Compulsive Centrist Disorder
mikethemadbiologist | April 18, 2011The New York Times' Jonathan Mahler waxes philosophical over the divide in education policy, using the recent dismissal of NYC Chancellor of Schools Cathleen Black, to offer up Compulsive Centrist Disorder-inspired banalities about education:
As is often the case with morally charged policy issues -- remember welfare reform? -- false dichotomies seem to have replaced fruitful conversation. If you support the teachers' union, you don't care about the students. If you are critical of the teachers' union, you don't care about the teachers. If you are in favor of charter schools, you are opposed…
mikethemadbiologist | January 10, 2011The NY Times' Matt Bai writes a predictable article about the Gifford shooting:
Within minutes of the first reports Saturday that Representative Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, and a score of people with her had been shot in Tucson, pages began disappearing from the Web. One was Sarah Palin's infamous "cross hairs" map from last year, which showed a series of contested Congressional districts, including Ms. Giffords's, with gun targets trained on them. Another was from Daily Kos, the liberal blog, where one of the congresswoman's apparently liberal constituents declared her "dead to…
mikethemadbiologist | December 31, 2010So maybe NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg isn't a centrist? 'Centrists', who seem to be beloved by the Washington political press corpse and few others, typically style themselves to be common-sense people who just solve problems--consider them the up-scale version of the "jus' folks" flapdoodle purveyed by America's Party. Well, Mayor and presidential aspirant Bloomberg didn't seem to be able to plow the snow very well. Writes the Krugman:
...he's supposedly non-ideological, competent, able to transcend partisan divisions with a single bound. There's a recurrent fantasy about a Bloomberg third…
mikethemadbiologist | December 5, 2010Someone tell me how Ian Welsh's assessment of Obama is incorrect (italics mine):
Nor is he a Nixonian or Eisenhower Republican, that would put him massively to the left of where he is and to the left of the majority of the Democratic party. Instead his a Reaganite, something he told people repeatedly....
That isn't to say Obama may or may not be a wimp, but he always compromises right, never left and his compromises are minor. He always wanted tax cuts. He gave away the public option in private negotiations near the beginning of the HCR fight, not the end. He never even proposed an…
mikethemadbiologist | November 23, 2010A while ago, I finished reading Adrian Goldsworthy's How Rome Fell. While there are far too many inane comparisons between the Late Roman Empire and the U.S., this summary of Goldsworthy's thesis seems appropriate (italics mine):
That is not to say that the latter emperors were more selfish, but simply that they could never be as secure. Many may have had the best of intentions to rule well, but the government of the empire became first and foremost about keeping the emperor in power - and at lower levels, about the individual advantage of bureaucrats and officers.
The Late Roman Empire was…
mikethemadbiologist | November 17, 2010Because that's what it seems they're claiming. I'll get to that in a bit. Rolling Stone invited Matt Taibbi, David Gergen, and Gary Hart to discuss political events of the day. The subject of the Tea Party came up, at which point Taibbi said:
To me, the main thing about the Tea Party is that they're just crazy. If somebody is able to bridge the gap with those voters, it seems to me they will have to be a little bit crazy too. That's part of the Tea Party's litmus test: "How far will you go?"
Gergen and Hart both, despite their supposedly being smart people, misinterpreted what Taibbi said…
mikethemadbiologist | November 15, 2010What I find most disturbing about the Simpson-Bowles report, among many disturbing things, including a number fetish, is that our political discourse, which is usually mostly irrelevant, has become even more so. Why?
Because we're focusing on the wrong deficit.
While this deficit proposal is obviously an attempt to shift the debate rightward by proposing an arbitrary amount of GDP to be spent on government--and thereby 'limit'* the scope of government--it is having a far more insidious effect. Many progressives and liberals (here, here, here) feel the need to respond to this proposal,…
mikethemadbiologist | November 8, 2010A while ago, in discussing deficit 'hawk' conservative Democrat Kent Conrad, I wrote this about so-called moderation:
Stupidly, Democrats have never pushed back against the idea that a hard-line deficit reduction hawk is a 'moderate', which I think might be what leads an astute political observer like Steve Benen to describe Senator (D-ND) Kent Conrad as a "moderate." To me, a moderate is someone who attempts to synthesize and find the balance among several objectives that may contradict with each other: while I think limiting the stimulus package was stupid fiscal policy, arguably that's a…
mikethemadbiologist | March 15, 2010Quelle surprise. David Brook's recent burbling, "Getting Obama Right", seems to have garnered a lot of attention, to the point where several people sent it to me (approvingly, which is puzzling). Basically, Brooks makes the argument that Obama is "a center-left pragmatic reformer." As John Aravosis notes, if that's the case, then, given his shift rightward following his election, he must have been an honest-to-Intelligent-Designer socialist during the campaign. But what really bothered me about Brooks' column (other than I was encouraged by people I respect to waste moments of my life I'…
mikethemadbiologist | February 16, 2010...make sure you know what the hell you're talking about. Jacob Weisberg had a recent post at Slate, "Down With the People: Blame the childish, ignorant American public--not politicians--for our political and economic crisis", which argues, well, what the title says. Now, we do have a longstanding tradition of calling idiots fucking morons in this humble bloggy abode, so we can't be upset with Weisberg's attempt (although, as usual, Lance Mannion does it far better than Weisberg, albeit with nuance, which is very French).
