W, You Should Probably Just Keep Your Head Down and Your Mouth Shut

I haven't watched the Bush-Gibson ABC interview yet and I probably won't. Bush was a terrible president when he had some clout and now as the lamest duck ever, his words are essentially meaningless. Every time I catch a snippet of Bush talking, particularly in reference to our current economical situation I cringe and wonder why we don't switch administrations sooner after the vote.

All this is to say that Joan Walsh did watch the ABC exit interview and she handily takes Bush's thoughts and answers apart, you should go read it regardless of your feelings on watching the interview itself.

Which reminds me that I think the upcoming movie of the Frost-Nixon interviews is a bit odd. I understand the play, seeing real live people act out that interview should be more palpable than watching it on the screen, big or small. And all reports were that they did a fantastic job of bringing the interviews to life. Also the timing is great, I definitely think that it is important to not just let Bush and his cronies slip away into insignificance. We're going to spend a lot of time and energy as a country trying to right the ship of government and the status of our Constitution and the rule of law after what they've done while in power. At the very least they deserve to be investigated and hopefully held accountable.

But I don't really get the movie because now you're just watching two actor recreate a series of television interviews that are available on DVD and the web. Is there any good reason to watch the movie instead of the original interviews? (please let me know if you've got one)

And on moving up the inauguration, Daniel Shorr had a great take on it days before the election. I think that a week would be too fast of a turnaround but surely things could be done before the holidays, say December 20 instead of January. Moving things up a month would be a vast improvement especially given the current economic and war settings facing our nation and the world.

Late Addition: Daniel Schorr talked about these sets of interviews last night.

Jack Black Is Jesus!

I knew it!

Plus Doogie shows us how to save the economy...


(via WR)

Reminds me of my favorite fictional President...

Georgia, Not So Peachy

If you're a Democrat that is.

It was always a long shot but hopes of a Democratic super-majority of 60 votes in the Senate have finally vanished with Saxy Chambliss' reelection in Georgia.

Your only election fix is now on tap in Minnesota.

Five Thirty Eight has the goods.

(sorry that was gross)

Heck of A Job

I read John Cassidy's New Yorker profile of Ben Bernanke and the current financial crisis last night and I was struck by a couple of things.

First and rather simply after the big lead picture of Bernanke and the opening lines,

Some are born radical. Some are made radical. And some have radicalism thrust upon them. That is the way with Ben Bernanke, as he struggles to rescue the American financial system from collapse.

I was ready for a fairly sympathetic piece about how Bernanke has responded and what he has done to fight the meltdown and staunch the bleeding. So as I read and quotes like this one kept coming up I was a bit surprised at the level of the take-down (not that it was undeserved, quite the contrary actually)

Summing up the widespread frustration with Bernanke, Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal think tank in Washington, told me, “He was behind the curve at every stage of the story. He didn’t see the housing bubble until after it burst. Until as late as this summer, he downplayed all the risks involved. In terms of policy, he has not presented a clear view. On a number of occasions, he has pointed in one direction and then turned around and acted differently. I would be surprised if Obama wanted to reappoint him when his term ends”—in January, 2010...

In October, at a meeting in Washington of central bankers, executives, and economists, Allen Sinai, the chief economist at Decision Economics, Inc., asked Bernanke how he thought a central bank should manage the economic risks posed by a housing bubble. According to Sinai, Bernanke said that he had no way of knowing if there had been a housing bubble. “I realized then that he just didn’t realize the scale of the problem,” Sinai told me.

As I read on I realized that the story of our current financial collapse reads a lot like the story of what led up to the Septemer 11th attacks or that of Hurricane Katrina. Each time the Bush Administration was warned that there were problems and that they should be addressed before it was too late. And each time Bush and his cronies waved off the warnings and dissmised their critics as worry worts or questioned their patriotism. And each time the critics were right and then suddenly it was too late.

Hell of a track record Bushie.

Make sure to read the article yourself, it is a bit long but available on a single page (woo hoo).

Late Addition: Steve Benen at Political Animal has been having similar thoughts.

Rock the Cello

Puts a whole new spin on an old, old classic (instrument that is)...



(via my cousin JC)

TIVO Attack!

So I don't have a Tivo or generic DVR (shocking I know) and about the only reason that I manage to survive this horrific scenario is that I currently watch very little television.

It's pretty much some sports, a little Daily Show, and maybe some scrubs re-runs. How do I manage with so little TV you ask, I spend time online and I work the Netflix account.

This is all really just to say that everyone that I know with a Tivo/DVR loves it and swears they don't know how they lived before. For some slightly more concrete proof, of albeit back of the napkin style calculation we can turn to Justin Wolfers at the Freakonomics site...

What about the gains to the average American?

Time use data tell us that he watches 2.6 hours per day, or 18.3 hours per week; with TiVo, he can watch this programming in around 12 hours, saving 6 hours.

Average hourly earnings are around $18, suggesting that TiVo saves time that could otherwise have been sold for around $108 per week. We should also add in the benefit of higher quality television — around $11 per week — and subtract the cost of the annoying service charge, which is around $3 per week, yielding net benefits of $116 per week, or $6,000 per year. The net present value of this flow is around $120,000 per person, or perhaps around a quarter of a million dollars per household. Wow.

That's a pretty blatant argument supporting geting a Tivo/DVR especially considering many cable packages will throw one in these days or failing that you can get one for less than $200. Which makes the fact that only about 3 in 10 American households have one astonishing (factoid via Freakonomics).

How will TV survive once word gets out and everyone gets a Tivo? ESPN Corporate has some ideas...


It's also worth remembering how Tivo came into Bucky, Satchel, and Rob's life...

Fascinating First Person Accounts

I always enjoy first person reporting just a tiny bit more. Yes arguably, and more than probably, it ruins a bit of the reporter's objectivity but I enjoy it because the reporter or author is telling the story of what actually happened to them not what it looked like after they arrived or what eye-witnesses, victims and the like had to say.

Unfortunately, although in a perhaps circumstantially necessary way, we tend to get this type of reporting and storytelling in relation to disasters (think NPR's coverage of the Chinese earthquake earlier this year).

Which brings me to two stories from the weekend.

A piece in the WaPo on the still unfinished (how can that possibly be) debate over torture in the Outlook section, written by an American interrogator whose investigation tracked down AbuMusab al-Zarqaw i, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq without resorting to torture or other circumspect techniques which the author stresses don't work. We've already heard lots on this topic but much of it comes from politicians and academics and occasionally so-called interrogation experts but this is the first run down on tactics and results in Iraq and against al-Qaeda targets provided by someone involved.

Less interesting and informative as a whole, but fascinating nonetheless, is the story of a bombing attempt on the NPR crew in Baghdad. Their armored BMW was destroyed and they were narrowly warned away from the car by Iraqi troops who had received a tip. Car-bombings and assassinations are nothing new in Baghdad but it lends a new perspective to the reporting when the reporter has personally experienced the story. (the pictures are very impressive)