Reason Magazine - Staff > Matt Welch > Hit & Run Posts

Attn: SoCal Reasonoids -- Last Chance to Catch the Myth of a Maverick Mini-Tour!

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:14:00 EDT

I'll be talking about McCain: The Myth of a Maverick tonight at 7 p.m., in the Mark Taper auditorium of L.A.'s beautiful downtown Central Library, as part of Zocalo L.A.'s "Deconstructing McCain." Yer address and map: 630 W. 5th St. Come out and heckle!

Question Time With the Republican President Who Will Appoint Democrats and Reject the Unitary Executive

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:58:00 EDT

John McCain gave an interesting speech this morning dreaming out loud what the world will look like in January 2013, after the first four years of his administration. The headlines from it will mostly (and inacurrately) be about "Troops Home From Iraq by 2013: McCain," on which more from me here, but there are some more concrete, semi-radical promises of interest in the speech. For instance:

I will ask Democrats to serve in my administration. My administration will set a new standard for transparency and accountability. I will hold weekly press conferences. I will regularly brief the American people on the progress our policies have made and the setbacks we have encountered. When we make errors, I will confess them readily, and explain what we intend to do to correct them. I will ask Congress to grant me the privilege of coming before both houses to take questions, and address criticism, much the same as the Prime Minister of Great Britain appears regularly before the House of Commons.

Wowza! While I am a huge fan of Question Time With the Redcoats, I would worry somewhat that the Rolling Fireside Chat Revue would place even more "bull" in the Bully Pulpit, aggrandizing an already inflated office in which (as Gene Healy taught us in this month's cover story) presidents before Woodrow Wilson thought it a bit too presumptuous to deliver the State of the Union in person.

More from McCain today, on that question of executive power:

The powers of the presidency are rightly checked by the other branches of government, and I will not attempt to acquire powers our founders saw fit to grant Congress. I will exercise my veto if I believe legislation passed by Congress is not in the nation's best interests, but I will not subvert the purpose of legislation I have signed by making statements that indicate I will enforce only the parts of it I like.

Besides being a direct (and welcome) rebuke to George W. Bush and the Unitary Executive theory, this also somewhat contradicts McCain's long track record of supporting a line-item veto, which the Supreme Court ruled in 1998 gave the executive branch powers our founders did not see fit to include in the Constitution. And more relevantly, it would seem to be in contradiction of McCain's own longstanding belief that presidents have too little power vis-a-vis Congress in the planning of foreign policy and the waging of war. Here are some of his thoughts on that subject, from his 2002 political memoir Worth the Fighting For:

My disdain of congressional interference in the conduct of the war in Vietnam made all the stronger my natural antipathy to the notion of 535 self-styled secretaries of defense second-guessing and hamstringing the president's authority in national security matters.
*
At timies, my despair [about Bill Clinton's feckless foreign policy], and the disdain it provoked, caused me to doubt principles I had held for a lifetime about the president's preeminence over Congress in the conduct of foreign policy and the imperative that American power never retreat in response to an inferior adversary's provocation.
*
On October 14, 1993, eleven days after the ambush of our rangers in Mogadishu, I offered an amendment on the Senate floor restricting funds for American forces in Somalia to the purpose of their "prompt and orderly withdrawal." [...] [I]t was an encroachment on presidential authorrity and a retreat in the face of aggression from an inferior foe that I would never have contemplated in the past. [...] In hindsight, I wish I had not undertaken so drastic a step.
*
[Theodore Roosevelt] invented the modern presidency by liberally interpreting the constitutional authority of the office to redress the imbalance of power between the executive and legislative branches that had tilted decisively toward Congress in the half century since the Civil War.

McCain ain't no John Yoo, but he agrees with Dick Cheney that the War Powers Act is unconstitutional, and he won't lightly brook any shackles on his ability to move troops hither and yon.

Oh yeah: Here's McCain's terrible 2013 ad:

Here's a better version:

The Battle of Minneapolis?

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Mon, 12 May 2008 10:02:00 EDT

L.A. Times political blogger Andrew Malcolm, one of the most active Ron Paul-watchers in the EmmEssEmm, sees a quiet revolution brewing on John McCain's libertarian flank:

[Q]uietly, largely under the radar of most people, the forces of Rep. Ron Paul have been organizing across the country to stage an embarrassing public revolt against Sen. John McCain when Republicans gather for their national convention in St. Paul at the beginning of September. [...]
The last three months Paul's forces [...] [have] been fighting a series of guerrilla battles with party establishment officials at county and state conventions from Washington and Missouri to Maine and Mississippi. Their goal: to take control of local committees, boost their delegate totals and influence platform debates. [...]
They hope to demonstrate their disagreements with McCain vocally at the convention through platform fights and an attempt to get Paul a prominent speaking slot. Paul, who's running unopposed in his home Texas district for an 11th House term, still has some $5 million in war funds and has instructed his followers that their struggle is not about a single election, but a longterm revolution for control of the Republican Party.

