FunctionalAmbivalent

Putting the New Stock Market Record Into Perspective

The stock market closed at a record high today, 11,727.34.  That's up 4.36 points over the previous record, which was set on January 14, 2000.  That's an increase, over the last roughly six-and-a-half years, of nearly 0.004 percent, and annual rate of return of 0.0006 percent.  If you invested $100,000 in the stock market in early 2000, it would now be worth $100,004.

Adding inflation to the calculation, you would have lost over $14,000.

That's quite a bull market we've got going.  I, for one, am feeling irrationally exuberrant.

How Powerful Can al Qaeda Be?

So I'm talking with a Republican friend the other day and he tells me about this guy he met, a guy wired into the national security apparatus.  And this guy had told my friend about how there were thousands of al Qaeda sleeper cells here in the U.S., plotting and even putting their plots into action.

"You have no idea," my friend said the guy said, "how many plots have been thwarted."

And I kind of marveled for a second: Our national security big-hitters are batting 1.000?  There are all these plotters out there, really bad guys capable of pulling of James Bond Villain-class stuff...and every single plot they've set in motion has not only been thwarted but thwarted in such a way that no one even heard about the thwarting?  No shoot-outs in the streets or explosions in bomb factories or lawyers calling press conferences?  Amazing!  And I'm being told this by my Republican friend, who is normally cynical about the government's ability to accomplish things but in this case believes without question that the government has been 100% effective in stopping hundreds of terrorist plots right here on American soil.

So for the next 24 hours I'm kind of mulling this over, the whole conception of al Qaeda as this ruthlessly effective organization with thousands of plots boiling but none of them actually happening because the American Security Apparatus is perfect -- absolutely perfect -- in detecting and disarming the plotters. 

Now, nothing against the intelligence community or the military.  And nothing against self-proclaimed intelligence insiders making the rounds of Republican cocktail parties charming well-kept middle-aged women out of their silky underthings with tales of chilling terrorist plots on every street corner, either.  I just have never seen any group of human beings capable of maintaining a perfect record in even simple endeavors, let alone something as complicated and dangerous as thwarting secret terrorist plots.

Now, given what I know to be fact -- people aren't perfect -- and given what we're told about al Qaeda -- it's huge, competent, and energetically plotting right here in the US of A -- I can't make sense of the fact that there hasn't been another attack on American soil.  Not one.  Something in the equation is wrong, either I'm wrong and people are capable of perfection, or the popular Republican estimate of how many plots are cooking is maybe just a little bit high.

So, anyway, this morning I'm surfing through the news and I come across this from media blowhard  Bill O-Reilly:

"With the controversy comes death threats on a daily basis," O'Reilly said. "Not only from kooks. But the FBI came in and warned me and a few other people at Fox News that al Qaeda had us on a death list. … That's a little disconcerting."

My goodness, O'Reilly is brave! The all-powerful al Qaeda wants to kill him, to silence his voice, and yet he continues to speak out.  "A little disconcerting," he calls it.  Why, a mere mortal would quiver with fear, but O'Reilly...well, the moral of this story is clearly that O'Reilly is brave and -- dare I say it? -- heroic, even.

I want to know: If al Qaeda wants O'Reilly dead, and if al Qaeda is really the big, tough organization people like O'Reilly say it is, wouldn't O'Reilly be dead?  How hard can it be to kill a high profile talk show host?  I'm a middle aged fat guy with no military training, and I bet if I wanted O'Reilly dead I could kill him.  I could start hanging out at his favorite restaurant and when he showed up I could pull out a legally acquired handgun and shoot him.  Mark David Chapman did it to John Lennon; I could do it to O'Reilly.  I wouldn't, of course, because I'm not nuts, and I certainly don't advocate that anyone else do it, either.  O'Reilly has every right to be a rude blowhard, if that's what he wants to be.  But, for the sake of this thought experiment and for the price of duking a maitre d' a couple of times its clear that I could gain all the access I needed to do Mr. O'Reilly harm.

So how come, if al Qaeda is really powerful and really wants O'Reilly dead, al Qaeda can't do basically the same thing?  And if they couldn't get into the restaurant, couldn't they stand outside with RPGs and accomplish the same goal?

Between my Republican friend's terribly dramatic, insider information about how many terrorist plots have been foiled, and O'Reilly's self-aggrandizing bloviation that he's standing up in the face of al Qaeda death threats, I'm thinking that maybe -- just maybe -- the public debate is dominated by people who wildly overstate the power of our adversaries.  This is not to say we shouldn't take Islamic radicalism seriously; it is to say that we should keep it in perspective. 

It's also to say that much of what we're being told might just be bullshit designed to make some people seem more important and impressive than they really are.

Can't Get Anything Right

Not Card.  Rumsfeld.

Fast Learner

Drudge's headline this morning:

Bush Warns of Mideast Oil Dependency

Really?  Can it possibly be true?

Republicans and the Power of Myth

Remember the great Republican outrage over Democrats who threw Oreo cookies at a black Republican candidate in Maryland?  Conservatives shouted it from the rooftops as a sign of liberal hypocricy.  RNC chair Ken Melman used it as an example of liberal racism here, the Washington Times editorialized against it here, and bloggers everywhere picked the story up and ran with it.

Which is great except for one thing: It doesn't seem to have actually happened.  No Democrat, liberal or otherwise, threw Oreo cookies at Michael Steele.  This from Media Matters:

...eyewitnesses at the debate -- held at Morgan State University's Carl J. Murphy Fine Arts Center in Baltimore -- dispute the allegations of cookie-throwing, and accounts of the purported incident offered at different times by Ehrlich, Steele, and Paul S. Schurick, Ehrlich's communications director, contradict each other. Moreover, the Sun noted that initial news accounts of the debate made no mention of Oreo cookies at all. The first mention of cookies surfaced five days later, when the Sun reported Schurick's charge that Oreos were passed out -- not thrown -- by Democrats at the debate.

