NCAA Week 4 plus bubble thoughts

1) Florida 10-4
2) Indiana 9-3

3) Louisville 10-5
4) Gonzaga 10-2
5) Duke 12-3
6) Michigan 9-4

7) Kansas 12-3-1
8) Wisconsin 9-8
9) Syracuse 12-5
10) Pitt 9-6-1
11) Ohio St 6-7
12) Michigan St 8-6
13) Miami 10-3-1

14) Georgetown 10-3-1
15) Arizona 9-4
16) Oklahoma St 7-5-1

17) Minnesota 9-8
18) Creighton 8-6-1
19) Virginia 5-2-6
20) VCU 9-6
21) Colorado St 8-5-1
22) San Diego St 6-7
23) Marquette 7-6-1

24) Middle Tennessee St 1-3-1
25) Missouri 7-8

Ranked Teams
30) New Mexico 14-4
29) St Louis 8-4-1
36) Memphis 6-3
51) Butler 8-5-1
37) Notre Dame 7-6
45) Oregon 7-5-1
27) St Marys 6-3-2
49) Akron 4-3-1
75) Louisiana Tech 4-2-1

I have no idea how Louisiana Tech got a bunch of votes. They've played almost no meaningful games (especially in the last couple of weeks). They're likely to win their conference but aren't the best team in that conference, which is Denver at #50, so it's unclear if they'd merit any bubble conversation. I rather doubt it.

Here's the list of bubble teams identified by the bracket matrix as teams not getting a solid percentage of inclusions or as low at large teams. Maybe 3 or 4 of these are thus far looking like legit tournament teams. 7 of them will get in anyway. 11 won't.
19) Virginia. 6 non top 100 losses is undoubtedly their problem here. Right now they're in but they cannot afford any more weird losses.
26) Kentucky 6-8, presumably this is because of the injury to Noel. They did get a big win at home against Missouri this week, so they could remain in as well. With Noel they were a no-brainer for inclusion and at a higher seed.
27) St Marys 6-3-2. Not sure what this is all about. They're ranked after all. The win over Creighton during bracketbusters this weekend really helped here. Swept by Gonzaga, but Gonzaga's really good this year.
39) Ole Miss 4-6-1. I'm not sure that they actually should merit inclusion, but they're ranked highly enough to do so. A sweep of Tennessee and a win over Missouri (at home) are basically their only resume fodder. They're also the only decent team Middle Tennessee St has beaten. Loss to South Carolina hurts here.
40) Iowa 4-7-3. Very fringe votes for inclusion. They're really high on the MOV/tempo metrics and have 3 wins against the top 25 (Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa St, all at home), and lost by only 4 to Indiana (also at home). Their losses @ Virginia Tech, @ Purdue, and @ Nebraska all hurt a lot here and other than Iowa St, they've only got a win against N. Iowa non-conference of any note. I think they should be in, but they probably will not be without a deep Big Ten tournament run.
43) Baylor 5-9-2. Possibly safe, with a number of decent wins (Kentucky, Oklahoma St, BYU, Lehigh, and St John's). Oklahoma St and early win over Kentucky are the only resume fodder and they're losing a lot of games lately (6 of the last 8, with the only wins coming over in-conference cannon fodder). I could see them slide out.
50) Denver. 3-8. Probably has to win the WAC to get in but did get a nice road win during bracket busters this weekend.
52) Stanford. 5-10-2 Probably shouldn't get in and doesn't look like they will.
55) California. 5-9. Probably shouldn't get in either but looks like they might. Win @ Arizona and sweep of Oregon seems to be the keys here. They've only got a win over Denver to point to out of conference, where they lost to Harvard and Creighton, were blown out by Wisconsin, and lost by 1 to UNLV.
56) Villanova 6-9-1. Wins over Louisville, Syracuse, and Marquette are most likely why they would get in. Swept by Providence, loss to Columbia and only one win over the other Philly teams (St Joe's) would be arguments why not. I'd be fine with them in instead of Stanford or maybe Baylor though.
57) Maryland 3-5-3. Win over Duke is pretty much the only reason they're even in the conversation. NC State and Stony Brook are the only other good wins, with a close loss to Kentucky also. I doubt they get in without a couple of ACC tournament wins (over the Carolina teams).
58) Southern Miss 1-6-1. Shouldn't get in. Seems like a safe bet to miss out.
62) Tennessee. 7-9-1. Win over Wichita St is about it, and then the blowout over Kentucky put them on the radar. Unlikely to make it. They do have a lot of wins over quality teams, but most of them are modest wins rather than impressive stock.
64) Boise St 6-6-2. Win over Creighton on the road helped. Lost by 4 to Michigan St also. Otherwise, win over UNLV and a sweep of Wyoming is about it. I could see them getting in, but they've got a lot more buzz surrounding them than I suspect is warranted.
67) Temple 7-6-2. Wins over Syracuse and St Louis. Lost to Duquesne. Otherwise, wins over LaSalle and Villanova is about it. I guess I could see them getting in as well, but it's not a strong case.

84) Arizona St 5-6-2. Win over UCLA and a sweep of Colorado is about it here. Getting swept by Washington does not help. Loss to Utah and DePaul also doesn't help. They also got smacked by Arkansas, Creighton and Arizona. They're a fringe candidate, but they shouldn't even be a candidate.
86) St John's 5-7-4. Close wins over Cincinnati and Notre Dame, and Detroit is about it. Losses to San Francisco and UNC Asheville do not help. Again, a fringe candidate, but shouldn't be even involved. Blow out losses to every good team in their conference (Louisville, Syracuse,Pitt, Georgetown twice), plus Baylor should suggest this isn't a very competitive team.
NR) Charlotte. 5-6-2 I don't think a team I'm not even tracking should be included as even a fringe possible bubble team. Something tells me there's a huge flaw in the RPI system that they are. Win at Butler and at Davidson is about it here, plus a win against LaSalle. Destroyed by Miami, blown out by St Louis, lost at home to VCU, swept by Temple. Otherwise a lot of close games against mediocre teams. If I had to guess, they're behind George Mason in the #120 range.