Whole thing here. McCain jokes here that he hopes his opponent come Novemeber is the good Dr. Congressman. Brian Doherty's "Scenes from the Ron Paul Revolution" here.

Insert Cock Joke Here

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Fri, 09 May 2008 20:09:00 EDT

In the same week that the city of Los Angeles criminalized home remodeling over a certain size, dreary Councilwoman Janice Hahn is trying to see to it that homeowners only get one cock per walk:

Under her proposal, residents would need a permit to keep one rooster, and people who wanted to keep up to three would need to seek special permission from the city.

Speaking of "affordable housing" illiteracy, this L.A. Times story on Washington's latest subprime bailout bill contains a gem of a quote from Republican Congressperson Ginny Brown-Waite of Florida:

No one wins when a house in the neighborhood is foreclosed. Absolutely no one, because it brings down the value of those properties.

Ron Paul Un-endorses White Supremacist

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Thu, 08 May 2008 13:57:00 EDT

Bill Johnson, who is running for Superior Court judge in Los Angeles (with the help of campaign manager Holly Clearman, who is a California coordinator for Paul's presidential campaign), was the author of the 1980s Pace Amendment to the Constitution, which read in part:

No person shall be a citizen of the United States unless he is a non-Hispanic white of the European race, in whom there is no ascertainable trace of Negro blood, nor more than one-eighth Mongolian, Asian, Asia Minor, Middle Eastern, Semitic, Near Eastern, American Indian, Malay or other non-European or non-white blood, provided that Hispanic whites, defined as anyone with an Hispanic ancestor, may be citizens if, in addition to meeting the aforesaid ascertainable trace and percentage tests, they are in appearance indistinguishable from Americans whose ancestral home is in the British Isles or Northwestern Europe. Only citizens shall have the right and privilege to reside permanently in the United States.

"Thought-tormented Ron Paul fan" Tim Cavanaugh extracts a statement from Paul chief of staff Tom Lizardo:

Over the past several weeks, I have also been involved in assisting Dr Paul with the consideration of candidates who are seeking his endorsement for their campaigns. We have gone through the process of setting up a method by which candidates are to be considered for such endorsements. During that period, we have also received and reviewed requests from dozens of candidates.
Although Bill Johnson's name ended up on the endorsement list, he did not go through this process. In light of this fact, and in light of the revelations regarding his past statements and associations, Dr Paul has retracted the endorsement and hopes that, in the future, the process that has been put into place will mitigate the likelihood of similar errors.

Cavanaugh spars with angry Paul supporters here; Paul supporters argue amongst themselves here; other coverage of Johnson by the Metropolitan News-Enterprise and the L.A. Times' Opinion L.A. blog.

Dave Weigel has been all over the ongoing Ron Paul Republicans story, including a forthcoming column in the July issue.

Why Does Aspirin (and Hillary Clinton Supporters) Work?

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Thu, 08 May 2008 12:19:00 EDT

Hillary Clinton is well on her way to becoming the most reviled politician in the country. Not because she's resisting establishmentarian calls to step aside and let Prince Obama stride toward coronation − hell, I'd keep competing too, if I was that close to the mechanical rabbit. No, it's more that she will leave no faux-populist-bullshit-hardhat-Scranton-antitrade-what's-an-economist-Pabst-in-my-lunchbucket-Obama=Jesse stone unturned in her (and her husband's) quest to debase each and every molecule in their bodies, and snuff out every last positive memory we might have had of the way the federal government managed its affairs in the 1990s (when we, meaning me, never really liked her to begin with, and never voted for her husband).

The latest from Hitlery:

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."
"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

Yes, there is. When mincing little twerps like Paul Begala posit this rancid crew of Beltway power-mongers as the too-legit-to-quit anti-"egghead" faction representing the vast non-latte-drinking values of Real America, it's almost enough to make a guy pine for the authenticity of John Edwards.

I sincerely hope Hillary takes it all the way to the convention, even if that means I won't be able to watch cable TV for a few months. Few prospects would delight me more than seeing the Clintons stand up on a national stage in front of the political party they've long dominated and then get showered with richly deserved boos.

In Soviet Los Angeles, Housing Affordables You!

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:19:00 EDT

When I used to write editorials for the L.A. Times about the city's buttinskyite approach to property rights in the name of preserving "affordable housing," I went to extraordinary lengths to ask each and every relevant local official and activist I met the same question: How many affordable housing units -- however you care to define the term -- exist right now?

The answer was as you'd expect: They really, truly, have no idea; not even when you break it down into categories like rental units. No one keeps track of the numbers. Still! Must do something!

This week, by unanimous votes, we get the L.A. City Council's solution to the affordable housing crisis: Prevent owners of fleabag residency hotels from upgrading their properties into higher-priced condos and lofts; and prohibit home-owners from increasing the size of their houses to any more than one-half the size of their property. After all, if owners are free to buy, sell, and expand on their properties as they see fit, then how in the heck will we get more housing stock built in Los Angeles?

