Dylan Matthews

That's Not Right. That's Not Even Wrong.

Sometimes when I want to preserve my will to live I forget that George W. Bush is still the POTUS. And then he goes and does something awful to remind me, the bastard:

Bush, in his speech to Israel's Knesset, sought to push in the wedge on Israel, and security, against Obama, casting the Illinois Senator as Neville Chamberlain to his Churchill:
"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," he said, with aides telling reporters he meant Obama. "We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American Senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.'"

There's no substance here, obviously. It's an egregious Godwin's law violation in service of a political point. But this seems as good a time as any to repeat my firm conviction that Munich analogies are never appropriate. I cannot think of a single occasion since 1945 where pre-emptive action prevented something on par with the Nazi invasion of Poland. I can think of plenty occasions where it ended up blowing back badly (like, er, Iraq), but none where it actually helped upon being heeded, or would have helped if heeded. What's more, are we really sure that a pre-emptive Anglo-French invasion of Germany in 1938 would have been remembered well? It seems to me that it would have been perceived as unjustified aggression on the part of Daladier and Chamberlain, a continuation of the harsh measures of Versailles, and only repressed the underlying dynamics that lead to the rise of Hitler for a little while longer. Pre-emption only looks good with the benefit of hindsight; at the time, there's no reason to think it would have earned a positive legacy.
Anyway, have some Editors. This song's about the Black September massacre, but it does fit into the overall legacy of Munich as an awful, awful city for Jews.

Marriage in California

This makes me so absurdly happy:

Same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
The court’s 4-to-3 decision, striking down two state laws that had limited marriages to unions between a man and a woman, will make California only the second state, after Massachusetts, to allow same-sex marriages. The decision, which becomes effective in 30 days, is certain to be an issue in the presidential campaign.
“In view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship,” Chief Justice Ronald M. George wrote of marriage for the majority, “the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.”

The decision is based on the California Constitution, as George writes, so there's no option of appeal for the state. However, as Kevin Drum notes, a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is already on the ballot this November, so there'll be one last opportunity to reverse the ruling. Schwarzenegger is saying he'll uphold the decision and opposes the amendment, which, as Matt Zeitlin says, is consistent with his past comments. Maybe now he'll sign the legislation legalizing marriage he's twice vetoed; it won't be enough to counteract an amendment, but it'd enshrine the decision in democratically-enacted law, which adds some legitimacy to it.
I find the Court's decision to apply strict scrutiny to be particularly praiseworthy, particularly this point of their logic (helpfully summarized by Eugene Volokh):

1. The California Constitution's Due Process Clause and Privacy Clause (there's an explicit one in California) secure a right to marry, which extends to same-sex marriages as well as opposite-sex marriages. The limit of marriage to opposite-sex couples thus must be reviewed under strict scrutiny (i.e., must be narrowly tailored to a compelling state interest).

There isn't an explicit federal privacy clause, of course, but there is a 30-year precedent (Zablocki v. Redhail) saying that marriage is a fundamental right. Marshall only applied intermediate scrutiny there, but all the still, this makes me hopeful that some post-Obama Supreme Court will eventually use the Equal Protection Clause and the precedents of Zablocki and the California case to strike down every law and state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Contra Yglesias, I think the American tradition of strong judicial review is an unquestionable good. It provides a compelling counterweight to popular ignorance and bigotry, and in all but the rarest cases (I'm looking at you, Lockner) serves justice. And this ruling, and a prospective national one, sure as hell serves justice.
Mostly, I'm just happy that the biggest state in the union, the sixth largest economy on the planet, will in 30 days have damned near full legal equality for gays and lesbians, not even 40 years after Stonewall, not even 30 years after Harvey Milk was martyred. That's remarkable progress, and the justices of the California Supreme Court, and the people of California, should be proud.

The Illiberalism of Video Game Alarmism

Matt and Julian have done a good number on it already, but Samhita of Feministing's aesthetic Stalinism as regards Grand Theft Auto 4 is truly remarkable:

On some level, I do agree with proponents of GTA 4. Several of my friends have said, "but it is just fun." I don't deny that advances in video game technology are in fact mind-blowing and down right incredible and the they are fun. Hello, I am a blogger, I get the nerd new-cool-fun-fangled-technology thing.
What I can't get down with is justifying blatant misogyny by calling it art.
…
Apparently, great, cutting edge art is only designed for a straight male point of view. There is nothing free about the space that GTA4 is creating, it is a cultural and corporate site of predetermined identities that yes, allow you to do things that are illegal, but I think it is a far cry from freedom.

