don't quit your day job, John

I've learned something about the Republican nominee over the course of this last week: John McCain isn't very good at executive leadership, specifically managing people.

The big news of the last week, of course, is his VP, a painfully obvious gimmick pick that undermines perhaps his most salient argument against Obama. His strategists' choice to respond to the criticisms by arguing that being mayor of a town of 6,000 is better experience than being a United States Senator, and even more absurdly by arguing that living near Russia counts as foreign policy experience, is pretty heinous overreaching and only further highlights her incredible weakness as a candidate. That's not even considering her ties to an Alaskan separatist party which undermines his patriotism card, and her hiring of a lobbyist and support for the "Bridge to Nowhere" which undermines his reformer card.

For that matter, have you ever seen a clearer example of a karmic justice against a social conservative, of a Christian rightwinger getting swatted by reality? Think about it: she guts special education funding in Alaska by 62%, only then to have a baby with Down Syndrome. Then she opposed comprehensive sex education in her state and slashed funding for a state program helping teen mothers... and her 17-year-old daughter comes up pregnant. Her life story is a refutation of conservative beliefs.

In fact, she's such a terrible choice that the press started asking if he even bothered to vet her. Even worse, it appears that he really did cut corners on the vetting process, despite having finished his primary more than two months before Obama. And why did he suddenly find himself with a candidate he hadn't vetted? Because he wanted someone else, but "the party" said no. Apparently the Original Maverick, at this late point in the campaign, still doesn't have a solid enough purchase on his party to make his own decisions about the most important matters of his own campaign. And it has not gone well so far, if we can judge by the reactions of conservative pundits Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy when they thought the mics were turned off:


Then there was this week's convention. First there was the interruption by Gustav, where he directed the party to postpone the convention for a day and take on a mood of sober compassion ("We will be contacting corporations and others to ask them to be respectful of events in the gulf," his campaign manager said), but his admonishments meant little to the party. They went out and partied their asses off, on camera, at lobbyist-funded shindigs while Gustav rattled the levees in New Orleans.

Unfortunately, canceling the first day meant having to find another spot for Rudy 9iu11ani. They chose to put him right in front of their most important speech of the entire convention, that of Sarah Palin, at a critical moment in the timing of the convention events since it was on live network television at that point. Rudy then went off script on live TV, thankfully not making a gaffe, but going so long that they had to cut the introductory bio for Sarah Palin, the VP candidate they were literally introducing to the nation at that point.

And then there was John McCain's own speech. The speech was not terribly good and pretty poorly delivered, and everyone on TV was a little perplexed at seeing yet another "green screen" behind McCain reminiscent of the disastrous speech he gave right as Obama clinched the nomination.

It appears that no one checked to see what part of the backdrop the cameras would pick up:

Oh, but this screw-up gets better! Some of you may be wondering why the McCain campaign would up behind McCain a picture of some anonymous middle school in California that isn't even obviously marked as a school and in a speech that barely mentions schools or education. Well, a little digging by Josh Marshall unearthed exactly what school this is: Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, CA. It appears that the campaign told some flunky to go get a picture of "Walter Reed" to put behind McCain, never checked what the guy found, and this inexplicable image ended up behind McCain during what was probably the most important speech of his life.

John McCain just isn't any good at managing people. We keep seeing his campaign making rookie mistakes and botching the details (and some big decisions), always scrambling to clean up messes or make up for unforeseen circumstances or react to Obama's last move rather than taking initiative, something that reflects poorly on his leadership. He appears to have trouble judging who to put in high administrative positions and who needs more oversight. Perhaps worst of all, he's no good at discerning his employees' weaknesses and liabilities, so their screw-ups catch him off-guard. After this week, I think we've gotten a pretty good look at which of the candidates would run a more efficient administration, which one would be "ready on day one." It clearly is not John McCain.

he's his own man

How do you know when your narrative has penetrated the country's consciousness?

Answer: When one of the other guy's top picks for VP says this:

Ladies and gentlemen, Tom Ridge!

exploiting the dead for political gain

So inappropriate. So incredibly inappropriate.

Also, apparently they timed John McCain's speech to begin at 9:11. How tacky is that?

hypocrisy now

When Jon Stewart's on, he's really on.

Wednesday night: the RNC speeches

The Republican party needs a hug.

a bar so low she could roll over it

On my yahoo! news feeder it says Palin's speech could "make or break the GOP's presidential hopes." Um, exactly what are they expecting to happen, for her to break down halfway through the speech, burst into tears, and run off the stage?

It's a speech pre-written for her by professional writers. It's on a teleprompter, so she doesn't even have to memorize anything. All she has to do is stand up there and read it without looking absolutely horrified.

It ain't rocket surgery.

Sarah Palin on the Pledge of Allegiance

For real. From Eagle Forum Alaska, in answer to a questionnaire they sent to Alaska gubernatorial candidates in 2006:

11. Are you offended by the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?
JB: No.
SP [Sarah Palin]: 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.

For those of you who are curious, the Pledge was originally written in 1892 (for extra fun, click the link and find the picture of students reciting the Pledge to see why Franklin Roosevelt changed the salute to putting your hand over your heart!). The "under God" part wasn't added until 1954.

Good Lord, what next?

The newest on Palin, bringing rage to my librarian's heart:

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." The librarian, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire her for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

RAAAAAAAGE!!!!!

Sarah Palin: former member of the Alaskan Independence Party?

From ABCNews blog:

Officials of the Alaskan Independence Party say that Palin was once so independent, she was once a member of their party, which, since the 1970s, has been pushing for a legal vote for Alaskans to decide whether or not residents of the 49th state can secede from the United States.

And while McCain's motto -- as seen in a new TV ad -- is "Country First," the AIP's motto is the exact opposite -- "Alaska First -- Alaska Always."

Lynette Clark, the chairman of the AIP, tells ABC News that Palin and her husband Todd were members in 1994, even attending the 1994 statewide convention in Wasilla. Clark was AIP secretary at the time.

"We are a state's rights party," says Clark, a self-employed goldminer. The AIP has "a plank that challenges the legality of the Alaskan statehood vote as illegal and in violation of United Nations charter and international law."

I can just see an Obama surrogate's response: "We want to keep this election from being about 'small things,' to quote Barack Obama's magnificent speech last Friday. We are confident that Sarah Palin has since decided that she does, in fact, want to remain an American citizen."

Mr. Projection strikes again.

On a more serious note, some of us know what secessionists are like, having come from states where that kind of thing gains a bit of traction. You'll still see bumper stickers in Texas that say "Secede" on them, and I've met a couple of people who are into that. And they are, nearly to a man, wild-eyed jingoists completely detached from reality. This is not a flattering association for the young governor, as it makes people like me start to look at her not just as a hard core righty, but one that's so far out in right field that you have to wonder about her sanity. She's approaching Ted Nugent levels of crazy.

This veep pick is turning out to be a nightmare for the GOP.

the acceptance speech: the video

Still awesome.

It is Sarah Palin

The Pandersaurus makes his play.

So, I thought Barack Obama didn't have the experience to be president? But Sarah Palin, who's been the governor of the second least populous state in the Union for a year and a half, does?

Pandering hypocrite much?

Chuck Todd inadvertently nails the GOP:

They really wanted to pick a woman, and there were no obvious choices.

Ouch.

I'm increasingly coming to the belief that, were I a Hillary supporter, this pick would infuriate me, not make me more likely to vote McCain. This pick is obviously an attempt to mop up the PUMA vote by saying, "You wanted a woman for president? Here ya go! Here's one for Vice President! That's close enough, right?"

But here's the thing: Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton have nothing in common... except their gender. They have no policy positions in common and no common experiences. Hillary Clinton is a former First Lady and current US Senator who everyone (even Republicans) admit is an expert on health care and a hard core policy wonk. She went toe to toe with a bunch of deeply intelligent, powerful men in an endless litany of debates and kicked the s**t out of every last one of them. Clinton voters chose her over Obama because they wanted a sober, realistic, keenly intelligent, strong woman committed to universal health care with a great Democratic president at her side, not an anti-Roe pro-ANWR drilling creationist homophobe who only 2 years ago was the part-time mayor of a city of 7,000 people.

And here's McCain saying, "All you were really looking for is a woman, right? Here, take this one!"

the speech

Pat f**king Buchanan on Barack Obama's acceptance speech:

Think it might qualify as an effective speech?

all aboard!

