I do think Godwin's rule needs to be amended somewhat in the age of Cheney and Bush.

Later that same day, Chester Scoville details a new right-wing science fiction novel and comments that

I'm thinking it's time to retire Godwin's Law, or at least put limits on it.

This sort of apparent synchronicity seems to happen a fair amount in the blogworld, but, of course, we're all basically swimming in the same ocean, or, in fact, in the same bay of the ocean.


But on to more important considerations, such as: if we retire Godwin's Law, what would we replace it with? My candidate is Fudd's First Law of Opposition:

If you push something hard enough, it will fall over.

[See also Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law.]

It's safer than howling at the moon because you can't hit me with a shoe.

Yessir.

an economic populist, that will stand up for the middle class, that doesn't just want to increase the minimum wage but somebody that will work to put the government on the side of working families. And that means different trade policy, standing up to the drug industry, taking on the oil industry. It means showing that the Democratic Party is a progressive, populist party.

In other words, progressive populism.

Where have I heard that before? (Or here or here or here or here.)

[via Drum via Sirota]

1. John Adams - ran 1789 and 1792, elected 1796


2. Thomas Jefferson - ran 1796, elected 1800


3. John Quincy Adams - ran 1820, elected 1824


4. Andrew Jackson - ran 1824, elected 1828


5. William Henry Harrison - ran 1836, elected 1840


6. Grover Cleveland - ran 1888, elected 1892


7. Richard Nixon - ran 1960, elected 1968

You'll note that besides being the only contemporary candidate to pull this off, Nixon's the only one to do it without being winning in an election immediately following one he lost in.

When I'm a little less bleary-eyed, I'll try to compile a list of all the candidates who ran in more than one Presidential election. In the meantime, take a look at this list of Presidential rankings. The consensus seems to be that Warren G. Harding was our worst president, followed by James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce and Andrew Johnson. George W. Bush is currently listed at #22 (just below Clinton at #21) but there's no way that position's gonna hold -- he's got nowhere to go but down. (Whereas in the middle of the pack is probably the right place for Bill.)

P.S. I'm inclined to think Gore shouldn't run, that it would be too hard for him to win. I don't have anything much against him, except that he ran a lousy campaign and he's generally a weak candidate, despite his current resurgence. We should remember that the election was Gore's to win, and that Bush was only able to steal it because Gore allowed it to get close enough to steal. That doesn't exactly speak to Gore as being a great candidate to hang our hopes on.

Update: In comments, Roger Keeling has a good rebuttal:

And as for Gore: first, he WON the 2000 election. He WON. Okay? And unlike quite a few folks out there, Gore has repeatedly demonstrated an ability to learn from mistakes. He may be "lackluster" as a campaigner -- I know, I know, a violation of your belief that we should "cast" our candidates -- but I suspect he'd run a vastly better race next time out. Especially since he could count on something that didn't exist last time: a well-entrenched infrastructure of bloggers and their readers, and alternative media, that now understand the urgency of IMMEDIATE response to every burp that comes from the Mighty Rightwing Wurlitzer. That was utterly missing in the 1990s, but has emerged now and -- hopefully -- will continue to find ways to counter the rightwing hate machine out there.

In TODAY'S environment, I think Gore would have an excellent chance of winning again ... and this time, by a margin big enough to drown out any rightwing electoral fraud. (Not to mention that if the new Democratic Congress does what it should, there will be some solid election reforms in place by the 2008 elections anyhow).

I truthfully worry that, with Al out of the equation, Democratic ranks are a bit thin for a run on the White House next time. We have a slew of great people coming up through the trenches, now, thanks to Dean's 50-state strategy. But it will take some years for those folks to season, and for the real winners to emerge. Right now, who realistically do we have ready and able to run? Hilary? Yeah, she's gonna do it, and I hope to hell she loses. Edwards? He's all but vanished. Who on our side has the intellectual heft, name recognition, and experience to make a serious run? And of that list, who would you really like to see up there?

Good points, but I would hesitate to overestimate the influence of the lefty blogosphere based on this last election, which was much more about widespread disatisfaction with the morass of Iraq than anything else. That happened to resonate with the lefty blogosphere's concern, but if the electorate was on a different wavelength, I doubt online progressive activism would have much influence at all, certainly not as much as the Mighty Wurlitzer, or even, really, one component of it, talk radio.

[See Roger's response, and further continuation of the discussion, in Comments.]

Bush's explanation for why he doesn't talk policy with his dad simply doesn't hold water.

