Fun Site of the Day

This blogger goes by the name of "Jake" on Balloon Juice and is an all-around good feller with a sense of humor.

Backpost from 4/30/08, moved it to today because why not.

Reagan Started It

Balloon-Juice sends along this good article/line from Joe Klein: (and you know it's good because I've been saying it for a while):

In truth, class warfare is what the Reagan Era gave us: thirty years of tax breaks for the wealthy at the expense of the common weal, thirty years of lax regulations which enabled the bankers to strip-mine the savings of average Americans while reaping huge rewards in Ponzi schemes, like the micro-dividing of mortgage assets that were really debits. Once again, I'm not sure Obama's proposals will work--some will surely be more successful than others, there's a good chance that rather than being too bold, he isn't being bold enough--but I am absolutely certain where the continuation, or augmentation, of Reagan-Bush policies would leave us: even worse off than we are now."

Pic from here. Backpost finished 2009-12-03.

Balloon Juice about GOP

John Cole of Balloon Juice echoes my feelings about the GOP and their Palin-slathering purity tests; read the whole thing:
"Missing The Point" One thing John focuses on is something that I've found stirring both a social-scientist and a Democrat: the eerie way that the conservative bloggers attach themselves to the actions and fortunes of the Republican party. None of these bloggers, as far as I know, are paid by the GOP. The conservative pundits neither. Yet they act, free of charge, as direct surrogates with 0% diversion from the party line and party goals. It's sick and it's the core of what Hillary Clinton called the 'vast right wing conspiracy.' The use of conspiracy is wrong - because conspiracies are by definion secret and this is as wide out and open.

Way Ahead of Them

Even when it wasn't trendy, I was asserting that George W. Bush was quite clearly stupid. People would gainsay; claiming that - according to unsourced anecdotal evidence - Bush was quite intelligent in a one-on-one conversation. Proofs were also brought as to his education (Yale undergrad, Harvard MBA) and his success in life (president, hello?).

I would counter-argue that (1) education does not correlate to intelligence - especially for wealthy brahmins before 1970 (when most Universities were compelled to matriculate women and minorities). The fact that W's younger siblings were not accepted in Yale (Jeb = UT, Neil = Tulane, Marvin = UVA, Dorothy, BC) is good proof of the pre/post 1970 theory.

(2) Bush, sorry to say, has not been successful on his own. Note, most of the millionaires I know, self-made and otherwise, are not particularly smart. The ones who are intelligent are the exception, to be honest. Bush's successes came from his being well-born. See proof #1 about his education. Anything he did on his own (his businesses are exhibit A-Z) failed. When he became a vapid stooge for the GOP elite - as governor of Texas and Looter-in-Chief of the federal government - then he 'succeeded.' It's in fact much more probable to use Bush as proof that intelligence is *not* predictive of success more than the other way around.

(3) Unsourced anecdotal evidence are not very compelling when punched in the face by facts.

The facts are that intelligence is demonstrated by doing and saying smart things. And for the most part, smart people don't need third-party confirmation for their intelligence. If a person is smart, other people aren't compelled to say "oh, but he's really smart, believe me." Nobody has to confirm Clinton's intelligence, or Cheney's, or Rove's. Their intelligence is assumed because they sound smart. George W Bush, Dan Quayle, Jack Kemp, and Gerald Ford all sound really stupid; hence why their friends have to confirm and reconfirm the doubts of their intelligence.

Answer this about Bush: what smart things has he done? Has he written (on his own) intelligent books/articles/essays? When he speaks, does he say smart things or does he sound barely sentient? Note, I'm not even arguing about whether Bush is smart "enough" to be entrusted with great power (an idea - that the president should be talented and competent - that used to be held as an article of belief by most Americans), I'm saying that Bush's speech and behavior is indicative of someone barely smart enough to whiz with his pants down.

The real question about Bush isn't "how smart is he" but the larger question of "how dumb can you be before they start calling you that in public."

Which brings us to John McCain.

