One of the things I wanted to blog about before the fortnight from hell took me away from writing was an argument that, Hell yes Obama should pick Clinton for the number two spot if they could possibly work it out. That was before Clinton went number two all over the possibility with her actions of the last few days. (When you start to hint that your opponent’s prospective victory will be illegitimate, you’re beyond the pale of practical intraparty politics.) It is now probably impossible to forge a joint ticket, which is too bad for the Dems because, regardless of what you or I think of Hillary Clinton, she in fact has a whole lot of passionate support behind her. Back when I famously, and laughably, argued that Hillary Clinton was “inevitable,” I based my argument on the evidence that American white womanhood really did passionately support Clinton’s candidacy. Events have actually borne that out, and I’m pretty sure that white women are going to decide the 2008 election. A majority of white men will vote McCain, because the GOP candidate always wins among white men. African-Americans will vote overwhelmingly for Obama. After a summer and fall of media articles about Obama’s “problems” with the Jewish vote, Obama will win two-thirds to three-quarters of the Jewish vote because most Jews are liberals and so is he.

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As the Dem presidential campaign goes into a tailspin, either by Hillary Clinton flaming out or pursuing her own “Samson Option,” I’m wondering if the worst mistake was to stop having debates. We ridiculed and reviled them, with good reason, but what the unending sequence of joint fora did was guarantee that the two candidates would have to look each other in the face every week or two.

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Are idealistic revolutions doomed to fail? The 2parse/blog argues that idealistic revolutions, ranging from the French Revolution to the Russian Revolution, all end up suffering the same failure of believing that the end justifies the means–any means. As a mutual fan of Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon,” I agree that some of the greatest anti-totalitarian novels of the modern era have highlighted the tendency of utopian schemes to become corrupt and often undermine the very principles they claim to uphold. The same doom could very easily befall a libertarian revolution, with the end justifying the means. So far, purists in the movement have largely kept out such a threat. The result, rather than a successful idealistic libertarian revolution, has largely been a complete and total lack of a libertarian revolution. Instead of focusing on idealism, perhaps libertarians should take the pathway of the more successful revolutions in history and focus on process.

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Tonight, Hillary Clinton pulled off a stunning victory in Kentucky, home to good hard working white folk. Barack Obama, on the other hand, pulled off a victory in Oregon, which according to some segments of the media (and the Hillary Clinton campaign) isn’t as white, nor as hard working. In a primary season that has already brought us enlightening discussions on race and gender that have clearly elevated the political discussion in this country, why not just lump class into the mix and start making gross generalizations? Everyone else is doing it. For one reason, I think that the stereotypical model of a member of the “white working class” is horribly out of touch with the reality of most white voters who are defined as “working class” instead of “middle class.” As I mentioned at my blog Freedom Democrats a few days ago, the “white working class” has drastically changed in recent years:

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Add to the list of why biofuels are a bad idea the threat of weeds taking over the world:

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When Republicans attack you as weak and “reckless” on foreign policy you’re supposed to carp a bit and then try to change the subject. It’s the rules!

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Just to keep my hand in, a link to my half-assed overview of the upcoming Libertarian-Party convention. Like, upcoming this weekend. I apologize for the light blogging hereabouts: we had a death in the family last week that put me on the road for three days and otherwise discombobulated me. Fortunately, my co-bloggers here have continued to produce great things.

It’s hard not to want something bad to happen to Lori Drew, the “MySpace Mom” who participated in a cruel hoax that ultimately ended in the suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meiers in 2006.

However, it appears in federal prosecutor’s zeal to make sure Drew is punished, they are willing to advance an absurd and dangerous legal argument — they’re going to go after Drew for violating MySpace’s term of service: (more…)

RadGeek has an excellent post about how some libertarians can be pretty sloppy in their discussions of “spontaneous order” while some radical feminists can be pretty precise about it. He goes so far as to argue that taking the concept of spontaneous order seriously is a hallmark of feminist theory. Here’s an important passage from early in the essay-length entry:

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This is just nuts…nuts. In a world with skyrocketing agricultural commodity prices, congress wants to push through a $300 billion farm bill filled with juicy nuggets of pork like subsidies for racehorse breeders and $5 billion in direct payment to farmers whether they need it or not. Most of it is going to megafarms of course.

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This post is a “sibling” post to my post on political gatekeepers at Freedom Democrats. Please check it out as well, although the theme is the same the points are different. This post focuses on gatekeepers in the libertarian movement, or the lack thereof, while the Freedom Democrats post focuses on liberal gatekeepers online.

