Corey Robin says: stop criticizing Obama and #SOTU: I'll pass

Well, technically, no, he didn't exactly say that.

He wants us to stop criticizing anything Obama said in the State of the Union Address that is dependent on the good will of Republicans:

I promise not to blame Obama for not doing what the Republicans prevent him from doing, not to exaggerate the power of the presidency, to acknowledge the constraints of a bicameral Congress, the reality of Blue Dogs and unreality of Green Lanterns, if… 

…you STFU about SOTU, POTUS, and the next presidential election. 

Deal? 

Not totally a deal, Corey. Here's why.

First, Obama had two years in his first term where he wasn't dependent on the GOP — including in the Senate, before Scott Brown replaced Ted Kennedy and a magic 60 votes were there.

That leads into what I said in comments to him:

So, Corey, there's a lot he could have done in 2009-11, with Dems in charge, that he didn't. 

Oh, like single payer. Or a neoliberal health care fix that actually worked better, especially the tech side. (Shocking for a Web 2.0 neoliberal to not actually keep a gimlet eye on how his "legacy" accomplishment was actually being put together, isn't it?) 

Or, more stimulus. 

Or, better stimulus. 

== 

Of course, there's things he could do today that don't depend on Congress. 

Like ending the war in Afghanistan. Full stop. Ending, not semi-ending. 

Like stop spying on us so much. 

Like stop continuing "renditions." 

You get the drift. 

== 

Of course, none of this addresses the ultimate issue, namely, that Barack Obama somehow seems more highly impressed with the mellifluous notes of his golden tongue than he should be. 

Or, as his predecessor said, "soft bigotry of low expectations," maybe? 

So, for those reasons and more, no, I won't stop ... "critiquing" Obama, from the left.

Speaking of ....

Remember those halcyon days when Dear Leader asked for people (why didn't he use the word "folks" way back then?) to criticize and critique him from the left?

Beyond that, per one other commenter, I didn't even watch. Like with Slick Willie and Shrub alike before him, a lot of the last 20 SOTUs have been about incrementalism. And political point-scoring via incrementalism.

Beyond that, even if they have no chance of adoption, Obama could still propose non-incremental ideas.

Like a carbon tax joined with a carbon tariff on imports. Right now, when oil prices are low, too! And, since he's a lame duck, he doesn't have to worry about expending "capital," either.

As for Corey's unreality of Green Lanterns, there is an actual Green Party. For which I do vote.

Also, per a Facebook comment, I think if presidents were smart, they'd go back to the time before Woodrow Wilson anyway. Deliver a print document SOTU; that then prevents opposition Congresscritters from giving a teevee rebuttal, one that is not specified by the Constitution anyway.

Senate Dems fail to offer right #KeystoneXL amendment

Yes, one of the two failed amendments to Senate Republicans' pushing of a KeystoneXL pipeline bill were both nice — use of US components only, although I really can't conceive of that much heavy steel being imported from China. The one that got OKed, about boosting energy efficiency, is also nice, but seems fairly toothless. The one about restricting tar sands oil coming through the pipeline to US use only? Meh.

None of these hit the right angle, though.

I've said before that, if nothing else, Alberta tar sands oil is better by pipeline than by rail.

That said, a better amendment would have forced the Department of Transportation to make its push for railroad companies to do a voluntary upgrade of their tanker cars into a mandated replacement with new models.

But, even that's only the second-best option Senate Dems had.

The best?

Link KeystoneXL approval to a carbon tax at home along with a carbon tariff on imports.

First, the domestic tax needs to be linked with the tariff on imports anyway; just a domestic tax is not sensical either environmentally or economically.

Second, to the degree that that Alberta tar sands oil is "dirtier" than US conventional oils, it would have a heavier tariff vs the domestic tax.

Sure, this amendment likely would have had zero chance. It probably would only get 20 Democratic votes.

But, it surely could have gotten at least two.