If I were John McCain, I'd probably pick Kay Bailey Hutchison. I think he's still deluded enough to think he can sway Hillary voters, and he's more than happy to pander in a way that Barack is not. Barack willingly left him that opening by opting for Biden. Imagine how easy it will be play the "picking on a girl" card after the notoriously contentious Veep debate! I believe Hutchison is also an anti-Roe Christian, which helps him with the social cons, and being a Texas senator, she's one of a tiny number of senators that loves Bush even more than he does, which helps him with his troglodyte base. Plus, Hutchison's seat is about as safe as it gets, should she ascend to the White House.

These things may well apply to Sarah Palin as well, though I'm not as familiar with her. Hutchison is almost certainly a more experienced debater, though, and he's going to need that. Then again, Palin would likely be more content to be a curio in the White House, a mere talisman to conjure scorned Hillary voters, while Hutchison might be a little more insistent on taking part in his Administration.

Still, I'd be shocked if McCain doesn't pick a woman.

John McCain's health care guy: all Americans are actually insured

From The Dallas Morning News:

But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

"So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

The guy who helped write John McCain's health care policy thinks you already have all the insurance you need, so you should just shut the f**k up. Yet McCain thinks it's an awesome idea to let him craft the policies that could decide whether your cancer gets diagnosed before it kills you, or whether you get the chance to take Lipitor instead of suffering a fatal heart attack (ahem, two things that don't happen for people who rely on the ER for their primary care). And he wants you to elect him president.

But hey, have you heard that John McCain was a POW?

have you heard that John McCain was a POW?

By election day 1996, people were joking: "hey, did you know that Bob Dole was injured in WWII?" because he had overused it in the course of the campaign. What was the ultimate patriotic trump card to use against a draft-dodging Democrat and his uppity feminist wife had become a punchline by Election Day. Dole lost in a landslide.

And how many people rolled their eyes when John Kerry said "reporting for duty" at the 2004 DNC? I did, and I was one of his supporters! Need I remind anyone of the RNC purple heart bandaids?

And you may not have heard, but Rudy Giuliani was mayor on 9/11.

At this point in the campaign, before he's even been officially nominated at the RNC, we've already seen McCain use the POW defense for not knowing how many houses he has, ditching his disabled wife for a hot, young, rich, blonde USC cheerleader, having a shitty health care plan, breaking the rules of the Saddleback forum, and a whole host of others. Those don't include the old hits, like when he used the POW defense during his first House race to counter accusations that he was a carpetbagger, or when he invoked the Hanoi Hilton to shield him from the Keating 5 scandal.

And the press is starting to notice. What was once a ridiculous chorus of buffoons perpetually invoking John McCain's "reticence" to discuss his POW experience has recently morphed into a litany of articles expressing "concern" that McCain is cheapening his experience (and, let's not forget, the experiences of all those who suffered in POW camps).

And last night, Rachel Maddow exposed it to primetime MSNBC viewers:

She's going to be good.

Meanwhile, you may have seen McCain whip out the POW defense most recently on Leno. That was his 13th appearance on the Tonight Show. I didn't watch; does anyone know if he accused Obama of being a celebrity while he was there?

Obama at bat, Schweitzer on deck

Meet your next president, ca. 2017.

The 'Nich goes to Denver

He's a feisty little bastard.

Biden

*shrug* Eh, what do I know?

I have to admit, this seems to me a very strange choice. I will give him this: Biden brings foreign policy experience, one would think more than McCain. He lends a little gravitas to the campaign. He has a humanizing personal tragedy (not to trivialize his experience, obviously, but our immediate concern is the electoral calculation). He has a reputation as a "straight talker," and it's a fairly well justified reputation (certainly moreso than John McCain's). Most of all, Biden has the experience and the connections, the "what you know" and "who you know," to be effective in a leadership and/or advisory role in an administration, which admittedly does speak to Obama's seriousness about picking someone would help him be a great president, and not just someone who will help him pick up a demographic here or a state there. The fact that he didn't go for the old "pick a guy from a swing state" canard also speaks to his judgment.

So why am I not enthused about this choice? Here are a couple of reasons: Biden ran in the primary and was a dismal failure, garnering about 1% of the Iowa vote despite having as much experience holding a federal office--35 years-- as all 4 candidates who beat him combined. In fact, were it not for Bill Richardson's 3rd place finish, who served 18 years in the House and in various Clinton Administration positions, Joe Biden would have twice as much experience as the people who beat him in Iowa combined. No matter what anyone says about his abilities in "retail politics," the fact is that, when he makes a foray into the primary marketplace, people admit that they kinda like him, but nobody buys.

Joe Biden doesn't fit very well with Obama's message of change. He's a long time Senator who's run for president multiple times before. He is a regular on all the news shows when they want a hoary old Democrat to counter a hoary old Republican. I'd mentioned once before that the optimal VP pick would be someone who is not perceived as part of: a) the Washington establishment, or b) the upper eschelons of the Democratic Party, and Joe is associated with both.

Biden is a loose cannon in debates, the very opposite of, say, Clinton's disciplined, measured, and highly effective approach. Biden likes to give memorable, unconventional answers and deliver lots of zingers, but he has a bit of a tin ear. Thus you get a guy who coined the devastating anti-Rudy "a noun, a verb, and 9/11" line, but also one of the few politicians to fall face first into the trap of using racial stereotypes to compliment Obama ("clean and articulate"). And should we forget his bizarre decision to berate one of the citizen questioners in the Youtube debate?

Say what you will about the assault weapons ban, this was perhaps the oddest, most uncomfortable moment in the entire debate.

And then there are his votes, specifically this one and this one (on the latter, he also personally fought to sink any ameliorating amendments, thus earning the nickname "Joe Biden (D-MBNA)"). Barack has made those 2 bills Exhibits A and B of his case that merely switching parties is insufficient for making transformative change.

But again, what do I know?

McCain's houses

Back home we had a pithy saying for situations like this: it's called "having more money than sense."

Mitt books a ticket on the Crazy Train?

I do not believe that God loves us this much.

This has "head fake" written all over it.

Veep

As I've said before, the strategist in me says that all the names trotted out there, and all the ones that appeared on Barack's "short list," are feints to divert attention from the actual running mate. Kaine looks pretty good, and looked damn good this week on MTP, and Clinton has her obvious advantages (and almost as obvious disadvantages), but I have an extraordinarily hard time believing that Obama would see Sebelius, Bayh, Biden, Dodd, Hagel, Reed, Nunn, or Chet Edwards as compelling choices. They all ring of "safe" picks that won't bring a lot of negatives, but also aren't exciting enough to bring a lot of "bounce," either (Hagel, in fact, would be an embarrassment down the road: he's very nearly the most conservative Senator in the whole damn Congress, Iraq War aside, and would you want that guy to be your tie-breaker in the Senate?).

So I'm going to construct an alternate list that I think is a little more risky, but has a little more potential payoff for a campaign that knows what it's doing. My general criteria are these: they should jive well with the message of "change," they should be respected voices but not perceived as "Washington establishment," they need to be seen as bold personalities that stand for their convictions but are also pragmatic and willing to compromise, and they need to have clean hands on Iraq (either opposed it or at least were not vocally pro-war). Few of the candidates are perfect. Hillary Clinton fails on a number of these criteria, but she brings so many other positives that I cannot see leaving her off of any short list (not to mention, she's been strangely quiet for some time now, and any speculation in her direction has been awfully scrupulously tamped down). Colin Powell also fails spectacularly on a number of counts, but for some reason people really want to see him redeemed and, more importantly, still trust him now that he's left the Administration, and the massive bounce generated from his name plus the national security cred plus the bipartisan thing earns him a spot on the list. They proceed from smaller names who could build support over time to the bigger household that would generate a lot of buzz but often carry bigger risks:

Brian Schweitzer, Governor of Montana
Russ Feingold, Senator from Wisconsin
Eric Shinseki, former 4-star general
Tim Kaine, Governor of Virginia
Jim Webb, Senator from Virginia
Wesley Clark
Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York
Colin Powell
Hillary Clinton
...and what the hell, let's throw one in from way out of left field...
Tom Brokaw

And what's the fun of these events if you don't try to predict them? I'm going with Schweitzer. Or Kaine. What do you think?

reaction from the "liberal media" on Rachel Maddow

Greenwald is dead on. The addition of Maddow to MSNBC's lineup makes her the 2nd liberal with her own show (3rd counting Bill Moyers). On all of cable TV. The bizarre reaction to her hiring, especially in light of current and recently-defunct shows headed by Brit Hume, Tucker Carlson, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Nancy Grace, Glenn Beck, and John Gibson, not to mention avowed Dittohead Brian Williams, puts all of the media's varied neuroses and weaknesses on full display, from their shell-shocked terror of right wing scolding to the reliance on narrative over evidence.

