The Nightnmare World of Scalia

If there's any one person whose presence is dooming the world more than anyone else, it's Antonin Scalia, the caveman who has been occupying a seat on the US Supreme Court for decades.  He is, quite frankly, a menace to us all.  More than George W. Bush, more than Dick Cheney, because Scalia can't be removed from office and his views of the world have given the necessary legitimacy to the rest of the GOP.  They have been able to destroy our nation - and by extension the world - because of the Supreme Court, and especially the linchpin, Scalia.

I was alerted to a recent interview  with Scalia in New York Magazine, and this tidbit was highlighted as an example of where the Most Powerful Man in the World gets his information:

What’s your media diet? Where do you get your news?
Well, we get newspapers in the morning.
“We” meaning the justices?
No! Maureen and I.
Oh, you and your wife …
I usually skim them. We just get The Wall Street Journal and the Washington
Times. We used to get the Washington Post, but it just … went too far for me. I
couldn’t handle it anymore.
What tipped you over the edge?
It was the treatment of almost any conservative issue. It was slanted and often
nasty. And, you know, why should I get upset every morning? I don’t think I’m the
only one. I think they lost subscriptions partly because they became so shrilly,
shrilly liberal.
So no New York Times, either?
No New York Times, no Post.
And do you look at anything online?
I get most of my news, probably, driving back and forth to work, on the radio.

and lest you think he means NPR, the journalist did his job

Not NPR?Sometimes NPR. But not usually.
Talk guys?
Talk guys, usually.
Do you have a favorite?
You know who my favorite is? My good friend Bill Bennett. He’s off the air by the
time I’m driving in, but I listen to him sometimes when I’m shaving. He has a
wonderful talk show. It’s very thoughtful. He has good callers. I think they keep off
stupid people.

So basically, he doesn't read normal newspapers, and another part of the interview he says he largely is off the internet.  His news comes from the Right Wing crazies.   God help us.

h/t Fallows.

Megan McArdle on Health Care

Megan McArdle is an infuriating blogger at the Atlantic. The Balloon-Juice lexicon for "McMegan" is accurate:

Nickname for fact-free Atlantic blogger Megan McArdle, who predictably makes arguments that have less to do with reality and more to do with wild-ass assertions meant to lend credibility to her libertarian bona fides. A self-proclaimed “economic libertarian” whose first blog was called I Am Jane Galt. See also, “Technically true, but collectively nonsense” and “It wasn’t a statistic-it was a hypothetical.”

She's one of these people who uses all possible effort to be wrong about everything. It's stunning. In her latest column, though, I found that she was basically correct. Entitled "What Cutting Health Care Costs Looks Like" she describes how her mother was kicked out of the hospital before she had a chance to recover fully from a burst appendix.

McMegan still tries to spin the story into some libertarian squawk, but ultimately it shows a sympathy for how cruel cost-cutting can be. This naturally proves a point I made decades ago (on the State of the State, I believe) which is that while the joke goes that a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, I add that a liberal is a conservative who lost his job. In this case, it's a similar indignity.

BTW, I do think the early-hospital-ejection is a major social problem in America and I think we can solve it. The first question to ask is, naturally, why hospital stays cost so much, but I am a practical man and I realize that there's no way to rebottle that efreet. I suggest a facility called a Recovery Clinic (RC) which would be like a 'nursing home' in the sense that it is a residence with 24/7 nursing care, but would allow the full recovery that the hospitals have overcharged out of their purview.

Tea Party?

The current Tea-Party takes their title from the Boston Tea Party. From the beginning, I've been disturbed by the imagery because even though the original Tea-Partiers became heroes of the American Revolution, at the time they were committing treason. And the current teabaggers, by using that event as a standard, are thus declaring to the world that they intend treason. No?

That established, the Tea Party is in fact the wrong image - because bottom line, the rebellion/treason that they intend to enact is Fort Sumter. Not just because the Teabaggers are generally egotistical misanthropic crackers, but also because they hate non-Whites and especially our Black president.

Image from here. And, note, these people are proud of their Frankenstein imagery.

Robo-Land, Massachusetts Senate 2010

So Massachusetts is now in one of those teabagger fueled election death-struggles. Which means that for the past week or so we've been getting robocalls every few minutes or so. Robocalls, like mudslinging, turns voters off, not on and the candidates should know that. Karl Rove did - that's why he'd only pay for robocalls for his opponents (I think).

Anyway, the election tomorrow (Tuesday) is between a lackluster Democrat and a pretty-boy GOP walking-teabag cypher. The fact that we're in this place is scary to me, as a Democrat and a supporter of the president, but it's also a testimony to machine politics. We shouldn't be here, but here's why I think we are:

1. Martha Coakley is a poor candidate. Sadly, she's a combination of Hillary Clinton & John Kerry - an unimaginative, and mean, woman whose ambition overshadows her talent. I voted against her in the primary for this reason and were she in any fashion decent, this election wouldn't be so close. A sign of her paucity as a candidate is her desire to go negative early and often. Even when she was leading by double-digits in the primary, she attacked her opponents - one reason why I voted against her. And that undeserved hauteur - a hallmark of Kerry - is undoing her now.