I've said on previous occasions that McCain strikes me as a dumb person. There are certain hallmarks of intelligence in his record (e.g. his willingness, before 2008, to speak unfiltered to reporters), so he's in a category above the profoundly stupid George W. But in our present day, whether it's because of age-induced brain-damage, or just inborn handicap, McCain doesn't seem to be that smart.

His inconsistencies in belief and action - what he's done his whole life - are proof for his stupidity. He did one thing right, that I know about: his refusal to be let out of the Hanoi Hilton early because of his family connections. But his undistinguished military career before his imprisonment, his erratic public behavior in Congress, and his despicable acts of private behavior (e.g. adultery), make me think that he just ain't bright.

So, anyway, other people are starting to notice. John Cole, of Balloon-Juice, for example: "Is McCain Just Dumb?" (based on this latest show of idiocy).

"I Am Aware of All Internet Traditions"

Because I am still logy from a 48-hour deadline push, I am easily suckered into peer-pressure, internet-style. John Cole claims that "This may be the greatest thread in the history of the intertrons."

Why? Because some doofus didn't understand what the blogger was saying, expressed his confusion and when he was corrected refused to accept the reprimand. In so doing, he defended himself from any criticism by claiming the now immortal phrase "I Am Aware of All Internet Traditions."

At least at Balloon-Juice that phrase will live long.

Some More Balloon

A few more things I've added to this Ballon-Juice thread (note, I never used to respond on blogs, but BJ feels different: (1) it's filled with a lot of no-nonsense types, men and women, who take pride in seeing through B.S., (2) many posters have swift, sick senses of humor which makes for great reading, and (3) posts are put up pretty quickly - all three things are the opposite on most sites like, for example, TPM/TNR):

jake says: I’m convinced the dude has memorized TAoW [The Art if War].

One thing that impressed me about "Dreams of My Father" is how Barack's upbringing was influenced by lessons learned from his father and step-father - both men were chosen by their countries to come to America to be given high degrees and return back to Kenya/Indonesia to be leaders. Barack's step-father teaching him how to defend himself in the chaotic oppressive weirdness of Indonesia gives insight to how Obama learned to survive in a dangerous world.

Obama as ninja pic from here. Backpost finished 2009-12-06.

Hillary's Debt

Balloon-Juice quotes this Hill story:

After a long primary season, the Clinton campaign’s expenditures have far exceeded the amount of donations it has received so far, and the campaign has accumulated debt of more than $19 million, according to campaign finance reports. Much of that debt consists of unpaid salaries and bills to vendors.

One commenter asks how it's possible that Clinton went so deep in debt in what was clearly a futile contest (she was mathematically eliminated after her 11 straight losses in February weren't offset by wins in Ohio & Texas).

Here's my response:

This is ridiculous. Clinton has to pay it. You just don’t accidentally run up a $20 Million Debt

I think it's called "shooting the moon." As far as I can tell - trying to put rational thought into what appears to be a deranged woman's head - her team spent money like gangbusters, and ran a scorched-earth campaign, in order to get within 2 digits of delegates of Obama (i.e. under 100, 99 would be fine, just like her 9.2 win in PA became 10 points, it works in reverse too).

With just 2-digits separating 'em, Hillary was going to pitch to the superdelegates that she *had* to take it to Denver and to force a floor-fight. Because 2 digits is just "too close." I read yesterday (can't find so quickly) that this was the thinking.

So the spendthrifting, the bridge-burning, was going to pay off if she could just get under 100. Then she'd claw her way to a floor fight and emerge bloody and victorious... and then pay off the debts.

This also explains the behavior of her top surrogates. This pyramid scheme was the only way they'd get paid as well. The Clintons made too many promises since 2000 to too many people - my assumption is they have a "promise debt" to go with this money debt - and so all of her surrogates needed to go along.

