Why We're Infamous

Andrew has the rundown of exactly why it so...interesting... at times to go to school at Berkeley. There's only so many times that the administration can tell us that we go to "the best University in the world" before we start to question it.

PS: I know we all do, but let me reiterate: I HATE SNEHAL

Two Different Perspectives

The Democratic Party has a problem. Bob Novak points out that while the Democratic faithful (us citizens who started caring about the 2004 election on January 21, 2001) seem to be energized by the thought of a second go-round for Al Gore in two years, the party leaders are far less enthused, instead prefering freshman Sen. John Edwards. While "it's hard to find prominent Democrats who welcome Gore's apparent inclination to try again in 2004," he says, a "poll of Democratic voters shows Edwards eighth our of hopefuls with 1 percent--well behind Gore in first place with 46 percent." The Democratic leadership's problem is further compounded by Edwards' appearance on Meet The Press this past Sunday which both Novak and Stuart Rothenberg have claimed to be very political, and in that not-good, inexperienced kind way.

I think this just shows why, in the end, Edwards will not end up as the Presidential nominee, no matter how attractive a candidate he seems. It is simply a matter of experience relative to other presidential hopefuls. While he would be stronger than Bush was in 2000, Bush wasn't running at such a disadvantage (against a monstrously popular "war leader") as whoever the Democratic candidate will be. If Gore and Lieberman don't conspire to run "together" as a ticket from the outset (I still don't get the immediate political advantage of that), I think Edwards might end up with Gore as the election draws nearer. I could be wrong however, especially if Edwards learns from this apparently disastrous appearance with Tim Russert.

More importantly, the leaders of the DNC need to get more in touch with their party base. It appears that the two are so distant that the apparently anointed nominee is not even known by a great majority of the country. The DNC needs to a better job of publicizing Edwards if they really want him, which is difficult because it already appears that he's all over the place. Obviously Gore is leading the polls because of simple name recognition as well as bitterness over Florida, but it's not sure yet that his support will erode as primary season approaches.

Just What We Need

John Ashcroft has reversed sixty years of the Justice Department's position concerning the Second Amendment. I'd write more about this outrage, but I have a paper due on Friday that requires more attention. Instead, I'll let Bob Herbert do the honors.

And It Only Took a Month

So they finally released the results of the ASUC election yesterday. And guess what? I don't care. And I'll tell you something else - neither do 98% of the people attending this fine institution. Unless you either are running for a position, close to someone running for a position, a Daily Cal writer who needs something to write about, or so naive as to believe that elected ASUC officials will affect your college experience in any sense, then does it really matter which Poli Sci major gets to add a title to his resume?

Defending the Garden State

I don't care who Paul Krugman bashes (although he's fully correct in this argument, even getting Andrew Sullivan to agree with him). Anyone who spends a large part of their New York Times Op-Ed column touting the greatness of New Jersey is a good guy in my book.

On a semi-side note: After a year spent in California, defending New Jersey has become a sort of passion of mine. People here just don't understand I guess, and try as I might, their opinions on the "armpit of America" won't be changing anytime soon. C'est la vie.

To End The "Blame Game"

I've tirelessly transcribed an entire letter from this week's New Yorker (it's not online) that, I hope, puts to rest all the blaming of President Clinton for the Sept. 11 attacks:

Lewis Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, suggested to Nicholas Lemann that the Clinton Administration’s counterterrorism policy made it “easier for someone like Osama bin Laden to rise up” (“The Next World Order, April 1st). As a former special adviser to President Clinton on national security, I must object. Libby cites the “lack of a serious response” to a laundry list of Clinton-era terrorist incident, beginning in 1993. Why start then? Why not include the 1983 of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, which killed seventeen Americans; the 1983 bombing of the Marine compound in Beirut, which killed two hundred and forty-one Americans; the 1986 Berlin disco bombing, which killed and American soldier; and, of course, the 1988 sabotage of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed two hundred and seventy people? Except for the very limited action against Libya, the Reagan Administration did not respond to any of these attacks

Under Clinton, spending on counterterrorism more than doubled; the 1993 World Trade Center bombers were caught; and the largest counterterrorism operation in U.S. history thwarted planned millennium attacks. After the 1998 attack on our embassies in Africa, President Clinton authorized Tomahawk-missile strikes against bin Laden. It is also worth noting reports that the current Bush Administration backed away from some of the more aggressive measures for dealing with al Qaeda which Clinton had passed on. President Bush has wisely asked that we all work together to strengthen our counterterrorism policy. Playing the blame game doesn’t help anyone."

William Danvers
Arlington Va.

