JustOneMinute

Birthers Versus True Believers

In the bitter Birthers versus Believers smackdown, the Mighty Kos has unveiled an opinion poll showing that 23% of respondents are still in the haze about whether Obama is a US citizen or not.  Unsurprisingly, Birthers break to the right and Believers shade left.

Believer Glenn Thrush, evidently troubled by the failure of the 'Birther' mockery to convert these heathens, now wants to hurry up and label them racist.  I'm sure some of them are, so let's smear them all!

Honorary birther Andy McArthy of NRO ponders the opacity of a President who promised transparency.

I expect to be back with more when time permits, but briefly, I am in the "Show Us The Certificate" camp - what's the mystery?

WILD A** GUESS DU JOUR:  This is from Mark Steyn:

Do I think he was born in Hawaii? Yes — if only because the alternative is way too audacious (to use an Obama-ism) to contemplate.

But do I think there's something on the long-form birth certificate he doesn't want us to see? Yes. That would seem entirely likely — and consistent with his modus operandi.

Let's think big (in a small-minded way) - suppose the original certifcate has Obama as "Barry", with attendant documentation formally changing his name to "Barack" when Obama was in his teens or twenties.  That would be a hard memory lapse to explain, and sort of mar the current version of his "Dreams From My Father" story.

Now They Are Irritating Me

Via Glenn we come to an analysis of the tax burden of the rich in the US.

Although philosophically I am on their side, this presentation irks me.

First, although their headline is "Tax Burden of Top 1% Now Exceeds That of Bottom 95%", the text deals with income taxes.  Hey, those lower earners pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, you know.

Secondly, there is no mention of any income-inequality effect in this bit of rhetoric:

Some in Washington say the tax system is still not progressive enough. However, the recent IRS data bolsters the findings of an OECD study released last year showing that the U.S.—not France or Sweden—has the most progressive income tax system among OECD nations. We rely more heavily on the top 10 percent of taxpayers than does any nation and our poor people have the lowest tax burden of those in any nation.

If the top earners in the US earn more on a pre-tax basis than their counterparts in France or Sweden (as every income-inequality survey indicates) we would expect them to pay more in taxes even if tax rates were identical in the three countries.  As a matter of simple arithmetic we might even find that high earners in the US pay more in total taxes even if tax rates are lower in the US.  That would hardly resolve the question of which country had the most progressive tax code.

Better arguments, please.

MORE: And better arguments would include noting that over a person's lifetime Social Security and Medicare are considered to be progressive, in the sense that lower earners get more than they paid for.  STILL MORE:  If, she says IF, you ever collect all of it!  OK, as to how much today's youngsters will actually get back on Social Security, who knows?  Probably less than the currently promised amount.

AIG - Where There Is Smoke, There May Be Fire (And There Ought To Be Sources)

The NY Times front-pages a thinly sourced story warning us that AIG may be a house of cards:

The dozens of insurance companies that make up the American International Group show signs of considerable weakness even after their corporate parent got the biggest bailout in history, a review of state regulatory filings shows.

Over time, the weaknesses could mean trouble for A.I.G.’s policyholders, and they raise difficult questions for regulators, who normally step in when an insurer gets into trouble. State commissioners are supposed to keep insurers from writing new policies if there is any doubt that they can cover their claims. But in A.I.G.’s case, regulators are eager for the insurers to keep writing new business, because they see it as the best hope of paying back taxpayers.

Let's start with a tedious "I told you so" moment - last March I noted that AIG had managed to lose plenty of money in their conventional lines of business, mainly by aggressively investing insurance premiums in mortgage backed securities.  Michael Lewis made a similar point more recently in Vanity Fair.

Secondly, although Mary William Walsh of the Times is reporting from one of the financial capitals of the explored universe her primary sources seem to be W. O. Myrick, a retired Louisiana insurance examiner, Thomas D. Gober, a former insurance examiner now in Mississipi, and Rob Schimek, the CFO of AIG.  That's it?  We can all hope that a front page story will shake lose a few more sources.

Subject to that caveat, the scary stuff is scary:

But state regulatory filings offer a different picture. They show that A.I.G.’s individual insurance companies have been doing an unusual volume of business with each other for many years — investing in each other’s stocks; borrowing from each other’s investment portfolios; and guaranteeing each other’s insurance policies, even when they have lacked the means to make good. Insurance examiners working for the states have occasionally flagged these activities, to little effect.

...

Nothing is wrong with spreading risks to other companies, a practice known as reinsurance, when it is carried out with unrelated, solvent companies. It can also be acceptable in small amounts between related companies. But A.I.G.’s companies have reinsured each other to such a large extent, experts say, that now billions of dollars worth of risks may have ended up at related companies that lack the means to cover them.

“An organization like this one relies on constant, ever-growing premium volume, so it can cover and pay for the deficits,” said W. O. Myrick, a retired chief insurance examiner for Louisiana.

If A.I.G.’s incoming premiums shrink, he warned, “the whole thing’s going to collapse in on itself.”

Ms. Walsh studiously avoided the use of the phrase "Ponzi scheme", so I will too.  However, let me ask a question - if a company is just too cool to examine, are they engaging in a Fonzi scheme? 

We are offered a couple of "No worries" quotes from insurance commissioners in Pennsylvania and New York, but where is the credibility?

Responsibility for A.I.G.’s 71 American insurance companies is spread among 19 state insurance commissions, which do not conduct examinations simultaneously.

As a result, Mr. Myrick said, a conglomerate like A.I.G. “can keep moving assets around to clean up one company” at a time, when examiners were looking. He said that it would take a coordinated, multistate examination of all the insurance companies to catch this.

And hints of a Fed-instigated cover-up:

But policyholder advocates said they feared state regulators were deferring to the wishes of the Fed and Treasury, to use the insurance operations to pay back the taxpayers.

“The insurance commissioners, for whatever reason, are letting them do this,” Mr. Myrick said. “I’d be jumping out of my shoes.”

I am keeping my shoes on for now, but let's hope truth is putting its boots on.

Nuke The Whales?

We should give this whale a pass.

Meanwhile, Back At The Wars...

The Times buried some good news on Iraq and Afghanistan back on A4 of the Thursday paper.

In Iraq, Defense Secretary Gates is optimistic about the troop withdrawal schedule; prominent righties are as well:

INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Wednesday that the United States might accelerate the withdrawal of its forces from Iraq even as fresh tension there underscored worries about instability after the American troops are gone.

Speaking with reporters after his latest visit to Baghdad, Mr. Gates said another brigade of about 5,000 troops could leave by the end of December on top of the two brigades, or 10,000 troops, now scheduled to pull out this year. That would still leave the bulk of American forces in Iraq until after January’s elections.

The upbeat assessment came as flash points around Iraq offered cautionary notes about the country’s progress toward self-sustained security. While Mr. Gates met with his commanders, Iraqi forces made a surprise raid on a camp of Iranian exiles previously under American protection. A dispute between Baghdad and Kurdish leaders is intensifying, and the Shiite-led government has been arresting several Sunni militia leaders allied with the United States.

Mr. Gates and other administration officials said such issues need to be addressed but did not cause them to rethink their current timetable for drawing down American forces. Instead, they expressed confidence that the month-old pullback from Iraqi cities had gone “better than expected,” as Mr. Gates put it, and indicated that, if anything, the American disengagement could proceed somewhat faster.

...

Some Iraq specialists in Washington said that the current tensions were worrisome but that they should not affect the first stage of American troop withdrawals.

“There’s no one more conservative about withdrawing troops than the Pentagon,” said Douglas Ollivant, a former Iraq policy official at the White House. “If the Pentagon thinks, and Odierno concurs, that it’s time to withdraw troops, that’s a sign that it really is O.K. to withdraw troops.”

Frederick W. Kagan, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who helped inspire President George W. Bush’s “surge” strategy, said Mr. Gates’s suggestion “doesn’t sound like a significant shift in the approach we were talking about already.” Mr. Kagan, who just returned from a visit to Iraq, said, “We’re on a path that makes sense.”

Meghan O’Sullivan, who directed Iraq policy for Mr. Bush, agreed and said the more important concern was making sure that enough forces remained for a while after the elections, noting that it took five months for Iraq to form a government after its last elections, in 2005.

And Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero is willing to send more troops to Afghanistan and a mash note to Obama:

MADRID — Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said Wednesday that Spain was willing to increase its troops on long-term assignment in Afghanistan, in what appeared to be a gesture of support to the Obama administration.

Spain’s Socialist government has long resisted calls from the United States and other NATO allies to increase its Afghan force.

Mr. Zapatero said the move could be achieved by prolonging a temporary deployment of forces that had been sent to help with security in Afghanistan ahead of the Aug. 20 presidential election.

...

The move toward an increased troop presence seemed intended to address the Obama administration’s request for help in Afghanistan.

President Obama has been working to shift the American military focus from Iraq to Afghanistan, where the United States has been fighting militants from the Taliban and Al Qaeda for nearly eight years.

“Things have changed an awful lot,” Mr. Zapatero said. “I think Obama is a person who listens. I think he’s humble enough to understand, and humble enough to understand the diversity and complexity of the world, in terms of cultures, terms of ways of living, in terms of religions, in terms of different perspectives on a world order.”

“It’s not so much a question of what Obama can do for us, but what we can do for Obama,” Mr. Zapatero said.

Ask not what Obama can do for you; ask what you can do for Obama.  Geez - how do you say "Get a room" in Spanish?

Still Outpolling Bush. And Cheney!

Obama slides in the Pew Research polling.  The reaction to Obama's intervention on the Gates arrest - briefly, Obama explained that he didn't have the facts so he was going to side with his racial and social peer - is about what might have been expected:

Thirdly, Obama’s comments on the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. appear to have played some role in his ratings decline. News about the arrest of the prominent African American Harvard professor at his Cambridge home was widely followed by the public and 79% are aware of Obama’s comments on the incident. Analysis of the poll data found that the president’s approval ratings fell among non-Hispanic whites over the course of the interviewing period as the focus of the Gates story shifted from details about the incident to Obama’s remarks about the incident¹.  Interviews Wednesday and Thursday of last week found 53% of whites approving of Obama’s job performance. This slipped to 46% among whites interviewed Friday through Sunday as the Gates story played out across the nation.

Consistent with this trend, a small re-contact survey conducted Monday night finds a mostly negative reaction, particularly among whites, to Obama’s comments on the controversy, even though the public is closely divided over who was at fault in the original dispute. Based on what people have heard about the incident in Cambridge, 27% of blame Gates, 25% fault the police officer, 13% volunteer both or neither, and 36% offer no opinion. However, more people disapprove (41%) than approve (29%) of the president’s handling of the situation. And by a margin of about two-to-one, more whites disapprove (45%) than approve (22%).

Change They're Not Going To Believe Is Happening To Them

The Heritage Foundation looks at ObamaCare and says that

Proposed economic incentives, plus a government-run health plan like the one proposed in the House bill, would cause 88.1 million people to see their current employer-sponsored health plan disappear.

Just glancing at the report I see that they are living in the past - their analysis is based on the premise in the House bill that the public option would reimburse based on Medicare rates, but I recall seeing a modification to that emerging from some discussion or other.

Manny And Ortiz?

The Times reports that Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz are on the same 2003 list of steroid users that includes Alex Rodriguez.

Given his recent history Manny is hardly a surprise.  Ortiz's career took off when he joined the Red Sox in 2003, so the news that he was on steroids is not exactly a shocker.

Obviously the Red Sox championship of 2004 is hopelessly tainted.  The only sensible resolution is to award their trophy and rings to A-Rod, Giambi and Sheffield of the NY Yankees.

The Suds Sit-Down

Obama, Biden, Gates and Crowley had the Suds Summit earlier today.  Here is the 'touch all the bases' statement from Gates, posted at The Root.  Crowley says he is moving forward.  The Times and ABC have coverage.

Editors at The Onion are either in heaven or redundant.