Hello, Bernie Sanders, Barbara Boxer, Ed Markey and other real "green" types. That's more than two of you — enough for an amendment's motion and seconding.

$45 oil — is that the US "breaking point"?

According to at least one Midland oilman, it is:

“At $45 a barrel, it shuts down nearly every project,” Steve J. McCoy, Latshaw Drilling’s director of business development, told Mr. Pruett and his guests. “The Saudis understand, and they are killing us.”

That said, it's interesting, or rather, it's "interesting," to see that what would be called "capitalism" when practiced in the US by American companies is called "conspiracy" when practiced by KSA and Saudi Aramco.

American exceptionalism hypocrisy strikes again!

As for the actuality of concerns? Per my previous blog post on this subject, talking about the possibility of $40 oil, right now, West Texas Intermediate is hovering right around that $45 mark. I'm sure my blog's "man of the year," Saudi oil minister Ali Al-Naimi, is taking note.

Meanwhile, per that $40 blog post of mine, noting that Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar probably hadn't looked too closely at ripple effects when issuing his report about state of Texas revenue for the 2015-16 biennium, the Times link at top reminds us of these ripple effects:

A Mexican restaurant has started a Sunday brunch to expand its revenues beyond dinner. A Mercedes dealer, anticipating reduced demand, is prepared to emphasize repairs and sales of used cars. And some well-off oil company managers are cutting back at home, rethinking their vacation plans and cutting the hours of their housemaids and gardeners.

Of course, Greg Abbott will soon tell us this is all Obama's fault, even as he prepares to launch his first suit as governor of the great state of all hat, no cattle miracles, or, as I call it, the Pointy Abandoned Object State™,  surely getting ready to once again sue Barack Obama, aka Dear Leader. 

Now, per the Times, and per Midland Mayor Jerry Morales, this is almost surely not going to be anywhere near as bad as the late 1990s. But, it could be about as bad, and for about as long, as the bubble-bursting at the start of the Great Recession.

More here, on the possible duration, at least related to China's economy:

"Heavy industrial overcapacity remains severe, and will take years, not quarters, to resolve. Generally, there is a large supply overhang problem which lower input prices cannot solve," wrote Brian Jackson, IHS Global Insight's China economist on Tuesday. "Most importantly, debt levels and shares continued to rise in 2014 – IHS estimates that China's debt-to-GDP ratio rose over 20 percentage points in 2014 to reach 247 percent." 

The latest on that end? Baker Hughes just announced 7,000 layoffs. And, it expects the second quarter of the year to be worse than the first quarter. And, it may close some facilities.

And, there's also the issue of whether sagging stock prices couldn't force publicly traded companies into even further cuts.

Meanwhile, Texas Monthly is now weighing in, saying there's a fair possibility of a 1980s-style full oil bust.

Update, Jan. 27: The situation is of concern enough within the oil patch that pipeline companies are merging. And six-month business projections look weak.

Hedge funds, meanwhile, are betting on continuing price weakness.

#Ebook stagnation — my thoughts on why

Note that in the US, the reading rate has plateaued even more than the buy rate.

Both in Australia and the UK, and here in the US, ebook sales have stagnated in the past year or two.

Is this a temporary glitch, and will ebook touters from a few years back eventually be proven right, or — at least in the current sales structure of ebooks — is it something permanent?

Before answering those questions, let's look at why the stagnation has happened.

I have several thoughts.

1. Early adopters have all done their early adopting, and middle adopters haven't jumped in yet; late adopters certainly haven't.

2. Ebook buyers from Amazon have pulled back from buying ebooks, with the lapse of "teaser" prices now having used books, after just 2 years, cheaper than ebook copies of the same, and often even new ebooks not that much cheaper than print.

3. Ebook buyers — or even more would-be ebook buyers — don't like their book choices being held hostage to wholesaling disputes like the Amazon-Hachette one.

