Across the Great Divide

Shovel Dirt, Not Dollars.

David Brooks proposes a National Mobility Project as a better way for the Federal government to reverse the economic doldrums.

In times like these, the best a sensible leader can do is to take the short-term panic and channel it into a program that is good on its own merits even if it does nothing to stimulate the economy over the next year. That’s why I’m hoping the next president takes the general resolve to spend gobs of money, and channels it into a National Mobility Project, a long-term investment in the country’s infrastructure.

Build stuff we need, he says, rather than shoveling money into bailouts, tax credits and rebates that haven't been shown to work. At least when money goes into infrastructure, some actual jobs are created and we get a highway or rail line at the end.

It's not that simple, of course. There's still the question of where the infrastructure gets built (Alaska, Arizona or Michigan; city, suburb or rural); what gets built or replaced (roads, water projects, bridges, light rail, bike paths or border fences); who gets the contracts; and how it fits in with the long term health of the nation (energy development and consumption, sprawl, sustainability).

Still it beats trickle down by a long shot. And I can still walk trails and roads built the last time we tried this, during the last depression.

How Do We Know You're the Good John Anderson?

Ed Kohler takes notes on KTLK's Jason Lewis and Minnesota Majority's Jeff Davis hyperventilating about "voter fraud" in Minnesota.

The conservative brain trust uses data to appear grounded in facts, but then draws fringey  conclusions. Talk radio is particularly well-suited for this sort of distortion, because the argument rides on a rushing tide of outrage instead of reflection on what's just been said. The listener can't easily say, "Wait a minute. Let's go back and look at that last assertion to see if it holds up."

According to Minnesota Majority, it has been "investigating" voter registration records and "has uncovered a large number of anomalies." You can read the allegations here.

Now, anomalies in lists can arise for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with intended voting fraud, but Minnesota Majority doesn't see it that way. Nor does it think that Minnesota's measures to question suspect registrations at the polls are sufficient deterrent to votes being cast by unqualified voters. So it's calling people ahead of time.

The group says: "We have not done anything wrong. No one should be intimidated by our research, unless of course an individual was contemplating committing voter fraud."

Or in case a call might make a potentially Democratic voter contemplate being hassled at the polls or sent to a different polling place.

According the Minnesota Majority, its investigation only found  "76 cases in which it appears that a single voter may have cast more than one ballot." [Emphasis mine.] Out of about 3.2 million registered Minnesota voters.

This ranks right up there with the evidence that dinosaurs and humans walked the earth together 6,000 years ago.

Some All of the Aboves Are Not Equal to the Others.

Palin spoke after touring Xunlight Corp., one of a handful of solar technology startup companies in Toledo, a struggling industrial city in this swing state. The city's leaders are hoping that the solar companies will create jobs to replace some of those lost by downsizing in the auto industry.

But Palin made only a passing reference to solar power in her speech and instead renewed her call for more drilling in U.S. coastal waters. She repeated her signature anthem, "drill, baby, drill," which seemed to fall a bit flat on the audience at the plant even as it's become a popular chant at her rallies.

– Associated Press

h/t Junction Daily Blog

*****

McCain "spots a familiar face" in the crowd in Defiance, Ohio (Getty Images). Apparently no swing state has a town named Denial.

Caltrops!

During the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, locals were introduced to that instrument of anarchist bus terror, the caltrop. Possession of these tri-spiked devices was cited as proof positive of nefarious intent. They have been used since at least Roman times to slow advancing armies or strikebreakers' trucks.

Trust me, they work.

But the terror wreaked by caltrops throughout history hardly compares to what we see out here in western Colorado each fall.

Personally, I'd rather take my chances with buckets of urine.

We call them goatheads. Instead of being made out of steel, they're small, pea-sized thorns that grow on low-slung vines that crop up where natural soils are disturbed. A prime spot is along roads and bike paths. No matter which way they fall on pavement, there's one spine pointed up, with the other two providing stability for the killing jab.

Over the past week, I've changed about a dozen tubes punctured by the devils. For two active riders, that seems about average.

Road bike tires are particularly vulnerable. You can use tubes filled with goo that's supposed to plug holes, and we've even equipped one flat-prone bike with expensive kevlar-like tape inside the tire. (The tape slid and gapped in one tire, and within about 20 miles, the defense was penetrated.)

I may be sitting outside in the early evening in my shorts and t-shirt, but before you feel too jealous, just know I have two tubes to repair, and I've just fished three gnats out of my beer.

If You're in the Neighborhood...

I just bought unleaded for $1.749 a gallon in Grand Junction. What a strange month.

UPDATE: That was Tuesday night just after 11:00. Here's the story about the kind of war we can all support.

Cops Beat Polygraph, Gangs Lose Trademark Protection.

Undercover agents infiltrating a gang beat a polygraph test designed to flush them out. Next, the government bars gang members from wearing clothing displaying the group's trademarked name or logo.

When cops beat polygraphs and gangs lose their "intellectual property" rights, I'm not sure which way is up.

Judge Not.

Lest we forget, the New York Times reports on the transformation of the federal judiciary that has taken place since the Reagan revolution.

Republican-appointed judges, most conservatives, are projected to make up about 62 percent of the bench next Inauguration Day, up from 50 percent when Mr. Bush took office. They control 10 of the 13 circuits, while Democrat-appointed judges have a dwindling majority on just one circuit.