The War-Spending Debate You Won't Hear This Week

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Wed, 07 May 2008 15:44:00 EDT

The Iraq War is being paid for via the most fiscally irresponsible method in modern American history -- a series of "emergency" supplemental bills, outside the normal vetting of the budgeting process, several years after any of the costs could at all be described as being unplanned "emergencies." You knew all this, because you read Veronique de Rugy's groundbreaking May cover story about how congressional Republicans ripped the lid off of all previous restraints on a system that is as easy to abuse as the phrase "support our troops."

This week we are experiencing the ugly results -- Democrats are cramming into the latest $195 billion emergency supplemental bill $11 billion in unemployment benefits, among other non-defense items. That likely pales in comparison to the cost of unvetted weaponry goodies that the Department of Defense is shoving into the package; meanwhile, President Bush has also thrown in extraneous crap, such as $770 million for international food aid.

If the federal government was playing by rules that were in effect as recently as 2000, emergency expenditures would mostly be offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget, war funding would have been enveloped into the normal defense-budgeting process by no later than 2005, and -- this bit is underappreciated -- we might actually know the real-world price tag of the war, because budgeteers would have made at least a half-assed attempt at filing war-related expenditures under the same category, instead of willfully blurring the lines.

Instead of any of that, politicians this week, including the major-party presidential candidates, will argue about withdrawal timetables that'll never become law, then eventually agree to spend another couple hundred billion dollars without anything resembling oversight or basic fiduciary responsibility. And if Democrats aren't making even the slightest noises about reforming this system now, it's hard to imagine them suddenly getting religion only after increasing their majorities in Congress and re-taking the White House.

Ancient Aztec Ritual Harshed by Narcs

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Tue, 06 May 2008 17:46:00 EDT

Huge drug bust at San Diego State -- a six-month undercover DEA investigation into seven fraternity houses nets 96 arrests (75 of them students), plus "4 pounds of cocaine, 50 pounds of marijuana, 48 hydroponic marijuana plants, 350 ecstasy pills, psilocybin (mushrooms), 30 vials of hash oil, methamphetamine, various illicit prescription drugs, one shotgun, three semi-automatic pistols, three brass knuckles and $60,000 in cash."

This DEA quote caught my eye:

"Our children are our biggest asset and absent a safe, drug-free learning environment, their chances of succeeding are greatly diminished," said Ralph W. Partridge, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration in San Diego. "The university police and SDSU administration are to be commended for their swift actions in confronting the drug use problem on campus."

Funny, I thought that cheap access to frat-boy drugs were the whole point of SDSU.... At any rate, if having illegal narcotics in your post-high school learning environment "greatly diminishe[s]" your chances at success, then California has been doomed to failure since what, 1959? Somehow the state, and its college graduates, manage to muddle through.

More seriously, I always wonder what happens to these guys who are arrested in their early 20s for meeting a sliver of the insatiable undergraduate demand for pot-smoking. I was never any dealer, nor much of a user, but I've known and worked with quite a few perfectly successful people who dealt drugs in college. I have also known a couple who were unlucky (and/or careless) enough to get carted off to jail, but those guys I lost track of. (Though through the magic of Google I see one former mushroom-dealing colleague running a successful business in Texas, so hopefully it all turned out well.)

So I leave the question open to the floor: What ever happened to your drug dealing friend or aquaintance who got arrested in or around college? And by what year in our glorious future will the act of purchasing marijuana be a perfectly legal transaction between consenting adults?

Out of the Cellar on WBAL

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:33:00 EDT

Attn. Bal'moreans: I'll be on Ron Smith's terrific 1090-AM radio show at ~~12:45~~ 3:45* Inner Harbor time, to talk about Rat City.

* sorry about that.

Beet on the Brat

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:06:00 EDT

The good news? A boneheaded proposal in the lousy $300 billion-plus farm bill seems to be holding up its passage. The bad news? We live in a country where anyone within barfing distance of power thinks that what the U.S. sugar industry needs is more protection from the federal government. From the Wall Street Journal:

A proposal to sweeten government support for American sugar producers is emerging as a major sticking point between Congress and the White House in final negotiations on the farm bill.
The initiative is a priority for House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, a Democrat whose rural Minnesota district is among the nation's top producers of sugar beets. [...]
Rep. Peterson is proposing to increase what sugar farmers can borrow from the government, an amount that hasn't been raised in 20 years. He wants to lock in allotments for domestic producers at about 85% of the U.S. market.
He also proposes a mandate that sugar imports be used for ethanol production. The provision would shield the domestic industry from foreign competition, which has increased after a trade agreement with Mexico and several Central American countries. [...]
The sugar industry is lobbying strongly for Rep. Peterson's proposals. "It's been our No. 1 priority," said Phillip Hayes, a spokesman for the American Sugar Alliance, which represents domestic producers, processors and refiners. "We have an administration that seems more interested in supporting foreign producers, than producers right here in America."

