Not a Potted Plant

Somehow, the Los Angeles Galaxy lost its playoff game against the Seattle Sounders, but is still advancing to the MLS Cup. I don’t rightly understand how this works. Seems to me if you lose a playoff game, you should get knocked out of the playoffs. Oh, I’m sure that the rule was announced in advance and everyone knew if L.A. got at least one goal that would be enough under the system.

And, hey, I’m glad my home-town team gets a shot at the championship and all, and it’s kind of cool to think that David Beckham’s last game will be played here in L.A. for a championship even if it is the U.S. professional league (sort of a step down from the European leagues, but come on, the guy’s 37, a venerable old age for a soccer player). I guess. I don’t watch MLS on TV or anything. I catch an Italian Serie A game or a matchup between the USMNT and some other national team now and again.

But a playoff seeding system that lets a team lose but still advance — or that sees a team win but nevertheless get knocked out of advancement — just doesn’t seem right to me.

With a big trial breathing down my neck, there’s a ton of stuff due tomorrow. And I have a class to teach and a life to lead. There’s too much work to do, too fast. “It’s not fair,” I said to my adversary today. “You have all these other lawyers and people helping you, and I have one paralegal.” He laughed. “It’s not fair,” he agreed sympathetically. That won’t stop him from pressing his boot down on my neck, of course. But he understands. That’s the kind of business we’re in.

…Look, I’m going to talk someone out of going to law school, eventually.

As I assume most of you have heard, Hostess – the maker of Twinkies among other assorted goodies, is going out of business. Roger Ebert danced on their grave on Twitter, due to the unhealthiness of their product. More than a few people I know have said “good riddance.” This, in my view, is very much the wrong way to look at it.

The political arena is busy fighting it out. One side is blaming the unions that refused to budge. The unions appear to be looking at this as a moment of triumph. Yes, they’re out of the job, but they stood up to “Bain-style corporatism” or somesuch. I don’t think either of these takes are exactly right. Indications are that Hostess had some foundational problems that were what required them to appeal for renegotiated labor settlement in the first place. They’ve been in and out of bankruptcy for a while. Besides which, it is ultimately the decisions of the employees as to how to read their interest, and if they got this wrong it was due to a miscalculation rather than to a sense of entitlement. When you’re asked to take a pay cut, it’s not a sense of entitlement to refuse.

On the other hand, it’s unknown whether the company could have kept going and could have rebounded, and the union did put the final nail in that coffin. They may not have been the primary cause of the shuttering of Hostess’s doors, but they were a part of it. At least, in a “facts on the ground” sort of way. They might be getting less money, but they’d still have a job. The notion that the concessions being asked of them were “outrageous” are undermined by the fact that the other union, the Teamsters, agreed to them. (To my knowledge, it wasn’t the case that one got a sweeter deal than the other.)

There are questions, I suppose, as to the extent to which dissenting employees should have to live with the decisions made by their union, but I don’t see a clear-cut answer either way on that one. I tend not to have a remarkably favorable disposition when it comes to enforced union membership, and so in my world those who wanted to work could have continued to, but (a) there are good arguments going in the other direction and (b) even some of the workers striking may well have produced the exact same result. The company was hanging by a thread, and there is little indication to me that this was solely or primarily due to labor.

So what was it due to, then? That’s where Ebert (a paragon of good eating and health?) dances on their grave. I’ve seen a lot of arguments that Hostess’s problem is that they never diversified from sugary products in an age of health-consciousness. And thus the dancing, this is a market repudiation of unhealth. Yay! There are two problems with this.

First of all, the makers of Twinkies and Wonderbread also made Nature’s Pride. Nature’s Pride is a healthyish bread company. I have a loaf in my fridge and another in my freezer. Nature’s Pride has won accolades both for its naturalness (“no artificial preservatives, colors, flavors, trans fats or high fructose corn syrup”) and for its good taste. I don’t care much about the former, and don’t entirely agree with the latter, but as far as double-fiber wheat bread goes, theirs was the best. Nature’s Pride is the only product of theirs that I am going to miss. Given the inconsistent availability of double-fiber bread, if there is a health impact here it will be negative. Also, this wasn’t a me-tooism on their part: they were among the first to focus on factory hippie bread.

Second, this explanation is at odds with the notion that it was management’s fault. Which, maybe the blame of management is misguided. Ultimately, though, this is considered a big deal precisely because their Twinkies and cupcakes are beloved by large parts of the country. It just doesn’t seem to me that there is much room to argue that this is a repudiation rather than a product of a down economy and business practices.

