell cola when we can sell water from the tap that people can get for free, but we'll sell it in bottles from the tap? Twenty billion a year. Twenty billion dollars a year in bottled water. In the third world there are literally billions without potable, without drinkable, without clean water. Now why shouldn't capitalism figure out how to clean the water out there and get people something they need and make a buck off it? Because that's what capitalism does. It makes a profit off taking some chances and meeting real human needs, instead of convincing Americans and Europeans that they shouldn't drink pure clean tap water but instead pay two bucks a bottle for it."

* "Capitalism cannot stay indefinitely in business trying to manufacture needs for people in the middle class and the developed world who have most of what they need. It has to figure out how to address the real needs of people."

* "Capitalism has put democracy in trouble, because capitalism has tried to persuade us that being a private consumer is enough. That a citizen is nothing more than a consumer. That voting means spending your dollars spreading around your private prejudices, your private preferences. Not reaching public judgments. Not finding common ground. Not making decisions about the social consequences of private judgments, but just making the private judgments and letting it fall where it will."

* "As Americans, I would think we understand that, above all, democracy means pluralism. If everything's religion, we rightly distrust it. If everything's politics, even in good politics, we rightly distrust it. But when everything's marketing, and everything's retail, and everything's shopping, we somehow think that enhances our freedom. Well, it doesn't. It has the same corrupting effect on the fundamental diversity and variety that are our lives that make us human, that make us happy."

* "So many of our choices today are trivial. We feel that we're expanding and enhancing our choice, but the big choices, a green environment, a safe city for our kids, good education, simply, are not available through private consumer choices."

* "We're on the wrong end of globalization...the US is selling itself, China's buying. China is buying into the global market. America is selling itself out in that global market."

* "we've got to retrieve our citizenship. We can't buy the line that government is our enemy and the market is our friend. We used to say government can do everything, the market can do nothing. That was a mistake. But now we seem to say the market can do everything and government can do nothing. Government is us. Government is our institutions. Government is how we make social and public choices working together. We've got to retrieve our citizenship."

I Heartily Concur: Reggie Longcrier

I first saw this on Feministing -- it's a question asked of John Edwards on last night's YouTube debate by Reverend Reggie Longcrier, pastor of Exodus Missionary Outreach Church in Hickory, N.C.:



"Sen. Edwards said his opposition to gay marriage is influenced by his Southern Baptist background. Most Americans agree it was wrong and unconstitutional to use religion to justify slavery, segregation, and denying women the right to vote.

So why is it still acceptable to use religion to deny gay Americans their full and equal rights?"

I Heartily Concur: Daniel Radosh

Daniel Radosh becomes the first two-time recipient of the "I Heartily Concur" tag, thanks to his post yesterday about the next round of Iraq-withdrawal debate. He's talking about the possibility, voiced by the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and the Iraqi Foreign Minister, and mentioned in the New York Times, that "the departure of American troops could lead to sharply increased violence, the deaths of thousands and a regional conflict that could draw in Iraq’s neighbors":

Let's be clear: to the extent that this is true, and I think it's quite likely, it's the invasion and occupation that will have caused it, not the withdrawal. The war has made these disastrous results virtually inevitable. We tried to warn you four and a half years ago. Yes, the continued presence of the U.S. military has forestalled the worst of it, but if bad shit is going to happen, it's going to happen regardless of whether America withdraws now or in five years or 10 or 25 — or simply stays until its resources are so degraded that it is no longer an effective deterrent. Nothing this or any conceivable U.S. administration has done or could possibly do in the future is likely to bring about a different outcome.

I think this is a critically important point that is being totally overlooked (which is of course why I'm blogging about it, so that those of you who read this will be able to help re-frame the debate. Since there are only about 20 of you, though, it'll have to happen Breck-style: they told two friends, and so on, and so on...) -- it's not our leaving Iraq that's going to cause the country to collapse; it's our arriving and sticking around for the last four years. The die has been cast, the horse is out of the barn, the ship has sailed; it's gonna happen whether we cut and run, stay the course, or do anything in between.

