Why Some Are So Afraid of Obama, or Methinks the Right Dost Protest Too Much

[In last week's "Weak in Review" post we promised you two quixotic posts on politics this week.  The first introduced the idea of the perfect balance between liberty and societal cohesion.  We call it SCEP.  This post takes that idea and directly applies it as a way to pick between two flawed Presidential candidates. - ed.]

For all the moaning about how spectacularly bad the mass media is that goes on around here, we here at Distasteful Inelegance wanted to belie a misconception that you, dear reader, may have about us.  We don't watch TV news letting the poor quality of coverage angry up the blood.  We don't even have cable anymore.  What we do to stay abreast on current events is read really good long form journalism like this piece from The Atlantic online (You can go ahead and go read it now.  We'll wait.  Oh, you're back.  Welcome.) that takes a very dim - but fair - view of both party's nominees.  Kind of like what was said in this post.  Would that we could have a serious conversation about things that really matter to a nation.

Let's pause for contemplation...

As a contemplative sort, we naturally got to thinking about why people like the President despite the really bad stuff  that he has done in his first term: kill/capture list, Gitmo, Patriot Acting...the list gets disturbingly long.  Larry Lessig puts it best in his critique of the President.  Even if we ignore the scary-illegal stuff they've been up to, Lessig is correct: President Barack Obama has not lived up to the potential of Candidate Obama.  (Of course, that would have been impossible for any mortal, but anyway...)

Now, we will be quick to confess that we probably give more heft to what Mr. Obama says than what he and his administration does.  Clearly, we all suffer from a certain confirmation bias that leads us to overly weight the positive aspects of Our Guy and minimize his weaknesses.  The converse is true for Their Guy.  In our either/or choice for President, we all to often focus on why the Their Guy is going to be a disaster for the country, and don't spend enough time facing the cold hard facts about Our Guy.

While we wrestle with that for a while, let's flip this on it's head for a minute.  If you were a "swaggering, conservative, faux cowboy with authoritarian fantasies that viewed yourself as an independent alpha male taking on the world"*, what Democratic Presidential Candidate would you fear the most?  Probably a highly intelligent center-left fellow of non-WASP heritage who possesses bags of public appeal, right?  You'd probably see, and fear, the fundamental change in society that his election to the highest office in the land might represent.  Ergo, the Right's concerted attempt to recast Obama with streams of false accusations of everything he isn't: radical socialist, Muslim, foreign.

Remember this is the guy that said this in the infamous "you didn't build that" speech:

"Not every government program works the way it’s supposed to.  And frankly, government can’t solve every problem."

You can see how that practically Reagan-esque statement would freak out anyone trying to like The Mitt.  They cry the most when hit that close to home.

Oh, yeah, we remember why we tend to overlook the really bad stuff the current President has done, and why he is the safer choice: most of us appear to have largely ignored  the fact that we have drifted away from the proper balance in public policy that made us a great nation historically.  By just about any measure you can think of - income disparity, wealth concentration, social mobility, access to education, global competitiveness - we are moving away from a system that enables the best our citizens have to offer.  Only one candidate seems to be aware of that fact (We occasionally bump into people that can't honestly recognize that, and all we can do is ask them, "Who was the guest on Hannity last night?").  He is the same guy that said this very reasonable thing:

"The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.  There are some things...we don’t do on our own...So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together.  That’s how we funded the GI Bill.  That’s how we created the middle class.  That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam.  That’s how we invented the Internet.  That’s how we sent a man to the moon.  We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for President -- because I still believe in that idea.  You’re not on your own, we’re in this together." 

Now, despite the fun had at his expense on this blog, you don't particularly need to fear, nor mistrust, nor dislike Gov. Romney.  If we afford him the same benefit of the doubt that we do Mr. Obama and ignore the execrable things he has said trying to get elected, he's a pretty moderate, reasonable guy.  The biggest problem with The Mitt, however, is if elected President he will be leading a party (and has chosen a running mate) that has staked a position diametrically opposed to the above sentiment.  A party whose current policy direction is a radical departure from what we have agreed is a good balance of support for the society at large, and the individual liberty of each of us (it's that hypothetical SCEP thing we are always talking about).  Unfortunately for our democracy, it really is the choice for the greater of two seriously flawed, candidates.  And in many ways it really will be a bigger disaster if we pick Mitt.

