I really don’t get what’s so gruesome about this video:

If you don’t have time to watch the 3 minute video, it goes something like this: dead turkey gets pulled out, and a minute later a guy sticks a live turkey in upside down. The live turkey thrashes around once or twice. It’s not like there’re fountains of blood, or a gutting, or anything else.

Seriously: what’s grotesque about this video? Can anyone explain that to me? How do you think that turkey gets onto your table every Thanksgiving? Assisted suicide via painless IV drip? Jesus, HuffPo, get a grip.

Matt Yglesias thinks that conservative opponents of the Big 3 Bailout are more worried about the liability of pensions on the car companies than executive pay. And he’s probably right. Because the pension costs of GM and the rest are crushing those companies. Let’s look at GM.

GM has a CEO who, in 2007, made $15.7 million. I noted previously that GM’s pension liability in 2004 was $89 billion, and that the health benefits for those same retirees was $64 billion. When broken down by year, these numbers add up to a $1,600 legacy cost per car. What is the cost of the CEO’s salary, per car? Well, they expect to sell 11.7 million cars in 2009, which would put the CEO liability at right around $1.50 per car. So yeah, I’d say the cumulative effect of those legacy costs is a bigger deal than the (ridiculously overpaid) CEO.

Leaving all that aside, though, I defy Matt to provide one example of a bailout opponent who says that the Big 3’s management deserves to keep their jobs. For example, here’s Mitt Romney calling for a restructuring in which legacy costs are pared down and management gets the boot. I don’t think there’s a single serious person who says “Yeah, get rid of the pensions for those middle class shlubs, but give the executives raises!” That’s asinine. Nobody thinks that. But simple math states that the pension costs are a far, far bigger problem for GM and the rest than what one idiot CEO makes.

I must admit to some perverse amusement at the fact that Joe Lieberman is holding onto his committee chairmanship, if only because Kos thinks this is cause enough to primary a sitting majority leader. Here’s what I honestly don’t understand, however: the claim that Lieberman is some sort of knuckle dragging right winger. Writes Ezra:

Lieberman’s slingshot into the furthest reaches of the far right was always a sadly transparent reaction to his rejection by the left. Human beings do not enjoy criticism. They gravitate towards affirmation.

Lieberman is pro-choice, pro-union (both teacher and AFL-CIO), and opposed the Bush tax cuts in ‘02. The reason McCain ended up with Sarah Palin instead of Joe Lieberman as the VP pick is because Lieberman is very liberal. The only issue he’s really conservative on is the war; he thinks winning the war on terror is an important goal. In fact, he thinks it’s the defining issue of our times. That led him to support the candidate who favored the surge, the strategy that seems to have (gasp) stabilized Iraq and given us some hope of exiting the country with honor and leaving behind a useful ally. It does not make him a member of the “far right” by any reasonable definition of the phrase.

Looks like the government is giving up trying to regulate the online poker industry. I might have to fire up my long-dormant PokerStars account and give it a test run. Things have probably changed a little over the last two years.

h/t to Jacob Sullum

One of the things that supporters of the GM/Ford/Chrysler bailout say is that it’s not fair to blame unions for the unprofitability of cars. Yes, their labor costs make them unaffordable, but the UAW has made so many concessions. It’s unfair to ask them to give up anything else.

I pretty much accepted this criticism, seeming to remember hearing about unions having to make a few cutbacks in recent years. But then I thought I’d see just how steep these concessions are. I think this article from an issue of CounterPunch should shed some light on things (in the best possible light for the UAW). Consider, for example, that the unions accepted a $1 billion cut to the retiree health care program that GM runs. That sounds pretty amazing, right? I mean, $1 billion. That’s not chump change.

Except when it is. Do you know what GM’s pension liability was in 2004? $89 billion. Health care liability for retirees in that same time? $64 billion. Those numbers are simply unsustainable for a company that doesn’t turn a profit and has a workforce one third of the size necessary to support its retirees.

Other concessions made by the unions: They shifted to a four day, 40 hour work week, leading to some loss in overtime pay (but also giving the workers a three day weekend). They opened up the shops to allow nonunion members on the floor. You mean the plants no longer force people to join an organization they might disagree with politically and in terms of what’s good for the workforce at large? Shocking. The UAW now allows plants to bargain with the unions individually instead of setting up flat, across-the-country rates of pay. I mean, doesn’t that just make sense? $20 in Cleveland isn’t the same as $20 in rural Kentucky.