First, I actually don't agree with Weisberg when he writes, "We…
mikethemadbiologist | January 25, 2010In the battle of ideas, what things are called matters (e.g., the 'death tax' instead of the estate tax). So I'm utterly puzzled as to why Paul Krugman is calling the current state of play in healthcare centrist:
The fact is that the Senate bill is a centrist document, which moderate Republicans should find entirely acceptable. In fact, it's very similar to the plan Mitt Romney introduced in Massachusetts just a few years ago.
This is not a centrist bill. After one considers everything that those left-of-center bargained away, it's hard to see how this bill could be any farther to the right…
mikethemadbiologist | November 13, 2009If you haven't heard by now, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds got clobbered by the Republican candidate. One of the things that hurt him was the poor turnout by independents and Democrats compared to the 2008 presidential election. And why did they stay home?
Consider the answers to these three questions posed to VA Democrats who voted for Obama, but not for Deeds:
And:
And:
If the Democrats don't stop acting like Republican-lite, like Herbert Hoover (although that's an unfair comparison to Hoover, who, while ideologically hidebound, had saved millions of lives from famine…
mikethemadbiologist | April 26, 2009(from here)
And I don't mean that in a good way. Washington Post columnist and Compulsive Centrist Disorder sufferer, regarding prosecutions for torture, scribbles:
The memos on torture represented a deliberate, and internally well-debated, policy decision, made in the proper places -- the White House, the intelligence agencies and the Justice Department -- by the proper officials.
One administration later, a different group of individuals occupying the same offices has -- thankfully -- made the opposite decision. Do they now go back and investigate or indict their predecessors?
Let me…
mikethemadbiologist | February 6, 2009Via Greg Sargent, we learn that Blue Dog Democrat Senator Ben Nelson is still a repulsive person.
Total Reductions: $80 billion
Eliminations:
Head Start, Education for the Disadvantaged, School improvement, Child Nutrition, Firefighters, Transportation Security Administration, Coast Guard, Prisons, COPS Hiring, Violence Against Women, NASA, NSF, Western Area Power Administration, CDC, Food Stamps
*****************************
Reductions:
Public Transit $3.4 billion, School Construction $60 billion
Fucking unbelievable. Intelligent Designer knows that Democrats can be pretty screwed up, but,…
mikethemadbiologist | January 20, 2009Later today, Obama will give his inaugural speech, and like most such speeches, it will be full of bipartisan platitudes. That's fine, if par for the course (although, for a counterexample, FDR's 1932 address serves as a clarion call without all of the Cumbaya crap). Nonetheless, Obama has one very important political task ahead of him: getting rank-and-file Democrats to trust Democratic party leaders.
Right now, I think most active Democrats, whether they be conservative, moderate, or liberal, do not trust Democrats to do the right thing by themselves. To me, this is a perfect reasonable…
mikethemadbiologist | January 13, 2009...or dead. Compulsive Centrist Disorder is a malady that strikes many pundits who think that the ideal policy is always between two opposing points of view, even if one of those viewpoints is really fucking stupid. Sadly, Compulsive Centrist Disorder, when applied to healthcare, can harm the health of innocent bystanders (italics original; boldface mine):
Pete Stark's bill, the most left-wing of the lot (it's sort of a "Medicare for many more" proposal) covers the most people....
Stark's is the best again. And yet there's no chance whatsoever that we'll actually do this because his plan,…
mikethemadbiologist | November 7, 2008I agree with ScienceBloglings Orac and Mike Dunford: Robert Kennedy Jr. shouldn't be in an Obama cabinet.
As far I'm concerned, Kennedy's bullshit about thimerisol is every bit as ridiculous as creationism, except that it's far more murderous. While I don't think that would be an issue that he would deal with at Interior (but might be at EPA), irrationalism has no place in a Democratic administration. Could we wait a few months before we cede the intellectual highground? Related to this, Mike has a good suggestion:
If we want to effectively oppose this nomination, we need to bring in the…
mikethemadbiologist | October 22, 2008McClatchy Washington bureau chief John Walcott recently received the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence. While doing so, he called out Compulsive Centrist Disorder. Walcott's remarks:
Relying on The Times, or McClatchy or any other news source, for all the truth is dumb, but it's infinitely preferable to the pernicious philosophical notions that there is no such thing as truth, that truth is relative, or that, as some journalists seem to believe, it can be found midway between the two opposing poles of any argument.....
Does the truth lie halfway between say, slavery and…
mikethemadbiologist | March 1, 2008Mayor Michael Bloomberg of NYC wrote an op-ed a few days ago about the need for bipartisanship. Here's a taste:
More of the same won't do, on the economy or any other issue. We need innovative ideas, bold action and courageous leadership. That's not just empty rhetoric, and the idea that we have the ability to solve our toughest problems isn't some pie-in-the-sky dream. In New York, working with leaders from both parties and mayors and governors from across the country, we've demonstrated that an independent approach really can produce progress on the most critical issues, including the…
mikethemadbiologist | February 6, 2008...and that's a good thing.
As long as the primaries continue, we can delay the full-blown onset of Compulsive Centrist Disorder. It also means that the candidates will have to spend their time talking at (yes, at, not to) voters instead of the pundits and media dahlings, which can only be for the better.
Unrelated silly thought of the day: Have Fox News host ScienceDebate 2008. Kidding.