NCAA Week 3

1) Florida 9-3
2) Indiana 8-3
3) Louisville 11-5

4) Michigan 8-4
5) Duke 14-3
6) Gonzaga 10-2
7) Syracuse 11-4
8) Pittsburgh 9-5-1
9) Kansas 10-3-1

10) Miami 11-3
11) Wisconsin 10-8
12) Michigan St 8-4

13) Ohio St 4-7
14) Minnesota 8-7-1

15) Oklahoma St 7-4-1
16) Arizona 9-4
17) VCU 8-4-1
18) Colorado St 8-3-1
19) Creighton 8-5-1
20) Georgetown 10-3-1

21) Cincinnati 8-7
22) Kentucky 5-8 (about to start dropping though)
23) Missouri 6-7
24) Marquette 8-6
25) San Diego St 5-7

Ranked teams out of my top 25
49) Butler 7-4-1
36) New Mexico 13-4
42) Oregon 6-4-1
51) Notre Dame 6-6

I'm not sure what the NBA commentators for the ASG last night were talking about with "about 20 teams that could make the final four". I see maybe 10-12 good contenders, with even several of those as unlikely and draw dependent (because they're playing too slow in the cases of Pitt and Wisconsin, to a lesser extent Florida and Miami, same deal). There's a pretty hard gap between the top 10-12 teams and the rest, and even in there, a sizeable gap between the top 2-3 teams and the rest. There's a few teams beneath that gap that could make a run (Arizona?, VCU?) but not many. Last year Louisville was the only "surprise" final four team and even then they were 15-8-1 coming in, which was quite respectable and were one of the top ranked defenses, (this year they're the #1 ranked, but they're scoring at a much better clip than last year).

HS draft for the NBA

Since this topic comes up occasionally, I thought I should quantify it somewhat to see if the data supports the conclusion that I reached quite some time ago that the one and done rule the NBA imposed was arbitrary and dumb.

The list of HS players drafted into the NBA isn't very long, so data-driven conclusions are unlikely to reach very far unfortunately. But they are still useful to examine to see if there are any hints. I would suggest that we are likely being imprisoned by media narratives surrounding parts of the limited data rather than the whole from this analysis.

First off.
Starting just with the 1995-6 classes, we can see right away two Hall of Famers, both clearly the class of their draft class. Kevin Garnett is leaps and bounds above any other player drafted in 1995. The next best player in that draft is Rasheed Wallace (drafted right ahead of him at 4th), but he's way behind in value.

The following year we get Kobe Bryant picked 13th, again the best player of that class, but it's a much better draft. He's followed by Steve Nash, Ray Allen, Ben Wallace (who went undrafted), and Marcus Camby. Iverson and Stojakovic are also better than Rasheed was, for comparison of how deep this class is. Jermaine O'Neal was also in this draft at 17th and falls in a class behind these players but still had a respectable career (if injury riddled and complete with an infamous fight). He is roughly as productive and valuable as Stephon Marbury was (a one-done shoot first point guard who went 4th).

1997 Tracy McGrady, picked 9th, is the 3rd best player in a draft following Tim Duncan (just ahead of KG's class as a top tier Hall of Famer), and Chauncey Billups (a pretty clear HoF candidate too). It drops way off after those three (Antonio Daniels?).

1998 Finally a bust? Al Harrington as a HS pick is rather mediocre, but he was picked 25th. And despite being a rather average to below average player is still playing (because he can shoot reasonably well). Rashard Lewis picked 32nd is a capable NBA player and 5th best player in this draft (roughly as good as Antawn Jamison who went 4th). Dirk Nowitzki is an international player of note picked at 10th is the best player in this draft, followed by Paul Pierce and Vince Carter. Brad Miller goes undrafted and comes in at 6th. Korleone Young is drafted 40th and does pretty much nothing. Second round picks rarely do though. Famously this is the Olowakandi draft (he was terrible and picked 1st) and also famously Nowitzki was traded for Robert "Tractor" Traylor, who went 6th and has a short unimpressive career while Dirk has a surefire HoF career.

1999. Here some real worry probably started to creep in.  Jonathan Bender goes 5th, mostly on the strength of comparisons to KG. While he never really puts up any numbers anyway, he also has a very brief injury riddled career. Leon Smith is a total basket case of a human being, is drafted at 29th and doesn't amount to much either. More than likely, his career, what there was of it, IS the case against drafting HS players. But I have a hard time seeing much generalisation to be made of his circumstances to any high school athlete. Manu Ginobili goes 57th and is probably the 2nd best player in this draft (behind Shawn Marion).

2000 A historically bad draft class all around. Michael Redd is the only good player drafted (43rd), while Mike Miller (5th) and Kenyon Martin (1st) are the only other reasonably productive players picked and a pair of others (Turkoglu and Jamal Crawford) are decent. And that is all. Darius Miles goes 3rd, the highest a HS player has gone so far, probably because nobody else seems very good anyway, and doesn't amount to very much (but isn't nearly as bad as Marcus Fizer, picked after him at 4th). DeShawn Stevenson goes 23rd, and appears to have a niche as a bearded defensive player (and is still in the league today) but few other appreciable skills.

2001 Odd class all around. Kwame Brown goes 1st. He is a below average player, but sticks around in the league still today and isn't nearly as terrible as Olowakandi was. Pau Gasol is clearly better than anyone else from this class (picked 3rd), followed by Tony Parker (a young French point guard at the time, picked 28th), and Tyson Chandler (picked 2nd and another very good HS player). Despite the flops of Brown and Eddy Curry (a HS player picked 4th, a high volume scoring big man who can't do anything else at all, ends up with a heart condition to boot), this is actually a very deep draft with many highly skilled players scattered in it (about 11-12). Diop, while styled as an international player, played HS ball in the US and is picked 8th. Doesn't amount to much.

2002 Amare Stoudemire becomes the first HS player to win a rookie of the Year award after being picked 9th. He remains the best player from this draft, although Yao Ming was too injury prone to actually claim this title. Stoudemire's a problem child player for much of his career though and a terrible post defender.

2003 LeBron. Enough said there. Kendrick Perkins goes 27th and isn't all that productive but has a mean scowl and excellent post defense skills. Travis Outlaw goes 23rd and somehow ends up with a "Travis Outlaw's contract" style career, which is to say, he gets dramatically overpaid and isn't a very good player. Darko Milicic goes 2nd and isn't all that productive either. We could consider him either international or HS. Ndubi Edi and James Lang are also HS players drafted in this class. Neither amounts to much of anything. Both go late (26th and 48th).

2004 Dwight Howard. Again, enough said. A ton of HS players are picked this year in the first round. Al Jefferson goes 15th and is the 3rd best player in this class (behind Iguodala). Josh Smith goes 17th and while something of a coaching problem (for putting up ill-advised jump shots, among other reasons), is actually quite good (probably 6th best in class behind Luol Deng). JR Smith is an even bigger coaching problem at 18th, but again, at least a skilled scorer. Dorell Wright goes 19th and takes a while to get some PT, but turns out okay (better than JR, but with less minutes). This class is marred basically by the Bassy Telfair pick at 13th, who had a documentary film produced about his HS to NBA leap and the knee injuries to Shaun Livingston (picked 4th). (don't click on that if you're squeamish, his leg literally bends sideways suffices to say). And then the pick of Robert Swift at 12th, which amounts to a total dud, but certainly not any bigger than Araujo at 8th.

