BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Elections, Politics, and the Sliding Scale of Judging Human Performance
The Sarah Palin for veep thing is still going on, and despite the fact that virtually everyone who isn't currently writing a right wing blog realizes she's entirely unfit for the office. It's become a surreal situation, as the election debate is now her vs. Obama, with McCain almost a forgotten man (which is almost certainly a feature, not a bug, since voters like McCain more the less they see/hear about him). Since Palin has no political accomlishments and no relevant experience, Republicans are fantastically unpopular after 8 disastrous years of Bush, and the national political media has become Gawker-esque in their obsession with personality issues over complicated things like... policy.
This is nothing new; it's been the Republican play book for years, since Karl Rove used it so successfully to get Bush semi-elected twice. He "won" in 2000 since the media portrayed him as a folksy class clown type you'd want to have a beer with, while Al Gore was too intense and pointy-headed and intellectual. Bush was reelected in 2004, despite terrible approval ratings (which have only descended since) when the media portrayed John Kerry as elite and French-like and rebroadcast all the Swift Boat slanders of his Vietnam heroism. (That may go down as the most amazing turn of political events in American election history. That John Kerry, a well off young man who volunteered to serve in Vietnam, was wounded in battle, and received several combat decorations for valor, was slandered for his service... while running against a war-mongering president and vice president, both of whom used family connections to dodge the draft. It boggles the mind. Even 4 years later.)
So, now we're in 2008, Bush's two terms are up, and since not even Republicans would suggest that Dick "Shotgun" Cheney step up a level and run for president, the horse race was on. John McCain won it, somewhat surprisingly, since he was the most moderate (at least by reputation) of the candidates, and therefore the one least embraced by the party base. He was competing against Barack Obama, a much younger and more vigorous man, a legendarily-gifted public speaker, and a very strong campaigner who had just pulled off a huge upset by outworking and politically outsmarting the entrenched front runner, Hillary Clinton. The contrast between the candidates was quite clear, and despite Obama's two major shortcomings (in terms of being elected in America), black skin and an Islamic name -- he was narrowly or substantially leading McCain in every poll, and massacring him in the unscientific "enthusiasm factor."
Democrats, and tons of new, young voters, were itching to vote for Obama, and against the Bush legacy. Democrats were obliterating Republicans in new voter registration and campaign donations, Obama couldn't book venues large enough to hold the people who wanted to see him speak, and the slimy tactics of smearing him as a stealth Muslim and unpatriotic were losing their effect outside of the fever swamps. McCain, on the other hand, had been the least popular of the Republican candidates with the right wing fringe fanatics who push the publicity and internet debate, and they didn't like him a great deal more as a presidential candidate, despite his working for their support by flopping (back to the right) on every issue he'd ever supported to earn the "maverick" reputation the media so adored him for.
McCain had clearly hoped to win by holding the right wing base and appealing to moderate voters. That's how he won the nomination, since the fringe makes 99% of the noise, but is numerically only 20 or 30% of the Republican voters. They hated him, but all the regular people and lower-information voters remembered him from previous campaign runs and punched his ticket. Indications were that McCain was leaning towards ex-Democrat Joe Lieberman for his VP, in an obvious attempt to get moderates to vote for him. Lieberman was Gore's VP back in 2000, before he lost his mind and went all neocon after 9/11, and while he's now very right wing on "national defense" (funny how the Bush Doctrine turned that term into an oxymoron) he's still essentially a liberal on social issues (like McCain used to pretend to be).
Someone in McCain's campaign realized that wouldn't work, since it wouldn't reverse any trends. McCain wasn't going to steal Obama's support amongst the moderate voters, and he wasn't going to compete in the election if he didn't get the right wing base fired up and score some media coverage. He needed someone young and energetic, and he needed an outsider. Just picking another ranting Christian white male politician, like the dozen he'd defeated in the Republican primary, wouldn't get anyone's attention. So, in what's turned into a move as politically savvy as it was functionally preposterous, he tapped the obscure, inexperienced, but culturally conservative, fire-breathing, right wing female governor of Alaska as his VP. While this led to some hilariously bald-faced hypocrisy on the part of various Republican talking heads, it's got a real possibility to swing the election in McCain's favor.
In any normal situation, picking someone clearly unprepared for the job of VP, especially to serve under an elderly president with a very checkered medical history, would be enough to terrify even the party loyal. In this day and age, when the Republican base cares only about ideology and not results, it's actually seen as a benefit.
The fun thing is to switch the roles, or the political parties involved. Imagine if an older white male Democrat had won the nomination, and trailing in the polls, had flailed for a life rope and decided to pick a younger, little-known female to be his VP, (Aside from the fact that this already happened.) then thrust her onto the national stage without adequately vetting her background. And imagine that she was a liberal female, from some obscure corner of the country, who no one had ever heard of before. And imagine that as soon as she was in the national spotlight, one scandal after another came to light.
She displayed a voracious appetite for pork as the mayor of her tiny town, left it deeply in debt, tried to ban books, and fired the town librarian. Her husband, who she insists on CC'ing in on state business, is a member of a wacky fringe pro-treason/secession party. She's being investigated for a variety of ethical issues, including pressuring a government official to fire her sister's state cop ex-husband, and then firing the official when he wouldn't bend to her will. Her money-grubbing only increased as governor, and she never met a pork project she didn't like, including several that landed her on the avarice list compiled by her now-running mate, back in his mavericky, anti-pork days. Better yet, in terms of inciting fury from the "family values" conservative base, she selfishly endangered the health of her unborn daughter, putting her career first by making speeches and flying cross country while 8 months pregnant and leaking embryonic fluid. And she's got a teenaged daughter who's unmarried and knocked up by the school jock.
I think it's fair to say that woman would be incinerated by the national media, led by the right wing media. Sanctimonious aging white male hypocrites like Rush "Dominican Whores" Limbaugh and Bill "settled out of court" O'Reilly would devote their their entire shows to slamming her inexperience, her criminally negligent mothering, the damage her first slut daughter, baby daddy boyfriend, and bastard grandson would do to the nation's morals, etc. And if the woman's only real defense against these denunciations was that they were being mean to her because she was a woman... they would simply turn up the volume and use that as further argument against her. As they did when Hillary obliquely complained about the sexism and double standards she was facing in her primary campaign.
Needless to say, none of this has happened, since this particular woman is a right wing Republican herself. More surprisingly, the fact that virtually her entire bio and resume would doom a liberal female are actually working as selling points for her. Those things humanize her and make her more middle class and help people identify with her. It's basically the whole, "George Bush is the candidate you'd want to have a beer with" argument, in a dress. Competency, experience, professionalism, knowledge, temperament, statesmanship... everything we're supposed to value in a president or vice president is not supposed to be applied to Sarah Palin, since she's not just another old white male Republican.
I've had theory I've been meaning to write about for years. I'm not going to get fully into it today, but it postulates that humans use a sort of sliding scale of ability vs. type, when judging performance. It's about expectations. For instance, if a model, or an actor, or a jock gives an interview and doesn't completely mangle the language and seems to have a thought or two in their heads, we're impressed. Whereas we would simply expect that (or a higher) level of competence from a college professor, or a journalist, or some other thinking profession.
Example: Angelina Jolie. Everyone thinks she's brilliant since she's a statuesque beauty, she can speak with composure while on TV answering softball questions from a star struck reporter, and she does those UN humanitarian missions that largely involve looking radiant while posing with emaciated refugees. It's as if her entire life prior to about 2003, when she was on drugs, fucking every guy in Hollywood, drinking Billy Bob Thorton's blood and getting a giant tattoo of his name on her arm, etc, didn't happen. Or more to the point, those years actually make her seem smarter now, since our initial impressions of her were "big-lipped stupid slut actress" and now that she's not embroiled in regular scandals, has a pretty husband, and is making a lot of babies, she's a role model.