I Predict Pandemonium

Rush Limbaugh has been dieting?  No one tells me anything.  Nevertheless, at about 12:15 today, El Rushbo announced that he has lost 79 pounds since March 9 (down from 290) and is loving the diet so much he may press on until people become convinced he has a ghastly wasting illness or drug addiction (OK, he didn't actually mention heroin chic).

Rush also claimed to be revealing his secret diet plan for the first time - Quick Weight Loss centers are apparently franchised throughout Florida and Texas, although their website has crashed just now.

This is quite a plug, if true (I am quite gullible if it is not.)  The next move is up to Oprah.

Going Postal In The Health Care Debate

As Congress continues to tussle with the merits of a national public health plan, we turn our eyes to the poster child of Government inefficiency, the Post Office.

WASHINGTON — The debate over how Congress can best ease the financial woes of the United States Postal Service is likely to intensify in coming months as the Postal Service’s record-breaking losses continue to escalate.

Postmaster General John E. Potter says the Postal Service now expects to run a record $7 billion deficit in 2009, up from projections in March of $6 billion. Losses for the third quarter will not be made public until Aug. 5, but Mr. Potter says those numbers should be similar to figures from the second quarter, when the Postal Service lost $1.9 billion.

The Government Accountability Office added the Postal Service to its list of “high risk” federal programs on Tuesday, urging it to work with Congress to find a solution to its financial problems.

Mr. Potter previously beseeched Congress to change laws that mandate delivery six days a week, a request that has met strong opposition from some lawmakers.

While some remain dead set against five-day delivery, Dan G. Blair, chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission, the independent agency that oversees the Postal Service, said the initial “frosty reception” from Congress appeared to be changing.

“Congress certainly seems to be saying ‘no way,’ but what happens when they have another $6 to $7 billion operating debt next year?” he said, noting that the commission does not plan to take sides in the delivery debate.

Congress won't let them reduce their service.  Close some offices?  No, Congress won't allow that either.  Financial, uhh, chicanery seems to be OK:

Other lawmakers, however, say there are additional ways to cut costs.

A bill to allow the Postal Service to pay health benefits from a retirement fund was voted out of committee last week and has 339 co-sponsors. The Postal Service says that could save $2 billion a year from the operating budget.

Totally reassuring.

A Connecticut Yankee In The Great South And West

The Times has an interesting article on "cool roofs" which oddly omits the word "albedo".  It turns out that, as per your common sense, a white or light-colored roof keeps a house cooler in sunny climes (in winter in the North, that is a bad thing.)

So why are roofs black all over the country, and why has common sense only recently gotten off the canvas and thrown a few punches?  The Times blames its readership, basically:

Before the advent of central air-conditioning in the mid-20th-century, white- and cream-colored houses with reflective tin roofs were the norm in South Florida, for example. Then central air-conditioning arrived, along with dark roofs whose basic ingredients were often asphalt, tar and bitumen, or asphalt-based shingles. These materials absorb as much as 90 percent of the sun’s heat energy — often useful in New England, but less so in Texas. By contrast, a white roof can absorb as little as 10 percent or 15 percent.

“Relative newcomers to the West and South brought a lot of habits and products from the Northeast,” said Joe Reilly, the president of American Rooftile Coatings, a supplier. “What you see happening now is common sense.”

I apologize, all you Southerners and Westerners.  Be chill.

IF YOU CAN'T FIX IT WITH DUCT TAPE, YOU CAN'T FIX IT:

In a related story the Times discusses a recent McKinsey study:

The biggest opportunity to improve the nation’s energy situation is a major investment program to make homes and businesses more efficient, according to a study released Wednesday by the consulting firm McKinsey. An investment of $520 billion in improvements like sealing ducts and replacing inefficient appliances could produce $1.2 trillion in savings on energy bills through 2020, the study found.

Just to belabor a distinction - "conservation" is changing your lifestyle, for example by setting the thermostat to 62 degress in the winter and activating your brown fat cells.  "Efficiency" is being smarter about doing whatever you are comfortable doing now, for example by leaving the thermostat at 72 degrees but weatherizing and winterizing the house with improved insulation.  For certain types of efficiency-improving projects the financial numbers can be very favorable, as McKinsey no doubt argues.

Rush Limbaugh will routinely mock the conservation set but I am not sure of his official position on investing a little money now in order to save a lot of money over time.

Un-Civil Servants, Or, This Is Acting Stupidly

As we learned during the Sotomayor hearings, New Haven firemen have to pass a job related test to get a promotion.  Which leaves us wondering, what is the procedure for the Cambridge Boston Police Department - do you have to fail an intelligence test to get a job there?

This email is an embarrassment and a disgrace (I am assuming it is authentic, but it would be great to be wrong.)  Repeatedly using a "jungle monkey" metaphor to refer to Henry Louis Gates?  Writing to the Boston Globe reporter on the receiving end of this tirade that "I might as well ax you the question"?  Ugh.

HMMPH:  It's the Boston PD, not Cambridge, so who's stupid now?

Warning, Will Robinson!

Humans are actually very good at sensing danger - who knew?

This Times article on that topic has a headline torn from the Department of the Obvious - In Battle, Hunches Prove to Be Valuable , but it is interesting to see how much study has gone towards figuring out who, specifically is good at detecting dangerous situations, and why.  Attention to minute details, noticing things out of place, and having tight control over your bodies production of cortisol seem to be key.

And when there is nothing else to say, mention the Yankees - Joe Torre routinely praised certain players by saying that in a big spot the game didn't speed up for them.  I suspect that is a similar phenomenon, although obviously the battlefield at Yankee Stadium is entirely metaphorical.

It Was Getting Hot In There, So They Took Off All Their Clothes

Just another house party.

Proud To Be A Canadian, Where At Least Their Health Care's Free

Via Glenn we see this amusing video of Paul Krugman violating the oldest rule in the book - don't ask a witness a question when you don't know the answer.

Prof. Krugman, speaking on some panel, asked an audience how many Canadians were in the room and about seven hands went up.  He then asked how many of the respondents thought they had a poor healthcare system; as another panelist said, "I think we are seeing the same hands".

Ooops!

But to be fair - the audio quality is not that of a sound studio; it may be that Prof. Krugman asked how many comedians were in the room.  And to give credit where due, the Prof took the blow with the good humor that I don't normally associate with his public persona.

Howard Kurtz With A Conflict Of Interest?

How blue is the moon?  Here is a good point from Media Matters on the eternally conflicted Howard Kurtz, who attributed the latest uptick in birther coverage on cable to Chris Matthews:

First, here is Howard Kurtz of the WaPo and CNN on the birther coverage:

I don't understand why this has gotten so much prominence, particularly on cable television in the first place if we make a judgment as journalists that this is basically a lot of garbage, then why do we have to spend a lot of time flogging this horse?  The guy who has been flogging this the most, it seems to me, is Chris Matthews on MSNBC. 

And Jamison Foser of Media Matters:

No mention of CNN.  No mention of Lou Dobbs.  No mention of Jonathan Klein's defense of Dobbs.  Instead, Kurtz singles out Chris Matthews, who has been debunking the birther nonsense, as the person primarily responsible for it, rather than Lou Dobbs, who has been promoting it.

And, as I'm sure you know by now, CNN pays Howard Kurtz a nice chunk of change.  Might that have anything to do with his refusal to hold CNN -- whose president, Jonathan Klein, defends Dobbs' promotion of birther conspiracy theories -- responsible for their conduct?

Over to Mickey!

That Was Easy

Suddenly Andrew Sullivan discovers that the most transparent Administration in history is stonewalling a release of the archived version of Obama's *original* birth certificate, and now he is a birther too!

Well, an honorary birther anyway, as am I - he doesn't think there is anything there (nor do I), but the question of releasing a record sitting in a state archive seems innocuous enough, and participating in state-sponsored faith based initiatives seems unpleasant enough that Sully is curious.  As am I.

So That Would Be "Black Irish", I Guess

Here is an ABC News headline of which I am deeply dubious:

Harvard Prof Gates Is Half-Irish, Related to Cop Who Arrested Him

Really?  So Gates has a mother or father who is all-Irish?  Or two grandparents each of whom are half-Irish?  Who knew?!?

ABC fills us in:

In a PBS series on African-American ancestry that he hosted in 2008, Gates discovered his Irish roots when he found he was descended from an Irish immigrant and a slave girl.

He went to Trinity College in Dublin to have his DNA analyzed. There he found that he shared 10 of the 11 DNA matches with offspring of Niall of the Nine Hostages, the fourth century warlord who created one of the dominant strains of Irish genealogy because he had so many offspring.

Hmm - unless the Irish immigrant was his father and the slave girl was, well, I don't know (a love-slave?), this math doesn't work.

But better safe than sorry!  When Obama sits down with these two for a beer he better bring a couple of six-packs.  And one and a half baked potatoes.

FOR FOLKS SCORING AT HOME:  The LA Times repeats the "half-Irish" claim without missing a beat; we attribute that to professional deference.

Dan Riehl restates the information accurately - "Gates shares some common DNA with the Irish" - and refrains from unseemly "gotcha" prancing and preening.  (No, I am not educable by example, but thanks for asking.)

Don Surber also lets the headline slide.

MORE:  Gates on his home life.  Gates on Gates, from TIME:

We can now trace my family back to the 18th century. An Irishman fathered the children of Jane Gates, my great-great-grandmother, who was born a slave in 1819. It's a miracle of DNA technology.

That gets him up to 1/16th Irish; unless ABC has other relatives in mind, we won't be getting to 1/2 until St. Patrick's Day.

Health Care Open Thread

Just because I have nothing to say on health care reform just now doesn't mean you don't.

Opportunity Lost

Not even the Cincinnati Bengals are interested in signing the now-free Michael Vick and we deplore this lost opportunity.  Had the Bengals picked him up, wags at home could have had fun every time the camera showed the Bengals huddling up - "Hey, am I watching a football game or a re-run of "Prison Break?"

Well, it would have been fun the first five or ten times...

Ya-Bing?!? Micro-Hoo?!?

Microsoft and Yahoo confirm a 10 year search deal.

We'll Ban Corked Bats... Later

Are the Lords of Swimming competing for some mysterious "Worst Oversight Ever" award with their bizarre decision to ban the high tech new swimsuits later, but not now?  What is the promotional pitch - "You can't take the records seriously, you can't take the new champions seriously - Enjoy!".

Oh, well - at least the "Worst Oversight" award may not go to the Mets.  Psych!  It will.

JOHNNY VANDER MEER WATCH:  Mark Buehrle of the White Sox follows his perfect game by being perfect against Minnesota through five.  61 pitches?  I bet they leave him in a while.

CAN TOUCH THIS:  Minnesota breaks through!  Span singles with two outs in the sixth.

Send Better Rebuttals (Ongoing...)

The always insightful William Jacobson pens on the birthers and manages to irk me with this:

Which gets me to the Obama birth certificate conspiracy theory, to wit, the claim that Obama was not born in the U.S.A., despite the official Hawaiian record of his "live birth" and contemporaneous newspaper announcements. It is this latter evidence that seals the deal for me. Much like the craziness regarding Trig Palin and the ice measurements, to accept that 48 years ago someone had the foresight to plant newspaper stories in anticipation of Barack Hussein Obama becoming president half a century later just isn't credible. As Obama himself has proclaimed, would anyone who wanted him to become President have given him that middle name? If they were so smart as to plant stories in the newspaper, why not give him a name like William Jefferson Obama or George Herbert Walker Obama.

As I have said before, the motive back in 1961 could have been quite different.  Perhaps the mother and maternal grandparents feared for the day when the white Ms. Dunham would be contesting with a black Kenyan man in a Kenyan court for custody of a black Kenyan baby (or British, or whatever Obama's nationality might have been.)  They would have been well advised to take steps to tilt the playing field a bit by documenting their son as a US citizen, irrespective of any Presidential aspirations.  Name the baby 'Barack' in the hope the marriage works out, document the baby as an American in case it doesn't.  [But in a court case, surely the father would squawk about the fraud, yes?  Well, if mom can limit the he-said she said dispute to an American court, where will his witnesses be?  But it's a good point.  That said, in my first post on this I did note other reasons to seek American citizenship.]

