"All Aboard, (Northeastern United States of) America, All Aboard Amtrak..."

It makes me smile when I read about how Amtrak is carrying more passengers and making better financial decisions.

Although, I won't really be happy until I'm traveling inter-city on high-speed rail is connecting every major city so you don't have to worry about snow or bad weather cancelling your flight or making roads unsafe to drive. Kind of like how the Acela proves here:

An eye-opening view into demographics and politics

Columbia University School of Journalism professor and New York Times op-ed contributor Tom Edsall has a very interesting piece citing a number of studies about the correlation between demographic changes and political ideology. Of particular note is the following passage:

"In 1988, the Democratic presidential nominee, Michael Dukakis, carried 26 percent of the nation’s counties, 819 of 3,144, on his way to losing the Electoral College 426-111 and the popular vote by seven percentage points. In 2012, President Obama won fewer counties, 690, but he won the popular vote by four points and the Electoral College in a landslide, 332-206."

While the title of the op-ed piece is misleading, the content is very interesting and worth reading.

Fighting Communism, One Athlete at a Time | New York Times

A very interesting piece in The New York Times about tennis player Li Na and Chinese athletes generally.

Behind the I.R.S. Mess: A Campaign-Finance Scandal | Steven Rattner - New York Times

Kind of really the point here:

“By way of background, the decision in 2010 to target groups with certain words in their names did not come out of nowhere. That same year, the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case substantially liberalized rules around political contributions, stimulating the formation of many activist groups.

In the year ended Sept. 30, 2010, the division received 1,741 applications from “social welfare organizations” requesting tax-exempt status. Two years later, the figure was 2,774. Meanwhile, the staff of the division tasked with reviewing these applications was reduced as part of a series of budget reductions imposed on the I.R.S. by anti-tax forces.

A far higher proportion of the new applicants wanted to pursue a conservative agenda than a liberal agenda. So without trying to defend the indefensible profiling, it wouldn’t be that shocking if low-level staff members were simply, but stupidly, trying to find an efficient way to sift through the avalanche of applications.”

Friedman: India vs. China vs. Egypt | NYTimes.com

Another interesting column by Tom Friedman.  Here is the premise:

"It’s hard to escape a visit to India without someone asking you to compare it to China. This visit was no exception, but I think it’s more revealing to widen the aperture and compare India, China and Egypt. India has a weak central government but a really strong civil society, bubbling with elections and associations at every level. China has a muscular central government but a weak civil society, yet one that is clearly straining to express itself more. Egypt, alas, has a weak government and a very weak civil society, one that was suppressed for 50 years, denied real elections and, therefore, is easy prey to have its revolution diverted by the one group that could organize, the Muslim Brotherhood, in the one free space, the mosque. But there is one thing all three have in common: gigantic youth bulges under the age of 30, increasingly connected by technology but very unevenly educated."

Read the rest of Friedman's column. It is worth reading and thinking about because the impact over the next 10, 20, and 30 years will be bigger than people realize.

The Atlantic points out what I've always noticed about conservative media (but doesn't really explain it.)

Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic has a great piece on why so many conservative "news outlets" got the election wrong:

"It is easy to close oneself off inside a conservative echo chamber. And right-leaning outlets like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh's show are far more intellectually closed than CNN or public radio. If you're a rank-and-file conservative, you're probably ready to acknowledge that ideologically friendly media didn't accurately inform you about Election 2012. Some pundits engaged in wishful thinking; others feigned confidence in hopes that it would be a self-fulfilling prophecy; still others decided it was smart to keep telling right-leaning audiences what they wanted to hear."

This brings me to something I noticed a few years ago and never could find an answer for it. Where are the liberals in conservative media? Conservative Media always blames the mainstream media as having a liberal bias. Think of the "liberal media" for a second:
- MSNBC? A former Republican Congressman hosts a three-hour morning news show (which, in case you're wondering, is three hours more than any liberal hosts a show on Fox News).
- New York Times? David Brooks and Ross Douthat have regular columns in the Op-Ed pages.
- Washington Post? Same with Michael Gerson, Charles Krauthammer, Kathleen Parker, George Will...