[We'll come back to more on that guy Ryan, and why his is a dangerous ideology next week. -ed.]


*This quote comes from a really smart person that I have the pleasure of knowing.  Unfortunately, it comes from a Facebook post that cannot be linked to on the public internet.  (Zuckerberg! <shakes fist in anger>) This will have to do for attribution.

The Myth of the Self-Made Man, or the False Tyranny of Circumstance

[In continuation of our discussion of VP choices, finance, the economy and job creation, the social safety net, and the larger mission of government.] 

If you listen to the noise coming out of the presidential campaigns - or more precisely the "unaffiliated" shills peopling super-PACs and cable news editorial staffs -  long enough, you might be fooled into believing one of two things (or both?) that aren't true about our country.

One side wants you to believe that we live in a perfect meritocracy where, through hard work and pluck alone, simply anyone can bootstrap himself (or herself) out of the middle class and take a seat at the Great Table of Unlimited Wealth.  Right next to Donald Trump and his merry band of alpha-males.  These folks seem to quake in constant fear that mean old socialists will storm jackbooted into their penthouses and force them back down into the grey, feckless mass of the middle class, forever forced to take public handouts that rob them of their self-esteem and pride.  Or, you know, actually make them pay taxes or something.

The other side wants you to believe that plutocrats have successfully perpetrated a silent coup d'eta of our government to cement a neo-feudal class structure where no man (or woman) is capable freeing himself (or herself) from the shackles of the circumstance of his (or her) birth.  These folks seem to see Dickensian villains - ever poised to send each of us to debtor's prison, or the poor house, or the orphanage - pulling the puppet strings of industry and government to guarantee that individual effort is funneled solely into corporate profits.  Or, whatever it was that Noam Chomsky and George Orwell were really afraid of.

Neither of those narratives is remotely true.  As with just about anything you can think of, the truth is more nuanced and complicated than an overly-reductive campfire tale.  As citizens of the United States of America, we fortunately live somewhere near the exact midpoint between these two dystopian hellscapes.  The issue that necessarily gets lost in the FUD, is how close we are to that midpoint.  (For more on this subject go read this excellent article in The Economist, which is similar to this old DI post.)  That is something I will call the Societal Cohesion Equilibrium Point (SCEP).

Without getting too esoteric on you, dear reader, we can think of the SCEP as the point where regulation, liberty, and socioeconomic mobility are tuned just right to create the perfectly level playing field for everyone.  Success would then be a function of ingenuity and hard work, while circumstance could unfairly hinder no one.  People are not advantaged nor disadvantaged based on demography.  Yes, this is what you might call a total f&#king fairy tale.  There aren't enough social scientists in the universe nor precise econometrics to even design a thought experiment to find SCEP.  But, I think we all could agree that it is out there, and it's pursuit is the real job of government.

Back to reality.  The dynamic systems that make up a society of 300-odd million people (let alone the interaction of micro and macrocultures on a global scale) are so chaotic and complex that luck and randomness and circumstance will always play a role in success and failure.  Conversely, despite that infallible truth, hard work and personal responsibility are essential virtues to stack the deck in one's favor.  Those, therefore, that sit on a mountain of wealth and conclude they are uniquely touched by the gods are just as misguided as those that blame their station in life on the hands of an unfair society.

So, when it comes to objectively deciding whom to vote for this Fall, try to ask yourself which guy's aim is to get us closer to the SCEP.  Try to listen to the arguments and read between the lines, because a certain vice-presidential nominee's budget proposal is more about tearing down current institutions and replacing them with some Ayn Rand inspired libertarian pipe dream.  The other guys are more interested in making those institutions bettter.  Just remember this is not a fight between neo-feudalism and.arch-socialism.

We will never achieve a truly level playing field, but if we all close our eyes and believe hard enough...

