smokerblog

Photo Finish?

This morning on ABC's This Week, George Stephanopolous admitted that he has no clue about who will win the upcoming election. That seems to be the prevailing sentiment.

It doesn't stop people from making wild predictions ,though. Check out the Weekly Standard's recent survey of columnists. Particularly check out Bill Kristol's electoral college prediction: 348 Bush - 190 Kerry. If Bush is within spitting distance of that total, I'll eat my hat.

The End is Near

As I look up into the sky and see a darkened moon, still trembling with the knowledge that the Red Sox are the World Series Champions, I can think of no other explanation.

Seriously. Stop reading this post and prepare yourself as best you can for The End of Time. Repeat it quietly to yourself as the world grows dark around you: the Red Sox have won the World Series, the Red Sox have won the World Series, the Red Sox have won the World Series...

Trumping Tit-for-Tat

I can hardly be considered a student of William Riker, but his course on Strategy in Politics was one that I remember vividly and actually occasionally refer back to when I get into arguments about our current electoral system. So I was shocked to learn that there is a new strategy for winning the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma Challenge, one that trumps the Tit-for-Tat strategy that we learned about under Prof. Riker's tutelage.

If you're actually intrigued by this, there's plenty of good background information on the classic Prisoner's Dilemma game theory puzzle and the Tit-for-Tat strategy (which can be distilled into "do unto others as they have already done unto you," or even further distilled into, um, "tit-for-tat").

Note that the winning Southampton strategy requires several actors cooperating together, sacrificing many participants for a privileged few. While that may seem to be "cheating," the whole point of the competition is to create a laboratory for simulating and testing human behavior. Check out the Freedom to Tinker blog (particularly the comments) for more insight on the competition and how the results may be applied to real-world decision-making.

If you're eyes haven't glazed over yet, you might be interested learn how game theory might be applied on the campaign trail and why the candidates seem to be running around like headless chickens through the battleground states.

And no, dangit. I'm not talking about that William Riker.

But Will It Run Quake III?

Why do people climb Mt. Everest? Why do we jump out of airplanes with just a backpack full of silk? Why are we driven to continue pushing the edge, grasping beyond our reach?

Because we can.

Now via slashdot, there is news of a new frontier to explore: extreme backwards compatibility. Some Apple uber-nerd has installed Apple's OS X Panther operating system on a 10-yr old Centris with 68MB of RAM, a 4GB hard drive, running at 25MHz.

Now, I'm an Apple nerd, so I can appreciate the insane compulsiveness required to even contemplate such a feat. For those of you who aren't Apple nerds, it's like installing Windows XP Professional on your old Compaq 286 or, if you're not into the whole computer thing, it's like putting a big block Chevy engine into an old-style VW Beetle.

Given the old Macintosh hardware architecture, she's had to install and boot into Debian Linux, run a PowerPC emulator and load OS X into that. Obviously, this runs incredibly slow, taking 1.5 hours before the boot screen appears, while the full boot is currently expected to be running for a week.

But. It can be done.

Scarecrow vs. Tin Man

Pollster John Zogby views the upcoming election as a battle between the two Wizard of Oz characters: one with all heart and no brain, the other with all brain and no heart. This view seems to be shared by David Brooks, who once again offers some insight to the red state/blue state divide:

Republicans, from Reagan to Bush, particularly admire leaders who are straight-talking men of faith. The Republican leader doesn't have to be book smart, and probably shouldn't be narcissistically introspective. But he should have a clear, broad vision of America's exceptional role in the world. Democrats, on the other hand, are more apt to emphasize such leadership skills as being knowledgeable and thoughtful. They value leaders who can see complexities, who possess the virtues of the well-educated.

...

It just so happens that America is evenly divided about what sort of leader we need: the Republican who leads with his soul or the Democrat who leads with his judgment. Even the events of the past four years have not altered that disagreement.

I would add that this is just how the candidates are being sold to the American people. In fact, Democratic presidents have been known to draw strength from a moral center while Republican presidents can occassionally demonstrate ministerial qualities.

Aherrm, but, so, maybe my inability to see this as a black-and-white issue is really just an indication of my Democratic leanings, eh?