I ask again, where are the liberals in conservative media? Alan Colmes? Sure, he makes a token appearance from time-to-time on Fox News but it's not like he hosts his own TV show anymore (and even then, it was Hannity & Colmes). Thomas Frank? Nope, not with the Wall Street Journal anymore, and even when he was, his column printed less frequently than Brooks or Douthat do with the New York Times.

I'm not saying conservative media should swing to the ideological middle. There is a need for both, objective and partisan media. However, if you only offer your viewers partisanship without an intellectually honest counterpoint, you're likely to end up in the exact same place the Republican Party is sitting in today. And in the long term that's not good for the party or for the country.

The Economist's Presidential Election Endorsement

The Economist published their endorsement for this year's presidential election today.  The Economist, known to be a conservative news outlet, had this to say about President Obama:

"Even to a newspaper with no love for big government, the fact that over 40m people had no health coverage in a country as rich as America was a scandal."

While one particularly scathing comment about Mitt Romney was:

"...the extremism of his party is Mr Romney’s greatest handicap. The Democrats have their implacable fringe too: look at the teachers’ unions. But the Republicans have become a party of Torquemadas, forcing representatives to sign pledges never to raise taxes, to dump the chairman of the Federal Reserve and to embrace an ever more Southern-fried approach to social policy. Under President Romney, new conservative Supreme Court justices would try to overturn Roe v Wade, returning abortion policy to the states. The rights of immigrants (who have hardly had a good deal under Mr Obama) and gays (who have) would also come under threat. This newspaper yearns for the more tolerant conservatism of Ronald Reagan, where “small government” meant keeping the state out of people’s bedrooms as well as out of their businesses. Mr Romney shows no sign of wanting to revive it."

The Economist also lists its history of Presidential Endorsements.  For those keeping score, they are:

1980: Ronald Reagan
1984: No Endorsement
1988: No Endorsement
1992: Bill Clinton
1996: Bob Dole
2000: George W. Bush
2004: John Kerry
2008: Barack Obama
2012: Barack Obama

Its 1984 non-endorsement had this very prescient point that haunts us today:

"Although Mr Reagan's ultra-Keynesian America is barrelling along towards full employment, all its trading and budget accounts are frighteningly out of balance. A sound international economic order cannot be built on the assumption that the rumbustiously richest country will go on borrowing unprecedented amounts at enormous interest rates from everybody else for ever."

All-in-all, it hasn't been a good few days for Mitt Romney.  First, his keynote speaker from the Republican National Convention, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, effusively praised President Obama for his handling of the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy.  Then, he attempted to do the right thing by having a can drive at what was originally scheduled to be a campaign rally.  Just one problem though:

"The campaign asked for nonperishable donations despite the fact that the Red Cross does not typically accept or solicit individual donations or collections of items because of the extra labor involved with sorting, cleaning, repackaging and transporting such items."

After that, New York City's Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg made a surprise endorsement of President Obama based on his views on climate change, in spite of the fact that it hasn't come up much in this year's election cycle.

What does all this mean?  Nothing, except that this will all be over in four more days, when Barack Obama has an 81% chance of winning 303 electoral votes.  Then, like the Hurricane Sandy recovery, we can all get on with the rest of our lives.

Conservatives that believe in climate change!

Tom Friedman found conservatives that believe climate change is real! Unfortunately, they live in Australia and New Zealand. Friedman makes some great points comparing Australian and Kiwi conservatives with their American counterparts:

"Indeed, to go from America — amid the G.O.P. primaries — to Down Under is to experience both jet lag and a political shock. In New Zealand and Australia, you could almost fit their entire political spectrum — from conservatives to liberals — inside the U.S. Democratic Party.

Or as Paul Quinn, a parliamentarian from New Zealand’s conservative National Party, once told a group of visiting American Fulbright scholars: “I will explain to you how our system works compared to yours: You have Democrats and Republicans. My Labor opponents would be Democrats. I am a member of the National Party, and we would be ... Democrats” as well.

For instance, there is much debate here over climate policy — Australia has a carbon tax, New Zealand has cap and trade — but there is no serious debate about climate science. Whereas in today’s G.O.P. it is political suicide to take climate change seriously, in Australia and New Zealand it is political suicide for conservatives not to."

He also touches briefly on mandatory voting in Australia and New Zealand and how it forces politicians to pander to the center rather than the extremes. It is a big reason both parties in both countries down under support climate change legislation and single-payer health care systems. Mandatory voting is a great idea that, unfortunately, will never fly in the United States.