Example: Tyra Banks. This might be somewhat less true now than it was a few years ago when I was initially formulating this idea and talking it over with Malaya, but back then Tyra had just started her own talk show after a few guest hosting show appearances and some visits on Oprah. She was horrible. She wasn't anything approaching a journalist, she was clearly quite stupid, she couldn't speak very well, etc. But she was a famous ex-supermodel, she was very pretty (after several hours of makeup and hair work), and she exuded some level of personality. So the media kept saying she was good, and that people liked her, and her show became a hit based largely on people admitting that her show wasn't really any good, but that it was a lot less bad than it might have been.
Example: Shaquille O'neal. Circa 2004 he was the best player in the NBA. He'd won three straight championships with the Lakers, he was a scoring and rebounding monster, and an unstoppable force on the court. The most talented "big man" in the game. And he was, but judged objectively... he wasn't actually any good. His success was based entirely on him being physically gigantic. He was coordinated and agile and athletic... for a 7 foot, 350 pound man. Only the fact that he was taller and stronger than almost everyone else made him successful. If you took his basketball skill set and put it on a guy who was 6'6", he couldn't have cracked the starting rotation at a junior college, much less starred in the NBA. Shaq couldn't make a shot beyond 8 feet, he had no fade away, no hook, no drop step, nothing. He was just power to the basket, and the fact that he was historically awful at free throw shooting did much to limit his effectiveness in close games, since his team couldn't give him the ball in crunch time or the other team would just foul him. Eventually smart coaches realized it was better to just "hack a Shaq" him even without the ball, an approach Shaq frequently rewarded with 8-22 free throw shooting efforts.
Announcers used to rave about Shaq when he occasionally dribbled and ran, but think about that. The man was earning $20m+ a year to play a game that he'd played every day of his life since about age 6. And we were supposed to be impressed that he could semi-adequately perform one of the most basic elements of it? An ability possessed by 95% of 5th grade boys on earth? What kind of grading on a curve is that? It's the sliding scale of human performance.
Sarah Palin encapsulates this. She'd have no career at all if she were a Democrat, since most women politicians are, and therefore only the really talented or charismatic ones rise to high positions. But since she's a Republican, and a fundie/right-wing type, and she's not a empty-eyed, jowly white male squeezed into a shiny suit, she's a revelation. It's the same reason Ann Coulter and (especially) Michelle Malkin are famous and successful. Neither of them are actually any good at what they do, and when white males try the same angry, attack politics they pursue, it usually takes them nowhere. There are tens of thousands of white men pursuing the same niche market, and very few of them make a living at it. Men doing that screaming, five-minutes-of-hate shtick are that are seen as angry and scary, and while the base might embrace them, they get little cross over or national appeal. But when pretty (?) women (?) dance their way through the same routine, it's novel and fresh and interesting. And less threatening, scary, and angry, as well.
Which brings us to now. Two months until election day, and once again, despite the best efforts of Obama and most of the liberal blogosphere, we've got an American presidential election that's almost entirely devoid of content. The right wing blogosphere is doing all it can to concoct utterly disingenuous daily outrages, and while the national media is growing less willing to continue their false equivalences, and having more trouble ignoring the slimy, substance-free campaign McCain is running, they're institutionally predisposed against doing their duty and flatly calling a lie, a lie. And even if they did, I don't know if it would matter. After all, it's not like anyone's supporting McCain/Palin for logical, scholarly, policy-based reasons. That's the whole point.
For a final digression, Kevin Drum recently posted on something I found very interesting. Where will this lead? Most of us, myself included, are only looking as far as the election. What happens afterwards, though?
If McCain wins, he'll face a Democratic congress that's beyond furious. Losing is one thing, but after eight years of George Bush and Karl Rove, losing a vicious campaign like this one will cause Dems to go berserk. They won't even return McCain's phone calls, let alone work with him on legislation. It'll be four years of all-out war.
And what if Obama wins? The last time a Democrat won after a resurgence of the culture war right, we got eight years of madness, climaxing in an impeachment spectacle unlike anything we'd seen in a century. If it happens again, with the lunatic brigade newly empowered and shrieking for blood, Obama will be another Clinton and we'll be in for another eight years of near psychotic dementia.
With such a hotly competitive presidential election, I've heard little about congressional elections, but the Democrats made huge gains in 2006, narrowly taking control of the House and Senate, and President Bush and Republicans have only gotten less popular since then, in the opinion pols I've seen. The consensus seems to be that the Democrats are almost certain to at least hold their advantage, and are most likely to pick up numerous additional seats in congress.
If Obama wins, he'll have a clear mandate for change, and since he's campaigned on a lot of issues, he'll get right to working on them, and will have legislative support. If McCain wins, he'll not only be opposed by two very hostile houses of congress, but since his campaign has no issues, and those it does have are perpetuations of things Bush did that people have come to hate, what will he do? Seriously? What will he do? I have no idea what he wants to do domestically, but even if he had some major agenda, there's no way the Democratic congress would go along with it. McCain's first response to international disputes is to start a war, but I don't think he'll be able to talk the country into another one at this point, even if the military had the capability to fight it, after 7 years of being overextended in Iraq. There are major problems with the economy, but McCain is uninterested in that and he'll just follow the institutional Republican approach by trying to cut taxes on the rich and praying that invisible market hands fix things. Which sometimes works, but isn't exactly proactive, and in any rate, isn't doing anything. Which was my question.
It looks like the last 2 years of the Bush Administration will be entirely bereft of notable events. Aside from the Telecom Amnesty plan that legally erased the criminal sale of our privacy to intrusive federal authorities, is there a single important piece of legislation, or other act of political consequence, that's happened since 2006? When's the last time anyone saw Bush? I don't remember anything involving him since that chest bumping he did at the Naval Academy Graduation. Can you imagine 4 more years of this? It's looking like you might not have to imagine it. You might get to live through it. Buy a fiddle. Rome's smoldering.
Volumes have already been written about Sarah Palin, McCain's laughably-unqualified choice for VP, a choice that was apparently entirely poll-driven and based on McCain's crush on a woman he'd met twice in his entire life. She's a hard core right wing Christian fundamentalist; a woman from well outside the mainstream of American political and social views, and even if that doesn't bother you, she's manifestly unfit to be VP, much less the proverbial heartbeat from the presidency. Fortunately, it's not as if McCain has a history of health problems, including cancer, and if elected would be, at 72, the oldest man to ever take office as US president. Oh wait...
At least Palin's selection has enlivened an otherwise tedious political race, as journalists dig through her very brief career and come away uniformly amazed and appalled at McCain's judgment in selecting her as his running mate. Palin's entire political experience was a short stint as the mayor of some podunk hicksville town, and a year and a half as the disinterested-in-policy governor of Alaska, the state with the 4th smallest population in the US. And that's not even getting to the good stuff, like her pending indictment for influence peddling in getting her sister's ex-husband fired from his job as a State Trooper, her past membership in an Alaskan secessionist movement party, her former job as the director of corrupt and disgraced senator Ted Stevens' fund raising group, her support of the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" boondoggle, the fact that her underage daughter is five-months knocked up by her boyfriend (who the press release amusing referred to as her future-husband), and much, much more.
This might be my favorite tidbit yet, though. It's from an Alaskan political blog, posted in 2006 when Palin was running for governor. The blogger sent a questionnaire about social and cultural issue to all the candidates. Two of whom answered. One of them was Palin, and her replies are quite enlightening. She's doctrinal on all the right wing "family" issues; anti-abortion, against real sex ed, for the (proven to be ineffective) abstinence only sex-ed (as her 17 y/o daughter's bulging belly testifies), etc. The funniest one is this:
11. Are you offended by the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not? SP: Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.
This answer is clearly meant to be red meat to the Republican base, but I'm curious. Does she really believe it? I'm sure she supports the policy she advocates, but does she think what she said about "good enough for our founding fathers" has some historical accuracy? Since it's incorrect on multiple levels.
