Things which are surprising but should not be

In the wake of Al Franken at long last being confirmed as a Senator, it's important to remind your Republican colleagues blowing on about liberal celebrities in politics that their very own Most High and Exalted Saint Ronnie Raygun himself came to public prominence first as...an actor.

Unless they believe Saint Ronnie was really a cowboy, which I admit is possible.

Oh, and some pop star died

There's been a military coup in Honduras (is there any other kind?). Bernard Chazelle analyzes the New York Times' coverage.

From the byline alone, you know this is going to be good: Elizabeth Malkin, in Mexico City, with reporting by Simon Romero from Caracas. Which makes perfect sense since, as we all know, Mexico City and Caracas are the two major cities in Honduras. (Too bad they had no reporter in Bangkok. I hope the Pulitzer committee doesn't notice.)

The driving point behind the coup appears to have been a non-binding straw poll set for Sunday gauging public support for convening a new constitutional convention. Some people have itchy trigger fingers.

MOAR

...apparently too itchy, as the State Department has issued a condemnation. Somebody somewhere got their wires crossed in this deal.

The loathing of Fehr

Via Lemieux, I'm also behind this Joe Sheehan piece on the retiring Donald Fehr.

There are jobs that demand of the person filling them that they be able to forgo popularity to do them well. No one likes public defenders. No one likes tax auditors. And no one likes the men who have chosen to represent baseball players as if they were a group of laborers in an industry long dominated by a paternalistic management and covered by an unquestioning press largely bought and paid for by the same.

Don Fehr took on this task and did it very well for a quarter-century. He did it as his peers in the NFL, NBA, and NHL all lost major labor battles and saw their unions weakened, or in the NFL's case completely broken and turned into a house union. The relative popularity of Fehr and his NFL counterpart, the late Gene Upshaw, ran in inverse proportion to how good each man was at his job of representing the athletes in their charge. Since 1983, when Fehr took over following the brief, unlamented stint of Ken Moffatt, the MLBPA has established itself as the most powerful players' association in sports, and one of the few successful unions in American labor. They won three grievances over collusion at a time when free agency was still in relative infancy. They beat management in the courts when necessary. Under Fehr's watch, we're into the longest stretch of labor peace since the players were serfs.

There's a worthwhile question over whether a professional athletes' union should be considered a part of "labor." The answer, I think, is a qualified yes. There's no question pro athletes make exponentially more than their value to society, and management has used this to great effect in turning public opinion in its favor while no one takes a second glance at what the owners are making. However, one can see from the reaction to Fehr's career that the Divine Right of Bosses is still in effect regardless of how much money labor's piece of the pie represents.

Labor should look to the MLBPA as an example of what's attainable rather than holding it in contempt. Of course, this is precisely the reason the press is so intent on stamping out the union's legacy and fostering resentment. The contrast with the beatification of Upshaw, who oversaw the complete submission of the NFLPA to the league, is a good one; the media's ideal portrait of a Good Union Boss as opposed to a Bad One. It shouldn't be overestimated how much the relative power of labor has influenced the bourgeouis media's love affair with pro football.

Mean Green

I think Jonathon Schwarz explains well why I remain somewhat unable to get too excited about the ongoing demonstrations in Iran even though I'm naturally sympathetic.

2. I'm amused by all the attention this is getting from some of the best U.S. liberal bluggers, such as Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings. Even when they're at their best, American liberals essentially follow in lockstep the agenda of the governing classes. Would they care anywhere near as much if Iran weren't an Official Enemy? Obviously not. Thus even when "opposing" William Kristol, they're ratifying the right's power by giving them the ability to decide what gets talked about.

Quite. There are any number of rigged elections going on around the world at any given time; it's blindingly obvious that the only reason this one is getting the celebrity treatment from the American media is that the Iranian regime is not a US client state. I can hardly remember a similar reaction to the street demonstrations after the 2006 elections in Mexico. In fact, those protesters were dismissed the same way our right-wing Serious media handles demonstrators in the United States; i.e. as unemployed leeches who should get a real job and let the ruling class worry about ruling. Now suddenly conservatives are holding "tea parties" and cheering on foreign demonstrators as gallant and courageous. The world is turned inside out.

Maybe it's because there aren't any giant paper-mache heads. Perhaps that does it.

Men are desperate

If someone can explain the social forces behind "pay-per-view" events, please let me know.

It can't be a coincidence that the only sporting (or "sports entertainment") events that are at least modestly successful as pay-per-view franchises involve men beating the tar out of each other.

Really, what sporting event would you pay $50 to see on television? The 2008 Wimbledon final? Not even that would make the cut for me.

But apparently men will dole out any amount of cash to see blood or sex.

Though there are boxing fans who will say that moving all major fights to pay-per-view, while perhaps a financial windfall for the sport's benefactors, has been one of the many reasons for the decline in popular interest.

Persian snooker

Can anyone figure out what happened in the Iranian presidential election between conservative favorite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and would-be reformist Mir-Hossain Mousavi.

In these presidential elections, Iranians have a 'candidate of change' (yes, literally the same slogan) in the person of Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Now, this is very interesting, since Mir-Hossein Mousavi, currently a member of the 'reformist' camp, was the prime minister (when the post existed) from 1981 to 1989. Back then he was a member of the 'left wing' due to his advocacy for a state-run economy. Nowadays, he has changed indeed and supports all manner of privatization (as do all 'reformers').

Mousavi's premiership coincided with the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), during which his economic management carried the country through very rough times. Among other innovations, he introduced the coupon system that made sure everybody received the minimum ration of needed nutrients during those hard times.