Do I think that is the percentage bet?  No.  My official editorial position is that Obama was probably born in Hawaii, but I have not embraced the faith-based initiative currently on offer, especially when more evidence is on file in Hawaii and is surely available to the White House.

That said, I am in broad agreement with the thrust of the Jacobson piece, to wit, this is a distraction that is not helpful to the conservative cause.

And that is my graceful segue to the National Review editorial on this topic, Born in the USA.  Their conclusion that this is a foolish distraction is utterly reasonable but unfortunately they deliver the sort of factual errors that will shatter their credibility with the true believers.  Here we go:

The Hawaiian birth certificate President Obama has produced—the document is formally known as a “certificate of live birth”...

No, it's not - look at the picture again.  It is known as a "Certification of live birth", aka the short form.  A "certificate of live birth" , aka the long form, has more information, such as the hospital and attending physician, and they are no longer routinely provided by the State of Hawaii.  However, old examples are floating about the internet and Hawaiian officials have said repeatedly that they have looked at their archived version of Obama's long form.

National Review ought to care because getting this detail wrong will leave folks wondering whether they have been following the debate and doing their homework.  As to why I care - well, the short form is meant to be an accurate summary of the long form, which Hawaiian officials insist they have inspected.  That should assure us that Obama has a long form certificate which lists Honolulu as his place of birth.  Case closed?  Well, maybe not. 

If that long form was issued on the basis of a hospital record with an attending physicians's signature, it becomes harder to believe in a conspiracy limited to the mother and the grandparents.  But the State of Hawaii would also issue birth certificates on the basis of affidavits.  So what if Obama's long form lists his place of birth as his home address, based on the affidavits of his mother and grandmother?  Is the case still closed? 

Well, good luck re-opening it.  Obama's mother and grandparents have passed away, so they won't be questioned.  If the long form certificate provided a hospital, I suppose historians could look for hospital records, doctor records, insurance records, old bank statements for the Dunhams, or whatever (and have a nice day.)  Sorry, I digress - let's press on with the National Review:

...we note for the record that his mother was a native of Kansas, whose residents have been citizens of the United States for a very long time, and whose children are citizens of the United States as well. 

My goodness, was it only yesterday Josh Marshall revealed his utter ignorance on this point?  In the update following his self-proclaimed last update he finally cottoned on to this:

Later Update: This appears to be the lacunae the birthers hang their hat on (from the State Department website ...)

Birth Abroad to One Citizen and One Alien Parent in Wedlock: A child born abroad to one U.S. citizen parent and one alien parent acquires U.S. citizenship at birth under Section 301(g) INA provided the citizen parent was physically present in the U.S. for the time period required by the law applicable at the time of the child's birth. (For birth on or after November 14, 1986, a period of five years physical presence, two after the age of fourteen is required. For birth between December 24, 1952 and November 13, 1986, a period of ten years, five after the age of fourteen are required for physical presence in the U.S. to transmit U.S. citizenship to the child.

Their thinking seems to be that since Obama's mother was just shy of her 19th birthday at the time of his birth, she couldn't meet the "five after the age of fourteen" requirement, thus necessitating rushing home to get the phony certification of stateside birth to make the eventual run for president possible.

Reliance on the statute may not be appropriate, but if for whatever reason it does not apply, the National Review ought to explain why.  Otherwise they appear to be dismissing arguments with which they are not familiar, ad we know how troubling that can be.

OK, I am running long.  Longer.  Let me try and at least soundbite my own official editorial position, which is inspired by Thomas Collins, a regular commenter here:

The US Congress accepted the certification of the results of the Electoral College, which met in accordance with the US Constitution. The results were that Barack Hussein Obama received a majority of the electoral votes. That's it. He's the legitimate US Prez, like it or not (and as I have many times stated on this blog, I don't particularly like it).

Congressman are sworn to uphold the Constitution; presumably they feel as if they have fulfilled their duty and accepted Obama as President.  In any case, it is not at all obvious from the Constitution just what the enforcement mechanism for the "natural born citizen" clause might be.  But I will bet that no court is going to take this up so soon after Bush v. Gore.

So where are we?  There are facts in abeyance available on Obama's long form birth certificate known only to a few top Hawaiian officials; there is a law about the children of Americans and aliens which may or may not be applicable; and there is the "natural born citizen" clause of the Constitution which has never been litigated.  You can stir that soup for a long time and never get a court involved and never, ever get a Democratic Congress to poke at this.

However!  After watching the media roll over for the John Edwards love child (and they didn't even like John Edwards!) and having seen the media roll over for Kerry's Vietnam stories in 2004 (we are still waiting for the public release of all his records, as promised on Meet The Press), I think we will be waiting a while before we get a serious reporter to simply say to Robert Gibbs, "Let's all look at the long form birth certificate so we can try to move on."  It seems easy, but it jars with the media's current faith-based initiative.  There is also the theory that keeping this topic buzzing helps the Dems by making the righties look kooky.  Maybe!  But we don't really need any help, and I doubt it helps the media to remain so visibly in the tank for Obama.  Time will tell.

WE CONCLUDE THIS TIRADE:  Which of the following Bold Statements would create the most awkwardness and be most likely to instigate a spousal under-table kick at a dinner party?

(a) I don't really believe Christ was born in Bethlehem;

(b) I don't really believe Mohammed was born in Mecca;

(c) I don't really believe Obama was born in Hawaii?

WE RESUME THIS TIRADE:  Lots of interesting background in the Honolulu Advertiser.  The Nordyke twins were born the day after Obama and have birth certificates very close to his by file number, which I guess proves that... any conspiracy must have been implemented in 1961 rather than years later.

We see yet another example of "Send better rebuttals" from Robert Farley of Politifact (my emphasis):

In November 2008, The Advertiser reported that the first published mention of the future president appeared in a Sunday Advertiser birth announcement that ran on Aug. 13, 1961:

"Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama, 6085 Kalanianaole Hwy., son, Aug. 4."

The identical announce- ment ran the following day in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

Birthers wave off those birth announcements, saying that Obama family members 48 years ago could have phoned in false information to both newspapers.

Such vital statistics, however, were not sent to the newspapers by the general public but by the Health Department, which received the information directly from hospitals, Okubo said.

Birth announcements from the public ran elsewhere in both papers and usually included information such as the newborn's name, weight and time of birth.

"Take a second and think about that," wrote Robert Farley of the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times' Pulitzer Prize winning Web site PoliticFact.com on July 1. "In order to phony those notices up, it would have required the complicity of the state Health Department and two independent newspapers — on the off chance this unnamed child might want to one day be president of the United States."

Well, having stopped and thought, I infer that if our conspiracists could get false information into the system at the Health Department, it would flow from there to the two newspapers, which reduces the circle of complicity.  And here I learn something else:

Advertiser columnist and former Star-Bulletin managing editor Dave Shapiro was not at either paper in 1961, but he remembers how the birth notices process worked years later when both papers were jointly operated by the Hawaii Newspaper Agency — which no longer exists.

"Those were listings that came over from the state Department of Health," he said. "They would send the same thing to both papers."

So someone who wasn't there can tell us what the normal procedure was years later.  That pins it down.  In Alterna-World the elder Ms. Dunham, a bank manager worried about her son-in-law, chats with a lawyer friend who does estates, wills, and that sort of thing (Bankers do get involved in that sort of discussion, you know).  Incredibly, this lawyer has a friend in the Dept. of Health, and the rest is history.  Inconceivable?  Really?  My vast conspiracy now extends to a concerned mother-in-law and a lawyer friend with contacts.  Real Bourne Identity stuff.

Michael Lewis Explains Goldman Sachs To The Rest Of Us

This clears everything up.

Angry White Men?

Michael Crowley of TNR has us scratching our head with his overview of the Henry Louis Gates debacle:

This is the third time in the past year that Obama has squared off, directly or indirectly, with working-class white men.

And he goes on to cite Joe the Plumber (which was about taxes, not race, but whatever), Sotomayor and the New Haven firemen, and now Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. Crowley (which seems to be about race mainly because Gates screams that it is.)

My bafflement - is the emphasis on "past year" in the Crowley assertion?  Because Obama had a famous problem with working class whites through his primary tussle with Hillary.  If I were doing a thumbsucker for TNR I would put a much earlier date on my start my history of Obama's problems with the white working class.  But maybe that is just me, bitterly clinging to my memories from more than a year ago.

AMUSING ASIDE:  Do I see traces of a shift in theme for Mr. Crowley?  The URL for his TNR post includes this (my emphasis):

blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/07/26/men-in-uniform.aspx

Maybe the original theme was New Haven and Cambridge,with Joe the Plumber as a late addition.  That would explain the omission of Obama's white working class primary problem.  Or maybe the original theme related Henry Louis Gates to the Village People - sort of a "Macho Man" thing...  Maybe!

Sauce For The Plumber Is Sauce For The Professor

Opposed as I am to the politics of personal destruction, this Henry Louis Gates tax problem does speak to his attitude that he is above the law.  Huge, huge props to Dan Riehl (and his brother Doug...).

Birthers And Truthers

The Politico points out that the August recess may make for some great home theater as Republican Congressman confront their conspiracists:

GOP headache: The birther issue

When lawmakers return home for recess in August, they can expect to hear tough questions from constituents on the economy, health care and government spending.

But Republicans are preparing for something else: the birthers.

As GOP Rep. Mike Castle learned the hard way back home in Delaware this month, there’s no easy way to deal with the small but vocal crowd of right-wing activists who refuse to believe that President Barack Obama was born in the United States.

At a town hall meeting in Georgetown, a woman demanded to know why Castle and his colleagues were “ignoring” questions about Obama’s birth certificate — questions that have been put to rest repeatedly by state officials in Hawaii, where the birth certificate and all other credible evidence show that Obama was born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961.

When Castle countered that Obama is, in fact, “a citizen of the United States,” the crowd erupted in boos, the woman seized control of the gathering and led a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. The video went viral; by Sunday, it had been viewed on YouTube more than half a million times.

Should be fun.  Eventually we get a fair and balanced tidbit:

Out-party politicians have long had to deal with conspiracy theorists on their side — the people who think that the Clintons killed Vince Foster or that the Bush administration helped orchestrate the Sept. 11 attacks.

“Twenty-five percent of my people believe the Pentagon and Rumsfeld were responsible for taking the twin towers down,” said Rep. Collin Peterson, a Democrat who represents a conservative Republican district in Minnesota. “That’s why I don’t do town meetings.”

But the birther phenomenon may present a bigger challenge — a potent blend of race and politics, fueled by conservative TV and radio pundits, and played out in a day when all that stands between a town hall meeting and Web omnipresence is a $100 flip cam.

To which I would add - although it is impossible to glean from coverage such as this at Politico, one of the basic demands of the birthers would be trivially easy to satisfy.  Rather than the short form summary of his birth certificate made available by the Obama campaign, let's see the long form, which would clear up whether Obama was born in a local hospital with an attending physician, or whether the birth certificate was issued on the basis of an affidavit from the mother and grandparents.

Here is the earlier Politco coverage:

The White House is, presently, ignoring the birth certificate questions, having released an official copy of the Hawaii certificate during the presidential campaign.

...Most of the lawsuits seek documents and express dissatisfaction with the State of Hawaii's refusal to release for public inspection Obama's original birth certificate rather than the notarized copy typically issued. The state's governor, Linda Lingle, has attested to the authenticity of the birth certificate, and Hawaii law forbids its release; Kreep blamed Democratic control of Hawaii for the refusal to release it. (Lingle is a Republican.)

