Metamorphosis Complete

John McCain disavows the title "Maverick." He truly has become Bush.

Tea Party, ca 23 A.D.

I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

There are truly innumerable examples of teabaggers unwittingly spouting stupefying irony/ignorance (here and here , for example).

But did you know that this tea party mindframe has existed practically unchanged for 2000 years? It's true!

PS: On a serious note, the Obama protesters are actually not at all comparable to the Monty Python crew. Why? Because the while the Romans did tend to levy oppressive taxes on their tributary states, Obama actually cut taxes for 95% of working Americans. Including teabaggers. No shit.

Unrelated, but what the hell.

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Update: Someone (15000 someones) agrees with Justice Holmes!

Final Stretch

Instead of televising a debate, we should do something more like this:

Fuck debates. What a joke.

Anyways,this is how it's gonna be till election day.

I thought this was interesting:

Damn It Feels Good To Be A Banker

This is HILARIOUS.

Of course, at the moment, it doesn't feel that good to be a banker.

Superstar Sarah

I was reading more on Palin (for the life of me, I cannot understand why I can't let it go. Her story is not particularly interesting, other than the insanity that it reflects in McCain for having chosen her, and in others for supporting her. Maybe it's just that she's so easy to rip on that everyone's having a field day. Anyway.) and I found that even Maureen Dowd --the Sarah Palin of NYT editorialists (yeah I'll say it)-- gets her barbs in. Excerpt:

Palin has rocketed in the polls, drawing women and men with her vapid — if vivacious and visceral — scripted cheerleading. But if you’re reading this, Charlie, we want to know everything, including:

What kind of budget-cutter makes a show of getting rid of the state plane, then turns around and bills taxpayers for the travel of her husband and kids between Juneau and Wasilla and sticks the state with a per-diem tab to stay in her own home?

Why was Sarah for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against the Bridge to Nowhere, and why was she for earmarks before she was against them? And doesn’t all this make her just as big a flip-flopper as John Kerry?

What kind of fiscal conservative raises taxes and increases budgets in both her jobs — as mayor and as governor?

When the phone rings at 3 a.m., will she call the Wasilla Assembly of God congregation and ask them to pray on a response, as she asked them to pray for a natural gas pipeline?

Does she really think Adam, Eve, Satan and the dinosaurs mingled on the earth 5,000 years ago?

Why put out a press release about her teenage daughter’s pregnancy and then spend the next few days attacking the press for covering that press release?

As Troopergate unfolds here — an inquiry into whether Palin inappropriately fired the commissioner of public safety for refusing to fire her ex-brother-in-law — it raises this question: Who else is on her enemies list and what might she do with the F.B.I.?

Does she want a federal ban on trans fat in restaurants and a ban on abortion and Harry Potter? And which books exactly would have landed on the literature bonfire if she had had her way with that Wasilla librarian? "

And also, seriously...I mean seriously.

Finally:


In other words:


Beauty queens are all the same. Except for ones from the midwest, who have an annoying accent when they spout idiocy.

Not Done With Palin

NYT gives her a bum rap. She's uber-secretive, cronyistic, petty, ignorant, and has ties to religious fanatics. Sound familiar? No wonder McCain thought she might energize the base.

Here is an excellent editorial by Marc Fisher that comments on the sort anti-technocracy that I've bemoaned before. An excerpt:

Most people I spoke to readily conceded that Palin lacks experience with or knowledge of many important national and foreign issues. But, as Allison McGarvey, a teacher who lives in Stafford County, said, Palin is "a courageous woman, and what she doesn't know, she can learn quickly. Let's face it, no president knows all the issues. Anyway, I don't see how a candidate can pick one stand and just stick to it. The world situation changes every day. It's their moral and ethical background that's important."

In this hyperdemocratized society, the national conviction that anyone can succeed is morphing into a belief that experience and knowledge may almost be disqualifying credentials.

Like many at the rally, Victoria Robinson-Worst sees Palin's lack of experience as an asset. "I know people who have experience who are totally incompetent," said Robinson-Worst, who lives in Loudoun County, designs wedding flowers and raises two children. "And I know people who have no experience who step in and get it right. I mean, women can do amazing things."

