suck it up, Eric

I love this post from fivethirtyeight.com because it hits the nail on the head. Liberals (like myself), as Psimet points out, need to stop worrying about the behavior of the other side. Spending too much time trying to figure out why the attacks are so personal waste time. Barak Obama seems to get it too -- his focus the past few days has been all on content.

The better summation:

A simple difference

Barack Obama:

These are the policies I will pursue. And in the weeks ahead, I look forward to debating them with John McCain.But what I will not do is suggest that the Senator takes his positions for political purposes. Because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism.The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook.

So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain.

The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America - they have served the United States of America.So I've got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first.

And from last night (Giuliani):

They would have acted in their self-interest, and they would have changed
their position in order to win an election. How many times have we seen Barack
Obama do this? [shortly after suggesting McCain would do no such thing]

Of course, we have seen multiple changes in McCain's position this year (on torture, campaign finance reform, immigration reform, tax cuts, Roe v. Wade, etc). We also see that the speeches at the Republican convention cannot rise above making it about mockery -- why? Why does it have to be about insult?

We'll see what the mocking does in the polls in the next few days and weeks.

bike-run

Nice relaxing bike ride today, followed by a light 20 minute run, though my heart rate monitor strap is dying. Either that or I have no heart rate. Some do say I am heartless, so that is a possibility.

why tri-ing new things is good

Isn't that post title clever? Ok, not so much.

Biked in today and swam. It hurt less than it did last time, and I'm beginning to see what I need to do to get better. I think there is a kickboard in my future.

short but sweet

Ok, I am biased, but...

I thought I was too cynical to be inspired by a politician. I was wrong.

I know Obama can't do all that he promises, but I'm more than willing to give him a chance.

Really?

Could someone remind the McCain campaign that he is running for president of the United States? I mean, come on, I thought the Brittany ad was stupid and beneath a serious presidential campaign, but this reads like something the Onion would do.

My question is this: do the pundits parroting this crap* (or instigating it) believe the words coming from their mouths, or do they have a contest every day to see if they can get the topic seriously discussed on other shows and believed by their viewers / readers? This is almost as bad as the "terrorist fist bump" in levels of idiocy.

I guess McCain is going to accept the nomination in a room decorated with no more than 2 balloons and an American flag.

*link to article about stupid pundits, not the pundits themselves.

This Election is simple...

... or not.

At its base, the framing of the DNC is correct: if you are happy with the policies of the Bush Administration, by all means vote for McCain. If you are not, vote for Obama. To Democrats, this seems like a clear winning strategy as most Americans seem to believe we are on the wrong track. This should be an easier task than Bush faced in 2000 when he had to convince people to vote for a change in the party in charge even though most Americans were pleased with the job Bill Clinton did.

The problem that arises is that many voters cannot actually identify the policies of the presidential candidates, are not willing to take the time to learn the policies, and, given that they probably do not follow the intricacies of current policy, are unable to compare the presidencies. And if Drew Westen is correct, most people vote based on emotion, not their analysis of the likely effects of policy decisions on their lives.

This emotional voting is behind the efforts of both campaigns to point to personal foibles or emotionally charged issues (Obama as elitist, McCain doesn't even know how many homes he owns). It also suggest that if Democrats really want to win, they need to emphasize the question Reagan made famous, "Are you better off than you were [8] years ago?" Everything else is a red herring.

Experience? Neither candidate has true executive experience. McCain is older, but then Cheney is older and more "experienced" than Bush. How did that work out? Not to mention that no experience is comparable to that of president of a major power, let alone the world's most powerful country. If we want evidence as to how either of these candidates will run a major organization, look to the campaigns. Which has run the better organized, more effective campaign?

Wisdom & judgement? With which candidate do you tend to agree most often? If you think the Iraq war was a mistake, support alternative energy research, and aren't a fan of torture & warrantless wiretapping, Obama's probably your guy. If you like Bush's policies, voting records suggest you should go McCain.

Race? Doesn't matter.

Obviously, this is a simplistic view, and really just represents some ruminations from this mornings exercise mentioned in the previous post. There's more, but I have to get ready for class.

training day two

Bike>run>swim. Today was my first bike-run combo. A nice easy 2 mile jog (~18 minutes) after my 11.1 mile ride in to work.

Tomorrow I return to the pool for a little more public humiliation.

I hurt, or why I am triathlon training 9 months in advance

Friday was my first time on aerobars on my bike. That was good. A little more position fiddling, and I think I can pick up speed pretty quickly.