Read reason's six great reasons to unilaterally dismantle all U.S. farm subsidies here.

UPDATE: Did you need a reason to hate Hillary Clinton more?

Hillary Clinton today said that Sen. John McCain was wrong to say yesterday that he would veto the 2008 farm bill as President, noting it would provide American family farms with priorities like permanent disaster relief, country of origin labeling, renewable energy advances and rural development broadband deployment. [...]
"Rural America is struggling in the face of skyrocketing energy prices, an economic downturn and rising food prices," Clinton said. "Saying no to the farm bill would be saying no to rural America." [...]
"This Farm Bill needs to move and the president needs to get out of the way so that we can start taking care of rural America."

Hmmm. What Changed??

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:31:00 EDT

W magazine writes about Arianna Huffington:

It wasn't that long ago that Huffington was variously dismissed as a social climber, "intellectual lap dancer" and political opportunist

Next up: W reveals how it wasn't that long ago that David Brock was dismissed as a partisan hack!

Bonus Arianna-ana: 1) Time's classic mid-'90s Margaret Carlson piece, "Should the Huffingtons Be Stopped?" 2) Watch ex-hubbie Michael call B.S. on her post-facto opposition to Proposition 187. 3) Jacob Sullum tells you what you really need to know about La Huffington's 2003 anti-SUV ads.

Attn: SoCal Reasonoids -- McCainapalooza Tour!

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Fri, 02 May 2008 10:19:00 EDT

This Sunday, May 4, I will be at the Palm Springs Book Festival, hawking McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, and appearing on two panel discussions: 1) "The Presidential Race," at 1:00 p.m., featuring Hugh "A Mormon in the White House?" Hewitt, Robert "The Pornography of Power" Scheer, Greg "Armed Madhouse" Palast, and John "Pure Goldwater" Dean. And 2) "American Imperialism and its Consequences," at 4:30 p.m., with Chalmers "Nemesis" Johnson. Between those sessions there will be an interesting-sounding discussion on Barry Goldwater.

Can't make it to the land of shag carpets and fabulous waiters? There will be other opportunities to hurl pricey foodstuffs in my general direction. On Saturday, May 10, I'll be speaking at a meeting of the Rancho Palos Verdes Democrats (both of them?), details to come. On Wednesday, May 14 at 7:00 p.m., I'm apparently delivering a lecture at the Pasadena Public Library.

And on Thursday, May 15 at 7:00 p.m. comes the big enchilada -- "Deconstructing McCain," a Zocalo L.A. event at the gorgeous Los Angeles Central Library.

Each and every one of thse will feature plenty of time for cross-examination, semi-hostile discussion, and book signing. Most will involve (please Jeebus) some post-game libations.

Speaking of John Dean, he's got a new piece out today about the testy relationship between McCain and the maverick senator he replaced, Barry Goldwater; something you can basically read about in our two books, and nowhere else. Here's an excerpt:

Although Goldwater initially supported McCain's run for the Senate, Goldwater knew an opportunist when he saw one, and did not like any of them. We chose not to dwell on the McCain/Goldwater relationship in Pure Goldwater, but we did report how, after assisting McCain win his Senate seat, Goldwater was forced to pull McCain up short for using his good name for fundraising, when McCain had tarnished his own name because of his involvement with the Keating Five. We also included correspondence to shows that McCain is not very good at keeping his word.
To know Goldwater -- as we believe those who read his unpublished private journal will -- is to understand how different these men are, and to see that McCain is cut from very different cloth than Goldwater. Goldwater considered public service a high calling, not an ego trip or power play. McCain was fortunate that Goldwater never publicly exposed him, but Goldwater was too good a Republican to do that and he thought too highly of McCain's father to sink his successor in the Senate.
Had Goldwater publicized what I believe to be his true feelings about John McCain, I doubt McCain would be the presumptive nominee of the GOP in 2008. Goldwater's political perceptions of others have proven extraordinarily prescient, so his reaction toward McCain is telling.

Look for Daniel McCarthy's review of Pure Goldwater in our June issue. And check out Nick Gillespie's 2006 review of Dean's Conservatives Without Conscience.

Fiscal Discipline: Use Only in Case of Surplus

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Thu, 01 May 2008 19:33:00 EDT

Some surprisingly straight campaign talk from The Associated Press:

Republican John McCain is making promises that would cost billions of taxpayer dollars, yet he is vague about how he would pay for them. [...]
McCain has pledged to balance the federal budget, although he has backed off an earlier promise to do so in his first term and now says he would do it within eight years. [...]
[He] proposed a new mortgage refinancing program for struggling homeowners that could cost the government $3 billion to $10 billion. He proposed to suspend federal gas taxes for the summer months at a cost of $8 billion to $10 billion.
And McCain has several proposals whose costs are unknown, such as his pledge to give all veterans a plastic card to get medical treatment anywhere they choose, a new student loan program and tax write-offs for companies that provide Internet service to rural areas.
How would he pay for it? New user fees could pay for the gas-tax holiday, McCain adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin said. [...]
[F]or all the numbers he has provided, McCain has been reluctant to say exactly which programs he would cut.