4. Ebook readers — and even more, potential ebook readers — have grown wary of the fact that, at least in the US, one does not own ebooks. Rather, one owns the right to read an ebook stored by Amazon or whomever in a digital cloud, a right that can be, and has been, revoked.

5. Print readers are still holding out for more ease with the digital equivalent of underlining and otherwise marking up a book. (But, see No. 5.) Ditto for other issues related to this.

6. Ebook readers, in nonfiction, have gotten tired of problems with footnoting, indexes, etc.

If No. 1 is the primary issue, then, the plateau is only temporary. That's somewhat true if No. 6 is the primary issue, though that still has a trust issue involved.

If some combination of Nos. 2-5 is the problem, though, then the plateau is going to be around a while.

That's because all of the problems there, and subproblems within each point, are traceable in part to quasi-monopolistic issues in general, and business practices of Amazon in particular. And, even No. 6 in part relates to that — it's an issue of buyers tired of vendors in general being cheap with ebook production. (That said, that is probably more then publishing houses than Amazon, but, if Amazon really cared about the issue, it would lean on publishers to do better on their end. In nonfiction, if a book has at least 10 Amazon reviews, I generally offer 50-50 odds that one of the reviews is a complaint about ebook formatting issues.)

To me, No. 2 probably is not that big, though it's not negligible.

I think Nos. 3 and 4 are the biggies. Especially to people who don't have fondness for Bezos otherwise, on things like Amazon's sweatshop "fulfillment warehouses," Bezos looks like a potential John D. Rockefeller of digital publishing. Or worse.

For me, these two issues, plus the degree that No. 5 relates to No. 4, make me wary indeed of, if not ebooks in general, then the Amazon and Kindle world in specific.

Given that Bezos is showing ever more signs of turning the Washington Post into the nation's libertarian newspaper in five years (what — the Wall Street Journal isn't enough? let alone the Phil Anschutz "empire"?) I don't think Nos. 3 and 4 are changing any time soon.

I don't know if Amazon is as much a problem Down Under or in the UK. Maybe it is, and given that that US survey is from 2013, it just took Amazon wariness — and Amazon hamhandedness or worse that provoked it —an additional year to spread beyond the US.

Why did Ford pardon Nixon?

I reject ideas of any conspiracy between Jerry Ford and Dick Nixon in the last few days before Nixon's resignation, that Ford would someday pardon him as part of the step-down.

That said, I don't buy Ford's narrative about "national healing," and while accepting Jerry terHorst's line that "national healing" was bullshit when Ford wouldn't pardon Vietnam draft avoiders at the same time, I think that there's still a backstory that ter Hoorst may not have thought about.

It related to a new biography of Nino Scalia, who headed the Ford Administration Office of Legal Counsel. Specifically, it relates to his attempt to hide Nixon's presidential papers from outside purview.

Suppose there is no pardon, and Nixon goes on trial. And, some presidential papers — or White House tapes — somehow come out at trial. Or even without electromagnetic or paper trails available, it still comes out at trial.

What if we find out that Ford, pre-vice presidential nomination, had discussions with Nixon plotting House GOP strategy to spin Watergate? What if, as part of that, we find out that Ford knew more, pre-vice presidency, about Watergate than he told the public — or than he told Congress in his confirmation hearings?

And, what if this comes out before the 1976 general election?

So, without any "deal" with Nixon, Jerry Ford may still have had some "good" reasons to pardon Nixon.

We may never know. I half-read, half-skimmed — and generally disliked — John Dean's new book on the "complete" Nixon tapes. But, again, they don't cover every waking moment of Nixon's presidential life. And, Dean's book ends with July 16, 1973, other than a "summary" chapter beyond that. That's three months before Spiro Agnew resigned.

Top blog posts of 2014

We're halfway into January 2015, but I'm a roundup from last year for a slow Sunday.