Most obviously, the US Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 (by a socialist who wanted to include "equality" and "fraternity" but knew it wouldn't be adopted if he did). It did not contain the phrase "under God" until those rhythm-wrecking words were awkwardly inserted in 1951, during the height of Cold War paranoia and anti-Soviet propaganda. Neither the pledge, nor the "under God" part, has anything to do with the Founding Fathers, by a good century.
More generally, the US constitution is probably the most famous secular document in existence, and it was certainly the first national charter in human history to not mention any specific religious dogmas, (there are several vague, theistic mentions of a "creator") and to explicitly remove any religious qualifications for citizenship or the holding of public office. That's covered thoroughly in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.
It seems likely that Palin will be dumped long before the election, at the rate things are falling apart, but even if she's sent back to Anchorage in disgrace, at least her selection will have provided two benefits. (Three, if you count the amusement factor.) First, it's proven a useful tool for shining light on McCain's rash, impetuous nature (and his volatile temper will be revealed as calls for her to be dumped from the ticket grow louder). Second, it's drawing the fringe rightwing types out into the bright light of the media's attention, and the more regular US citizens see of the true beliefs and behavior of the American Taliban type fundamentalists, the sooner they'll be discredited and removed from public society.
The Bush Administration is overrun with such people; their ideology over reality approach is largely responsible for the disaster that the US occupation of Iraq descended into, the unconstitutional politicization of the US Attorneys' Office, our almost incalculable national debt, and a host of other political blunders. But the Bushies were run by savvy political operators like Karl Rove, who were good at presenting a sane face to the compliant press, while they skull-fucked all non-rich Americans behind the scenes. McCain's handlers are clearly less competent, at least in these early days. Let those of us who hope for a better tomorrow join in raising a ceremonial bottle of sauce to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, in prayer that McCain's guys won't have 4 years to learn better how to manipulate and scheme.
So, long time no blog. No real excuse; I've been busy running the Diablo 3 site, making a lot of forum posts, writing the wiki, setting up the columnists and editing their submissions, and working on a detective novel I'm writing with my dad. I have been doing a fair amount of blog-style writing, but it's been via email for an audience of one, since the I.G. has been out of town on her summer project for 2 months, and with not much else do to at night, and in need of distraction from the papers she had to write to earn credit for her ordeal, she's been quite finger (and voice) chatty.
None of that excuses me from at least managing semi-frequent updates here, though. Oh well, if you want a refund, I'll send it right over.
It's lame to, since I've had a lot of interesting stuff to blog about. And I've got a bunch of reviews to post; I have read a few of the literary classics I threatened to read when the summer began, and they're quite ripe for discussion. I wrote notes for them and squeezed them into my ratings matrix, so at some point I'll flesh them out and post them. Today though, I'm just going to throw up a few tidbits about this and that.
The Olympics have begun, and while I've not had TV since last fall (I have TV, but don't want cable and don't care enough to buy an antenna, so it's just a DVD-watching device), I've seen some of the coverage online. NBC actually has a really good online option. A great option really, one that's considerably better than watching them on TV. You can see almost every event live, without any announcers or commercials. And you can see almost every past event in its entirety, also without announcers or commercials.
To watch, go to the NBC Olympics video page, and just click on anything. You get a pop up window with a good sized video screen, and navigation that lets you select every event in the Olympics. Each event then has dozens of videos to view, far more than you'd ever see on TV. You'll want to fast forward liberally though, since it's just a straight satellite feed and between events you get 10 minutes of random shots of the crowd, of referees talking with their heads close together, of workers rearranging the equipment, etc. It's just like being in Beijing yourself! Minus the smog and occasional deranged, homicidal, suicidal, knife-wielding locals.
I watched a variety of events; basketball, swimming, the opening ceremonies replay (shut up Bob Costas), and the ones I actually wanted to see; fencing and Taekwondo. The fencing is ridiculous; there's no vestige of actual sword play in the sport. Saber is the worst of the 3 forms, since everything above the waist is a scoring zone, and since they're pretending the electrified car antennas they're using for "weapons" are cutting blades, any sort of contact scores. The sport breaks down to a lot of twitching and pacing, until both guys (or girls) lunge and whoever hits the other a millisecond before they are stabbed themselves, wins.
Some of the female foil fencing was better, since the foil only counts if you get a stab, so there's some defense and blocking in close. A few times both women would end up face to face, trying to poke each other with weird "elbow bent by their ear" moves, like a pool player trying to hit straight down on a cue ball against the rail. Which is, of course, ridiculous in any form of actual combat, but at least it was entertaining on TV. Computer.
Unlike the TKD, which, under the Olympic scoring rules, was outright farcical. No pushing, no punching, no grappling, etc. Just kicking. Hitting the huge chest pad is worth 1 point, and hitting the helmet is worth 2 points. The arms do nothing in the sport, and the less skilled combatants often ended up basically sumo suit wrestling (minus the laughs and dog piling when someone fell), while trying to do these absurd little half hopping kicks to the side, in hopes that they might graze the life vest-style chest padding.
Nutshell version: Olympic TKD is to actual martial arts as Olympic fencing is to an actual sword fight as Tyra Banks wandering around LA in old clothes with a camera crew is to actually being homeless.
I wonder why, though? They have real boxing in the Olympics, after all. True, they wear very padded gloves and headgear, and the fights are only a few rounds so the endurance and strategy of real boxing isn't a big factor, but there's actual hitting and occasional knockouts. They don't stand 10 feet apart and wear space suits and sensor-equipped gloves, and engage in some fist-based version of TKD/fencing, where the goal is just to touch your opponent in a scoring zone an instant before they touch you. You try that hopping, touching-for-a-score bullshit in boxing, you get laid out, since it's actual combat, and power and accuracy and impact matters. Which makes me wonder how Olympic TKD and Judo and fencing have become such effete, reality-divorced displays, when they all started out as actual forms of combat? Dunno, but it's sad, and a somewhat painful viewing experience.
I've got a lot less to say about this, but I highly recommend reading it. It's a nicely-detailed, inside-researched article about how Hillary Clinton achieved such an epic fail in the Democratic primaries. She came in almost as the presumptive nominee, with all the name recognition, all the money, all the media coverage, the ex-president husband, etc. And through poor planning, lack of strategy, constant adviser in-fighting, and just general incompetence, she let Obama snatch the pony out from beneath her.
I read political blogs every day, but I hadn't followed the gruesome details of the campaigns all that closely, so it was great to read such a well-researched article that could effectively summarize six months of conflict in 5 short pages.
Finally, I saw these pics today, while doing the first gossip blog surfing I'd done in at least a week. (I was too tired after a long bike ride to do anything but slouch at the computer and move my mouse hand.) They're shots of the Jonas Brothers (who are apparently famous, in a boy band sort of way. I've no idea where they came from, but I'd assume some Disney show.) at an Mtv show, and the teenaged girls sitting near them going completely out of their minds. Turning red, sobbing, shaking hysterically, etc.
This is not a new phenomena, of course. It's been epidemic since at least Beetlemania and Elvismania, but it's not one I understand. Leaving aside the cheap joke material of comparing the flavor-of-the-week teenie-bopper Jonas Brothers to the Fab Four, what is it in adolescent girls that causes this sort of behavior?
It seems to be age or maturity-related; younger girls get squealy and hyper, and adult women might salivate, but they don't turn red and faint. It's some combination of post-puberty hormones, repressed sexual energy, Prince Charming fantasies, and some other things I don't know about and probably never will, having grown up with entirely different plumbing and psychology.
I've not had much time to follow political news, or anything else but Diablo III since the big announcement late Friday night (California time). But when I hit Yahoo news this afternoon, between running some errands and looking up the location of the UPS store in downtown San Rafael, I thought this was absurd enough that it required comment.
Retired 4-star US Army General Wesley Clark (who I thought was a good choice for the democratic presidential candidate in 2004, for reasons I no longer recall) was on some weekend political talk show, and when questioned, pointed out something fairly obvious. That John McCain's main claim to military fame, that his plane was shot down and he was imprisoned (and very cruelly-treated) by the Viet Cong for the duration of the Vietnam War, doesn't necessarily qualify him to be president of the US.
