One of my favorite Onion headlines is South Postpones Rising Again For Yet Another Year.  As Homer Simpson once said, it's funny because it's true.  And there is a parallel truth in the failure of the Tea Party to control a party in which it seems to command a majority.  How does Mitt Romney, of Romneycare and abortion rights, win a Florida primary?  Because the Tea was strained into two cups -- a Newt, and a Rick.  With Establishment carpet bombs a-bombin', and Newt lacking any defenses against Air Romney, that was just enough.  The RINO beat the Newt.  [Read more]

12. I need to get working on that Newt's-going-to-lose mea culpa (a/k/a The Dr. Houseman Column).  Before doing so, will have to write column explaining that Newt is still helping to re-elect Barack Obama.  It will rest on the recent WaPo polling showing that independents have now flipped from leaning Romney over Obama to leaning for Obama over Romney now that Romney is getting defined.  This, as much as the slow reduction in unemployment, is why Obama is just about even on approve/disapprove, which is bad news for Romney. [Read more]

I told you so.  Back in November, I posited that the primary lens through which one should view this Republican primary cycle was not as a contest among positive options, but as a contest among Romney and whoever was the most compelling alternative to Romney.  (You know, the AntiRomney.)  After Romney convincingly won his home state, I argued again in this space that if Gingrich remained in the teens nationally (which he did at all times), he would win South Carolina.  And now with Gingrich's resurgence through two debates and a decisive triumph in South Carolina, he is well poised to win Florida, and with it, assume the mantle of the front runner in the GOP race.  All of which shows that the Tea Party has taken control of the Republican Party, and also, that Barack Obama is likely to be re-elected nine months or so hence.  Why?  Three reasons: [Read more]

Three weeks into this weird, compacted four month NBA season, the experts who rated the Chicago Bulls less likely than the Miami Heat, Oklahoma City Thunder, and even the Los Angeles Lakers to win the championship look pretty dumb.  The Bulls are 12-2 (and an eye-popping 7-2 on the road), and are easily the class of the league to this point.  Here's why the Bulls look like they are set to repeat as the best regular-season team, and have the best chance to win the 2012 NBA championship. [Read more]

The asininity of the current Republican nomination fight requires recourse to literature for us to find a path through it toward the winner.  I speak of that fictive champion of deductive reasoning, Sherlock Holmes, who memorably stated:   "When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."  We like truth at dagblog.  So let us apply Holmesian thinking to the mess Santorum's shocking switch -- from bottom of the pile to topping the entire field -- has made in Iowa.  Let us eliminate some impossibilities. [Read more]

During the last month, there has been a lot said, written, and assumed about the National Defense Authorization Act that is either untrue or overstated.  There are several reasons for this.  One is that it's a law, and laws can be complex and ambiguous.  Another is that President Obama signed it, which means it triggers the automatic Obama Bad-Obama Good discussion.  The discussion about it to me largely misses the point, focusing too much on questions of citizenship, for example, and too much on scoring points for and against Obama. This blog presents my critique of the NDAA, which differs substantially from others you have likely read. [Read more]

What a weird year.  I set out to write the blogging year through recaps of ten blogs that strung together what the year was to me (at least the year as concerns subjects about which I write), with further commentary on how those issues have played out and where they are.  So far so good, though it took way too long to write.  Unfortunately, like 2011 itself, my subject selection is all over the place.  As organizational fiat, I sorted my blogs and treatment of the year roughly by subject or blog-type:  Tucson Shooting (1); Politics (2-5); Law (6-8); 9/11 Forevermore (9-11); First Person Stuff (12-16); Fun (17-20); and Sports (21).  This was my blogging year that was. Thanks to all of you for all the great comment threads and for sharing it with us at dag. [Read more]

Recently, I was in New York for business and had a bit of time to spare.  I am never in New York City and had just a bit of time to see sites.  After dashing through MoMA, I took a cab to the 9/11 Memorial and was able to visit the site just as the day was reaching dusk in lower Manhattan.  If you can, I recommend visiting. [Read more]

In Robert Redford's profound Quiz Show, a parable about America in the form of the story of fixing the game show Twenty One, Scorsese in a rare acting turn portraying Geritol executive Martin Rittenhome explains that game show's appeal:  "You see, the audience didn't tune in to watch some amazing display of intellectual ability.  They just wanted to watch the money."   That quote sums up most of the commercial appeal of Walter Isaacson's best-selling biography of corporate titan Steve Jobs:  Americans are obsessed with billionaires.  From the insipid The Social Network to last week's 60 Minutes profiling Warren Buffett's kid (He's not getting most of the billions!  Can you believe it?) to Trump, to Bloomberg, we can't stop watching the money.  The book reflects many of the flaws of our culture, and of celebrity journalism.  While playing to wonderful reviews, it is ok, but could have been much more. [Read more]

For the last week, as most of you know, I've been betting heavily on the prospect of Newt Gingrich becoming the Republican nominee.  As is ordinarily the case, I've been placing bets in round, $10,000 increments.  So many of you have taken the other side of that bet that I have been forced to abandon the practice.  dagblog.com only has so much walking around money from the Obama 2012 campaign, after all.  Helpfully, I was able to short-sell my interest in the Gingrich bets to Bain Capital, because Mitt Romney is so good with money, he's shorting himself.  This is hard to do, since his futures have been diving, but the dagblog firebaggers (well, both of them) are so wishfully confident in him that there's still some action there.   [Read more]