Whole thing, with plenty more details, here. I might also add that trillion-dollar wars tend to be expensive, as do plans to boost the standing military by 150,000 troops, etc.

It is perhaps noteworthy to point out that this is almost precisely the opposite of John McCain's tax/budget philosophy of 2000, when he was a big (and convincing!) budget hawk and debt-payer-downer. Here he is in his 2002 memoir Worth the Fighting For, talking about his differences with George W. Bush on that score:

He and I disagreed on tax policy. My position invited greater hostility from conservatives in the party and in the press than my support for campaign finance ever had. Republican primaries had long featured a bidding war to see which candidate could promise the biggest tax cut. I chose to offer the smallest, targeted to middle- and lower-income families, so that we could use most of the budget surplus to pay off the national debt, build our defenses, and begin to pay the transition costs of reforming Social Security and Medicare for the sake of future American generations.
Lest anyone think my positions were brave, if self-defeating, honesty obliges me to note that every poll my campaign conducted (and we took as many as we could afford) found greater support for paying down the debt than cutting taxes for upper-bracket incomes, among Republican voters as well as Democrats and independents. [...] You will have to trust me that I held and expressed these views before I had survey research proving their popularity.

Readers of this website might also find of interest the selection immediately preceding the passage above:

I welcomed a greater, if still limited, role for government in national problems, anathema to the "leave us alone" libertarian philosophy that dominated Republican debates in the 1990s. So did George W. Bush, I must add, who challenged libertarian orthodoxy with his appeal for a "compassionate conservatism." He based much of his more activist government philosophy in an expanded role for the federal government in education policy and in his support for contributions that small, faith-based organizations could make to the solution of social problems. I gave more attention to national service and to a bigger role for government as a restraining force on selfish interests that undermined national unity. But his positions did him much credit, as well they should have, and they do him much credit now as he uses his presidency to advance them.

Just Sue Ellen Stories

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Thu, 01 May 2008 09:25:00 EDT

"How 'Dallas' Won the Cold War," the Nick Gillespie/me co-production in this weekend's Washington Post, drew some interesting testimonial responses. A sampling:

In 1987 [...] I visited Bukhara in Uzbekistan. At one point, we were invited into the living area behind a shop, where the owner took out a video cassette and played it for us. It was a grainy episode of "Dallas," dubbed in Finnish. (We learned later that Estonians would record the Finnish version of "Dallas"--and other Western TV shows also--off of Helsinki TV, easily seen Tallinn. These would then circulate throughout the USSR.) Our host grilled us intensely about each of the appliances in Miss Ellie's kitchen. Thus did visions of Southfork reach even unto Central Asia.
*
In the summer of 1983 I was traveling through Europe with my Brother. One of the countries we visited was Romania. I recall meeting [a] 20-30 year old Romanian male. His first question to me was "Who shot JR"? I was surprised to hear such a question. He said he watched the series however [the] episodes they see were a few seasons behind. It was unfortunate for I could not answer his question.
*
I was there when Dallas won the Cold War, with an American tour group, just after Dallas started running. Wherever we went--Moscow, St Petersburg, Odessa, Kiev, everywhere!--the touring day could not begin till after the morning episode was over, since neither the driver nor guide would stir till then. Same thing for the late-afternoon epidsode, the tour had to end before it began. And it was not only our driver and guide--auto and pedestran traffic just disappeared from the streets during those two hours. I think I remember being told it was Boris Yeltsin's party that sponsored the twice-a-day showing ... and ran political messages in the commercial breaks since they knew everyone in the, then, USSR, would be watching.
*
Do you remember a news story following the opening of Albania? Boat people from Albania started coming across to Italy and landing on the beaches in droves, causing a headache for the Italian police. One policeman reported that when he approached a group of Albanian boat people, they said, "Is this Dallas?"

*
In the late 80s, probably 1987, I was in Inverness, Scotland. My then wife and I went out to a pub. We walked in and saw the entire bar looking in our direction and up to a TV that was placed above the door. There was dead silence except for the American accents on the television. As we proceeded into the place and bellied up to the bar, we turned to look and on the screen was Dallas. The entire place was mesmerized.
*
It's probably the most important show ever, as ridiculous as that might sound. Its impact on the rest of the world was even more profound than its impact in the U.S.
I would propose that Baywatch continued the Dallas phenomenon in the late 80s and 90s. To people outside the U.S., and particularly in Germany, Baywatch symbolized the myth of California: A place to live freely and enjoy the abundance of the earth. Must have been very attractive to the East Germans who could get the program and wanted very much to travel, and to the West Germans who were sick of the whole big government, nanny state thing. When the Wall came down in 1989, David Hasselhoff (brilliantly) flew to Berlin right away to give a "Freedom" concert at the Brandenburger Tor.

