This is the 2nd in a series. Part 1 is here. Historian Corey Robin and his critics reject “false consciousness” as an explanation for working class support of anti-labor legislators.  Nevertheless, it seems clear that it is a thing.  False consciousness theory posits that voters may support a politician even after he pursues policies that objectively harm them. A Pew Research poll released this past January on the Trans Pacific Partnership (“TPP”) exemplifies this phenomenon.

President Obama apparently recognizes that China's rapidly growing economy and military pose significant problems for the US and the rest of the world. In response, he urges swift passage of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). "If we don’t write the rules, China will write the rules out in [the Trans-Pacific] region" Obama warned in a Wall Street Journal interview. That outcome would mean: “We will be shut out—American businesses and American agriculture. That will mean a loss of U.S. jobs.” The President's analysis is flawed.

0 dead, 98 injured, 235 arrests.  This appears to be the final tally of the Baltimore protests. Despite four centuries of provocation catalyzed by the depraved indifference of six Baltimore cops to the life of a young African-American man who was wrongfully arrested and then killed, black Baltimoreans acted with extraordinary restraint.

Friday night I attended a town hall meeting on the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) in Bethesda, MD.  The TPP is:

a proposed regional regulatory and investment treaty. As of 2014, twelve countries throughout the Asia-Pacific region have participated in negotiations on the TPP: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam.

According to Washington Post book reviewer Joanna Scutts, anthropologist Melvin Konner argues in Women After All that we can look forward to a peaceful future because women will increasingly mate with "caring, committed partners" rather than "feckless brutes". 

At least three assumptions underlie Konner's conclusion:  1) Going forward, young women will have a greater degree of agency when it comes to selecting reproductive mates.  2) Women with agency will choose caring unassuming mates.  3) The offspring of gentle empathic men will be gentle and empathic.  While the truth of each assumption may be questioned, this post briefly examines the second and finds it dubious.

For married-with-children New York suburbanites in the 1970s and 80s, nothing spelled success like a Mercedes S-Class Sedan in the driveway.  After the big promotion, hot shot investment bankers, law firm partners, and ad agency execs headed over to Mercedes-Benz of Greenwich.  There they handed Hans a fat check and the keys to the family's now superfluous Gran Torino before cruising back to Scarsdale or Darien in 450 SEL splendor.

Princeton University president emeritus William G. Bowen argues in Sunday's Washington Post against those calling for colleges and universities to divest their holdings in fossil fuel companies.  I have done the same here and here.  But after reading Bowen's unconvincing justification for continued investment in the corporations responsible for our planet's ever-worsening climate crisis, I am seriously reconsidering my position.

In a mean-spirited op-ed that's apparently part of an on-going twenty-year jihad against the Clintons, Maureen Dowd likens Hillary Clinton to an "annoyed queen".  While I have been first very critical, then somewhat less critical, of Hillary's response to reve

On Sunday September 21, over 300,000 people rallied in Manhattan at the People's Climate March.

As a newspaper columnist, celebrated Jewish filmmaker Aviva Kempner is a very good baseball documentarian.  In the Washington Post's 2014 Yom Kippur edition, Kempner blasts the lords of baseball for scheduling games on the holiest of Jewish holidays thus forcing those “who have to follow [their] conscience” to miss playoff games “[t]hanks to the insensitivity of Major League Baseball”.

Generally, I am skeptical of claims of anti-semitism in the academy. I think that people for a variety of reasons confuse legitimate criticism of Israel with anti-semitism. Accordingly, I was inclined to side with former University of Illinois Professor Steven Salaita and CUNY-Brooklyn Professor Corey Robin who claim that Salaita was wrongly terminated from the University of Illinois because he tweeted critically of Israel.

This is a no-brainer.  What's hard to fathom is that people are even debating whether the Masters should have disqualified Tiger Woods for an illegal drop or for signing an incorrect scorecard.  On the 15th hole Friday,  Tiger hit a beautiful approach shot that unfortunately (for him) bounced off the flagstick and directly into a nearby pond.  Here's what happened next , according to Woods (per the New York Times):

Every ten years the British magazine Sight and Sound polls various cineastes to learn what they consider to be the greatest movie of all time. In 2012, Alfred Hithcock's Vertigo unseated Orson Welles' Citizen Kane which had been selected first in each poll conducted since 1962.

I don't read yesterday's (and this morning's polls) as that favorable.  What gives?  Very early Saturday morning (I'm going by east coast time throughout this post), Nate explained that the President's chance of winning was over 80% because of the 22 polls of swing states published Friday, he led in 19 and trailed in only 1.  This seemed sensible.  On Saturday, there were fewer published polls (at least listed at Real Clear Politics) and a couple of these were not positive for Obama.  The most worrisome are a Tampa Bay Times Florida poll that shows Romney +6 and, perhaps even more troubling

The second of three debates between Romney and President Obama is in the books.  The instant post-debate polls all had Obama winning.  Nevertheless, Rasmussen and Gallup have now published their first tracking polls which include data compiled after the thrill(a) at Hofstra(uh) and they ain't pretty.  Gallup shows Romney up among likely voters 52-45 (7 points!) and Rasmussen has Romney up 49-47.  The Thursday data moved both polls 1 point towards Romney. 

On the strength of Mary Ann Johanson's 4-star review of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises in the Monterey Weekly, http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/news/2012/jul/19/dark-knight-rises/, I did something for the first time since the releases of Gran Torino and Mystic River, I bought a ticket to see a non-arthouse film. Given Johanson's expansive rave, I was expecting not only a cinematographic tour-de-force of but also scathing social commentary decrying the overlordship of New York, er Gotham, City by financial robber barons.

Instead, I suffered through a bombastic, repetitive, over-long, and occasionally incoherent fascist fantasy. I have not seen the first two Dark Knights, so at least some of my confusion may be due to unfamiliarity with details in the previous films. To be fair, I'll concentrate here on my problems with Dark Knight Rises that could not result from ignorance of its predecessors and conclude with a critique of its retrograde politics.

If I were a betting man, and I'm not, I'd bet the house on the Giants beating the spread which currently has them 3 point underdogs versus the Patriots.  In fact, I'm very confident that they will win the Super Bowl.  For the life of me, I can't figure out how the Patriots are favored.  Okay, I can.  Tom Brady. 

It's a great life. You risk your skin catching killers and the juries turn them loose so they can come back and shoot at you again. If you're honest you're poor your whole life and in the end you wind up dying all alone on some dirty street. For what? For nothing. For a tin star.

Lon Chaney, Jr., asking Marshal Will Kane played by Gary Cooper why he goes out into the street to get shot at. High Noon.