As Coach Leach would say: Rachel, swing your sword.

Bush: McCain's treatment not torture

Interesting. I can't believe I didn't think of that!

pandering on abortion

Sometimes candidates give answers to questions that are clear cut cases of pandering. Blatant, pathetic, eye-rolling pandering. Such was John McCain's answer to the question of when life begins at the faith and politics forum over the weekend:

At conception.

Interesting answer in light of his opinion that embryonic stem cell research should continue. I guess Christians get no straight talk from Senator John "my Veep may be pro-choice" McCain.

Atrios makes a good point:

While the Villagers seemed to object, and it didn't go well with the audience, I was quite pleased with Obama's response that the question of when life begins is above his pay grade. I remember Pastor Tim Russert asking, I think, Claire McCaskill a similar question and she was like, "What are you asking? When does an embryo become ensouled?"

Believe what you want, but the important question for politicians is how such things get translated into... policy. And when McCain says he believes life begins at conception (cheer!) it's pretty meaningless unless he's asked to explain how that would be translated into policy.

You want some straight talk on when life begins? Here it is: the position that life begins at conception is utterly and completely untenable from a policy perspective. If the government proceeds from the assumption that life begins at conception, then all abortion becomes ipso facto felonious, not just criminal, no matter what trimester or under what circumstances the conception occurred or what damage, short of death, the pregnancy could do to the mother. It is only an extremely tiny minority of Americans who would agree with this policy (over 60% of Americans, for instance, agree with Roe v. Wade as it stands, and how many more don't agree but still think rape and incest qualify as extenuating circumstances?), and yet it would require a tremendous investment of police and judges and whatnot to enforce it while further diminishing the already dangerously low number of doctors in this country. "Enforcing" in this case has to mean charging doctors and women with murder and conspiracy to commit murder, because in this context abortion is simply a woman paying a doctor to murder her child. And if you think the percentage of people who want to ban abortion is low, wait 'til you see the number that want women charged with murder.

For that matter, did you know that scientists think the pill, at least on occasion, prevents implantation of a fertilized egg? How could such a pill possibly stay legal?

And what about the non-abortion ramifications of this law? Suddenly every miscarriage would have to be issued a death certificate. Embryonic stem cell research would clearly be illegal, as would any life-saving medical procedures that require those cells. In vitro fertilization often ends with the discarding of a number of fertilized eggs, which, obviously, kills them. How can that not now be multiple homicide? Atrios once brought up another point: would this mean that blastocysts are entitled to child support?

You can believe whatever you want personally (and for what it's worth, I'm sympathetic to the opinion that life begins at conception/implantation/whatever), but policy positions have to be sensible and pragmatic, or else they spin off uncontrollably into a maelstrom of unforeseen side effects. The ideological forces these decisions unleash can make landfall in unexpected places while rushing to impose "consistent application" upon the legal code and law enforcement.

Hey, you got your politics in my D&D! Get your D&D out of my politics!

As comically absurd as the entire conversation is, I feel somehow obligated to respond to this nonsense emanating from (where else?) the Crazy Train and their bloggy minions, seeing as I'm literally setting up a D&D game as we speak (Spelljammer, as the kids say, is full of win). Setting aside all the obligatory and well-deserved FU's to Michael Goldfarb and Ace of Choads, does no one else find it grossly hypocritical of these d'bags to bash a group of hobbyists while having themselves clearly played enough of the hobby to be conversant in the jargon?

Or are we supposed to let that slide because being a conservative political blogger is so hip?

It's so typical of conservative behavior in any case. Take a small, defenseless group and hold them up for scapegoating and ridicule by everyone else. It's in their electoral strategy, their rhetoric, their foreign policy, even in their sense of humor. It's always about kicking around the little guys, be they D&D players or hippies or immigrants or atheists.

It's no surprise, either, that this trip originates with the John McCain campaign. He is an especially petty and cruel conservative, as we've seen in many of his comments about hippies or Obama supporters or bloggers or, well, Mitt Romney while he was being mugged at that last debate.

And in response to some of the comments, I'd like to point out that an Obama/Drizzt Do'Urden ticket would be a little, shall we say, ethnic. Similarly, Alustriel of Silverymoon would look like a mere Hillary substitution and Elminster never struck me as a guy who would do administrating well. He would be much better suited with a wizened, hard-nosed national security type like Bruenor Battlehammer. He even has executive experience!

put this one on TV

Nice.

a book by a conservative that i'm buying right freaking now.

No, not that book.

Here I am trying to enjoy the miraculous victory that Michael Phelps had in the 100m butterfly today, and I flip over to KERA as a pure fluke (TiVO's out of commission for the moment - I never channelsurf).

I see a couple of white-headed guys going on about some general political stuff and I flip back over to Numb3ers. Phelps takes the gold, and I still don't think I've seen a frame of video where he's actually in the lead anywhere, and as NBC goes to break, I end up flipping back over to KERA.

Before I know it, I'm totally sucked it by a guy named Andrew Bacavich (pronounced BASE-uh-vich) who's making a brilliant series of nuanced and emotional statements about the state of where we are as a country today.

Bacavich describes himself as a conservative - disillusioned with the failures of the Republicans to uphold their collective promises of smaller government, balanced budgets, and a return to the "traditional values" of the past (his quotes). Further disillusioned with the American imperialism that sent his own son off to die fighting in Iraq, and with the lack of Congress to illustrate a meaningful picture of the greater good, Bacavich describes the rise of the American imperial presidency. This presidency isolates the president from Congressional oversight with its myriad of agencies that don't answer to congress: The FBI, CIA, NSA, joint chiefs of staff, Attourney general, etc - and the congress willingly thrusts its powers onto the exective branch, so that it can get on with its business of getting re-elected. Further, he details how the empire of production that arose out of WWII shifted to the empire of consumption that we live in today, and the threat that the full-on consumption culture poses to our society and our security as a whole.

Watch the entire interview when you get a moment. It's flat-out fascinating.

It's a blunt, scathing critique of the state of American govt and policy. And it rightly puts the blame not on those that run for and are elected to office, but to our moronic electorate that continually puts them into office. As Carlin says, "Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens you're going to get selfish, ignorant politicians. So maybe something else sucks around here." - actually, watching that passage again it's amazing how parallel the sentiments run.


So the book is called The Limit of Power, and I'll own it just as soon as I can get my oily mitts on it.

Here's a quote from the interview:

BILL MOYERS: What do you value most?

ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, I think the clearest statement of what I value is found in the preamble to the Constitution. There is nothing in the preamble to the Constitution which defines the purpose of the United States of America as remaking the world in our image, which I view as a fool's errand. There is nothing in the preamble of the Constitution that ever imagined that we would embark upon an effort, as President Bush has defined it, to transform the Greater Middle East. This region of the world that incorporates something in order of 1.4 billion people.

I believe that the framers of the Constitution were primarily concerned with focusing on the way we live here, the way we order our affairs. To try to ensure that as individuals, we can have an opportunity to pursue our, perhaps, differing definitions of freedom, but also so that, as a community, we could live together in some kind of harmony. And that future generations would also be able to share in those same opportunities.

The big problem, it seems to me, with the current crisis in American foreign policy, is that unless we do change our ways, the likelihood that our children, our grandchildren, the next generation is going to enjoy the opportunities that we've had, is very slight, because we're squandering our power. We are squandering our wealth. In many respects, to the extent that we persist in our imperial delusions, we're also going to squander our freedom because imperial policies, which end up enhancing the authority of the imperial president, also end up providing imperial presidents with an opportunity to compromise freedom even here at home. And we've seen that since 9/11.

Savannah

I've been listening to this King Wilkie album off and on since Christmas, and I've really fallen for the song "Savannah" (there's a player at the bottom of the page). I'd never noticed these lyrics before:

When the levee broke, nobody was around
But you stood by watching when I fell to the ground
There's no mud on my hands 'cause I do what I'm told
I wanna live a lot longer, now I'm feeling so old

I'm going down to Savannah
gettin' back what once was mine
goin' down to Savannah
will you have mercy on me this time?

I know that this is probably a reference to any number of Atlantic coast hurricanes, but post-Katrina these lyrics seem a lot more chilling. Then again, the album was recorded in 2006, so maybe that's intentional.

how to argue foreign policy like a conservative pundit

Every world event/political issue is exactly like that one time in World War II/the run up to World War II, and the people doing what I don't like are just like Hitler.

Clearly, history teaches us that we should always choose war, because the failure to choose war every single time anyone does something we don't like means they'll be strong enough to take over the world.