If you live outside of the US, you probably wonder how this is even remotely controversial. Clark has vastly greater military credentials than McCain, presumably knows quite a bit about the intellectual and leadership qualities of your average Navy flyboy, was very careful in his comments to honor McCain's service and bravery in captivity, and said nothing against the value of anyone's military service. He just pointed out that getting shot down in a fighter plane and captured by the Vietnamese army isn't an experience that exactly translates into presidential experience.
His remarks have become big news in large part because the mainstream media in the US is happy to misrepresent anything for ratings, is entirely cowed by and fearful of saying anything that might remotely be construed as anti-military (especially in a time of war, such as um... ever), and because that same media harbors an enormous man-crush on John McCain. And, of course, because right wingers who support McCain (largely by default, since the hardcore 25%er base liked all the other Republican candidates better than the pseudo-independent McCain) have gone insane over the issue, since they live to 1) support Republicans, 2) attack the patriotism of Democrats, and 3) support the military (in every way but by actually, you know, paying the soldiers more or giving them better support post service).
The real irony is that the only prominent people attacking John McCain's military service are... right wingers. There's a substantial fringe faction (including Republican ex-congressmen) who thinks he's literally a Manchurian Candidate. That he was brainwashed and "turned" by communist Chinese operatives during his lengthy captivity, that he made numerous anti-American propaganda tapes while in captivity, that he covered it up through his powerful position as a senator on the military affairs subcommittee, that he abandoned his fellow P.O.W.'s by opposing programs that would have searched for prisoners still held after America lost the Vietnam war, that he's currently under the control of the Chinese government, and that President McCain would be (almost) as bad for America as the secretly-Muslim, whitey-hating, possibly-atheistic African impostor he's competing against for the job.
Yes, this is the sort of thing that dominates political discourse in America. How else do you think we ended up with two terms of George Bush Jr.? Debating the issues?
I've not watched any TV in months, and even when I did watch TV I didn't watch cable news, since I found it uniformly insipid. But even with that background of disgust, this might be the stupidest thing I've ever read. Even aside from the not-so-subtle bit of ongoing smear/slander against Obama, can you envision anyone with an IQ over 80 watching this without feeling like part of their brain was leaking out their left ear?
From the June 6 edition of Fox News' America's Pulse:
HILL: A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? The gesture everyone seems to interpret differently. We'll show you some interesting body communication and find out what it really says.
[...]
HILL: First, the president of America chest bumps an Air Force graduate. Next, Michelle and Barack Obama fist bump or fist pound -- people call it all sorts of things -- but what happened to the old pat on the back? A handshake? A hug? Today's body language and what we can glean from it. Janine Driver is a body language expert and joins us now. Janine, thanks for being back with us.
DRIVER: Hi, E.D. Nice to be here.
HILL: OK, tell me about this whole thing. Let's start with the Barack and Michelle Obama, because that's what most people are writing about -- this fist thump. Is that sort of a signal that young people get?
DRIVER: I'm sure it is, without a doubt. And it's a connection that they have together. It's something just personal between the two of them, like "I'm proud of you." You know, my husband and I, if we're walking down the street and he's proud of me, we have our own little method. He squeezes my hand three times, which means, "I love you," and I squeeze his four times, saying, "I love you, too." It's something intimate between them, but I'm sure young people in this country are going to kind of like them kind of representing a little bit.
HILL: Uh-huh. Has our communication style changed as a culture in America?
...
HILL: OK, let me ask you about this then, because I -- you know, George Bush is a little older than Barack Obama, and he did one of these -- look at that. Look at that, folks. Stop. Turn around. Look at your TV screen. He's doing that chest bump. Now I see that in the end zone in NFL games after somebody scores a major touchdown. I don't normally expect to see the president of the United States doing it. What does that mean?
DRIVER: E.D., you know, it's funny. When I saw these pictures, and your producers sent them to me today, I really cracked up laughing. You know, I -- these pictures with George Bush are being taken -- the president, George Bush -- are being taken out of context.
I realize it must be difficult to fill 24 hours a day on a US cable news channel, where the focus seemingly has to be only on US events. (Why they can't do world news half the time, I don't know?) That kind of "coverage" of the US inevitably leads to idiocy like this, with a body language expert required to "explain" Michelle and Barack Obama giving each other a fist bump of the type every single baseball player has exchanged after a home run for the last fifteen years. But how can a person paid to be on TV ask, in a credulous tone of voice, "has our communication style changed as a culture in America?"
What? Next thing you know our cultural values, vocabulary, food choices, and entertainment interests might change over time as well. Better keep electing old white men to the presidency, just in case. One with some dignity, apparently, since Dubya's succumbed to the same creeping cultural rot!
Looking at the notes from the Senate Intelligence Committee's Phase II report on pre-war intelligence on Iraq, which has finally been released after Republican senators kept it from public consumption for several years, and it's um... yeah. Remember when Clinton lied about oral sex with an intern, and the country (well, the Republican party and the media) was consumed with impeachment talk? For lying to keep sex secret from his S.O., something 99% of the people on earth have done at least once in the last six months their lives?
Consider that, and try to figure why Bush, Cheney, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, and most of the rest of the current administration aren't being brought up on charges right now? A few highlights:
Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.
Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.
Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.
Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq's chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community's uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.
The Secretary of Defense's statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.
The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.
No matter how seriously you take the issue of extra-marital sex, can anyone argue against the fact that every single one of these points is of infinitely more importance than who did or did not gobble the Clenis? That they had incalculably more importance, that they led directly to the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and hundred of thousands of Iraqi civilians? Etc?
I think Bush and co are benefiting from outrage fatigue. Everyone hates Bush; he's got the lowest approval rating in the history of American presidential approval ratings (really), people are shell shocked by gas prices, interest rates are shooting up as the housing crisis deepens, the Iraqi occupation has dragged on so long people are just inured to it, etc. When you put the fact that Bush and company consciously lied in the process of instigating the Iraq Attaq on top of all that, it feels almost irrelevant. Like finding a cockroach on your shit sandwich. And since Bush's term is almost over, everyone just sort of wants him to go away. Democrats want him to fall off a bridge, Republicans want him to just vanish without pulling down the ratings of their entire party, and no one really has the heart to stir up impeachment proceedings, no matter how richly they might be deserved.
The American people are like Smeagol when he was talking to Gollum/himself in his good phase in the Return of the King movie. "Go away, and never come again." And take nominee McBush with you. Four more years = DO NOT WANT!!1! We'd rather just forget about you than spend the time to try and punish you as you should be punished.
This is almost a "how to" lesson for future political criminals. If you do such a horrible job that people spend most of their time trying to forget that you exist, you're unlikely to be held accountable for your sins. The Republicans had to try to bring Clinton down since he was a very popular president. Bush has brought himself down to the point that attempting impeachment at this point would probably make him look persecuted and give him a popularity boost.
I don't imagine this is news to anyone who every considered the issue from a scientific perspective, rather than from wishful thinking of the "wouldn't that be cool?" type, but a major study has shown that no, of course there's no relation between your talents, traits, proclivities, and the time of the day/month/year you were born.
For several decades, researchers tracked more than 2,000 people - most of them born within minutes of each other. According to astrology, the subject should have had very similar traits.
The babies were originally recruited as part of a medical study begun in London in 1958 into how the circumstances of birth can affect future health. More than 2,000 babies born in early March that year were registered and their development monitored at regular intervals.
Researchers looked at more than 100 different characteristics, including occupation, anxiety levels, marital status, aggressiveness, sociability, IQ levels and ability in art, sport, mathematics and reading - all of which astrologers claim can be gauged from birth charts.
The scientists failed to find any evidence of similarities between the "time twins", however. They reported in the current issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies: "The test conditions could hardly have been more conducive to success... but the results are uniformly negative."
