Benzene 4

Home | About Benzene | Contact

June 2004

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30

May Jul

Blog-Parents

RaptorMagic

Orcinus

Blog-Brothers

Callimachus
(Done with Mirrors)

Gelmo
(Statistical blah blah blah)

Other Blogs I Read
Regularly Often

Athletics Nation

Andrew Sullivan
(Daily Dish)

Kevin Drum
(Political Animal)

Hilzoy
(Obsidian Wings)

Saturday, June 19, 2004

Letters

Of the many letters that have been waiting patiently in my emailbox, this is the one that suffers most from the delay. Paul is responding to Darcy's letter of June 3. I know it drives Darcy crazy to have the dialogue in slow motion, but I'm afraid that's how we do things here.

Paul Cohen (June 3)

I wanted to comment on Darcy's comments on my comments...

With regards to Paul Cohen's comments, I appreciate his contribution, and he is, as you say, a thoughtful and interesting writer. But I can't help but point out that someone who believes that CNN and ABC News are biased towards the left,

But I didn't say that! I said that they are not conservative.

who believes that Bush's competence is constantly questioned by the media (when and by whom?

Doesn't the New York Times count as media?

Certainly not in any White House press conference from Sept. 2001 to perhaps a few months ago), who insists the Clinton scandals -- plural -- were "real" (which ones? Whitewater? "Travelgate"? Vince Foster? Juanita Broderick?),

That Clinton shook his finger at the American people and lied about Monica is real. I don't think that "Travelgate" comes up to "scandal", but it is not a glorious moment in Clinton history either.

and who seems unaware of just how poorly the Supreme Court Bush v. Gore decision is regarded even by conservative legal scholars (no one has even seriously argued that the decision would have been the same had the plaintiff and defendant been reversed)

Where in my remarks do I defend the legal underpinnings of the decision? Darcy attributes views to me that are not mine, and then attacks them. What I said was that the Supreme Court decision was as partisan as the Florida court decision that preceded it.

-- well, Mr. Cohen may be as yet undecided as to who to vote for, but with all due respect I would humbly suggest that he's no less partisan than I am. He's simply insufficiently disgusted with Bush (yet) to commit to holding his nose and voting for the other side.

I prefer neither party over the other, in general. How is that partisan? On several issues -- the Mideast, scientific research, tax policy, affirmative action, health care, I am indeed partisan -- but my views are "liberal" as often as they are "conservative."

[Way back in 1993, in Benzene 3, I defended Clinton on his "Travelgate" actions. In brief, I opined that the White House travel office was corrupt, sacking the whole lot was a sensible reform, and the only reason it got portrayed as a "scandal" is because the ones making the portrayal -- the regular White House press corps -- was the group whose ox was gored. As I recall, my buddy Chuff, himself a journalist, vehemently disagreed, but he didn't change my opinion.

[As for the rest, I'll stay out of it and let Darcy speak for himself.]

Here's another from Paul, which may have had something to do with the mention of "scientific research" above. Recollecting Paul's complaint that Kerry has nothing but meaningless campaign pap to offer, I passed on a link to Kerry's remarks at a hospital in New Hampshire last fall, about stem-cell research specifically and attitude toward science generally.

By the way, there's a ton of other speeches on the site; just back up one level in the hierarchy for a complete list. Some are more substantial than others, of course, but if you're seriously interested in Kerry's political positions, for heaven's sake, don't rely on television ads and newspaper columns. Read some of his speeches.

Paul Cohen (June 2)

Thanks. I agree with almost everything in that speech except for a small section on climate change. I believe that Earth's climate is changing, will change, and always has changed. Human activity may be having some effect on these changes, but we really have no idea how much. Nor do we know what caused the last ice age, the little ice age (18th century), nor when the next ice age is likely to occur. The Kyoto accords are based on bad science, in my view.

I strongly support Kerry's position on research, and on medical care. Just one observation, though, one of the major barriers to more affordable health care is the cost of medical malpractice insurance. Without meaningful tort reform, costs will continue to spiral, but I never hear any suggestions for such reform from leading Democrats, (indeed, a long article on health care by Hillary in the New York Times magazine completely ignored the issue) and I suspect that the Democrats are as unwilling to take on the bar association as the Republicans are to take on the gun lobby.

My vote is now Kerry's to lose, even though I prefer conservative court appointments.

[I like to maintain a healthy skepticism about reports of global warming. Global climate is an enormously complicated system -- far more complicated than almost everything else science has presumed to study -- and the science is fairly new. A lot of the early conclusions proved unreliable, owing to gross oversimplification of the data. Also, many of the more determined environmentalists seem more driven by faith than by science.

[On the other hand, I'm not satisfied to just say, "Well, we don't really know, so phphhlt to all that." I don't know the scientific literature well enough to judge what we do and don't know right now. I do know that I trust objective scientific inquiry, against ideology on either side. All things considered, while I don't consider Democrats to be any better than Republicans on this score generally, I do think that Republicans from the oil-finance Texas wing of the party, which currently dominates both the White House and the House of Representatives, are among the worst.

[As for Kyoto, I like what Lugar said in that other speech I linked recently: Kyoto as written had a lot problems, but the United States has the clout to renegotiate it. To just away from it is irresponsible and unconstructive.

[On tort reform, two years ago I'd probably agree with you. In theory, I still agree. It's certainly true that litigiousness is way out of control. But as I look more closely, I see far too many instances where "tort reform" is simply a code word for emasculating legal enforcement so that favored industries can get away with whatever the hell they want no matter what the law says. So while I still believe our legal system is in desperate need of drastic reform, I can only roll my eyes when pro-business Republicans cry "tort reform".

[By the way, Hillary Clinton is not my idea of a good authority on how to fix the health care system.]

[next item] — [bookmark] — [previous letters] — [next letters]

1:34:33 PM [permalink] comment []

June 2004
Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30
May Jul