"You know, I love my dad," Bush said. "But he understands what I know, that the level of information I have relative to the level of information most other people have, including himself, is significant."

Oh, please. That's obviously not the real reason.

So here are two more-likely possibilities: Either Bush does talk to his dad and doesn't want people to know; or he truly has no interest in what his dad thinks.

The latter still strikes me as the most likely. Bush, after all, remains the son whose actions can be seen in large part as a reaction to his father -- rather than an homage.

Darwin was humble and modest in exactly the way that Inspector Columbo is. He knows from the beginning who the guilty party is, and what the truth is, and would rather let the bad guys hang themselves out of arrogance and overconfidence, while he walks around in his raincoat, scratching his head and saying, “Oh, yeah—just one more thing about that six-thousand-year-old Earth, Reverend Snodgrass . . .”

Poor creationists, it's been "just one more thing" for years and years and years now. If it wasn't for the fact that they're close personal friends of the commissioner and the mayor (and political contributors as well), Lt. Darwin could have closed the case ages ago.

(Note to Gopnik: Columbo's rank was "Lieutenent" not "Inspector".)

Update: Another nice pull from Gopnik's piece:

By humanism, we can mean two things. One is that man is the measure of all things; the other, that all things can be measured by man. The first view, essentially religious in origin, inspires Renaissance painting and the Sistine ceiling and Vitruvian proportions. The second view — that what makes people uniquely interesting is their capacity for gauging their environment and changing it; that the more we measure, the more accurately we see what things are actually like — has been what we have meant by humanism since the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, and Darwin is one of its greatest exponents and examples.

Former President George H.W. Bush broke down in tears as he cited his son Gov. Jeb Bush as an example of leadership.

Bush was addressing state lawmakers, his son's top administrators and state workers gathered in the House chamber Monday for the last of the governor's leadership forums.

He said he was proud of how his son handled the loss of the 1994 governor's race to popular incumbent Democrat Lawton Chiles and referred vaguely to dirty tricks in the campaign.

"He didn't whine about it. He didn't complain," the former president said before choking up. As he tried to continue, he let out a sob and put a handkerchief to his face. When he spoke again, his words were broken up by pauses as he tried to regain composure.

"A true measure of a man is how you handle victory and how you handle defeat, so in '94 Floridians chose to rehire the governor. They took note of his worthy opponent, who showed with not only words but with actions what decency he had," Bush said before starting to sob again.

I have to wonder if Poppy's teariness about Jeb is because he realizes that his idiot son George has ruined everything and made it impossible for his smarter son, Jeb, to ever be President. No Bush will ever sit behind the desk in the Oval Office again, no matter how much money they're willing to throw at the problem.

Update: Video (Olbermann)

Early reports indicate that some promising candidates are being considered for the post, including Rep. Jim Leach (R-IA), former Sen. George Mitchell, and former 9/11 Commission executive director Philip Zelikow. "Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Rep. James Walsh (R-NY) are circulating a letter among colleagues suggesting Leach be named." Among other names receiving mention are U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, former deputy ambassador to the U.N. Richard Williamson, outgoing Sen. Mike DeWine (R-OH), and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Giuliani would be the closest to Bolton in temperment, but he's too ideologically suspect for Bush to nominate. (Plus, Rudy is clearly still politically ambitious, and the UN Ambassador is a political dead end.) Mitchell is a Democrat, and a moderate, so he'll never get the nod (where are they getting this dope from?). Lieberman (not mentioned here), although he's been kissing Bush's ass on the Iraq War, is also generally too liberal.

Of the names here, Republican stalwart Richard Williamson seems the most likely, although outside this list I wonder about Paul Wolfowitz (who seems more suited to the UN then the World Bank, which he currently runs), Elliot Abrams (currently Deputy NSA), and Richard Perle as possible nominees.

I don't think Bush is inclined to reach outside of his extended rotating stable of people, and he's already smarting from having to go into Poppy's pocket to get Gates to replace Rumsfeld, so he won't do that again so soon. I would guess the new Ambassador-designate will be someone we're all familiar with, and almost certainly someone we wouldn't want in the job. (Amazing prediction, huh?)

In a small New York loft, just below Union Square, for example, there is a tech startup called Platinum Blue that consults for companies in the music business. [...] It has a proprietary computer program that uses “spectral deconvolution software” to measure the mathematical relationships among all of a song’s structural components: melody, harmony, beat, tempo, rhythm, octave, pitch, chord progression, cadence, sonic brilliance, frequency, and so on. On the basis of that analysis, the firm believes it can predict whether a song is likely to become a hit with eighty-per-cent accuracy. [...] The head of Platinum Blue is a man named Mike McCready, and the service he is providing for the music business is an exact model of what Dick Copaken would like to do for the movie business.