Crossing Party Lines

The American Conservative magazine has endorsed John Kerry for president. Except yeah, okay, it's more of an anti-endorsement of George Bush, but their view seems to be that four years of Kerry are preferable to four more years of Bush.

Other conservative endorsments of Kerry: John Eisenhower, former Republican Senator Marlow Cook, the Tampa Tribune, and a whole bunch of others. That's not even including groups such as the Log Cabin Republicans who are refusing to choose sides.

It's much harder to find Democrats who endorse Bush, impossible to find liberals who do. Besides Zell Miller, the mayor of Youngstown, and some Mississippi Democrats, I can only find this guy in my 15 minutes of googling.

UPDATE:
The right-leaning Orlando Sentinel has endorsed Kerry. And I neglected to mention that former NYC mayor, Democrat Ed Koch has endorsed Bush (I always thought he was a Republican, for some reason).

I wonder if any of these people live in a swing state...

And...Down the Stretch They Come

By now, you should have heard of electoral-vote.com. If not, you should check it out. It displays the electoral vote outcome based on the somewhat fuzzy logic that only the most recent polls matter. I'm no statistician, but it seems that the melange of polling data results in the electoral equivalent of comparing apples and oranges.

In any case, the site is useful for tracking general trends and it's kind of fun to watch the final tally swing wildly back and forth in each candidate's favor (much more fun than actually listening to the mud-slinging going on right now). Now, the genius behind this site has put together a map predicting the final results (updated as conditions warrant) based on the following pseudo-scientific assumptions:

1. Voters currently preferring Bush or Kerry will actually vote for them.
2. Nader will get 1% where he is on the ballot, 0% where he is not.
3. The minor candidates (Cobb, Badnarik, Peroutka, etc.) will get 1% total.
4. The undecideds will go for Kerry 2:1

That all seems perfectly reasonable to me except for the last one. It's a solid assumption based on historical data, but this election may not fit into the pattern so easily. Based on my decidedly unscientific gut feeling, I suspect that the ratio will still favor Kerry, but by a much narrower margin. In any case, it's going to be close. Get out your presidential bingo cards and prepare for a wild ride on election night!

The Sox Have Won the Pennant

Blergh.

So yeah, I just stayed up to see the whole thing. And yeah, I'm posting this tonight, because I'm too disgusted to go to bed right now.

Something that was made clear to me this weekend as I first rode the T to and from downtown Boston Saturday night and then again as I watched FOX show the faces of fan reactions over the past four nights. Trailing in the series, Boston fans were filled despair and frustration. Over the past couple of nights when their team trailed, Yankee fans seemed more puzzled or confused than anything else. It may sound silly or manufactured, but there really is a collective fan psyche that follows each team around.

Check out the Poor Man blog for a hilarious insight into the mentality of the typical Red Sox fan watching tonight's game.

POSTSCRIPT:
Were they playing "New York, New York" on the stadium loudspeaker as the Red Sox celebrated? What's up with that?

Crossfire Fallout

So Jon Stewart's recent Crossfire appearance, plus Ted's link to the New Yorker panel of news anchors, plus the New Yorker article on the Dan Rather hubbub has gotten me to thinking more about the role that our major news media (particularly tv) plays in shaping the public discourse. Talking through this with all of the wallace-l smarties has also helped me solidify these thoughts a little.

First off, in terms of aftermath, here's Tucker Carlson's response to Friday night's show and here's a partial transcript of Novak and Carville's reaction and then here's Jon Stewart's take on the whole thing. There. Now that my linking obligations are fulfilled, let's move on.

Stewart's premise is that the talking-head punditry is actually hurting America. What passes for "debate" on shows like Crossfire or Hannity & Colmes or The McGlaughlin Group is too often just a rote recitation of partisan talking points volleyed back and forth. Fairness and balance is taken to mean equal time for both sides with no regard for content. Viewers are left with competing visions that have no basis in reality.

This is where I had a nice long rant complete with quotes from Monday night's Crossfire demonstrating this point. But I don't need to waste space or bore you with any of that. Instead, let me say that there is a place for shows like Crossfire, and a place for networks like Air America or FOX or EIB, but I think people are hungry for a little more in the way of potatoes and vegetables to go with their red meat, especially on the broadcast networks.