If you disagree, that's of course because you're Neville Chamberlain.

A few days later, the case against Ivins not looking nearly as good

Why am I not surprised? Glenn Greenwald:

The FBI's total failure to point to a shred of evidence placing Ivins in New Jersey on either of the two days the anthrax letters were sent is a very conspicuous deficiency in its case. It's possible that Ivins was able to travel to Princeton on two occasions in three weeks without leaving the slightest trace of having done so (not a credit card purchase, ATM withdrawal, unusual gas purchases, nothing), but that relies on a depiction of Ivins as a cunning and extremely foresightful criminal, an image squarely at odds with most of the FBI's circumstantial evidence that suggests Ivins was actually quite careless, even reckless, in how he perpetrated this crime...

The Washington Post Editorial page -- the ultimate establishment organ -- published its second Editorial yesterday calling for an independent investigation of the FBI's case against Ivins and pointed out just some of the numerous, critical holes in that case:

The case is admittedly circumstantial, and questions have been raised about the reliability of the FBI's scientific evidence, the inability to tie Mr. Ivins to the handwritten notes included with the mailed anthrax, the process by which the FBI excluded as suspects others who had access to the anthrax, and more.

The NYT today has an excellent Op-Ed from a microbiologist (the former Chief of Fort Detrick's bacteriology division) pointing out the numerous deficiencies in the FBI's scientific assertions. Critically, that Op-Ed describes the properties of the high-grade anthrax sent to Sen. Daschle and then notes: "It is extremely improbable that this type of preparation could ever have been produced at Fort Detrick, certainly not of the grade and quality found in that envelope."

I felt a little weird about that first big information dump on Bruce Ivins because of how much it focused on his psychological problems and fetishes. We saw the same sort of thing happen in the Kenneth Starr investigations and in various other trials, where the prosecutor would bombard us with stories about the defendant's peccadilloes and deviant tendencies to mask the thinness of their case.

Ivins appears to have been guilty of having a whole panoply of psychological problems, but evidence that someone is crazy doesn't actually prove that said person committed a given crime. In fact, it's not even particularly helpful in that regard.

I think it's still much too early for anyone to be rendering a verdict on this case one way or the other, but it's not looking good at this point.

What is Maureen Dowd's problem?

This may be the most hateful, sneering column I've ever read. Edwards' confession was "creepy?" Really? And what's with the odd, irrelevant side-swipe "Bill Clinton's alleged soul?"

Also, this is a trap:

The creepiest part of his creepy confession was when he stressed to Woodruff that he cheated on Elizabeth in 2006 when her cancer was in remission. His infidelity was oncologically correct.

Edwards would not have stressed that fact if he didn't think (almost certainly correctly) that Dowd et al. would have been all too happy to "elide" the timeline to sensationalize his infidelity, in some cases just letting people assume he was cheating during his wife's hour of need, and in other cases outright lying about it, unless he made it inescapably clear that such was not the case. It's a disingenuous and unfair attack.

For that matter, she claims:

John Edwards’s confession was a little bit breathtaking.

Not the sex stuff. That happens here all the time.

And certainly not covering up the sex stuff. That happens here all the time, too...

The stunning admission Edwards made to ABC’s Bob Woodruff, and in a written statement from Chapel Hill on Friday afternoon, was that he’s a narcissist.

Really? She's gotten so worked up that she would write such a bile-filled column, complete with puerile name-calling ("Breck Girl?" You're really still tossing that one around, Maureen?), because she's so upset that John Edwards is a narcissist? Isn't she a little long in the tooth for a "politicians are narcissistic" epiphany? It's not exactly cutting-edge political insight.

So why has Edwards' and Clinton's particular infidelities evoked such rage from Maureen Dowd? After all, it's not like they were out there waving their fundamentalist fingers and trying to prevent gays from marrying while they sullied their own marriages or anything, yet so far as I can tell, neither Larry Craig nor even the execrable Mark Foley got anything approaching the Edwards treatment. Maureen Dowd appears not to have even written about David Vitter when his scandal broke. Do dirty sins of the flesh "narcissism" and having a "need to sell what is secretly weakest about themselves, as if they yearn for unmasking" only merit heaps of scorn when the guilty party fits the Democrats-as-sexually-depraved narrative? What gives?

Two of my favorite things

Obama and hockey

http://www.hockeyzombie.com/comic/2008/03/05/

Edwards confirms he was having an affair

From AP:

Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Friday admitted to an extramarital affair while his wife was battling cancer. He denied fathering the woman's daughter. Edwards told ABC News that he lied repeatedly about the affair with 42-year-old Rielle Hunter but said that he didn't love her.

He said he has not taken a paternity test but knows he isn't the father because of the timing of the affair and the birth.

A former Edwards campaign staffer claims he is the father, not Edwards.
...
The National Enquirer first reported on the affair in October 2007, and Edwards denied it.

Wow. Obviously one can argue that it's not of our damn business what's happening in his home life, which is true, or that the age of his kids and the health of his wife make his infidelity particularly heinous. I agree with both of those statements on a purely intellectual level, but my blood pressure rose at the thought of him running for president knowing about this time bomb. We're at a potentially pivotal moment in our country's history, one where the Democratic nominee has a leg up and the chance to make some serious waves, and this fool runs while he's got a campaign-crumbling skeleton in his closet?

It wasn't just his family or his reputation that he was gambling with.

millenarianism, or just politics absorbing religion?

If Obama were the Anti-Christ, wouldn't Christians want him to be elected, since that would prove that the End Times were upon us and God's Justice finally made manifest on earth, complete with the Rapture and eternal bliss for all true Christians?

For that matter, if Obama were the Anti-Christ, wouldn't it be futile to try to prevent him from rising to power, since it is prophesied in the Bible, which is supposed to be inerrant?

And while we're at it, if Obama loses, that would be pretty definitive proof that he is not, in fact, the Anti-Christ. Are any of these so-called "Christians" prepared to apologize for spreading such a scurrilous rumor about a man who clearly did not deserve it?

Garfield minus Garfield

As someone who absolutely loved Garfield as a kid, I think this idea is pretty awesome. Jon becomes a very different character when stripped of his pets.

an oldie but a goodie

A conversation on Grims' blog reminded me of this video that I found, actually, on Mike D's blog!

I will argue that this is the best misunderstood song ever.

The Truth.

Your view that the world is going to end is "irrational" and evidence of your abject stupidity. My view that the world is going to end, however, is eminently logical, not to mention...THE TRUTH!

Discuss. Even better, don't.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? From The South Bend Tribune:

MISHAWAKA — Emergency crews are on the scene of a fire that destroyed Polito’s Pizzeria Restaurant this morning.

Officials say the fire began shortly after 2 a.m. at 4615 Grape Road.

The fire was spotted by Indiana State Police Trooper Rob Murray, who was driving by the plaza ‘and could smell wood burning’.

Go figure, the Outback Steakhouse next door sustains only minor damage.

and the number 1 reason not to vote for McCain...

He put Paris Hilton back on my news feeder. Sigh.

projection: John McCain's primary tool

So we have two major candidates for the presidency this year.

One of them is a celebrity who has frequently appeared on the small and big screens according to IMDB, including The Daily Show 12 times, Letterman 8 times, Jay Leno 10 times, and Larry King 9 times. He has not only had cameos on Saturday Night Live but has hosted it. He was in Beyond the Glory, had a cameo in Wedding Crashers, 24 and numerous documentaries such as Why We Fight and Port Town. His autobiography was made into a TV movie in 2005.

One of them is a notorious media darling. Reporters have on several occasions written about how this candidate wines and dines the media with cookouts and vast quantities of free booze, and about how reporters found themselves referring to this candidate's campaign as "we." He also recently took a trip to Europe and the Middle East in the middle of a presidential campaign.

One of them has a weak grasp of foreign policy. He frequently confuses Sunnis with Shi'ites, he cracks inappropriate jokes about sober matters of war and peace, and lacks a basic working knowledge of the timeline of the Iraq War.

One of them is a serial flip flopper. He has, in a relatively brief period of time, moved from hard-liner to centrist and back to hard-liner, having flip flopped along the way on abortion, tax cuts, lobbyist money in campaigns (he in fact doesn't support a reform bill he himself introduced), ethanol, torture, and affirmative action. In fact, one site catalogs 72 flip flops.

One of them is of highly dubious religious credibility. He's suddenly started hawking his faith recently, but used to claim another religion, and has never been baptized as an adult despite claiming to have attended evangelical services for 15 years. It is considered a newsworthy event when he actually shows up to church, because reporters found no evidence of him attending regularly before this past July.