I can pretty much guarantee that the void here is going to be filled by somebody. The Twinkies will be back. Ding Dongs and the distinct cupcakes will be back. Of all the products they made, it’s Nature’s Pride that is probably most vulnerable because they have the most direct competition (I am sincerely hoping that the supermarkets relying on Nature’s Pride simply go with a competitor so that I can still get my product.)

Meanwhile, this represents a shift from a moderate-sized competitor’s product being absorbed into a larger conglomeration. Maybe they’ll hire 18,000 employees or maybe/probably they will get by with less. To the extent that this is a triumph, it is for horizontal immigration and larger corporations. If you have ever complained at all about Frito-Lay’s dominance in the potato chip industry, this should not be seen as positive.

Heck, the end result could be Frito-Lay (and thus PepsiCo) inserting itself into the cakefood industry as well. Or maybe not because there are other cakefood companies looking to buy. Which suggests to me that any chest-pounding over a victory for our common health is off-base. Whether we blame management or labor, the primary end result of this is a temporary disruption of cakefood provisions and some permanently lost jobs.

Though much has been made of the generational gap, it’s really hard to separate that from the racial dynamics. Romney won the white 18-29 vote. I need to look further into it, but I think the larger issue could be the different composition of that age group.

This has ramifications for the gender gap as well. Though women vote more than men among all races, the difference is more pronounced among minority groups. And the difference between minority men and minority women in voting patters exceeds that of white men and white women (9-10% for minorities, 6% for whites). So the race problem is a women problem and vice-versa.

Speaking of which, it speaks volumes that at a time when anti-abortion sympathies have never been higher, and that the Democrats are pushing the envelope to the left, the Republicans still lost the issue in the overall.

A lot of the advice the GOP is getting is bunk. Especially by people with no vested interest in the GOP’s fortunes who would mostly like the GOP to nominate better candidates for them to vote against. The party would be wise to ignore a lot of it. I do hope that conservatives resist the urge to ignore all of it.

I agree with Elias on his closing point about the GOP’s situation not being too dire, but I also disagree with it. On the one hand, a 52/48 nation isn’t the worst place to start from. I also think that at least a part of the significant shift of Hispanics and Asian-Americans to Obama might be not unrelated to the man as much as anything. It remains very uncertain as to whether their next nominee will be able to pull it off. On the other hand, the Republicans simply can’t go forward with the assumption that will happen. Also, the dynamic of people getting more conservative as they age is about to get tested for a variety of reasons.

Because, in addition to the other demographic challenges the GOP is looking at, that fewer people are getting married and having children is yet another. It’s a little too convenient for me (a proponent of SSM) to believe that gay marriage and gay adoption may tighten the wide gap in the gay vote, but I’ll choose to believe it anyway.

With the exception of the introductory conversation, I tried to keep my part of the conversation forward-looking rather than gripey. If I’d been more gripey, I’d have gone to the bat more for Chris Christie and have said that the GOP response to him post-election is a part of the problem.

I didn’t spend as much time as I might have liked talking about regionality and such, but one of the reasons that Chris Christie is important even though he’ll never be a national player is that the party needs regional ambassadors and needs people who are uncomfortable with the party’s core to be able to say “I’m a [Chris Christie/Tom Campbell/etc.] Republican” and feel that they have a place in the party.

One of the more interesting aspects of the “Republicans Got It Wrong” aspect is that one of those Republicans was Karl Rove. Rove, whatever you think of the man’s moral compass, was exactly the sort of coalition-minded person that while he was in the game rather than announcing it would have been keeping an eye on a lot of the numbers that the Republicans (including Rove) missed. He would have been the one to say “Mr. Governor, you’re going to lose tomorrow.” I remember back in 2000-04 it was Rove and the RNC that was ramping up its numbers base. They do need that back, in whatever form.

One of my bigger fears is that the Republican Party will determine that the easiest path to victory is with a marginal increase in the white vote. I don’t think it would work, and I’d hope it doesn’t work, but I can’t say that it wouldn’t. A softening of their views on economic issues could yield dividends in the midwest that will keep the GOP competitive for as long as it takes for its architects to cash out at least. There are reasons this might work, though it’d ultimately be disastrous for the country.

George W. Bush did reasonably well among Hispanics and Asian-Americans. A lot of conservatives looked at this and said “See, despite all he did, he still didn’t win them” and determined they’ll never vote Republican and that they shouldn’t bother trying (the above Sailer strategy, with less sharp edges). If nothing else, this election should demonstrate that even if you can’t win them, it’s not unimportant to mitigate the losses. The alternative is minorities that are not only voting against you, but are fired up.

Having said all that, I can’t fully disagree with those (Tim? Tom?) who talked about how the GOP shouldn’t overreact to this loss. They do need to stop digging, but they have four years until the next presidential election and a lot of time to test various ideas.

