Amy Is In But Who Would Run With Her?

Sen. Klobuchar has officially entered the Democratic primary race. 

I think I've said here, certainly on Twitter, that Il like her, mainly because I think she will appeal to independent voters along with Democrats and thus will be in a good position to beat an incumbent president and, I hope, have coattails to help candidates for the Senate and House.

That's the sort of reasoning I've used before, voting for Sen. Edwards in the 2004 primary over Keerry and Sen. Obama in 2008 over Clinton, and Clinton in 2016 over Sanders.  I've more enthusiasm fro Klobuchar than I had for Edwards or Clinton, but less than for Obama.  Klobuchar has a better record than Obama had but his candidacy was more historic than hers is, which made the difference in my enthusiasm.

As I see it, Klobuchar's main weakness is foreign affairs.  In the past that would have meant she'd pick as vice presidential candidate someone with better credentials in that area.  But, big as the Democratic field of candidates and potential candidates is, Dems don't seem to have a lot of such figures. Looking at the rosters of the Senate Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees I don't see people with a combination of the right age, the right background, and a national reputation.  The closest we can come, I think, are the two senators from VA: Kaine and Warner.. 

Interesting times.

Blast from the Past--Investigating President Carter

FiveThirtyEight has a piece on how presidents get investigated by Congress, including an interesting graph showing investigations of presidents from Nixon to Obama. 

Three points of particular interest:

• based only on eyeballing, ranking the presidents from least investigated to most (counting days of investigative hearings in the House) you get this list:
• GWBush
• Clinton!!
• Obama
• GHWBush
• then Carter, Nixon, and Reagan, much more investigated and hard to rank.
• the graph shows whether Congress was under the control of the president's party or not--which accounts for Bush's position, but what's most surprising to me is the high ranking of Carter.--if you discount Watergate, he likely was more investigated by his own party, than Nixon was by his opponents. 
• Reagan's high ranking is partly accounted for by Dem control of the House throughout his terms in office, but it's also a reminder of how rocky his administration was and the number of scandals.  

Northam and Boyd

John Boyd, head of the National Black Farmers Association, met with Gov. Northam and offered support, according to this.

Why Blue America Is Blue--II

See this tweet on bankruptcies increasing from 2017 to 2018.

And see this report from Politico. 

I'd predict some "emergency" farm legislation will move before 2020.

A Leap Too Far for the Army

As a former draftee I retain a deep skepticism of the wisdom of the US Army.   So I would have said "I told you so" to the Army's plan for its "Iron Man suit", that is if I'd known about it, which I didn't.

As it turns out it was impracticable to integrate all the features desired into one outfit, so the Army appears to be separating the bits out to use individually.

The Marginal Utility of an Extra $50 Million

Jerry Brewer had an interesting column in the Washington Post about star basketball players seeking new teams.  This was the bit which stood out to me:

 In the doc [made by ESPN on Chris Paul's decision], he met with his friend, Jay-Z, the rap and entertainment mogul. Paul was telling him about various offers, ranging from $150 million to $200 million. Jay-Z listened and then spoke his mind. “Ain’t gonna change your life,” Jay-Z said about the offers. “You get 150, you get 200 — it’s the same thing. You’re gonna ride the same plane. You’re gonna wear the same sneakers. That [expletive] ain’t gonna change your life. One-fifty, 200 — same thing. . . . Your happiness, now that’s worth everything.”

Why Blue America Is Blue I

From the Rural Blog:

About 15 percent of Americans live in rural areas; the percentage has been declining for more than a century. The 35 percent of counties that have experienced long-term, significant population loss now have about 6.2 million residents, a third less than in 1950. Depopulation mostly started with young adults moving to cities or suburbs; the slide in population continued because fewer women of childbearing age were left in rural areas to boost the population"

That's part of the "Big Sort" which underlies our political divisions. 

"Seeing the Whole Picture"

T.J. Stiles had some tweets participating in a discussion on Winston Churchill (Newt Gingrich had triggered it by comparing Trump's work habits to Churchill's, to which some, including Stiles, took issue).

He had this tweet in which he said it was important "to see the whole, real picture".   I replied to the tweet, but have had some added thoughts.

"Seeing the whole picture" sounds good, but when you think about the meaning of the word, it's more complicated.  A picture, whether painted or photographic, is basically a two-dimensional  representation of reality; it's not a 360 degree holographic image.  And it's static, representing a moment in time, not a movie showing the lapse of time.

I'm being nitpicky, of course. It's best to look at every corner of a picture, to look up close and stand way back, while remembering the limits of a picture in representing reality.

Simple Gifts--the Handshake

According to this, Quakers popularized the handshake in America.  I can see them as disliking the bow or the tipping of the hat as perhaps signalling social differences. "Simple Gifts" is a Shaker song but the emotional basis is similar.

What Historians Don't Know--the Case of Jill Lepore

So I got several books for Christmas.  First I read "Becoming" which was very good.  Then I read Carl Zimmer's "She Has Her Mother's Laugh", which also was very good.  Now I'm ready for Jill Lepore's " These Truths, a History of the United States". 

Lepore is a good writer.  I think I've read most of her books and enjoyed them.  She's more of a narrative historian than an analytical one, but she knows how to tell a story.

So she starts her history by imagining in the fall of 1787 readers of a New York newspaper seeing the language of the new constitution. By page ii of the Introduction she moves to the people of the United States considering whether to ratify it, "even as they went about baling hay, milling corn, tanning leather, singing hymns, and letting out the seams on last year's winter coats for mothers and fathers grown fatter, and letting down the hems, for children grown taller."

So what does she get wrong?

Obviously farmers weren't baling hay in 1787.  (I  know I've seen a similar error somewhere recently, forget where, might even have been Lepore in another form reusing the same material. )

I'd also challenge the idea of "milling" corn.  I find to my surprise that wikipedia covers it, but I'd be more comfortable with the wording: "grinding corn".

As the proportion of Americans who farm, or grew up on farms, dwindles, the understanding of that way of life starts to vanish.