...Dr Dean said the results undermined the claims of astrologers, who typically work with birth data far less precise than that used in the study. "They sometimes argue that times of birth just a minute apart can make all the difference by altering what they call the 'house cusps'," he said. "But in their work, they are happy to take whatever time they can get from a client."
The findings caused alarm and anger in astrological circles yesterday. Roy Gillett, the president of the Astrological Association of Great Britain, said the study's findings should be treated "with extreme caution" and accused Dr Dean of seeking to "discredit astrology".
I don't think "seeking" is quite the right word there, Starmaster Gilbert.
This will have zero effect on people who put value on a horoscope, after all. Humans invent and utilize patterns and systems of organization to superimpose on our random, chaotic world. Religion is the biggest one, but things like astrology, political ideologies, racial and gender stereotypes, and others are all popular as well, and probably always will be. After all, if someone can believe that a case of alleged parthenogenesis = divinity in the flesh, which led to a human sacrifice that redeemed all the sins of the world, it's comparably much easier to believe that position of Saturn when you were born might have some effect on your personality or destiny.
In more reality-based news, it turns out that porn is good for men, providing they find a variety that turns them on, and take that visual excitement to its logical conclusion.
Masturbation 'cuts cancer risk'
Men could reduce their risk of developing prostate cancer through regular masturbation, researchers suggest. They say cancer-causing chemicals could build up in the prostate if men do not ejaculate regularly.
Australian researchers questioned over 1,000 men who had developed prostate cancer and 1,250 who had not about their sexual habits. They found those who had ejaculated the most between the ages of 20 and 50 were the least likely to develop the cancer. The protective effect was greatest while the men were in their 20s. Men who ejaculated more than five times a week were a third less likely to develop prostate cancer later in life.
...
Dr Giles said fewer ejaculations may mean the carcinogens build up. "It's a prostatic stagnation hypothesis. The more you flush the ducts out, the less there is to hang around and damage the cells that line them."
A similar connection has been found between breast cancer and breastfeeding, where lactating appeared to "flush out" carcinogens, reduce a woman's risk of the disease, New Scientist reports. Another theory put forward by the researchers is that ejaculation may induce prostate glands to mature fully, making them less susceptible to carcinogens.
Dr Chris Hiley, head of policy and research at the UK's Prostate Cancer Charity, told BBC News Online: "This is a plausible theory."
This news hit a week ago, and I read it, chuckled, imagined the conservative hysteria it would create, and forgot about it until a friend sent me the link yesterday. I'm not curious enough to go fishing in the fever swamps, but some of the religious, self-appointed moralists have to be apoplectic over this by now, right? These people fight to stop cancer vaccines because they'd rather women die of cervical cancer than possibly have more sex. They must be bursting blood vessels over medical evidence that frequent ejaculation, whether from auto, homo, or heterosexual activity, has health benefits.
On the other hand, that's about male sex and male needs and male health, so perhaps not. There's a reason far more health insurance plans pay for Viagra and Cialis than birth control pills, and it's not a reason that's going to be real comprehensible until you view society through the lens of the sexist men and self-loathing women who hold most of the political and cultural power in America.
Obama and Clinton held a debate (video or transcript) a few days ago, and there's been more or less universal condemnation of the frivolous, gossipy nature of the questions ever since. I've read dozens of bloggers and media critics who were disgusted by it, but I'm only going to link to a couple. Glennzilla did his usual sober, calm, and devastating deconstruction of the media follies, and then today for laughs, there's this ahistorical parody on Obsidian Wings, depicting the 1858 Lincoln vs. Douglas debate as moderated by Gibson and Stephanopoulos.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you love America this much (extending fingers), this much (extending hands slightly), or thiiiiiis much (extending hands broadly)?
LINCOLN: I think we covered this…
GIBSON: If I may interrupt…
LINCOLN: Please.
GIBSON: I noticed, Mr. Lincoln, that your American flag pin was upside down…
LINCOLN: Yes, the wind caught it. Now, as I was saying...
GIBSON: We get questions about this all the time over at Powerline and on Hannity’s talk show. Mr. Douglas has said this is a major vulnerability for you in the fall. So I’ll ask again – do you love America?
LINCOLN: (scowling with a forced smile). Yes.
GIBSON: If your love for America were ice cream, what flavor would it be?
I don't usually read comments on blog posts, but some of the readers got nicely into the spirit of things and added value of teh funny kind:
Are you bitter about American politics this much (extending fingers), this much (extending hands slightly), or thiiiiiis much (extending hands broadly)?
If your bitterness about American politics were a leafy green vegetable, which one would it be? Brussel sprouts? Spinach?
I like to think of my love for america as a giant beaver, gnawing on the tree of liberty to damn up the river of freedom.
My bitterness would be a fruit: to wit, Chinese bitter melon, which is nearly bitter enough to make you contemplate suicide when you eat it.
I haven't watched TV in many months, but one of the TVs at the gym is usually on CNN when I'm doing the elliptical machine at night, and from what I see, the constant criticism of the pettiness and self-inflicted irrelevance of the mainstream news seems to be entirely accurate. I didn't see any post debate coverage, but last week all they showed non-stop was pontificating about the preacher at Obama's church who made some controversial remarks several years ago. A couple of weeks before that every single minute of CNN for a solid week was about hookers. The one the NY Governor allegedly hired in particular, what hookers are like in general, interviews with self-proclaimed pimps, etc. Some weeks before that Larry King and their regular news coverage was all about a UFO that apparently buzz bombed some hick town in Texas.
The real news channels have been watering down their coverage for years, and now they're hemorrhaging viewers while Colbert and John Stewart swell in ratings, so they think a further retreat from actual news is the solution. Hence we get endless inconsequential stories about celebrity-style foolishness. Gotcha comments, personality based bullshit, and reporting that grows ever shallower with each news cycle. This puddle-deep reporting is exactly the sort of media coverage that gave us 2 terms of George Bush -- if the candidates are never forced to answer real questions or show real solutions, but can skim through with smiles and glad handling and a few sound bites, you get an idiot who looks good on camera but has no real ability to govern.
Now we've got McCain skimming through unencumbered by media scrutiny; if anything he's even more beloved of the media than Dubya was. McCain is clearly a more capable man than the current president, and McCain is occasionally (though largely symbolically) willing to go against the default grain of his party on social issues, but he's "four more years" in every way when it comes to foreign policy. Naturally, the media coverage of this is nonexistent. Why shouldn't it be? After all, Clinton almost teared up at one point, and Obama doesn't bowl very well, so clearly those stories must lead the evening news for the foreseeable future.
Candidate Barack Obama made a remark at a fund raiser last week in San Francisco that's become somewhat controversial, thanks to the rebroadcasting, amplifying, and condemning it's received from his various political and racial enemies on the right and in Hilary Clinton's campaign offices. Here's the remark:
You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them....And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
When I first read that last week I thought it was fairly insightful. I knew it would be cited by Obama's political enemies as elitist and insulting and untrue and anything else they could smear on it, since 1) they're his enemies, and 2) since any honest discourse about race or class in America is strongly condemned by the powers that be, especially those on the right side of the political aisle. Much of the conservative voting bloc in the US is motivated precisely by what Obama pointed his finger at in these remarks, and the politicians and commenters who remain in power thanks to the proletariat's inchoate anger at Hollywood liberals, or gun control, or immigrants, or the ACLU, etc. If those people are pointed, or led, to the actual economic and political sources of their troubles, in a What's the Matter with Kansas fashion, they might rethink their knee-jerk reactions to cultural provocations, and that might stop them from automatically, and self-defeatingly, voting Republican. So, much as was the case with the controversy whipped up after Obama's brilliant speech on race, the aim of the whippers is to manufacture outrage and perpetuate stereotypes, precisely because those are what keep people from reading or listening to the words and possibly rethinking some of their inbred assumptions.
That was my initial reaction to Obama's words and the extremely predictable reaction to them. I'm slightly rethinking this today, since as Kevin Drum points out, Obama's comments are rather crude and arguably inaccurate generalizations of larger and more complex issues.