"If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."

Be careful SCOTUS. The Affordable Care Act is like Obi-wan Kenobi:

"If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."

Why? Because if you can't devise a regulated, free market solution for a public good that comprises one-sixth of the American economy, the only available alternative becomes a Single-Payer "Medicare for All" plan.

Gail Collins of The New York Times agrees:

"It was basically a Republican idea to begin with, and look what happened. If this is thrown out in court, compromise will never get any traction again. Single payer! Single payer! Maybe you could have wooed me into the middle a few years ago, but no more. No more. Next time around we stop talking about complicated reforms and just go with Medicare for everybody."

Bill Maher NYT Op-Ed: Please Stop Apologizing

Bill Maher had an op-ed in Wednesday's New York Times about the quasi-outrage over everything these days. As usual, he makes some good points:

"The answer to whenever another human being annoys you is not “make them go away forever.” We need to learn to coexist, and it’s actually pretty easy to do. For example, I find Rush Limbaugh obnoxious, but I’ve been able to coexist comfortably with him for 20 years by using this simple method: I never listen to his program. The only time I hear him is when I’m at a stoplight next to a pickup truck.

When the lady at Costco gives you a free sample of its new ham pudding and you don’t like it, you spit it into a napkin and keep shopping. You don’t declare a holy war on ham."

My only issue with the op-ed is it reads like one of his "New Rules" on 'Real Time with Bill Maher'. So if this is the same New Rule I'm going to hear on Friday night, I'm going to be really disappointed.

Hey, Mets! I Just Can’t Quit You. | NYT's David Brooks

David Brooks, who usually writes about politics, wrote about his love for the New York Mets today. He shared this great recent experience:

"I was in the media center of the Mets spring training facility in Florida this week when Ron Darling, the excellent pitcher from the great teams of the 1980s, sat down at the table next to me and started reading The Times. That was a vivid moment, evoking all sorts of memories, though I didn’t try to talk with him."

Knowing Darling's Yale pedigree (with degrees in both French and Southeast Asian History), Brooks probably could have engaged him in an interesting foreign affairs discussion. At the very least Ron Darling would likely know who David Brooks is.

However there is something endearing about this experience of a well-known and respected journalist (whom I totally respect even though I don't often agree with him) just being a fan around a former All-Star from his favorite team.

The paradigm shift in American labor

Every time I read Tom Friedman's columns in The New York Times, I'm amazed by how insightful and pragmatic he is. Today's column is no exception, with this very prescient point about why "Average Is Over":

"There will always be change — new jobs, new products, new services. But the one thing we know for sure is that with each advance in globalization and the I.T. revolution, the best jobs will require workers to have more and better education to make themselves above average."

Read the whole column, especially the part about "E La Carte" and the Chinese factory that makes iPhone screens. As with most of Friedman's writing, you'll be fascinated and frightened at the same time.

Point-counterpoint that is actually fun to read

If you follow politics but have never read David Brooks' and Gail Collins' 'The Conversation' series in The New York Times, you have no idea what you're missing. Here's a couple of great nuggets from today's conversation:

Brooks: "...as one of the callers on Bill Bennett’s radio show pointed out, it’s an odd thing when a leading Republican candidate has the children of his first wife attacking his second wife for things she said about his third wife and this candidate is the one getting social conservative support."

Collins: "The South Carolina voters really just seemed to be looking for somebody who would expose Barack Obama as the socialist evildoer they believe him to be. Do you think they factored in the personality issue? Really, the president generally manages to come across as pretty likable, even when he’s announcing a new series of air strikes. And Newt can be pretty off-putting even when he’s explaining that he loves his grandchildren."

Trust me, you will not be disappointed reading it every week.

"Meet the Mets, Meet the Mets, Step right up and BUY the Mets!"

The New York Times got its hands on the term sheet being offered to those looking to buy an ownership interest in the New York Mets. Reading this passage about one of the ownership perks proves how pathetic the Wilpons really are:

"Access to Mr. Met, the team mascot, although the degree of access is not entirely spelled out. It definitely means you, as a part-owner, can schmooze with Mr. Met at Citi Field. It’s less clear whether you could get him to come to your child’s birthday party without a fee."

