Chess Champion Garry Kasparov to Run For Preseident

Kasparov represents Russian Democracy's best hope.

Pipe Dream

I was reading a bit over at the Financial Times about a global warming conference Bush summoned with all of the other big polluters (side note: in German the word for polluter is umweltverschmutzer, which amounts literally to something like earth dirty maker). Bush seems to have transitioned from the earth ain't warming, to the earth is warming but it is unclear what the causes are, to ok, the science is settled. Now I don't think there is much likelihood Bush will actually do anything substantive (like a revenue neutral carbon tax) other than maybe propose another alternative energy R&D tax credit or a tax deduction for purchasing a energy efficient domestically produced washers or other electronic appliances (maybe Maytag is a political contributor to the bushes). But I think maybe there is a chance that he would like to leave office with some warm fuzzies and after the unmitigated disaster that this administration has been (read: Iraq, Katrina, Gonzalez, etc.), something like climate change would allow for a bold bipartisan action to put a prettier patina on Bush's legacy. That said, I am not holding my breath.

Edwards Opts In To Public Financing

This surprises me. And the campaign is pretty straightforward about it, they aren't waxing poetic about the virtues of public finance but rather speaking of the need for cash as fundraising hasn't been up to par.

Home Sales

hat tip: Brad DeLong

Subprime Mortgage Delinquency Rates

hat tip: Brad Delong

Bryan Caplan Rails Against Stupid Voters

He lists four irrational biases that voters tend to have:
Anti-Market Bias
Anti-Foreign Bias
Make-Work Bias
Pessimistic Bias

Anyhow, giver her a looksie, Caplan is always worthwhile.

Econoblogosphere Diagramed

Portfolio.com has a cool diagram with links of the economics blogging community. Take note of the GMU mafia.

Why Conservatives will Never Make Inroads with the Youth

"the strength of a movement is highly correlated with its capacity to get you laid."

The Futility of Exercise?

Gary Taubes has an interesting article in the New York Magazine on why exercise doesn't do too much for weight loss.

Get Advesarial on Facebook

Stop adding friends on Facebook, get the enemybook application and add enemies.

The Case for Prostitution

Here is an interesting, really more depressing/humorous, argument for prostitution. The author is an aussie and he is not arguing so much for prostitution's legality but rather how prostitution is preferable to lying to get into a girl's pants. I disagree, but food for thought.

The French, Romney, and Republican Malaise

The Economist Euro Blog "Certain Ideas of Europe" has a little post on the poor dental hygiene practices of French children. Now they are relaying information as presented in Le Figaro and it appears that the article is piss poor reporting (a sample of two dentists quoting statistics without citation). That said, Europeans do have piss poor hygiene. What interests me is whether Mitt Romney somehow manages to fashion this into a campaign slogan or punchline. I can just imagine it "if we go forward with this socialized medicine business our children will be stopped in their tracks by vast European style bureacracies that ration toothbrushes and toothpaste." It is unfortunate but at the moment the republican base are a bunch of cheap dates that seem to be riveted by talk of killing jihadis, the damn French, and cutting taxes. A central tenet of Romney's campaign has actually been to talk shit about France. Not that I don't enjoy making French jokes ("I have a good French rifle for you, it's only been dropped once") but it doesn't constitute a policy prescription or a governance philosophy. If a republican wants to win the election they will have to discover a compelling narrative and this is usually rooted in sensible and appealing policy prescriptions. One arrives at sensible policy prescriptions by developing their own ideas and engaging others in order to determine their fitness, not by making jokes about how Europeans are a bunch of cheese eating, post historical, socialist surrender monkeys.

Hillary's Non-Inevitability

Hillary is starting to pull away from the pack in terms of polling (nevermind the fact that the Caucuses are still a ways away). The punditocracy is contemplating whether or not she will be able to bag the competition for good. I say no as the media likes a good story, a horse race, and will ensure that there is one.

Romney's Campaign is Starting to Crater

Romney's polling in New Hampshire has fallen off precipitously. If this happens in Iowa too I think he will be moving onto the second tier.

Obama's Strategy

Pundits are starting to question the wisdom of Obama's campaign strategy. Thus far he has been reluctant to take any shots at Hillary. I think this is a prudent strategy. If we look back at 2004 Gephardt was the favorite in Iowa and Dean was leading the national polls. Dean and Gephardt started to exchange blows through the airwaves and ultimately dragged each other down. Kerry and Edwards stayed out of this skirmish and surprised everybody during the caucus. I think Obama will keep his hands clean in hopes of Edwards bringing Hillary down a peg and knocking himself out in the process.

Best Line Ever by a Presidential Candidate

"I stuck the credit-card companies with $90,000 worth of debt!". Mike Gravel's response to a question about his personal bankruptcy. Inspiring.

Petrov Day

I did not know this but 9/26 is Petrov Day. He is a Russian that saved the world and then suffered immeseurably because of it. No, really it's true, check it out.

New Apple Product?

Apple is apparently developing a UMPC (basically a really small laptop).

Facebook Etiquette

Reihan Salam gives the rundown. I don't have enough friends where I have to worry about "un-friending" somebody. One of the few upsides to being a prick.

Gore to Run?

So Christopher Hitchens muses:

"So, and if I am right, the former vice president will then complete a year in which An Inconvenient Truth has been awarded an Oscar and he has authored a best seller. Roll it round your tongue again: an Oscar, a best seller, and a Nobel Prize in the space of 12 months or so. Not bad. And meanwhile, the field of Democratic candidates looks—how shall one put it?—a trifle etiolated. Sen. Clinton may have succeeded in getting people to call her "Hillary" and to have made them feel resigned to her front-runnership, but what kind of achievement is that? Sen. Obama cannot possibly believe, and doesn't even act as if he believes, that he can be elected president of the United States next year. John Edwards is a good man who is in politics for good reasons, but there is something about his populism that doesn't quite—what's the word?—translate.
Apart from the awards, not only could Gore claim that he had been a fairly effective senator and a reasonably competent vice president, he could also present himself in zeitgeist terms as the candidate who was on the right side of the two great overarching questions: the climate crisis and the war in Mesopotamia. Should I add that, whether or not he really won the Electoral College in 2000, he did manage to collect the majority of the popular vote? Several people, some of them well-informed, have been saying to me that Gore will wait until the Nobel committee's announcement before he makes up his mind. Should he make up his mind to run, he could alter the entire equation."

I think I saw this prediction before.