Are the vast majority of GTA4 players (or gamers in general, for that matter) straight men? Sure. But that doesn't make it a "straight male" game. Samhita assumes that one needs to be like Niko Bellic, the game's protagonist, in order to appreciate it, at least in sexual orientation and gender. But that's absurd. Why are those similarities prerequisites, and similarities in other respects (race, national origin, criminality) ignored? I'm willing to wager that GTA4 players are overwhelmingly WASPy, native-born Americans devoid of criminal records - unlike the Serb immigrant criminal Bellic. Why are those major differences less of a problem, in Samhita's eyes, than orientation and gender? I'd be willing to wager that the differences between a WASPy American-native non-criminal straight guy playing GTA4 and a WASPy American-native non-criminal gay guy, straight girl, or gay girl are of a much, much lesser gravity than that gamer's differences with Bellic.
Samhita goes on to say that GTA4 players are projecting their own fantasies onto Bellic:

Furthermore, it is played, repeatedly and it is a role playing game, where you are the person engaging in violent acts. It is a fantasy, your fantasy. Perhaps there is a moment of identification like this with movies, but it is different then actually acting something out yourself.

Yeah, no. As she notes in her post, GTA4 has raked in half a billion dollars since being released on April 29th. If all the millions of people who contributed to that total harbor repressed violent psychosexual urges, I'm guessing we'd have a much greater violence problem than we do. Moreover, even if a substantial fraction of them do (and I very much doubt it), so what? As Matt points out in his post, violent video games - like violent movies - perform an important substitution role, providing an outlet for violent urges that falls short of criminality, the same way pornography staves off rape. Samhita may not like GTA4, but I think it's far likelier that it has a positive social impact than a negative one.
But the thing that disturbs me about Samhita's post the most is her logic for opposing Mothers Against Drunk Driving's attempt to censor the game:

actually stand at a different point than MADD and I don't necessarily support the censorship of the game, I don't really think censorship works. The more ratings and labels you put on something, the edgier and sexier it becomes.

NO. Don't oppose censorship because it doesn't "work". Oppose it because it's wrong. Because it's illiberal. Because it's antithetical to an open society and freedom and liberal democracy. This is what angers me so much about radical feminists like Dworkin and MacKinnon - their attempts to fight the patriarchy (or what they saw, I think mistakenly, as patriarchal forces) extended so far that they felt it acceptable to throw the Constitution and freedom of expression by the wayside when it became inconvenient. Liberals shouldn't accept that abuse of our liberties, that attempt to regulate our personal lives and undermine the rights that makes the democratic experiment possible, whether it comes from Focus on the Family or NOW, whether it's caged in Christian or feminist logic. It's wrong either way.
Look, I hate misogyny. I try my best to avoid exploiting the privilege that comes with being a white male in our society, and to challenge my friends when their edginess turns to bigotry. But I'm not willing to throw away my most basic right so that some overly doctrinarian interpretation of a video game, and I'm not willing to hear that right debated about for its "usefulness". Freedom of expression is non-negotiable. Not because censorship "doesn't work". Because censorship is wrong. Always.

Bye, Bye Malley

Sacrificial offerings to the Israel lobby make Dylan a sad Obama supporter (via Ben Smith):

One of Barack Obama’s Middle East policy advisers disclosed yesterday that he had held meetings with the militant Palestinian group Hamas – prompting the likely Democratic nominee to sever all links with him.
Robert Malley told The Times that he had been in regular contact with Hamas, which controls Gaza and is listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organisation. Such talks, he stressed, were related to his work for a conflict resolution think-tank and had no connection with his position on Mr Obama’s Middle East advisory council.
“I’ve never hidden the fact that in my job with the International Crisis Group I meet all kinds of people,” he added.
Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Mr Obama, responded swiftly: “Rob Malley has, like hundreds of other experts, provided informal advice to the campaign in the past. He has no formal role in the campaign and he will not play any role in the future.” The rapid departure of Mr Malley followed 48 hours of heated clashes between John McCain, the Republican nominee-elect, and Mr Obama over Middle East policy.

Because, of course, the last thing you'd want in an advisor on the Israel/Palestine issue is someone with contacts with the legitimate, democratically elected government of Palestine. That's just crazy. What's so frustrating about this is that it comes in sharp contrast to one of Obama's bravest moments - his promise to meet, unconditionally, with Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong-Il, and Fidel Castro, not because he agrees with them, but because having diplomatic relations with countries that frustrate us is more productive than antagonizing them. This move dashes, to a certain degree, my hopes that he would extend this to include meeting with Khalid Mesaal and Ismail Haniyeh. Yes, they're terrorists, yes, they're anti-Semitic, and no, their ideal world does not include a Jewish state of any kind. But they are the democratically elected government of Palestine, they do control Gaza, and any kind of peace settlement must give them a seat at the table alongside Fatah and the Israeli government. Any agreement that excludes them is bound to be seen as illegitimate, and rightly so.