Over in the comments at my personal blog, one of my favorite film writers, David Ehrenstein, adds:

The impact of Dallas cannot be underestimated. At heart it was little more than a louche retread of Sirk's Written on the Wind and Stevens' Giant but with the unabashed vulgarity of Russ Meyer thrown in for good measure.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder was obsessed with the show, assigning two of his most valuable boyfriends (Udo Kier and Raul Gimenez) all-important taping duties. He didn't want to miss a nanosecond. Needless to say Berlin Alexanderplatz is rather different in overall presentation. But its dark heart is much the same.

At Commentary magazine, Abe Greenwald searches for the new diverting Dallas in our modern twilight struggle, and comes up with ... Hillary vs. Obama! Still, my favorite response was probably this:

Good article, I enjoyed it but there is one failing. To wit: Contrary to popular belief, this is no evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald shot/killed JFK.

Some related nuggets from the reason vault: The Second Romanian Revolution Will Be Televised, and Charles Paul Freund's classic In Praise of Vulgarity.

Bissinger's Buzz-Kill

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:10:00 EDT

Wow. I didn't think there was any sports-twit more irritating than Bob Costas, but along comes non-astronaut auteur Buzz Bissinger, on Bob Costas' show last night, blowing a gatekeeper-gasket at the very existence of unwashed, non-jocksniffing bloggers like Deadspin's Will Leitch (who is actually a very good writer in addition to running one of the most successful sports blogs on the planet). First segment here; then watch the mid-life crisis unfold in real time:

Leitch reacts here; world piles on. As always, few things are more hilarious than watching the defenders of a deeply degraded form (newspaper sportswriting? Are you kidding me?) bust veins about modernity they understand not, while the kids laugh and laugh....

I'd never really heard of Bissinger (though he's the author of the famous Friday Night Lights), until I picked up a copy of the International Herald Tribune on vacation a couple weeks back and beheld the single most rancid column you will probably ever read about the Olympic Games. Sample:

There is only one way left to improve the Olympics: to permanently end them.
True, in the world of sports, any plan that puts morality over money is unlikely to happen. Commissions are formed only once the problem is over (see Major League Baseball) and the cheaters will always find another angle -- you can bet that some lab somewhere is working on the design of a new steroid undetectable to testing (see every professional sport and many "amateur" ones). The loftier the rose-colored rhetoric, which in the Olympics has become an Olympian growth industry, the worse the underlying stink. And this is an institution that is rotted in so many different ways.

Bissinger then goes on to list every (unrelated) bad thing that's happened at Olympiads over the past 40 years, and concludes:

Would some athletes become innocent victims with the loss of the Olympics? Yes. But it would be nothing close to the number of innocent victims killed in Darfur with Chinese-supplied weapons, or in Iraq during the American occupation.

Sounds like someone forgot to take his performance-enhancing sedatives!

Unionizing the Village in Order to Democrat it

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:53:00 EDT

The Washington Post's resident Labor toady, Harold Meyerson, is refreshingly direct today about our coming union/Democrat world:

[H]ow, Democrats wonder, can they secure the white working-class vote?
Well, they could start by re-unionizing it.
[bunch of numbers showing unionized whites voting Democrat, unlike their non-unionized co-racialists]
What do unions do that has such an impact? Chiefly, they remind their members what's at stake.

That's the ticket! Meyerson goes on to let slip what a Democratic-run Washington would do within the first 100 minutes of a Hillbarry Clinbama presidency:

Today, the party is united behind the Employee Free Choice Act, which, by enabling workers to join unions again without fear of being fired, would also greatly help Democratic prospects at the polls.

What is the Employee Free Choice Act, a.k.a. "card check"? Get ready to read all about it in the June issue of reason, care of David Weigel! In other words, subscribe today, for less than 20 bones a year.

If You Must Have a Failing Organ, Don't Go Taking Legal Pain Medication!

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 15:49:00 EDT

At least not the kind that gives you the munchies. If you do, they'll just let you die:

SEATTLE - Timothy Garon's face and arms are hauntingly skeletal, but the fluid building up in his abdomen makes the 56-year-old musician look eight months pregnant.
His liver, ravaged by hepatitis C, is failing. Without a new one, his doctors tell him, he will be dead in days.
But Garon has been refused a spot on the transplant list, largely because he has used marijuana, even though it was legally approved for medical reasons. [...]
With the scarcity of donated organs, transplant committees like the one at the University of Washington Medical Center use tough standards, including whether the candidate has other serious health problems or is likely to drink or do drugs.

Whole outrage here; thanks to commenter "sage" for the tip. Drew Carey explains the benefits of a liberalized organ market here.

Radicals for Interventionism

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Fareed Zakaria, an intelligent fellow, lets hyperbole get the best of him in the Washington Post, in a discussion about John McCain's big foreign policy speech last month:

It contained within it the most radical idea put forward by a major candidate for the presidency in 25 years.... [T]hat the United States expel Russia from the G8, the group of advanced industrial countries.