...what really strikes me as odd about Obama's statement is that, on its merits, it's largely untrue, isn't it? Economic distress probably is responsible for growing anti-trade sentiment (though the Midwest has never exactly been a bastion of free trade support), and maybe for a bit of the increase in anti-immigrant sentiment too... But does anyone really think that stagnant wages and globalization are responsible for rural gun culture? Or the rise of the Christian right? Or an increase in bigotry? ...Gun culture, for example, has been around forever. It's just that it was largely unnoticed until liberals started trying to take guns away in the 60s and 70s. The rise of the Christian right has lots of causes, but it's part of a long American religious tradition that has very little to do with the ups and downs of the economy. And bigotry hasn't increased in the past 25 years, so that part doesn't even make sense on its own terms.
I think he's right on most of the particulars, but is ignoring the larger issue. It doesn't matter if exact, demographically-provable economic charts show that the Midwest is victimized by globalization and immigration; it matters if the white rural voter thinks that's the case, and fostering that belief, along with the attendant conservative cultural values, is what keeps the Republican party viable in national elections, despite the fact that their actual economic policies are of benefit almost exclusively to the rich. Obama might not have been exactly correct on the details, but the overall theme of his remarks was a perfect strike against the demagoguery of his opponents. Even aside from that, it was a remark made to his supporters at a fundraiser in a very liberal city, and was exactly the sort of faux-insightful political analysis those type of people like to hear. (As this San Francisco-area inhabitant is proving with this blog post?)
Besides, it's not as if politicians don't focus their remarks to appeal to the audience listening, especially when that audience is paying to attend a fund raiser. Parsing out every word of a speech made to a highly supportive, partisan audience is absurd, since obviously any politician is going to give such people more or less what they want to hear.
I was too busy with RL stuff I'm not going to blog about, and and semi-RL computer work I'm also not going to blog about, to think about blogging over the weekend. Sadly, I don't have a great deal to say today either, but the unfolding story of the Governor of New York's prostitution scandal is worth a comment.
The story in a nutshell is that Elliot Spitzer, the current governor of New York, has a long history of using high priced call girls, a fact he had to admit to once news broke of a federal investigation into his behavior. He's not resigned yet, but it seems almost certain he will, since America remains a basically puritanical nation, in thought if not deed, and sex scandals are always guaranteed to incite a media frenzy.
Should he resign? Probably; he'll never get any governing done with this cloud hanging over his head, and it displays poor judgment on his part. Like most thinking adults, I don't think prostitution should be illegal, and don't really care if someone engages in it. That said, the fact remains that it is illegal, and Spitzer was sworn to uphold the laws of the nation. Furthermore, it's idiotic for a high powered, elected official to do this sort of thing if only because it opens up such potential for blackmail and extortion. (On the other hand, now that it's out in the open, that potential is gone, so why should he resign now?)
The more interesting aspects of this are how the prosecution came about, and how the scandalous details of the case are being leaked to the media. Lots of legal bloggers have been weighing in, and making some interesting points.
Federal law enforcement doesn't get involved in individual cases of prostitution. They certainly don't engage in wire taps and monitor bank funds transfers of the small scale Spitzer was doing to pay for the whores. (The man's a multi, multi-millionare. No matter how crazy it sounds to most of us to pay $1000+ for an hour of sex, it was pennies to him.) And they say they're going to prosecute him under the Mann Act, an archaic, 100 year old, almost-forgotten law that bans interstate travel for immoral purposes. So his crime was wanting such high class poontang they had to ship it in from other states? If he'd just settled for local talent, it wouldn't have been a crime? Absurd.
Why would the feds care? Well, given the the fact that the Bush Administration's legal branch is hopelessly politicized and partisan, has a history of politically motivated prosecutions and firings, and given that Spitzer made his career as a crusading, white collar/rich people prosecuting liberal attorney general, and has viciously and personally feuded with some prominent Republican party members, there are quite a few dots to connect.
I don't think anyone's suggesting the feds engaged in an outright frame up, but they somehow got word that Spitzer was involved with whores, and found a way to make a federal case out of something they would never have touched if he hadn't been a prominent Democratic politician. Consider that every news story about this is filled with anonymously leaked info from the government prosecutors, all of it salacious and scandalous, none of it illegal or pertaining to the actual legal case, and all of it intended to make Spitzer look bad and end his career. That's clearly not an accident. There's not much of a legal case against the guy, but there doesn't have to be; there just needs to be big sex scandal to bring him down.
That issue aside, can anyone understand high priced prostitution? I don't get it. I've never paid for sex (at least not directly), and don't see the attraction. The whole point of sex for me is being intimate with a woman I care about and know and have some level of relationship with. It's the chance to interact with another person (a woman, in my case) in an intimate, personal way that is unlike any other sort of social interaction. Sure, there's physical pleasure and ego gratification and such, but sex is not just interactive masturbation. It's a whole different level of human interaction.
Prostitution, on the other hand, is just sex. You know the woman (or man, in some cases) isn't enjoying it, doesn't really give a shit about you, and is only there as part of a financial transaction. For some people that's the whole point and the whole thrill. I don't understand that POV, but I can acknowledge that it exists. Why do most men hire whores, though? I can understand if if the guy's so ugly or anti-social or desperate that he can't get a real woman, but why do men who aren't that bad off do it? Aging, married men, such as Spitzer, I can understand. Men have a very strong biological drive to have sex with young, attractive women, an evolutionary trait that's not highly compatible with long term monogamy. Some men resist the urge forever, but most men give into the temptation now and then, whether by banging one of their daughter's friends, or hiring a whore, or for the truly skilled, keeping a young mistress.
What about single men, though? Especially rich, powerful ones, who can easily get a girlfriend if they put their minds to it? Why do they go to strip clubs, or pay for whores? I can understand why rock stars and athletes and other male celebs bang groupies; they get an orgasm, get their ego stroked by a woman desiring them, and there aren't all the complicating attachments of a real relationship. I don't want that myself, but I can empathize enough to kind of put myself into their shoes. How does that work with a whore, though? It's not free, so there's no ego satisfaction of the "I'm so hot girls will throw themselves at me." nature. It's just sex, and not even really sex, since it's all an act for her. (This is true for quite a bit of consensual sex, on the part of women bored by their inept lovers, but that's another issue for another blog post.) It's vaginally-assisted masturbation, and the guy is paying quite a bit for the privilege.
Which brings me back to the initial issue. Why pay for it? What's the attraction for a single guy, in this age of infinite free porn online? I'm not making any promises, but I guess I'll have to try it out sometime when I'm single and have the resources, just to see what it's like. I've never had one night stand type anonymous sex, so maybe it's really all of that and I've been missing out with my years of getting to know and like and sometimes love women, before going to bed with them?
This was the haunting message some vandal left on the wall of a local Barack Obama campaign office in (heavily redneck) East Texas. Police have no leads, though some bloggers may have found a suspect.
One of the better political blog posts I've ever read can be seen here. I highly recommend if it you want to get a sense of the larger, underlying principles and concepts that shape the superficial, surface level of politics that is more discussed, yet much less important.
Yet if you look at the history of the last thirty or so years, it seems (says Krugman) that conventional wisdom has been stood on its head, and that politics drove economics.
...And that is our history as we know it. Starting in the 1970s, at about the time of the Lewis Powell memo, an interlocking network of right wing billionaires and theocrats began to fund the institutions whose dominance we take for granted today: The American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, The Family Research Council, the Federalist Society, the Brookings Institute (over time), and on and on...
For these billionaires, the ROI of the Conservative Movement is absolutely spectacular. At the micro level, for example, if you want to create an aristocracy, then you want to eliminate any taxes on inherited wealth, despite what Warren Buffet or Bill Gates might say about the values entailed by that project. So, the Conservative Movement goes to work, develops and successfully propagates the "death tax" talking point (meme, frame) -- which they may even believe in, as if sincerity were the point -- and voila! Whoever thought that "family values" would translate to "feudal values" and dynastic wealth? At the macro level, their ROI has been spectacular as well. Real wages have been flat for a generation; unions have been disempowered; the powers of corporations greatly increased; government has become an agent for the corporations, rather than a protector of the people; the safety net has been shredded; and so on and on and on.
