Cindy McCain was still on drugs during 2008 campaign

Whoa, apparently Cindy McCain was still using painkillers during the 2008 campaign. Quoteth The Exiled in September 2008:

What is it with Cindy McCain’s eyes? Everyone’s noticed that there’s something odd about them. Even Katie Couric was caught in an unplugged moment omigodding about how weirded-out she was by Cindy McCain’s mysterious, odd-looking eyes.

To anyone who has ever enjoyed the opium poppy plant’s many wonderful by-products–Vicodin, Percocet, heroin, morphine, methadone, Codeine cough syrup, or just plain opium to name a few–Cindy McCain’s “weird blue eyes” are about as much of a dead giveaway about her real condition as, say, the folds in Trig Palin’s down-turned eyes are a giveaway about his Down Syndrome.

The clue to solving this mystery lies in Cindy McCain’s pupils, which always, under any light and in every photo, have a “pin-pointed” quality to them. Her tiny pin-point pupils make her eyes seem so freakishly pale and vampiric–which sorta remind one of the eyes that heroin-bard Lou Reed crooned over in his smack-ballad “Pale Blue Eyes.”

Subsidized corn = subsidized fast food

Wired has a front-page article that states something that I've long suspected: one of the main reasons fast food is so cheap is because of subsidized corn:

Chemical analysis from restaurants across the United States shows that nearly every cow or chicken used in fast food is raised on a diet of corn, prompting fresh criticism of the government's role in subsidizing poor eating habits. [...]

Corn is central to agriculture in the United States, where it is grown in greater volumes and receives more government subsidies than any other crop. Between 1995 and 2006 corn growers received $56 billion in federal subsidies, and the annual figure may soon hit $10 billion.

In addition to encouraging unhealthy fast food consumption beyond the free market equilibrium, cheap corn also contributes to fertilizer and antibiotic use, as well as food poisoning:

But in recent years, environmentalists have branded corn as an icon of unsustainable agriculture. It requires large amounts of fertilizer and pesticides, both of which require large amounts of fossil fuel to manufacture.

Most of the resulting corn is fed to livestock who didn't evolve to subsist entirely on corn. In cattle, eating corn increases flatulence emissions of methane — a potent greenhouse gas — and creates an intestinal environment rich in e. coli, a common cause of food poisoning. That necessitates mixing cow feed with antibiotics, in turn producing antibiotic-resistant disease strains.

Though Obama has paid lip service to reform, he still supported the most recent farm bill. His only misgivings about the bill, at least during the campaign season, came in the form of anti-agribusiness populism, though he never acknowledged that it's the fundamental distortionary effects of the farm bill that are the problem. McCain, for all his economic ignorance, agreed with the majority of economists in opposing the farm bill, though he didn't seem to care enough to show up to vote on it this time around (though neither did any of the other presidential candidates).

Unfortunately, the farm bill is only seriously renegotiated every five years, and the most recent one just passed a few months ago. So even if President Obama would have been more intelligent and sincere on agricultural policy than wannabe President Obama, it's really too late now to matter.

Net neutrality and Wired's wishy-washy libertarianism

By most measures, the Internet is one of the most libertarian spheres of the economy. This is qualified by saying that this only applies to the non-wireless forms*, but nevertheless, internet access and content delivery are relatively competitive and free markets. Net neutrality advocates, however, are looking to change this, by forcing ISPs (this mostly applies to last-mile providers) to not discriminate with regards to bits – that is, allow all content through, and do not charge different prices for different content.

Though exaggerated, the fears of ISPs using non-neutral practices to throttle traffic are not unfounded – some ISPs have been filtering BitTorrent traffic in some way or another). But BitTorrent users and providers don't exactly have much clout, and so it cannot be that they are the only force behind the movement which has won the support of the soon-to-be president Obama. Valleywag believes that that huge ad company that also happens to have a search engine (Google) is in favor of the legislation because they believe that ISP's will eventually try to bite into its ad revenues by demanding more to move Google's bits around the Internet:

It's all about net neutrality. What's "net neutrality"? As far as we can tell, it's a bunch of rhetoric that amounts to regulations that affirm Google's God-given right to avoid giving Internet service providers a cut of advertising revenues. An Obama presidency would mean Google can save money on lobbying fees. Well, times are tough, and every penny counts. It's good to know that even the saintly Vint Cerf votes on pocketbook issues. He's the father of the Internet, and he approved this message.

