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Poor National Review. It has to deal with getting written off as hacks by the older generation of conservatives:

Buckley once quipped, after Garry Wills, Joan Didion, and John Leonard had decamped, that he hadn't realized that he was "running a finishing school for young apostates."…

("[60s NR writer Jeffrey] Hart is clearly uneasy about the rise of the younger generation, which, under the editorship of Richard Lowry, has been generally enthusiastic about the Bush administration. "Perhaps surprisingly, none of these now prominent figures at the magazine had been known for books or even important articles on politics or political thought," he sniffs. "Where they stood on the spectrum of conservative thought–traditionalist, individualist, libertarian, skeptical, Straussian, Burkean, Voegelinian–was completely unknown."),

I don't know what they are talking about with not being intellectual enough. Check that second quote against Jonah Goldberg's FAQ about himself: "You'll note that the second I became quasi-famous for the French-bashing stuff, I all but stopped the French-bashing. Similarly, I cut wayyyy back on quoting The Simpsons once that became sort of my official shtick. " It's kind of like Maxim, but the only product to sell is knee-jerk fratboy libertarianism.

But let's take a peek at what all those brilliant minds were doing back in the day. Let's take a quick moment on Martin Luther King's birthday to go back and see what those important contributors of political thought at the National Review have told us over the years about the Civil Rights movement – the highbrow equivalent of fire hoses and attack dogs (hat tip to Brad Delong).

William F. Buckley, from the February 22, 1956 issue:

On February 6, Miss Autherine J. Lucy went to class at the University of Alabama, which admitted her by the order of a federal court. When she left the building she was assaulted by a mob…. It was the culmination of a weekend of demonstrations against the admission of a Negro…. [T]he nation cannot get away with feigning surprie at the fact that there was a demonstration by students, nor even that the demonstration became ugly and uncontrolled. For in defiance of constitutional practice, with a total disregard of custom and tradition, the Supreme Court a year ago illegalized a whole set of deeply-rooted folkways and mores…. The incident involving Miss Lucy is only one of many such incidents whose occurrence we had better get used to if we intend to enforce the Supreme Court's decision at bayonet point… the consequences of exacting of a whole region of our country compliance with a law that in the opinion of Southerners unsettles the basis of their society. The Supreme Court elected to tamper with organic growth. It must, under the circumstances, accept the fatherhood of social deformity.

Now to L. Brent Bozell, from the June 4, 1963 issue:

The… governor of Alabama, acting for his state, filed a suit in the United States Supreme Court that asked… whether the educated citizens of the Kennedy Administration are concerned with discharging this special responsibility [to uphold the law] or merely with gassing about it…. [D]id the President act within his authority in sending federal troops to Alabama in the wake of the Birmingham riots?…. Alabama's principal contention… is that the Act of Congress under which the President dispatched the troops is unconstitutional… that the 14th amendment… is "null and void"… that the President's actions did not comply with [the act's] conditions….

The statute… a law the Reconstruction Congress enacted in 1871…. [T]he President can send in troops… only when… there must be some "domestic violence" or "insurrection," and let us agree that condition was met b the Negro rioters…. [T]he domestic violence must be the cause… [of] a denial of equal protection… [or] obstruction of federal laws. Now: how in Heaven's name–granted they created a certain amount of havoc–can the Negro riots be said to have caused either of those consequences? Finally, assuming it is a violence-inspired enail of equal protection… the local authorities must have shown themselves either unable or unwilling to deal with the situation. Yet the authorities in Birmingham [police chief "Bull" Connor and Governor George Wallace] apparently did have the matter under control before Kennedy pushed the button….

[T]he legality of the 14th amendment…. The argument that it was improperly ratified is historically irrefragable….

It is undoubtedly too much to hope that Alabama will win her case: the President's cavalier action is not likely to raise many eyebrows on a Court that handed down those sit-in decisions. But… Alabama's lawyers can help but the public straight on who is and who isn't concerned these das with working otu the nation's terrible racial problem within the framework of law.

