Ted

Via The Big Picture’s Barry Ritholtz, CNN has an interesting article about which Democratic presidential candidate Wall Street might prefer. You’ve got to love the lead:

A recent study from the University of California at Berkeley, published in the October issue of the Journal of Finance shows that between 1927 and 1998, the stock market returned approximately 11 percent more a year under a Democratic president versus safer, three-month Treasurys. By comparison, the stock market only returned 2 percent more a year versus the T-bills under Republicans.

(Dwight Merideth had a marvelous series of posts on this subject called “Just For the Record”, by the way.)

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but Bush’s support from the “investor class” is far from monolithic. A Money magazine poll of “investor class” voters, however defined, revealed that only half planned to vote for Bush. And while Republicans got more in donations, they didn’t get that much more.

The piece goes on to detail:

* the Republican vs. Democratic donations of some of the largest major financial institutions.
* the positions re: corporate governance, taxes, international outsourcing, of the major Democratic candidates that would affect the investor class. (There’s a lot there I didn’t know- Dean used to be a stockbroker? Edwards is the only guy who would require expensing of stock options? Wow.)
* non-crazy quotes from Don Luskin about prominent Democrats.

It’s short and well worth a look; go to it.

If you had a problem with this ABC News smear story, “Dean’s Trooper”, you’re not alone. (Jesse has a summary, if you don’t want to read the whole thing.) If you like, you can let ABC News know how you feel here.

My email to ABC is below.

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In the children’s classic Charlotte’s Web, a spider saves the life of Wilbur, a pig bound for slaughter, by spinning webs in English that say that Wilbur was an amazing, special creature. The humans believe anything that they read, and ignore the evidence of their senses that says that Wilbur is just another pig.

As a kid, I enjoyed this book very much, but I didn’t believe that people would be that dumb. As it turns out, I should have trusted E.B. White.

In case you missed it, Slate’s Chris Suellentrop wrote a short piece about Wesley Clark on the campaign trail. He picked a handful of campaign rhetoric from Clark, and labelled each quote as if it was an outrageous accusation. Right-wingers (including Andrew Sullivan, Instapundit, and lots of others) took this piece as evidence that Clark was a big ol’ loon, and left-wingers (Mark Kleiman, Josh Marshall, Kevin Drum) argued that Clark was being sharply misrepresented.

It turns out that Sullentrop intended to satirically make the point that Clark wasn’t being covered like Dean. Unlike Dean, his statements were less likely to be distorted and blown out of proportion. No one (including myself) realized that it was intended as satire.

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A few thoughts on Paul O’Neill vs. the person who leaked Valerie Plame identity:

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Need a couple of fresh reasons to dislike Bill O’Reilly?

* Thankfully, there seems to be a widespread agreement that Nazi comparisons are inappropriate for our domestic political opponents. Last week, columnist Ralph Peters was criticized for his comparison of Dean to Hitler, and MoveOn was criticized for failing to remove from their server homemade commercials that compared Bush to Hitler.

Ladies and gentlemen, O’Reilly on the ACLU:

“The ACLU is the most fascist organization I have seen in decades. They want to tell you how to live. They don’t want to abide by the Constitution. They want to go AROUND the Constitution. They’re intellectual fascists. And they use the courts as their Panzer divisions.”

Nothing expresses faith in our nation of laws like comparing “courts” and “Panzer divisions”, does it?

* O’Reilly has repeatedly lied about the interview in which he told Jeremy Glick to “shut up” and cut off his microphone. As it turns out, transcripts can be checked on this intergummy thing. Someone should make up a phrase about that.

The Paul O’Neil book is an instructive case. President Bush has been accused by his ex-Treasury Secretary of being disengaged, over his head, and led by advisors who put political calculations over the good of the country (cough, Mars mission). Furthermore, O’Neil says that the Bush administration had made its decision to invade Iraq almost immediately after the inauguration.

Glenn Reynolds sees the issue as such:

As I understand it the big hype is that he says (1) that Bush can talk a lot in meetings; and (2) the Administration wanted to topple Saddam before 9/11.

First of all, Glenn has point (1) exactly backwards (which he later admits). O’Neil says that Bush was unengaged and unresponsive, sitting through large and small meetings without questions or comments. Reynolds’ comprehension of stories he doesn’t want to hear doesn’t give one a lot of confidence in the rest of his analysis. And, in fact, confidence is not warranted.

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I’m not a big fan of the Googlebomb, but Moe Lane at Obsidian Wings has one that I’d be proud to be a part of.

Ninja.

Provided that I can figure out the technology, I’m going to be participating in an online chat with Wesley Clark and a dozen or so bloggers tomorrow (Wednesday) at 5:00 Eastern time.

Watch it here…

or log in.

Public IRC Server: irc://irc.forclark.com
Read-Only Channel: #wireside

UPDATE: I’ve never used IRC, and I couldn’t figure out how to get it going in time. CURSE YOU, TECHNOLOGY!

Here was my question:

I recently read an article in Inc. magazine about how the Democratic Presidential candidates are talking about international free trade issues in general, and NAFTA in particular. The article didn’t have a summary from you about your views. How would you describe your position on international trade?