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I have trouble imagining anything more excessive than this. Lindsay Beyerstein posts “Cops tase 82-year-old heart patient in bed“:

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The sad case of Cory Maye probably needs no introduction at this blog. A struggling father trying to make ends meet in the poor rural South, Cory Maye defended himself, his home, and his 18 month old daughter by using deadly force against an unknown intruder. Under most circumstances, the case would be closed in acknowledgment that Cory Maye was simply exercising his constitutional rights. But, unfortunately, the unknown intruder turned out to be a white police officer and Cory Maye is black. The rest . . .

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I’m on deadline for a book review due tomorrow night so for the moment I only have more primary-blogging to offer. More in a day or two. Meantime, my cobloggers continue to put up awesome stuff.

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Libertarianism, of the non-anarchic variety, has typically favored a decentralized and federalist approach to government. Modern liberalism tends to take the opposite view, favoring centralized government. In the former, federalism protects you from the tyranny of the national government and decentralization enables you to move around and force local and state governments to compete. In the latter, centralization allows for a uniform protection of your civil liberties across the nation and for the local minority to be protected by local majorities. Ideally.

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Professor J. Bradford DeLong writes to the Chair of Berkeley’s academic senate to request that a special committee, comprising

members of the faculty with expertise in moral philosophy, the role of the university, international relations, human rights, and constitutional law. I ask you to instruct this committee to write of a public report to the Academic Senate no later than this Labor Day, advising the Senate of the pros and cons of actions that the Academic Senate might or might not take in the matter of Professor John Yoo . . .

Because, as the Professor puts it, “I am enough of a liberal and enough of an academic to believe that discussion of these issues will help.”

But there are problems!

One is, according to said Chair of said senate, even convening a committee to take up the question of Yoo’s alleged misfeasance would be “defamatory.” That’s curious. But the other objection makes one wonder what Berkeley is doing with all that tax and tuition money they rake in:

Besides that, there’s the practical problem of finding committee members with the expertise you outline.

Professor Drummond, excuse me, sir. My name is Jim Henley, blogging at Unqualified Offerings and The Art of the Possible, and I was just wondering - are you shitting me?!

Let me rephrase that. No, on second thought, let me retype that question in all caps with an even larger count of fissiparous interrobangs: ARE YOU SHITTING ME?!?!?!?!?!?!

Yeah, I bolded it too.

UC Berkeley, jewel in the crown of the California University system can’t fill a committee with “faculty with expertise in moral philosophy, the role of the university, international relations, human rights, and constitutional law?” I mean, ARE YOU - ahem. Point made.

See also the Editors.

Greetings to the readers of the Art of the Possible. Some of you may know me from the blog Freedom Democrats, an online community occupying the niche of libertarianism within the Democratic Party. For those readers who are encountering me for the first time, I have been an amateur activist in libertarianism, the Democratic Party, and blogging off and on for several years now. I am very thankful for the opportunity to blog here at the Art of the Possible and wanted to take advantage of the timing of Mona’s most recent blog post on this site’s purpose to introduce myself, and my views, more fully.

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My system is very simple: assume the winner does no worse than her advantage in already-decided voters in the latest RCP average. On that basis, I’ll call for Obama by 8 in NC and Clinton by 7 in Indiana. On Wednesday, Clinton will have gained no ground in the delegate count, Obama will have stopped his short, post-Wright losing streak, and Clinton and the media will still be demanding to know why "Obama can’t close the deal" rather than demanding to know why Clinton can’t make up any ground on him, and how she ever lost the lead to a Boojie neophyte in the first place if she’s all that.

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At the American Conservative’s @tac blog, Kara Hopkins explains the amazing withdrawal plans of the Democratic candidates. "Looks like we’re going to be very busy—while getting out?" she writes of Hillary Clinton’s statements about leaving and training and protecting the massive US Embassy (and theme park?) and paying attention to Iranian influence and all sorts of things that sound like they will make packing to leave a really frazzling experience for the troops. As for the other guy:

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If there’s anything we should have learned from George W. Bush, it’s that generalized combativeness is not a good thing in a President.

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This does not happen often:

Political freedom loses much of its point in the absence of psychological freedom. Rationality and the capacity for moral agency develop. That’s why we do not think children have the same rights and responsibilities as adults: they haven’t developed the requisite capacities. But this development can be retarded, creating adults with little more than a child’s capacities, reinforcing childlike dependency. If you don’t worry about this, then I wonder in what sense you care about human freedom. (more…)

Reading Scott Horton and seeing

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Federal Air Marshals are getting left on the ground because their names got on the no-fly list. So now we’ll get some action on the bloated and festering problem, perhaps? As for the rest of us who are inconvenienced, serves us right for having the same names as dirty terrorists, doesn’t it. (more…)

There’s a surface plausibility to the Jeremiah Wright conspiracy theory that Bob Murphy provisionally endorses. In fact, I heard an African-American caller to Air America this morning offer the same suggestion.