Today was my first time really swimming laps in, well, forever. I know I have swum the length of a pool before, but that 200yard swim this morning just about did me in. Lots o' work to do. A swim coach would be dandy, but represents more of an investment than I am willing to make at this point.

So bicycle good, pool bad. Now I just have to get back in the water on Friday.

too busy

So when I decided to blog, I thought I would do it at least 2-3 times a week. Then the last month happened. Between my lovely bride running a school supply sale & hurting her back, swim lessons for my oldest, finishing an article for submission, and getting ready for a new semester, things have been rather hectic.

What to do when life is too hectic? Decide to start training for a triathlon when I really can't swim terribly well. Too make it a little easier, I am targeting one next spring, but I really, really am going to do it. Really, I mean it.

seeing what we want to see

Building on the post that two many things have happened in the past year to determine if it was "the surge" that led to stabilization in Iraq, I wanted to comment on the argument for / against withdrawing troops.

Many of those who supported the surge continue to support keeping troops in Iraq, even if it means doing so against Iraqi wishes (see McCain). Interestingly, at the time, Maliki was less than enthusiastic about the surge himself. The reasons for maintaining troops, however, have changed. 18 months ago, the surge was supposed to provide breathing space for Iraqis by providing additional security to reduce violence allowing them to pass necessary laws. Now that violence has gone down, the argument is we need to keep troops in order to make sure violence stays down. If violence were to go back up, the argument would be to keep troops in to reduce violence again. Whatever the conditions are, the argument is to maintain troops. Though McCain argues troop reductions should be dictated by conditions on the ground, there is no clear explanation of what those conditions should be.

This is remarkbly similar to arguments over tax cuts and missile defense. On tax cuts, during the 2000 election Bush argued we needed tax to return the surplus to the people. As the economy began to slow down, the tax cuts were needed to spur the economy. Whatever the prevailing economic conditions are, hard core tax cut proponents think taxes should be cut. There is an ideological belief that tax cuts are good, so all economic conditions justify tax cuts.

Missile defense fell into a similar scenario. The same proponents of missile defense before 9-11 supported it after 9-11 in spite of the fact that we were shown that terrorist were likely to use somewhat unexpected delivery methods to hurt the US, not a ballistic missile. Though proponents of missile defense cannot really point to anyone that has a missile that a) has a missle that can hit us and b) is likely to shoot at us, 9-11 proved US vulnerability and, therefor, the need to have missile defense.

Note, however, that the same thing can happen the other way. Those in favor of pulling troops out of Iraq need to take care in how that argument is justified. Pre-surge, one of the arguments was that too many US soldiers were dying. Casualties are down tremendously, so that argument is less powerful now (though every loss is sad).

Obama's broader strategic argument is much better here. The real reason the Iraq war was a mistake, beyond the fact that Iraq did not have WMD, ties to Al Qaeda, and presented no real threat to the US, was that it hurt the US strategically by taking resources away from Afghanistan and limiting the US ability to respond to other threats seriously. The larger strategic mistake is not fixed by the surge. Kerry did a good job on Meet the Press trying to argue this, though Lieberman made the counterattack clear: rather than focus on the argument, he painted the response that things other than the surge matter as insulting the troops.

I digress. Those who favor fairly rapid withdraw (anything less than say 30 months), need to keep the eye on the strategic prize -- the large troop presence hurts US interest regardless of the current level of violence -- and to press those who argue for troop removal depending on the "facts on the ground" to explain what those facts would need to be.

Why I suck as a bicycle racer

Ok, the first reason I suck as a bike racer is that I haven't raced this year, or frequently in years prior. In fact, I've never raced much. I really want to, but I don't. So the real question is why don't I? Part of it is that I don't train enough, part of it is that I haven't made time to race. Even with my limited training, I know I am in better shape right now than I have been in for quite some time.

But what is the real reason, I ask? I think it is that there are just things I enjoy doing more than racing or even riding my bike. As much as I long to be on my bike some weekends when I am doing other things, in the end, I do consider some activities more important than just getting up and going riding (as much as I love doing so). If you give me the choice of a nice 3 hour solo ride or 3 hours playing with the boys, even knowing that at least 1 hour of that is going to include crying by one or all of us, I'll normally take the 3 hours with the boys.

I also don't often do evening group rides (though I have & plan to soon). The two main reasons are 1) that I am tired in the evening; and 2) evening group ride means less time with boys, even when they are screaming & crying. It also means more stress for the wife, which I also don't want to cause.