2005 Andrew Bynum goes 10th, aside from injuries, he's probably the 4th best player in this class (just ahead of undrafted Jose Calderon) but well behind Deron Williams and way behind Chris Paul. Monte Ellis goes 40th and becomes a famous ballhog but otherwise is a solid player (especially for a second round pick). Louis Williams goes 45th and ends up as a very good instant offense shooter as well. Martell Webster goes 6th and ends up just below average (behind Francisco Garcia who went 23rd). Andrey Blatche is a headcase picked at 49th but having a productive season this year with the Nets. Amir Johnson goes 56th, gets limited minutes with the Pistons, but plays very productively in them (followed also with somewhat less limited minutes with Raptors and still more productive play). Gerald Green goes 18th and wins a dunk contest, but not much else is done. CJ Miles goes 34th and is also largely unproductive.

I don't count very many "busts" here such that the problem was NBA teams needed to protect themselves from themselves. There's a good volume of late-first round and second round picks (picks which rarely turn out to be suggestive of productive NBA careers). This suggests that many NBA teams already recognized the dangers of HS evaluations and adjusted accordingly. The famous busts of Kwame Brown (thanks be to Michael Jordan), and Telfair's documentary, and a few problems of immaturity (Miles, Stoudemire, the Smiths, Blatche), appear to be the cause of concerns here. There are also numerous cases where these players had to play a year or two of pro ball to begin to become productive however. Garnett or Kobe don't start out as a perennial All-Star for example and McGrady doesn't win a couple scoring titles right away either. Howard or LeBron are both very good immediately but neither is rookie of the year, and neither is in the discussion for top 5 best players in the league for at least a couple of seasons. So it is possible an extra year of seasoning may help these players mature better or polish their games. That argument is not invalidated by saying the age restriction is dumb. It also takes most college players a year or two to begin to adjust to the skill level jumps, and usually year 3 is when any player begins to really flourish.

What it suggests is the NBA prefers to have someone else pay to develop the players, pushing risks off on someone else (in this case, the players themselves and colleges who recruit them for one-and-done runs). For the most part, college freshmen who are drafted are a relatively safer bet than HS players, in the defence of this practice. But college freshmen are rarely drafted outside of the lottery or first rounds. HS players were. In addition, statistically valid issues can be raised with international player scouting and that of 4 year seniors who are drafted, both groups that fail on a very high rate relative to HS players and underclassmen who are drafted. There are prominent examples of both groups who succeed, who are held up as exemplars (particularly Tim Duncan or Steve Nash types as 4th year college players) but we rarely hear about 4th year seniors who are terrible professionals who are drafted. This may be because such players are rarely lottery picks in the first place (Jimmer Fredette so far is in this category, Terrence Williams from a few years back, Acie Law and Al Thornton in the same draft, and then Luke Jackson, as but a few examples). But if such a comparison is fair and honest, we should admit that many of the HS players who have failed and busted or been mediocre are of similar draft status to that of international or college players and have similar expectations leveled upon them. Whatever the valid reasons may be behind such a policy, it doesn't appear that "protecting" owners from their supposed stupidity is one of them.

HS great picks would be
KG
Kobe
LeBron
Howard
McGrady
Chandler
Stoudemire
Jefferson
Lewis (mostly because he was second round)
Josh Smith

Value picks
Bynum
Wright
JR Smith
Jermaine O'Neal
Williams
Ellis
Johnson
Perkins
Blatche
Harrington

HS Busts would be
Brown (#1 picks aren't supposed to be below average)
Swift
Telfair
Darius Miles
Bender
Webster
Livingston
Eddy Curry

Lost picks would be
Young
Lang
Ebi
Leon Smith
Outlaw
Green
CJ Miles
Stevenson

This looks like a fairly normal distribution, but it has some serious top heavy options.

Week 2

Not much changed, despite the apparent chaos of upsets. The bigger sort seemed to occur among the middle, bubble quality teams with a few (Illinois, Virginia), playing up, and a few (BYU, Maryland), playing down.

I will start posting top 100 records. Any extra record element is non-top 100 losses. For most good teams, this would be a non-factor, but it becomes an issue with many bubble teams, if for no other reason than to explain absurdly high RPIs. I consider games against non-top 100 teams to be irrelevant record padding (college football is much worse on this front with very few games outside the top 30-40 teams). Top 50 records aren't much better as a metric unless a team has a bunch of 50-100 wins but nothing in the 1-50 range (California did this last year, and lost in the first round).

1) Florida 9-3
2) Indiana 8-3
These two may take a lot, a major injury for example, to drop down to the next tier.

3) Michigan 9-3
4) Louisville 9-5
5) Duke 13-2
6) Syracuse 9-3
7) Pittsburgh 8-4-1
I could see Michigan moving up from this tier, and Miami or Gonzaga moving up.

8) Miami 12-3
9) Gonzaga 9-2
10) Ohio St. 4-6
11) Kansas 11-3-1
12) Minnesota 8-6-1
13) Wisconsin 8-7
14) Michigan St 8-4
15) Arizona 8-3
Pretty stable group here I think. Minnesota is the highest team I'm charting that isn't ranked in the AP (they're 26th, they were ranked last week though).

16) Kentucky 4-6
17) Creighton 8-4-1
18) Colorado St 6-3-1
19) Oklahoma St 8-4-1
20) VCU 7-4-1
21) Cincinnati 6-6
22) St Marys 2-3-1
23) Baylor 6-6-2
24) Georgetown 8-3-1
25) San Diego St 5-5
Creighton dropped way too much for their loss this week in the polls.

Honorable Mentions (ranked teams)
27) Virginia 6-1-5 (5!)
28) Marquette 5-4-1
36) New Mexico 12-4
40) Butler 8-4
41) Memphis 4-342) Notre Dame 6-5
47) Oregon 5-4-1

Early NCAA Ranks

I use a composite of Pomeroy, Sagarin Predictor, and LRMC to rank teams. It comes out fairly close to ESPN's BPI, but there's some twists and turns along the way. It tends, combined with some other factors, to put me in the top 1-2 percentile on ESPN's bracket challenges year after year.

I will look at things like away/neutral records or high/low pace teams once the field is set to adjust picks but I don't generally care until then. A very good team will win either way anyway. Teams that are closely or reverse ranked on this list when matched up tend to be excellent upset picks early.

For once the polls appear to be correct near the top at least. (Louisville is a little underrated and Butler is way overrated). I made the mistake of actually looking at the horrid RPI ranking system, so there's some notes on that.