This is where culture wars, identity politics and self-suffocating academic theories of deconstructionism have led us: Authority is suspect. Experience is corrupting. Ignorance is strength?

Next will be "war is peace." Or have we already heard that one?

Krugman tells how this campaign is gonna be.

This is a relatively objective critique of Palin's inexperience.

This is perhaps the most interesting take on what the Palin pick really means, and it's quite scary.

Even Friedman has a point on Palin. (And Friedman is kind of an idiot.)

Damning With Faint Praise

Wonkette nails it. Condi's apologia is so piss-poor it's laughable. Condi ends by saying, "There different kinds of experiences in life that help one to deal with matters of foreign policy." Chief among these: dealing with matters of foreign policy. Shitty among these: having babies, winning beauty pageants. Which ones does she have again?

Finally, an authoritative fisking of Palin's stance on the "bridge to nowhere," with damning photo to boot.

The reviews below also really hurt, since the worst (in my opinion) are plucked from the National Review, an arch-conservative publication with highly apologetic tendencies towards bush. Ouch. If I'm agreeing with Bill Kristol, something is terribly wrong.

Read Me

A good quickie on the role of the media this election cycle.

So Clever

I love Wonkette. Didn't see the movie.

Link Dump - Mostly Palin, That Hilariously Unqualified Minx

I'm a little disappointed that I missed on my forecast of Lieberman for veep, but I am stoked that my prediction of "the perfect storm of electoral failure" still looks on the money. I mean, what was he thinking?


"She's a moose hunter. That sounds like a euphemism for something, but it's not. She actually hunts moose."



Palin's to do list.

Two main points from the NYT article on McCain's pick:

Ms. Palin appears to have traveled very little outside the United States. In July 2007, she had to get a passport before she visited members of the Alaska National Guard stationed in Kuwait, according to her deputy communications director, Sharon Leighow.

Whooops! said the McCain staffers who initially tried to claim that Palin's travel abroad would help offset her lack of "formal" foreign policy experience. This was an asinine claim even if it had been based on reality. Also:

Ms. Palin is known to conservatives for opting not to have an abortion after learning that the child she was carrying, her youngest, had Down syndrome. “It is almost impossible to exaggerate how important that is to the conservative faith community,” Mr. Reed said. "I mean, these people are themselves -- almost without exception -- born with severe mental retardation."

Okay, so Ralph Reed didn't actually say that last bit. But he's proven it many a time.

I do feel bad for her daughter Bristol in all this. Not just because she's young a dumb and got knocked up, and not just because the whole country now gets to know about (and presumably pass judgment upon) this, but because Palin has declared that she's looking forward to her daughter's having the baby with "the man she will marry." So there will be a shotgun wedding so as not to torpedo her mother's political aspirations. Nice.



This is not right. The meth-heads with guns that wanted to to kill Obama were deemed "not a credible threat," but some dude in prison who wrote a nasty letter to McCain was dealt with swiftly and harshly.


Unrelated:

Unfortunately, escape is not so easy.

When The Shit Hits The Solar-Powered Fan

A very funny little fiction about peak oil. I liked this line:

Funny how electricity and oil are so closely tied. Never thought of that before.

One Woman Is As Good As The Next?

This commentary pretty much says all you need to know about McCain's pick for VP.



Paul Begala also offers a few not-completely-idiotic thoughts, as he is wont to do when not seated opposite Tucker Carlson:

For a man who is 72 years old and has had four bouts with cancer to have chosen someone so completely unqualified to become president is shockingly irresponsible. Suddenly, McCain's age and health become central issues in the campaign, as does his judgment.
(snip)

For months, the McCainiacs have said they will run on his judgment and experience. In his first presidential decision, John McCain has shown that he is willing to endanger his country, potentially leaving it in the hands of someone who simply has no business being a heartbeat away from the most powerful, complicated, difficult job in human history.

Yes, it's rhetorical and not particularly insightful, but it's also unquestionably true. She has no serious leadership credentials. Period.