[...] [O]ne morning recently McCready sat down and opened his laptop to demonstrate the Platinum Blue technology. On his screen was a cluster of thousands of white dots, resembling a cloud. This was a “map” of the songs his group had run through its software: each dot represented a single song, and each song was positioned in the cloud according to its particular mathematical signature. “You could have one piano sonata by Beethoven at this end and another one here,” McCready said, pointing at the opposite end, “as long as they have completely different chord progressions and completely different melodic structures.”

McCready then hit a button on his computer, which had the effect of eliminating all the songs that had not made the Billboard Top 30 in the past five years. The screen went from an undifferentiated cloud to sixty discrete clusters. This is what the universe of hit songs from the past five years looks like structurally; hits come out of a small, predictable, and highly conserved set of mathematical patterns. “We take a new CD far in advance of its release date,” McCready said. “We analyze all twelve tracks. Then we overlay them on top of the already existing hit clusters, and what we can tell a record company is which of those songs conform to the mathematical pattern of past hits. Now, that doesn’t mean that they will be hits. But what we are saying is that, almost certainly, songs that fall outside these clusters will not be hits—regardless of how much they sound and feel like hit songs, and regardless of how positive your call-out research or focus-group research is.”

Epagogix is the name of the company that's developed a similar formula for determining hit movies:

If you were developing a $75-million buddy picture for Bruce Willis and Colin Farrell, Epagogix says, it can tell you, based on past experience, what that script’s particular combination of narrative elements can be expected to make at the box office. If the formula says it’s a $50-million script, you pull the plug.

[...]

[A Hollywood studio gave Epagogix] nine unreleased movies to analyze. [They] worked only from the script—without reference to the stars or the director or the marketing budget or the producer. On three of the films—two of which were low-budget—the Epagogix estimates were way off. On the remaining six—including two of the studio’s biggest-budget productions—they correctly identified whether the film would make or lose money. On one film, the studio thought it had a picture that would make a good deal more than $100 million. Epagogix said $49 million. The movie made less than $40 million. On another, a big-budget picture, the team’s estimate came within $1.2 million of the final gross. On a number of films, they were surprisingly close. “They were basically within a few million,” a senior executive at the studio said. “It was shocking. It was kind of weird.” Had the studio used Epagogix on those nine scripts before filming started, it could have saved tens of millions of dollars. “I was impressed by a couple of things,” another executive at the same studio said. “I was impressed by the things they thought mattered to a movie. They weren’t the things that we typically give credit to. They cared about the venue, and whether it was a love story, and very specific things about the plot that they were convinced determined the outcome more than anything else. It felt very objective. And they could care less about whether the lead was Tom Cruise or Tom Jones.”

[...]

The team once gave a studio a script analysis in which almost everything they suggested was, in Hollywood terms, small. They wanted the lead to jump off the page a little more. They wanted the lead to have a young sidekick—a relatively minor character—to connect with a younger demographic, and they wanted the city where the film was set to be much more of a presence. The neural network put the potential value of better characterization at an extra $2.46 million in U.S. box-office revenue; the value of locale adjustment at $4.92 million; the value of a sidekick at $12.3 million—and the value of all three together (given the resulting synergies) at $24.6 million. That’s another $25 million for a few weeks of rewrites and maybe a day or two of extra filming. [They] ran the numbers and concluded that the script would make $47 million if the suggested changes were not made. The changes were not made. The movie made $50 million.

[...]

That was the thing about the formula: it didn’t make the task of filmmaking easier. It made it harder. So long as nobody knows anything, you’ve got license to do whatever you want. You can start a movie in Africa. You can have male and female leads not go off together—all in the name of making something new. Once you came to think that you knew something, though, you had to decide just how much money you were willing to risk for your vision. Did the Epagogix team know what the answer to that question was? Of course not. That question required imagination, and they weren’t in the imagination business. They were technicians with tools: computer programs and analytical systems and proprietary software that calculated mathematical relationships among a laundry list of structural variables. At Platinum Blue, Mike McCready could tell you that the bass line was pushing your song out of the center of hit cluster 31. But he couldn’t tell you exactly how to fix the bass line, and he couldn’t guarantee that the redone version would still sound like a hit, and you didn’t see him releasing his own album of computer-validated pop music.