"Dream" Ticket: Just Say No

Hillary Clinton was not seriously considered as a vice presidential candidate in 2004. She wouldn't have been seriously considered as a vice presidential candidate this year had she not run. The reasons are obvious. No blue state Senator who is far to the right of her party on defense, has negatives in the 40s, brings only four years more experience over the nominee, and who half of the country is convinced is Rosa Luxembourg's lycanthropic evil twin is going to add anything of value, either in electability or in governing ability, to the ticket. That's just stupid.
But damned if there are people who'll try to convince the world otherwise. And not just Clinton hacks like Terry McAuliffe; people I really respect, like Ed Kilgore, are on board. I get the impulse; it's tempting to want to heal the rift in the party through a Clinton choice. But I think doing something like picking Wes Clark - who, in addition to being more progressive on foreign policy than either of the candidates, would actually add something to the ticket - would be a better way to show that loyal members of the Clinton faction of the party, even someone as close as Clark, are not going to be shunned. Picking Clinton is, as previously explained, just stupid.
More importantly, though, I have a very hard time with the notion that the Clintons deserve the (nominally) second most powerful post in the US government, a post they would surely use to create a parallel policy shop with which to compete with Obama's (better) people, for extending the primary process and damaging the party the way they have. This could have been over a long time ago. After the Potomac primaries, or Wisconsin, or Wyoming or Mississippi - there were plenty of opportunities for her to do what losing candidates have always done, and withdraw gracefully. But she didn't. She stayed in, and she ran an incredibly nasty campaign, one with plentiful helpings of economic demagoguery, not even thinly-veiled race-baiting, and repetitions of Republican smears like Wright and Ayers. Because of her vanity, because of her unwillingness to accept defeat, McCain actually has a shot this November. I've said it before in conversation with my friends on the campaign, and I'll say it here: on a basic, emotional level, I want Versailles. I want a Carthaginian peace. I want a world in which Hillary, Bill, and all the people who helped them do this don't have a role in the Democratic party.
Obviously, that won't happen, and thinking rationally, it shouldn't. Hillary's a better Senator than some alternatives, Bill still garners respect from some quarters of the party, and the campaign has supporters willing to believe the most absurd spin they can generate, supporters it'd do no good to alienate. But the point is, I don't think Obama owes the Clinton campaign shit; on the contrary, the Clintons owe him, and our party, a lot. I don't think it's unreasonable, for instance, to ask that Mark Penn and McAuliffe not hold positions of authority in Democratic campaigns for the foreseeable future, or for Bill and Hillary to publicly apologize for their racism on the campaign trail. That's the direction concessions should go toward, from Hillary to Obama, not the other way around.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

Via Ned, Putin has officially been sworn in as Prime Minister of Russia. In a totally unrelated development, Russia has gone from being a presidential system to being a parliamentary system. Totally unrelated.

DeLong v. Yoo

This is too awesome:

An economics professor at the University of California-Berkeley has filed a formal grievance to investigate the tenure of one of the University of California, Berkeley's most controversial faculty members: John Yoo.
…
[N]o one on the faculty took action against Yoo until Bradford DeLong, a former Clinton administration economist, wrote a letter to the chairman of Berkeley's Academic Senate, William Drummond, on Tuesday. The letter asked Drummond to create a fact-finding committee to determine Yoo's culpability for the torture of detainees. "If you have not read John Yoo's recently-released 'Torture Memo,' and have not been as horrified and appalled as I am, I strongly urge you to read it in full," DeLong wrote to Drummond.
DeLong said he believes Yoo should face some form of punishment.
"For the university to take no note of Yoo's "Torture Memo" is for it to endorse Yoo's claim that this is lawyering and law professing as usual," he said, "that Yoo has some legitimacy when he claims, for example, that the president can legally order the torturing and maiming of prisoners and that Congress has no power to restrain him even though the Constitution explicitly gives Congress the power."

There are so many reasons why this is an excellent step. It's fitting that Brad DeLong is launching it, and not some far-left, quasi-Marxist professor whose credibility would be shot immediately. Even better is DeLong's proposed solution. While there's no question that Yoo should lose his job, I don't think a summary firing would be appropriate; a firing following a committee report proving beyond any doubt that Yoo is, by any definition, a war criminal, would be met with more support, and have more legitimacy. So good luck to DeLong on this one. If he succeeds, it'll be the first real punishment this administration faces for its crimes.