I suppose these are all real concessions. But they’re all pretty minor concessions as well, in the grand scheme of things. There’s only one way that Detroit’s going to get back on its feet: make cars people want, and make them cheaper than competition. It’s hard to do number two when you’re saddled with $1,600 in legacy costs per vehicle before a worker even sets foot on the floor.

Lots of interesting discussion in the comments. A little circular, but that tends to happen when people are posting repeatedly on the same topic in the middle of the day when they should be more focused on work.

I am interested to see what people make of this story (via Rod), of a Mormon woman who gave $100 to the Proposition 8 campaign:

The tall, frail Christofferson stood in the center of the group. She appeared to be shaking during her prepared remarks which lasted about 3 minutes. Two young female family members flanked her to prevent her from fainting, according to a restaurant employee. At several points during her speech, Christofferson simply became too emotional to continue.

El Coyote has become the latest casualty in the local outburst against the passage of Proposition 8, an anti-marriage amendment to the California State Constitution. Dozens of e-mails and websites, including the popular online local guide, Yelp.com, have urged boycotting the legendary cafe in recent days.

Christofferson, who is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, insisted that her donation was personal, and reflected her religious faith.

“I’ve been a member of the Mormon Church all my life,” she said. “This was a personal donation. In like fashion, any employee here would be free to donate, worship or support anything of their personal choosing. Over the Coyote has financially supported many charities and thousands of dollars most particularly have been given to the gay interests and charities. The restaurant does not support any political group.” …

Moments later, the same group which had been invited for lunch and margaritas grew increasingly verbal, apparently reacting to the lack of a direct apology from Ms. Christofferson, and she left the building in tears. The group continued to meet for another 30 minutes, before dispersing for what appeared to be a looming boycott. One demonstrator was already shouting outside.

I’d recommend reading Rod’s take on events like this: he labels this a Stalinist show trial, and it has all the hallmarks…ritualized denunciations, tearful apologies, a threat to livelihood. What we have here is a woman who has donated to gay special interests and charity groups and operates in the middle of LA. I think it’s fair to say that she’s no bigot or homophobe. And yet some still think she should be shut down for voicing a difference of political opinion, one informed by her religious beliefs. I find this really, really disturbing. This is not a “live and let live” attitude. This is intimidation and an affront to frank and open political discussion, one of America’s strongest attributes.

Conor is tired of people like Freddie saying that conservatives don’t care about the human cost of letting Detroit’s Big Three fail; as is his wont, Freddie replies in the comments writing that

It’s incredible to me that you would invoke McArdle on this. She has one response and one emotional context when she condemns thousands to enormous economic hardship: glee.

You aren’t threatened, of course, none of you ever are. [Emp. mine]

Freddie’s assertion that journalists don’t exist in the same world as auto manufacturers, however, is nonsense on stilts, and it made me think of Ross’s post on a journalism bailout:

More importantly, what about the journalism industry? What about us - my friends and co-workers, and friends of friends and co-workers of co-workers, who’ve spent the last five years watching our business slowly circle the drain? Doesn’t America need the New York Times as much at it needs the Chevy Cobalt? Isn’t the Star-Ledger as important as the GMC Savana? Sure, GM employs roughly five times as many people as all all of America’s newsrooms combined - but that just means that we’d be much, much cheaper to bail out! GM needs $25 billion, but we’d settle for, I dunno, five billion? Pocket change, in other words!

Let’s look at it this way: Auto manufacturing in America is a dying industry. The cars in Detroit are too expensive and (with the exception of Ford) of too low a quality when compared to their Japanese peers. They are also inefficient gas-guzzlers, a terrible idea in the current economic climate. Detroit has not responded to changes in the marketplace in any reasonable way. They are losing market share to competitors with which they are unable to compete. Our choices are to prop them up indefinitely with taxpayer money or let them reorganize in bankruptcy.

Journalism, similarly, is seen as a dying industry. Subscription rates are in freefall since content is available for free on the Internet. Bloggers are doing work for free that journalists were once paid to do. There’s a general distrust for the MSM’s product–the MSM seal of quality means almost nothing any more. Advertising revenues continue to decline and hundreds of thousands could soon find themselves out of business.

