AdamSmith

To be sure, my hopefulness may be naught but naivete. Although one does recall that, before W. and H.W., there was Prescott, and today there are, as noted before, the tiny handful of Lugars, Hagels, et al. to perhaps give some glimmer. Of course it may not really be hope, but just a wish, given that their soon-to-be banishment cannot last forever. That, certainly. But more, too: the Faustian, even Lear-like dimensions of the beast. The relentless drive; after the deepest humiliations, the return to the arena again and again; the daring & boldness of the diplomatic openings; etc., etc., etc. And then destroyed by his own hand, felled by the same energies that had raised him up or, at least, impelled him. Part of it is simply nostalgia for political villains and scoundrels who nevertheless -- starkly unlike current-day neocons and other cons -- had a sharp grasp of realpolitik.

I just logged in to post this same link. Krugman dashes cold water on hopeful speculation by TampaYankee, me and others that the past 8 years are culminating in some version of the Republican party's hitting rock bottom, so that its more centrist elements will be in position to wrest power from the radical right. Discouraging. Even such a yellow-dog Democrat as AdamSmith would breathe more easily if the Republican party were a safer, saner partner in governance. I think of Nixon (as reported by that ghastliness Monica Crowley) watching on TV in 1992 as the Bush I renominating convention opened with Pat Buchanan's bashing of gays and much else. "He's so extreme; he's over there with the nuts," fumed Nixon, complaining this undid what he praised as his own past efforts to drag the party away from the "Goldwater crazies." ...Crowley's memoirs of Nixon, as I've noted before, are riveting. This review by Chris Buckley captures it all (including some Beltway insiders' conviction that Monica knew Dick biblically, at least after Pat Nixon kicked the bucket): Final Judgments By CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY Published: August 25, 1996 Nixon Off the Record By Monica Crowley. 231 pp. New York: Random House. $23. He's baaack! For the last five years of his life, Richard Nixon sipped tonic water and spilled the beans to a young assistant he hired right out of college after she wrote him a flattering letter about his book ''1999.'' Monica Crowley was a steel-trap amanuensis, taking down every word with apparently astonishing precision -- she implies that she didn't use a tape recorder, but then perhaps Nixon's post-White House staff avoided tape recorders the way Count Dracula's assistants might avoid crucifixes. After Nixon died in 1994, she says, William Safire, a former Nixon scribe, gave Ms. Crowley the ethical go-ahead to publish, telling her, ''Nixon knew that when he spoke to you, he was speaking to history.'' The result is her first and Nixon's final book, a portrait of the most compelling, infuriating and fascinating American political figure of our half of the 20th century. Here he is in all his five-o'clock-shadowed glory, spinning not in the grave but from it: seething over the incompetence of the Bush re-election campaign, scheming to ingratiate himself with the Clintons -- not a pretty picture -- handicapping the current election and agonizing over his place in history, all the while serving up scathing assessments of all the players. Richard Nixon hasn't been this interesting since the Oval Office bugging system was taking the dictation. In life we knew him as Tricky Dick. Now, in death, he gives us Dishy Dick. A lot of the players will be going around airily pretending they haven't had time to read the book, then locking the doors to the den to look themselves up fretfully in the index to find out what he really thought about them. For George Bush, James A. Baker 3d, David Gergen, Robert A. Mosbacher, Nicholas Brady, Richard Darman, Jack Kemp and Pat Buchanan, reading this book will not be a pleasant experience -- a bit like attending the reading of a will in which they are left not the house, estate and trust funds but the deceased's diabetic cat, with contemptuous instructions for its care. ''Withering'' is not quite strong enough a word to describe Mr. Nixon's feelings toward many of the above. And those are the Republicans. President and Mrs. Clinton would do well to search elsewhere for diverting reading on their vacation, as would his Cabinet. ''Well! Look at that Cabinet. Aren't they an awful-looking group? My God! Shalala and Reno? They are so far to the left