2. Massachusetts screwed up the voting schedule - I said this before - there's a reason to have elections all at the same time. We should have had the primary on the November day and the special election soon after. Rather MA is forcing people to go to vote 3 times in close succession. It's expensive and time consuming. And unlike my fellow pundit-curmudgeons, I sympathize with good faith reasons for being unable to vote (with our 3 kids we're forced to find a babysitter or work out a way to switch places and go to the polls - not easy, and we both have time flexible jobs!) And voting in January in Massachusetts?! In-freakin-sane! The inevitable low-voter-turnout of the bad scheduling favors the crazy, under-employed, and committed - and in an off-year that means that opposition party.

3. Obstructionism Works - The GOP are better obstructionsists that Democats for a number of reasons: (a) conservatives, almost by definition, are against change which means they WANT to stop things, (b) the GOP is against government (pretty much) and so stopping legislative movement is part of their ideology, (c) the party, since Newt's time, has had remarkable voting unity - which helps obstructions.

In any case, the GOP obstructionism has given the view to the electorate that Congress isn't capable of doing anything and that helps the GOP depict themselves as the loyal opposition. Of course the truth is that they are continuing the despicable practices of their 2000-2008 reign... but most voters seem unable to capture that right now - aided by Coakley's hacky negativity.

Tomorrow may determine the end of the Obama era - just like Clinton's Democrats let him down from 1993-1994, so the stupid Democrats of 2009-2010 may end Obama before he can really begin.

Briefly stated, we need to get rid of the filibuster - it's become unconstitutional. Beforehand, the Senators, knowing they had a terrible weapon, only used it for the most severe cases. But the current GOP, like the gun-toting hillbillies who make up their core electorate, are using their weapons for everything. Sadly, it's time to take the gun away. I'll say more anon about that, though.

Young Obama Statue Officially Unveiled In Indonesia

From the TPM:

Young Obama Statue Officially Unveiled In Indonesia

Eric Kleefeld
December 9, 2009, 12:18PM

The new statue of Barack Obama in Jakarta, Indonesia, commemorating him from when he lived there as a child, has now been unveiled.The statute is made of bronze, and stands two meters tall, including the pedestal, with a nearly life-sized likeness of the young Obama. It is located at Taman Menteng Park, a site that was used as an athletic field by Obama's elementary school. It was paid for through a private non-profit group, called Friends of Obama.

Central Jakarta Mayor Sylviana Murni said at the unveiling ceremony: "There is a message through the young Obama statue that any child and anyone from any background can reach their dreams if they fight for it persistently."

The peanut gallery in the TPM comments think the right wingers will freak out. Even TPM pushes this with their headline: "Winger Bait."

First of all, stop caring about the freaks on the right. They need no substance to fuel their crazy. They live in a frictionless vacuum of stupid hate.

Second of all, why should the Right wing get angry about Obama when there's a life-size statue of George W. Bush passed out drunk in the basement of a Waco Arby's?

Welcome to the Sane Side: LGF

Welcome LGF to the side of sanity. Little Green Footballs - Why I Parted Ways With The Right:

1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.)

2. Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.)

3. Support for throwing women back into the Dark Ages, and general religious fanaticism (see: Operation Rescue, anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the entire religious right, etc.)

4. Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.)

5. Support for homophobic bigotry (see: Sarah Palin, Dobson, the entire religious right, etc.)

6. Support for anti-government lunacy (see: tea parties, militias, Fox News, Glenn Beck, etc.)

7. Support for conspiracy theories and hate speech (see: Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Birthers, creationists, climate deniers, etc.)

8. A right-wing blogosphere that is almost universally dominated by raging hate speech (see: Hot Air, Free Republic, Ace of Spades, etc.)

9. Anti-Islamic bigotry that goes far beyond simply criticizing radical Islam, into support for fascism, violence, and genocide (see: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.)

10. Hatred for President Obama that goes far beyond simply criticizing his policies, into racism, hate speech, and bizarre conspiracy theories (see: witch doctor pictures, tea parties, Birthers, Michelle Malkin, Fox News, World Net Daily, Newsmax, and every other right wing source)

And much, much more. The American right wing has gone off the rails, into the bushes, and off the cliff.

I won’t be going over the cliff with them.

His reasons have long been held by The Styx and other sane locations. Sometimes it takes a rational, reasonable person longer than others to see the light. But we need to have faith that our right-wing brethren, if they are truly our friends, can't be completely idiotic.