So that leads to the question, why continue to throw American dollars and lives at a situation which is a lost cause? Maybe it's our mess and we have a moral responsibility to clean it up -- that's an argument that I'm not sure that I agree with, but is at least worth thinking about (of course you'll never hear anything like that from the current administration because that would require acknowledgment of a mistake made). But if that's the case, and we need to help fix things, then we need to come up with a different way to do it. The current way isn't doing anything except pissing people off, and the people getting pissed off are the kind of people who like to blow other people up.

I Heartily Concur: Keith Chaffee

I wasn't planning to comment on the death of Jerry Falwell; my fondest (and vainest) hope is that, in death, the memory of Falwell will fade from public consciousness and he will become less relevant with each passing day.

But Keith Chaffee (from whom I cribbed the layout for my American Idol recaps) reminded me of what is surely the most egregious of Falwell's public comments, made on The 700 Club, on September 13th, 2001:

"The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

As Keith wrote, "I am not normally one to rejoice in the death of any human being, but Jerry Falwell was an evil and a hateful man, and the world is a better place for his leaving it."

Amen. Let us speak of him no more, forever.

A Post About Covers

This post started off as another in the "I Heartily Concur" series, highlighting what Daniel Radosh wrote a while ago about Alanis Morrissette's cover of the Black Eyed Peas' song "My Humps." In the addendum to his post he articulated something about music in general, and songwriting specifically, that I've been thinking about for a long time:

One thing worth noting about the Gordon and Gourds covers, and the Ben Folds one mentioned in the comments, is that they're songs you might actually listen to and enjoy entirely on their own terms. The same goes for Richard Thompson's Oops I Did It Again, Fountains of Wayne or Travis doing Baby One More Time, the entire oeuvre of Me First and the Gimme Gimmes and [add your favorites here]. That's because the original songs are all genuinely good. By switching up genre, the cover artists reveal the quality songwriting that often gets hidden behind the production trappings, for better or worse (depending on whether you're a fan of the original genre).

On the other hand, no one will ever listen to Alanis doing My Humps more than once or twice. Because once you get past the humor of Alanis goofing on Fergie, what you're stuck with is a lousy song."

I love cover versions, and I especially love covers that do a song in a completely different style from the original. And while I was writing up this post, my mp3 player offered up The Gear Daddies' cover of the Johnny Wakelin obscurity "Black Superman," which currently occupies a place of honor on my quickly-growing covers playlist (entitled "David Coverversion").

Rather than a quick-hit, content-free post, I decided to spend a little time and dig up a dozen great covers to share with you all. Some, but not, take their subject song into a different genre; even those that don't, I believe, rise to the level of the original, and in some cases exceed it.

At any given time I could pull up a dozen other worthy covers, so let's call this the Covers Playlist v1.0. For some reason it's heavy on the countrified stuff:

Tarnation, "Little Black Egg" -- I know nothing about this band. In fact, I'm not even sure how I came into possession of their album 'Mirador.' I assume someone gave it to me when a bunch of my friends pitched in to help me rebuild my music collection after the Cedar Fire. Anyway, this cover of The Nightcrawlers' off-kilter 1965 garage rocker immediately caught my ear. It sounded like something that might end up in a Quentin Tarantino movie. Shake Your Fist charted the history of the song in a blog post last spring.

Otis Redding, "Satisfaction" -- Some are partial to Devo's cover, which is great, but Otis gives this Stones song the classic Stax/Volt treatment. Another amazing cover out of the Memphis scene is Wilson Pickett's version of The Archies' "Sugar Sugar" -- I've never heard such a trivial song given such unexpected depth & soul.

The Goo Goo Dolls, "Bitch" -- Long a staple of their live shows, this version of the Rolling Stones' romp appears on the 1993 Red Hot compilation No Alternative, and features Buffalo, NY legend-in-his-own-mind Lance Diamond on vocals.