It's common knowledge that the Bush Administration likes to blame Clinton for everything that goes wrong in the world (of course, they like to forget that terrorism wasn't exactly high on their agenda before 9/11). But when conservatives hold Clinton responsible for the string of terrorist attacks on this country over the past few decades (as they canonize Reagan), they reveal their shallowness and general lack of intelligent thought when judging President Clinton's time in office.

Just Plain Stupid

The notion that MusicNet and PressPlay, the two record company-sponsored music file-swapping services are just a few kinks away from success is the incorrect notion this article from the Wall Street Journal (via MSNBC) offers. MusicNet CEO Alan McGlade, among others, claims that the problems in the initial launch of the program are small, and that, once it becomes more user-friendly and stable, far more customers will flock to the service than the measly 40,000 that have signed up in its five months of existence. They have a ways to go - free (and "illegal") services, which offer a far better selection of audio and video files, in a format that is transferrable to CD, have been downloaded in numbers totalling well over 150 million. The fact is, that when selection amongst the five major music distributors (Sony, AOL Time Warner, Vivendi Universal, AG Bertelsmann AG and EMI Group) is split into two programs, both of which have significant gaps in their collections due to independently released records, any business model they present is doomed to fail. No matter how many file-sharing programs like Napster sue into extinction, there will always be those that, due to clever programming, simply cannot be shut down

The Record industry ought to face the fact that people will never pay for what they can get for free; downloading a song on KaZaa doesn't exactly reap a pang of conscience. In addition, creating new, more secure, file formats will get them nowhere. If these companies truly believe that people are going to download songs that delete themselves after a period of time and cannot be burned onto a CD, then they'll never sell MusicNet or PressPlay to any considerable amount of consumers. Instead of shying away from the technology, they should at the same time embrace it and compete with it. By embracing it, they should work with those in charge of the free services, and, rather than trying to do the impossible (shut them down), perhaps they could find a way to get paid royalties from them, without charging anything to the user. With all the annoying ads on KaZaa and Morpheus, surely these companies must be making money.

But more importantly, the record companies have the ability to compete with the computer programs. As costs for CD production continue to fall, the retail price for CD's remains the same as it was in 1983: $18.98. If that price was halved, it is a given that CD sales would skyrocket, and shockingly, record companies might actually make money. It would also help to find musical groups that aren't superficial and derivative, since they necessitate an unreasonable amount of money to hype them. The problems the record companies face are not great -- yet those corporate executives have not proven forward thinking enough to solve them

Presidential Coattails

I was going to write my thoughts on Spider-man, but the blog was ending up as a replica of several movie reviews I had already read, so I decided against it. I did, however, come across this article by Richard Berke, which considers the impact of President Bush's campaigning for Senate candidates. While most agree that a Presidential endorsement at this time could lead to nothing but good things, I'm inclined to disagree. While Bush's popularity is still startlingly high, I don't truly agree with either school of thought as to what his poll numbers really mean.

On one side, people are saying that it is inevitable for the numbers to fall, especially as Bush is currently receiving a bevy of domestic policy setbacks. This could lead to Bush actually hurting candidates. Others offer a differing opinion, suggesting that Sept. 11 permanently changed Bush's appearance in the eyes of the American public, and no matter what, his numbers won't fall below a certain level. I, on the other hand, believe that while Bush will remain popular statistically, that popularity will maintain a level of superficiality, carrying over very little to candidates he endorses, and wearing thin come the 2004 election.

The main reason that the President was seen an eighty percent approval rating six months after Sept. 11 was because he wasn't really challenged up to that point. Important decisions were clear and easy to make. But now, as he struggles through a diplomatic quagmire in the Middle East in addition to other problems, his numbers are slowly declining. My main point here is that an indicative poll of the nation's feelings on Bush would be meaningless when taken in May 2002. Pertaining to Senate candidates, the numbers won't cling to them - no South Dakotan is stupid enough to think John Thune and George W. Bush are the same person, regardless of how many "policy trips" the President makes out there. The party in the White House always loses seats in mid-term elections. Try as he might, Bush will not prevent this phenomenon from reaccuring.

As for 2004, the conventional wisdom is that some poor Democrat will step up to the plate for Bush to whack out of the park with a Reagen 1984esque electoral triumph. This need not be so. While his 2000 campaign was not as infamous as the Gore trainwreck, Bush was not the wonderful campaigner he and his staff would like to believe. In my opinion, a strong, dynamic candidate (my opinion ofJohn Edwards grows by the day) can slowly chip away the armor that Bush has built around himself, and, at the very least, give him a run for his money. These Democrat presidential wannabes are wise to start early.