The picture tells the story. The Conservative Movement succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of the billionaires who invested in it. Despite the remarkable gains that we have made in productivity, they creamed most of it off.
This part just summarizes the economic thrust that's driven the pro-rich policies (and results) of the Republican Party over the past few decades, and does it very neatly, which is why I thought it was worth a link. The rest of the post is largely about why Obama's kumbaya-style "let's end partizan rancor" is doomed to failure; the Republicans in Washington are funded by the beneficiaries of this wild income spike, and they are not going to give in on policies that would take some steps towards equalizing the slices of the economic pie distributed to all Americans. You're free to agree or disagree with the specific policy recommendations made in the post, but however you feel about that, I thought the big picture info was well worth a look.
All that being said, congrats to Barack Obama for his win in the Iowa primary, and check out his victory speech if you haven't seen it already. He and Clinton (the male, ex-president Clinton) are the two best speech-makers I've ever heard, and this is a prime example of Obama doing his uplifting, "together we can change the world" thing.
For all the man's charisma and speaking ability, I've been hesitant to support Obama since he's way too happy with the religious stuff. I'm sure he's committed to a secular nation and upholding the constitution (far more so than Bush, certainly), but while I'm not hoping to see major party atheist candidates anything soon, I'd like one who seemed a bit more grounded in reality. Happily, Obama doesn't mention God or Jesus or even Allah in this victory speech, though one can't judge too much from just one 14-minute triumph.
On a larger level though, I've thought his presidential run, while interesting, was ultimately doomed by his race and background. America is still too white, and too racist a society to elect a black man to the presidency, even in 2008, even with Republican approval ratings in the 25% range. I think it's a shame, but I think that's the case. I thought it was, at least. Obama pulling 37% in the Iowa primary, with Edwards and Clinton going around 30% each, is an amazing development, though. Especially since Iowa is a very conservative, old-fashioned state, and it's something like 90% white, by the figures I've seen posted along with the election returns. I'm sure Obama, if he does get the nomination, could win California and New York and other blue states. But the South? The Midwest? True, Gore and Kerry didn't win there either, in 2000 and 2004, and they nearly won anyway (well, Gore actually did win, before the Supreme Court stepped in and stopped the recounts and appointed Bush, but let's not get into that again) but they were just boring, uninspiring candidates. They weren't black(ish) on top of that.
That being said, it's always possible that Obama in the race will motivate a lot of people who don't usually vote to get out there (that's said every time some alternative candidate pops up though, and it usually turns out to be a non-factor), and it's equally possible that while the racist vote exists, the Republican nominee will be so awful that people who would never vote for a black man simply won't vote at all.
I've been paying little attention to the primaries since I figuring Hillary Clinton would get the Democratic nomination. Edwards has been saying some good things (in my opinion; not good in terms of getting popularly elected) about turning the power structure upside down, but he's too young-looking and pretty and diminutive to get the nomination, in this image-dominated day and age. The endless Rush Limbaugh/Ann Coulter hate towards him and his pretty hair has sunk into the media narrative, and that may be true of all the "Hitlery is a ball-busting lesbian." stuff too. I still think she'd win if she were nominated; everyone but the fanatical rightwing still loves Bill Clinton, and she'd get all that vote plus women would turn out to support her, if only from the novelty of having someone other than an aging WASP male to cast a ballot for. Obama, in a nationwide election, though? Not just in Illinois, against awful Republican options? Unknown. I just hope he's got some damn good security; charismatic black national figures have a long history of taking bullets in the US, guns have never been more available in the US, and there are powerful forces profoundly disturbed by his uplifting rhetoric.
A semi-regular commenter chimed in on my recent post about the Benazir Bhutto assassination, if only to immediately segue into promotion for Ron Paul's Quixotic presidential campaign. Most people, even in America, have never heard of the guy, but he's gaining online popularity and getting some national media coverage as well. Paul's a Republican congressman from Texas, and though he's only polling around 3% nationally, he's far more popular online, since he's tapping into the so-called "Randroids," the techy, overwhelmingly-male, internet-savvy libertarian base. He doesn't have that many supporters, but they're very vocal and active, so any time the guy is mentioned, especially in negative terms, Ron Paul sites post links, and his fans stream in to make their voices heard.
It's quite an effective technique (assuming you can get rabid supporters who will go where you point them), and kind of reminds me of the early days of Diabloii.net, when everyone was waiting and waiting and waiting for D2, and to kill the time we'd find votes about upcoming RPGs on other fansites, post a link, and generally overload their voting script in half an hour. I've not seen any Ron Paul votes get broken yet, but one amusing side effect of his eager acolytes is that many big-time bloggers, political, scientific, and other, individuals who are seldom adverse to seeking out hit-pumping controversy, seem to be almost afraid to blog about the guy since they know his supporters will flock to his defense. Even if they're not afraid it's become common practice to preface posts about Ron Paul with a warning that the comments are about to be overrun. Even if the blogger doesn't bring that up, the first comment from some regular reader usually does. So consider yourself warned. I guess.
I mention the guy since he's an interesting case study in gaining political fame, or infamy, in America. Paul's campaign has made news by fundraising the largest one-day haul ever (yet), and by launching some very innovative self promotions. Including a blimp. Literally; a real, flying, white and black dirigible that's touring the nation. He's also making news, at least on blogs I read, by being ignored by much of the mainstream press, and actively excluded from the Republican base. FOX News is apparently blocking him from taking part in the next debate in New Hampshire, despite him out fundraising and polling higher (though still in single digits) than some others who are invited.
Whether this merits conspiracy theories about him being opposed (or just ignored) by the mainstream media is open to debate. It's pretty clear, though, that the mainstream Republican Party would like him to go away. Paul's views on most major issues are diametrically opposed to those of his party's leadership (and of the Democratic Party's as well, for that matter); he's advocating an immediate withdrawal from Iraq and heavy cuts to all defense spending, for one thing. Something no other major presidential candidate of either party has even dared consider, for fear of being labeled "soft" on terrorism. With every other Republican candidate standing on stage at the "debates," clutching their nuts while insisting they want to "double Guantanamo" and indefinitely extend Bush's imperial adventure in the Middle East, Paul stands out like a bear in a wedding photo, and says things the leadership of his party does not want brought up.
So he's an interesting guy and an interesting sideshow to the election, but despite all that, and the sympathy I naturally feel for another individual stigmatized with two first names, ("Your last name?" "Paul." "No, your last name." "*sigh* All my life...") I could never support the guy for elective office. He's a true bomb thrower (at least while he's still safely on the fringe; Huckabee made a lot of rabble-rousing populist remarks when he was at 5%, but started to toe the moneycon party line once he gained wider support), but he lights too many fuses. I like some of his fringe positions, (immediate end to the Iraqi Occupation and severely curtailing the pointless and wasteful "War on Drugs"), even if I disagree with his "logic" for doing so, but there's too much else about him that drives me away. He mingles with neo-Nazis, denies evolution, supports all sorts of quackery, wants to repeal the 16th Amendment, is anti-choice, and holds many other positions I can't overlook or excuse, and that I think would be disastrous for the country were he in a position of national power. I do enjoy the site of him harassing the Republicans from in their midst, and if I were a Republican I'd vote for him over a WWIII-inducer like Guiliani, or a Bible-thumper like Huckelbee, or a say-anything empty suit like Romney, if only to try to send a message to the power structure.
I hope everyone's heard about her assassination, but it's gotten interesting in the days after, since the official Pakistan government story appears to be a pathetic attempt at a coverup. Watch the video from Britain's Channel 4 and see what seems like pretty clear evidence that she took at least one bullet to the back of the neck or head, seconds before the bomb goes off.