Uncle Tupelo, "Now I Wanna Be Your Dog" -- Originally recorded, I think, during the 'April 16-20, 1992' sessions and long unavailable until the 2003 re-releases. In addition to this Stooges classic, Tupelo recorded a number of covers, including The Louvin Brothers' "Atomic Power" and, of course, The Carter Family's "No Depression."

The Gipsy Kings, "Hotel California" -- I first heard this Spanish-language version of the Eagles' biggest hit on the severely underrated 'Rubaiyat' album, a collection of covers of Elektra artists by other Elecktra artists. It also includes Billy Bragg doing Love's "Seven & Seven Is," Metallica's cover of Queen's "Stone Cold Crazy," and a wild glam-trash cover of Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" by Faster Pussycat.

Elvis Costello, "I'm Your Toy" -- One of the songs on 'Almost Blue,' Elvis' 1981 album of country covers which includes excellent takes on Hank Williams' "Why Don't You Love Me Like You Used To Do," Merle Haggard's "Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down," and George Jones' "Brown To Blue," among others. "Toy" was written by Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman and released as "Hot Burrito #2" on The Flying Burrito Brothers' fantastic 'Gilded Palace Of Sin.' Raul Malo of the Mavericks has done a great, aching version of this song as well.

Johnny Cash, "Rusty Cage" -- Johnny did a bunch of excellent covers on his American Recordings albums, including Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" and Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus," but his take on this Soundgarden tune is my favorite.

U2, "Dancing Barefoot" -- U2 has tossed off a handful of fantastic covers throughout their history, including a great version of the Darlene Love/Phil Spector Christmas classic "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)," but none as fine as this Patty Smith cover, which originally appeared as the b-side of "When Love Comes To Town."

The Waco Brothers, "The Harder They Come" -- One of two great covers on the Bloodshot Records comp 'Making Singles, Drinking Doubles' (the other is Neko Case doing Loretta Lynn's "Rated X."), this surprised the hell out of me the first time I heard it. I knew very little about Jon Langford, but this song opened my eyes to his universe of music, for which I am eternally thankful every time I crank The Mekons' "Memphis, Egypt."

Jeff Buckley, "Hallelujah" -- Two other version of this classic (John Cale's on the Cohen tribute album 'I'm Your Fan' and Rufus Wainwright's from 'Shrek') are better known, but I think Buckley's version (from 'Grace') captures all the wistfulness of Leonard Cohen's original while still putting his vocal stamp on it. A sad reminder of what a great loss his death was.

R.E.M., "Wall Of Death" -- This is on the Richard Thompson tribute album Beat The Retreat, which includes a brilliantly tragic John Doe & Exene duet on "Shoot Out the Lights."

Mike Watt, "Maggot Brain" -- This Funkadelic cover appears near the end of Watt's all-my-friends-in-the-studio record 'Ball-Hog Or Tugboat?' and features J. Mascis channelling Eddie Hazel and keyboards by P-Funk's very own Bernie Worrell.

I'd love to hear what your favorite covers are -- post 'em in the comments.

I Heartily Concur: Bill Maher

Writing on Salon a few weeks ago, Bill Maher started an op-ed about the current HPV vaccine controversy this way:

New Rule: If you don't think your daughter getting cancer is worse than your daughter having sex, then you're doing it wrong.

I don't have much to add to what he wrote. I have a daughter, and another on the way, and as soon as they can be given this vaccine (at age nine), they will be.

Am I worried that giving her this vaccine will make her want to have sex? No. I'm worried that not giving her this vaccine will increase her risk of getting CANCER.

According to the National Cancer Institute (a division of the National Insitutes of Health), 10,000 women will be diagnosed with the cancer caused by HPV this year, and 4,000 will die from it. The vaccine prevented nearly 100 percent of the precancerous cervical cell changes caused by HPV, and the NCI estimates that it has the potential to reduce cervical cancer deaths around the world by as much as two-thirds.

It's pretty simple: this vaccine prevents cancer. Many people who get cancer die. Therefore this vaccine prevents people from dying. It will help prevent my children, and yours, and everyone's, from dying.