Why is this hyperbole? Because kicking the Russkies out of an international talking club is not remotely as radical or consequential as, say, articulating a doctrine for pre-emptive war across multiple fronts several years before it occurred to George W. Bush.

Zakaria goes on to make a good point and an arguable point, respectively:

We have spent months debating Barack Obama's suggestion that he might, under some circumstances, meet with Iranians and Venezuelans. It is a sign of what is wrong with the foreign-policy debate that this idea is treated as a revolution in U.S. policy while McCain's proposal has barely registered. What McCain has announced is momentous--that the United States should adopt a policy of active exclusion and hostility toward two major global powers. It would reverse a decades-old bipartisan American policy of integrating these two countries into the global order, a policy that began under Richard Nixon (with Beijing) and continued under Ronald Reagan (with Moscow). It is a policy that would alienate many countries in Europe and Asia who would see it as an attempt by Washington to begin a new cold war.

Why, this almost seems like a bracing slap across the kisser of a man who foreign-policy chin-strokers like Zakaria usually adore! Until you read the next paragraph:

I write this with sadness because I greatly admire John McCain, a man of intelligence, honor and enormous personal and political courage. I also agree with much of what else he said in that speech in Los Angeles. But in recent years, McCain has turned into a foreign-policy schizophrenic, alternating between neoconservative posturing and realist common sense. His speech reads like it was written by two very different people, each one given an allotment of a few paragraphs on every topic.

Here's a new experiment for our journalistic pals: Try to write a piece about John McCain as if you didn't greatly admire him, and instead had only to go from his actual words, votes and initiatives. (In a few months, we'll repeat the exercise with Barack Obama.) One probable result: There would be much less of this alleged neoconservative/realist "schizophrenia," since there ain't been much of anything "realist" about McCain's foreign policy in over a decade. (And indeed, Zakaria provides zero evidence of "realism" from McCain's speech.) It's funny; "neocon" has become so debased and misused a term, that I bet there are many people who just find it impossible to believe that it can very accurately apply to someone they actually admire.

My reaction to the first wave of silly reaction to McCain's foreign policy speech here.

We Get Letters....

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:14:00 EDT

From an R.G. Bethany, subject line of "Peace":

The Movie "HAIR" is Psychological Anti-Warfare at its finest. Here's how it works. Two hours of very exciting music and dance. Nothing bad is said or implied. Everything is happy. You will notice alot of movement in every scene. Several things are always moving. You are being conditioned. Knowing this does not matter. Then the series of scenes at the end and...BAM. It hits you hard. Remember this is Psychological Anti-Warfare.

Me, I'm even more shocked that the movie came out in 1979. After, for example, the first season of Dallas....

Mi Visa Es Su Visa

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 09:48:00 EDT

Travel abroad much? Get ready to leave your fingerprints all over the world:

The U.S. government today will order commercial airlines and cruise lines to prepare to collect digital fingerprints of all foreigners before they depart the country under a security initiative that the industry has condemned as costly and burdensome. [...]
"If we don't have US-VISIT air exit by this time next year, it will only be because the airline industry killed it," [Homeland Security Secretary Michael] Chertoff said recently. "We have to decide who is going to win this fight. Is it going to be the airline industry, or is it going to be the people who believe we should know who leaves the country by air?"

The exit fingerprints come on top of the new 10-finger entry prints being rolled out this year, which is estimated to expand the 90-million strong foreigner-fingerprint database by more than 20 million a year (the DHS says it will keep the prints on file for 75 years).

But wait, we're just talking about foreigners, right? Fat chance:

Other countries are also joining the biometric bandwagon. Japan last year began collecting some fingerprints when foreign visitors enter the country and the European Union is considering it. These countries are also talking about sharing these databases.

Already, more than 160,000 U.S. citizens have applied for newly required ID cards, featuring Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips, to travel to Western Hemisphere destinations that previously accepted common driver's licences. Hundreds of thousands of Americans who never needed passports before now have them.

As in all things immigrational and consular, there is no such thing as unilateral armament, though the U.S. does get to play harder ball with smaller countries due to its size and power. In the words of French Interior Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie, "We are open to some demands, but we want reciprocity." And since the U.S. just signed deals with the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovakia and Malta to get these formerly dodgy countries within shouting distance of the reciprocal "Visa Waiver" program in exchange for onerous security and privacy concessions that the existing Visa Waiver countries (like France) probably wouldn't accept, expect the EU to make more and more noise about how full biometric data collection for its Grand Canyon-visiting citizens amounts to the same as, well, a visa.

The upshot is that immigration restrictionists (particularly those motivated by security concerns) will continue getting what they want -- in this case, a trigger mechanism for hunting down furriners who overstay their visas, which is either the largest or second-largest category of illegal immigrants in the United States. The bad news is threefold: As Kerry Howley said yesterday, when restrictionists win, the economy loses. As James Bovard said in our February 2004 cover story, database management and point-of-entry security mandated by Washington can be an ugly thing.