I bet conservatives will keep milking the story though, the same way they keep saying that Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet.  Why tell the truth when lies generate so much more outrage?

Tobacco Road

A New Jersey legislator has proposed a law banning smoking while driving.

Assemblyman John F. McKeon, D-West Orange, sponsored a measure that would fine drivers up to $250 if they are found smoking while driving.

McKeon, a tobacco opponent whose father died of emphysema, cited a AAA-sponsored study on driver distractions in which the association found that of 32,000 accidents linked to distraction, one percent were related to smoking.

Actually 0.9%, but let's not quibble over a 10% exageration. 

A look at the actual study shows just what kind of knucklehead McKeon is, and by extension just what kind of knuckleheads a lot of busybody do-gooders are.  Let's examine the numbers.

McKeon bases his crusade on one study showing that smoking causes 0.9% of distraction-related traffic accidents.  There are 32,000 distraction-related accidents a year nationwide.  1% of 32,000 accidents is 320 accidents a year, the vast majority of them certainly minor.  New Jersey's population,  according to the U.S. Census Bureau, is about 8.6 million, or 3% of the nation's population.  Assuming that New Jersey consumes only it's share of traffic accidents and no more, to prevent 10 minor accidents a year Assemblyman McKeon believes that police should take time away from investigating murders and chasing down drunk drivers to pass out tickets to people smoking in their own cars.

Assemblyman McKeon is a boob.

The real threat to driver safety is not smoking, everyone knows, but cell phones.  There's not a right-thinking American anywhere who doesn't favor the ban on talking on a cell phone while driving.  Yeah, well, the AAA study concludes that  cell phones account for a mere 1.5% of distraction-related accidents -- which are themselves 25% of all accidents.  Doing the math, that means that cell phones account for not quite 0.375% of all traffic accidents, or about 1,000 accidents a year.  Again, most of them are minor.  All the same, with something like 250 million autos in the U.S., the apparently appalling 1-in-280,000 chance that your own personal automobile will be in a cell phone-related accident is too much for us, as a society, to bear.

There are, of course, behaviors that no one is threatening to legislate against.  For example, I am unaware of pending legislation that would ban automobile air conditioning.  According to the AAA study, 2.8% of distraction-related accidents happened while one of the drivers was fiddling with his climate controls.  That's three times as many accidents as caused by smoking, but I'm guessing even non-smokers like Assemblyman McKeon enjoy a good blast of cool air now and then, so they're not concerned how dangerous their own habits are.

The Big Kahuna of terrifying automotive bahavior is adjusting the car stereo.  By banning sound systems, Assemblyman McKeon could eliminate 11.4% of the distraction-related accidents.  Then he could go after those destructive people who carry passengers, since 10% of distraction-related accidents are caused when someone in the car -- often a child -- distracts the driver.  Perhaps we could ban children.

The most effective means of eliminating auto accidents would be to elminate autos.  That one small measure would cut auto fatalities nearly 100%.  (Not quite 100%.  Every year, a few people die when jacked-up cars fall on them.)  Let's see if Assemblyman McKeon can get behind that.

Was Deep Throat a Lutheran?

The Baby Boom portion of the political world is abuzz with speculation that the identity of secret Watergate source Deep Throat might be soon revealed.  Gravitas-laden investigative reporter Bob Woodward -- who named the most important secret source in the history of journalism after what was, apparently, his favorite porn movie -- has long said that he will reveal the real name of Deep Throat when Deep Throat dies. 

Every time someone close to the Nixon White House kicks off, people like me get excited.  Was that Deep Throat?  We watch breathlessly for a few days, and then retreat into our surly speculations.

There are rumors that Deep Throat is in ill health, and that the Washington Post has prepared an obit that reveals the person's role in history.

Now, being a political person with an inch-deep knowledge of politics and no hint of human empathy, I think right away: Who's sick?

Well, the Pope is sick, but I don't recall him working in proximity to Nixon, and even if he had I have a hard time picturing him lurking around parking ramps to meet with Woodward. 

Which leaves Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who is sick, yes, but is also -- much more importantly -- a Lutheran.

I'm a Lutheran, and the idea that Rehnquist might be Deep Throat excites me because it would be the first time a Lutheran has made history since...well, since Luther himself.

So I checked Rehnquist's bio, and saw that he had gone from the Department of Justice under evil ectomorph John Mitchell to the Supreme Court.  Unfortunately, he did all this before the Watergate shenanigans got really cranked up.  Mitchell was, of course, insane, having been driven mad by his wife, Martha, who drank and would not shut up even after being abducted by federal agents and having a needle stuck in her butt.  (Really, if you're too young to remember all of this, you're missing out on a lot of fun.)  As Nixon's campaign manager, Mitchell was one of the driving forces of Watergate. 

Rehnquist, theoretically, could still be Deep Throat.  After moving to the Supreme Court he could have stayed in contact with his friends back at Justice, gossiping over coffee and passing what he'd learned to Woodward. 

Also, the fact that Deep Throat has not revealed himself for the sake of a billion-dollar book deal is evidence that he -- I think it's a man, because no Republican woman would allow herself to be publicly referred to as "Deep Throat" -- is still a working member of the Republican establishment.  Like, for example, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

But it probably isn't Rehnquist.  It's more likely some boring Presbyterian.  We Lutherans will probably just have to go back to our silent corner of the world.

Which puts me back at Al Haig for Deep Throat.  Does anyone know: Is he sick?  And where does he go to church?

UPDATE: An unhelpful emailer informs me that Deep Throat was Hal Holbrook.  You just couldn't see him much because of the lighting.