Joe Biden says the US won't try to stop secession in Iraq?

Quoteth the New York Times:

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. told Iraqi leaders on Friday that he and President Obama were committed to helping them resolve their political differences, but he warned that the United States would be unlikely to remain engaged in Iraq if the country reverted to sectarian violence, American officials said.

First of all, I doubt this is true. Even if the American public would not tolerate another over internvetion in the case of possible secession, I have no doubt that the Obama administration would pick sides and try to throw money and guns at whoever is promising to keep Iraq whole.

But besides that – what kind of message does Joe Biden think he's sending, exactly? I assume he intended it towards Malaki and his parochial interests, but it sounds like something that would please the Sunnis and Kurds (and even Malaki's rivals among the Shiites, like Ayad Alawai).

The reason I think that Joe Biden's promise of nonintervention is hollow is that the secession of the Kurds – who would likely be the first to split if the US declared a hands-off approach – would greatly offend US ally Turkey, which is doing everything it can to keep hold on to its own restive Kurdish region. The US would lose a rare friend in the Middle East, and Europe might lose the opportunity to break Russia's monopoly on transiting natural gas from the Caspian Sea with the Nabucco pipeline (though admittedly the Russians have already all but killed the deal).

I imagine that the inspiration for Joe Biden's remarks are his own personal convictions – back in 2006, when he was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, his play for Iraq was to split it up into three autonomous regions loosely bound into one nation. That was probably the most intelligent thing I'd ever heard Biden say, though I wish he'd gone further and called for three totally independent states, Turkey be damned.

Andrew Cuomo pissed that Caroline Kennedy stole his Senate seat

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is apparently pretty pissed that Caroline Kennedy has emerged as a frontrunner to fill Hillary Clinton's Senate seat, since he's evidently been eyeing a Senate seat for a while. While he obviously has more experience than Caroline Kennedy, Andrew Cuomo's pedigree is nothing to laugh at: he's the son of a former New York governor, and up until his 2003 divorce from one of RFK's eleven children, he was Caroline Kennedy's nephew-in-law.

And as much as I hate aristocracy, I can't say that I feel bad for Cuomo – he had perhaps the single largest individual role in the subprime collapse in his capacity as Clinton's HUD secretary from 1997 till 2001, leaving aside maybe Alan Greenspan.

Something interesting also to note is that the three biggest winning personalities this electoral season (all senators, I might add) – Obama, Biden, and Clinton – have all had their former senate states shrouded in mystery and intrigue. Obama's seat led to the undoing of Illinois Governor Blagojevich, and Clinton's new job as Secretary of State led to Caroline Kennedy's interest in the newly-vacated seat and the ensuing uproar. Joe Biden's son Beau (current Attorney General of Delaware), who has been rumored as a possible replacement for Joe Biden's senate seat, has taken the (sort of) high road and stayed out of the running for the unelected seat, and instead might run in an actual election in 2010 – made easier by the fact that the person appointed to Joe Biden's old seat, Ted Kaufman, was Joe Biden's former chief-of-staff and has stated that he doesn't intend to run to keep the seat in 2010.

Biden on drugs

In continuing with our "on Biden" series, today we look at Joe Biden's views on drugs. All are from ontheissues.org except where otherwise linked. First, the good:

• Supported eliminating the disparity in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine.
• Supports the idea of drug courts and focus on treatment, and theoretically opposes increased penalties for drug crimes.
• Recognizes the fact that America's gun problem is largely a drug problem (though he doesn't recognize that it's a drug law problem, not a drug problem).

And the ugly:

• Coined the term "drug czar" while championing the new office.
• Against lowering the drinking age from 21.
• Is proud of having enacted legislation that increases penalties for those caught dealing drugs within 1000 feet from a school.
• Championed the RAVE Act and its identical eventually-passed boringly-named version, which he snuck through without debate. This anti-ecstasy law (broad enough to be used to persecute NORML) was perhaps spurred by the infamous "holes in the brain" article which alleged that MDMA was highly neurotoxic – i.e., really bad. Only, it turns out the research was bad and the authors had to retract it. Oddly enough, I don't remember Joe Biden ever reconsidering his vote in light of the evidence. Funny how that works.

They follow the standard Democrat line – support specific marginal changes to the way we process criminals, emphasize the treatment part, but leave the bigger picture unchanged.

Biden on intellectual property and technology

The more I learn about Joe Biden, the more I see what a stereotypical politician he is. CNET has a piece on Biden's voting record, in which we find out that Biden's been a reliable lackey of the music industry lobbyists. He's urged the Justice Department itself to go after file sharers (as opposed to the music industry footing the court costs), supported legislation making life difficult for internet and satellite radio broadcasters, and was one of four senators invited by the RIAA to its "champagne reception in celebration of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act." In fact, we also learn that Biden was a key supporter of legislation that inspired the creation of the encryption software PGP, whose creator said that it was his legislation "that led me to publish PGP electronically for free that year." On P2P networks he has also shown himself to be a reliable shill, having held hearings in the Senate on the issue and inviting "the Justice Department, RIAA, MPAA, and Microsoft to speak," but not a single ISP or P2P firm.

On net neutrality he's a little more sane (though I don't for a second think the decision was made on its merits – more likely he was just lobbied by the right people), opting not to prohibit ISPs from discriminating between different types of data. Though rather than opposing the idea because of his faith in consumers to pick ISPs with policies that they demand, he is opposing the measure on the grounds that the threat of legislation is enough to keep companies from picking through consumers' content. The correct response to the question would be to point out that the only company to try to throttle content is Comcast, and that they've experienced a huge backlash and have since stopped, and there are no companies that have chosen to emulate Comcast.

Both of these positions are in opposition to Obama's. Obama has hinted that he he's in favor of copyright reform in favor of lessened IP rights for copyright holders, and he's also come out in favor of mandatory net neutrality legislation.

What do the prediction markets know that pollsters don't?

Sorry to bring up something as profane and childish as electoral politics here (normally I try to hold myself above the usual CNN Airport Network fare), but I've noticed that despite the fact that the polls are showing Obama and McCain in a statistical dead heat, the prediction markets are still betting on Obama by a fairly wide margin. National polls show Obama's lead over McCain narrowing to between 2 and 5 percentage points, but contracts that pay $1.00 if Obama wins are going for about $0.60 on Intrade. It's possible that the polls show the individual state contests playing out so that Obama is way over McCain in the electoral college vote, but I doubt it – seems more likely that the bettors think they know better than the pollsters. And though the polls were taken before McCain's statement about not knowing how many houses he owns, the prediction markets have been at 60% for Obama for a while now. And before you blame immature and small markets for the discrepancy, note that betting volumes are much higher than they were in 2004.

And for those interested in what the markets have to say about Obama's vice presidential pick, Joe Biden's contract is trading at 41.4, Evan Bayh's at 24.2, Tim Kaine's at 12.0, Wesley Clark's at 8.7, and Senator Clinton's at a lowly 12.0. On the Republican side, Pawlenty and Romney are tied at about 25 each.