The other one is Barack Obama.

riddle me this

Is the media still overly pro-Obama when everyone in the media states as an objective fact that the media is overly pro-Obama?

Women for John McCain

Nice.

Dear God NOOOO!!!!

Political Wire:

NBC News notes that nothing is on Sen. Barack Obama's official schedule yet "but the traveling press registration e-mail has us flying to South Bend at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday and not leaving until 3:25 p.m. the next day... It seems seems like an awfully long time to be in one place."

Could Obama be meeting with Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) to ask him to be his running mate?

Please let this be the Obama campaign juking the press (or juking the Crazy Train into picking a Bayh foil). Booman:

From a strictly ideological point of view, Evan Bayh represents the Clintons by proxy among members of the known short-list. He's the only person under serious consideration that endorsed Clinton during the campaign. He's a former chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council. There's a very good chance that Bayh would staff up the Naval Observatory with a bunch of also-rans and cast-offs from the Clinton campaign, giving them new life and hope for a role in a future presidency. For Team Clinton, Evan Bayh represents their best hope for jobs and significance in an Obama administration. These attacks on Obama are sending a clear message that they can make trouble for Obama if he shuts them out. As I see it, this is not really a lobbying campaign for Hillary, who they all know is persona non grata in the Obama household. It's an oblique campaign for Bayh.

And they just might get what they want. Just this morning, Bayh joined with Obama in sending a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates asking him to dedicate more money to address brain injuries. Obama will appear with Bayh on Wednesday in Elkhart, Indiana, and people there are buzzing with excitement and speculation that Obama will tap Bayh as The One. One theory is that Obama will want to get some coverage for his pick that doesn't have to compete with the Olympics, which start on Friday in Beijing.

I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in thinking that, if Obama's intent on using his VP slot to placate Clinton, I would really prefer he pick Clinton!

Bayh is the poster child for the old Democratic Party I know and despise. He's a spineless, finger-in-the-wind politician who habitually cedes the high ground to conservatives on national security, "morals," and generally turning the USA into a police state. Every time the Senate Democrats desperately need to hold the line on some Republican atrocity, Bayh is one of the last hold-outs, always unwilling to back the Democrats if it's gonna look like it was his vote that kept the GOP out of the winner's circle. After all, how is a Democrat to win re-election if he can't run as the more sensible Republican?

Can you just imagine Evan Bayh in a raucous VP debate? "Well, you're right Governor Romney, I stand in awe of the Great Maverick Patriot Straight Talker John McCain and all that he did in Vietnam, which of course clearly shows that he's the perfect presidential candidate. It's a little known fact that I really wanted to be his running mate! But if I may share one little quibble with your phrasing..."

Admittedly, Bayh is not without his strengths. As much as I would caution against relying on a tactic with such a weak track record, he is from a state that is, at the moment, at least, in play, and I'll wager his approvals are fairly high here. After all, the records for biggest Democratic landslide in an Indiana Senate race and highest percentage of the vote in a modern statewide Indiana election both belong to Evan Bayh, and they're not even both for the same race. If there's anything the Indiana Birch Borer has shown, it's that he can win statewide offices in the Hoosier State. Even though he's always the last guy off the fence in important votes, to his credit he did (eventually) vote against confirming United States Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. Not bad for a DLCer. He's also extremely cautious as a politician; there is very little likelihood of Bayh stealing the spotlight from Obama. Very, very little. Heh.

On the other hand, Bayh is a politician associated neither with "change" nor with national security gravitas. In fact, here's a fun little riff on his Wikipedia page that, to my mind, should be a disqualification:

Bayh, in contrast to Senator Richard Lugar, was an early supporter of the Bush administration's policies on Iraq.[6] On October 2, 2002, Bayh joined President George W. Bush and Congressional leaders in a Rose Garden ceremony announcing their agreement on the joint resolution authorizing the Iraq War, and was thanked by Bush and Senator John McCain for co-sponsoring the resolution.

He's a relative unknown even in neighboring states, known mainly by political wonks because he's the son of 1976 presidential candidate Birch Bayh (and it's a widely held opinion among Indiana Democrats that Birch was the better man of the two). He is the very model of "milquetoast." And best of all, Indiana's governor is a Republican, which means he gets to choose the person to finish Bayh's term, handing the GOP a free Senate seat just as the Democrats are planning an ambitious agenda. Good thinking, morons.

some people have no integrity

Many of you may have heard here and there among your more gullible friends and family (typically those who pass up newspapers, preferring instead to get their news from chain emails) the suspicion that Barack Obama is the Antichrist. A buddy of mine has actually heard it from 2 or 3 independent sources, all claiming that a description matching Obama is right there in "Revelations" (oy):

Wanker: "Seriously, it says that he'll be a charismatic man who comes from the East."

Buddy: "East, eh? You mean like Hawai'i?"

Wanker: "No, you know, the Middle East, where his family comes from."

Buddy: "Middle East? You mean Kenya? Or are you talking about his mother's family from Kansas?"

Wanker: [getting increasingly exasperated] "C'mon, you know what I mean... his spiritual homeland, where his religion comes from..."

Buddy: [smirking, clearly unimpressed] "Massachusetts?"

Anyway, so despite it's painfully glaring logical flaws, the Dumbest Rumor Ever Forwarded continues to gain traction, such that the McCain campaign sees fit to respond to it in some way. A candidate with integrity would at least want to have no part of a rumor this vile, especially a candidate who's been sunk in the past by a vile and scurrilous rumor.

And then there's John McCain, happy to defecate on the national debate table if it scores points. Are any of you readers old enough to remember a Republican campaign that didn't rely on crass innuendo as its primary rhetorical tool?

it's coming, everyone. Can you hear it?

Football season!

In anticipation for all the kids down south, I found a preseason assessment that the best college football analyst I've read drew up for Texas Tech (I'm pretty sure that Sunday Morning Quarterback has a soft spot for the Red Raiders). I was surprised to read that Tech has been "discovered" by the talking heads and is being hyped as a potential January party-crasher. That sounds a bit optimistic to me. I was also surprised, however, to read that the improvement in Tech's defense when Ruffin McNeil became coordinator last year was almost entirely illusory, a case that SMQ makes pretty cogently.

All in all, it becomes clear that Leach's Red Raiders have to fix the same 2 things for which every Leach Tech squad has been notably lacking: defense and running game. Everybody knows that the D blows and that the O is all pass, but Tech also has two problems offensively: 1) they have an unusual amount of trouble with 3rd and short situations, and 2) they're functionally incapable of running out the clock. Both of these problems are due to the lack of a reliable running game. When you're all pass, your drives take very little time, which is great when you're behind or when you score on most of your drives, but it's terrible when you're facing a good defense or you're tentatively ahead and need to put the damn thing away. Tech very nearly lost to Oklahoma last year after pulling ahead 27-7 at the half because they couldn't run the clock out. If they ran, the running back would get stuffed behind the LOS, but if they passed, the clock would stop. Lots of unconverted 3rd-and-shorts that game.

Personally, I have grave doubts that either of these issues are really fixed, and I've have been a Tech fan way too long to have any expectations of consistency. Beating OK in Norman ain't gonna happen, and I'm deeply skeptical of Tech's chances against Texas and Kansas as well. Plus, I can't help but suspect that the truly ascendant team in the Big 12 isn't Texas Tech but Oklahoma State (who has beaten Tech, what, 2 out of the last 3 years?). And, finally, there's the consistency issue: don't be at all surprised to see the Red Raiders pound Texas in Lubbock right after flubbing one against Kansas St. Tech won't go undefeated, and I don't find a Kansas-like 11-1 to be very realistic, either. Incomplete teams have incomplete seasons; this is a 3 loss team at best.

Meanwhile, for the kids up north, SMQ also has a nice rundown of the upcoming ND-Michigan game, a real Cleveland Steamer of a match-up, to be sure.

Hey Brian Williams

ya think this story might be "newsworthy?"

the Reaganite fallacy

A revelation that I wish people would talk about: John McCain has been touring the country in $500 Italian leather shoes. Not that I care that he wears expensive shoes, but because it proves a current media double standard. Imagine, after all, if a Democrat were caught making an intemperate purchase. That, ultimately, brings up another question: if John McCain is guilty of intemperate spending, and John Edwards is guilty of hypocrisy for engaging in intemperate spending while arguing that poor people aren't getting a fair shake, then the inevitable logical conclusion is either:

a) John McCain thinks poor people are getting what they deserve, or

b) John McCain is also guilty of hypocrisy.