And as I've been trying to say for years, whatever we impose on the world, the world will get around to imposing on us. It's getting increasingly hard to believe that there once was a time you could get a one-way stand-by plane ticket to Europe without ever attracting undue attention or entering a gargantuan database, and then slip entirely off the grid, ignoring whatever pointless and short-lasting visa (or spending) requirements they talked about in the Let's Go book. Are we much (or at all) safer after having traded that liberty in?

Breadless Circuses

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:10:00 EDT

Is there anything good that can come out of the sharp inflationary spike in the global price of basic food? Maybe, says the Washington Post's Jackson Diehl:

As prices for bread and rice soar, dictators are tottering.
Oddly, one of them is [Hugo] Chávez, who lost a constitutional referendum in December partly because of the combination of soaring food prices and shortages he has inflicted on Venezuela. Another is Robert Mugabe, who to his surprise lost a presidential election in Zimbabwe three weeks ago, though he has yet to admit it. According to the U.N. World Food Program, the government of North Korea faces another food crisis; bread prices explain in part why Pervez Musharraf lost control of Pakistan's government in February.
Then there is Egypt, where the link between food and freedom -- or the lack of it -- has never been clearer.

Whole thing, including intriguing stuff about Egypt's new "Facebook Party," here.

Then there's this:

Soaring food prices and global grain shortages are bringing new pressures on governments, food companies and consumers to relax their longstanding resistance to genetically engineered crops.
In Japan and South Korea, some manufacturers for the first time have begun buying genetically engineered corn for use in soft drinks, snacks and other foods. Until now, to avoid consumer backlash, the companies have paid extra to buy conventionally grown corn. But with prices having tripled in two years, it has become too expensive to be so finicky. [...]
Even in Europe, where opposition to what the Europeans call Frankenfoods has been fiercest, some prominent government officials and business executives are calling for faster approvals of imports of genetically modified crops.

And finally, negotiators on Capitol Hill and in the White House have decided, given this unbelievably strong sellers' market, that the U.S. doesn't need to add to its cajillion-dollar deficit and generalized moral depravity by throwing another $286 billion at American farm companies over the next 10 years. Just kidding!

You Must Not Think Bad Thoughts

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:09:00 EDT

Be careful what you look at, if you're sitting in a Maine public park. According to a bill that passed the Pine Tree State's House,

a person who, for the purpose of arousing or gratifying sexual desire, intentionally engages in visual surveillance, aided or unaided by mechanical or electronic equipment, of the uncovered breasts, buttocks, genitals, anus or pubic area of another person is guilty of visual sexual aggression regardless of where the surveillance occurs. Surveillance may occur either in a public or private place.

Read more about it over at Advice Goddess Amy Alkon's blog. While you're there, watch her accuse Rebecca Solnit of "grassy-knoll feminism."

To Catch a Theft Victim

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:48:00 EDT

File this one under "Well it certainly feels true":

Steve Steinberg refused to pay a parking ticket issued after his car had been stolen, so the Washington, DC Department of Motor Vehicles sent a collections agency after him. [...] After he reported the theft, Steinberg says, the DC police and DMV ticketed his car, towed it, then released it to the thief.
Despite having several opportunities to check the car's license plates, the only thing Steinberg got from the police was a $200 ticket for the parking violation the thief had committed. Steinberg sent letters to the police and DMV and informed them that his car had been stolen and he would not pay the ticket, so the DMV reported him to a collections agency.

Underlying story here.

I am quite confident that I will never be able to successfully satisfy the bureaucratic requirements for licensing my car at the DC DMV. Last time I braved the line I was told to come back only when I brought my Social Security card. Hasn't this nation gone paperless yet?

Politics Is Hell on the Homefront, Too

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 18:42:00 EDT

Though he wins re-election handily every six years, and his machine still effectively runs Arizona Republican politics, it is kind of funny how John McCain is despised, challenged and occasionally defeated (in minor elections) by activist Republicans in his home district, who dislike him because of immigration, abortion, and his temperament (not necessarily in that order). The latest, from an Arizona GOP insider:

John McCain's slate for important state convention delegates, was unable to muster the necessary votes to win in his own home district.
His list included three GOP precinct committeemen who had endorsed Democrat Janet Napolitano for governor and whose names appeared on the pro-abortion WISH List: Sharon Harper, Kahryn Nix and Brenda Sperduti. [...]
Along with the cookies, cupcakes and McCain lapel stickers, a "Recommended McCain Delegates to State Convention" list printed on McCain's letterhead was distributed to committeemen entering the meeting. Previously, letters were mailed and follow-up phone calls made, to ensure support for McCain's hand-picked slate.

RealClearPolitics on "McCain's Arizona Problem" here. Seeing Red AZ's litany of complaints here.