Its the mentality of a gambler, really. If you're so deep in the hole, the concept of stopping is crazy because if you owe $10,000, then the next humongous bet will pay that off if you win! And when that fails, make another humongous bet. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Buchenwald-Gate

Wow, this election has gone from the farcical to the obscene pretty quickly, and this time it's not from Hillary, it's from our friends, the Republicans. The GOP is going nuts over the fact that the Democrats have repudiated the polarizing Queen of Darkness and will soon nominate an uncorrupted, charismatic transcendent orator who draws crowds of thousands and has added new voters, and members, to the Democratic party. Meanwhile the GOP candidate is detested by most of the party and is about 1000 years old.

So the GOP has been trying to use whatever they can to slam Obama and the most recent gambit is to say that Obama is stupid and makes gaffes, like confusing Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Ya see, Obama said this on Memorial Day (from CBS):

Obama also spoke about his uncle, who was part of the American brigade that helped to liberate Auschwitz. He said the family legend is that, upon returning from war, his uncle spent six months in an attic. “Now obviously, something had really affected him deeply, but at that time there just weren’t the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain,” Obama said. “That’s why this idea of making sure that every single veteran, when they are discharged, are screened for post-traumatic stress disorder and given the mental health services that they need – that’s why it’s so important.”

Well it turns out that Mr. Barack O'Liar has lied again: it was not his uncle but his Great uncle. Liar. And it wasn't Auschwitz, it was Buchenwald! Super liar!

OK, back to reality. What does it matter? To almost everybody on earth, Auschwitz is a synecdoche for all concentration camps. And it's totally immaterial for Obama's point, which is that his relative liberated a concentration camp and was haunted by the experience. That is all true.

But, according to the links cited by my friends at Balloon-Juice, the right wing crazies have called Obama a liar and a goofball for messing up the facts. Nice try, schmoes, but it doesn't wash. And it would be just silly if the GOPers had stopped there. But they went worse.

The Right-wingers, in order to create a scandal, have to show that it DOES matter which concentration camp Obama's great-uncle liberated. And so, as I read on Balloon, they have to say that while Auschwitz was bad, Buchenwald was NOT THAT BAD:

Buchenwald, on the other hand, while atrocious beyond normal human understanding, was merely a slave labor camp, and not historically abnormal in a time of war. The people who died there did so under the stress of work and disease, rather than as a deliberate attempt to wipe them off the planet. Which, of course, says much more about human nature and history than it does about the Nazis.

It is crazy beyond comprehension. This was my commentary on BJ:

OK, I’m going to play the “Jew card” on this play. I am named after two (great) uncles who were killed in the Holocaust. I don’t know where they were killed; it could have been in Auschwitz, it could have been in their homes by a mob, it could have been in a ghetto. It does not matter.

Seeing a pile of bodies – who for all I know contain my grandfather’s brothers – and to be told by ANYBODY that it is “merely” a slave camp is beyond obscene.

Yet, as my rational side is pulling me back, I have to say that this episode demonstrates just how much a Republican hates a Democrat: in order to attack a Democrat, a Republican will say that the Nazis weren’t so bad in Buchenwald.

Put another way, Republicans hate Democrats more than they hate Nazis.

Taking it just one step further: the GOP first attacked the story, then found out it was basically true, so now they have to say that Obama's great-uncle was a weenie for suffering PTSD from seeing what was only horrific to a billionth degree and not a trillionth degree.

John Cole and the Start of the General

Even though Hillary hasn't stopped her machine, the consensus is that she is done. So John Cole, of Balloon-Juice (a daily-read for me) kicks off the general election with this coda for Hillary, praise for Obama, and seething contempt for the GOP. I will intersperse his statements with commentary when appropriate:

At any rate, I feel a profound sense of relief the whole nomination process is finally over.

The Styx is saving relief for when Hillary finally walks off the stage or Obama goes over 2025.

I guess I am just not used to the messy way you all do things here in the Democratic party, but these past few months have been excruciating. The primary, for me at least, was over after March 5th, when she failed to blow him out in the firewall state of Texas, but as a new member of the party I guess I am in the wing where "firewall" and "math" still mean things.

Just to emphasize, this was a new experience for many Democrats and a singular product of Hillary Clinton's psyche. I don't remember anyone quite as disgusting, empty and narcissistic in the party since, uh, since Woodrow Wilson? William Jennigs Bryan? Hmph.