Well - is the birth certificate an utterly authentic summary of a birth certificate issued on the basis of a parental affidavit?  Don't ask, don't tell!  Just for flavor, let's see what the state officials said:

STATEMENT BY DR. CHIYOME FUKINO

"There have been numerous requests for Sen. Barack Hussein Obama’s official birth certificate. State law (Hawai'i Revised Statutes §338-18) prohibits the release of a certified birth certificate to persons who do not have a tangible interest in the vital record.

"Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai'i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai'i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.

"No state official, including Governor Linda Lingle, has ever instructed that this vital record be handled in a manner different from any other vital record in the possession of the State of Hawai'i.”

Does that really resolve anything about a parental affidavit?  Actually, no.  Move on!

Unlike the 9/11 truthers, who would have needed a Presidential Commisison and heaven knows what else, the birther demand for the long form certificate would be easy to satisfy. 

Of course, if the answer came back that the original long form certificate was issued on the basis of an affidavit, well, new questions would be raised.  I am already clear on the parental motive, which would be for Ms. Dunham to document her baby as a US citizen in fear of one day fighting a black Kenyan man in a Kenyan court for custody of a black Kenyan baby.  Keeping a US baby in the US courts had to look like a stronger play in 1961.

Well, the same media that looked away from the John Edwards love child is looking away from this.  I have no idea what actually happened in 1961 - if I had to guess, I would say that a smiling Baby Barack was born in Hawaii.  But why do I have to guess when the proof might be at hand?  Why have his supporters embraced the place of Obama's birth as the latest faith-based initiative and abandoned any interest in facts or evidence? 

HOW VAST A CONSPIRACY?  Hwo big a conspiracy are we talking about with the birth certificate?  Under a simple scenario, the mother and grandparents file false affidavits in order to generate the birth certificate currently on file with the State of hawaii.  Years go by and nobody cares.  Finally, at some point during the Presidential campaign David Axelrod looks at the short form summary provided by the state, says to himself, "What I don't know can't hurt me", double checks that only people with a "direct and tangible interest" in the certificate can get one, and goes full speed ahead.

So who would know?  Well, Obama knows what his parents and grandparents told him; it is entirely possible that he has never examined the paperwork himself or had his staffers do so.  In which case, the tiny band of conspirators has passed away.

I Want Health Care And I Want Someone Else To Pay For It

The Times tackles the question of insurance subsidies to assist lower-income folks obliged to buy health insurance under the risky Democratic scheme.

A Straw In The Wind In Favor Of Gates

Interesting - the 911 caller asserts, and the Cambridge Police confirm, that she didn't mention the race of the suspected in-breakers when she made the 911 call.  Gates had made a similar claim to the effect that the caller could not have seen him well enough to ascertain his race in one of his early accounts [Link?  When the morning fog clears...].  The good news - we should see something from the tapes soon  [Some (all?) are out; see UPDATE].  From the Globe:

The woman whose report of a possible house break-in led to the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. said she never mentioned race during her 911 call and is “personally devastated’’ by media accounts that suggest she placed the call because the men she observed on the porch were black, according to a lawyer acting as her spokeswoman.

...

In an interview last night, Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert C. Haas said it was ac curate that Whalen did not mention race in her 911 call. He acknowledged that a police report of the incident did include a race reference. The report says Whalen observed “what appeared to be two black males with backpacks on the front porch’’ of a Ware Street home on July 16.

That reference is there, said Haas, because the police report is a summary. Its descriptions - like the race of the two men - were collected during the inquiry, not necessarily from the initial 911 call, he said.

...In an interview at police headquarters last night, Haas said “it was very clear that she wasn’t sure’’ what the men’s race was. He also said that when the dispatcher questioned Whalen for more details, she told police she could only guess about the race of the two men. “She speculated . . . that one might be Hispanic.’’

The report is a summary?  Well, then, who, if anyone, mentioned that the men were black?  Here is the police report as hosted at The Smoking Gun.  Per that report, Sgt. Crowley stepped up on the porch, then went back to the sidewalk to speak with the 911 caller.  Sgt. Crowley then returned to the porch and saw Gates through the window in the foyer.

Hmm.  Hard to believe the 911 caller realized the possible intruders were black during the sidewalk conversation.  Let's go back to the Globe for a moment:

Whalen phoned police, Murphy said, because she was aware of recent break-ins in the area.

It would be interesting to see the police reports for those break-ins (as if.)  Were there suspects or witness reports?  If other break-ins were allegedly committed by black men, maybe Crowley was doing a bit of profiling.  Or maybe the dispatcher made that point to him.  Or maybe this was just a self-serving bit of fiction in the report.

As to why we care - Crowley's defenders, and others, have pointed out that he could hardly be accused of racial profiling if he had been told to look for two black intruders.  (Of course, others have said that Gates was not a likely suspect because of his age, which strikes me as hopelessly age-ist; it also overlooks the possibility that Gates was having a nasty dispute with a separated spouse at the same address.) 

The good news is that we will be hearing the tapes soon enough:

Hass said yesterday that he expects some version of the tapes to be released in the next few days.

...

Haas said he wants the city to quickly release transcripts and tapes of the 911 calls and of the officers as they were on the scene at Gates’s house.

“It would help us a lot if the tapes could get released,’’ Haas said, adding that the decision is being made by the city’s lawyers and manager, not his department.

One issue that has slowed down the release, he said, is concern over Whalen’s privacy rights, given that her 911 call would be played by the media nationwide. He said some form of the calls will be released - possibly just transcripts - in the next few days.

But Murphy said her client backs having the 911 tapes released immediately.

“She has no objection,’’ Murphy said.

“The police concern is legitimate because it comes from her initial concern they not release her name. But since that couldn’t be done, her concern about privacy has passed.’’

Transcripts?  We want the raw screaming!

IT'S NOT THIS BLACK AND WHITE:  From Radley Balko of Reason:

In the wake of both Gates and Obama escalating the arrest into a national debate about race, too many conservatives took the instinctively authoritarian tack represented here by Washington Post staff writer Neely Tucker:

One of the common-sense rules of life can be summed up this way: Don't Mess With Cops.

It doesn't matter if you are right, wrong, at home or on the street, or if you are white, black, Hispanic, Jewish, Muslim or whatever. When an armed law enforcement officer tells you to cease and desist, the wise person (a) ceases and (b) desists.

The End.

Perhaps on an individual level, this is sound advice. As a general rule, you ought not provoke someone carrying a gun, whether your criticism is justified or not. As a broader sentiment, however, it shows a dangerous level of deference to the government agents in whom we entrust a massive amount of power. And it comes awfully close to writing a blank check for police misconduct.

If there's a teachable moment to extract from Gates' arrest, it's that arrest powers should be limited to actual crimes. Instead, the emerging lesson seems to be that you should capitulate to police, all the time, right or wrong. That's unfortunate, because there are plenty of instances where you shouldn't.

That's it?  Gates had committed no crime, therefore he was free to heap as much abuse as he wanted on the police?  Couldn't Gates have made his points forcefully but politely, or would that have been "capitulation"?

We don't know what happened, and the tapes may not clear it up.  I don't know how loud Gates was, how much of a crowd was watching, or how many times he was warned to stand down or face arrest (neither do Messrs. Obama or Balko).  But, although I don't know whether Gates crossed the line, I think that there is some amount of bad behavior that could have justified his arrest.

UPDATE:  Breitbart has the tape of the 911 call and the dispatcher tape, which more or less ends at the beginning of the confrontation between Crowley and Gates ("Keep the cars coming... He is not cooperative").

Let's see - no mention of race by the 911 caller; the dispatcher clearly says "Race unknown" to Crowley.

Possibly lost in translation - the 911 caller emphasized that she did not know whether she had seen a break-in attempt or a guy struggling with a jammed door.  The dispatcher left out that nuance and described a possible B&E.

Shorter Marshall - The Birthers Are Ridiculous Even Though I Know None Of The Facts

Josh Marshall ilustrates that if you simply close your eyes to the facts the birther controversy about the circumstances of Obama's birth goes away.

Now, I don't want to get into all the claptrap about the birth certificate. Because the whole story is just unadulterated, raw nonsense. What I do want to figure out, however, is a question that's been rattling around my head for something like a year now. I have never seen any serious argument that the child of an American citizen, even if born abroad, isn't him or herself a natural born American citizen.

He's never seen a serious argument?  How hard did he look?  Eventually, Marshall leaves the reality-based community and returns, briefly, to reality in this update:

Later Update: This appears to be the lacunae the birthers hang their hat on (from the State Department website ...)

Birth Abroad to One Citizen and One Alien Parent in Wedlock: A child born abroad to one U.S. citizen parent and one alien parent acquires U.S. citizenship at birth under Section 301(g) INA provided the citizen parent was physically present in the U.S. for the time period required by the law applicable at the time of the child's birth. (For birth on or after November 14, 1986, a period of five years physical presence, two after the age of fourteen is required. For birth between December 24, 1952 and November 13, 1986, a period of ten years, five after the age of fourteen are required for physical presence in the U.S. to transmit U.S. citizenship to the child.

Their thinking seems to be that since Obama's mother was just shy of her 19th birthday at the time of his birth, she couldn't meet the "five after the age of fourteen" requirement, thus necessitating rushing home to get the phony certification of stateside birth to make the eventual run for president possible.

Yup, that's the crazed, radical thinking - since she didn't comply with the law, Baby Barack had a citizenship problem.

Note that Marshall immediately retreats to the reality-based argument that the family faked Obama's birth certificate in order to lay the groundwork for a Presidential run in the next millenium.  Ha, ha, those silly birthers!

My point - as to what actually transpired, how would I know?  But on the subject of the motive of Ms. Dunham and the maternal grandparents to fudge the circumstances of Obama's birth, I have belabored this before - the grandparents and the mother may have been straining to document Obama as a US citizen in fear of the day when the white Ms. Stanley would be engaged in a custody suit in a Kenyan court arguing with the black Kenyan father about the fate of a black Kenyan baby.  Since the happy couple did in fact separate a few years later the possibility of a separation may not have been utterly beyond their imagining in 1961.

So much reality for the reality-based to absorb!  Later we can talk about short-form birth certificates, long form birt certificates, and the availability of a birth certificate by means of an affidavit.  In two segments of "coverage" I find no mention of the distinctions by Chris Matthews.

Whatever.  The media did no job at all prying into the John Edwards love-child debacle, and they didn't even love him.  (That said, one might wonder about the non-effort by the Clinton campaign, the McCain campaign, Fox News and the WSJ.)

SHORTER TAYLOR:  Some birthers are racist, therefore all birthers are racist.

Uh huh.  And I'm Socrates.

Oh, well, label and smear.  This rhetorical device is one of the older tricks in the book (and one of the only tricks in Taylor's book) - claim the other side's most extreme argument typifies all its arguments and that its most extreme members typify all their members.  When I think back real hard I recall that the anti-war people such as Taylor didn't like it when that ploy was pulled on them, but obviously Taylor has become comfortable with the tactic.  So comfortable, in fact, that I wonder whether he realizes that that is all it is?

Rise Of The Machines

From the Times:

Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man

I would be worried if we couldn't develop a machine that could outsmart Joe Biden.

EDITORIAL ASIDE:  Please, "2001" is so 60's.  "Skynet".

Move On?

Per the AP , Henry Louis Gates says it is time to move on from the topic of his arrest and focus on the broader issues:

"I told the president that my principal regret was that all of the attention paid to his deeply supportive remarks during his press conference had distracted attention from his health care initiative," Gates said. "I am pleased that he, too, is eager to use my experience as a teaching moment, and if meeting Sgt. Crowley for a beer with the President will further that end, then I would be happy to oblige."

...

"If my experience leads to the lessening of the occurrence of racial profiling, then I would find that enormously gratifying," Gates said on The Root. "Because, in the end, this is not about me at all; it is about the creation of a society in which 'equal justice before law' is a lived reality."

And to the Boston Globe:

In an e-mail to the Boston Globe late Friday, he said: "It is time for all of us to move on, and to assess what we can learn from this experience."