A Telling Choice for Veep; or Careful, Ryan. Most Things In Here Don't React Too Well To Bullets

As you, dear readers, are no doubt already aware Gov. Romney has tapped Wisconsin Representative, Paul  Ryan, as his running mate.  We will tackle this in more depth (more depth than this one sentance, anyway) later, but in the meantime here is some suggested reading on the subject.

Two heels of the same loaf of Wonder Bread?

More bullets!

• Over at the National Journal, Major Garret discusses the five advantages and five hazards of having Ryan on the Republican ticket.

• Henry Blodget at Business Insider points out the analysis of Ryan (Here's the keeper quote: "Mr. Ryan is the most conservative Republican member of Congress to be picked for the vice-presidential slot since at least 1900. He is also more conservative than any Democratic nominee was liberal, meaning that he is the furthest from the center.") by NYT's Nate Silver.

• Here is the original post by Silver at his excellent NYT blog FiveThirty Eight.  Most interesting is that Nate Silver projected Romney to have only a 30% chance of winning before selecting Ryan.  Obviously, he needed to do something different, but as we will point out later this week, it is likely to backfire on Romney.  (Notice how he is already trying to distance himself from the "Ryan Budget"?)  The post is titled "A Risky Rationale Behind Romney’s Choice of Ryan".

• Ubiquitous John McCain veep choice quote: "I'm still proud of my running mate."  We bet he is.  As Jon Stewart noted, thanks in large part to his running mate he won another term in the Senate.

That sound you heard Saturday morning?  That was David Axelrod having a spontaneous orgasm.

Farewell London Olympics, We Barely Knew Ye; or Start Gearing Up for Sochi

[insert snarky comment here]

A quick recap of interestingness that came out of the Game of the XXX Olympiad.  They really should think about the implications of using Roman numerals when recurring events reach their thirtieth edition, but seeing as how this is a Greek tradition revived by a Frenchman with Victorian notions of sporting integrity, maybe "XXX" is appropriate after all.

We will miss you, London 2012, but we will miss hearing presenters on the BBC say, "Oh my goodness me," the most.  While Sochi is next on the Olympic docket, we say bring on Rio de Janeiro, where we are certain to see one or two gratuitous camera pans of bikini-clad beach goers, but until then on to the bullet list:

• Women ruled the Games - appropriate given that 2012 is the 40th anniversary of the passage of the Title IX (those pesky Roman numerals pop up in the strangest places) gender equity in education law.  Two generations later and we can see its positive effects on women and sport.

• Some other parts of the world still have some work to do, but a track athlete became the first woman to represent Saudi Arabia.  Encouraging, to say the least.

• The further saga of Oscar Pistorius, who went from oy vey! - when his South African 4 x 400 meter relay team failed to complete their heat - to oh yea! - when it was revealed that the Sprinkbok runners would get to race in the final.  The second runner, who was set to hand over to Oscar running third, was impeded by a rival who had strayed into his lane.  So, they got a sporting "do over", and ran respectably in the final, with Oscar running anchor.  Still, an amazing one of the most inspirational stories of these, or any other Games.

This guy is Belgian?  Not pictured is the staffer
being suffocated by Darth Rogge's mind

• Remember way back in 1992 when MJ had to cover up a rival sponsor's logo on his official podium track suit.  That was nothing compared to this:  The Olympic Brand Police got a bit out of control.  Sure we can understand the IOC not wanting to undermine their lucrative sponsorship arrangements by being lax on inadvertent product placement or guerilla marketing tricks, but this takes the idea to an absurd extreme that even the NCAA would blush at.  We can picture Jacques Rogge pounding on his desk, screaming, "No free rides!" at hapless janitorial staff who had just been ordered to place gaffer's tape on every toilet and urinal in the athletes' village.

• Lastly, congratulation to Team GB and the PRC for their impressive medal hauls.  In regard to the Chinese team, I suspect our perennial seat at the top of the Summer Games' medals table (which is such passive-aggressive geopolitical bullshit) will soon be a thing of the past.  There has been some unfair coverage of China's swimmers this time around.  They deserve the same benefit of the doubt that, say, American, British and Canadian sprinters, as well as every cyclist deserve. (Yes, Virginia, there is an entire article on Wikipedia about cycling doping scandals.)