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"There’s too much zoning" seems to be one of those general principles many libertarians and liberals could agree on. At some point into a reform program, the median libertarian will want to keep removing land-use restrictions while the modal liberal will believe that "we’ve done quite enough now." But right now, in lots of places, there’s work to be done together. See Matthew Yglesias and Tyler Cowen.

From Dennis Perrin.

Stooksbury on farming. Seems related to an argument downblog about whether small-scale production or large-scale production is more "efficient." Stooksbury says, let’s stop externalizing the producer costs of large-scale farm production and find out.

In comments downblog, Comrade Kevin suggests that not hitting back at Hillary Clinton in certain ways marks Obama as "a wuss." I am inclined to the view, rather, that:

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Clark Stooksbury notes the surprising fact: Al Gore is not behind the global food shortage.

One Cato blogger expressed happiness that "A federal court in Argentina has decriminalized the personal consumption of drugs in that country." But it made another sad:

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Talkleft — Snipes gets the max Wesley got Martha’d. Hard to root for the man who brought us Money Train, but isn’t equal protection of the law supposed to be a good thing?

Matthew Yglesias — Credit Where Due Yglesias showers Hillary with faint praise — or is it real praise? — for being a better obfuscator than Obama.

Andrew Leonard — The Washington Food Crisis Consensus Poor countries strongarmed into cutting support to farmers now feeling the pain?

Nabakov’s last work will not be burned Contrary to his dying wishes.

Megan McArdle — Commodity Soothsaying Megan refuses to play the commodities forecasting game. Mentions The Economist’s “$5 oil”cover story in 1999, just as oil started to run up. A gold star to any reader who finds me a jpeg of that cover plus the text.

Greenpeace activists targets Taiwanese fishing boats Just bizarre. Who died and made you the tuna police, Greenpeace? I’m all about protecting fish stocks, but not vigilante environmentalists boarding vessels and “confiscating” fish aggregation devices.

UPDATE: Better Taipei Times story with more details about what happened exactly. Will write more about the Tuna situation shortly. (more…)

Daniel Koffler schools Terry McAuliffe on the contradictions in his popular vote "argument." And you have to figure a man who has worked for Reason AND Dissent knows from contradictions.

Sometimes I listen to Bill Press in the car on the way to lunch lately. He’s fun radio in a lot of ways, but his anti-anti-ethanolism reminds me of nothing so much as a late-stage climate-change denialist brandishing at every stray story or trend that might, if you squint, befog the issue. Today it was the runup in rice prices. The logic seemed to be that rice isn’t corn and rice is expensive so, like, there. More charitably, if rice is going up and the costs of other foods are going up for reasons that include the growing wealth of substantial parts of Asia and the rising cost of inputs including energy, then we should lay off ethanol subsidies and incentives to grow corn even though they also play a causal role in food-price inflation because - well, I don’t really know why. The best answer I can come up with is, because Bill Press lives in the midwest.

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Dubner observes that Starbucks in Manhattan are now listing the staggering calorie count of their stale and awful baked goods and mediocre coffee beverages in anticipation of NYC regulation that would require such postings on restaurant with more than 15 locations in the city.

A great natural experiment, he thought…

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Daniel Gross, one of my favorites on Slate, explains in no uncertain terms why the senate’s “Foreclosure Prevention Act” is such a terrible idea. (more…)

Sorry for the lack of posting, all. I’ve been on holiday in Japan and then started a new job the day after I got back to Taipei. But one of the good things going on holiday is good for is reading books, which I never seem to get around to in my normal life anymore.

From my vacation reading (Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen) comes this fascinating nugget about life expectancy in Britain.

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The conventional model of “objectivity” in professional journalism (otherwise known as “he said, she said” and “stenography”), as it’s practiced today in the dead tree media, goes back to Walter Lippmann.

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I’ve appreciated very much the readers who’ve come here from Mutualist Blog, and I believe we’ve had some very productive discussions.  But there’s something I feel I have to say, as awkward as it is.

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My co-blogger at Unqualified Offerings, Thoreau, is past fed up with the establishment media’s treating war hawks, torture apologists and defenders of unchecked Executive lawlessness — and who see “victory” in Iraq — as honored pundits to be thanked for their graciously giving an appearance/words/time: (more…)

May have more to say tomorrow, but for now I simply wish to make known that the scholar of religion “Karl” — Jeff Goldstein’s mini-me at Protein Wisdom — has settled the question of whether Barack HUSSEIN Obama is a Muslim mole, or a Christian; Obama is neither. He’s a Marxist.

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