After all that, it might surprise you to learn that I'm actually hopeful. It seems to me that some media people are getting it. For instance, ABC refused to air any of the partisan spinmeisters after the Presidential debates, political correspondent Mark Halperin even seemed to take considerable pride in his role as a media filter. ABC may actually be staking out some ground here. If you listen to the Fresh Air rebroadcast that Ted linked to, you'll see that ABC's Peter Jennings also seems to get it, much more so than the retiring Tom Brokaw who came across as a fuddy-duddy grumbling about the influence of bloggers. Tim Russert strikes me as someone who also gets it, but I haven't watched much of his show since the Bill O'Reilly-Paul Krugman debacle that Russert failed to take control of.

Here's hoping that Stewart's stirring of the pot continues to swirl around so that more people in the media begin to take notice. Perhaps I'm overreacting to all this because we are in the middle of a very contentious election season, but I don't think so. We need honest debate and consideration of the issues now more than ever.

From Out of the Belly of the Beast

We returned last night from a long weekend in Boston with Kari's St. John Fisher Tax Case Challenge Team, there for the regional competition. The team performed well, but we won't know results until next Monday. If the team places in the top 6 nationwide, they will head to Orlando next month to vie for the national title.

Looking to blow off some steam Saturday, we headed downtown for a fine seafood meal, followed by drinks at Fenway neighborhood bar, ground zero for rabid Red Sox fans everywhere. I half-expected to see fans crowding into traffic, but the street was mostly empty as fans packed into and in front of bars, eyes glued to any available tv screen.

Go Sarbanes-Oxley!
(photo by muddy river)

The cab we rode from the restaurant took us down Brookline past Fenway just as Trot Nixon homered in the 2nd. As we listened to the radio, the cabbie and I both ducked to look through the windshield, hoping to see the ball sail into the street. As a Yankee fan, I wasn't hoping very hard, but it would have been cool.

Our first bar choice had a line extending around the block, so we worked our way down the street until we eventually got into a bar to enjoy the game. We were with a fun group, but to give you an idea of what we were dealing with: as we walked down Brookline away from the stadium, we looked back and saw a building with its windows lit up to spell out "GO SOX!" Upon seeing this, one of our group lifted his arms in the air and yelled, "Go Sarbanes-Oxley!"

Although it was fun for me to watch the Yankees dismantle the Sox, standing in a packed bar with increasingly dejected Red Sox fans took its toll. Let's just say it was a long T ride back to the hotel.

Jon Stewart "in the Crossfire"

Jon Stewart might just be my hero. The Daily Show host's Friday appearance on CNN's Crossfire is currently making the rounds of the blogoshpere. CNN has the transcript, Bittorrent has the movie files.

Cornered by CNN's two "partisan hacks," Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson, Stewart came out swinging, delivering a straightforward indictment of Crossfire and other "hard-hitting" debate shows. Stewart aimed most of his charges at Tucker Carlson and seemed baffled by Carlson's charges of hypocrisy.

STEWART: But the thing is that this -- you're doing theater, when you should be doing debate, which would be great.

BEGALA: We do, do...

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: It's not honest. What you do is not honest. What you do is partisan hackery. And I will tell you why I know it.

CARLSON: You had John Kerry on your show and you sniff his throne and you're accusing us of partisan hackery?

STEWART: Absolutely.

CARLSON: You've got to be kidding me. He comes on and you...

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: You're on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls.

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: What is wrong with you?

Now, I have nothing against partisan hacks per se, but CNN is supposedly "the most trusted name in news." Despite (or perhaps because of) Jon Stewart's protestations, the Daily Show actually lives up to this ideal. I can't find the video but here is a partial transcript of a recent sketch ridiculing what passes for fair and balanced reporting on the major news outlets.

End of Round 3

Ding-ding!

Performance-wise, as in debate-scoring-wise, my sense is that Kerry has done consistently well through all of the debates and that Bush has steadily improved. One pundit said last night that anyone who thinks one candidate scored a clear victory in the debate is either lying, biased, or watching the Yankees-Red Sox game. And he (I think it was Joe Scarborough) was right.

I don't think Bush successfully portrayed Kerry as a flaming liberal, but I don't think that Kerry sufficiently turned the issue around either. It seemed clear that the Kerry campaign has made a crucial calculation. They have apparently decided that the swing voters they need to attract are women and blue-collar workers. Kerry's message was carefully crafted to appeal to them on almost every issue. Bush's answer to almost every issue was "No Child Left Behind!".