Stay Classy, Lind

You know why I don't generally hold Michael Lind or anything he says in particularly high regard? Because he does things like use the word "genocide" in scare quotes. This is in the context of Kosovo, wherein obviously Milosevic had completely benign intentions as related to ethnic Albanians and would never so much as consider committing genocide except when he did and even fellow Serbs admitted it. Lind's done a good job of ingratiating himself in liberal media circles, but I have a hard time treating him as a real liberal when he expresses such wanton disregard for human life.

Indiana/NC

North Carolina's called for Obama, as soon as the polls close, which is always a good sign. No one's calling Indiana yet; I still think it'll be a pretty comfortable Clinton win, but I'd be happy with single digits. I'm standing by my (admittedly optimistic) prediction of +5 Clinton in Indiana and +10 Obama in NC.
Update: Just a note on the exit polls showing that about half of Clinton supporters wouldn't support Obama: stop it. Everyone who said that to a pollster, stop it. That means you too, one third of Obama supporters who wouldn't vote for Clinton. Anyone who considers a McCain presidency more beneficial to whatever liberal policy goals are most important to them than a presidency of their second-favorite primary contender is an idiot, an absolute, simple idiot. There is no issue on which McCain is better than Clinton or Obama, none. Anyone who'd vote for McCain over either of them is either not a liberal, completely ignorant of the candidates' policy views, or engaging in extremely dangerous posturing. I'm willing to say, unequivocally, that in the incredibly unlikely event that Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, I will cast my ballot for Hillary Clinton on November 4th. Every Democrat - no matter how embittered or angry they may be about Clinton or Obama - should say that about the candidate they don't favor.
Update II: CBS is calling Indiana, but when Chuck Todd is saying that he could win based on votes in Gary and Indianapolis, I'm inclined to wait and see. It may be like in Missouri, where the AP called the state for Clinton but Obama got enough votes in St. Louis and Kansas City to pull into the lead. On a more frivolous note, I find it odd that Hotline describes PBR, which Obama apparently drank tonight, the "beer of the working man". I've always understood it to be the beer of the Williamsburg hipster. Maybe irony's just gone too far.
Update III: You know, when John King's magic touch-screen map is saying that zero percent of the vote is counted in Gary, there are still a lot of black precincts not counted in Marion County, and the margin's only six points in Clinton's favor, I'm getting hopeful. I don't think there'll be a win, but it'll be close. But a win would be so awesome. Also, if Gary wins this for Obama, I'll be singing this all of tomorrow:

Update IV: Well, it's almost midnight, none of Lake County is in yet, Clinton is leading by 38,000 votes or 4%, and djw makes a really convincing case that there are enough Obama votes in Lake to overturn that margin. I'll see how it pans out in the morning, but in any case, Obama racked up a bigger margin in NC than anyone expected, and Clinton fell way short of expectations in Indiana. Obama's obliterated her delegate gain from Pennsylvania and expanded his lead in both delegates and the popular vote even further, and Clinton is running out of excuses for staying in.

World Goin' One Way, People Another

Oh, sweet Jesus, please stop:

Clinton's attacks on oil prices as artificially inflated, Enron-style, keep escalating, and today she appeared to threaten to break up the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
"We’re going to go right at OPEC," she said. "They can no longer be a cartel, a monopoly that get together once every couple of months in some conference room in some plush place in the world, they decide how much oil they’re going to produce and what price they’re going to put it at," she told a crod at a firehouse in Merrillville, IN.
"That’s not a market. That’s a monopoly," she said, saying she'd use anti-trust law and the World Trade Organization to take on OPEC.

Great, because I really think that what we need at this point is yet another reason for Venezuela, Bolivia, and the Gulf states to hate us. I think we can all agree that their grievances aren't severe or numerous enough already. This is diplomatic idiocy bordering on malfeasance.
On a purely economic level, she's right: OPEC is a cartel, and prices would be lower if national oil companies didn't coordinate. This fits with her emerging strategy of focusing on gas prices as the only bad thing in the world. But both this, and that larger narrative, shows a real lack of sophistication. It's easy to say that gas prices ought to be lower. It's also easy to say that we should curb greenhouse gas production and become more energy independent. It's a contradiction to say we should do both. Nearly every economist, environmentalist, etc. agrees that the most effective way to wean the United States off of fossil fuels and foreign oil is a carbon tax or, functionally equivalent, a fully-auctioned cap-and-trade system. Both of these things would, necessarily, increase the price of gas, as well they should; the best way to discourage consumption of oil is to make its consumption more costly.
So Clinton has a choice. She can continue with this demagoguery on gas prices, or she can give a damn about global warming. She can't do both.