So I endured another month of listening to certain wings of a party (that, again, I am a newcomer to) do their best NRO and Weekly Standard impressions and talk about electability, stealth Muslims, lapel pins, patriotism, new new delegate math, Rev. Wright, and whatever else they could dream up.

Whatever. She threw everything she had at him. He weathered the storm. Consider him vetted. Consider Rev. Wright kicked in the junk. Consider me relieved. Now, can we get to the very serious business of dismantling the GOP? I have a very serious axe to grind, and it is deeply, deeply personal for me. There are a bunch of frauds, crooks, and phonies with whom I have a serious grudge that I want to settle. You see, I still have my “Peace Through Strength” button from when I campaigned for Reagan. I believed in limited government, I believed in a strong national defense, I believed in fiscal restraint and balanced budgets and I believed in personal integrity and individual liberty and personal freedom.

I am pissed. I want the frothing nutters, the fraudulent hucksters, the race-baiters, the anti-science frauds, the anti-intellectuals, the gay-bashers, the big-money cheats, the torture fetishists, the religious nuts, the tax and spenders, the xenophobes, and the phonies to pay. I want payback. I want the people who ruined my former party relegated to permanent minority status. I know I am a newly minted Democrat, and, as such, it is ballsy for me to start telling you what I want from the party, but this is my website and you are just going to have to deal with my opinion.

I am under no illusion I will buy into everything Barack Obama puts forward, but I am damned sure convinced he is a decent man who, at the very least, will restore a sense of competence to the national stage. I am willing to meet most Democrats half-way, and I am already doing everything I can to get this man elected. I think Obama will act in good faith for this nation, and I am responding in kind. His policies are not outlandish or crazy or uber-left- they reflect a rational, and I would argue, a decent and progressive way forward out of the mess I helped to create. I won’t like all of them, and I will not agree with all of them, but there is no chance that I will ever be President, so perfect agreement is never a possibility.

And don’t get me wrong- I am not for Obama because of what I am against. I am for Obama because he is a decent man, a break from the past, and really a once in a lifetime opportunity. He has treated us like adults throughout this primary, and it is time to act like adults. There will be times we feel he lets us all down, but we are not electing a deity. We are electing a leader, and Obama is that leader. It is time to get past the bullshit of the last 20 years, the battles I am really tired of fighting, and time to turn our attention to the really important issues of the day- the economy, the budget, our international presence, our crumbling infrastructure, our military, medicare and medicaid and social security, and on and on and on.

If Barack Obama was not your your preferred candidate, I am sorry that person did not win, but it is time to remember that the target is John McCain and the Bush/Cheney way of doing things. If you can not accept that and help move us forward, please at least get out of the way.

Well done. And, play ball!

Joke of the Day

I hate to give credit to some moron on balloon juice who's the biggest Hillary supporter around, but this is a funny joke:

Q: Why does West Virgina have the highest unsolved murder rate in the nation?

A: No dental records and the DNA is all the same.

Chai to Obama

Now that I'm oompa-loompa free (a phrase I explain here), I can freely, in good conscience, give money to politicians. Just gave a multiple of chai to Obama's campaign through Balloon-Juice's page on ActBlue. Why this way?

1. To Obama? for obvious reasons.
   
   
2. With Actblue? Because they do good work for the Democratic party, across the board, allowing individuals in random locales to give to struggling "blue" campaigns all across the country.
   
   
3. Giving Balloon-Juice credit? Because John Cole is a repentant republican who now hates Bush, wants a Democrat in '08, and is a sane supporter of Obama.

A number of the BJ readers give a few bucks to Obama whenever Hillary does something outrageous. It's a good - albeit expensive - minhag.

Hillary and George W.

Some dude responds to my balloon post: (specifically this part: "Before every contest Hillary claims X will happen and it doesn’t. But they swiftly say, after the contest, that they expected non-X, in fact non-X means victory.")

jake Says: that sounds familiar: When we see a decrease of violence in Iraq we’ll know we’re winning! An increase of violence in Iraq means we’re winning!