But journalism is adapting in a way that auto manufacturers have refused to. Journalists are turning to the web, working on blogs and breaking news in real time to compete with CNN, Fox News, and the rest of the 24/7 news networks. The old models of distribution are breaking down, so journalistic outlets are adapting to maintain a sound business model. This comes with some measure of pain–witness the layoffs of redundant staff throughout the industry, the buyouts, the demotions, the pay cuts. But it’s necessary to keep American journalism viable.

If, however, journalists turned to the government and said “Hey, we’re the fourth estate: in addition to employing hundreds of thousands of people, we give the people the news and check the government. We’re too big to fail” none of these changes would have taken place. News on the web would still be in its infancy. Journalists wouldn’t worry what pajama-wearing bloggers like Freddie had to say. We wouldn’t adapt to survive, we’d just suckle the teat comfortable in the knowledge that we were going nowhere.

This is why Detroit has to be allowed to fail. Will there be some short-term hardship? Yes, and it sucks. But if these companies are going to be viable private entities in the future–companies that provide a living to residents of Detroit, Ohio, Kentucky, and elsewhere for generations to come–they need to be able to stand on their own two feet and make a product that people want at a reasonable price. Simply pumping the industry full of tax dollars won’t accomplish anything. This, I feel, is the conservative position. It’s not glee at breaking the unions. It’s about crafting a solution that strengthens a major institution on the American landscape.

The eminent Mr. Schwenkler:

So congratulations, America. Our long national nightmare is over, and now we’ve got a president-elect who apparently goes in for spying on his citizens, torturing his enemies, expanding the military, violating the sovereignty of our allies, threatening to attack Iran, providing effectively unconditional support to Israel, keeping massive residual forces in Iraq well beyond the date of our “withdrawal”, bailing out banks and automakers alike, massively shrinking the tax base while increasing federal spending by hundreds of billions of dollars, and now sticking with the kinds of agricultural policies that degrade the environment, encourage bad eating habits, and contribute to the global hunger crisis. But don’t worry - I hear he’s a sharp guy with a really calm temperament, which of course is all that really matters. Here’s to change we can believe in!

In addition to that calm temperament he also spends less money on his clothes than Sarah Palin. So, y’know, he’s got that going for him.

You know, I really do understand not supporting John McCain for president. I get that. When Rudy Giuliani was still a viable candidate, I swore I would never, ever pull the lever for McCain. What I don’t get are all the commentators–conservative, liberal, or otherwise–who thought that Obama was some sort of transformative figure in the population. He’s a one-term senator who gives a good oratory; an orthodox liberal; a go-along-to-get-along type who has done nothing courageous in his career to earn that “reformer” cred the media bestowed upon him (as David Freddoso pointed out some months ago).

So now what will we have? We’re going to wind up with some sort of hideous national health care program. For the pro-lifers out there like Doug Kmiec (he of the Douthat/Carlson spanking) we’ll have the Freedom of Choice Act, rolling back every modest gain by the pro-life movement since Roe. For the anti-war types, we’ll have endless war with countless enemies fought by an expanded army. For the opponents of torture, we’ll have someone who really doesn’t plan on changing much of anything instituted by the Bush administration.

I’m going to really enjoy seeing how the Obamacons, in particular, try to spin the next four years. It will be intriguing.

I have a serious, simple question to ask:

Why are we even considering bailing out American automakers? Why are people like Freddie so vociferous in their support of handing out billions of dollars to GM and the rest?

I’m honestly quite confused. It doesn’t really make much sense to me. Their arguments appear to come down to this: Well, we bailed out Wall Street! It’s not fair to let companies that employ middle class people to go under! The unions have tried to make concessions, so they can’t possibly be the reason that American autos are uncompetitive in the market place!

I’ll let others argue the difference between allowing Wall Street to collapse and forcing the car companies to reorg under Chapter 11 (it seems to me that it’s the difference between a global depression and forcing Americans to buy better, cheaper, more fuel efficient foreign cars, but I digress). And I don’t really have a dog in the pro/anti union struggle; I think they’ve probably done more good than bad, but they’re certainly a major reason that Detroit is in such terrible shape today. (Whenever I think about unions, I’m always reminded of the Simpsons episode where a young Monty Burns encounters a pro-union worker at his grandfather’s plant who screeches “You can’t treat the working man this way. One day, we’ll form a union and get the fair and equitable treatment we deserve! Then we’ll go too far, and get corrupt and shiftless, and the Japanese will eat us alive!”)