...

A study in 2006 confirmed that the jurists appointed by Republicans beginning with the Reagan administration are, as the Federalist Society’s president, Eugene Meyer, put it, “a very different type of judge.”

The study, overseen by Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law School professor who is now an adviser to Mr. Obama, analyzed whether judges voted for a liberal or a conservative outcome in 20,000 appeals court cases.

It found that as a group, the appeals court judges appointed by Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford voted for a conservative outcome in 52 percent of their cases. Mr. Clinton’s judges had an identical record.

By contrast, the appeals court judges appointed by Mr. Reagan and the two Bush administrations took the conservative position in 62 percent of cases. And the number was larger in certain ideologically charged areas, like abortion, affirmative action, environmental protection and whether states have sovereign immunity from federal lawsuits.

This week, there's one less Bush (Sr.) appointee on the federal bench. Chief Judge Edward J. Nottingham of the District of Colorado resigned his lifetime appointment because of a developing sex-related scandal. There were mixed reviews of Nottingham as a judge; but there was little argument he was full of  himself. He affected bright blue judicial robes and lectured Qwest chief executive Joe Nacchio on morality. Nacchio's conviction on insider trading charges was overturned by the 10th Circuit Court, based on a Nottingham ruling.

I'd read about Nottingham's troubles before, and seen a DailyKos diarist's comparison of Nottingham with Paulie Walnuts.

But it wasn't until I was back here talking to people that I realized the imperious judge was Eddie Nottingham, who graduated from high school two years ahead of me.

So this post is not about judges and Republicans and sex scandals any more. It's about how we cannot see the future; how we cannot know another's complex heart; and how very little time it takes before we start looking like the people we thought we'd never be.

Measuring the Drapes.

Senator Obama is measuring the drapes.
— John McCain

The Washington Post tries and fails to track down the origin of that worn metaphor for premature political ambitions.

McCain could've said something more original, and certainly more resonant with voters under 65. Instead, he comes off sounding like gramma. "And then they'll be picking out the doilies for the davenport and putting champagne in the ice box."

Meanwhile, his "outsider" running mate wasn't just figuring out where Washington D.C. was. She'd already pored over the blueprints shorting after making it to Juneau. A story in The New Yorker tells how quickly the ambitious hockey mom turned her sights away from the state capitol.

Upon being elected governor, Palin began developing relationships with Washington insiders, who later championed the idea of putting her on the 2008 ticket. “There’s some political opportunism on her part,” Bitney said. For years, “she’s had D.C. in mind.” He added, “She’s not interested in being on the junior-varsity team.”

During her gubernatorial campaign, Bitney said, he began predicting to Palin that she would make the short list of Republican Vice-Presidential prospects. “She had the biography, I told her, to be a contender,” he recalled. At first, Palin only laughed. But within a few months of being sworn in she and others in her circle noticed that a blogger named Adam Brickley had started a movement to draft her as Vice-President. Palin also learned that a number of prominent conservative pundits would soon be passing through Juneau, on cruises sponsored by right-leaning political magazines. She invited these insiders to the governor’s mansion, and even led some of them on a helicopter tour.

Palin hired a Washington D.C. law firm to lobby for the interests of little Wasilla at the Capitol. The account was handled by the former chief of staff Senator Ted Stevens. She had Bill "Meritocracy" Kristol pushing for her soon after the Alaskan cruise.

[T]wo months before McCain chose her, Kristol predicted on “Fox News Sunday” that “McCain’s going to put Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, on the ticket.” He described her as “fantastic,” saying that she could go one-on-one against Obama in basketball, and possibly siphon off Hillary Clinton’s supporters. He pointed out that she was a “mother of five” and a reformer. “Go for the gold here with Sarah Palin,” he said. The moderator, Chris Wallace, finally had to ask Kristol, “Can we please get off Sarah Palin?”

Kristol, like McCain, had met Sarah Palin only once before the pick was made.

Getting a Handle on the Times.

Over 30-plus years, you begin to acquire a range of tools, and if you move out of apartments and start house holding or cabin keeping where there's some payback on doing work yourself, some of them may be worth a damn.

I'm a very far cry from my brother-in-law with his compressor, Lincoln welder and rolling Craftsman cabinets, and most of the time, I could live my life just fine with a bottle opener, mechanical pencil and a bike pump. (And I could manage without the opener.)

But on occasion I go on work binges that involve agrarian implements or janitorial supplies. Here in Colorado, where my garage is not the beneficiary of tools purchased decades ago, I am struck by how most everything is a made-in-China plastic-and-pop-can-steel piece of crap that will have to be replaced in a few years.

The handle on the hose reel broke off in the first six months. Today, the threaded end of a window scrubber buckled when I put too much pressure on it while cleaning up. Yes, it's hollow extruded plastic. I've already got a bicycle tie shim holding the squeegee t-bar on its extension pole, because the best telescoping pole the store had was threaded and the best squeegee, unthreaded.

The axe is an illustration by a friend, Eric Madsen, who has drawn an entire, admiring series of Carlyle's Tools. At the moment, I can't think of a better way to show what we have lost.

Louder than Words.

Photo for the New York Times by Stephen Crowley.