Seriously? A friend of mine from high school got this at his wedding without forking over $20 million for 4% of the team:

In case you were wondering about the Euromess, here's a great map!

A great map in the New York Times Magazine that breaks down the Euromess and how each country is interconnected with every other Euro country.

For Bobby Valentine, charity can be all-consuming | Boston.com

It's hard not to root for a guy like this. Or someone with enough intelligence to do this:

"[Bobby Valentine] would eventually learn 2,042 kanji characters out of an instructional book, practicing them in the dirt with the toe of his cleats during practice, and by the time he made his tearful goodbye speech to the team’s fans in 2009, he did so in Japanese."

"If we’re not going to finish first, it doesn’t matter if we’re last."

In a column in today's New York Times, Tyler Kepner states the obvious:

"In a loaded division, one team must absorb a lot of losses. In the A.L. East, that team has long been the Baltimore Orioles. And in the N.L. East, that team could well be the Mets. That may be true no matter where Jose Reyes ends up, but it is especially likely if a division rival snags him."

He also brings up an interesting thought, one which I've agreed with:

"General Manager Sandy Alderson is viewed as a realistic decision maker. He could let things become worse for a while if it means a sound future for the organization. The healthiest thing Alderson did last season was trade Carlos Beltran for the minor league pitcher Zack Wheeler, who is now considered the Mets’ best prospect.

“Sandy’s not afraid to say, ‘If we’re not going to finish first, it doesn’t matter if we’re last,’ ” said an official of a rival team, who was granted anonymity so he could talk candidly about another team’s plans. “He’ll break it down if he has to. The question is, can it get by ownership?”"

Welcome to the 1982 New York Mets.

Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and that's pretty much it.

If you read Afghanistan's history, the only men to conquer this essentially landless region were Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan. Everyone else pretty much failed miserably. Tom Friedman references that with yet another excellent column in today's New York Times:

"Last week, I toured the great Mogul compound of Fatehpur Sikri, near the Taj Mahal. My Indian guide mentioned in passing that in the late 1500s, when Afghanistan was part of India and the Mogul Empire, the Iranian Persians invaded Afghanistan in an effort to “seize the towns of Herat and Kandahar” and a great battle ensued. I had to laugh to myself: “Well, add them to that long list of suckers — countries certain that controlling Afghanistan’s destiny was vital to their national security.”"

The rest of Friedman's column is worth reading as well.

Today's Flavor of the Day: NJ Gov. Chris Christie

It seems like there is such disappointment with the Republican field right now that everyone is trying to entice New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to join the already convoluted race. "Should he or shouldn't he?" aside, Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post and Politicker NJ both weigh in -- no Christie-related pun intended (although Politicker NJ does bring it up) -- with three and five reasons, respectively, on whether or not he should run.

Additionally, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight tries to figure out how Christie differentiates from Republican frontrunners Mitt Romney and Rick Perry.

And these are just the article about this topic today. If this Republican field gets any less appealing, who knows how many calls there will be for Christie to enter the race. Stay tuned.

Right again Mr. Friedman!

Tom Friedman, as always, nails it right on the head:

"President Obama has chosen not to push for a price signal for political reasons. He has opted for using regulations and government funding. In the area of regulation, he deserves great credit for just pushing through new fuel economy standards that will ensure that by 2025 the average U.S. car will get the mileage (and have the emissions) of today’s Prius hybrid. But elsewhere, Obama has relied on green subsidies rather than a price signal. Some of this has really helped start-ups leverage private capital, but you also get Solyndras. The G.O.P. has blocked any price signal and fought every regulation. The result too often is taxpayer money subsidizing wonderful green innovation, but with no sustainable market within which these companies can scale.

Let’s fix that. We need revenue to balance the budget. We need sustainable clean-tech jobs. We need less dependence on Mideast oil. And we need to take steps to mitigate climate change — just in case Governor Perry is wrong. The easiest way to do all of this at once is with a gasoline tax or price on carbon. Would you rather cut Social Security and Medicare or pay a little more per gallon of gas and make the country stronger, safer and healthier? It still amazes me that our politicians have the courage to send our citizens to war but not to ask the public that question."

His new book is out too. It's been an interesting read thus far, although I'm only about 10% of the way in right now.