I’m just asking, from a common sense perspective: what do we have to gain by keeping the bloated corpses of GM, Chrysler, and Ford alive? They’ve lost market share for something like two straight decades. They make inferior, inefficient cars that are extremely expensive to produce. They haven’t responded to market place demands. Why are we bound and determined to keep them from declaring bankruptcy?

Now, I don’t want to accuse Andrew of advocating a blacklist–he specifically declares the artistic director of Sacramento’s Musical Theatre should not be fired for supporting Proposition 8–but this post feels awfully sympathetic toward some kind of blacklist. Isn’t one of the joys of America that we can work with people with whom we disagree politically? Or should we only associate with people whose political ideologies align with our own, and shun those who diagree with us?

The fine Mr. Kennelly points us to one of the most awfully sanctimonious responses to criticism I’ve ever read. Kmiec’s reply to Ross’s post is really something to behold; like Daniel, I also went back to read Ross’s original harrangue under the assumption that I had missed Ross calling Kmiec a child rapist or some such. Needless to say, the temperate Ross did no such thing.

What Daniel missed, however, was Tucker Carlson’s response to Kmiec’s whinging. Writes Tucker, in a post titled “Republicans Didn’t Used To Talk This Way”:

Hey, Doug. Toughen up. Seriously. I’ve read suicide notes that were less passive-aggressive than this. Let’s review what actually happened: You argued that Obama is not a pro-choice extremist. Ross disagreed. Rather than respond with a counterpoint, you got hysterical, dismissing Ross as a hater, even fretting about the future of his soul. …

I understand it must have hurt when Ross accused you of shilling for Obama. On the other hand, he’s right. You did shill for Obama. That’s not Ross’ fault. Don’t blame him.

But if you are going to blame him, do it directly, like a man, without all the encounter-group talk and Pope quotes. People often attack the religious right, sometimes with justification. But as you just reminded us, there is nothing in the world more annoying than the religious left.

“There is nothing in the world more annoying than the religious left.” That, my friends, is the knockout blow. I have a feeling that Douglas W. Kmiec seriously regrets accepting Slate’s offer to participate in this little roundtable.

A coin toss has determined the winner of the mayor’s race in the tiny northwestern Minnesota town of Goodridge.

Democracy at work, ladies and gentlemen!

As a Republican who favors keeping abortion legal AND overturning Roe v. Wade, I’m not sure I have a dog in the Douthat/Kmiec dustup over at Slate. But you’ve got to read Douthat’s takedown. Some representative lines:

What I don’t understand at all is Kmiec’s position, which seems to be that the contemporary Democratic Party, and particularly the candidacy of Barack Obama, offered nearly as much to pro-lifers as the Republican Party does. I am sure that Kmiec is weary of being called a fool by opponents of abortion for his tireless pro-Obama advocacy during this election cycle, but if so, then the thing for him to do is to cease acting like the sort of person for whom the term “useful idiot” was coined, rather than persisting in his folly. …

Kmiec’s suggestion that Obama took the Democrats in anything like a pro-life direction on the issue doesn’t pass the laugh test. (And nor, I might add, does his bizarre argument that because the goal of placing a fifth anti-Roe justice on the court is somehow unrealistic, the pro-life movement should pursue a far more implausible constitutional amendment instead.) …

I can’t begin to fathom why the GOP should consider taking any advice whatsoever from a “pro-lifer” who has spent the past year serving as an increasingly embarrassing shill for the opposition party’s objectively pro-abortion nominee.

Ouch. Douthat gets to the heart of the argument against the “Obamacons,” I think: it’s one thing to say you could never support a guy like John McCain–he’s done plenty to annoy conservatives, and some anger toward him would not necessarily be misplaced. But any conservative who argues that Obama is the superior candidate on the issues conservatives are most interested in is a fool (especially if you’re a social conservative).

Is Obama an alpha male? Roissy examines.