that I don't know what they are. And Hillary! She's so steely. She even claps in a controlled way.'' Secretary of State Warren Christopher is hereby advised to assume the fetal position if anyone within a hundred-yard radius brings up the book. Who comes off well? It's a short but surprising list: Bob Dole, Mario Cuomo, H. R. Haldeman, Al Gore, Dan Quayle and Elliot Richardson. There's a fun dinner party for you. The aggrieved will be able to take some comfort from the book's rather massive Achilles' heel, assuming it is that. Either Ms. Crowley, who occasionally gets a bit breathless about all the mentoring -- Michael Kinsley's line kept coming to me: He threw her over the desk and mentored her until dawn -- didn't catch the glaring fallacy in her argument, or something even more interesting is going on here. At the outset of Part 1, she writes: ''Above all for Nixon, leadership demanded a person secure in his abilities and in himself and who was, therefore, willing and able to take those risks. Of the many criticisms leveled at him, the one he found most egregious was that he was insecure. Politics, by its very nature, attracts the supremely secure.'' As they say in the Valley, Hello? There's enough in that there asseveration to keep every pundit, political scientist and psychologist in America arguing for a month. Her book is a prosecutor's brief for the antithesis, at least in Nixon's case. Almost every page contains DNA evidence, supplied by her mentor himself, that for all his undeniable guts, his ability, again and again, to take a kicking and go on ticking, Richard Nixon was the most transparently insecure human being ever to reach the White House. ''Why the hell isn't he showing some leadership?'' he fumes about George Bush's lack of vision. ''I'll tell you something. When the (expletive deleted) and his gang come to me for advice, I am not going to provide it unless they are willing to thank me publicly. Neither Reagan nor Bush did that after all these years of my advice, and frankly I have had it. They'll find me when they need me, but I may not be available.'' You can hear the stamping of slippered feet on the study floor. Twenty pages later he's bristling about the Bush campaign -- ''All tactics and no vision. Nothing.'' In his histrionic, tautological way, he tells her: ''I reiterate to you once again: I will not give them any advice unless they ask and unless they are willing to thank me publicly. I'm tired of being taken for granted. They all come to me on the sly when they are in big trouble -- well, no more. No more going in the back door of the White House -- middle of the night -- under the cloak of darkness. . . .'' Wonderful image, that: Nixon being bundled into the side entrance under a raincoat. Desperate to be a player again, he submits to the humiliation of a visit from the Presidential aspirant Ross Perot, calculating that the specter of his becoming a Perot shadow adviser might prompt Mr. Bush or Mr. Clinton into bringing him in out of the cold. Mr. Perot makes the former President wait two hours, pleading New York City traffic. (To paraphrase Dana Carvey's Perot, ''Isn't that just sad?'') In one of the book's more amusing moments Nixon, convinced that his phones have been tapped, resolves to flush out the tappers with a prearranged call to Ms. Crowley, telling her that he's planning to come out publicly for Mr. Perot. First time as tragedy, second time as opera bouffe. ''I hope to God they don't ask me to speak at the (1992 Republican) convention,'' he says later. ''I won't do it. It's a loser all around.'' He doth protest a bit too much here. Richard Nixon would have bicycled to Houston to speak at that convention in a New York minute, if asked. And too bad he wasn't. His take on Pat Buchanan's fateful speech at that convention: ''He's so extreme; he's over there with the nuts. . . . Attacking the gays was wrong, wrong, wrong. Besides, they vote too.'' Again and again he tells Ms. Crowley, in terms that would scorch paint off the walls, of his contempt for Bill Clinton. Then when Mr. Clinton wins, he sets out to cozy up to -- another less attractive phrase comes to mind -- the new President with such zeal that you find yourself mumbling, ''Say it ain't so.'' After Nixon had read her a copy of a letter to Mr. Clinton, she reports, ''He said to me 'I know it goes a bit overboard, particularly on the character stuff, but the guy's got a big ego, and you've got to flatter the hell out of him if you are going to get anywhere.' '' And there you have it