I'd say the pick makes McCain look fairly desperate. I'm clearly biased, but I can hardly see any other way to construe it. I mean, while Biden may be a good choice for Obama as far as "shoring up weaknesses," I kind of wonder how many people really believe that that sort of thing decides elections. I half-suspect it just provides mouthy pundits (or wannabes, like, um, yeah, nevermind) with one more topic over which to engage in moot, mentally masturbatory bloviation. I mean, the fact of the matter is that people vote for the presidential candidate they want to be president. Veeps are an afterthought. So when McCain makes a reachy move like this (this might be the most "maverick" we've seen from him in a while), it seems almost like an admission that he can't beat Obama head to head. He's pulling out the gimmick playbook because he can't get it done with fundamentals. Once again, while I happen to really like Obama's pick of Biden, there is absolutely no question that Obama's campaign intends to win the election on the strength of Obama. He could have chosen just about anyone as his veep and it wouldn't have made much difference. Well, he couldn't have chosen "a first-term governor of a state with more reindeer than people" without raising some eyebrows about what type of campaign he was trying to run.

As for my predictions about the efficacy of this gambit, I suspect that it will fail spectacularly. The desperation of this pick will not go unnoticed, and I think the patent insincerity of his attempt to reach out to female voters (read: exploit disgruntled Hillary supporters on the rebound like Fratty McRoofie III at a kegger) will probably backfire. Not like, not work well. More like, blow up in your face you patronizing old pig.

Furthermore, in failing to choose an old Republican stalwart (for all his weaknesses, I think Tom Ridge would have been an excellent choice for McCain; they would present a united front of old, grouchy, militant geezers, which they might as well do, because only the die hard Red-Heads are going to vote for them anyway.) he will most likely continue to alienate the conservative branch of the Republican constituency. Much as he may think he can pick up points with traditionally Democratic demographics, what he really needs to do is ensure the thus-far tenuous support of traditionally Republican blocks. Some of the old boys from the party will not be pleased that he has chosen an upstart nobody of a woman from Alaska, while McCain, regardless of his running mate, is himself an awful choice for reaching to anyone not already in the fold. Not to mention he's running against Barack Muthafuckin Obama, the archetype of charisma and pied piper of the disillusioned, so even a more dynamic candidate would hardly stand a chance among the ranks of the undecided. In short, for a guy who touts his military expertise, McCain has done a terrible job of picking his battles. McCain would do better to base his strategy on ensuring maximum turnout from the Republican faithful: wave the flag, cut taxes, hate gays, love Jebus. Don't try to get cute and start pretending that women matter all of a sudden; in matters of fresh faces and fresh ideas, Obama is king.

PS: If the McCain campaign really thought those sore losers on the HillRod wagon were serious when they claimed they would vote for McCain if Obama won the nomination, they will prove sadly mistaken. On the other hand, this maneuver is somewhat more subtle than I've given them credit for. I cannot but imagine that McCain strategists appreciate that they will have little success in capturing the female vote at large. Palin's unique appeal is in her exemplification of a strange and paradoxical political entity that I call the she-o-con. There are a handful of Fox News pundits and such that also fit this mold, and they are essentially smart, attractive, conservative women wily enough to conceal their "masculine" political ambitions behind a pretense of dutiful motherhood. They are proud soccer moms who quickly avow their subservience to their husbands, lest they be castigated as uppity, but who are meanwhile clearly brainy and ballsy enough to handle the Machiavellian machinations of the political world. They're like the Republican equivalent of Hillary Clinton masquerading as Martha Stewart. A strange beast indeed. (Actually, I don't know enough about Palin to confidently assert that she is a she-o-con, since she's never really been in the media at all. But I extrapolate this from what little biographical information is available on her. If she is not she-o-con, then she REALLY doesn't have much going for her.)


PPS: I have been please with my calls about the election so far. Way back at the beginning of primary season, even after Hillary came out of the gates super strong, I predicted confidently that Obama would win the nomination. So I'll make another prediction, this time on the record, so that the legend of my political forecasting prowess will spread from - and be enshrined forever upon - a blog that nobody reads. Obama crushes McCain in the biggest landslide I will see in a presidential race in my lifetime. We're talking like 57%-40% of the popular vote, and carrying almost all of the big swing states to a thrashing at the electoral college level. It will be an embarrassingly lopsided lopsided contest. See "a thumpin'."