If no one with a microphone is going to point out the greater truth that it's not hypocritical to be rich and yet want to help poor people, then will someone at least point out that the rules should apply to McCain as well?

This is an example of the kind of moral corruption I like to call "free market fundamentalism." It goes back, in some form or another, all the way through history, but it's most recent and bizarre manifestation was popularized by Reagan's gospel of wealth, or the "fuck it: if you got it, flaunt it!" approach to the ethics of wealth.

We Americans have always had a tense relationship to wealth. It all goes back to the ol' Protestant work ethic and the Calvinist belief in predestination: strong work ethic, which is a sign of salvation, generates wealth. Therefore, wealthy people are more likely to be part of the elect than the poor. On the other hand, conspicuous consumption is a sign of greed, which is a sin, or Catholicism, which is even worse. Thus for much of American history the goal was to be rich, but not too rich. A 5th or 6th bathroom is probably okay, but don't put any gold in it! Complicated, intricate jewelry is beautiful; just not too much of it! You don't want to look like you're from New Orleans or some other gaudy place. A limo is fine, but no jets! Who are we, the Pope? Even to this day, no one, no matter what their income, is willing to refer to themselves as either "rich" or "poor."

Then Reagan came in with a compelling message. There's nothing wrong with being rich, said St. Ronnie; in fact, being rich is just a sign that you work hard and God has blessed your home! See, "the market" is a sort of crucible of work that elevates the diligent and destroys the lazy; it does God's work! That's why all you good, God-fearing white people in the suburbs are wealthy, and why the good ol' US of A is the richest nation on earth. That, of course, can only mean that poor people are poor because the market/God has chosen not to bless them, obviously because they're lazy and decadent. After all, do you really think it's a coincidence that Protestant countries are richer than Catholic ones? And if you're not rich, just work hard and God/the market will make you rich, because people who work hard make money in a free market. Unless, of course, the government takes Godly people's money away and hands it to those "other" people, those who didn't work for it (and of course, we know they didn't work for it because they don't already have money. Are you keeping up?). Luckily, the only people who want to do that are the poor themselves and rich people who got their money without work, who are "less familiar with the rigors of the marketplace" as one douchebag I found put it.

It is because of this moral fallacy that we implicitly accept the argument that it is hypocritical-- and, ergo, immoral-- to be rich and advocate for the poor, but it is not immoral to be rich and ignore the poor.

I think on some level Edwards' stance on the poor throws the weakness and decadence of the morality of free market fundamentalism into sharp relief, and that's why otherwise intelligent people are all too happy to resort to the "hypocrisy" claptrap even despite a logic that is both clearly flawed and entirely self-serving. The market must be fair. If it is not, then this entire moral universe, within which dwell the ethics of taxation, government spending, immigration, regulation, environmentalism, and workers' rights careens off its axis.

a note on the VP search

Pay no attention to the supposed "short lists" being passed around. The purveyors of conventional wisdom usually blow this call. In fact, one could argue that hype actually diminishes a person's chances of being picked because, optimally, you want people to be both happy with the selection and surprised by it. It makes a bigger "splash" that way.

If the Obama campaign knows what it's doing, they'll find someone with "gravitas" who is affiliated in the popular mind neither with Washington nor with the Democratic party proper. People associate Tom Daschle, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, and Joe Biden with both.

more on chain emails, or moron chain emails

Haven't received this one personally (at least, not since it was the Clinton one), but it looks like Barack's hit the big time: he's got his own death list. Some of the best entries:

MERCEDES HUGLEY, one of Obama's many white, female conquests while at Harvard. Filed sexual assault charges against Obama for date rape in 1990. Because "date rape" was not considered a crime like it is today, she ended up dropping the charges. Two years later, she was found dead of an apparent cocaine overdose.

Why is it significant that the conquests were white? And did you like the part where Hughley is allowed to file rape charges, is then told "I'm sorry, ma'am, date rape is still legal in this country," and then has to drop the charges?

HASAD AL SHAREEZ - FBI informant. Reported to his handler in January 2001 that he had a tape about of a person named simply "B. Hussein" meeting with 9/11 hijacker Mohatma Atta in Prague. Was found shot in the basement of a mosque in Dearborn, MI in October, 2001.

That's right, folks, Barack Obama is now apparently part of the 9/11 conspiracy. He would have had a lot to offer people wanting to destroy buildings in New York and Washington, being a state senator in Illinois and all. Bonus credibility points for referring to Mohammed Atta as "Mohatma."

KEYSHAWN "SPOON" CALWORTH - Was found dead of an apparent heroin overdose May 18, 1997. Was reported to have ties to Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

"Ties to Rev. Jeremiah Wright?" That's it? Boy, they really phoned that one in, eh? Though you have to admit, these are awfully suspicious circumstances. I mean, what are the chances of a guy named "Spoon" dying of a heroine overdose?

And my personal favorite:

DARSANO RAHARDJO - Childhood classmate of Barack Obama when he attended a madrassa in Indonesia. Was found with his head cut off in a Jakarta alley way in 1970. Many children at the school attributed Rahardjo's murder to the young Barack Obama. It was likely done as an initiation ritual, since Islam demands that a boy spill another's blood before the age of ten to prove their loyalty to Allah. [emphasis added]

not just jokes to everybody

I'm sure you've all heard about the shooting in Knoxville by now, in which a crazed ultraconservative neoconfederate nutball took a shotgun and 76 rounds into a Unitarian Universalist chapel and started mowing people down during a children's musical. Turns out he had a couple of choice authors on his bookshelf: Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly. Neiwert reminds us that Chad Castagana, the crazy bastard who mailed fake anthrax letters to various famous liberals, was a Free Republic commenter who loved to read him some Michelle Malkin.

But hey, that joke about the liberal hunting license is a real knee slapper, am I right?

it's still okay if you're a Republican

Atrios links to this picture from Crawford Ranch, pre-election 2000.

'Tis the season

Just got my first conservative chain email in 4 years. Did you know that Cindy and John McCain are living embodiments of family values?

There was a, well, shall we say "lacuna" in the narrative around the time that a middle-aged John McCain left his disabled wife for a buxom blonde former USC cheerleader nearly 18 years his junior who also happened to be a fabulously wealthy heiress to a beer distributing fortune. I sent out a mass reply adding that part.

Hopefully after the election I'll be able to send the sender a recipe for humble pie, ripped off from the Food Network, of course.

getting hitched: and so it begins...

Anyone out there feeling a bit randy?

Just buy a wedding cake. There's no more reliable way to get screwed.

Except, perhaps, to buy anything else remotely associated with a wedding. $42.50 a head for catering? For buffet-style self service? $175 for a f**king bridal bouquet? Seriously?

You can try to pry $175 out of my cold, dead hands!

a lesson about judging books by covers

Due to some issues with the manufacturer, we had to take our electric lawnmower to a Mennonite repairman out in the sticks outside of Osceola. He had the whole 19th century clothes and Abe Lincoln beard thing going on, and his workshop had a carriage outside of it. It smelled of lavender and horse manure (the workshop, not the carriage. Well, probably the carriage, too, if it had sat out there long enough, but you know what I mean).

Just got our mower back. Works better than it ever did. Go figure.

The Dark Knight

[potential spoilers in this post, read at your own peril]

Great, great movie. Pretty morally ambiguous for a superhero film, which makes it even more fascinating to watch. A buddy of mine noted how much of a post-9/11 movie this is, as it invokes some of our privacy vs. security debates and fear of terrorists blowing up buildings and whatnot. Maybe someone's already spilled barrels of ink discussing the Joker is the ultimate terrorist, playing upon all our caricatures of them. Rene makes some good observations, especially about the more technical aspects of the film.

Rene is also right about the Joker and the screenplay writer's choice not to flesh out his back story. To take it a step further, in point of fact Nolan's Joker actively mocks the audience's expectation to be provided some sort of pop psychological justification for the Joker's madness. The Joker is not some mere lunatic with an agenda like Scarecrow (or, frankly, like Tim Burton's Joker); he's a primal force, a manifestation of Chaos, the perfect counter to Batman, the embodiment of cold, rigid Order. The two of them are locked in a perpetual struggle for the soul of Gotham, both utterly unyielding in their demand that the city conform to their ethos, while everyone else is stuck being pulled in either direction, trying to navigate a survivable path between the two.

This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.

