Obama to the right of Nixon?

Supposedly Not. Start with Krugman, who describes the methodology a bit, then check graphs:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/obama-the-moderate/
http://voteview.com/blog/?p=317



Supposedly he's slightly to the right for Democratic presidents, but still way to the left of the GOP, while the GOP has definitely drifted right. Whether voteview's methodology actually makes sense is another matter: is Obama to the left of Truman, who integrated the military and originally fought for real universal health care? So much to the right of Nixon, who signed in the EPA and many other liberal-friendly bills? Was there that huge a jump from Eisenhower to Nixon, compared to from Nixon to Reagan?

There's also Congressional graphs http://voteview.com/blog/?p=284


showing extreme rightward trend of the House GOP. It also goes back to 1879 -- so why doesn't the Presidential graph?

There's also http://www.voteview.com/dwnomjoint.asp which shows graphs for the second dimension, supposedly civil rights or social issues, which goes Republicans - Northern Democrats - Southern Democrats. Which, WTF. What set of real issues does that ordering capture?

So, interesting ideas, but I'm skeptical of the work.

Personal

Blah. I'm running on two hours of sleep. The radiators in this apartment building are steam or hot water, and developing knocking -- air bubbles in hot water, I think -- which has gotten really bad. 5 minutes long, every 70 minutes from like 4am to 9am. Landlord has claimed little they can do. Funny, I grew up in a 1910s house, and we could bleed the radiators easily enough. So, tossup, sleep now, or try to move around during the day, because I've been spending far too long lying down or sitting?

It wasn't so bad in December. I don't know if it's gotten more bubbles; I've thought at times maybe it's actually better when it's cold out, like maybe it's starting and stopping that makes the noise, vs. running continuously.

Sunday I went to a dim sum meet up group. That was fun, though I prefer Hei La Moon to Empire Garden, I think. 2 men out of 12 people. I think I was the youngest person there. Was too tired/lazy for any Super Bowl party activity.

Last year was Snowpocalypse. This year it's 5 C.

I've had lots of tasty guacamole courtesy of TJ and Whole Food's. Food of the gods! I've also been re-gaining weight. Might be related, though the guac doesn't claim to be that caloric...

Books:
_The Price of Civilization_, Jeffrey D. Sachs -- his attempt at a liberal manifesto. Pretty lightweight, and he seems skeptical of Keynesian stimulus. One point:
In 1913 US was 52% richer than Western Europen and in 1998 ditto (page
225). Europe's taxes went up a lot in between -- 10+% GDP between 1965
and 2009 -- but didn't push it down. America has more land and resources.
Another point was saying we want society to be efficient, sustainable, and fair, and "free markets" can't do any of those on their own. They approximate efficiency, and sustainability if things are owned right, but you can't have everything owned (air), and the approximation isn't very exact.


_The Magic of Reality_, Richard Dawkins and Dave McKean -- kids book on myths and science. I bought it to see what McKean was doing (he did the Sandman covers, and some books with Gaiman like Coraline) as much as anything. I learned a few things though, like how complicated rainbows are, and how spectroscopy is used in Hubble red shift and detecting exoplanets. For the latter, it's not left to right, but the shift of the star's light as it's pulled backward and forward.

_Shadows Linger_, Glen Cook (re) -- second book of the Black Company. Still good.