And for my favorite, let's roll it back to Mr William Buckley to take us home. From 1959:

The soberly-dressed "clerky" little man… seemed oddly unsuited to his unmentioned but implicit role of propagandist…. Let me say at once, for the benefit of the wicked, fearful South, that Martin Luther King wil never rouse a rabble; in fact, I doubt very much if he could keep a rabble awake… past its bedtime… lecture… delivered with all the force and fervor of the five-year-old who nightly recites: "Our Father, Who art in New Haven, Harold be Thy name."…

The history of Negro freedom in the United States…

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according to Dr. King, is actually a history of Supreme Court decisions… in each of these decisions "the Supreme Court gave validity to the prevailing mores of the times." (That's how they decide, you see? They look up the prevailing mores–probably in the Sunday New York Times.)…

In the future, [according to King] the reactionary white south will try…. Nevertheless, victory is inevitable for the Good Guys…. The Negro must… expect suffering and sacrifice, which he must resist without sacrifice, for this kind of resistance will leqve the violent segregationist "glutted with his own barbarity. Forced to stand before the world and his God splattered with the blood and reeking with the stench of his Negro brother, he will call an end to his self-defeating massacre." (I don't think [King had] really examined that one, do you?)…

In the words of an editorial from next morning's Yale Daily News, "a bearded white listener rose, then a whole row, and then a standing ovation." Did you ever see a standing ovation rise?

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It's most interesting! Anyway, I rose and applauded heartily. I was applauding Dr. King for not saying "the trusth shall make you free," because actually it took the Supreme Court, in this case, didn't it?…

[A] discussion period for undergraduates followed the lecture…. Here was no trace of the sing-song "culluh'd preachuh" chant, the incongruously gaudy phrases…. Martin Luther King… relies almost entirely on force of one kind or another to accomplish integration…. [I]t seems curiously inconsistent to hear him, time after time, suggest power, or force–the force of labor, of legislation, of federal strength–as the solution….

If you are at all interested in the current state of labor economics research (and really, who isn't?), you should read this interesting interview with Berkeley economist David Card, where he gives a high-level overview of his research since the early 90s. He is a brilliant academic, and he has contributed some ground-breaking work to a large number of the important issues of the past 20 years.

You may have heard the name from the New York Times magazine article about economists' views on immigration (where he lead the "not such a big deal" camp; check out his research), and his name shows up in popular debates about the growing inequality. Some of the interview is a bit technical, but the parts on immigration, returns to education, minimum wage and skill-biased technical change are all worth a minute (or several) of your workday time. Excerpt:

[Card] For example, what does it mean for a firm to have a vacancy? If a firm can readily go to the market and buy a worker, there's no such thing as a vacancy, or at least not a persistent vacancy. During the early 1990s, when Alan and I were working on minimum wages, it was our perception that many low-wage employers had had vacancies for months on end. Actually many fast-food restaurants had policies that said, "Bring in a friend, get him to work for us for a week or two and we'll pay you a $100 bonus." These policies raised the question to us: Why not just increase the wage?

From the perspective of a search paradigm, these policies make sense, but they also mean that each employer has a tiny bit of monopoly power over his or her workforce. As a result, if you raise the minimum wage a little–not a huge amount, but a little–you won't necessarily cause a big employment reduction. In some cases you could get an employment increase…

The No-Politics Friday ™ continues into 2007 while looking back on 2006. Starting a little over a year ago, I moved above a second-run dollar theater whose manager was also my landlord. So for a period I saw nothing but bad second-runs movies while getting free popcorn. Halfway through I moved to Champaign, Il, where my access to quality cinema was practically nonexistent (though I do thank the local art theater for trying its best). However, my roommate just got a television that could only be described as bitchin (and, god bless us everyone, it was an open-box special at Circuit City), which makes it a perfect time to catch up on movies via DVD.