1. Jan. 7, 2014: I note that movement skeptics have founded their own health website, but caution the general person to also be skeptical about it.
2. Jan. 9, 2014: I question the alleged genius of some master sabermetricians who have Baseball Hall of Fame voting rights.
3. Jan. 10, 2014: I explain the reality of alleged skeptic, and later convicted wire fraudster, Brian Dunning.
4. Jan. 15, 2014: I expose the depth of past — and seemingly current — pro-life views of Texas Democratic U.S. Senate candidate David Alameel. (True Texas Dems, file this one away, as the man is threatening to run again.) I discuss this further on Jan. 26 and even call him a flat-out liar on Jan. 29.
5. Jan. 30, 2014: Younger football Manning sibling Eli gets in my gunsights after a lawsuit over Super Bowl merchandise.

6. Feb. 4, 2014: Democrats all the time Dems, in Texas, don't like me after I question the reality of Wendy Davis' fundraising numbers. Turns out I'm right, and that in November, both she and Battleground Texas are big fat flops.
7. Feb. 18, 2014: I expose the puffery behind a piece claiming scientists are as religious as the general American public.

8. March 5, 2014: Pseudoskeptical fraudster Brian Dunning is convicted. I discuss the details of the case against him.
9. March 8, 2014: Talking baseball. I wonder if the St. Louis Cardinals shouldn't trade for then-Tampa Rays lefty David Price.
10: March 17, 2014: I talk about abortion as being a "Gordian knot" for many liberals. That includes me.
11: March 25, 2014: I critique problems with Neil deGrasse Tyson's reboot of Carl Sagan's "Cosmos."
12. March 27, 2014: I expose some lunacy in the attitudes of Texas Gov. Rick Perry and other state-level GOP officeholders about the lesser prairie chicken in particular and protection of in-trouble wildlife in general.
13. March 29, 2014: I show that Carl Hart's new book on addiction is overhyped, probably driven by a mix of political libertarianism and the soft bigotry of low expectations.

14. April 4, 2014: Warren Buffett isn't so smart about newspapers in the digital age. I explain.
15. April 8, 2014: I actually defend something that looks like "social justice warrior" action, when Mozilla pushes out Brandon Eich.
16. Aprl 8, 2014: Disqus says it will push ads on its Internet commenting system. I barf.
17. April 12, 2014: I rake over the coals some Texas Greens' ideas to have Brandon Parmer "surrender" to Wendy Davis. (In retrospect, he did anyway.)
18. April 14, 2014: I take down the misuse of the word "potential."
19. April 19, 2014: I question whether Reds' rookie outfielder Billy Hamilton is "all that," and introduce the Pete Kozma Line, a sabermetric version of the Mendoza Line.

20. May 5, 2014: I critique modern health research and reporting, saying that researchers should tighten p-values and other research parameters.
21. May 12, 2014: I call for Managerial Wins Above Replacement as a needed way to better evaluate baseball managers.

22. June 19, 2014: I once again tell Boston Red Sox fans that David Ortiz is not a Hall of Famer.

23. July 27, 2014: The sad reality of modern America — big business tells explosion-damaged West, Texas to go fuck itself.

24. Aug. 9, 2014: I call out P.Z. Myers and other Gnu Atheists for creating straw men in their quest for nth-wave feminism.
25. Aug. 23, 2014: I reject the idea that non-hired academic Steven Salaita is worthy of any brouhaha on his behalf.

26. Sept. 25, 2014: Is the godfather of modern movement skepticism, James Randi, suffering from founder's syndrome? Given that I think he's overrated in some ways anyway, I have no problem saying that.

27. Nov. 17, 2014: As part of noting that atheism is just the lack of belief in the existence of any gods, I explain in detail, with examples. how atheism does not necessarily equate to political or social liberalism.
28. Nov. 28, 2014: I delve a bit into the personal and family history of Steve McQuilliams, the TeaParty type, possibly white nationalist type, Austin would-be bomber.

29. Dec. 26, 2014: I say "hasty lumbago" to Texas' departing governor, Rick Perry.