1) Florida
2) Indiana

3) Michigan
4) Duke
5) Louisville

6) Kansas
7) Syracuse
8) Pittsburgh (huge gap on RPI rank)
9) Ohio State
10) Gonzaga

11) Minnesota
12) Miami (somehow 2nd in RPI?)
13) Arizona (somehow 3rd?)
14) Creighton
15) Wisconsin (perennially underrated, probably because they're boring and slow. Pitt is slower this year though)

16) Kentucky (44th?)
17) Michigan State
18) Colorado State
19) Cincinnati
20) Oklahoma St
21) VCU (49th?)

22) Georgetown
23) San Diego St
24) Ole Miss
25) Baylor

Some other teams of note
26) St Marys (somehow 60th in RPI)
27) UNLV
29) Belmont (little conference high pace team, fun upset watch pick)
34) BYU (on Lunardi's bubble, safely in here)
36) New Mexico (5th! in RPI? 5th!)
37) Oregon (ranked)
38) Missouri (ranked)
42) Middle Tennessee (little conference likely snubbed team if they don't win out, also fun upset watch)
45) Butler (ranked, 14th RPI?). I have them in but they're on my bubble.

Southern is also having the best season for a SWAC team since I've been keeping track of the probable and set fields. That doesn't mean they'll win any games, but they're inside the top 200, which is astonishing for that league. I have them at roughly 148th. I think a number of times a worse team has won their conference tournaments, bumping them up to 300th range, but even then, the better team was only in the 220s.

Memphis, UConn, UCLA, and Virginia would be the last four in at large.

Right now here's my list of bubble teams that wouldn't get in:
Maryland
Illinois
Oklahoma (23rd?)
Arkansas
LaSalle (27th?)
Alabama
Temple
Villanova

Lunardi also has either in or on the bubble listed these teams:
Louisiana Tech
Arizona State
Indiana State
Washington
St John's
Only two of those (La Tech and Indiana St) even made my list to keep tabs on and neither would get in.

A movie or two

I've taken a long hiatus from recording my thoughts here. They've mostly ended up in extended debates on social network forums where I've had them. And of course the vacuousness of the election cycle was very wearisome to any attempt to find thoughtful debates over actual issues.

Nevertheless, things are still happening, and I am still thinking about some of them.

1) I don't think we should be getting into Mali. The only justification for a national interest I can think of is that we have fucked up that country by previously fucking up another one (Libya). Which is a rather dumb way of saying "why don't we light something else on fire and see if that helps put out the flames".

2) I have followed the Newtown tragedy with my usual indifferent attitude. I'm extremely skeptical that most of the proposed ideas have much merit. I would endorse the following statements:
- We should study the epidemiology of our violence. What causes it. What steps could be taken to prevent it once we understand it. We have a lot of violence and murder even after it has decreased, far more than most developed countries. We also have a lot of misinformation, fear-mongering, and easily lifted off the shelf causes (ban violent video games! ban rap music! ban assault weapons! throw lots of people in jail or mental hospitals!) that I doubt would accomplish much but which suck up a huge portion of the oxygen in the wake of these events while excluding any pertinent discussion. Arming a few people with some facts would allow actual reasoned debates to occur somewhere and might allow prominent media outlets to book sane people rather than Alex Jones types
- Encourage mental health to reform and share information where necessary, but also to be less stigmatize socially. A handful of lunatics heavily armed have effectively made the lot of us scared of anyone who has the slightest case of depression or shows anxiety at work or school. And for the most part, the reality is that it is precisely the people who are "off" in that sense who are most vulnerable and most often violated in their person or property, assaulted, raped, etc, among us.
- Stop pretending there's a functional difference between semi-automatic rifles and other legal weapons. They just look scarier to people who don't like guns but in both cases they're designed and capable of spitting out little metal pullets at high speed into living tissue and causing damage and death, at close or long range. Actual machine guns or bazookas or tanks or land mines or surface to air missiles are generally illegal and heavily restricted (eg banned). There are people who disagree with some of those bans as well on moral or legal grounds, but by and large, these weapons at least have functional differences from a common hunting rifle, handgun, or shotgun that allow for legal distinctions to occur and which could apply to their function as weapons. "Assault rifles" do not.
- Gun rights advocates should not presume to the defence of liberty against tyranny as the first most accessible argument for the protected right of gun ownership in this country. Tyranny has many forms, and I'd much rather that a free society defend ALL of its rights and liberties against it, not just its right to be armed. Nevertheless, in defending that right, there are a number of sane sounding justifications for why someone would want a particular gun. Sport, discipline, hunting, and self-defence all spring to mind and would apply just as well to virtually any weapon which is presently legal. I find the macho-gun culture aspects of how some of these are marketed, presented, and used to be more than a little repellent personally, in that I find men should have quite enough confidence in their penis without needing a gun to represent something. But my personal sentiments are hardly a good basis for public policy. Neither are yours.

3) Movies. I've now seen 5 of the 9 nominees for best pictures. 4 of them were mediocre to decent in my mind (Lincoln and Django were okay to low end good, Zero was decent but not great, Les Miserables had a lot of people who couldn't sing in it but were determined to pretend otherwise). Argo was a good movie, but I wouldn't say it was "best picture" material (Affleck can direct though). I've heard good things about Beasts and will probably see it and Silver Linings at some point. I'm not sure that there were "Oscar" worthy films this year in that sense so much as a few good blockbusters (Avengers, Skyfall, and Dark Knight Rises. The first Hobbit movie wasn't that great, but had a few flashes of promise too).

Daniel Day Lewis was very good in Lincoln even though I thought the rest of the film was way too messy. I thought Denzel did well in Flight too as a functional alcoholic. I don't have critical opinions on the rest of the field.

The main reason to bring this up: Zero Dark Thirty. I think it was a touch too long. I think Chastain did rather well in it acting wise but I suspect her story or character was trumped up and condensed to make the CIA seem more sympathetic. I think it is deliberately ambiguous about the torture sequences in some ways. I think it's very direct that what we were doing was in fact TORTURE. In capital letters, even if no one refers to it as such, stress positions, blaring music, putting people in tiny boxes, water boarding, stripping men naked and cold (in front of women, a cultural affront on top of the physical) and so on. It's unpleasant even watching the violence afflicted by men wearing black masks upon their helpless captives even though in most cases these are men who plotted or participated in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians. It messes with the people doing it, it's directly referred as hurting and pain, and so on. The ambiguous part is that people keep complaining that they cannot do it as though it must have offered them some perceived advantage but it never really demonstrates any such advantages in gathering intelligence about the war on terror efforts or learning any vital clues on the trail to Osama. The vital clues come from normal acts of intelligence gathering (tips, bribes in the "right" places, etc). Also the film seems to be blaming Obama for that change even though Bush was the one who ordered the halt, which I think is a mistake.