The danger of these systems (if they are as accurate as Gladwell portrays, which I don't have any reason to doubt beyond the normal exaggerations of entrepreneurs selling themselves and their goods) is not, in my opinion, that the people who develop them aren't artists -- in any collaborative entertainment or art enterprise there are artists and there are technicians and there are money-people and they are all a necessary part of the project. In one sense these predicive systems simply provide another tool to be used, although this tool is probably more useful to the business side of show business than to the creative side.

No, what concerns me are those 60 clusters of hit songs that Platinum Blue found, and their movies equivalents, and I want to know more about them -- have there always been the same clusters?, do they wax and wane over time?, are there other locii that are not ascendant now but used to be, and may be again in the future?, what is the lifespan and lifecycle of a cluster?, do the clusters change shape and position over time? -- stuff like that. I suspect, but I don't know (of course) that given the constraints of human psychology and physiology there will be a limited number of potential hit song or hit movie clusters, but that the shape, center and intensity of those clusters will change over time as tastes change under the influence of things like fashion, technology, and the demand for (apparent) novelty working against the comfort of the recognizable. That's been the way things seem to be falling out in the sociobiological sciences, that we are simultaneously constrained by our heredity and free within those limits -- the clusters exist, but they can mutate or float somewhat as the zeitgeist changes.

Except, of course, if you reinforce the current state of the clusters by making songs and movies which land with some precision in their center, thus maximizing the chance for profit, but, at the same time, inhibiting the ability of the clusters to flex and change. The effect of this could be to fix the clusters in their current state, or, at least, to prevent them from evolving or changing over time. The general acceptance of the predictive systems in the arts and entertainment would make it even harder to find financing to make movies or songs which push the envelope and influence the shape and position of the clusters by their (surprise) success. Art, it seems to me, lives somewhere in the interstices between the clusters, and the continued existence of the entertainment industries depends on art or art-like projects which ignore (some of) the rules and yet turn out to be well-liked or widely influential.

It would be an interesting project, for instance, for Epagogix to remove from its database every film made before 1977, and then put the script for Star Wars through its analysis. Would it predict the great success of that film and the existence (and money-making ability) of its progeny, grandchildren, cousins, nieces and nephews? Or would the system, as I suspect, merely encourage the making of the sort of films that were successful up to then, before Star War existed?

In his classic study, “The Great War and Modern Memory,” Paul Fussell wrote of how World War I shattered and remade literature, for only a new language of irony could convey the trauma and waste. Under the auspices of Mr. Bush, the Iraq war is having a comparable, if different, linguistic impact: the more he loses his hold on reality, the more language is severed from its meaning altogether.

When the president persists in talking about staying until “the mission is complete” even though there is no definable military mission, let alone one that can be completed, he is indulging in pure absurdity. The same goes for his talk of “victory,” another concept robbed of any definition when the prime minister we are trying to prop up is allied with Mr. Sadr, a man who wants Americans dead and has many scalps to prove it. The newest hollowed-out Bush word to mask the endgame in Iraq is “phase,” as if the increasing violence were as transitional as the growing pains of a surly teenager. “Phase” is meant to drown out all the unsettling debate about two words the president doesn’t want to hear, “civil war.”

When news organizations, politicians and bloggers had their own civil war about the proper usage of that designation last week, it was highly instructive — but about America, not Iraq. The intensity of the squabble showed the corrosive effect the president’s subversion of language has had on our larger culture. Iraq arguably passed beyond civil war months ago into what might more accurately be termed ethnic cleansing or chaos. That we were fighting over “civil war” at this late date was a reminder that wittingly or not, we have all taken to following Mr. Bush’s lead in retreating from English as we once knew it.

It’s been a familiar pattern for the news media, politicians and the public alike in the Bush era. It took us far too long to acknowledge that the “abuses” at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere might be more accurately called torture. And that the “manipulation” of prewar intelligence might be more accurately called lying. Next up is “pullback,” the Iraq Study Group’s reported euphemism to stave off the word “retreat” (if not retreat itself).

In the case of “civil war,” it fell to a morning television anchor, Matt Lauer, to officially bless the term before the “Today” show moved on to such regular fare as an update on the Olsen twins. That juxtaposition of Iraq and post-pubescent eroticism was only too accurate a gauge of how much the word “war” itself has been drained of its meaning in America after years of waging a war that required no shared sacrifice. Whatever you want to label what’s happening in Iraq, it has never impeded our freedom to dote on the Olsen twins.