So, as I've seen virtually no good new movies this past year, and am in a perfect position technologically and emotionally to watch a lot of high-definition dvds in my living room, the question goes to you: What were the best movies of 2006? Please answer in the comments, my netflix queue is hungry and wants to be fed.

Now of course I lied; I have seen some good movies in 2006 and would like to share them with you.

Half-Nelson

I'm glad to see Ryan Gosling break big as an actor, something I've been waiting for since he first made waves in the excellent "The Believer" (1999). Watching several talented actors face the brutality of inner-city poverty, addiction and the drug trade makes for a rough movie-going experience. The emotional impact is overwhelming; days later you may still be torn between whether to think "[Gosling is] charismatic, multifaceted, and sincere, and we can't really dismiss him without dismissing some part of ourselves" or "[Half-Nelson is part of] a series of new, grotesquely condescending movies..trumpet whites' hidden resentment about blacks' troubling, irremediable social status…hipster masochism."

Our Brand is Crisis

The best feature about Iraq I saw in 2006 was about the 2002 Bolivian election. In this documentary, the dark twin of The War Room (1993), camera crews follow the consulting team of "Greenberg, Carville, Shrum" as they attempt to win the Bolivian election for their client with the aid of modern political consulting equipment.

I knew of the movie before I saw it, and I was surprised by how drawn I was to Jeremy Rosner, the consultant who forms the center story. There's no bad faith or shameless profiteering on his part; he believes that what he is doing will ultimately aid democracy in South America. It is not hard to see in Bolivia echoes of the current political fallout in Iraq – where exporting democracy seems to be a series of color-coordination, negative aids from crafted third-parties, chi-squared evaluation of a candidate's honesty appeal, focus-group vetted slogans and controlling the terms of the debate, and how none of these things seem to be a match for deep-seated grievances on poverty, joblessness and cultural differences. You can hear in Rosner's post-election interview what we are already hearing from the neocons who thought democracy would triumph by default in Iraq.

Dave Chappelle Block Party

In a year where everything seemed to be falling apart, and where many of the best movies involved the worst of times (see above), seeing great musicians playing a street concert, doing what they love, with everyone having a great time, is a perfect antidote. One of the best concert films I've seen – the dvd has full performances of many of the songs, and they can be worked into a full-length viewing of the movie. Highly recommended.

So that's me. Your suggestions?

Trading at 460; could this be Mr. Horton's 21st century backroom?

A New York Times style article about Google's expanding New York office and the Silicon Valley 'campus' culture:

You could be forgiven for not knowing that a satellite Google campus is growing in downtown Manhattan. There is no Google sign on the building, and it's hard to catch a glimpse of a Googler, as employees call themselves, on the street because the company gives them every reason to stay within its candy-colored walls.

From lava lamps to abacuses to cork coffee tables, the offices may as well be a Montessori school conceived to cater to the needs of future science-project winners…Google has free food, and plenty of it, including a sushi bar and espresso stations. There are private phone booths for personal calls and showers and lockers for anyone running or biking to work.

The campuslike workspace is antithetical to the office culture of most New York businesses. It is a vision of a workplace utopia as conceived by rich, young, single engineers in Silicon Valley, transplanted to Manhattan…

All the free food has created a problem familiar to college freshmen. "Everyone gains 10 or 15 pounds when they start working here," said James Tipon, a member of the sales team, who actively contributes to the four pounds of M&Ms consumed by New York Googlers daily.

Two quick notes. (1) I know it's not the mid-90s anymore, but I hope everyone has read their Microserfs (errors reprinted, 310-311):

At 21, you make this Faustian pact with yourself that your company is allowed to soak up 7 to 10 years of your life but then at 30 you have to abandon the company, or else there's something WRONG with you.