The important non-ambiguous part I got from watching it though was this: We went in there specifically to kill Osama. Period. There wasn't effective resistance. There was a calm and deliberate intention. The only reason we spent special forces on it instead of a drone or air strike was to a) be sure he was there and b) be sure he was killed. It had the secondary effect of limiting collateral damage by not killing a bunch of random civilians (and of course, wives and children of the people living in the compound). That's it. We can think of some justification for why he would be killed, perhaps he would shoot back or blow himself up, something. But none of those hold in the depiction of events, the planning involved, the questions surrounding the operation, the attitudes of people involved. We could say this is from fictionalized accounts. But we also get the strong impression that the film was crafted with the participation of the White House, the CIA, and the special forces community (including the team involved in the strike). If they had input, and they disagree with the notion that we went in there specifically to kill rather than collect him, I'd say someone should say so. Nobody seems all that intent on disagreeing with that notion even though they went to some effort to establish it as true before. Personally, I find that more than a little troubling. I don't particularly care that we sometimes use military force and drones strikes to kill people in foreign countries in theory. I'm not a pacifist, even though I'm far less belligerent than most Americans it seems. Still. I find it at least a little strange that we would send in a special forces team to assassinate someone who we could by sending that team have had hauled back, put on trial, and eventually have killed in a more ordinary and banal American way (the death penalty).

I think the idea that terrorism is more like a crime, perhaps a war crime at times but a crime nonetheless, is one of the more effective premises available in suppressing it. Giving it elevation as a proper military tactic, worthy of (always) the full military response is a) a waste of nation-state resources and treasure and military forces and b) an undeserved credit to a bunch of murderous thugs. People argue that putting these people on trial allows them access to media, undeserved legal protections, that we would have to disclose a good deal of intelligence gathering methods and sources. I'd argue that those legal protections are important because they help assure fairness in the legal system, and it thus ensures that our burdens of proof must be high to imprison and especially to kill other human beings. Accusations are not enough to have a man stripped of his freedom and thrown into prison, there is to be a due process of law executed to assert these accusations have merit and evidence backing them. We have already protections to allow for intelligence and secrecy in trials. And allowing people access allows them to display their full measure of disconnectedness or to articulate arguments that are disjointed from the usual notions of terrorism while all the time being afforded a proper legal and ethical treatment that is often believed unavailable or inaccessible to people persuaded by these foolish notions and the thugs who promote them. If we appear less the hypocrites, so much the better.

General reactions to the defining moment of our times...

Which for me boiled down to a choice between flavors of ice cream rather than anything momentous and important. And probably will come down to it as equally bland in historical terms years from now also.

1) I think conservative skepticism of polling had some merit to the general arguments, but the problem was that they seemed interested in rejecting the entire trend line of polls, conducted by different agencies with different methodologies, etc, and accepting only information which conformed to the "Romney is going to win! Woot!" narrative rather than information which could be used to describe the political landscape as it existed in 2012. Liberals and Democrats have learned how to analyze polling data after Kerry was defeated in 2004 (and Gore in 2000), and then to use it to inform ways to motivate their base, or to target groups of swing votes. At some point conservatives may do the same. I'm not sure yet if that means most Republicans will.

2) From following various conservative pundits reactions, the likely step is going to be a double down strategy on the idea that Mitt wasn't conservative enough. I think this is politically stupid, but I also have nothing invested in Republicans per se either (the idea of conservativism is sensible enough in forming a basis for a governing party, but we seem to have lots of reactionaries rather than conservatives at the moment), so go right ahead. The basis of this presumption appears to be the maintenance of the House as somehow legitimatizing the Tea Party style operations. There are huge logical gaps in this. First, I don't think anyone thought Democrats could win the House back, perhaps even many who thought there would even be substantial gains. So predicating a victory on voters maintaining the status quo is rather faulty logic (I think the same applies to Obama's win also, though less in the Senate). Voters usually maintain the status quo as that's part of the voting bias. Second, from the information I am seeing, the Tea Party style operations seem to have cost Republicans the Senate, both in this election and in 2010. Running ridiculously unqualified people who say insane things (O'Donnell, Akin, Angle, Mourdock, Buck) is not an encouraging electoral strategy for achieving long-run victories. Democrats had some of the same painful lessons in the wake of the Iraq War (trying to get rid of Lieberman for example), but Republicans are having a lot of trouble absorbing the lessons and adjusting their electoral strategies.

Most of the Tea Party styled victors for Senate seats were in relatively safe states for Republicans (Utah, Kentucky, etc). So the effect has been to move the Republican caucus to the right (in some ways, not in others). There's a few contrasting cases (Wisconsin?) where they managed to find saner or competent seeming candidates that still had high base appeal. I'm not at all convinced this is a sustainable trend wherein the Republican establishment manages to find tame enough people capable of winning elections but also who can win over Tea Party voters in primaries. This plan might work okay in the House, but not for President or Senate. As a correlated problem, moving the caucus to the right allows liberals to paint mostly moderate Republicans with the same right-wing extremist brushes and cast them aside in more liberal states (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Illinois, etc) where they may otherwise stand a chance of winning. It assures that Republicans become less competitive in those states.

Finally, what seems to me the most significant source of power to maintain many House seats was the 2010 elections that granted Republicans considerable control over redistricting from the 2010 census changes. Ohio in particular has a cadre of pretty safe hard R seats out there now surrounding the liberal bastions of Columbus or Cleveland that are effectively conceded. While this may allow for some Republican control over relatively safe seats for another decade and hence insure some divided government gridlock, it doesn't say much about winning over the rest of the country to their agenda. And if last night's results were any indicator, it doesn't say much about assuring that those are safe seats. Allen West looks to have lost, Bachmann nearly so, and so on.

* A note: I consider the "tea party" to consist not just of a set of fiscal priorities. This is largely because conservatives tend not to agree on how best to resolve those priorities, or what they in fact are. Other than a general sense that deficits are bad, at least when run by Democrats or not caused by defense spending, and that the debt climbing is bad, I do not see much progress here on how to address these as problems. Where there is broader agreement among conservatives is on social policies. Which is precisely where they have made progress at the state level enacting their agenda. Moving away from these types of candidates, the types likely to say expansive and stupid things about female biology when discussing rape victims or to admit their come-to-Jesus moment involving witchcraft, or to include chickens as a viable form of currency, would be a big start. I do not think this is a likely result if they were to double down on the political figures involved in order to say, focus on Rand Paul or Tom Coburn or even Paul Ryan styled conservatives, with their intensity on budget matters and the tough choices involved therein. They're more likely to get DeMint or Bachmann styled conservatives in less safe districts and states who insist that social and fiscal conservativism are melded as one.