The final reason I haven't even done the training races this year is sort of silly to many -- I don't want to pay for it. I don't want to pay for my license so I can be pack fodder. Which means I need to train harder to justify the expense, which means finding the time to do so. Which means I should get off the damn computer.

Well, several bright people disagree with the argument in my previous post (see, here & here for conservative disagreement, here for liberal disagreement). Either I'm wrong, as are some other really smart people, or I'm right and these folks are wrong. It could be that Obama is being treated to the Kerry & Gore treatment, it could be some deep-seated racism, or it could just be bad campaign tactics by McCain, I really don't know.

I cannot, however, believe, that McCain would say he is proud of his campaign's Brittney / Paris ad.

I take back my earlier comment about voting for McCain if you agree with his policies. Can you really trust anyone with such bad taste?

Arrogance or race baiting?

By now, Dana Milbank’s Washington Post column arguing that Obama is too presumptuous has been roundly criticized for taking quotes out of context in some places and misquoting in others.

Nonetheless, the view that Milbank’s has presented that Obama is some how arrogant has taken hold. NBC ran with a “debate” about it on the Today show this morning, McCain is running ads comparing Obama to Brittney Spears & Paris Hilton. The question is where does this criticism come from? Because he dares to express confidence in his ability to win (while noting that the road to victory will be long and difficult)? Because he met with foreign leaders & officials, after being goaded by the McCain campaign for not doing so? I seem to remember George W. Bush touting his close ties with Mexico as well, even making a campaign visit to open a cross border bridge during the 2000 campaign (see the April 25, 2000 Washington Post). Furthermore, when was the last time a presidential candidate came out and said, “well, it’s going to be a tough campaign, and I expect we will lose?”

If you listen to some of the talk, it smacks of old-fashioned race baiting. Let’s just replace “presumptuous” and “arrogant” with “uppity.” Obama is both a Democrat (making him elitist, though he is worth far, far less money than McCain, pays his taxes, and doesn’t have an annual budget for personal staff in the six figures) and an African American, meaning that he should be careful about expressing too much confidence.

Next time someone suggests Obama is arrogant, think about what that same person would say if McCain said the exact same thing, or made the same visit. What if McCain went abroad and met with foreign leaders? Would there be an uproar? Oh, that’s right, McCain did make that little speech in Canada about NAFTA. McCain has travelled to Iraq. McCain has travelled to Jordan (with Lieberman in tow). I guess he is presumptuous and arrogant as well.

Finally, vote for John McCain if you want to, but do so because you agree with his stances on the issues and believe his likely policy proposals and decisions are best for the country. Do not, however, vote for McCain because of all the bullshit about Obama that is just that: bullshit. Arrogance, elitists, etc., does not matter even if you believe it. Which candidate do you think has the better advisors, better policies, and would you expect to make the best foreign policy decisions? Vote for that candidate.

UPDATE: Damn NYT stealing my ideas! Even if they are obvious...

Fenders are good

Bicycle fenders, that is. I threw my bike in the back of the pickup this morning as my wife drove the boys to swim lessons. I hitched a ride to the pool, then rode my bike to the office. The only problem was that a downpour in the area had made the roads around the pool & the office more than a little wet. Those who cycle know how my shirt and back of my shorts looked when I got to the office -- a lovely dirt trail. Normally this isn't a problem as I typically change clothes when I get to the office, but not today.

Anyway, fenders are good.

As an aside, every area around you getting useful amounts of rain while your house misses out, sucks.

Too many variables, not enough observations

…or one thing I like about Barak Obama.

In an interview with Katie Couric last week, Obama made the mistake of giving an intelligent answer when asked about the apparent success of the surge. He notes that,

There is no doubt that the extraordinary work of our U.S. forces has contributed to a lessening of the violence, just as making sure that the Sadr militia stood down or the fact that the Sunni tribes decided to flip and work with us instead of with al-Qaeda - something that we hadn't anticipated happening. All those things have contributed to a reduction in violence.

You can add to this the fleeing of millions of Iraqi refugees, the success of ethnic cleansing in Baghdad and other areas that have lessened the need for sectarian violence, and the tacit support of Iran for Maliki’s government as evidenced by Iran’s intervention in Basra to settle violence there.

In short, Obama understands that while increased US forces may be one component of success, too much has occurred in Iraq in the past year to pin the reduction of violence (not elimination of violence) to the “surge.” Not only that, with Petraeus, the tactics used, down to where / how troops are deployed, have changed.