in one excruciating sentence: Nixon so yearned to be a contender again that he was willing to bear any burden, pay any price, to get back in the ring. ''I used the word 'character' not in the moral sense,'' he elaborates to a no doubt dumbstruck Ms. Crowley, ''because he has no morals -- but in the strength sense. Adversity builds character. . . . I have to work with the guy, so I might as well start with this.'' Mr. Clinton put him back in the (outer) loop with a few phone calls about foreign policy. Nixon tells Ms. Crowley that he told the President, ''Foreign policy is just more interesting.'' No surprise there, but how delicious to find a few pages later all our suspicions confirmed: ''Monica, history will not remember him (Mr. Clinton) for anything he does domestically. The economy will recover; it's all short-term and, let's face it, very boring.'' For a time, Nixon was thrilled and energized by Mr. Clinton's attentions. ''He invited me to the White House,'' he announces one day. ''The sentence hung there in the air before he continued, 'In 12 years, neither Reagan nor Bush ever put me on the White House schedule or put a picture out.' '' Just as it took Nixon to open China, so it took Mr. Clinton, whose own wife had served on the impeachment committee, to open the White House back up to Nixon. Amusingly, Nixon tried to keep Mr. Clinton from consulting with Henry Kissinger. But alas, the Rodney Dangerfield of Saddle River got no enduring respect from the Clintons. That realization came when they did not attend the funeral of Mrs. Nixon. It's a harrowing and poignant moment, Lear on the blasted heath, Monica Crowley in the role of Cordelia. ''Nixon, rocked with grief, exploded after the service. 'Vernon Jordan? The Clintons sent Vernon Jordan? He's a fine man, but come on. Hillary should have been there. That was inexcusable. He comes to me for advice . . . and he can't even send a Cabinet member to Mrs. Nixon's funeral?'' The disappointment and anger would turn out to be conclusive, yet when Mr. Clinton made his next State of the Union speech, promoting health care, he included a mention of Nixon's health care proposals. ''Did you know,'' he says to Crowley, ''that that was the first time a President ever mentioned me? Ford, Reagan and Bush never did.'' In life, Nixon was famed as a 20-20 political handicapper. In death, it remains to be seen. Bob Dole ''must really take over the party,'' he tells her. ''He's the only one; no one else can do it.'' Later: ''Dole is the only one who can lead. He is by far the smartest politician -- and Republican -- in the country.'' He advised his protege to wait until after 1994 and then ''kick the hell out of Perot'' (still waiting), to cultivate Colin Powell (done, to little avail), to avoid letting the religious right dictate the terms (yes and no), to be ''conservative'' on economic issues (done) but ''compassionate'' on welfare and health care (so-so), to ''stay young'' (he's trying) and -- the $64,000 question -- to ''attack Clinton's policies and not him personally.'' In fairness, Nixon said this in 1993; now the character issue may really be Mr. Dole's only available red meat. Mr. Dole, one of Nixon's most serious students, who eulogized him with the words, ''The second half of the 20th century will be known as the age of Nixon,'' would surely have invited him to speak at the '96 Republican convention. What a pity he didn't live long enough for that final dispensation. Whatever we thought of Nixon, he paid full fare for his sins. It's all here, the pain and humiliation of his 20-year exile from the arena. He made a fatal mistake not burning those tapes a quarter-century ago. It is inconceivable that he made a second fatal mistake letting it all hang out with Ms. Crowley. Mr. Safire was right: Nixon knew his soul-revealing musings would eventually see the light of day. ''Nixon Off the Record'' is a collaboration, not, as some suggest, a betrayal, and that makes the author's naive whoppers about her subject's confidence all the more charming, even endearing. Thank heavens Monica Crowley is a relative innocent. An older pro would have inserted 18-minute gaps and But that would be wrong's. Even so, it's doubtful Nixon expected her to perform such editorial services. He was many things, but naive he wasn't. This remarkable book is an act of catharsis, not hubris, Richard Nixon's final apologia. Tough as he was on everyone else, he was always toughest on himself. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...;pagewanted=all