The odd thing to me is that the Pakistani government seems to think their version of events is better, in some way. They're freely admitting that a seeming total lack of security allowed the leading political candidate to replace the entrenched leadership to be killed as the direct result of a gunman who fired at her from point blank range, an action immediately followed by a bomb-packing accomplice detonating himself and killing more than twenty bystanders, presumably including the gunman. But wait, says the Pakistani government; she wasn't actually hit by any of the bullets; she died ducking to avoid them, when she hit her head on the car's sunroof.
Even if you accept that account, what's the difference? An assassin got to within several feet of her and shot at the back of her head without any interference from security, and another guy set off a bomb from equally-direct range. Even if you believe that the shooter was an astonishingly bad shot, and that Bhutto had astonishingly bad luck with pointy car parts when she ducked down, the failures (intentional or otherwise) in security are identical.
Lately, it seems there's almost daily news about yet another moralizing, bible-thumping, right wing, sanctimonious Republican getting caught sucking cock in a men's room. Today's installment features a state representative from Washington, and has enough funny elements I couldn't resist posting about it.
State Rep. Richard Curtis, R-La Center, admitted to having sex with a man he met at an adult video store in Spokane last week, according to a police report released Tuesday afternoon.
The police report offers a damning and far different version of events from the brief account Curtis gave to The Columbian Monday, one that seems likely to threaten Curtis’ political future.
The report is filled with graphic details of an encounter that began at a porn store on a Spokane Valley strip and concluded miles away in Curtis’ room at the city’s poshest hotel.
The police report contains an account of how Curtis allegedly donned women’s clothing, red stockings and a black sequined lingerie top before engaging in a sex act at the store. He continued to wear them throughout the night under his clothing.
...Curtis, 48, is married and has two daughters. The two-term legislator and retired fire department captain was in Spokane last week for a retreat with other Republican lawmakers in preparation for the 2008 Legislature.
...Castagna said Curtis told him that "his wife knew he liked men when they got married, but she was not into that, so he only did that when he was out of town," the detective wrote in his report.
How's that for the trifectagrand slam something metaphorically featuring more than four key points?
Cheating on his wife.
At a Republican retreat.
While cross-dressing.
In a porn store.
With a male.
Prostitute.
Richie's scored pretty high on the scandal-o-meter with this effort, but fear, you thousands of remaining gay, self-loathing, Republican politicians. This is impressive, but it can still be bested. Imagine if the honorable Representative had used drugs to entice an underaged slice of boytang back to his room? See, there are at least two more points to score, and that's before going to extremes, such as leaving the kid's dismembered body in the dumpster behind his hotel.
So yeah, it was a good effort, and the fact that the Republican basically outed himself by reporting the kid's nickel-and-dime extortion attempts is a nice bonus point, but I'm sure within the next year or two we'll see another white male family values campaigner top this one.
As for the title of this post, it's a quote found within the body of the article. I found it deliciously metaphor-rich, given the context in which it was used.
As the old saying goes, "He couldn't even be elected dog catcher." I'm not real clear on what this means; are dog catchers even elected? Is that really the worst job you can think of? Why not sewage maintenence technician?
At any rate, that's the saying people use for unelectable people, and as this recent US Gallup poll shows, it still applies most strongly to atheists. (I had a table here, but blogger won't accept it without mangling the HTML, so forgive the crappy layout.)
If your party nominated a well-qualified Candidate For President in 2008 who was _______, would you vote for that person?
Catholic: 95% yes, 4% no. Black: 94% yes, 4% no. Jewish: 92% yes, 7% no. A woman: 88% yes, 11% no. Hispanic: 87% yes, 12% no. Mormon: 72% yes, 24% no. Married for the third time: 67% yes, 30% no. 72 years old: 57% yes, 42% no. A homosexual: 55% yes, 43% no. An atheist: 45% yes, 53% no.
Lots of these are kinda trick questions: McCain will be 72, Clinton's a woman, Obama's a black, one of the leading Republicans is a Mormon, and Guliani is on his third marrriage. I wonder how many of the people replying realized that. Furthermore, I'm skeptical about the inclusion in lots of these figures, since people are more open and less racial in polls than in real life (as the current 95%+ white/male/Christian demographic of senators/congressmen/presidents demonstrates).
One thing I don't doubt at al though is that atheists are still furthest down on the ladder. I guess it's a good sign that gays are no longer the least-electable group in the US, and those figures might even be accurate; there are a few openly-gay national politicians, but none who are openly atheistic. As I clumsily attempted to allude to in the post title, you've got to be a god catcher to be a dog catcher, and most Americans still think religious faith is important in a position of national leadership, even as fewer and fewer of us retain it in our own lives.
Prior to Tuesday's election, many right wing commenters made claims that polls were wrong and skewed and that they favored Democrats and were just more evidence of the vast left wing media conspiracy. The media, they claimed, was exaggerating Democratic leads in an effort to discourage Republicans from voting. (Of course if the polls had had Repubs ahead, the same commentors could/would have said the liberal media was doing that in order to motivate Democrats to vote and to give Repubs complacency.) The money quote from useful idiot Hugh Hewitt:
I get a lot of e-mail asking me why I point to polls like the one favoring Steele when I discount some polls favoring some Democrats.
Because this question comes mostly from lefties, I will pause to explain in as uncomplicated a fashion as possible.
Polling methodology and models favors Democrats.
So polls that show Republicans tied or ahead I see as indicating a race in which the Republican is in the lead.
Polls that show a Republican within striking distance I see as a poll indicating a dead heat.
It shouldn't be that hard to grasp, even for a lefty.
Now that the election is over and we've got actual voting totals to look at, who was correct? Unsurprisingly, not Hugh Hewit. As Glenn Greenwald documents, the polls were quite accurate, and when they were wrong, the error was on the side of Republicans. In Rasmussen's closest 11 senate races, 2 were picked correctly, 2 were 1% and 2% off towards the Democrat, and the other 9 all erred towards the Republican, several by substantial amounts; 5%, 5%, and 7%. Real Clear Politics averages polls from across the country, and their results for these same 11 Senate races erred to the Repub side on 8 of the 11, and when they erred toward Democrat it was by just 1-3%.
Anyway, go read the whole post if you want more; I'm just restating at this point. It's fun to gloat now, but also reflect on the ever-increasing truth of Steven Colbert's immortal, "reality has a well-known liberal bias" line.
I didn't know what to post in my glee at the Republicans losing control of both the House and Senate, but I'll assume you've read about it elsewhere by now. Mixed in with the fun of an anti-Republican landslide election, there's good news in the culture wars too.
From the country's heartland, voters sent messages that altered America's culture wars and dismayed the religious right - defending abortion rights in South Dakota, endorsing stem cell research in Missouri, and, in a national first, rejecting a same-sex marriage ban in Arizona.
As you might expect, the right wing nuts who back this midieval legislation aren't exactly taking defeat graciously.
"While South Dakotans fought valiantly to defend their babies, we once again witnessed an almost total lack of support from the national leadership," Euteneuer said.
The anti-abortion group Operation Rescue said the election results meant any legislation from Congress restricting abortion would be ``virtually impossible'' for the next two years.
"America has voted and the bloody results have placed the most vulnerable among us, the pre-born, in the crosshairs for continued extermination," said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman.
Wow, way to reach out to moderates, guys. Enjoy two years of diminshing influence and watching your criminal benefactors in government indicted and/or imprisoned. The new year is going to be damn near delightful, once the suponeas start flying and war profiteering/Republican donating heads start rolling.
As we enter the homestretch (just one week to go, mercifully) towards an election that every indicator says will be an historic Democratic victory, and the Republicans are crippled by Bush's horrible approval rating, general discontent over the quagmire in Iraq, and endless Republican financial and sex scandals, John Kerry mistates something in a speech that gives the right wing and mainstream media something to obsess over. Kerry's sin, as reported by ABC News: Kerry said:
"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do