PPPS: I didn't mean to compare Palin to Hillary in a way that would validate McCain's oh-so-ridiculous strategy of placing a Hillary decoy on his ticket. Also, I just found that Wonkette feels similarly, calling Palin a "fake Hillary Clinton," and breaking the news (to me) that Palin is embroiled in a scandal. Oh Alaska, do you ever elect legislative types that aren't corrupt?

More on Joe Biden

Here's a Biden video I had posted earlier that got taken down. I really do like this sumbitch. It's a shame he and Rudy fell out of the race so early, because their pointed remarks toward one another (an exchange that Biden got the better of) were nothing short of hilarious.



I also came across a nice Politico article elaborating on the notion that Obama's choice of Biden as VP really stuck it to McCain.

Here's the guy running off at the mouth, but in such a great way. Why can't more politicians talk like this? Dare I say, it reminds me of some sort of (now defunct) rapidly moving vehicle that conveys speech in a bullshit-free manner.



Non sequitir:
An interesting way to think about the Olympic medal count.




And an awesome xkcd. For pure math nerdiness, this is about as clever as it gets.

KOwned

I LOVE that man.


Also, I have semi-fawned over Joe Biden before (here and here), so I must say I'm pretty happy with Obama's choice. Given that Hillary was essentially ruled out from the start (although I'm still not sure why it must have been so), I think Biden is one of the best choices out there. Truthdig gives him a review that is, not surprisingly, quite positive, and speaks to some of the more substantial strengths that Biden provides the Obama campaign. Most notably, he shores up Obama's foreign policy cred with a great deal of experience in that arena. It's also an interesting observation that this choice "hamstrings" McCain with respect to the sort of running mate he can now select. (Ha! Obama forcing McCain to be conservative; there's a punchline for ya.) I would also love to see Biden in some VP debates; I think he would give Lieberman (yes, I think it will be Lieberman; McCain is orchestrating the perfect storm of transcendent electoral failure) a pretty nasty whoopin'.

And lastly, remember our plan for Iraq: "As they stand up, we'll stand down keep staying here. Even if they tell us to leave because we're fucking shit up. (Like this. Or these. I could go on.)

Seriously though, if even Al-Maliki thinks we should go, what the hell are we doing there? We should probably leave soon 5 years ago.


</rant>

PS: From this link:

Custer Battles is a relatively new company in the booming field of so-called "private military companies" in Iraq providing veteran soldiers from around the world for various security jobs. Named for founders Michael Battles and Scott Custer, who are military veterans, the company quickly nabbed lucrative contracts in Iraq, where U.S. authorities needed firms who were willing to accept high-risk assignments.

I don't give a shit what your founders' names are, naming your fighting/mercenary outfit "Custer Battles" is re-fucking-tarded. Is that some kind of sick joke? What the hell is wrong with you people?

</rant> <!-- Seriously -->



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Not Helping...

Robin Leach apparently leapt to John McCain's defense in a recent media schaden-session, deftly explaining why the geezer couldn't remember how many houses he owned. This unfortunate brain flatus was already a minor disaster for the McCain campaign, adding one more facet to the narrative of McCain's not-so-creeping senescence and seriously undermining his digs at Obama's elitism. What he really didn't need to help reassure voters that he can relate to their financial woes was for the Grand Poobah of pretentious dickwads, a man whose very existence is predicated on showcasing how much "better" some people live --nay, are -- than regular Americans, to cavalierly tell us "It’s nothing to get into a kerfuffle about."

[Leach said] he isn’t really surprised at McCain's odd memory lapse given the complex lives that the super-rich lead.

"He probably was confused as to which homes are in his name, his wife's name, or corporate names," Leach explained in his familiar, deep British baritone. "In his attempt to be honest, he put his foot in his mouth."

Well, if your dayjob is (well, was before he retired) touring opulent shrines to Mammon, it's rather easy to dismiss this incident as a common mishap among the fabulously wealthy. The problem is, voters don't like candidates to be fabulously wealthy (or, rather, they don't like to envision them so). Moreover, this incident has prompted many to investigate just how many houses the McCain estate does comprise, and their approximate value. And all this negative PR is being disseminated without the Obama campaign having to dirty their hands with innuendos or accusations. That is why this fuck-up is big; it has invited people to criticize McCain on their own terms. And Robin Leach's ill-conceived defense, in fact, the very notion that he saw fit to defend McCain at all, is most certainly not helping.