What's interesting about net neutrality, though, is that it's incredibly popular among the internet literati, despite its anti-libertarian core. Wired magazine, which the cloud at Wikipedia says adheres to "strong libertarian principles," is unabashedly in favor of net neutrality legislation. In their Obama vs. McCain scorecard they award McCain a D for opposing net neutrality, and give Obama an A for supporting it. Interestingly enough, on their scorecard of five issues, they reward the libertarian position with good grades only twice (in the spectrum and H1B visas sections), while awarding good grades for statist positions on three other issues (broadband [read: broadband regulation/subsidization], investment in green tech, and net neutrality). They left out a bit one – intellectual property (where Wired favors of the libertarian approach) – though they slightly redeemed themselves by mentioning it a few days later.

When you think about it, it's kind of pathetic that Wired is supposedly the standard-bearer for techno-libertarians, when its editorial opinions on the hottest issues in technology of the day are split 50-50 between libertarian and statist. As an alternative for political ideas (Wired, despite its politics, is still an excellent source of tech/science news and analysis), may I suggest the inspiration for this post – the Technology Liberation Front blog, which bills itself as a "tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology."

*The electromagnetic spectrum, over which all wireless communication travels, can handle a lot, but for about a century the federal government has strictly controlled its use, creating spectacular inefficiencies and blocking out huge majorities of the spectrum to open uses à la wi-fi.

The effects of a war in Iran

From Radio Free Europe, Robert Coalson writes about the incentives for Russia regarding sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program. He concludes that the threat of Iran to Russia is minimal, but notices a whole lot of incentives for Russia in a nuclear armed Iran, especially if it leads to war:

And that remote danger is made even more unlikely by repeated U.S. and Israeli declarations that a nuclear-armed Iran is "unacceptable." The refusal of the United States to pull the military option off the table means the worst-case scenario for Moscow, in the event talks fail, is not a mushroom cloud over Kuban but seeing Washington become bogged down in yet another military involvement with the inevitable further sapping of its strength and prestige. The facts that oil prices would also likely skyrocket under such a scenario and that Moscow would emerge as a "reliable energy partner" are probably also not causing Kremlin strategists to lose any sleep.

Unless Russia attempts to heat up the situation before the election, I think that the chances for war probably depend on who wins. If McCain wins, the Russians will believe (probably correctly) that McCain will rush into a war in Iran, and they will try to provoke him. If Obama wins, there's probably less of a chance that they'll try something like that, though I'm not sure that I think the chance is that much lower.

The greed levels here are through the roof!

This quote about the current financial crisis has been flying around the econblogosphere, but it's so good that I feel the need to repeat it:

On greed, let me repeat: If unusually many airplanes crash during a given week, do you blame gravity? No. Greed, like gravity, is a constant. It can’t explain why the number of crashes is higher than usual. And let me add: This isn’t a morality play. What we’re seeing are the consequences of monetary-policy distortions of interest rates and regulatory distortions of incentives, amplified in some degree by private imprudence, not the consequences of blackheartedness.

Something very good to keep in mind when you hear John McCain blather about how greedy suits made bad investment decisions. Funny how that happens – everyone all of the sudden just gets greedier than they were before! Maybe if those whippersnappers had gone through McCain's national service plan they wouldn't be so goldern greedy!

(Lest you think McCain is the only mindless jabberer, keep in mind that Obama is also a proponent of the sudden-outbreak-of-greed theory of finance, and maybe he thinks his national service program would keep the third deadly sin in check.)

The politics of unflattering photos

Apparently a small scandal is brewing over at the Atlantic over a photoshoot of John McCain, which some say was deliberately unflattering. The picture itself isn't that bad, but it's a little unflattering – the really bad pictures weren't printed on the cover, but you can see them on the link. But my question is: Doesn't this happen all the time? I've noticed quite a few times pictures in the NYT that were obviously chosen for their negative portrayal of somebody in the case of an article that has bad things to say about the person. It wasn't as deliberate as this – strobe lights from the bottom making him look like a Grey alien – but it seemed obvious that the photo editor chose an unflattering picture on purpose. I'll try to remember in the future to post a few of them as they come up.