To the extent that (a) his campaign is right about who the swing voters are and (b) he neutralized Bush's claims on education, Kerry won the political aspect of the debate. If he failed on either of these points, then the adavantage goes to Bush.

Either way, I'm glad I don't live in PA or OH, where the tv ad market must be saturated by now with political ads. And it's only going to get worse over the next 2 weeks.

UPDATE: To anyone who thinks Bob Schieffer's questions were too tough on Bush, Mike's got a good reply: they weren't tough enough.

Virtual Landscaping

I'm a little late in pointing this out, but Krista has launched her latest masterwork in conjunction with the presentation of her M.F.A. thesis: "ecologic culture shock: transplants in southern california."

If you can't get to San Diego to see the exhibit in person (actually there is only one more day left), check out Krista's interactive landscaping tool, which presents ecological information on each plant listed and provides helpful suggestions for the Southern California climate. (Hint: it's real easy to overreach your water allotment.)

Matt is Online

My brother Matt, in his role as high school math teacher, now has a blog. You can visit if, for some strange reason, you're interested in looking at his students' geometry homework. I was happy to see that among his course expectations he proclaims, "No whining! misery is optional."

It looks like his school is using Manila, the enterprise version of Radio UserLand, one of the first companies to recognize the burgeoning weblog phenomenon.

Cut Taxes and Spend

Remember when Bush said last night that non-defense, non-homeland-security discretionary spending growth had been cut from 15% under Clinton to 1% under his administration? Turns out those numbers are 2.5% and 8.2% respectively. If Bush plans to beat Kerry with a tax-and-spend stick, here's a stick Kerry can use to swing back.

Chart from the Congressional Budget Office, click to enlarge.

End of Round 2

Ding-ding!

Some scorecards give the slight edge to Kerry, some to Bush, but most everyone calls this debate a draw.

As in the first debate, there were no knockout punches, and neither candidate shot themselves in the foot as Bush did last week with his dispeptic reactions. Clearly, Bush's improved performance will be key to reassuring his base, but this debate could only have helped Kerry.

While a "win on points" is important to the campaigns, they only really care about a political win, which means winning over the undecided voters. Kerry's critique of the President's foreign and economic policies have been devastating to the President's chances among these voters. Kerry has the momentum and this debate has done nothing to stop it.

But. But, the third debate is coming up. Most pundits believe this debate on domestic issues is the Democrats' home turf. This also means it is Kerry's debate to lose. You may have noticed a subtle shift in Bush's tactics last night from attacking Kerry as a flip-flopper to a focus on his liberal Senate voting record. I think it was CNN's Jeff Greenfield who pointed out last night that the third debate's focus on domestic issues is not just a debate on economic policy, it is also a a debate on social issues. This may be Kerry's achille's heel.

The Republican campaign will now attempt to portray Kerry as an über-liberal. Last night, you saw Kerry shore up his defense by scoffing at this as name-calling. Near the end of the debate, Kerry delivered a clear explanation for his vote on the infamous $87 billion Iraq funding bill. He also offered clear explanations for his votes on partial birth abortion and parental consent bill. Immediately, Bush responding by hammering on the votes as if he and the audience hadn't even heard Kerry's explanations. Here's the exchange from the transcript:

GIBSON: Senator, do you want to follow up? Thirty seconds.

KERRY: Well, again, the president just said, categorically, my opponent is against this, my opponent is against that. You know, it's just not that simple. No, I'm not.

I'm against the partial-birth abortion, but you've got to have an exception for the life of the mother and the health of the mother under the strictest test of bodily injury to the mother.

Secondly, with respect to parental notification, I'm not going to require a 16-or 17-year-old kid who's been raped by her father and who's pregnant to have to notify her father. So you got to have a judicial intervention. And because they didn't have a judicial intervention where she could go somewhere and get help, I voted against it. It's never quite as simple as the president wants you to believe.

GIBSON: And 30 seconds, Mr. President.

BUSH: Well, it's pretty simple when they say: Are you for a ban on partial birth abortion? Yes or no?