The Most Accurate Election Forecast? Hardcore Gamblers Keith Thompson, Huffington Post Recently I was in Kentucky, reporting on horseracing for Garden & Gun. A "whale" (bettor of thousands of dollars per day) I interviewed, Mike Maloney, successfully traded securities, options and futures, but chose to go to the track every day instead because it offered him a greater challenge. "There are many, many, many more factors to consider in betting horseraces," he said. Maloney is a youthful fifty-two, with alert, light blue eyes and a cheerful demeanor. He doesn't chomp on a cigar. He's in no way a Damon Runyon character. I have reason to believe he's a sort of mathematical genius. I asked him: "Do you think handicappers can forecast the outcome of the presidential election better than polls?" He didn't hesitate. "Polls can be inaccurate. People may say what is politically correct, the questions may be leading, the pollsters may be biased. A pollster can still bill for an inaccurate poll. Bookmakers must make an accurate line or they lose -- period." For a second opinion I went to Ray Paulick, who was a protégé of notorious oddsmaker "Jimmy The Greek" before becoming a handicapper for the Daily Racing Form. Now he's editor of the thoroughbred industry insiders' must-read Paulick Report. "Gamblers have more experience with cheaters," he said. "They take voter fraud into their metrics. Polls don't. Nor do polls take into account how each state's secretary of state factors in, or systems within a state designed to eliminate voters; Jimmy the Greek called these 'the intangibles.'" The multi-billion dollar online gaming industry offers evidence that Maloney and Paulick are, as usual, on the money. Michael Robb, political expert for the British bookmaking site Betfair.com, lets the record speak for itself: Halfway through Election Day in 2004, when a CNN poll showed Kerry taking the lead, Betfair had Bush with a 91% chance to win. Of course that's just one election. Probably hundreds of fifth-grade social studies students correctly predicted Bush's margin of victory to a decimal place, right? Betfair also had all 50 states right in 2004. As did rival site Intrade. Koleman Strumpf, a University of Kansas economics professor who tracks betting trends, believes wagering is an incomparable barometer of an election. Among the reasons he gave me: Relative to the polls, the betting markets have to think hard about what they're saying since they are putting their money at stake. Also polls tend to reflect what people are thinking at a given moment, versus a forecast of what will happen on election day -- post-convention bounces, for instance. With University of Arizona economist Paul Rhode, Strumpf authored a study -- "Historical Presidential Betting Markets," published in Journal of Economic Perspectives -- that demonstrates that the betting market's forecasting superiority is nothing new. They begin with America's long history of wagering on political outcomes, which boomed in the 1880s when betting moved from poolrooms to the Curb Exchange, the predecessor to the American Stock Exchange. Betting on political outcomes often drew huge crowds to Wall Street and exceeded trading in stocks and bonds. "In presidential races such as 1896, 1900, 1904, 1916, and 1924, the New York Times, Sun, and World provided nearly daily [betting] quotes from early October until Election Day," write Rhode and Strumpf. The papers' sources were betting firms, which had men present at speeches made by the candidates in order to make "unbiased reports of the psychological reactions of the audiences." In the fifteen elections between 1884 and 1940, the betting firms were wrong just once, in 1916, when Wilson upset Hughes. And the gamblers might have had a perfect record had the Curb Market stayed open long enough to take into account late-breaking news from the West. The advent of polls marked the end of an era. "Prior to Gallup's introduction in 1936, newspapers had little else to report about the election horserace other than the betting markets," Strumpf said. "When scientific polls came along, newspapers had something to report other than markets they were oftentimes uncomfortable with." Responding to such discomfort, state laws increasingly limited organized election betting. Betting persisted, but in the shadows. Accordingly little data exists from 1940 through 1984, though it's enough that Strumpf concludes gamblers were more accurate than the pollsters in that period too. The advent of internet wagering offers a clearer picture: "Since 1988, the betting markets have definitely been more accurate," Strumpf said. It's still illegal for United States citizens to wager on the presidential election; Betfair and Intrade try to bar American bettors. Several newer off-shore sites are more lenient, however. Currently, Betfair lists Barack Obama as an overwhelming 1-7 favorite (paying $8 for a $7 winning bet). A John McCain win would pay $6.80 for every dollar bet. "On Election Night I'll look at the movement on the betting sites to see what's going on," Strumpf says. "I watch CNN too, out of the corner of an eye, but it's not necessary." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-thomso...o_b_140181.html