McCain: With friends like these, who needs enemies!




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More on Torture, Part 2

There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one
thing, while methods and tactics are another. -Emma Goldman, social
activist (1869-1940)

Here are some very interesting comments on interrogation by a guy who knows the field:



I am certainly pleased to hear that the ticking time bomb scenario is in fact unrealistic. But I should point out that even without that scenario's unlikely justification, Sam Harris's defense of torture is quite compelling. I'm not so sure I can stand by my claim that I unconditionally oppose torture (although my thoughts about the legal process that must govern its use most certainly hold). Harris's argument is essentially that if we are willing to engage in a practice (namely, war) that will undoubtedly kill innocent people, how can we cringe at a practice (torture) that might do the same or less, and presumably on a much more limited scale. (The argument that torture can in fact be worse than death is, if true, not applicable. Maiming, disembowelment, the loss of children, parents, and loved ones are all inevitable consequences of war. In short, there is no suffering that can be inflicted by torture that is not inflicted by war.) He sums it up thusly:

Assuming that we want to maintain a coherent ethical position on these matters, this appears to be a circumstance of forced choice: if we are willing to drop bombs, or even risk that rifle rounds might go astray, we should be willing to torture a certain class of criminal suspects and military prisoners; if we are unwilling to torture, we should be unwilling to wage modern war.

Unfortunately, I find his logic quite sound. The logical conclusion of any frank discussion about the ethics of warfare seems to arrive at simplistic aphorisms. If warfare is permitted at all, then "all's fair in [love and] war," or more simply, "war is hell." How then do we stay on the high side of the slippery slope to Shermanesque absolute war?

I don't know. But in the theme of reducing complex ethical issues to vulgar wisdom, I'm reminded of a movie quote on war:
"Strange game. The only winning move is not to play."





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Tha't all you had to say....

This interview was also kind of interesting, although I think it was conducted poorly by both parties. The amazing thing is that the consistent incoherence and irrelevance of Bush's answers make it impossible to pin him down on an issue. I think his stupidity is truly in asset in answering a policy question with a propagandist response; Karl Rove or even Dick Cheney could never pull off the old bait-and-switch as convincingly, because at least they would know they were doing it. W seems to legitimately fail to grasp the question.



Which is not to say that he's incapable of lying, of course. It's just that with the toughest questions, it's better to duckspeak. And as Harry Frankfurt elaborates, bullshit is a more pernicious enemy of truth than lies, because:

"It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may pertain to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose." (On Bullshit, pp. 55-56)

To put it another way, his fault is not that he provides the wrong answer to the question, it's that he's not even trying.

So when Bush actually does lie (like below), it's actually strangely refreshing. At least the value of truth is acknowledged by the attempt to deny it. (Likewise, it does not crush my spirit to think that my compatriots have elected a liar. Having elected a moron too stupid to be worthy of the epithet "liar", well, that is quite bleak.) So lie to me Georgie, it's better than whatever the fuck you were saying to that Irish gal.








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Neuro Neatness

I've seen this research before, but this is a particularly interesting popular piece on it that explains its relevance to neuroeconomics, social neuroscience, and addiction. Good stuff.

Article at Seed Magazine.



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Magic Patriotism

Penn and Teller have a point:


Although it would have been a better trick if they hadn't given up the goodies at the end. Well, not a better trick, but a much better political lesson.




Here are some interesting stats regarding presidential candidates and experience.


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Alternative Medicine - Extra Weird Addition

This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen. It could well be the stupidest thing on the internet. HOLY FUCKING SHIT is that stupid. It really makes me reconsider my stance on mandatory sterilization for mental midgets.

Disclosure: I am heavily biased in my evaluation of this birthing method, as I am a strong opponent of the impingement upon traditional hospital-based medical care by non-humanoid mammalian practitioners (especially aquatic ones) and other bestial outpatient clinics.



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