In a move that won about as much favorable press as Bud Selig declaring the All-Star Game a tie, NBA Commissioner David Stern tarnished his legacy when two days ago he voided a completely legitimate trade that would have sent star point guard Chris Paul from the New Orleans Hornets to the Los Angeles Lakers, Lakers center Pau Gasol to the Rockets, and three starters and a first round draft pick to the Hornets.  The move was a blatantly illegitimate kowtow to the owners of other franchises.  Stern needs to reverse himself, and with a figleaf of the trade being resubmitted to him modestly tweaked, hopefully will do so imminently. [Read more]

11.  It's bad to eat bluefin tuna.  I'm usually pretty up on not eating endangered things.  I won't order Chilean Sea Bass.  But after reading this piece concerning NYC's Sushi Yasuda,  I have now connected the buttery "toro" I have loved with the endangered bluefin, and will no longer be eating it.  On the other hand, kangaroos are totally not endangered.  I'm going to get some kangaroo to eat for Christmas, in a peppery cherry sauce, with a good Aussie Shiraz.  And thank Go [Read more]

Well, it's happening.  In the month since I saw the Rasmussen poll in which a not-yet-ascendant Newt Gingrich beat Mitt Romney by seven in a head to head matchup of Florida primary voters, I have been having the same argument with everyone political I know.  I took the position that Gingrich is the front runner and likely to win the GOP nomination; everyone else took the seemingly (well, they thought) sensible position that Republicans could never be goofy enough to nominate Newton Leroy Gingrich for President when they had the chance to nominate Willard Mitt Romney. Time to wake up and smell the poll numbers, people:  Rasmussen brings us the first national poll that looks like a decisive lead in the 2011 phase of the GOP nominating contest:  Newt 38, Mitt 17. Mitt Romney never had a puncher's chance.  His campaign will be over shortly after Boxing Day. And Barack Obama of the 42% approval rating is now a heavy favorite to win the 2012 Presidential election.   [Read more]

A funny thing happened on the way to the ascendant Tea Party strangling the government in the bathtub.  The strangler accidentally gave away the Presidency, the Senate, and increasingly likely, maybe even the House.  The question of whether the GOP will nominate Newton Leroy Gingrich to run against Barack Obama is the same question as whether the Tea faction would rather blow up the Republican Party it has taken over than win elections.  At the moment, I think the answer to both questions is yes. [Read more]

While in a Starbucks on vacation this week, I was surprised to see that the New York Times placed above the fold a supposed news item about how law schools aren't actually training folks to be lawyers.  This isn't really news to anyone who knows anything about American law schools, much less anyone who incurred three years of debt to attend one.  But the real reason the piece was a supposed news item is that it was in fact a very long, wide-ranging, and thoughtful editorial piece about the many failings of legal academe.  This blog is about why I agree with its many critiques of our broken legal academe. [Read more]

As anyone who has watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail knows, witches float (as do ducks and very small rocks) because they are made of wood.  We learn some of this 12th Century folk wisdom from a peasant (not to be classist) portrayed by John Cleese, who helpfully explains that a witch then on trial "turned me into a newt," only to turn aside incredulity by explaining "I got better."  With the narrative of the GOP primary unfolding with the illogic and nonsequiturial glory of a Monty Python flick, it was perhaps inevitable that the Newt would ascend to FOTM (Flavor of the Month) status.  And he has, with poll numbers a-surging.  But has the GOP finally found in Newt the Holy Grail of its Anti-Romney?   [Read more]

President Obama's re-election is becoming more likely.  While the President's approval rating recently hit an all-time low of 38%, which was lower than most Presidents at this time in their first term, two realities are converging:  (1) his approval has risen in key states, and also five points nationally since then; and (2) approval ratings are not presently as predictive of next November's vote as they used to be. [Read more]

It is an article of faith for some, both on the evangelical right and the secular left, that we live in the end times.  For every millennialist who is reading Nostradamus or prophecies of the end of days in the Bible, there is a secularist waiting for aliens to take their "container" from the Earth, or a Dmitry Orlov prophesying the apocalyptic end of modern culture from the end of our free recourse to oil.  Lost in these more grand hypotheses of abrupt ends to the world we know is a deeper, darker truth with more grounding in science than any of them.  It is this.  With supplies of arable land declining, and the number of dairy cows that can be sustained static or falling, our diets are threatened with chaos.  The science doesn't lie.  The numbers are there.  Dairy wanes, while the planet's gluttony for cheeseburgers and pizzas increases exponentially.  This post tears the roof off of the coming culinary catastrophe our complacent consumption conceals:  Peak Cheese. [Read more]

It has been three years since Barack Obama's near-landslide victory of 2008.  The question of whether he will be the seventh of the last nine elected Presidents to secure a second term (Bush 43, Clinton, Reagan, Nixon, Eisenhower, Roosevelt) or the third of the last nine to be a one-termer (Bush 41, Carter) is a close one.  Despite his fairly low approval ratings, Obama is apparently roughly a coinflip to win re-election, with the outcome hinging upon his opponent and whether the economy ticks up modestly in the next year.  This is a first in an irregular series of previews framing that contest and making observations about particular states. [Read more]

It's not nice to compare people to Adolf Hitler.  Hank Williams, Jr. found out that other people think this (though he doesn't) when ESPN pulled his hit theme "Are You Ready For Some Football" from the start of Monday Night Football after Hank compared the 44th President to Der Fuhrer.  Punished or not, Bocephus has lots of company with his Hitler schtick.  So to paraphrase Big Bank Hank (oh, wait, that's a reference to Rapper's Delight -- I didn't mean to start "jiving", Hank Williams, Jr.!), Are You Ready For Some Hitler?  Welcome to Godwin-a-Land, as we explore the empty, omnipresent metaphor that trivializes the greatest evil humanity has ever known, while simultaneously blowing into silly bits roughly half of every serious discussion in the history of the Internet. [Read more]