3) I don't think Republicans need to abandon a message of smaller government or conservative principles to win over voters to their cause. But they should be aware there's a lot of people who no longer resonate as clearly to mixing a message of fiscal restraint with expansionist foreign policy or moralising social policies, and that when they go off message and discuss these things or try to pass agendas based on them, many voters will find them unpalatable. Not just liberals. Keep in mind that while Romney lost, he didn't lose by very much (some tens of thousands of votes in various states). It would not take very much adaptation and moderation on some issues to go back to winning national elections moving forward. The question is whether Republicans are interested in analysis or rage. I suspect the latter.

4) I also think it would help a great deal to have a saner approach to fiscal restraint. Reaganomics had what successes it had in the 1980s economy because it was part of a broad set of reforms, from monetary policy under Volcker, to neo-Keynesian spending increases, to tax simplification and flattening of the tax code, and as an offshoot of some successful de-regulatory moves made under the Carter administration. Most of those specifics do little to translate to the current environment. Tax simplification while desirable has a lot of embittered constituencies who would fight for some of the complexity. Spending cuts do likewise. And both sides seem willing to talk about culling the excessively broad quantity and reach of regulatory power, but do little to curtail it while in power, even in relatively sane arenas where there are competing and patchwork laws. Instead of tackling these with sensible proposals, for the most part Republicans have offered soft messages like "balanced budget amendments", which if they stood a chance of passage would be accompanied by a constituency willing to make hard cuts, or insane messages like flirting with debt defaults while mostly ignoring entitlement spending, risking both the safety of that spending and the financial stability of the nation as a whole. To be sure, the Romney plan eventually provided some hard choices in tax reform specifically, and the Ryan budget plan is a good starting point for talking about entitlement reforms. But these fledgling signs of fiscal prudence are balanced by Romney's desire for tax cuts more broadly when we're at historically low levels of taxation and an insistence on defence spending, all while demagoguing Obamacare in part because of cuts it makes to entitlement spending. It's hard to know which part of that message to take most seriously, and an honest assessment of our political structures would tell us that only parts of it would ever pass into law in the first place. And probably not the good parts.

Please. Everyone shut up and look in the mirror.

I've seen and heard multiple people insisting on a desire for political figures to "do what's right", or to "do something" rather than bicker and argue pointlessly. I maintain that there are many, many problems with this desired approach to government.

Firstly, "doing what's right" is a very uncertain phrase, wherein people would likely find that their elected political figures would be doing a lot of things they wouldn't like very much and replace them with people that will do what they want, rather than what is actually necessary and effective to do. The American public wants a lot of inconsistent demands, low taxes and expensive public (and federal) services for instance. Mitt Romney's entire political shtick seems to be based around delivering this magically flavored ice cream where both are possible. There's a reason it's successful. Promising people things that are not possible or are not wise (more or less anything he's said he will do regarding China), is politically popular.

Second. The impetus of requirement to "do something" is very troubling. Often doing nothing is a perfectly reasonable response to a problem. Indeed, the public seems content for the government do very little about problems like Syria or Iran (as it should, as I'm not sure there's very much we could effectively do in the first place). It only becomes a concern when it is OUR problem. A natural disaster occurs, somebody better be helping out. To be sure, one may concede that there are basically good Samaritan style reasons why we might want some public goods and charity dispensed in the wake of a wave of tornadoes or a hurricane, earthquake, volcano, tsunami, whatever. And while there are arguments why we might not want large scale public assistance (for example, to incentivize people to relocate to places that don't have these major disasters), we also need to acknowledge that these are otherwise desirable places for people to live (California's climate for example is excellent, coastal cities around the world are always high demand, etc) and that some measures are appropriate to protect the citizenry from the folly of such geographical stubbornness. But this is distinct from saying the government must do everything in such scenarios to assist, or, more concisely, to point out that just because a legitimate form of public goods may exist in disaster assistance, does not mean that a form of legitimate public goods or externalities also exist in some other realm of intervention and assistance. Medicare for example is distinct from the provision of public health. Same with public school monopolies and education (or hospital monopolies) or Social Security or the Post Office and so on down the line.

Finally, the reason that we have (basically) two political teams that fight and contest everything is that we (basically) have two Americas, sorted ideologically into combative teams. Both sides only claim victories not when they work together (and when they do work together, generally I am skeptical that it's beneficial anyway), but when they achieve something ideologically designed and can lord it over their enemies. The reason isn't just zero sum politics, but that the public perceives only these sorts of victories as desirable. The public wants it this way, we desire the incivility and contest. We desire the battle and the shedding of blood in our rivals; "their" defeats and "our" triumphs. We do not desire unsatisfying compromises about what kind of governance we shall appoint through reasoned debate over these mutually exclusive demands into some sort of utilitarian affected views where the public shall and shall not intervene into the private business and affairs of our countrymen to achieve stated ideological goals. Only boring policy wonks celebrate technocratic achievements of this kind. If we wanted effective conservatives, and effective liberals, we would elect them, support them, and recognize them. We do not.

We should blame ourselves and shut the hell up about these inconsistent desires for productive, effective governance and incivil electoral combat. You can't have both. This is your problem. Not the politicians.

Things to miss

I skipped (most of) the debate. I had a lot of reasons. First, I really don't care very much about domestic policy debates between Presidents. Some amount of agenda setting is useful, but I doubt very much that the various positions between these two add up to substantially distinct agendas worth listening to them debate. Since I missed it, I read up on it instead. These were good ones from the live-blogging/tweet world.

"Continue to burn clean coal." I would like America also to continue to use cold fusion."
In general, people who proclaim a desire for "energy independence" are as reliable to do so and just as reliable to fail to realize that desire. While I think coal is going to be around for a while yet, I don't think we should kid ourselves that the technology is very clean and sound environmentally. In any case, while coal is a big issue in Ohio/WVa/PA, it seems like a dead issue with all the natural gas and fracking coming online instead. 

"Romney argues it's immoral to pass the burden of debt to younger generations. He says he'll cut any programme it's not worth borrowing money from China to pay for. I'm afraid unfunding Big Bird and Jim Lehrer is not going to help much."

The pleasant fiction that cutting things can be accomplished without changing entitlements, keeping taxes low, leaving most loopholes intact, and raising military spending, is persistent. But somebody needs to call bullshit on it. Maybe there's an argument for cutting PBS or foreign aid or art, or whatever, but those are small potatoes that don't impress me when someone says they'll cut it. Romney wasn't even willing to cut Education funding. That's a much larger chunk of change. 