John Ashcroft has recused himself from the Valerie Plame investigation. Patrick Fitzgerald, the current U.S. Attorney in the Nothern District of Illinois, will be in charge of the investigation

Here’s a press release with a brief bio of Patrick Fitzgerald. He’s been involved in the prosecutions of heroin smugglers, organized crime leaders, and a number of terrorists. More recently, his office prepared the indictment of former Illinois governor George Ryan. We’ll surely learn a lot more about him in the days to come, but at first glance, he seems like the real deal.

Mr. Fitzgerald, if by some unlikely chance you ever read this: I’d like to apologize in advance for what the blogosphere and much of the media are about to attempt to do to you. If you try to do your job, you will learn the meaning of “slime and defend.” Good luck.

UPDATE: Here’s a story gallery about Patrick Fitzgerald from the Chicago Tribune. He sounds like a genuinely vigorous prosecutor:

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Chicago’s new U.S. attorney, who delivered the biggest message to corrupt Chicago politicians, insiders, grafters and boodlers this town may have ever seen. Fitzgerald’s first big indictment was of insurance executive Michael Segal for alleged insurance and mail fraud. Fitzgerald wasted no time in going after the biggest fish in town, to the shock and astonishment of just about everyone. Segal is not just a pal, but the pal, the top of the heap. His indictment makes the prosecution of Chicago aldermen look like the issuance of parking tickets. This is a hugely symbolic act; its effect will be like watching the bugs scurrying for cover after the rock has been lifted.

This sounds good, too.

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Before I leave, I thought that I would string together a list of links and quotes from non-political humor sites. Enjoy.

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I’m so glad that John Q. brought up the terrorism futures markets, because I’ve been dying to talk about them. The proposal to open a market in “terrorism futures” only lasted a day before it was retracted, and captured the imagination of many libertarians and libertarian-sympathizers. It was sharply criticized by Congressional Democrats, who felt that it was abhorent that the government would open a market that would allow terrorists to earn a monetary profit off of their terrorist actions. But there’s an answer to that:

“Why wouldn’t terrorists just hop online and start betting if they couldn’t either mislead American authorities about their plans or make money to fund more al Qaeda operations?” Wyden asked. Why not indeed? If terrorists were trying to use PAM to make money that “would mean that they are giving up information to gain money,” says Hanson. “In other words, we’re bribing them to tell us what they are going to do. That’s kind of like normal intelligence gathering when we bribe agents for information.”

I agree that the idea is fascinating, and it was probably retracted too soon. Nonetheless, I don’t see any way that it could work.

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During the California recall, Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante was harshly criticized for his refusal to renounce his involvement as a student in the Chicano student group MEChA. Critics frequently called MEChA a hate group, the equivalent of the Klu Klux Klan, or “fascist hatemongers”.

Bustamante handily lost the election, and MEChA as an issue didn’t seem to make much of an impact and many voters. But MEChA as an organization is still a presence on over 300 campuses.

There was much debate here on LoserNet about the truth of the accusations against MEChA. (Lots of background from me, Pejman, and Tacitus. In short, I thought that they were being unfairly accused, and Pejman and Tacitus thought that they really were a racist group.) We spent a fair amount of time going back and forth about the documents we could find using Google. But I thought that the debate suffered from a lack of input from or contact with actual MEChA members. Few people had had any direct contact with MEChA. (A few exceptions: Kevin Drum had a MEChA chapter at his high school, and Sappho had a personal experience at college.)

About a month ago, I thought that I’d try to contact some actual, current members of MEChA to see how they would respond to some of the controversies about their group. I sent out a lot of emails, mostly to dead email addresses culled from infrequently updated chapter web pages. Unfortunately, I’ve only ended up getting two complete responses, but they’re good ones. The first is from the MEChA chapter at New Mexico State University. (UPDATE: Not all responses are from NMSU; the questions were distibuted to other chapters as well.) A representative of the chapter distributed my long list of questions to members and assembled the responses, so it’s not any one person’s response.

The second response is from an individual who started his email by saying:

I want to emphasize that MEChA IS NOT A HATE/SEGREGATIONALIST/SEPARATIST GROUP

I’ve edited these responses slightly for spelling and typos, but I haven’t added or deleted anything. I have no independent ability to fact-check these responses.

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I had half-written a post about the latest adventures in dumpster-diving, but Gary Farber beat me to it.

I have to say that the ever-increasing recent trend of many political bloggers — some from both sides of the column as they perceive it, though I’m seeing more from the right guilty of this of late (but that might be sample error on my part) — to react to any news event they perceive as likely to be politically polarizing by going to a site known to be full of what H. L. Mencken called “the booboisie,” mouthing off with sub-simian mewlings admidst the mouth breathings, is not a pretty sight. It would seem to be a masochistic endeavor, but no! It has a purpose! Because then said blogger can pull up this eagerly sought handful of soiled straw and proclaim: this is what The Other Side believes! That Other Side! They’re so stupid! Ha ha ha, stupid other side! Me not stupid like them! Me smart. Stupid other side!

The world is full to the gills with stupid people who say awful things on the Internet. Pointing this out doesn’t constitute a political argument.

Philosoraptor has some related thoughts. Philosoraptor is also a really excellent, thoughtful website, and we should encourage him to keep blogging. I’m not pointing to any one post because it’s all good.

Greg Beato identifies yet another irregular verb:

* We engage in refreshing, hilariously politically incorrect humor
* You (pl.) push the boundaries of good taste
* They wallow in profanity and ethnic slurs