I have not been one to buy into the arguments that Mr. Bush is stupid or is the sum of his “Bushisms” or is, as feverish Internet speculation periodically has it, secretly drinking again. I still don’t. But I have believed he is a cynic — that he could always distinguish between truth and fiction even as he and Karl Rove sold us their fictions. That’s why, when the president said that “absolutely, we’re winning” in Iraq before the midterms, I just figured it was more of the same: another expedient lie to further his partisan political ends.

But that election has come and gone, and Mr. Bush is more isolated from the real world than ever. That’s scary. Neither he nor his party has anything to gain politically by pretending that Iraq is not in crisis. Yet Mr. Bush clings to his delusions with a near-rage — watch him seethe in his press conference with Mr. Maliki — that can’t be explained away by sheer stubbornness or misguided principles or a pat psychological theory. Whatever the reason, he is slipping into the same zone as Woodrow Wilson did when refusing to face the rejection of the League of Nations, as a sleepless L.B.J. did when micromanaging bombing missions in Vietnam, as Ronald Reagan did when checking out during Iran-Contra. You can understand why Jim Webb, the Virginia senator-elect with a son in Iraq, was tempted to slug the president at a White House reception for newly elected members of Congress. Mr. Bush asked “How’s your boy?” But when Mr. Webb replied, “I’d like to get them out of Iraq,” the president refused to so much as acknowledge the subject. Maybe a timely slug would have woken him up.

Or at least sounded an alarm. Some two years ago, I wrote that Iraq was Vietnam on speed, a quagmire for the MTV generation. Those jump cuts are accelerating now. The illusion that America can control events on the ground is just that: an illusion. As the list of theoretical silver bullets for Iraq grows longer (and more theoretical) by the day — special envoy, embedded military advisers, partition, outreach to Iran and Syria, Holbrooke, international conference, NATO — urgent decisions have to be made by a chief executive who is in touch with reality (or such is the minimal job description). Otherwise the events in Iraq will make the Decider’s decisions for him, as indeed they are doing already.

Update: Speculation abounds that Bush might nominate Lieberman to replace Bolton. The Senate would, of course, consent, and Leiberman's replacement would be selected by the Republican Governor of Connecticut, thus flipping the Senate from the Democrats to the Republicans.

[Thanks to Romaine]

COLDWATER CREEK MAKES COMPANYWIDE CONVERSION TO RENEWABLE 'GREEN' ENERGY

100% of Company’s energy usage in the U.S. to be replaced by wind power

SANDPOINT, Idaho, Aug. 23, 2006 – Coldwater Creek, one of the fastest-growing women’s apparel retailers in the United States, today announced its commitment to purchase renewable "green" energy for its headquarters, distribution center, customer contact centers, and retail stores across the nation.

Recognizing the global importance of climate change, Coldwater Creek made the decision to offset 100% of its energy consumption with renewable energy certificates in order to dramatically decrease its impact on the environment.

Over the next three years, the company has committed to buy more than 217,000 megawatt-hours of wind-generated electricity. By supporting wind energy, Coldwater Creek is preventing more than 299 million pounds of CO2 – a key greenhouse gas – from entering the Earth’s atmosphere between now and 2009. This is the equivalent CO2 savings of taking nearly 30,000 cars off the road for one year, or the same amount of CO2 absorbed by protecting more than 113,000 acres of trees.

"We’re extremely proud to join other industry leaders in taking this meaningful step forward by offsetting our total energy consumption with wind power," said Dennis Pence, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Coldwater Creek. "In addition to decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, companies that have chosen to make this important move are creating a viable market for renewable energy sources and raising global awareness about alternatives to fossil-fuel power production."

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, fossil-fuel-based power plants are responsible for 67 percent of the nation’s sulfur dioxide, 40 percent of man-made carbon dioxide, and 23 percent of nitrogen dioxide emissions.

Beginning Aug. 1, 2006, Coldwater Creek entered into a three-year partnership with 3 Phases Energy Services, LLC, to offset the energy usage of its operation company wide with 100% new wind energy. This is being accomplished through the purchase of an innovative product known as renewable energy certificates. Renewable energy certificates provide a means for consumers to purchase and support wind power that is "injected" into the power grid by renewable energy producers. To ensure that the certificates it purchases from 3 Phases Energy actually support new wind farms, the certificates are independently monitored and verified by the nonprofit Center for Resource Solutions, before receiving the "Green-e®" certification.

"From the time the company was formed on the shores of a pristine lake in a small town in North Idaho, we have had a tradition of environmental involvement and stewardship," Pence said. "We plan to continue that tradition as we move toward our goal of operating 450-500 retail stores and establishing Coldwater Creek as a premiere, national women’s apparel brand."

Photo: Sean Fitzgerald