In science & social science, unless you can isolate your variables, you cannot definitely say what caused the dependent variable to occur. We have too many changes in Iraq to plausibly argue what the full cause of reduced violence has been.

In addition, Obama makes the better observation that even with the reduction of violence, maintaining troop levels in Iraq is extremely costly in dollar terms & military preparedness terms to the US, and the surge has not succeeded in one of its major goals – providing sufficient political space so that US troops could come home more rapidly.

My weekend with the boys

My wife had a conference this weekend, leaving me and the boys alone. Here is a brief photo collage of our weekend, including a bit of hiking, tree climbing and the boys' first attempt at fishing (Nolan is really good at casting).

Here we go:


An old trail at a local park.


Nolan hiking.


Stewart (bottom of stairs) and Nolan climbing stairs..


Nolan climbing a tree.


Fishing.

Rider Down!

So the colleague referred to in the previous post took a tumble on the trail yesterday. Bike is ok; his elbow is broken. He doesn't know how severe it is yet, but it is definitely broken.

I was riding behind him when it happened. I know it wasn't my fault, but I feel really guilty nonetheless given that I have encouraged his cycling, showed him the route, and was with him. As his wife was at work, my wife I took him to the hospital (and I had lunch with him afterwards).

The non-cycling related component of the blog: as we were walking to his apartment after the accident (we walked about 1.5 miles back to his place), we were discussing the potential expense of the accident as his new work insurance hasn't kicked in, and he only has catastrophic coverage. It is really depressing to me that we were making decisions on whether or not to go to the doctor at least in part based on the cost associated with it. This whole thing will probably end up costing him several thousand dollars even with his catastrophic policy. Of course, for some, the temptation is to ignore the bill from the ER. That drives up the cost for others, which leads more folks down the path of wanting to not pay their bill, and so on. It really just sucks.

Proselytizing

So I have a new coworker who asked my help in picking out a bike and in finding the best route to work.

Obstacle one was that with the model year changeover, the bike shop was out of the bike he really wanted – the base Kona Dew. He stepped up to the Kona Dew Deluxe. I have to say, I really like the Dews, in spite of the silly name. The Deluxe really is a nice commuting bike; another friend bought the base Dew and is really happy with it as well.

Anyway, I have met him to ride in to work a few days now, and must say what a pleasure it is to see someone else joining the ranks of bicycle commuters.

Even better is that on the way to work, we have a choice of two routes: a shorter one that includes a relatively short but very steep climb, and a longer less steep route. First day up the shorter route, he had to walk up towards the end. Same yesterday (I wasn’t with him then). Today, he rode all the way up. Though it seems strange, seeing him conquer the obstacle made me quite happy for him and, for that matter, makes me hope he really sticks with it for a while.

Anyway, it is nice to seem someone else joining the bicycle ranks & getting started bicycle commuting.

Musing on Iran

So Iran is testing missiles capable of reaching Israel (though they have doctored photos). Of course, both McCain and Obama have criticized Iran for doing so, as has the US government, though Obama did reiterate the need for diplomacy. This incident is only one of many that have made the Iran / US relationship difficult of late. Not only does the US still suspect Iran of having a nuclear weapons program (despite last fall’s NIE), but now Israel has carried out a military exercise that could be a demonstration that it could hit Iran. All sides seemed to be engaged in an effort to prove to the others that they will not back down in the face of threats. Of course, not backing down in the face of threats is, itself, seen as threatening, necessitating more threats. The US believes Iran is threatening because of actions like the missile test and the lack of disclosure on missile test, so we get tough-sounding rhetoric from Bush & Cheney to go with clandestine military action. Israel announces that it will not accept a nuclear Iran, and demonstrates its military prowess. Then we have Iran testing long-range missiles and noting that they have military abilities of their own.

What is missing in all of this saber rattling is any one side carrying out policy based on the notion that if I am threatened by the other side, then they may also be threatened by me. Yes, the US seems threatened by some of the rhetoric and actions out of Iran. Yes, Iran has the capacity to harm Israel. But the US and Israel also have the capacity to harm Iran and may already be doing so. How do we get countries to step back from the brink of this security dilemma? All this posturing reminds one of a playground brawl where no party to the dispute was willing to back down.

Sadly, if Steve Clemons’ observations from last summer, and Seymour Hersh’s recent revelations prove true, the US may be engaged in another war by December. Why? Because they won’t respond to our threats the way we would like, and we won’t respond the way they would like. And failure to respond to threats with threats is weak. Why can’t we all just take a deep breath and step back for a moment?