That shows us that Gates is a very big man - if the Cambridge Police Dept had besmirched my behavior and deportment by telling people I was "tumultuous" and acting strangely, I would demand the release of the dispatcher tapes to blow away their lies.  Ending the cop cover-up would be my idea of a teachable moment - yeah, I would give those guys something to move on, all right (after they were out of earshot), but clearly I am a lesser man.

Ahh, well - one might also have thought that as an historian and PBS documentarian Gates would be insistent developing as complete a public record as possible of his arrest, but what do I know about history or PBS?

Gates gives away part of the game to Maureen Dowd:

[Gates] says he’s ready for “marriage counseling” from the “Solomon” in the Oval, who wrote in his memoir that the police pulled him over “for no apparent reason.” “If Sgt. Crowley and the president and I meet, it’s clearly not going to be like Judge Joe Brown, OK? ‘You tell your side, you tell your side.’ We have to agree to disagree. But I would be surprised if somebody didn’t say, ‘I’m sorry you were arrested.’ ”

I would be shocked if the Apologizer-in-Chief, who is comfortable saying "I'm sorry" for all America if not himself, didn't say just that to Gates.

AND LET ME ADD:  Cambridge, MA is Kennedy Country - I presume that every prominent Democrat, including Obama, has been given the high sign as to whether the dispatcher tapes vindicate Gates.  So reason with me - if the tapes made Gates look good, would Obama have distanced himself from Gates on Friday with his non-apology apology to the Cambridge Police Dept.?

I DEPLORE THIS PROPOSED HOUSE RESOLUTION:  If your opponent is busy digging himself a hole, don't grab for the shovel.

So Now 'Birthers' Are Racist?

The Times delivers some pseudo-coverage of the Obama birth certificate controversy.

This, from the president of MSNBC, is absurd and inflammatory:

Mr. Griffin [president of MSNBC] said the claims were legitimate to cover “in that there’s a segment of our population that believes this and keeps bringing it up.”

“It’s racist,” Mr. Griffin said. “Just call it for what it is.”

Brian Williams doesn't add much:

A lot of journalists “live with this issue; we get e-mails, we get asked about it,” Brian Williams, the anchor of the “NBC Nightly News,” said on Wednesday’s broadcast.

...

“So many conspiracy theories, so little time,” he concluded.

Great point!  Well, Olbermann and Shuster of MSNBC had time for every goofball Cheney theory back during the Plame case - maybe they exhausted their networks allotment for the decade.  Or let's call it what it was - ageist.

The Times reporter opts for gross mischaracterization is his second paragraph:

Despite ample evidence to the contrary, the country’s most popular talk radio host, Rush Limbaugh, told his listeners on Tuesday that Mr. Obama “has yet to have to prove that he’s a citizen.”

Since there is "ample evidence", this should be easy - when has Obama been forced to prove he's a citizen?  All I am aware of is his release of the short form summary birth certificate, as described by Fact Check.

And speaking of the short form, the Times plays "hide the ball" as best they can with the short form - long form controversy.  Here they go again:

In response, the Obama campaign scanned the candidate’s “certification of live birth” from Hawaii’s department of health and published it on the Internet. Numerous third parties have examined and confirmed the birth certificate and concluded that it met the requirements for citizenship.

...But advocates of the issue, who are sometimes termed birthers, called attention to themselves through frequent calls to talk radio shows, e-mail messages to news organizations and a videotaped question at a Congressional town hall. Since mid-July, Mr. Dobbs has discussed it repeatedly on his radio show and on TV, emphasizing that he believes Mr. Obama is a citizen, while wondering in particular why Mr. Obama has not provided a fuller copy of his birth certificate so that “all of this nonsense goes away.” Mr. Dobbs’s coverage has been criticized by Media Matters and other organizations.

And that is it.  No one who is not already familiar with the background will glean from their coverage that:

(a) Obama provided a "short form" birth certificate which the State of Hawaii claims is an accurate summary of the long form.

(b) the short form provides a place of birth (in Obama's case, Honolulu) but no additional details, such as the hospital or the attending physician; that information would normally be available on the long form.

(c) the State of Hawaii will also issue a birth certificate on the basis of an affidavit.  So for all we, the Times, or the non-racists at MSNBC know, Obama's long form was issued on the basis of an affidavit from his mother and/or maternal grandparents assuring the authorities that a smiling and happy baby Barack was delivered at home, no physician attending. 

As to the truth, who knows?  As to why Obama won't release the long form, again, who knows?  As to why the NY Times won't even clarify the nature of the dispute or explain why the long form is relevant, well, that is obvious.

Folks who want to dive in would do well to start here.

MORE:  Why would the grandparents lie?  Fact Check can't imagine, saying this:

Of course, it's distantly possible that Obama's grandparents may have planted the announcement just in case their grandson needed to prove his U.S. citizenship in order to run for president someday.

It is less distantly possible that the grandparents and the mother were straining to document Obama as a US citizen in fear of the day when the white Ms. Stanley would be engaged in a custody suit in a Kenyan court arguing with the black father about the fate of a black Kenyan baby.  But I guess Fact Check couldn't conceive of that.

Smarter Than The Average Bear

The Times has an intriguing story of a genius bear roaming the Adirondacks:

NORTH ELBA, N.Y. — It was built to be impenetrable, from its “super rugged transparent polycarbonate housing” to its intricate double-tabbed lid that would keep campers’ food in and bears’ paws out.

The BearVault 500 withstood the ravages of the test bears at the Folsom City Zoo in California. It has stymied mighty grizzlies weighing up to 1,000 pounds in the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park.

But in one corner of the Adirondacks, campers started to notice that the BearVault, a popular canister designed to keep food and other necessities safe, was being compromised. First through circumstantial evidence, then from witness reports, it became clear that in most cases, the conqueror was a relatively tiny, extremely shy middle-aged black bear named Yellow-Yellow.

Some canisters fail in the testing stage when large bears are able to rip off the lid. But wildlife officials say that Yellow-Yellow, a 125-pound bear named for two yellow ear tags that help wildlife officials keep tabs on her, has managed to systematically decipher a complex locking system that confounds even some campers.

In the process, she has emerged as a near-mythical creature in the High Peaks region of the northeastern Adirondacks.

“She’s quite talented,” said Jamie Hogan, owner of BearVault, based in San Diego. “I’m an engineer, and if one genius bear can do it, sooner or later there might be two genius bears. We’re trying to work on a new design that we can hopefully test on her.”

Public Enemies - Two Thumbs Down

I saw "Public Enemies", starring Johnny Depp as John Dillinger and Christian Bale as G-man Melvin Purvis, in the delightful company of Just One College-Age Daughter and some friends.

The movie,which is set in the Great Depression and follows the hunt for John Dillinger, has a pleasant musical score and some eye-catching sets (The young ladies in our group found Johny Depp to be the most eye-catching bit of scenery).  However, the movie ws plotless, pointless, dragy, and devoid of characters or characterization.

Why did Dillinger rob banks?  Who knows?  He never quite says "Because that is where the money is", but he does helpfully mention that he doesn't like kidnappings.  Why not?  He doesn't say.

Melvin Purvis is relentless in his pursuit of Dillinger and some other baddies, such as Baby Face Nelson.  What drives this avenger?  Who knows?  The bulk of the show is pointless, tedious dialogue interspersed with pointless, tedious small arms battles.

The movie is not utterly without its diversions.  Somewhat early on, as Depp woos his future flame (played by Marion Cotillard, who was a bright spot), our Romeo assures her that life is not about where you are from, its about where you are going.  Ten minutes later, in an attempt to assure her of his fidelity and commitment, Depp is assuring Ms. Cotillard that he isn't going anywhere.  I managed to while away the next fifteen minutes waiting for Depp to inform us that life is about going backwards (Maybe he was an Eerily Prescient Mets fan).

When that amusement faltered I switched to a new pastime, titled "If He Dies Before I Wake" - I would pick out a character and mentally bet on whether he would be killed before I dozed off; as a bonus, I would speculate on whether he would be alive when I woke up again (Baby Face Nelson was gunned down while I slept like a baby, but I roused myself for Johnny's big finish.)

The movie does have some desultory, spiritless Bush-bashing for those who need that sort of thing - the Federal agents engage in warrantless wiretapping and enhanced interrogation, surprising those who thought Dick Cheney invented such practices.  Incredibly, both the wiretapping and the enhanced interrogations produce useful intelligence - well, that was during the Earlier Depression, but could never happen today.

Eventually all good things come to an end.  John Dillinger was gunned down outside a movie theater, which would have been viewed as a mercy killing if he had been watching this film.  Put this one on your "Must Miss, Don't Rent, Hijack Plane If Shown As Inflight Movie" list. 

'Sorry' Seems To Be The Hardest Word

Having trouble saying the magic words, "I'm sorry"?  Put the Sorry Times to work for you!

President Acting Stupidly can't quite bring himself to apologize to Sgt. Crowley and the Cambridge Police for saying they "acted stupidly", but fortunately he has the NY Times on his side to pretend he did.

Here is the Times story, which specifically notes the non-apology:

He did not apologize but softened his language. “I continue to believe, based on what I have heard, that there was an overreaction in pulling Professor Gates out of his home to the station,” he said. “I also continue to believe, based on what I heard, that Professor Gates probably overreacted as well.”

And here is the enhanced Sorry Times coverage by Jeff Zeleny at the Times Caucus blog:

Obama Expresses His Regrets on Gates Incident

...Mr. Obama did not use the word “apology,” but aides said that was the sentiment conveyed during his phone call with Sergeant Crowley.

I sense a budding revenue opportunity for the Times!  Beleaguered husbands everywhere could deliver the standard "I'm disappointed that you are upset and misunderstood my subtle and nuanced view".  Then, the Sorry Times takes over!  A quick story explaining that the dear man had said he was sorry will be more magical than roses. 

OK, it may need work...

Meanwhile, we are delighted to see that Obama has returned to his comfortable and conventional pose as the straddler of two extremes.  Just as did with the Reverend Wright and his deplorable racist grandmother or unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers and Senator Tom Coburn, Obama is now posing as the voice of reason caught between a screaming Henry Louis Gates and an enraged Sgt. Crowley, although Gates stayed out from under the bus longer than Granny.  We'll see how long that holds - don't we all agree that this teachable moment would be even more instructive if we heard the dispatcher tapes?

MORE: Patterico is excellent with "The Officer Didn’t Stereotype Henry Louis Gates — Henry Louis Gates Stereotyped the Officer", emphasizing the same point made earlier by Mickey Kaus.  A snippet:

And in apologizing for Gates, black firebrands and white liberals patronizingly excuse techniques of stereotyping that they would condemn in a racist.

Form an image of a racist in your mind: someone who watches a TV report about a crime committed by a black person, and says: “I’m not surprised. That’s how black people are: they’re all criminals.” Is this racist attitude justified if the racist says:

I’m sorry I have this bad attitude about black people, but I have seen and heard bad things about black people all my life. I know they commit a lot of crimes, and in fact, I have been robbed by three separate black people in my life.

Now, form an image in your mind of a black person who watches a TV report about police brutality, and says: “I’m not surprised. That’s how those white cops are: they’re all racists.” Is this attitude justified if the black person says:

I’m sorry I have this bad attitude about white cops, but I have seen and heard bad things about white cops all my life. I know they hassle black people, and in fact, I have been mistreated by three separate white cops in my life.

For some reason, people who would never accept the racist’s justification of his racist attitudes, will nod their heads in approval as black people expound on why they believe all white cops are racists based upon their own personal experiences.

Interesting.  Yet that line of argumentation is so common, and so commonly accepted, that I feel obliged to take a stab at defending it.  One tack - people don't choose their race but they do choose their vocation - a person who chooses to become a police officer probably does have a set of attitudes that differ from the general population in various ways (More authoritarian? More controlling?).

And why would that justify having an attitude only about white cops?  I don't know.  Gates seems to believe that cops hassle blacks men that mouth off; I think cops hassle everyone who mouths off, but where is my street cred?  The Times front-paged a story on this.

