The Washington Post published a chart of House members ranked by percentage of time the voted with their party. It shows a remarkable level of cohesion: overall, members voted with their party’s position almost 90% of the time on average. What’s really interesting is the party divide - just the opposite of what you might think. Democrats as a group vote much more consistently with their party (93% of the time) than Republicans (84%). With one anomalous exception (the most partisan member ever was a Republican with a 100% party-line voting record - but he died in office after casting fewer than 10 votes), it’s Democrats all the way down for almost the first 200 names. And there are only 2 members of the House with party-loyalty records of less than 75%. Interestingly, both are Republicans, one of them (Christopher Smith) known for his far-right views. (The fourth name from the bottom - at 75.3% party loyalty - is Ron Paul, currently kind of running for the Republican Presidential nomination.)
July 30th, 2007
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General, Politics, Church & State, Culture, Media, News & Current Events |
12 comments
Last week, I had a realization: I don’t ever want to be into anything as heavily as SayUncle is into guns. I know Sci-Fi nerds who are less into Sci-Fi than Uncle is into guns. And SayUncle isn’t even close to the nuttiest gun nut I know!
[Insert image of the SNL Star Trek convention parody here, only with Heston replacing Shatner, and the venue being a gun show.]
July 30th, 2007
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I do too have a life, Bloggin, Humor |
8 comments
To repeat a phrase I find myself saying a whole lot lately, I agree with Hilzoy:
However, I also think — and as far as I can tell, he doesn’t — that there is a substantive difference between the two, concerning the question: do you see negotiations as something that should be used as necessary, and regarded as a useful but neutral instrument, or do you regard them as having to be justified in some way, and/or used only when certain conditions preconditions are met? On this one, I’m with Obama. I say why below the fold.
I think that diplomacy is an incredibly important tool of foreign policy, and the more of it we engage in, the better. Moreover, it’s not important just because it can lead to agreements. If you talk to people, you can often get a better read on what motivates them, and what they think matters, than you could otherwise. You keep channels of communication open and maintain relationships between individual members of different countries’ governments, which can be incredibly important: there were times during the Cold War, for instance, when despite the enormous distrust between the US and the USSR, there were individuals who had negotiated opposite each other enough to know that the other played straight, and that can be very useful in a pinch.
…snip…
Well, OK, I do have one idea: it’s the peculiar view that negotiating with someone confers some sort of legitimacy on that person. This is a view that we can make true if we want. If we go around saying that we will only negotiate with people we think are absolutely wonderful, or that negotiations with us should be thought of as a certification of quality, like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, then it will be true that a lot can be read into our decision to negotiate.
To me, that’s a very good reason not to say things like that. Negotiations are a tool. They should be used when they are the best tool available for a given purpose. If we let people know that we will only negotiate under certain conditions, and those conditions are not “when negotiations would be useful”, then we are limiting our own freedom of action, just as surely as we would be if we declared to our family members: “If I use the vacuum cleaner, that means there’s a burglar, and you should call 911.” Making things you might actually need to do double as parts of a secret code deprives you of the freedom to use them as needed without sending a message.
…snip…
I also agree with another of Obama’s points: namely, that judgment matters more than experience, and that “The notion that somehow from Washington you get this vast foreign policy experience is illusory.” This is plainly true. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld. Years of experience. I rest my case.
And I think Obama is absolutely right to tie this in to Clinton’s vote on the Iraq war. I believe that Clinton’s vote to authorize the war was sincere — which I don’t believe about either Edwards or Kerry. For that reason, I do not think about her what I think about them: namely, that they were willing to cast what has to be one of the most important votes of their lives for political advantage. But precisely because I do think her vote was sincere, I think it casts an enormous cloud over her judgment.
As they say, read the whole thing. I’m on record as supporting Obama, especially over Clinton. I know it’s early, but so far, the more I learn about his positions on most of the issues I care about, the more I like him. Let’s not forget how right he was about Iraq, even before we went in.
July 30th, 2007
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Politics |
12 comments
Reality is a harsh mistress.
My Brewers are crashing down to earth. After leading the NL Central nearly all season, and by as many as 8.5 games as recently as early June, they’re about to cede the division lead to the red-hot Cubs. What’s the reason for this nose dive? It seems to me that it’s all about youth, inexperience, and inconsistency, with a dash of crummy pitching (as usual).