[In the interests of niceness, and avoidance of piling on, we chose to exempt NBC from yet more criticism in this post.  Their coverage was terrible on air and on the web.  So, if your dander is up, read this post on HuffPo by the always excellent Jeff Jarvis.  You might even see a comment from someone you recognize on that post. -ed.]

Friday, Friday (non-Jessica Black Edition); or Weak In Review

It's Friday and we here at DI would like to take a quick time out from our usual duties* to say welcome to our newest readers.  [We feverishly pour over the daily traffic stats in the vain hope that we are actually building something like an audience.  Usually not. -ed.]  Some of you have found our little blog all the way from Macedonia, Romania, Pakistan, and even more exotic places like Canada.  Cheers to all of you. Feel free to use the comments to register your thoughts on our posting, but please be kind, thoughtful, and considerate of others.  The internets have feelings, too.

This is what our editor looks
like after proofing our posts

 So as to not give you, dear readers, a wholly content-free post here is a link to an interesting infographic from NPR discussing how the unique physics of particular sports select certain body traits for success.  We always thought that female gymnasts were getting smaller over the decades, but we chalked that up to them staying the same size whilst we grew.  Perspective is always tricky through the 2D idiot-box, but now that we have 3D broadcasts we can test that hypothesis.  (Is that enough content to count as a post yet, Mr. Editor?) [No. - ed.]

Ok, so apparently we need to fill more empty bandwidth today.  Here is the...

DI's "Weak" in Review, or a sorry attempt to pad this post's word count

This week on Distasteful Inelegance we:

• Discovered our new sporting idol, and explained why he's even more remarkable than you first thought (Hint: no ankles)
• Gave your biases a Rorschach test
• Took a brief detour from covering sport, to cover the Mars rover landing in Link Hive! #6
• Then came back to the topical theme of the moment to speculate who are the winners (Phelps, Nike, et.al.) and losers (UK taxpayers) at these 2012 Olympic Games.

And as an added bonus, here is the...

DI Crystal Ball of Forecasting, or yet more padding to this post

Next week we have some fun stuff planned for you, dear readers:

• Probably some kind of Olympics wrap-up, or some other silly speculations
• Link Hive! #7, scary edition
• Not one quixotic post about politics, but...
• ...Two quixotic posts about politics and the Presidential campaigns

Enjoy your weekend, wherever you are.  Ciao.

(Ok now?)  [I guess. -ed.]

*These include mostly lazily "analyzing" outdated news, trying unsuccessfully to sound snarky, failing to change the world, Quixotism, and generally droning on self-importantly.

The Quadrennial World $port Activity, or A Two Week Party for Shoe Companies?

[This post is inspired by years of reading the excellent, trenchant The Sports Economist blog.  We can't recommend this blog more highly if you are at all interested in the business of sports.  Go there now and search for Olympics related posts to find some of the best thinking about the financial and economic impact of major events on the host.  And by the way, we aren't economists and we don't play one on TV, so don't get fussy if our reasoning is askew on this topic.  Just leave a comment and explain where our logic is off.   We enjoy watching the Olympic Games, because we love sport.  There is no fiction that matches the dramatic reality of most any athletic competition.  We wonder, however, if we would enjoy the games any less if they weren't as extravagant, and less of a drain on the host's economy.  We suspect not. -ed.]

If you are at all paying attention, you will inevitably hear about the vast sums host countries spend preparing for the Olympic Games - building new sport venues, beefing up public transit, etc.  This is almost always at taxpayer expense.  In fact, the decision to award a particular country an edition of the Games is often swayed heavily by the extent to which that country will dip into the public coffers.  If you might recall the coverage surrounding the final vote of the International Olympic Committee in 2005 to award the 2012  games to London over the putative favorite Paris.  There was wide speculation that Paris' plan to minimize their investment in new venues by erecting mostly temporary facilities was a factor that ultimately pushed the decision in favor of the British and their promises to spend on a massive scale.  Something about ensuring the "legacy" left by the games on London.  A more perfect example of the principle in economics known as "the winners curse" we have never seen, not to mention the big disruption to the normal enterprise that occurs on a daily basis in London.