ONE MORE TIME:  Gates claims he produced a driver's license with the address of the house in question, thereby establishing his right to be there.  Should that have been the end of the story?  Husbands and wives sometimes have nasty separations in which the husband gets kicked out the wife changes the locks; sometimes that can even escalate to the point where the wife takes out a Temporary Restraining Order.  I have no idea what sort of probable cause threshold would be appropriate, but shouldn't the police make a modest effort to take the emotional temperature of the household before leaving?  Gates was seemingly angry and uncooperative from the outset; per Crowley's version, Gates would not even respond when asked if anyone was in the house with him (In the Gates version, he does not describe the question but does refuse to answer).

So - do feminists and domestic violence experts agree that if the man of the house shouts at the cops that everything is cool so get out, the cops should simply leave?

Send Better Rebutals (Ongoing...)

Dave Weigel reports that the McCain campaign looked at and dismissed the notion that a lawsuit challenging Obama's citizenship would be successful.  The primary problem was that the plaintiffs lacked standing; however, the McCain people also claimed to have pondered the substance of the case (my emphasis):

“To the extent that we could, we looked into the substantive side of these allegations,” said Potter. “We never saw any evidence that then-Senator Obama had been born outside of the United States. We saw rumors, but nothing that could be sourced to evidence. There were no statements and no documents that suggested he was born somewhere else. On the other side, there was proof that he was born in Hawaii. There was a certificate issued by the state’s Department of Health, and the responsible official in the state saying that he had personally seen the original certificate. There was a birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser, which would be very difficult to invent or plant 47 years in advance.”

Grr - even the inestimable Captain Ed went along with the birth announcement notion back in July 2008 when Dave Weigel (then of Reason) floated it.

My point, then and recently - Barack's mom and maternal grandparents had a strong incentive to create a paper trail documenting Obama as a US citizen back in 1961 and it had nothing to do with assuring his future viability as a Presidential candidate.  Alll they needed to do was imagine a day when the white Ms. Dunham would be engaged in a custody fight in a Kenyan court contesting the fate of a black Kenyan baby sought by the black Kenyan father and his African family, and their course would have been clear.

As to faking the birth certificate?  The short form certificate that has been presented to the public is only described by Hawaiin law as an accurate summary of the long form; since the short form says Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, presumably the long form says the same thing.

However!  The short form contains no information about the hospital or attending physician that delivered Barack, as would appear on the long form.  And it seems to have been the case that the Stae of Hawaii would issue a long form certificate on the basis of simply a parental affidavit.

So - suppose that Obama's long form certificate, which he has diligently refused to release, contians no information about a hospital or doctor but simoply nbotes that Obama was born at home, based on an affidavit.  Obviously that would not prove that he was in fact born elsewhere, but I suspect eyebrows would be raised.

Ah, well - neither the McCain nor Clinton camps pushed this, but there is always 2012!

HUH?  Dave Weigel delivers a non-sequitur of a "rebuttal":

The problem with this? Parents and relatives don’t, and didn’t, get to place birth announcements in the Honolulu Advertiser or the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. As a Star-Bulletin employee explained to WorldNetDaily, the editors “print what we receive from the Department of Health Vital Statistics System,” and did so in 1961. And the Advertiser worked the same way.

Unsurprisingly, WorldNetDaily used that information to argue that the state could have had bogus information that it passed on to the newspaper, which is absurd on its face. But it really should be enough to debunk this “Obama’s grandparents lied to win a future custody suit” theory.

Well, a false affidavit that produced a birth certificate would also produce a birth announcement, apparently, so Mr. Weigel has debunked nothing.  But part of the problem is that Mr. Weigel is apparently confused (willfully or otherwise) about my theory, which he summarizes as "Obama’s grandparents lied to win a future custody suit".  My point is not that they did in fact lie; my point is that they had a clear motive to lie in 1961 which had nothing to do with a possible Presidential run decades later. 

The McCain strategist was dubious about their motive; I supplied one.  But any fan of crime fiction knows that the holy trinity of crime is motive, means and opportunity.  I am satisfied (and Mr. Weigel has not attempted to rebut) the notion that the Dunhams had a clear motive to fraudulently document Baby Barack as an American; I am far from clear as to whether they had the means and the opportunity.

Maybe discussing this in the context of Barack Obama causes too great an emotional burden for some people to discuss it rationally, so let's try a different example.  I, Tom Maguire, have a clear and compelling motive to kidnap Melinda Gates and hold her for, Bwa Ha Ha, One Million Dollars ransom - not only would the money be nice but I also am stuck with Vista on my new laptop.

So, having established my motive, should we worry that Ms. Gates has in fact been kidnapped?  Relax - I didn't do it.

And should Dave Weigel explain that, since, I didn't actually kidnap her, that proves I had no motive to do so?  Well, on his current performance he might, but it would make no sense.

More On President "Stupidly", Gates, And Crowley

More on the arrest and aftermath with Henry Louis Gates.

[0.  As I noted yesterday, the fact that Gates produced (per his version) a driver's license with an address is suggestive but not dispositive of his right to be in the house.  It is certainly conceivable that he and his wife had recently gone through a nasty separation, she had kicked him out and changed the locks, and he had broken into his former house in order to seize property in dispute or smack her around.  One wonders whether feminists and domestic violence experts endorse the view apparently held by President Stupidly, namely, if the man of the house can produce an ID with the appropriate address and refuses all further questions, the police should pipe down and leave.  (Per Crowley, Gates would not even tell him whether any one else was in the house; in Gates' version, he does not describe Crowley's question but he makes clear that he refused to answer it.)]

1.  Roll Dem Bones, or at least, the tape - hard to believe there is something for everyone in the 911 and dispatchers tape:

Mounting pressure to get to the bottom of the controversial arrest of black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. is centering on recorded police tapes that may offer a dose of reality amid all the media and political noise.

Cambridge police brass and lawyers are weighing making the tapes public, which could include the 911 call reporting a break-in at Gates’ home and radio transmissions by the cop who busted him July 16 for disorderly conduct.

...“I don’t believe this officer did anything wrong, and given what we know, I don’t think he would be afraid to share the tapes at all, either,” said Thomas Nee, president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association. “It’s public record. From dispatch to conclusion, it’s all on tape.”

I bet we will find out.  Or maybe the authorities will just release a tape of an old Richard Pryor comedy sketch, with Pryror screaming "It's because I'm black!".

2.  Am I the only gutless white guy in America?  The Times gives this advice on dealing with police officers:

Mr. Vivian, 47, said that he had been unfairly stopped by the police in the past, but that he lived by “an unwritten code” for dealing with these incidents. And Dr. Gates certainly did not obey the code, he said.

Quiet politeness is Rule No. 1 in surviving an incident of racial profiling, he said. So is the frequent use of the word “sir.”

...

That there is a well-known code of behavior familiar to most minorities who are stopped by the police, Mr. Vivian said, is testament enough of a problem.

That is the code known to minorities?  Am I the only white guy who has embraced the "Look down and suck up" approach to dealing with cops?  Maybe over the years my pale friends have only been faking their humility in recounting their own police stories.

3.  Another moment of racial solidarity - at Irish Central, Obama was the one acting stupidly and Crowley is aces.

4.  Crowley should apologize?  My Inner Irishman says, As If.  The tape does not reveal whether the interviewer asked Elizabeth Gates if her father would apologize; maybe Gates pere didn't need to be talking about Crowley's mama.

5.  President Stupidly speaks to ABC News:

The president said he understands the sergeant who arrested Gates is an "outstanding police officer." But he added that with all that's going on in the country with health care and the economy and the wars abroad, "it doesn't make sense to arrest a guy in his own home if he's not causing a serious disturbance."

Almost!  With two wars and a faltering health care reform effort, maybe President Stupidly should not be bloviating about local police matters, especially when he does not have the facts.

6.  In A Pickle:  The Cambridge mayor is probably in a jam.  Other than Crowley the Cambridge and Harvard police were not on the scene immediately, but they don't need to wait for the mayor's special commission to tell them what they saw and heard at the end of the scene and during Gates' arrest.  If the cops are backing Crowley out of fraternal solidarity, that is one thing; if they are backing him because the other cops on the scene believe he acted appropriately, that is another.

From ABC News:

One of Crowley's neighbors supported the sergeant's account, saying that the police report that said Gates was "belligerent" was not completely off the mark.

LATER ON FRIDAY:  The Cambridge police request an apology from President Stupidly; Gibbs and Obama realize they are losing the message war so Obama makes a surprise appearance in the press room, blames the media for the hub-bub, praises Crowley, tweaks Gates a bit ("I also continue to believe, based on what I heard, that Professor Gates probably overreacted as well.") and hopes we move on.  However, Obama is not apologizing to anyone.  If Obama and Gates force Crowley to take the first bite of crow there will be Hades to pay.

Gates has a long radio chat, to which I have not listened; does anyone believe the article excerpts?  I am stuck here:

Gates gives a detailed version of the encounter, challenging a specific aspect of the police report, that he referred to Sgt. Crowley's "momma":

"I think when they put together that report they did some historical research and watched some episodes of 'Good Times' or something," Gates said. "What kind of black person today says [that] to a big white police officer?"

What kind of person?  Hmm, a hyper-entitled Harvard prof with an overdeveloped sense of his own grievances and invulnerability?  Well, the cops there know what they heard, and maybe we will all hear the tapes.

THE TIDE CONTINUES TO EBB:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — A black police officer who was at Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s home when the black Harvard scholar was arrested says he fully supports how his white fellow officer handled the situation.

Sgt. Leon Lashley says Gates was probably tired and surprised when Sgt. James Crowley demanded identification from him as officers investigated a report of a burglary. Lashley says Gates' reaction to Crowley was "a little bit stranger than it should have been."

Asked if Gates should have been arrested, Lashley said supported Crowley "100 percent."

Sgt. Lashley has to work with these guys every day, so the idea that he might have come out in support of Gates is far-fetched.  However, he could have been busy or unavailable today; silence might have been golden.

We Now Move To The Post Post-Racial Phase Of The Obama Presidency

[AS CLOSE AS I WILL COME TO ORIGINAL:  On the question of whether the police should have simply said good night and moved on or stayed and asked a few questionS after Gates (allegedly) produced a driver's license showing his residence at that address:

Is it inconceivable that Gates was an angry husband in the midst of a ghastly separation from his wife?  Not every woman who kicks her husband out and changes the locks also gets a temporary restraining order, and perhaps the police don't check for TROs in their immediate response to a break-in call.  My question - is it the official position of domestic violence workers and the feminist movement that henceforth, police should simply move on if the apparent man of the house says all is well and refuses to answer any questions?]

At his health care press conference Obama was asked about the arrest of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates for disorderly conduct.

Shorter Obama - I don't have all the facts but I am going to side with my friend Skip Gates and show some racial solidarity by declaring the Cambridge cops to be stupid. 

Hmm, thank heaven we don't have a stupid President like George Bush, who would spout off without all the facts...

By these everything old is new again post post-racial standards I shouldn't even waste time trying to ascertain the facts either - the arresting officer, James Crowley, is white and maybe even Irish, so I'm sure he behaved appropriately.  Additional facts, such as the news that James Crowley is a bit of an expert in race relations, are hardly relevant:

Cambridge Sgt. James Crowley has taught a class about racial profiling for five years at the Lowell Police Academy after being hand-picked for the job by former police Commissioner Ronny Watson, who is black, said Academy Director Thomas Fleming.

I assume Obama and Gates will want to get to the bottom of this Cambridge cover-up.

Bill Cosby thinks Obama jumped the gun with his opinion, which is so June 2008 - where's the solidarity, Bill?