Mossavi has been widely touted in the Western media, which views Iranian politics--like American politics--solely through the lens of liberalizing the socially-repressive theocracy, ignoring the fact that poor people tend to be concerned initially with not starving, with clothing options coming second. Most were led to believe that Mossavi would be ride in easily in another color-coded revolution (this one green). So they were stunned when voting results claimed to show Ahmadinejad winning in a landslide.

Immediately, many began accusing Ahmadinejad of colluding with the theocratic clerics to either steal the election or launch a pre-emptive coup (covered well here). While this seems possible, if not likely, one shouldn't discount the third possibility; that the Big A actually won the election. The Western press appears to have grossly overestimated Mousavi's support because it rarely leaves the upper-crust bubble in Tehran.

Perhaps from the start Mousavi was destined to fail as he hoped to combine the articulate energies of the liberal upper class with the business interests of the bazaar merchants. The Facebook campaigns and text-messaging were perfectly irrelevant for the rural and working classes who struggle to make a day's ends meet, much less have the time to review the week's blogs in an internet cafe. Although Mousavi tried to appeal to such classes by addressing the problems of inflation and poverty, they voted otherwise.

As if on cue, here's a New Yorker correspondent claiming to know the electon was stolen because everyone she knows with Blackberries in the Grand Hyatt ballroom voted for Mousavi.

Of course, Iran's quasi-democracy should be viewed with some skepticism, given that potential candidates have to be pre-approved by the clerical administration before they are allowed to participate. Americans should find this system very familiar, although we mostly prefer our gatekeepers to be business leaders rather than clerics.

It's all very difficult to unravel, which doesn't mean that the American media won't find a way to strip all the nuance away when it wakes up tomorrow morning. I expect a simplistic outporing of finger-wagging, condemnation, and condescention toward anyone who wonders about the "done stole it!" narrative. Needless to say it'll be boom times for the "bomb bomb Iran" chorus line, who'll eat this shit like candy. Some were even forthrightly rooting for The Big A to win, because a moderate could lull us into forgetting his Brown Muslimness.

Really, I'm skeptical here because of my unwritten rule of rigging elections: If you're going to steal it with any concern for subtlety, you have to produce a result that people could believe. Ahmadinejad giving himself 67 percent of an election he was expected to lose doesn't make sense unless a)he's ragingly obtuse (possible) or b)that's roughly what he got.

The times, they are unchanging

June 7 [1890] the Farmers Mutual Benefit Association and The Knights of Labor held a joint convention at Washington Daviess county and nominated a full county ticket The candidates were about equally divided between Democrats and Republicans. At Fort Wayne on September 11 the Farmers Alliance and various labor organizations decided to put forth an independent county ticket The Democrats were said to be making efforts to prevent this action.

"The People's Party in Inidana," Indiana Magazine of History December 1918.

About that...

Obama's "address to the Muslim world" last week contained this bit of surprising Unseriousness.

"In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government," Obama said in a keynote speech to the Muslim world in Cairo.

It was the first time a serving US president had publicly admitted American involvement in the coup.

The US Central Intelligence Agency, with British backing, masterminded the coup after Mossadegh nationalised the oil industry, run until then by the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

For many Iranians, the coup demonstrated duplicity by the United States, which presented itself as a defender of freedom but did not hesitate to use underhand methods to get rid of a democratically elected government to suit its own economic and strategic interests.

Washington went on to become the major backer of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was overthrown in the Islamic revolution of 1979.

Yes but WHY DO THEY HATE AMERICA BLARGITY BLARGH!!!!!

Things you didn't know were in the Bible, part I

You have wearied the LORD with your words.
"How have we wearied him?" you ask.
By saying, "All who do evil are good in the eyes of the LORD, and he is pleased with them" or "Where is the God of justice?"

See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come," says the LORD Almighty. But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner's fire or a launderer's soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD, as in days gone by, as in former years.

"So I will come near to you for judgment. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice, but do not fear me," says the LORD Almighty.

-Malachi 2-3

Damned lies and statistics

Approximate number of German divisions on the Eastern Front in June 1941: 190

Number of Soviet military deaths during the Eastern Front: Roughly 10 million

Total number of deaths, civilian and otherwise, caused by the Eastern Front: Roughly 30 million

Relation to the total number of deaths worldwide in World War II: Over one-third

Rank among all historical world conflicts of the Eastern Front if considered by itself: First

Relation, in multiples, of the size of the Eastern Front to the Western Front which began June 6, 1944: Four

Remember kids, if it t'weren't for 'Murica, you, not to mention everyone in Europe, would be speaking German today!

Four minutes of heaven

Presented in glorious grainy mono.

In the year 2000

This seems as good an explanation as any for the extreme over-representation of libertarians in geekdom.

It goes like this: nerds spend their formative years being turned into surly loners by the taunts and abuse of their intellectual inferiors. Since they've essentially been rejected by society, they reject society right back, embracing a political philosophy which raises "the individual" (read: them) above all else. Nobody ever cared about them, after all, so why should they care about anyone else? The nerd may grow beyond this feeling in adulthood, but the sense of being outside society is likely to linger.

Then, once these newly minted teenage libertarians get older and discover the wonderful world of Technology, they start believing that the path to Utopia will come not from humanity learning to live together but through a genius scientist who will invent the cyborg body allowing us to live forever. Therefore, it's imperative that this potential genius not be encumbered by concerns about who's starving where.

You may wonder why libertarianism, which appears to be so prevalent on the internet, has been such a flameout in the real world. Partially, it is a function of this strange phenomenon. I mean, did you ever meet a Ron Paul voter in the flesh? Primarily, though, it's that many people who call themselves "libertarians" are Republicans who just want lower taxes and are a little embarrassed to be associated with social conservatives. Oh, and they might like pot to be legal. Not that anyone in their income bracket is ever getting busted.