One thing I would have liked to talk about more is candidate recruitment. It’s hard to say what the party can and should do here at least at the state level. I mean, they didn’t choose Akin and they didn’t choose Mourdock. It’s easy to talk about how they should take more control over the process, but if they had been successful Rand Paul and Marco Rubio wouldn’t be senators. A whole lot of the candidate backlash is due to the fact that the establishment was choosing lousy candidates. So I suppose that would be a good place to start.

I say all of this with, perhaps, a foot out the door. I’m really not sure what the future holds for me as a voter. But I have, over the years, actually invested more time in the Republican Party than a lot of people who would call me a traitor or a RINO. If I ever officially cast my lot with the other side, it will have been as a last resort.

The issues with conservative media are so immense that I would have to save that for another post, if I want to breach that egg at all.

Like most people, I was surprised to hear of General Petraeus’s sudden resignation on the account of an affair. Not so much that he’d had one (I don’t spend time thinking about such things), but I didn’t know that even CIA chiefs would resign due to them. I will note that some are suspicious that this had more to do with his pending testimony on Banghazi, but it’s nonetheless noteworthy that this is the explanation that was given. Anyhow, Dr. Phi – having spent time in the same room as the man – is not the least bit surprised.

Back in high school there was a coach. Coach Montgomery. We never actually saw anything occur, but the… I don’t know… familiarity with which he presented himself to the female students did not go unnoticed. Well, we partially noticed because during indoor free periods the less popular among us were having basketballs thrown at our heads while he was too busy talking to female students to notice. We didn’t like Coach M. Partially due to the fact that he wasn’t there to instill order when it was needed. But also because when he was paying attention to us, he terrified the crap out of us. He honestly struck us as a roidhead. A roidhead who would probably sleep with a female student if he had the chance.

A couple years after he graduated he was arrested. It was actually his suicide attempt that got him in the news. Our response to this was… not generous. We thought it was funny as heck. We could just imagine Big Strong Coach M scared spitless of what was an impending arrest and taking the proverbial coward’s way out. I can’t say I am remarkably proud of this response. In one sense, I am not hugely bothered by what he did. She was sixteen. A teacher (or coach) should be fired for such a thing, but I’m not sure about arrested (a subject worthy of exploration in the future) absent a degree of coercion beyond the basic power differential. A year or so after that I would be exposed to the destruction of suicide (not mine, obviously) and the funny part didn’t seem so funny anymore.

But before my better angels got a chance to catch up with me, I have to believe that I would smile all over again at having my negative confirmations of a man I disliked intensely being confirmed.

So a question for all y’all… has this ever happened to you? Wherein you’re looking at something that just doesn’t quite seem right and later it turns out that everything is unraveled in a rather public fashion?

At some point in the past, I remember seeing some interaction between a colleague of my wife and his nurse and getting a definite vibe of something. As far as I know, nothing ever came of it. It was probably nothing. Of course, if you’d asked me in all seriousness in high school, I probably would have said the same of Coach M.

If Sam Mendes brings as much thought to future James Bond movies as he did to Skyfall — and if he brings Thomas Newman to score them — he should be the house director for the franchise. Mrs. Likko thought the opening sequence was a little long but I think that kind of set piece is why I like Bond films as much as I do. Ralph Fiennes and Ben Whishaw are great additions, although by the end of the movie things were feeling a little heavy on the men in MI-6. And I loved the car and Javier Bardem as the heavy. More than made up for uneven pacing and gaps in the exposition.

What, you haven’t seen Skyfall yet? Go!

The last music score in Callie, Rock Out, is now closed. The owner took a job at the university and there were no buyers. Another store in the downtown area is now vacant.

Living where I do, this isn’t the sort of thing that can be blamed on Walmart. Amazon (and Apple) yes, Walmart no. In at least one sense, it’s a triumph for capitalism that places like this were made unnecessary. Yet I remember when I first got here, the fact that it had a record store was a positive.

Despite the fact I knew that I would never step foot in it. Taking the above picture is literally the first and only time that I did.

Shortly after moving out here, we signed up for Amazon Prime. Though it couldn’t be justified purely in terms of dollars and cents (since we’d be getting free shipping anyway due to order size), it’s made us less reliant on what’s local. To our benefit, to Rock Out’s and bookstores’ peril.

We are in a relatively unique situation, in that most of the big box stores are over an hour away. We have a (non-Supercenter) Walmart-ish place in town (without the Everyday Low Prices), but most of our shopping has to be an hour away or two.