Mayor Palin vs. Gov. Palin

Though Gov. Palin and Sen. McCain claim to be tough opponents of pork, it seems that Mayor Palin had a much different take on the issue. During her six years as mayor of that town of 6,700 souls, Palin raked in $27 million in federal (and federal alone!) earmarks. That includes $15 million for a rail project, which would seem to go against McCain's anti-Amtrak subsidy ethos.

According to her spokeswoman, Palin's turn from bacon-lover to a pork-buster came in 2003:

Maria Comella, Palin's campaign spokeswoman, said Palin sought the Wasilla earmarks because she was "working in the best interests of Alaska, working within the confines of the current system."

Palin became a staunch reform advocate after her 2003 appointment to the state's Oil and Gas Commission. She accused another commissioner – Alaska Republican Party Chairman Randy Ruedrich – of raising campaign contributions from industries he was regulating. "She realized that the environment around her was no longer what it once was, and elected officials were abusing their power," Comella said.

Ah, yes! Ms. Comella must have been recalling those good ol' days back between 1996 and 2003, back when politicians were honest and righteous, and nary a piece of legislative pork did pass.

A note about pork: it's basically nothing. One percent of the federal budget. So when McCain says he's gonna balance the budget by trimming the fat from it, he's lying.

Romney's VP stock skyrockets

To continue with the other day's topic of prediction markets and what they have to say about the veepstakes, Mitt Romney's stock just recently shot up to way over 50 cents on the dollar. Right before Obama's announcement, Romney was trading on Intrade at about 25. At the moment, the last trade was at 62.2. Considering there's nothing in the news about Romney to propel his stock, it must have been something about Obama's pick that made the markets all of the sudden go crazy over Romney.

"Locked in an almost permanent attitude of anxiety" vs. "[not] genuine" and "emotionless"

The Guardian has a hilarious article about the facial expressions of the candidates for US president. Obama's face is apparently "locked in an almost permanent attitude of anxiety," but the things they have to say about McCain's are downright creepy:

The verdict on McCain was harsh. The acoustic analysis noted that the Republican's voice was pitched slightly high, and that it remained flat, or emotionless, even while he was talking about sad subjects.

McCain's range of facial expression was just as unvaried. "McCain's facial repertory is very poor," the analysis said. "His smile is often not fully developed, ie his cheek-raising muscles do not participate enough in the expression of positive affect [to be perceived as genuine]."

McBrien put it in terms that were even more stark. "He has a poker face," he said. The problem with the lack of expression, according to McBrien, is that it makes it difficult for an audience to trust the speaker. [...]

The Vox researchers also picked up on one of McCain's tics. The candidate, who made a campaign slogan of his plainspeaking in the Straight Talk Express, has a habit of completely shutting his eyes and slightly smiling immediately before coming out with one of his signature sarcastic comments.

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.

Republicrats

Just to hammer home the incredibly similarity of America's only two parties*, the Tax Policy Center lays out the costs of of both presidential candidates plans for America:

TPC estimates that in 2013, Obama would collect revenues of 18.2 percent of GDP. McCain would bring in about 17.8 percent. Spending that year would be about 19.5 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office, assuming the Iraq war will be winding down.

That's a difference of 0.4 percentage points in GDP. And it's important to measure spending and not revenues, because any deficit spending will result in inflation, which acts as a only vaguely-recognized tax on American citizens, but also anyone else who owns dollar bills.

*Sorry, third parties, but America's voting system is stacked impossibly against you. If another party enters the scene, it won't be as a third party, but as a future member of the two-party system, like it always has been.

Millionaire corn farmers of the world, unite!

For all the farmer couples out there earning earning $2 million a year, never fear: you're still getting your subsidies! In case there was any doubt, the latest incarnation of the farm bill passed the Senate with flying colors (only fifteen senators had the common sense to vote against it). Though Bush promised to veto the bill (a rare moment of sanity), the point is moot, given that the bill passed both the House and Senate with enough votes to override a veto.