"I suppose the deduction for corporate jets ought to depend on whether they have windows that open." - That joke is going to get a lot of mileage it seems. "Not giving subsidies to Exxon: Good. Corporate jet tax: meaningless. Not giving tax breaks to ship jobs overseas: worse than meaningless." - I'm not sure what, if any, substance comes up in these debates usually. I seem to recall they offered something once in a while. I don't think the "borrowing money from China" or "sending jobs to China" lines are true, relate to anything either would do in office, but they persist because the public believes it seems that China bashing is more fun than taking responsibility for their own failings. 

"He has proposed a tax plan that would inevitably add to the deficit, but claimed he would never pass a tax plan that would add to the deficit. He says he wouldn't bring down the deficit by raising revenue, but attacks Obama for not supporting a plan that would bring down the deficit by raising revenue. And it all sounds rather convincing." - This was vintage Romney. The amusing (or perhaps disturbing, depending on your perspective) part of the debates seems to have been that Obama wasn't calling these bluffs on things like Medicare, defence spending, tax cuts, etc. 

"I'm not sure if I'm learning anything from this debate, but I expect to learn a lot from the fact-checks that will inevitably follow." - Pretty much. Some of the fact-checks preceded it even. 

Since I had already decided who I would vote for, and it wasn't either of those jokers. 
I have the following wonders
1) In baseball, someone (Cabrera) won the Triple Crown for the first time in 45 years. This doesn't appear to be a big deal (it also wasn't his best season, so maybe that's the issue). Given that baseball is actually making quite a lot of money still and therefore must have fans somewhere, I'm not sure why this is. Because he was playing in Detroit? Because he's Latino? Because he was a fairly predictable case to win a TC (Pujols being another)? 
2) I'm still undecided on whether Homeland is a pro-war-on-terror show or anti. It's hard to tell. 
3) The movie Looper was incredibly predictable. It did not meet my expectations but was possibly a decent film anyway. 

Wherefore a foreign policy debate? It ebbs and flows and then is heard no more.

Most people do not follow foreign relations. Fewer still follow these events abroad, and our interventions in them, with much serious interest. So for people who have the misfortune to follow me and see social network feeds jammed with IR related things (from time to time) during an election that's supposedly about economics (but isn't really), a word or two. 

I began writing in blog form back in 2006. At the time, I was disheartened by our international affairs, our conduct abroad, and to an extent our internal relations as they related to these. Dissent it seemed was not prized or debated but was viewed as treason. Dissent not merely from a foreign policy consensus that excluded pacific and realism perspectives, but also from the absurd lengths of our internal security measures and the expense paid in both blood and especially treasure to attain whatever it is we thought we were attaining. I titled a blog at that point after a famous IR realist (perhaps THE famous IR realist until Machiavelli and Clausewitz appear, and Bismarck puts much of it into practice) in part because I wanted to signal what views I felt needed airing. I have since had the disconcerting habit of butting my head in to think about other things, like economics or health care or anti-drug policy, but I am at heart greatly interested in how a nation plays the game of nations.These other matters, how it taxes, who it taxes, how it polices itself, what it polices, how it treats its poor, how it rewards its wealth, how it teaches its children, what it teaches, what infrastructure it has and wants, energy, climate policies, and so on. These are all concerns that can feed back into that "game" because they are ways we use our precise communal and individual resources and attentions, and how we may gain new resources for our collective and individual futures. Observing these trends may be helpful to gain insights into how a society and its people prepares for the mundane task of encouraging growth and prosperity, who it intends to grow and prosper (and who it does not), what sources of vibrancy in culture or innovation it seeks and which it condemns, how capably (or not) its government and officials disturb or cultivate these trends. By this we might hope to see how it might be prepared or not for larger tasks like major supply shocks, trade embargoes, unfriendly or aggressive actions by neighbours or rivals and so on.

Now. Back to this year. I've long since declared here and elsewhere that I'm essentially in the tank for Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico and libertarian candidate for President. I have many reasons where my views and his seem to align, often where his depart radically and preferrably in my view from the two party consensus on a number of important issues. Chief among these are foreign policy and civil liberties related issues. Johnson does not describe coherently an IR vision anymore than most candidates do, and perhaps less so than is typical owing to his third party status in a two party nation. But where he has opined about various matters international, he has expressed what seems to me like a liberal realist vision. If there can be such a thing, or neoliberal IR if not. The basic premise of a country in realist terms is to look to satisfy its interests. It can do so through aggression where it needs to and where that will succeed, but it often as not is possible to achieve desirable ends with diplomacy, both through cunning in the form of espionage and through allegiances and friendships of either value or convenience.  War is to be viewed as a non-trivial expense that can be avoided, with most conflicts to be won without ever having to fire a shot. This is also not the same as isolationism, nor an inherent desire for massive and extensive military cuts. A modestly powerful military with a defensive mindset in army and air power terms, and power projection in naval and air power terms with special operations branch for rapid global deployment would generally satisfy our needs below unlikely WW3 scenarios. Or the alien invasion/zombie apocalypse scenarios where our military usually gets to square off and triumph over in movies and books now days. 

It is perfectly possible for the American union to construct and maintain a powerful force for defensive purposes and to do things like combat international threats (like piracy or terrorism or aggressive foreign powers), while also doing things like nominally abide by international treaties we sign, cooperate with allies abroad in the satisfaction of their interests (where it is useful to us to assist or to maintain their allegiance) and so on. It is not, and was not, in the interests of this union to do things like expend valuable blood and treasure on matters of choice or where that expenditure served no interest and accomplished no valuable goals. Conquest and occupation of foreign countries that pose minimal international threats and through which we gain no value that isn't otherwise cheaply attained through trade and diplomacy are among the list of valueless goals for using force in my view.

I might be persuaded that we can deploy force abroad to stop people from aggression against their neighbours abroad. There are examples of such things, and it seems a prudent measure for our own long-term security to maintain a relative balancing of power on the globe, if not a hegemony of our own dominance. I might even, less likely, be persuaded that we can deploy force abroad successfully to stop people from aggression against their actual neighbours (the people living in the same country with them). I cannot be persuaded that either the post 2003 Afghanistan war or the invasion of Iraq occupied any of the above spheres of influence and interest to carry out and to extend and continue. I recognized this as a problem back in 2003, and was fed up with it by 2006. I saw little chance for the political figures involved from either major party to properly and rapidly extract themselves and indeed, observed their intentions to double down on these engagements with disdain.