Batman and the Joker share one big thing in common: both are fundamentally outsiders to the rest of humanity. The Joker lives off the grid, and has no records or Social Security number or last known address or even legal name. Batman is similarly separate from the system, even though he, at least, has an alter ego. Both are scorned by the city they are trying to change, labeled as "freaks." And, of course, both act in fundamentally deviant manners. After all, Bruce Wayne is a man whose parents were brutally murdered in front of him and who satiates his unquenchable trauma-induced rage by moonlighting as a vigilante dressed up as his childhood phobia. He is not exactly what we would consider a pinnacle of clear-eyed sanity, and no one highlights that fact as effectively as the Joker. There is a question in this movie as to which one of them is more self aware, as there should be.

This movie focuses on that struggle between these two primal forces via the battle for the soul of Harvey Dent, who is the real focus of the movie. What's interesting about it is, as those of you have seen the movie or are acquainted with the Batman universe know [spoiler alert!], the Joker wins that battle. In fact, in an ironic turn, it is the Joker's victory that prevents Batman from retiring.

For me, the most surprising casualty of The Dark Knight was actually my appreciation for Batman (1989). I'd never really realized before just how badly Tim Burton shortchanged the yin and yang rivalry between Batman and the Joker by allowing Batman a complete and total victory and carelessly tossing the Joker aside at the end of the movie. Also, seeing Heath Ledger completely disappear behind a thin, patchy coat of makeup makes the 1989 version look a little too much like Jack Nicholson playing the Joker playing Jack Nicholson. And yes, Ledger deserves an Oscar nomination for creating the best villain in any superhero movie ever.

Oh, and those of you who've been to Chicago will recognize Millenium Station, City Hall, and I believe W. Wacker Dr.

sustainable living: the sports utility bike

No way!

the curtain's closing, time to ditch the props

Looks like the cowboy manly man president is hocking the ranch. From Huffington Post:

An ABC-TV outlet in Houston, and now the Houston Chronicle, have posted a video taken at a political fundraiser for Pete Olson, featuring George W. Bush last week -- capturing some embarrassing/revealing moments after, he noted, he had asked cameras to be turned off.
...
Then, making light of the foreclosure crisis, he said: "And then we got a housing issue... not in Houston, and evidently not in Dallas, because Laura's over there trying to buy a house. [great laughter] I like Crawford but unfortunately after eight years of sacrifice, I am apparently no longer the decision maker."

Aside from styling himself as "bilingual," Bush making his home at the Prairie Chapel Ranch has been the most absurd act of political theatrics ever uncritically sold to us by our sycophantic press. The "ranch" was a pig farm until 1999, when Karl Rove convinced the Texas governor to buy it. The "ranch house" (actually the mansion) wasn't completed until Election Day 2000. It has no horses, supposedly because the president is afraid of them, and it has some cattle, but they aren't his. The estate includes a helicopter hangar, but no barn. And lo and behold! his presidency isn't even over yet, and he's moving back to the city.

Long after his presidency is over and America has either stood up for change or boarded the Crazy Train, we'll suddenly hear George Stephanopoulos and David Brooks talking matter-of-factly about the obvious phoniness of George W. Bush's cowboy antics, as if they have always spoken openly about the surreality of watching a sitting president, the son of Connecticut yankees who spent his youth at Andover, Yale, and Harvard, dressed up like a 9 year old Will Rogers fan, clearing brush from a ranch that doesn't raise anything and despite having paid staff to maintain the estate. As if anyone in the press scoffed when Bush tried to sell his good ol' boy image with lines like how his best moment as president was "when I caught a 7 ½-pound largemouth bass on my lake," except that by "lake" he means man-made pond he had professionally constructed and stocked with 600 largemouth bass. As if any of the pundits who ridiculed Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for feigning a southern drawl ever questioned the authenticity of blue-blooded George W. Bush's exaggerated, mealy-mouthed twang.

Not that anyone else found it a little obvious or anything.

the steel chair!

Because I'm sick of conventional sports metaphors in politics. We need more unconventional ones. This incident this weekend, then, was a pivotal moment. A Goldberg spear. The capturing of the queen. Losing Australia. From The Washington Independent:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, "U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes." Within hours, U.S. Central Command -- at the behest of a clearly worried White House -- released a statement arguing that Maliki was misquoted through a botched translation. But Monday, Maliki's spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said that the government was talking about "a timetable which Iraqis set." Asked when that timetable would run out, Dabbagh quickly specified, "2010."

As a result, the positions on Iraq of the Bush administration, the U.S. military and Sen. John McCain, the presumed GOP presidential nominee, now face numerous challenges. The administration's plans for a permanent U.S. presence in Iraq have been profoundly undermined. The military will have to adjust to a strategy of extrication. The McCain campaign is presented with one of its nightmare scenarios: the Iraqi premier embracing the judgment of its opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, which strengthens Obama's bona fides on a national-security issue McCain has largely staked his presidential bid on owning.

The weak link in all this, of course, is the media reporting of the events, which is a genuine X-factor considering their long-time love affair with St. John the Maverick. They've buried his flip flops and papered over his cringeworthy foreign policy gaffes, but can they avert their eyes and pretend not to notice that Maliki totally bankrupted McCain and Bush's primary argument for a permanent occupation of Iraq, handing Obama complete control of the crucial yellow/green corner of the board?

John McCain: foreign policy GENIUS!!!

Jon Stewart on the case. This, of course, comes on the heels of McCain referring to the defunct Soviet bloc nation of Czechoslovakia (twice!) and on multiple occasions misidentifying Al Qaeda as Shiite. In fact, he's done it so many times, both verbally and in written statements, that Mother Jones makes the most obvious, and scary, conclusion: he may, in fact, not recognize the difference between Sunni and Shia (to be more precise, what he may not grasp is the landscape of sectarian and ethnic divisions in the Middle East, the Mexican standoff between Arabs Sunni and Shiite, Kurds, Turks, and the various Afghan ethnic groups and regional warlords).

The Obamafication of the Republican Party, part 2

Josh Marshall notes the trend of the Bush Administration and the McCain campaign both quietly adopting Barack Obama's positions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran:

Let's run the list.

McCain and now the White House (via the DOD) are moving toward more US troops in Afghanistan -- a position they've each long opposed and which Obama has been on record in support of for at least a year.

Bush and McCain have each also in different ways tried to nudge closer to Obama's position on withdrawing troops from Iraq. The key shoe falling today is President Bush's embrace of a "time horizon" for withdrawing troops from Iraq. Meanwhile, McCain's declaration of military victory in Iraq seems very much like an effort to get people thinking the troops are coming home soon within the conceptual architecture of his professed goals in Iraq.

And finally Iran. I'm not certain what McCain himself has said about Iran in recent days. But over recent months a key line of attack from the president and John McCain has been that Obama is a latter-day Neville Chamberlain for saying we should negotiate with Iran. And now over recent days we've learned that the White House is sending one of its top diplomats to negotiate directly with Iran's nuclear negotiator. And there are growing signs the White House is poised to open a diplomatic interests section (an unofficial diplomatic outpost) in Tehran.

It may all just be an attempt to build some last-minute bragging rights while taking Iraq off the table in the election, but at the end of the day this is still John McCain and George W. Bush tacitly conceding that Barack is right about getting out of Iraq and negotiating with Ahmadinejad, and they were wrong.

One hell of a story, if you can find someone to report it.

not done with the Emmys, or David Caruso got robbed!

I keep thinking about all the shows got very love from the Emmy crowd, or none at all, because my opinions on current TV run directly against the conventional wisdom: I think TV right now may be better than it's ever been. The decision of HBO, Showtime, and basic cable channels to delve into the realm of quality programming, combined with some great network TV, has brought us an embarrassment of riches (or should I say Riches!), not only in the popular genres of crime drama and dramedy but also in more "niche" areas like sci-fi and period pieces. For instance, I think Battlestar Galactica might be the best sci-fi show ever, just as I'm pretty sure that The Wire is the best crime drama ever (and if it isn't, Dexter is for sure). And I'd put The Office or The Daily Show up against Seinfeld any day. What others?:

LOST
Weeds (Elizabeth Perkins should have won Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series outright)
30 Rock
Burn Notice
How I Met Your Mother (how does Neil Patrick Harris not win Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series every year?)
Late Night with Conan O'Brien
Californication
Friday Night Lights
Pushing Daisies
Recount
John Adams
Boston Legal
The Colbert Report
Flight of the Concords
House
Heroes
Monk

And I didn't even include Big Love, The Tudors, Friday Night Lights, Mad Men, Tin Man, or Damages because I haven't seen them!

When, then, do the Emmys have any room at all for the likes of The New Adventures of Old Christine or According to Jim?

Emmy nominations

First off, the fact that Flight of the Concords have two songs nominated for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics is beautiful ("The Most Beautiful Girl (in the room)" and "Inner City Pressure"). The third song in that category?:

Awesome.