The tech system feeds on bright, asocial kids from dive backgrounds who had pro-education parents. We ARE in a new industry; there aren't really many older poe in it. We are on the vanguard of adoldescence pro…

But just think about the way high tech cultures puropose protract out the adolescence of their employees well into their late 20s, if not their early 30s,. I mean, all those NERF TOUYS and FREE BEVERAGES! And the way tech firms won't even call work "The office:, but instead, "the campus"

2) Do you remember all those social awareness episodes of 80s television shows where the kid's best friend would get molested? I think the classic one was when the bike shop owner Mr. Horton got the better of Dudley from Different Strokes. (why oh why isn't this episode on youtube?)

Remember how in all those episodes the guy would lure in the children with cool toys, neat electronics and lots of candy? Am I the only one who feels a creepy connection between that and the same lures for high-tech programmers? I've been in a few of the new-not-at-all-like-the-old office "campuses" and I've gotten the same vibe you get from seeing Mr. Horton's backroom. It's the sense of "Gee, thanks for all the free nerf stuff and M&Ms, but at what point are you going to try to take pictures of me in the bathtub?"

I don't know what it says about an industry and its employees when the incentives to hire and retain the best and the brightest are indistinguishable from the techniques used to lure in children and sexually assault them.

First Pinochet dropped dead. Now Turkmenbashi has been promoted to Father of All Dead Turkmen. If deaths come threes among similar people, I'd be shitting my pants right now if I were Teodoro Obiang.

When I got to grad school three years ago and met my first Turkman (actually Turkwoman) I was introduced to the wonderful world of Saparmurat Niyazov (a.

k.a. "Turkmenbashi" or "Father of all Turkmen"). I have always had a soft spot in my heart for dictators. Not the cruel, authoritarian military ones – the batshit insane cult-of-personality ones.

And with Kim Jong Il quickly becoming less interesting as contact between him and the west increases, Turkmenbashi may have been the last picking-peanuts-out-of-crap crazy dictator left.
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He was a living answer to the question, "What would happen if we let Ol' Dirty Bastard run a country?"

Aside from the usual kleptocrat dictator fare (erecting golden statues of himself, plastering his face on every flat surface in the country, etc) he has had a productive career of codifying his bizarre eccentricities. To wit:

All hospitals outside of Turkmenistan's capital were closed last year.

He required all public servants to write articles lauding him

He has all the nation's doctors swear an oath to him rather than the Hippocratic Oath

All libraries outside the capital were closed because "average Turkmen don't like to read"

All schools based their teachings on his Ruhnama (a North Korea-style mixture of made-up biography, fantasy history, and awful poetry from the dictator himself)

He ordered the word for "bread" to be changed to the name of his late mother to honor her memory

Yes, it's true that there are plenty of dictators left in this world. Just ask my friends over at Dictator of the Month. But there are very few isolated, deranged, "watch an entire nation dance to a lunatic's whims" types left. Goodbye, Turkmenbashi. You are part of a dying breed.

Of assholes.

I honestly don't know anymore what I enjoy ironically or not. I can say that I have spent untold number of dollars playing this song on internet Jukeboxes while enebriated.
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It tends to put a smile on my face.

Also, at one point in time I purchased a copy of "Foxtrot" because I was informed that Genesis with Peter Gabriel was "good." That was not true.

I have paid my six matinee dollars to see Christopher Guest's newest, For Your Consideration. In the words of Cypress Hill: save your money, fool.

People in Hollywood seem incapable of understanding the simple truth that the rest of us do not find jokes about Hollywood to be funny. This film is a perfect example of why that always fails. The reason is that there is nothing inherently likeable about Hollywood personalities. Nothing. In fact they're inherently dislikeable – most of them quite strongly.

Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman and A Mighty Wind are three of my favorite movies. They're absolutely hilarious, mostly because there's something inherently funny about dopey old folk musicians, people who go to dog shows, and small town hicks.
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Contrast that to the newest film. There is absolutely nothing funny about Hollywood agents, vapid producers, and washed-up actors.