So I add:

The comparisons between Hillary and George W Bush are frightening. No, not similarities in politics but in attitude and tactics.

How many times did Hillary ignore a losing strategy just because she was too stubborn to admit failure?

How many stumblebum people has she kept on board because she treasures loyalty over competence?

The list could go on, but the similarities are manifest. The two share the same traits because they are both untalented people who have been thrust through circumstance and kinship into a leadership position higher than they would have attained otherwise.

The are the traits of shallow, scared people who bully others to make up for their shining inadequacies. I don't think I need to convince people here that Bush is a bully, but Hillary is as well. Someone who attacks below the belt and then plays the victim card when counter-attacked is a bully.

When people say they will vote for McCain over Hillary it's often because while McCain will have the same POLICIES of Bush, he has a different attitude: confidence, even honesty (which is a crock for McCain, but he projects it well).

A handy chart:
Bush - bad POLICIES, bad PERSONALITY
McCain - bad POLICIES, good PERSONALITY
Hillary - good POLICIES, bad PERSONALITY
Obama - good POLICIES, good PERSONALITY

Set Rules for Hillary

The reason why FLOTUS (a.k.a. the Tulza Tiger) is still a convincing contender in this race is because her team has successfully re-written the narrative after every defeat.

Before every contest Hillary claims X will happen and it doesn't. But they swiftly say, after the contest, that they expected non-X, in fact non-X means victory.

For example, she won Ohio but lost Texas. Before those primaries, we were told - by pundits, and Hillary people alike - that she had to win big to stay in the race. Well she didn't win big, in fact she lost half, yet her group reframed Ohio-Texas as confirmation that she must keep fighting.

And who can forget the reframing - still ongoing - of Michigan and Florida.

What needs to be done NOW, before Pennsylvania, is for the DNC and the Associated Uncommitted Superdelegates Inc. to state clearly that if Hillary gets X in Pennsylvania, then she's still viable, and if it's non-X they want her to drop out.

If past performance is any indication, she will not get X and the pressure to step down will be hard for her to deny.

Cross-posted at Balloon Juice

FLOTUS

I saw someone on Balloon Juice used this to describe Hillary and I think it's a great nickname. It's the officially approved acronym for First Lady Of The U.S. which is her late-great job experience. And the word sounds funny. Flotus flotus flotus.

Hillary's Latest Attack

Just submitted to Balloon Juice:

Two points:

1. I remember hearing that because Mark Penn was leaving the campaign, the new guy (whomever) will be all nicey-nicey, and the party-destroying attacks on Obama would cease? Well I guess from 'bitter-gate' and Hillary's imitation of Romney The Varmint Slayer, we can conclude either (a) Penn is still calling the shots, or (b) Penn never called the (negative) shots and it was always Hillary

2. The Charlie Rose video JC posted has Obama saying the same 'bitter' talking points back in 2004. Except that he was referencing the famous book "What's the Matter with Kansas." Now I haven't read the book yet, but I remember it being an almost Bible to Democrats after the terrible '04 loss. As such, if Obama is just saying what that book said, and the book is accepted gospel by the Democrats, then how dare Hillary mock Obama for this?

Yeah, I know, she'll doing anything to get elected. As some other commenter noted, it's tactics not strategy. But this kind of stuff pisses off the biggest most important constituency she has to convince: the super-delegates.

Great Line from Balloon Juice

Baloon Juice by John Cole is a great daily read. Cole was until recently a Republican, but the horrible malfeasance and icompitence of the Bush adminstration and the compicity of the GOP establishment has driven him away from the party. He's what we now call an indipendent which really means "former-Republican who can't recognize his/her party, but can't bear being formally aligned with the party of Ted Kennedy."

His anger at the GOP is even more vicious than mine (proof: his entire blog). Here's what he said at the beginning of last night's GOP debate:

Like a Cowboys/Browns Superbowl, I am rooting for injuries.

I forgot to add that he's a Steelers fan. Heh heh.