Buy your Fuck Cancer patches and hats from Deviant Goods

As far as the sex thing is concerned, giving my daughters this vaccine will give them a better chance of living to the point where I have to worry about them having sex. I'll deal with that issue then, and I'll be glad I have to worry about it at all.

I Heartily Concur: Steven Johnson

Author Steven Johnson took David Brooks to task a few weeks ago for Brook's beyond-ridiculous anti-hipster-parent screed in the New York Times. Johnson isn't the only one -- as you might imagine, the blogosphere, which is full of hipster parents, was full of hipster parents with something to say about Brooks' embarrassingly tone-deaf piece -- but he was the only one I read to make this point:

"Brooks' obsession with the surfaces of hipster parenting ends up blinding him to the real trend here, which is central to almost all the examples he cites: young parents choosing to raise their children in the city, not the suburbs. That is a decision with real consequences, not an empty gesture. It has material effects on children and parents -- and the cities they live in. It's a decision with political and environmental implications, and also one with some surprisingly old-time Americana values. (Brooklyn parents can be cloyingly sentimental about the small town friendliness of their neighborhoods.) It has almost nothing to do with non-conformism, and everything to do with the kind of community -- diverse, sidewalk-based, public, culturally-rich -- we want to raise our children in. It's striking that Brooks doesn't even find that trend worth mentioning in the piece -- much less taking it seriously."

My wife and I made the exact choice he's talking about, choosing to raise our child/ren in Harrisburg, a city that has all the things Johnson mentions and more. My hipster cred can't touch that of, say, Neal Pollack, but personally I couldn't care less what David Brooks, or just about anyone else, thinks about the way I'm raising my family. Like Pollack, what I care about is the my kids end up being thinking, creative individuals, not indie automaton clones of me.

I Heartily Concur: The Zero Boss

The Zero Boss started out in my Reader list under "parenting" but has moved to the "personalities" section and is fast becoming the type of blog to which I aspire (with, perhaps, a bit less snarky vitriol. Not that I'm anti-snarky vitriol, but a little goes a long way).

One of TZB's recent targets has been Virginia Representative Virgil Goode, who has been the most vocal critic of Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison's decision to use a Koran as part of his ceremonial swearing-in to Congress. It makes sense for him to use a Koran, seeing as how he's a Muslim (the first ever in Congress, by the way). Representative Goode, however, sees this symbolic act as, basically, another step along some slippery slope which could lead to the majority of Congress being Muslims, which will lead to...I'm not sure what, exactly.

Anyway, today's post includes the following:

How did Ellison respond to the charge that swearing in on the Quran is somehow equivalent to sucking the terrorists’ willies? With class and cleverness, folks. The Quran on which Ellison will be sworn in is none other than the copy formerly owned by one Mr. Thomas Jefferson. It’s made even more delicious once you learn know that Rep. Goode’s district houses Jefferson’s birthplace.

Rep. Goode, we here on the Internet commonly refer to this as "being p0wned."

I doubt Goode has any idea what being p0wned means, but I'll bet he thinks it has something to do with illegal immigration.

Added 1:20 PM: BTW, that is a zero as the second character in "p0wned," even though this font apparently does almost nothing to distinguish it from a lower-case oh. I'm no n00b, I'm just at the mercy of a font which is teh suck. Although technically isn't it supposed to be "pwned"?

I Heartily Concur: King Kaufman

Every now and then I come across a take on an issue that mirrors mine exactly. Rather than try to write something that just says the same thing in a different way, I'll just link to the post so you can read what this obviously extremely intelligent person has to say.

Today's quote is from King Kaufman, the excellent sports writer at Salon. In his column yesterday he wrote about the brawl between the Nuggets and the Knicks, and touched on Isaiah Thomas taking exception to Denver "running up the score." Kaufman's take:

"If you don't like your opponent running up the score, play better. This is the big leagues. Your incompetence is not your opponent's problem."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

By the way, Kaufman expands a bit more on this in today's column.