No trunk or big ears, but this is what a white elephant looks like

Let's show them what they've won.  Here is what London, and the British taxpayer, is going to "own" on August 13, 2012: lots of big white elephants dotting the  London skyline.  Yes, London, that's even after having the honor of being the most over budget and expensive games in history.  [Even the broadcast rights fees go back to the IOC, meaning that the state-supported BBC is paying to cover the events commercial-free.  Not that we're complaining.  We've been watching web streams of BBC's coverage, and been loving it.  No #NBCFail for us. -ed.]  Not convinced?  Just ask Montreal, Athens, and even Beijing how awesome it to have massively expensive, empty stadiums that take decades to pay off.  Maybe Greece would rather not have the extra billions tacked onto their national debt from the 2004 Games right about now?

It should be noted that Beijing is the exception that proves the rule.  Only a country with that much trade-surplus cash on hand could afford to throw a pile of money down the Olympics hole.

It should read, "Good luck paying for it."

There is something else that occurs to us about the Olympics, though.  This is a unique time for most of the athletes.  For a few days every four years, their largely ignored sport gets a ton of media and public attention focused on it.  That attention can lead to vast riches for those players who are particularly successful (Mr. Phelps, Mr. Bolt, et. al.), particularly photogenic (Ms. Solo, and nearly any beach volleyball player), or extremely media savvy (Tyler Clary).  It also occurs to us that the companies that make all the shoes, apparel, and various other bits of the athletes' kits seem to always report windfall profits in an Olympic year. Go check out some of the financials on participating companies.  Not mentioning any names but there have to be many smiling faces around Beaverton, OR and Herzogenaurach, Germany these days.

All of this leads us to wonder aloud whether all of the money sunk into Olympic preparation, and the hype that it engenders, acts as some kind of Keynesian stimulus for endorsed athletes and shoe companies.  It's likely the worst, least efficient stimulus imaginable, but it looks like at least somebody is being enriched by the Games.  It's just not the taxpayers of the UK footing the bill, nor the fans paying to watch in person, nor the hapless schmucks in the USA forced to watch nightly coverage on NBC.

Link Hive #6; or Red Planet, Schmed Planet

It's time for another Link Hive! in bullet form.  Despite the Olympian-themed posts recently (at least one more is on its way), this one is dedicated solely to Mars, the reddest of the planets. (That' because it is camera shy and embarrasses easily.)  Enjoy.

• Apparently, despite certain wings of the politisphere whinging* over budgets, those eggheads over at NASA really do get stuff to work.  In all seriousness, the successful touchdown of the new Mars rover is a very big deal.  Go read this article over on PopSci.com about how incredibly hard it was to safely land the over 2000 lb. Curiosity rover on Mars.  With obesity being as common as it is will we see sky cranes for everyone in the near future?

Retrorockets aren't rockets from the 80's (image source: NASA JPL)

• One of the first view of Mars sent from the Curiosity rover.  Here's an entire image gallery on NASA's website.

A snap from Curiosity's back-up camera. Just like the one on your Lexus. (image source: NASA JPL)

• Interplanetary easter egg hunt: Curiosity rover spells out "JPL" in Morse code with every tire revolution.

J: - - -, P: .- -., L: -.. Engineers love hiding easter eggs. (source: NASA JPL)

• If one NASA probe photos another NASA probe, do they both get sucked into an infinite self-referential loop?  Or is this the space probe equivalent of bumping into someone you know at a strip club?  How embarrassing!  This is a shot taken by the Mars Reconnasaince Orbiter (MRO) while Curiosity's drag chute was deployed.

Caught ya on camera!  This one's going to your wife. (source: NASA JPL)

*Someone has been bloody-well watching too much BBC. -ed.