And how do the presidential candidates compare on this issue? The SF Gate has no love for Obama on the issue:

Democratic presidential contender Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, who has based his campaign on a promise to end special-interest politics in Washington, issued a statement praising the farm bill, which is laden with special-interest subsidies. Obama said the bill will "provide America's hard-working farmers and ranchers with more support and more predictability."

The incredibly irrelevant Hilary Clinton had the gall to chide McCain for his opposition to the bill. Though McCain is admittedly bad on economics, he took the high road and voted against this bill (from Time: "For now, we need to put an end to flawed government policies that distort the markets, artificially raise prices for consumers, and pit producers against consumers. We’ve once again failed farmers in that regard, which is why I oppose this bill.").

In addition to the absurd economic distortions and general government waste in the bill, the soon-to-be law is guaranteed to piss off the world and hamper the Doha round of trade liberalization.

Obama backpedals on ethanol

Barack Obama, this campaign season's über-champion of ethanol subsidies, is starting to retreat from his position:

With the world teetering on the edge of a full-blown food crisis, it may be time to cut back on biofuel, said Barack Obama yesterday.

In an interview on NBC's Meet the Press, the Democratic presidential candidate said "there's no doubt that biofuels may be contributing" to falling food supplies and rising prices.

Ya think!? This being politics, I know it's too much to ask, but it would be nice to hear an apology from Obama for almost single-handidly pushing ethanol to the forefront of the presidential campaign, inspiring a chorus of me-toos from Camp Hillary (though McCain's generally held the high ground, he too occasionally becomes intoxicated on the Iowa spirits).

Edit: Obama's been pretty quiet about the subject of ethanol subsidies since his almost mea culpa, but the NYT didn't give his change of heart any play in an A1 article it ran about his stance on ethanol in June 2008.

Why politicians wouldn't want to talk about science

The headline on wired.com today is an article about Clinton, Obama, and McCain spurning a debate that was supposed to be about science. You'd think that would be a warm place for Democrats: there is no fundamentalist Christian base out there asking them to refute basic tenants of modern science, and yet neither of them wanted to show up at the event. It's pretty telling, though, of electoral strategies: debating science is a very technical topic, and actually requires expertise. Which isn't a bad thing – if a president is going to be making decisions that are ultimately rooted in science, they ought to know something about it. But people don't campaign on facts, they campaign generalities. What's Obama going to say when someone confronts him about the environmental and humanitarian costs of ethanol subsidies? Or when McCain is questioned about his statement that marijuana has no unique medicinal value? Or when any of the candidates are pressed on how likely any of their plans are to actually address America's contribution to general environmental degradation? So much of electioneering is based on trying to get people to not pay attention to numbers and facts, so it doesn't seem to be in anyone's advantage to embarrass themselves when they have to concede that they really don't know much about science at all.

Crashing the party in London

It looks like the Chinese government is taking the heat in London. The Communist Party's big PR bungle (thinking the Olympics would impress the world) is mounting. It's a good sign for those who hope that China's big coming is ruined (I count myself proudly among them), because there are still four months until the start of the Olympics, and the world is simmering with protectionist disconnect. The Democratic primaries and ensuing presidential race don't help matters, as Clinton and Obama are already falling over themselves to suck up to the ghost of John Edwards. Given McCain's absent understanding of economics, I'd be surprised if he and Obama (or, in the case of an inconveniently-timed Black Panthers endorsement, Clinton) don't start arguing over who can protect American jobs as well as they do in Gaza.

John McCain's running mate

John McCain is 71. He was tortured (right?) when he was younger, and he's led a pretty stressful life. If he's president, it'll be more stressful. Given that the vice presidency is a pretty weak position, it's usually sought after for political ambition -- vice presidents get a leg up when it comes to coverage and "buzz" that drives the nominating process for the next election. However, when you're John McCain's vice president, there's the added advantage of a higher probability of death, meaning you've got a higher chance of becoming the real president. Unless it's obvious from the beginning that Obama is going to trounce McCain.