And he was given a chance to vote, and he voted no. And that's just the way it is. That's a vote. It came right up. It's clear for everybody to see. And as I said: You can run but you can't hide the reality.

Kerry has successfully deflected the flip-flopper charge by turning the issue around to portray the President as someone who us unable to change his mind in the face of mounting evidence. His next challenge is to deflect Republican attempts to paint him as a latté-sipping, baby-killing, tax-and-spend New England liberal.

POSTSCRIPT:
Something I just noticed on CSPAN's replay: strips of tape on the floor created a faint boundary dividing the stage in half, which apparently the candidates were not allowed to cross. Given the contentiousness of the debate, this may have been the only thing keeping the two candidates from coming to blows.

Site Migration

So I've moved to my new webhost. All is right with the world again, provided the uptime is better than my previous host, of course. I've also upgraded by blogging software to Movable Type 3.1. Not that you should notice the change right away, but it should make life easier on me.

If the site is acting strange in any way, please let me know.

Starting over the upgradation

My apologies to anyone who has been trying to access ksmoker.com.

With no warning provided to me ahead of time, my webhost decided on Sunday to take the server offline to install new software. After complaining to them about the downtime, they informed me of "software glitches" that occurred during the "upgradation". Hmmm, not very confidence-inspiring, eh? So two and a half days later with still no service, I'm moving the site to a new webhost.

That said, things will be a little funky around here for a while until this site is set up in its new home. I'm probably going to move to new blogging software (don't know which yet) and I may even take the opportunity to redesign the site once again. Obviously, I'll keep you posted on the progress.

We apologise for the inconveience caused.

Hedgehog vs. Fox?

Actually, David Brooks has a more illuminating comparison of the two candidates and their debate performance.

...I think you'd be getting closer to the truth if you put it this way: The atmosphere of Kerry's mind is rationalistic. He thinks about how to get things done. He talks like a manager or an engineer.

The atmosphere of Bush's mind is more creedal or ethical. He talks about moral challenges. He talks about the sort of personal and national character we need in order to triumph over our enemies. His mind is less coldly secular than Kerry's, but also more abstracted from day-to-day reality.
...
Each cast of mind comes with its own strengths and weaknesses. The mechanically minded Kerry is much better at talking about realities like securing the Iraqi border. On the other hand, he is unable to blend his specific proposals into guiding principles.
...
Bush, by contrast, is steadfast and resolute. But his weakness is statecraft. That is the task of relating means to ends, of orchestrating the institutions of government to achieve your desired goals.

This is probably the most concise comparison of the candidates' styles that I have come across during the campaign and one that doesn't even resort to epithets or name-calling.

End of Round 1

Ding-ding!

Here are the judges' scorecards:

Bush supporters: a narrow Bush win. Bush stuck to his script and made some points that went unrefuted, but there was no knockout blow. Kerry's still standing.

Kerry supporters: a solid Kerry win. The President looked flustered and angry and was clearly on the defensive on several issues.

The press: a Kerry win. He spoke in sentences, not paragraphs, and looked presidental. Meanwhile, Bush was clearly uncomfortable and confounded by many of Kerry's charges.

Political experts posing as debate judges: a draw. Both sides made points that went unanswered. Both sides missed opportunities to attack false claims and inaccuracies.

Undecided voters: edge to Kerry. Finally, he presented a clear distinction between himself and the President. Finally, one can begin to see where he stands on the issues. Whether or not he can maintain this image remains to be seen.

Bottom line: a crucial Kerry win. The press will begin shifting its discussion to Kerry's advantage. Both bases were solidified, but neither candidate really cares about their base at this point. The audience that really maters, the swing voters, finally got to see a strong, unwavering Kerry to contrast against a defensive, dispeptic President. Everyone expected Kerry to blather on, but he didn't. Everyone expected the President to exude his famous good ol' boy charm, but he didn't. The Bush camp was hoping to put the race out of reach, but it will only get tighter.

In 2000, Gore "won" the debates only to see his momentum evaprorate within days. I don't know that this situation really compares to what we had in 2000; there is a lot more at stake and the voting public is much more polarized and entrenched. For the next debate, expectations for Kerry will be much higher as the President will attempt to take the offensive. We'll see how long the Kerry momentum holds up.