Michael Crichton has died, after a lengthy (and private) battle with cancer. This makes me quite sad: I stumbled onto Crichton’s work in middle school and found it most entertaining. To your average 11 year old, the cardboard cutouts who inhabited his pages were pluses, not minuses. Those who criticize his stilted prose and one-dimensional characters aren’t wrong, though I do think they miss the point. What made his writing great was the amount of research that went into it: you always emerged from his works with a better understanding of some arcane subject, be it astrophysics and the government’s response to extra-terrestrial life (”Sphere”), nanotechnology (”Prey”), or the fear mongering surrounding global warming (”State of Fear”).

He will be missed…

It’s hard to call this anything other than a transformative moment. I hope our new president the best. And I hope that you hope the same. Our new president will face challenges not of his own making…challenges that neither he nor we deserve.

Good luck, Barack Obama. I (and the rest of America) wish you four years of successes.

Between work and paying my poll tax,* I’ll be pretty busy today. Quick prediction: big Obama win, in the 330-350 electoral vote range. We’ll know by 8 or so whether or not I’m right. What say you all?

*Seriously, liberals are such GD whiners. Suck it up.

The London Times has the most detailed write up of the raid into Syria that netted us Abu Ghadiya, a write up that includes this little nugget:

According to one source, the special forces operation had taken place with the full cooperation of the Syrian intelligence services.

“Immediately after 9/11, Syrian intelligence cooperation was remarkable,” said the Washington source. “Then ties were broken off, but they have resumed recently.”

Abu Ghadiya was feared by the Syrians as an agent of Islamic fundamentalism who was hostile to the secular regime in Damascus. It would be expedient for Syria if America would eliminate him.

As they say, read the whole thing. I think this piece confirms my original argument that the raid itself wasn’t the issue; if it had been done under the radar with plausible deniability, everything would have been fine. It wasn’t, which sent the Syrians scrambling for cover and gave critics of the Bush administration more ammo. But really, if this is all true, what else could the Bush administration have done?

Yes, there is a difference between imperfect cooperation and no cooperation at all. See: Saudi Arabia. The problem with your argument is that, at this point in time, THERE IS NO COOPERATION FROM SYRIA. Ignoring the fact that American soldiers and Iraqi citizens are being killed in the blind hope that Syria might one day step up and take care of the problem is wishful thinking. From that MIT International Review piece you quote:

Administration hostility to Syria has ended this cooperation.

Now, we can argue about how we got to this point. I think the influence of Iran has just as much to do with decreased cooperation as anything the administration has done. But that doesn’t change the fact that right now, as we speak, there are terrorist camps operating with impunity out of Syria and the Syrians are not cooperating in any way to stop this from happening. As I wrote previously, this is almost exactly analogous to Afghanistan (a nation you think we should have invaded even before 9/11, apparently*). Al Qaeda terrorists operating out of Syria are killing Americans RIGHT NOW. Al Qaeda terrorists are operating out of Syria and fueling sectarian violence/terrorist actions in Iraq RIGHT NOW. Al Qaeda terrorists are attempting to destabilize the country we are currently engaged in RIGHT NOW. It’s easy to throw out massive numbers of American casualties in hypotheticals to prove your point, but that’s all they are: hypotheticals.

*I want you to explain to me, in as many words as you care to use, the following: What is the difference between striking al Qaeda in Afghanistan (pre-9/11), and striking al Qaeda in Syria (right now)? Both nations have allowed (encouraged?) their territory to be used as a base of operations for terrorists intent on killing American citizens. It seems to me that you would have made the same arguments in the months and years before 9/11 that you’re making right now. “Oh, we haven’t lost that many people in the embassy bombings and the WTC bombing and the USS Cole. Plus, we don’t want to destabilize the region further. What are you going to do? Carpet bomb Kabul? Think of how many Americans will be lost in retaliatory actions.” Again, I’m not advocating a full-fledged invasion of Syria. It’s unnecessary. But eliminating these terrorist camps IS necessary for the stability of Iraq and the safety of our soldiers.

I’m just curious: Did anyone actually watch the Obama infomercial? I did because the good folks at Culture11 asked me to participate in a symposium about its impact. You can find that here.

But I don’t think it counts if you’re being paid to watch something. Any regular, politically-minded folks out there who tuned in? I’m honestly intrigued.