Let me reprise Obama's response at the press conference:

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. Recently Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested at his home in Cambridge. What does that incident say to you and what does it say about race relations in America?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I should say at the outset that "Skip" Gates is a friend, so I may be a little biased here. I don't know all the facts. What's been reported, though, is that the guy forgot his keys, jimmied his way to get into the house, there was a report called into the police station that there might be a burglary taking place -- so far, so good, right? I mean, if I was trying to jigger into -- well, I guess this is my house now so -- (laughter) -- it probably wouldn't happen. But let's say my old house in Chicago -- (laughter) -- here I'd get shot. (Laughter.)

But so far, so good. They're reporting -- the police are doing what they should. There's a call, they go investigate what happens. My understanding is at that point Professor Gates is already in his house. The police officer comes in, I'm sure there's some exchange of words, but my understanding is, is that Professor Gates then shows his ID to show that this is his house. And at that point, he gets arrested for disorderly conduct -- charges which are later dropped.

Now, I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that, but I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge Police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact.

As you know, Lynn, when I was in the state legislature in Illinois, we worked on a racial profiling bill because there was indisputable evidence that blacks and Hispanics were being stopped disproportionately. And that is a sign, an example of how, you know, race remains a factor in this society. That doesn't lessen the incredible progress that has been made. I am standing here as testimony to the progress that's been made.

And yet the fact of the matter is, is that this still haunts us. And even when there are honest misunderstandings, the fact that blacks and Hispanics are picked up more frequently and oftentime for no cause casts suspicion even when there is good cause. And that's why I think the more that we're working with local law enforcement to improve policing techniques so that we're eliminating potential bias, the safer everybody is going to be.

Let's extract the President's insights:

I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry...

Angry about what?  Having the police show up at my house in response to a break-in report?  By his own account Gates was hostile and uncooperative from the outset.  Yet Gates now claims, improbably, that he is grateful for the role played by the neighbor who instigated the incident:

[Gates] has no qualms about the neighbor who called the police.

"I'm glad that someone would care enough about my property to report what they thought was some untoward invasion," Gates said. "If she saw someone tomorrow that looked like they were breaking in, I would want her to call 911. I would want the police to come. What I would not want is to be presumed to be guilty. That's what the deal was. It didn't matter how I was dressed. It didn't matter how I talked. It didn't matter how I comported myself. That man was convinced that I was guilty."

Well, Gates was convinced from the outset that the policeman had an attitude, anyway.

Back to the President:

[N]umber two, that the Cambridge Police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home...

I think the President is wading in Number Two on this one.  First, there seems to be a dispute as to whether Gates produced a drivers license (with an address) or simply a Harvard ID (no address.)

Secondly, even if Gates had produced a drivers license with that address, is it inconceivable that the license was a bit dated and that Gates was a former tenant having a bitter dispute with his landlord?  Is it inconceivable that he was an angry husband in the midst of a ghastly separation from his wife?  Not every woman who kicks her husband out and changes the locks also gets a temporary restraining order, and perhaps the police don't check for TROs in the immediate response to a break-in call.  My question - is it the official position of the feminist movement that henceforth, police should simply move on if the apparent man of the house says all is well and refuses to answer any questions?

Per the possibly self-serving police report, one of the officer's first questions was whether there was anybody else in the house.  The unwillingness of Gates to even describe that seemingly reasonable question in his own possibly self-serving account caught the keen eye of Mickey Kaus.  One might further guess that if the question had been something outrageous and provocative that Gates would not have been so coy in recounting it later.

Back to the President again:

[N]umber three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact.

Right, and so what?  As Ralph Richard Banks of the Times round table explains, this case has nothing to do with racial profiling:

This is not a classic instance of racial profiling, in which a police officer assumed that Professor Gates was breaking into a home simply because he is black. Rather, Officer James Crowley was summoned by a woman who observed two black men on the porch trying to force open the door.

The officer approached Professor Gates not as a result of a racial profile, but based on a witness’s account of a specific suspect engaged in suspicious behavior, just as we should expect him to.

I understand why Gates wants to wrap himself in the No Racial Profiling flag.  I am far from clear why the President wants to play along.

STRAY THOUGHTS: 

CAN'T MAKE THIS UP:  The arresting officer, James Crowley, refers to himself as Jim Crowley, which as a helpful mnemonic can be shortened to Jim Crow.

CUI BONO:  It's easier to see Henry Louis Gates flourishing in the new-old post post-racial America than in Barack's post-racial America of yesterday.  Secondly, where was Gates' street cred prior to this arrest?  This is from the Times round table:

In a 1995 New Yorker magazine article, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man,” Henry Louis Gates lamented the profound distrust between African-Americans and the cops. “Blacks — in particular, black men — swap their experiences of police encounters like war stories,” he wrote, “and there are few who don’t have more than one story to tell.”

 Yet if we believe what Gates told the WaPo, he had no war stories at all:

Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. has spent much of his life studying the complex history of race and culture in America, but until last week he had never had the experience that has left so many black men questioning the criminal justice system.

Gates was arrested outside his house in Cambridge, Mass., after a neighbor reported seeing two black men in the middle-class, predominantly white area pushing against the front door.

"I studied the history of racism. I know every incident in the history of racism from slavery to Jim Crow segregation," Gates told The Washington Post on Tuesday in his first interview about the episode. "I haven't even come close to being arrested. I would have said it was impossible."

But now Gates is a hardened criminal, with a terrifying four hour stint in the Cambridge lock-up to talk about, comforted only by the presence of several Harvard colleagues and attorneys - and now maybe he will get a book or a series out of it!  It's ridiculous to suggest that Gates planned this incident from the outset, but I don't think he was afraid to ride it as it developed.

CHANGING TIMES:  Between the Ricci case in New Haven and the stupid Cambridge cops, we have come a long way from 9/11 and the national admiration for New York's Finest and Bravest.  Of course, by "we" I don't mean all of "we", just the usual suspects of the left and (pardon my redundancy) the media.

BOO HOO: John McWhorter tells of being stopped for jaywalking and explains that "I simply cannot imagine [the policeman] stopping like this if a white man of the same age in the same clothes with the same stubble had done the exact same thing".

Yeah?  Back in 1986 I was in Beverly Hills for a friend's wedding.  While out jogging at about 9 in the morning I was hassled by a cop for jaywalking and threatened with a trip downtown since I didn't have any ID.  A trip "downtown" in shorts and a t-shirt really didn't appeal to me or fit into the wedding schedule, so rather than summon forth the memory of centuries of British oppression of the Irish I employed the power of positive groveling.  Don't cop an attitude with the cops - is that rule too complicated?

But my experience suggests a helpful "diversity" course for the Cambridge cops - the tentative title will be "How to treat black people the way black people think cops treat white people".  Yeah, because I tell 'em what I really think.  Ten minutes after they are gone.

Man, Oh Man, Oh Manny

Only in Mannywood; Hollywood would reject this script as too improbable.  Manny Ramirez was benched with a sore wrist on Manny Ramirez bobble-head doll night, having been hit by a pitch the night before.

However, with the bases loaded, the score tied, and the Dodger pitcher scheduled to bat in the sixth inning, Joe Torre sent in the Yankee slayer, who delivered a grand slam off a young fireballer he had never faced before.

I am just so glad he is in the other league so I can watch my Yankees without having to hide behind the couch when he comes up.

Why Do I Even Bother Showing Up Sober?

The Freakonomics team at the NY Times utterly overlooks my humble yet arguably successful effort to take up Nate Silver's weather bet.  Well, waddya expect - they credit Andrew Sullivan for the link, but that was Patrick Appel blogging at Sully's site.

The gist - Nate Silver offered to climate change skeptics a $25/day bet on whether the weather would be hotter or colder in their hometown.  Obviously this has little to do what global warming but it had at least the potential to shut people up about how cold its been lately and doesn't that mean Al Gore is a crock.

But it didn't shut everyone up!  I tried to accept, subject to a minor caveat - I wanted to bet on continued cool weather in Minneapolis, the topic of the original post, rather than the New York City area, my hometown.  Now, what do I know about Minneapolis?  Not much, but beyond the many hours wasted watching "Purple Rain" on late night cable I had a National Weather Service forecast predicting below-normal temps in the Mid West for the next one to three months.  I would hardly call it easy money (betting on weather forceasts?) but I like bets where the odds are in my favor.

Sadly but unsurprisngly, the like-minded Mr. Silver is also able to read a weather forecast.  His emailed reply to my caveated acceptance:

But can you use somewhere other than your hometown? No, that would be a problem. I'm fully aware that this is a somewhat "bad" bet for me for the next 30-60 days in about 10% of the country - an area which happens to include Minneapolis. After that, basically the whole
country is expected to have average-to-above-average temperatures through the middle of 2011.

If someone from MSP or Chicago or Milwaukee happened to want to take the bet -- that's fine, I'm a man of my word (although I'd hope that person would not be a total weenie and would continue the bet for longer than 30 days). But if I allow people to cherry-pick their location, I'm just printing money for them, and it sort of defeats the purpose, which is to illustrate that *on average* the country is getting (slightly) warmer.

Feel free to re-print this on your site.

I had no intention of being a total weenie, of course - I was aiming more for "weasel", figuring I would ride the bet through August and see what the updated forecast available in mid-August had to say about September.

Oh, well - except for an accident of birth I would be getting recognition in the NY Times right now and maybe collecting some money come Labor Day.  But I can move on.

As to why there has not been an update to the "no takers" update at Nate Silver's site, well, strictly speaking I didn't take the bet.  I suppose.

Because It's Not Cheney And It's Not Evil Oil Executives

Andrew Malcolm of the LA Times notes that Obama and Biden are having the same sort of secret meetings that gave proper progressives fits when it was Dick Cheney meeting with oil company execs.  But this time it is health care oriented, so no worries from the usual howlers on the left.  [But the day was young!  See the Update.]

The still sort-of new Barack Obama Democratic administration has again adopted yet another policy straight out of the administration of his much-criticized Republican predecessor George W. Bush.

Obama administration officials have rejected a watchdog group's request for a list of healthcare industry executives who've been meeting secretly in the White House with Obama staffers to discuss pending healthcare changes being drafted there and in Congress.

According to the Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington, which is suspicious of the influence of health industry lobbyists and company officers, it received a letter from the Secret Service citing an Obama Justice Dept. directive and denying access to visitor logs under the "presidential communications privilege."

Sound familiar?

No, We the People still don't get to watch the sausage being made.  I hope people weren't seriously expecting change.

UPDATE:  Memorandum puts the LA Times story and blog post near the top, so we see kvetching from Greg Sargent, Alex Koppelman of Salon, Marcy Wheeler,  David Kurtz of TPM, and no doubt others.  Well, good for them.

Somebody Call 911 - Biden Fire Burning On The Dance Floor

Joe Biden is overheard in Kiev lauding the Ukrainian women to his host.  A gaffe, or a characteristically keen insight from Old Joe?  For my money, any time Biden spends talking about hot babes is time he is not spending talking about bombing Iran.  Sure, eventually Biden will be caught ogling the hotties in some women's church choir, but for now let's laud his creative use of the pre-emptive mini-gaffe.

This From A Nobel Laureate?

Paul Krugman tries to defend Obama's risky carbon cap and trade scheme from the charge that it will encourage speculation and manipulation.  His explanation may fly because Krugman has enormous street cred with the sort of lefties who are utterly market-averse, but it is laughably weak.  Here we go:

But there’s also, it seems, growing opposition to cap-and-trade from people who should be on the side of progress — but whose reaction is basically “Eek! Markets!Wall Street! Speculation! Bad!”

We don’t need this.

So let me talk a bit about why this reaction is 99% wrong, and bad for the planet.

Any time you have a market, there’s some opportunity for speculation. Even if the good being traded isn’t storable, there may be a futures market, so you can bet on the future price. If the good is storable, the spot price may be moved by the futures market, since high futures prices may provide an incentive for stockpiling.

For example, the fact that wheat is traded means that there’s also a wheat futures market; and because wheat can be stored, futures prices affect spot prices.

So, should fear of speculation lead us to ban trading in wheat? Nobody would say that. Yes, sometimes speculators will get it wrong — but the advantages of having a wheat market vastly overshadow the possible harm that may sometimes come from speculation.