This weekend’s four-game series at St. Louis was a microcosm of how things have gone since June. The Brewers opened the series with a 12-2 thumping of the Cards. Then, in the first game of a split doubleheader, they blew a 6-0 lead (which was 6-4 entering the bottom of the ninth, and in which the Brewers scored all their runs in the first three innings), ultimately losing 7-6. They lost the second game 5-2. They closed the series on Sunday afternoon by blowing a 5-0 lead and lost 9-5. What should have been a 3-1 road series win, or at the very least a split, became another 1-3 series loss.
Buttressing the theory that youth and inexperience are to blame is the Brewers’ Jeckyll-and-Hyde road-home differential. At home, the Brewers are an NL-best 37-16; it’s the second-best home record in the majors. On the road, however, they are an abysmal 21-32; only the Pirates, Astros, Rangers, and Devil Rays are worse. What’s the biggest difference between a road game and a home game? Pressure.
Mind you, I’m not totally writing off the Brewers just yet. In a weak NL, a playoff spot is still a realistic possibility, especially if they continue to play so well at home. In fact, since I’ve vowed to bankrupt myself to get to the games if they make the playoffs (not to mention my promise to pee my pants), it wouldn’t surprise me if they did make it. They’ve certainly got the offensive firepower, and that will only get better if Ricky Weeks ever busts out of his slump.
But it’s clear that while the Brewers are finally a good team, they’re not yet a great team. Less than ideal, but after 25 years of mostly terrible baseball, I’ll take what I can get.
[P.S. Before anyone says it for me: “Waaaaah!”]
July 30th, 2007
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Sports, MLB/MiLB |
12 comments
Life works in mysterious ways:
A method for making instant steam, without the need for electricity, promises to be useful for tackling antibiotic resistant ‘superbugs’ like MRSA and C. difficile, as well as removing chewing gum from pavements and powering environmentally friendly cars, reports Nina Morgan in Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI. ‘The value of instant steam lies in creating truly portable steam that can be generated intermittently on demand,’ says Dave Wardle, business development director at Oxford Catalysts.
The company is already in talks with UK specialist steam supplier OspreyDeepclean about possible applications for steam cleaning hospitals, Wardle adds. An as-yet unpublished 2006 study at University College London Hospital, commissioned by OspreyDeepclean, showed that dry steam applied at temperatures ranging from 150 to 180 C could destroy bacteria, including MRSA and Clostridium difficile, in less than two seconds, without the use of chemicals.
Ina ll seriousness, this could be fantastic news. We as a culture have helped evolve, through our careless and over-use of antibiotics — a class of superbugs that antibiotics cannot kill. Without an effective means of fighting these bugs, mortality rates in hospitals will contiue to climb and there is the very real possibility that we will start seeing these bugs outside of hospital environments. Obviously, this method does nothing for people who have contract one of these infections, but it does appears as if it could work wonderfully as a preventive measure. A simple, effective, easy to use and almost instantaneous disenfciting process would go a long way to making our hospitals much more superbug resistant.
And giving us chewing gum free sidewalks, let’s not forgot …
July 30th, 2007
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Environment, Science, Health |
2 comments
The Iraqi soccer teams has won the Asian Cup. I will leave it to readers more familiar with football to tell me whether or not this is a prestigious trophy, but the press is certianly covering it as a monumental victory:
raq delivered an inspirational victory Sunday by winning the Asian Cup with a 1-0 victory over Saudi Arabia, a beacon of hope for a nation divided by war.
It was an extraordinary triumph for a team drawn together from all parts of the Gulf and with its players straddling bitter and violent ethnic divides.
I wish this would matter. I wish that this could be a catalyst to good feeling and well wishing and a recognition that the religious and ethnic differences don;t matter as much as common history, shared culture, and basic human decency. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? They don;t have a common history. Kurds and Shiites were the oppressed; Sunnis were the oppressors. They don’t have a shared culture. Kurds do not think of themselves as Arabs or Iraqis. People in the large urban centers tend toward modern secularism and plurality — at least, they did before the civil war we unleashed forced people to take sides — and people in the rural areas were still tied to tribal allegiances from before the Europeans first imposed their will on the region. IN those regions, Sunni and Shiite are separated by their sectionalism instead of drawn together by their larger beliefs. And as for common humanity, well, the headlines should prove that common decency has been slaughtered by four years of occupation and small scale civil war.
We will probably see pictures of celebrating Iraqis and hear stories of Sunni and Shiite celebrating together. And those are nice stories. Maybe, when everyone is finally sick of the death and destruction, this moment will be looked upon fondly, perhaps even used a rhetorical justification for the final reconciliations. But right now the violence is in full swing, spured on by legitimate differences in visions for the future and fears of the present. A fairytale isn;t going to solve any of that.
July 30th, 2007
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General, Sports, Iraq, Terrorism |
no comments