Cat's blood would be more than adequate to douse any such sparks. Your post (unsure if I regret this, or not) reminds me that, when dissecting a cat in advanced bio class in high school, I was appalled how appetizing its gastrocnemius muscle looked -- just like a chicken leg. Diligently maintain your ignorance of both SAW 5 and EscortSpeak. That may be your salvation when St. Peter totes up whether you deserve to enter the pearly gates.

You mean this is not it?! I thought we had been blessed with the tech heads' nirvana -- a "seamless transition"!

Agree. He has been saying publicly what others with some sense but less honor, Peggy Noonan etc., will only voice when they think the mike is off. As for raising the GOP, wonder if we will, irony of ironies, have W. and Cheney to thank for this in the end. The neocons having tested their theories to destruction, will this election finally clear the way for the Hagels, Lugars, etc. to come in from the cold and make the GOP a (comparatively) safe & sane partner in governance?

http://andrehasablog.blogspot.com/ ...natch!

Although one has to take Ed Rollins with several grains of salt, he knows the game, and had this pretty reasonable-sounding thing to say the other day: Former Reagan political adviser Ed Rollins likened today's landscape to that in 1980, when voters were angry at President Jimmy Carter and the Democrats and turned to Reagan in droves once they felt comfortable with the idea of him as president. "Barack has met the threshold," Rollins said. "Once Reagan met the threshold, people wanted to get rid of Carter and they did in a landslide. This is going to turn into a landslide." http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/53771.html

I long thought that Apple charged a premium for little more than brand perception. Then I was put through upgrading my Dell machine to Vista. That drove me to look again, long and hard, at Apple's offerings. Which led me to conclude that today, Apple charges a premium for technology that works, works well, and works comparatively effortlessly. I am typing this on my MacBook Pro.

A truly great day. May we live to see many more of them. Pardon my militancy. But this I believe.

I love Barney Frank. As I've said here before. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/03/b...f_n_131569.html Some outtakes: O'REILLY: You're a coward. You blame everybody else. You're a coward. FRANK: Bill, here's the problem with going on your show. You start ranting. And the only way to respond is almost to look as boorish as you. ... O'REILLY: You can come in and make every excuse in the world. FRANK: I'm not making excuses. O'REILLY: .blame everybody else in the world and then call me boorish. FRANK: I'm not going to be bullied by your ranting. You can rant all you want, you're not going to shut me up! The problem was that we passed in 1994, in fact. O'REILLY: Now we're back to 1994. This is bull. FRANK: Yes. O'REILLY: This is why Americans don't trust the government. FRANK: No, this is why your stupidity gets in the way of rational discussion. ... O'REILLY: I know, it's all the conservatives, it's all the Republicans and not you. FRANK: Oh, come on. O'REILLY: None on you. That's a joke. FRANK: You won't have a rational discussion. O'REILLY: That's a joke. FRANK: The joke is to think I could have a rational discussion with you. ... etc.

The more you look into these things, the worse it gets: http://www.ispub.com/ostia/index.php?xmlFi...n1/fracture.xml

She seems unperturbed.

Liberace was Canadian?!

He meant to type: Blame Candidiasis. http://www.skincarenet.org/candidiasis.html

Good thing black's my color.

Crossing wires with your Johnny Depp post, Depp is also slated to star as Barnabas Collins in a Tim Burton remake of "House of Dark Shadows."

I bow to superior talent!

I'm making a roux. ...with Thing 1 and Thing 2!

Apropos of very little, the Edsel was almost named the Bullet LaVolta. Courtesy of poet Marianne Moore, whom Ford's marketing VP engaged to come up with a name. She also suggested Mongoose Civique and Utopian Turtletop. But finally the VP had to write her that the powers that be had settled on a name with "gaiety and zest -- the Edsel. You will, I know, share our thrill at this development."

See you there! For a surefire way to tighten up the sag you mention, see the scene in Kenneth Anger's film "Scorpio Rising" where Hell's Angels are goosing each other with plastic skulls coated in yellow mustard. (...sort of the inverse of how chili works!) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4704748884284449320 P.S. Rhyming contraire with derrière -- clevèr!

Consider me properly chastised.

At the risk of being banned, I just can't resist... Martha Stewart Likes Big Wieners The always primp and proper Martha Stewart dedicated an entire episode of her daytime show this week to everything Hot Dog related. The Martha Stewart Show featured all kinds of hot dogs and toppings. They even had a special 15-foot hot dog created by Empire National in Brooklyn that was hand delivered to Martha's studio. And showing you can never be too proper, Ms. Stewart added, "For those of you who don't think length matters, I disagree – especially when it comes to wieners." How saucy, Martha! "There's just never enough bites in a hot dog," she added. http://perezhilton.com/2008-09-24-martha-s...kes-big-weiners