People have been trading physical wheat in physical markets around the globe for centuries, if not millennia, and will continue to do so with or without the existence of wheat futures contracts.  In the case of wheat, or oil, or Eurodollars, the underlying markets had a role and an existence prior to the creation of a futures market, and were subject to speculative squeezes and market manipulation prior to the creation of futures contracts. 

Obviously, we don't have an active market for carbon emissions in the United States at this moment; Congress is contemplating the creation of such a market.  Let me boldly assert that a market that does not and will not exist is not subject to speculation and manipulation.  Creating a new market from whole cloth will create new opportunities for mischief.

So how does Krugman cross this intellectual chasm?  Watch closely:

Now substitute “emission permits” for wheat. It’s exactly the same story. Why should you address it any differently?

That was easy!  It is exactly the same story!  Well, yes, "exactly" overlooks the reality that in the United States we have not had a market for carbon emissions dating back centuries or even nano-seconds, so we have no accumulated experience in how the underlying market ought to behave or what that market might look like if it were being manipulated, but other than being completely new and untried it is exactly the same as the age-old market for wheat.

There is another critical difference.  Wheat is grown by many, many different people, businesses and governmental entities all over the country and the world, so there is a varied source of supply.  Carbon emissions permits will come from one supplier, the US government.  If a wheat speculator needs to get his hands on some real wheat he will need to find a commercially agreeable farmer or wholesaler; a carbon emissions speculator may be able to find what he needs by visiting with his Congressman or Senator. 

So - if emissions permits skyrocket in price, will companies pay the price or plead with Congress for relief?  And what will Congress do when faced with the specter of angry utility rate-payers staggered by high electric bills?  Congress can legislate the existence of new permits in a way that they cannot legislate the existence of new wheat.

So why can't we have a simpler carbon tax, which would discourage carbon use by a less predictable amount but with a much more predictable price?  Well, c'mon - the simpler carbon tax is disqualified by two words, "simpler" and "tax".  The bureaucracy needed to monitor permits will be a boon to the government workers union for decades.  And "tax" is a no-no (I have to blame the Repubs for that); cap and trade sounds like something else.

Experimental Rhetoric

Apparently Republican pollsters and focus-groupers have recommended that Republicans should relentlessly tag the Obama health care plan as "experimental".  C'mon, does that really elevate the debate and educate the American public?  And where is the candor - how can they say this about a plan we haven't even seen yet?  I deplore this risky rhetorical scheme. 

Sunspots And Climate Change - The Times Steps Forward

What do we know about sunspot cycles and their effect on the climate?  Not much, but the Times has some coverage:

Ever since Samuel Heinrich Schwabe, a German astronomer, first noted in 1843 that sunspots burgeon and wane over a roughly 11-year cycle, scientists have carefully watched the Sun’s activity. In the latest lull, the Sun should have reached its calmest, least pockmarked state last fall.

...

A panel of 12 scientists assembled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration now predicts that the May 2013 peak will average 90 sunspots during that month. That would make it the weakest solar maximum since 1928, which peaked at 78 sunspots. During an average solar maximum, the Sun is covered with an average of 120 sunspots.

But the panel’s consensus “was not a unanimous decision,” said Douglas A. Biesecker, chairman of the panel. One member still believed the cycle would roar to life while others thought the maximum would peter out at only 70.

Solar activity seems to tie into the climate change debate by mechanisms which are not clear:

The idea that solar cycles are related to climate is hard to fit with the actual change in energy output from the sun. From solar maximum to solar minimum, the Sun’s energy output drops a minuscule 0.1 percent.

But the overlap of the Maunder Minimum with the Little Ice Age, when Europe experienced unusually cold weather, suggests that the solar cycle could have more subtle influences on climate.

One possibility proposed a decade ago by Henrik Svensmark and other scientists at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen looks to high-energy interstellar particles known as cosmic rays. When cosmic rays slam into the atmosphere, they break apart air molecules into ions and electrons, which causes water and sulfuric acid in the air to stick together in tiny droplets. These droplets are seeds that can grow into clouds, and clouds reflect sunlight, potentially lowering temperatures.

The Sun, the Danish scientists say, influences how many cosmic rays impinge on the atmosphere and thus the number of clouds. When the Sun is frenetic, the solar wind of charged particles it spews out increases. That expands the cocoon of magnetic fields around the solar system, deflecting some of the cosmic rays.

But, according to the hypothesis, when the sunspots and solar winds die down, the magnetic cocoon contracts, more cosmic rays reach Earth, more clouds form, less sunlight reaches the ground, and temperatures cool.

“I think it’s an important effect,” Dr. Svensmark said, although he agrees that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that has certainly contributed to recent warming.

Dr. Svensmark and his colleagues found a correlation between the rate of incoming cosmic rays and the coverage of low-level clouds between 1984 and 2002. They have also found that cosmic ray levels, reflected in concentrations of various isotopes, correlate well with climate extending back thousands of years.

But other scientists found no such pattern with higher clouds, and some other observations seem inconsistent with the hypothesis.

Terry Sloan, a cosmic ray expert at the University of Lancaster in England, said if the idea were true, one would expect the cloud-generation effect to be greatest in the polar regions where the Earth’s magnetic field tends to funnel cosmic rays.

“You’d expect clouds to be modulated in the same way,” Dr. Sloan said. “We can’t find any such behavior.”

Still, “I would think there could well be some effect,” he said, but he thought the effect was probably small. Dr. Sloan’s findings indicate that the cosmic rays could at most account for 20 percent of the warming of recent years.

Even without cosmic rays, however, a 0.1 percent change in the Sun’s energy output is enough to set off El Niño- and La Niña-like events that can influence weather around the world, according to new research led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

Climate modeling showed that over the largely cloud-free areas of the Pacific Ocean, the extra heating over several years warms the water, increasing evaporation. That intensifies the tropical storms and trade winds in the eastern Pacific, and the result is cooler-than-normal waters, as in a La Niña event, the scientists reported this month in the Journal of Climate.

In a year or two, the cool water pattern evolves into a pool of El Niño-like warm water, the scientists said.

The Times closes with words from an expert:

“We still don’t quite understand this beast,” Dr. Hathaway said. “The theories we had for how the sunspot cycle works have major problems.”

MORE:  TheTimes coverage coverage of quiet sunspots last fall included this on climate change:

Scientists are not sure why this minimum has been especially minimal, and the episode is even playing into the global warming debate. Some wonder if this could be the start of an extended period of solar indolence that would more than offset the warming effect of human-made carbon dioxide emissions. From the middle of the 17th century to the early 18th, a period known as the Maunder Minimum, sunspots were extremely rare, and the reduced activity coincided with lower temperatures in what is known as the Little Ice Age.

Compared to the Maunder Minimum, the current pace of sunspots “makes it look like we’re having a feast, not a famine,” Dr. Hathaway said. 

Blocking

Mickey Kaus is not so sanguine about big Presidential pushes for anything:

Hmm. When was the last time a President's campaign style attempt to sell a policy has actually succeeded in selling the policy? I can't remember it. I can remember lots of flops (e.g.,Bush on Social Security).

Well, there was that adventure in Iraq...

Approval Ratings Down

How are we likin' him now?  Not as much.

Heading into a critical period in the debate over health-care reform, public approval of President Obama's stewardship on the issue has dropped below the 50 percent threshold for the first time, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The idea that Congress will be stampeded into a massive, complicated overhaul of the health care system in the next few weeks with time set aside for a vigorous public debate over a weekend in August is absurd and irresponsible.  We've been talking about a health care crisis for fifteen years and now we have to solve it in the next fifteen days?  Why the rush?

Everybody's Talking About The Weather But No One Is Betting On It... Yet

On Saturday Nate Silver, polling and Oscar guru, tossed off a bet to climate change skeptics, following the grand tradition of science-based bets (nothing illegal here!):

1. For each day that the high temperature in your hometown is at least 1 degree Fahrenheit above average, as listed by Weather Underground, you owe me $25. For each day that it is at least 1 degree Fahrenheit below average, I owe you $25.

2. The challenge proceeds in monthly intervals, with the first month being August. At the end of each month, we'll tally up the winning and losing days and the loser writes the winner a check for the balance.

There is also an eligibility threshold:

You are eligible for this challenge if:

1. You live in the United States and provide me with your home address and telephone number (I will provide you with mine) and,
2. You are a regular (at least once weekly) contributor to a political, economics or science blog with an Alexa traffic global ranking of 50,000 or lower.

The reason for the latter requirement is because I want to be able to shame/humiliate you if you back out of the challenge or refuse to pay, as I'd assume you'd do the same with me.

I have emailed Mr. Silver to say yes to this proposition, subject to a couple of modifications.

First, where is the love?  Alexa ranks me at a mere 180,000 or some such.  I blame the "Typepad" hosting (while I search for Blogger Viagra).  However, I am confident that I am somebody, so perhaps Mr. Silver will relent on this point.

As to the hometown, oh, bother.  Mr. Silver's original post was in response to a Powerline effort from Minneapolis; after researching that, I am not inclined to double down and check out my hometown, too.  We started in Minneapolis, so let's continue there.

Finally, Mr. Silver proposes the Weather Underground as a data source (free registration required!).  That won't be as much fun for people following along and there may be a data matching problem - presumably we want the daily averages to be based on the same station that is providing the daily data for 2009.  My suggestion is the use use the staid old National Weather Service, which reports data for Minneapolis - here are daily averages, and the resource to churn out monthly reports.

I will keep people apprised of developments.

DISCLAIMER:  In the event legal questions become a problem, let's agree on charitable donations as a means of settlement.  If clouds darken his day for too long, Mr. Silver will be contributing to Clean Air Cool Planet.  In my name, natch.

ADDENDUM:  Hmm, can we both be idiots?

WHERE WE STAND:  I sent Mr. Silver an email at 1:05 PM indicating my acceptance subject to the modifications noted above.  As of 10:45 PM (my bedtime, since the Yankees won a while ago) I have not heard back, and he did set a Monday deadline.  I left a comment at his site noting this, but that comment is still being held in moderation, so I really am the invisible man just now.

Oh, well - apparently the clock is running out on me, possibly for reasons which were mentioned in my initial post - the NWS expects the cool weather in Minnesota to continue for a few more months.  Is a picture worth a thousand words?

Too bad.  If my non-residency in the Minneapolis area had been invoked as the technicality disqualifying me, I was hoping to volunteer either Captain Ed or John Hinderaker as my Minneapolis surrogate (I am strangely capable of curbing my conscience long enough to get a bet down), but there won't be time to work that magic unless Mr. Silver extends his self-imposed deadline.  Time will tell.

WE ARE ON THE SAME PAGE, AND THE SAME WEATHER MAP:  Mr. Silver responds, with kind words for my blogging and a candid explanation that, although he was born at night, it wasn't last night:

But can you use somewhere other than your hometown? No, that would be a problem. I'm fully aware that this is a somewhat "bad" bet for me for the next 30-60 days in about 10% of the country - an area which happens to include Minneapolis. After that, basically the whole
country is expected to have average-to-above-average temperatures through the middle of 2011.

If someone from MSP or Chicago or Milwaukee happened to want to take the bet -- that's fine, I'm a man of my word (although I'd hope that person would not be a total weenie and would continue the bet for longer than 30 days). But if I allow people to cherry-pick their location, I'm just printing money for them, and it sort of defeats the purpose, which is to illustrate that *on average* the country is getting (slightly) warmer.

Feel free to re-print this on your site.

Hmm, "total weenie"?  I prefer to think of myself as a value shopper, although "weasel" is OK, too.  My intention had been to back the stats jockeys at the National Weather Service for a month, maybe two (depending on how the updated forecast came in in mid-August).  Like Mr. Silver, I want a bet I can feel good about, so we don't have anything here.

Oh, well.  Opportunity was knocking, but it was on somebody else's door.  And props to Mr. Silver, who managed to run a bluff past the table.