Fast forwarding back to today. I have seen precious little debate and precious little evidence that Gov Romney even notices the rest of the world goes on. What evidence there is does little to suggest that either of our two party candidates have a firm grasp on a foreign policy vision, and disturbingly, little evidence emerges that they would do anything of substance with great distinction from the other. Running down the problems here.
1) Both have a very mixed, muddled strategy depicted in Afghanistan, alternately proposing that we keep troops there, diplomatically attempting to arrange such a status, and proposing that we leave or should have already left. These are incoherent visions mostly.
2) Both have a very mixed, muddled strategy depicted on Iraq. Again, alternately proposing we leave, we should have left, we should stay, we should have stayed, declaring that we have left when we haven't and so on.
3) Both have a strong pro-drug war stance which weakens and destablises at least one neighbouring country and causes some instability and danger directly on or very near our borders. Drug war deaths in Mexico alone are staggering over the past decade. Adding in Afghanistan or Colombia and the picture gets uglier. Currently also, both have advocated aggressive enforcement of immigration statutes, even if Mr Obama has recently decided for political purposes to stop prioritizing certain enforcement strategies, his administration is and was at a record pace for deporting people largely for the "crimes" of living and working. Mr Romney it seems endorses the idea that fixed fortifications would accelerate this process ignoring the obvious fact that the swiftness of voluntary deportations over the last 4-5 years has both made enforcement easier and pointed out that the principle motivation of migrants is employment and economic opportunities. Not the apparent laziness brought in by a too forgiving social welfare system, as he describes it. 
4) Both have advocated a mostly hostile approach toward Iran. Mr Obama took a more diplomatic tone in rhetoric but has still managed to walk through large-scale sanctions and penalties that his opposite endorsed (prior to them becoming policy). And both wink-nudge (our) approaches of espionage for sabotage and assassination of Iranian scientists and centrifuges. Neither has discarded the possibility or rhetoric of conflict despite an American public that is mostly arrayed against the idea of another open war.
5) Both have suggested and promoted defence budgets that grow. Gov Romney's proposal is larger than that of both his VP candidate (Rep Ryan) and President Obama's, but it is nonetheless bizarre that both parties want to increase defence spending. Neither is articulating a clear vision of what to do with those dollars, on what weapons systems we are apparently lacking, on what enemy we need be prepared to face. What little has emerged here is not encouraging, as it seems clear both parties want to be able to play whack-a-mole and drop bombs and drones and put some boots on the ground in mostly trivial countries for indefinite periods of time. This is a horribly expensive use of a military and a wasteful one for the things we expended vast sums of money on. Stealth aircraft and armored tanks are mostly useless for urban pacification. Pretending that we should perform both roles is likewise useless. We would have to train all service personnel for both roles (at least Army, National Guard units, and the Air Force, probably Marines as well). Which is wasteful use of specialisation gains and requires extended deployments in countries many troops will be scarcely more aware of as to the language and culture around them than we are. I will say it is more clear that Mr Obama has an interest in these as goals for liberal internationalist reasons. But that only calls into question for what uses Mr Romney might have in mind for his more extravagant military budget proposal and why he hasn't communicated such things.

What I'm left with in difference are generally only the most ridiculous and absurd statements made by either Messrs Obama or Romney, such as over this latest tragedy with the death of an ambassador in Libya and the apparent desire that this death be seen as part of a continuing right-wing trope about apologetics rather than recognizing that an ambassador in a foreign land which we helped to destabilise by bombing and weakening its previous ruler out of power (and to his death), is liable to be at least an unwelcoming environment requiring a modest attention to security of our personnel as they carry out their duties representing our interests. Or perhaps recognizing that it may not have been that wise or necessary to intercede when it produces a continuing level of violence and bloodshed both there and in the surrounding area (Mali), as Mr Obama did by committing our forces to assist in a civil war abroad alongside allies who had more compelling interests at stake and a more regional claim to do so.

It can be said that a large measure of the violence and demonstration over the last few days was no doubt affected by the attitudes of many foreigners to our stubborn (and well-intended) adherence to free speech codes that do not protect against offending religious displays nor against offending the views of those religious and thus permit the publication and distribution of ridiculous if not outright hateful statements and behavior on the part of some among us. Our first amendment is extremely hazardous to the sensibilities of others, including often enough ourselves (as in the recent cases like Citizens United or the WBC army funeral protests). We should neither apologize for this nor cease defending the capacity of some to say hideous things while exercising it. Instead, we can condemn and argue against such things said publicly and rebuke the attitudes that give rise to them. All without withdrawing the government's sanction to express feeling and opinion unrestrained. We can even do so with some amount of predictability as to the private sentiments and actions of our citizens most likely to draw offence abroad or from within, and design careful and thoughtful defences both of ourselves and appeals to our intentions and friendships among those offended, and indeed, even condemn and counsel against the response of violence taken up in the name of offence and insult. Nowhere in the condemnations and tin eared words of Mr Romney were these ideals cited and it was rare enough that the State Department and Mr Obama made any reference to it either as they burned the bridges with the local consulate who issued an ill-timed and poorly worded statement in a perhaps well-intentioned move to reduce local passions that obviously failed.

This is not the first time in this administration that I have seen the first amendment tested, and largely go undefended. The great Burlington Coat Factory Recreation Center fight in a meaningless series of talking points lo many months ago now only gave rise to Mayor Bloomberg of NYC, of all people, defending a free right of the people in the American tradition. No stirring defence or oration from the floor of the Senate, or from a White House press conference was to be heard. I take this, with the other great offences against protected rights (such as most TSA procedures, stop and frisk cop behavior, etc), to be a signal that such rights are not treated with dignity and confidence, and that they are no longer seen as the pillars of strength to be defended by either party that they should be. That they are of value for our abiding interest to create community out of diversity and thereby to offer a wealth of opinion, a wealth of conscience and viewpoint, and strengthen ourselves by the experience, and that we should abide by these limitations, recognize them, and offer up what value they generate to others that they may be drawn in and inspired if possible. It is not necessary to go in and bomb and maim to show our strength and dominance. It may be necessary to seek justice where others cannot or will not. But it is hardly our design to silence dissent and offence elsewhere any more than it would be here. And to expect and learn where that dissent is, to better understand it and learn to live with a certain reserved portion of it (non-violent expression) should be preferred to condemning it and denigrating others for their ill-conceived and directed anger and tempers. Nor is that a form of accommodating it, to be conceived as an assault on our values or as a formal expression of weakness. To recognize where we may err, to stray, and where others must abide us for our faults so that we may abide them theirs is a value worthy of some defence and recognition. It must be so not merely for ourselves, but that we may defend it in word or deed where needed abroad.

Do let us know when a political figure begins to seek or to strive to appeal to that, promises to strengthen rather than erode them in our policies and intentions here, and has shown a record and practised habit of doing so. This would also be someone likelier than not to be able to articulate a vision of the role we may take in the game of nations moving forward, and an understanding of both our strengths, as these may be conceived, and our limitations.