First of all, we've never met any of those people. So if they are funny, it would basically be an inside joke for those making the film. Second, what we do know about those people suggests that they are vapid, soulless, and unspeakably vain.
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Ha ha! That's hilarious. Wait. No it isn't.

This movie is about 4% funny (basically whenever this guy was on screen) and 96% depressing. I cannot imagine what Christopher Guest was thinking. Why did he think we would be amused by actors getting dicked around by a cruel, manipulative system and then ending up suicidal and alcoholic?
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Honestly, if anyone can make it to the end of this film and tell me what's supposed to be funny about Catherine O'Hara I'd like to hear it.

The kindest I can be to this film is to say that it is a joke I didn't get. More accurately, though, I'm not sure there were any jokes at all. What a waste of a hilarious cast.

Remember that article about the Republicans mocking Democrats for living in the "reality-based community" (where they "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality")? I always thought that may have been a bit unfair, since the quote was from an unnamed aide to the President.

But then I see this interview NPR did with Karl "Fixing up my resume" Rove right before the election (transcript here):

SIEGEL: We are in the home stretch though and many would consider you on the optimistic end of realism about…
ROVE: Not that you would exhibit a bias, you just making a comment.
SIEGEL: I'm looking at all the same polls that you are looking at.
ROVE: No, you are not. I'm looking at 68 polls a week for candidates for the US House and US Senate, and Governor and you may be looking at 4-5 public polls a week that talk attitudes nationally.
SIEGEL: I don't want to have you to call races…

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ROVE: I'm looking at all of these Robert and adding them up.

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I add up to a Republican Senate and Republican House. You may end up with a different math but you are entitled to your math and I'm entitled to THE math.
SIEGEL: I don't know if we're entitled to a different math but your…

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ROVE: I said THE math.

Evidently Rove's faith-based mathematics, based on internal secret polls that I'm sure were in no way biased towards those who were paying for it, lost out to the reality-based ones.

Perhaps everyone simply thought that Mike and I would sit on our laurels and wait for the results of today’s election. That was definitely a faulty opinion. We have actively been trading in this free market of election results hoping to maximize our final 2006 midterm election profits.

I am going to give a quick update on what we have done.

• Late last night we had made some money on our gamble that the Democrats would win the senate. So, naturally, we sold them out hard. Took our profits and strengthened our position that Democrats would take at least 20 seats in the house.
• We also noticed some severe pricing irregularities in Rhode Island. The Wall Street Journal was telling us that Chaffee (R) had the momentum in the race. He was also strongly undervalued. As a result, we sold Whitehouse (D) and took a position in favor of Chaffee, it was simply an economic no brainer.
  
  
  Come on Chaffee! You're now our guy!
  

• Changing position on the Rhode Island race freed up some money for another decent investment. We are now in favor of the Democrats taking the house while the Republicans retain the senate. Mathematically it makes sense; the Democrats will almost surely take the house (even fox news agrees). However, to take the senate they would essentially have to win three coin flip elections. Statistically this is a 12.5% chance, whereas the position was valued at 41%.
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  We also used this money to strengthen our position that the Democrats would take at least 25 seats in the house.
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• We thought we had found a good value, so we purchased Democrat Ben Cardin (on Ed's advice) in Maryland.
• Earlier today market fluctuations left us with a wonderful opportunity to back out of or hedge in the House of 30 seats. We moved this back to 35 seats at no cost to us. We are at slightly more risk if the Democrats don't win at least 20 seats, but we do much better if they beat 30.
• Everything else that isn't mentioned is unchanged.
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  Honestly how could we possibly go against Ed's gut in TN?

  
  Capitalism at Work!

Mike and I haven't really posted anything on ginandtacos.com for quite some time. It is not that we don't have anything to say, but…no actually it is mostly because we don't have anything to say.