Also, the *outstanding* series Pushing Daisies got a lot of love this year, including Lee Pace getting a best comedy actor nomination and Kristen Chenowith for supporting actress.

As for the most disappointing aspects of the nomination list, I still fail to understand why:

1. they keep insisting on giving nominations to 2 and a Half Douchebags. Lots of them. Every damn year. Aside from issues of crusty formula and 1970's era misogyny, why the hell does Charlie Sheen get an Emmy for playing Charlie Sheen?

2. After ending its 5 year run this season, the best cop show ever shot, The Wire, received exactly 1 nomination, for writing. That brings its grand total to two emmy nominations. 2 and a Half Men got 7 this year alone. For God's sake, even Medium and NCIS got one nomination this year!

Also, Justin Kirk (Andy Botwin, Weeds) got robbed.

what is she thinking?

I tend to enjoy Stephanie Zacharek's film reviews in Salon, but lately I've been wondering what the hell happened to her taste. She poopoohed The Dark Knight (one of only 3 top critics on Rotten Tomatoes to do that), WALL-E, and, last year, both No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, and yet gave her blessings to Meet Dave, Drillbit Taylor, and You Don't Mess with the Zohan. Huh?

things you miss when you're not paying attention

I spent several minutes at the checkout counter at the grocery store yesterday wondering if my cashier would notice that I bought $95 worth things shaped like O's.

She never did.

...floppity.

John McCain on July 13:

“I think that we’ve proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no, I don’t believe in gay adoption.”

John McCain on July 16:

"Sen. McCain's expressed his personal preference for children to be raised by a mother and a father wherever possible," the statement added. "However, as an adoptive father himself, McCain believes children deserve loving and caring home environments, and he recognizes that there are many abandoned children who have yet to find homes. John McCain believes that in those situations that caring parental figures are better for the child than the alternative."

Mmmm, that's some good straight talk!

This is increasingly becoming a bit of a "dog bites man" story.

David Caruso cheesy intro lines: the montage

I am born anew in the sublime absurdity of David Caruso's one-liners. I have breached the Chrysalis.

A great game would be to take turns making up more of these one liners while putting on a pair of sunglasses.

This show is a guilty pleasure of mine. It's so supremely ridiculous that it's hard not to smile when you're watching it. The CSI's in this show, pretty much all of whom work dressed to the 9's and could easily moonlight as underwear models, work as brilliant scientists in the most colorful, glitzy, crazy high-tech office I've ever seen, full of glass walls and neon oranges and blues (and that's about as well lit as a jazz club or a nudie bar). They solve every crime that crosses their path with indisputable certainty (as of course they would! After all, duh, it's science, dude!) and the perp always confesses at the end, almost always with that self-satisfied "yeah, you got me. Now let me tell you all about my brilliant diabolical plan!" schtick reminiscent of 1980's TV villains. Horatio is never wrong, never fooled and always a step ahead of everyone. In fact, he never even has to chase anyone; he's always already figured out whether and where they're gonna run, and has secretly positioned himself to intercept them without even his fellow CSI's any the wiser!

And the dialog... oh sweet Jesus the dialog... the very epitome of assuming the worst of your audience's intelligence. My favorite part is when they stop to explain the most painfully obvious ramifications of evidence they find, where it sounds about like:

"We got a return on those fingerprints you brought us from the murder weapon, Horatio. They don't match Jones."

"So Jones didn't kill him... someone else did."

or:

"The police didn't apprehend anyone at the scene."

"So then the killer must still be at large."

It's pretty much the exact opposite of The Wire, which is realistic, clever, grungy, centered on the poor, low tech, and expects a lot from its audience in the sense of being able to make connections not explicitly made on camera.

a thought on the New Yorker cartoon

I'm apparently in the minority on this one (in bloggyville, anyway), but for starters, I don't have any problem with the cartoon. It brought out the same "heh" that most New Yorker cartoons do, actually. It's amusing in a clever sort of way, but not actually funny.

What I'm interested in, however, are parts of "the left's" mindset that led to their offense at the cartoon. Atrios:

I certainly don't think that the New Yorker cover is the biggest deal in the world, but the basic reason I find it problematic is that I look at it and I think, "Yes, well, that's what the Right says about the Obamas pretty much daily." It channels what they say, but they forgot to add the funny. Hamas loves Obama, he hates the flag and America, he's a Muslim, Michelle Obama is a black militant, etc. It isn't funny to me because I read this crap every day all day. This crap isn't just on obscure wingnut blogs, it's everywhere. G. Gordon Liddy is thrilled.

If in 2000 they'd ran a cover which expressed in various ways things like "Al Gore claimed he invented the internet," "Al Gore claims he discovered Love Canal," "Al Gore grew up in a fancy DC hotel," "Al Gore is such pandering politician that he's wearing 3 button suits and EARTH TONES" (no I've never understood this one either), it wouldn't have been a parody, it would have been channeling the media zeitgeist. The Obama thing? Not so different.

Jesse Taylor at Pandagon echoes those sentiments. Supposedly there are others claiming that "low information voters" will see the cartoon and believe it's intended to depict the real Obama, and I have seen that opinion among some commenters, but I haven't seen any of the more influential peeps say that. It's the least defensible of the arguments, so I'm glad it's pretty rare (I can just imagine Joe Bob the high school educated, FOX News viewing, NASCAR fan's reaction when he receives his copy of The New Yorker in the mail this week). Gary Kamiya swats the slower flies in his Salon article, but only touches on the meat of the matter, which is that these liberal voices don't see the cartoon as satirizing right wing/lazy media arguments, but as accurately reflecting them.

Really? Right wingers are arguing that Barack loves Osama bin Laden and hangs a portrait of him on his wall? They're arguing that Obama uses American flags as kindling? That Michelle is an actual, Kalashnikov-toting black militant? That the two of them are actual, genuine, literal terrorists? I doubt that very seriously, and no, that one chain email you got does not prove that these are, in fact, widespread conservative beliefs.

There are kernels of truth in each sub-image of the cartoon, sure ("truth" in the sense of arguments conservatives really are pushing), such as that Michelle harbors secret animosity toward whites and doesn't really "love America," or that Osama bin Laden would like Obama to win, or that Obama doesn't love the flag enough to wear it on his lapel, these images are obvious and dramatic exaggerations of such sentiments. Which is precisely the point of satire.

I think there's a lesson here about how it's easy, when you're engaging in a prolonged war of words with someone, to view their opinions as more radical than they really are.

the Obamafication of Republican foreign policy

We learned yesterday, despite a nearly complete media blackout on the story, that John McCain has abandoned his policy on Afghanistan and has adopted Barack Obama's. From the Huffington Post:

John McCain likes to paint Barack Obama as a naive follower on key national security issues. But by moving up his planned Afghanistan speech by two days to follow Obama's, and by agreeing that more U.S. troops are needed there, McCain appears to be following the Illinois Democrat on a major proposed shift for U.S. foreign policy.

Last month, Joint Chiefs chairman Adm. Michael Mullen said he needed at least three brigades shifted to Afghanistan, but that "troop constraints were preventing such a move."

Democrats trumpeted the statement as vindication, but McCain's campaign held its line and "resisted calls for more [U.S.] troops" in Afghanistan.
...
Flash-forward to today. As the AP reported, McCain was set to discuss the economy, with an address on Afghanistan scheduled for Thursday. But the campaign ditched its planned focus on jobs (although not its banner) to follow Obama's lead -- not only by talking about national security but by joining him in calling for more American troops in Afghanistan.

Nearly an hour after Obama finished his D.C. speech, in which he repeated his call for "at least two additional combat brigades" to be sent to Afghanistan, McCain stepped to his podium across the country in New Mexico and tried to one-up his Democratic rival. As McCain's website now says, the Arizona Republican wants "at least three additional brigades" for the fight in Afghanistan.

Barack Obama: a leader John McCain can believe in.

Following that, we hear this morning of a striking reversal in a notorious Bush Administration. From AP:

In a break with past Bush administration policy, a top U.S. diplomat will for the first time join colleagues from other world powers at a meeting with Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, The Associated Press has learned.

William Burns, America's third highest-ranking diplomat, will attend talks with the Iranian envoy, Saeed Jalili, in Switzerland on Saturday aimed at persuading Iran to halt activities that could lead to the development of atomic weapons, a senior U.S. official told the AP on Tuesday.

Now who was it again who not only advocated talking to our enemies as a central feature of his foreign policy plan, but took an enormous amount of grief from both George W. Bush and John McCain, as well as his fellow primary candidates for it?