I do wonder, though, about what the future holds in the event of ever-increasing gas prices. The answer for many is unflinchingly increased density and the like. This has to do with personal transportation, but the outlook is considered dour for both the big box stores (often in the suburbs, often requiring a drive to get there) and shipping.

For a variety of reasons, I see Walmart and other one-stop shopping places actually weathering the storm reasonably well. Higher gas prices mean fewer trips. Fewer trips mean economizing each trip. One trip to Walmart can take care of a lot of needs. I’m less sure about the more specialized Big Box stores.

I do think it spells trouble for the Rock Outs of the world, though, even if like RO they are centrally located downtown. If I’m going to go shopping, and I’m at all worried about gas prices, I am more likely to go to a place that I know is likely to have what I need. It’s harder for smaller stores to have such inventory management.

I also, ironically enough, see a place in all of this for Amazon and the like. Going door-to-door has its advantages. It is more gas economical to deliver four things on a cove of eight houses than it is for those four people to individually go out and shop.

The biggest question for places like Amazon, and indeed postal and parcel delivery services more generally, has to do with delivery times. To be economical, it might start making more sense for house-to-house deliveries to be less-than-daily. On the other hand, since that wouldn’t work for time-sensitive items, maybe not. It mostly comes down to where they are already going and when, and how important it is to get there with what frequency.

Rising gas prices – whether due to scarcity, industry profits, taxes, or whatever else – would definitely take a toll somewhere. America, a place of extraordinary inexpensiveness by first-world standards, will become more expensive. Places like Callie will be hit harder than others. It will be interesting to see where the sacrifices are made. Or, more importantly, who will be carrying the bulk of it. I am skeptical that it will be successfully laid at the doorstep of those The Smart Set thinks ain’t livin’ right.

I’ve previously written that the most interesting Congressional race of the year was for Arizona’s newly-created Ninth Congressional District. Above is the result as posted today by the Arizona Secretary of State: Democrat Kyrsten Sinema is leading Republican Vernon Parker by 2,101 votes. This is a margin of about 1.3% of the total votes cast. The race has not yet been called for Ms. Sinema and Mr. Parker has not yet conceded. Given the closeness of the vote, that seems appropriate at this time. It’s going to be a squeaker, no matter what.

That margin, in turn, is almost exactly one-half of Barack Obama’s margin of victory in the popular vote over Mitt Romney in the Presidential election. Which makes me wonder about shirttails. If Obama had shirttails, however short, that might constitute Ms. Sinema’s margin of victory over Mr. Parker. Which would mean that Ms. Sinema owes the President, big-time, at least until she can assert the power and advantages of incumbency when it comes time for her to run for re-election in 2014.

I also have to wonder about the third party effect. Apparently, the Libertarian’s platform was to tell people not to vote at all:

The spoiler in the race may turn out to be Libertarian candidate Powell Gammill, who garnered more than 10,000 votes, despite urging voters during an October televised debate to stay home on Election Day in protest of the political system.

This, I should think, substantially deprives Mr. Gammill of the opportunity to argue that had one or the other candidate made an effort to incorporate some of his policy ideas into the platform, the race would have a more decisive outcome right now — and particularly to argue to the Republican that if only you had made more of an appeal to Libertarian-minded voters, Mr. Parker, you would be on the track headed to Washington right now instead of Ms. Sinema. Now, it’s far from clear that had Parker done this, he’d have been rewarded with a fraction of the more than 10,000 votes that went to Gammill. After all, Gammill told these people to stay home and they didn’t. But it’s also not entirely far-fetched to think that a portion of them could indeed have been persuaded to vote for Parker. Or for Sinema, for that matter, which would have her not only ahead by a nose but ahead enough that she would have had the race called for her by now.

The district is the sort of area in which future political battles will be fought. Middle-class, suburban, with reasonably well-educated voters who don’t care a whole lot about their candidates being demographically unlike the sorts of people who got to govern the country when Will and I were young. Lots of outside money and traditional ground machinery, and so far as I can tell the effort of both candidates was to reach out to people already inclined to vote in their direction, rather than to reach out to the middle and persuade the persuadable — one suspects, on the assumption that there were relatively few voters to persuade in the first place, but that making such a pitch would alienate the base. This last dimension, that of all-GOTV efforts and little, if any, effort to appeal to the moderate middle, is the single trend of modern politics that I find the least appealing and the least productive.

This isn’t the only close Congressional race in Arizona. It’s just the one I found the most interesting. It could very well work out that a majority of Arizona’s Congressional delegation are Democrats, something that I don’t think has ever been the case before. And given what incumbency does for a politician, it could be that this becomes a durable legacy of a decidedly unpleasant yesterday for Republicans nationally.