However, all of that changed this evening when we went to Taco Bell to enjoy several of their new menu entree the "Cheesy Gordita Crunch". For the record, the commericals where the texture of said food item is debated are valid in so much as the texture does tend to change in every example of this Gordita, and often within one sample. More to the point, this fine bit of Mexican food got us thinking about the fact that neither of us intended to vote tomorrow. Its not that we don't care, its just that we both kind of forgot to register.

We felt bad not being involved in the democratic process, so obviously we responded the only way we knew how.

By placing 100 American Dollars into the futures market for 2006 midterm election results via a somewhat shady Irish website. We are at least 85% certain that it was legal.

click the above image to see the full resolution image of Mike and Erik buying a Democratic senate
(technically selling the Republicans keeping control)

It seemed quite obvious to us. Mike is obtaining a Masters degree in Financial Engineering, Ed had already supplied us with a bunch of sure fire "winners" and I- well I decided it was exceptionally amusing and was willing to risk 50 of those American dollars.

So here is how it transpired. After we became 85% certain that this was legal, and there was a good likely hood that we could actually get the money back from the Irish, Mike created a 100 dollar account. It was a good sign when his bank accepted the transfer of money (at least we think it was a good sign). When looking at the site, there are options to buy or sell contracts on pretty much every race, and other various overriding situations (for example: the Democrats taking at least 24.5 seats in the house). If you are buying a contract it means you are purchasing your opinion that the event will happen. If you sell a contract it means you are assuming the event will not happen. The moral is that I could simultaneously buy a contract saying that Rod Blagojevich is going to win the Illinois gubernatorial race and sell contracts saying Judy Baar Topinka will win. Mike and I did not do this. That would have been stupid. I am fairly certain even Judy Baar Topinka's mother knows she is going to lose.
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Hence, we would make absolutely no money. We needed to find positions that were fairly volatile, and where Ed had picked the winner in his previous post.

As much as Mike and I are proud to be Americans and were taking great pride in doing our civic duty, we also wanted to make a lot of money. The only way to do this was to place sums of money "against the market". We believed we had superior information (Ed's previous post on election results). We were taking obvious cues from Ed's past performance:

Proven Past Winner

So here is what we did:

Ed tells us that the Democrats are going to win between 23 and 25 seats in the House.

So we took a strong position on the Democrats winning 19.5 seats, a weak position on Democrats winning 24.
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5 seats. And actually sold contracts on the Democrats winning more than 29.5 seats. Essentially we are putting our money on the Democrats taking between 20-30 seats. That's going to be fun to watch.

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The market is saying (in a dramatic fashion) that the Democrats are going to hang onto New Jersey. Mike and I trust Ed's opposite analysis of the race and sold contracts to people believing Bob Menendez would win – we invested in the democrats losing. The margin was better than simply investing in Tom Kean.

Ed Believes that Lincoln Chaffee's luck has run out. That was a position we could invest the hell out of. Particularly since most people in the market still thought Mr. Chaffee had a bit of luck.

Here is a really interesting one. Ed proclaimed his gut was in favor of Harold Ford Jr. in Tennessee. I have seen many bottles of Robert Burnet's London Dry Gin processed by Ed's gut. Even though the market is only 15% certain this will happen, we invested in Ed's gut much like his gut invested in many Taco Bell Grande Meals throughout the years.

We invested in Jim Webb in Virginia.

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We really did not like the political stylings of George "I hate the negros" Allen, and this race was trading at 50-50. Sounded good to us.

Finally, just so that we felt we were doing right by the Democrats we have picked them to win the senate. I know that this is in direct contrast with Ed's opinion, and our pick of Tom Kean in New Jersey, but what the hell. It wasn't a lot of money.

If you are bored with watching traditional exit poll results tomorrow. Take a quick look at some live updating graphs of Mike and My position in the futures market. Bare in mind our position was purchased around 9pm.

Oh, and despite having never watched it and aren't even entirely certain what the format of the show is, we invested money in Joey Lawrence taking it all in Dancing with the Stars.

Here are updating graphs of our official positions: Capitalism at Work!