Pic from LGF's website. H.t. Sullivan.

Sullivan Off the Rails, Cont.

Andrew Sullivan has been going off the rails (or off his meds) for a few months now. I think it's an elastic snap-back from his years attacking Republicans that he feels a need to just lash out brainlessly. I've detailed my misgivings about his most recent foray into anti-Zionism (it's in a backpost, be patient). But just today he shows the true reason why a sane person (like me) needs to be wary of anybody in the press. Obsoive:

"Maureen Dowd's column today hits on something she's been tuning into for a while. Dowd's instincts about human character are foolish to bet against. She has essentially read every recent president correctly from the get-go as types.

OK, pause for a second... do you get that? Sullivan is praising Maureen Frickin' Dowd! As being always right! Dowd may be the only person in the press corps who is *more* of a screaming splitting borderline hysteric than Sullivan. They're birds of a feather. I guess I always knew that but to see him actually praise her, and for something totally stupid, is just too much:

And she has always seen Obama as a bit of a cold fish, aloof, too unwilling to punch back, too arrogant to explain himself too much.

Get this: Modo's nonsense vendettas are validated because of her childish belief that Obama is just too aloof? This is the same complaint about Obama made by the insane Right Wing - which should tell you, immediately, how much into crazy town we've gotten. But the real proof is in his last line (emphasis mine):

MoDo worried about that in the campaign as the Clintons brought more raw human emotion to the trail and Obama often seemed to coast too cockily only to right himself, usually with some spell-binding speech or shrewd piece of campaign management. I generally trusted Obama's instincts. In the campaign, MoDo was nearly right (Obama did let the Clintons get back off the mat a few too many times) but in the end, wrong (look who got elected). But in government? The coolness has yet to be proven effective - as Kissinger has noted."

You know just how bad Sullivan has gotten when he uses Henry Kissinger as support for Maureen Dowd. Barf.

Pic from here, note - I am only one of millions that think Dowd is a silly person who is given too much of a platform.

Good Points by JMM on TPM about KSM

Those acronyms: JMM = Joshua Michah Marshall, TPM = Talking Points Memo, KSM = Kentucky Sizzled Mohammad.

JMM has right ideas about why it's good for KSM to have a fair trial (bold is from me):

...This isn't just a matter of wanting to see punishment. It also vindicates our system of justice and values -- and for it all to happen here, the scene of the crime, among the people of this city, not out on some island or in some secret jail.

Listening to the questions at Attorney General Holder's press conference, I'm hearing again fears about giving the defendants a platform "to air their hateful views." But really, who is so cowardly as to worry about what these five say? Is our standing and self-respect so brittle?

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) says it makes New York City more of a target for attacks. And there's at least some logic to the argument. But fundamentally, I don't think terrorists aren't attacking New York because they don't think there's enough reason to do so. And I trust the appropriate officials will keep the city's people safe.

There's a widespread belief that many seem to have that calling these people criminals and treating them as such somehow elevates their status and diminishes the fact that al Qaeda has effectively been making war on the United States. I've never understood this mindset. The key point in World War II is that at the end of the war the Allies would not deign to accord the leaders of Germany and Japan the respect accorded to defeated armies. They were tried as criminals. Because that is what they were.

Whether it's fear that our justice system can't mete justice out to these men, or worry that KSM or the others might mouth off about us at their trial, or concern about future attacks, I am continually surprised that the voices of cowardice and fear manage to convince themselves and others that they speak for courage and determination.

There does seem to be two Americas, the cowards and the brave. And the brave are those who believe, truly, in the Constitution. The cowards seem to be the ones who love America because their mom happened to be on a particular piece of dirt when she gave birth.

Lou Dobbs to Quit CNN

From the Times, Lou Dobbs to Quit CNN.

This is excellent news. Dobbs was a bigoted clown and a public embarrassment. He deserves to be on Fox, he's so biased and bad. [Spitting sound]

Update: The Onion, for the win: U.S. Deports Lou Dobbs: CNN Host Had Been Living Illegally In Country Since 1961

Acting on anonymous tips from within the Hispanic-American community, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials on Wednesday deported Luis Miguel Salvador Aguila Dominguez, who for the last 48 years had been living illegally in the United States under the name Lou Dobbs.

Warning Signs? What Warning Signs?

Sigh. "No warning signs"...

See the NY Times story: Fort Hood Gunman Gave Signals Before His Rampage. Or these 2 via Sullivan, from the Telegraph, and NPR.

NPR reported:

The psychiatrist [who worked alongside Hasan] says that he was very proud and upfront about being Muslim. And the psychiatrist hastened to say, and nobody minded that. But he seemed almost belligerent about being Muslim, and he gave a lecture one day that really freaked a lot of doctors out.

They have grand rounds, right? They, you know, dozens of medical staff come into an auditorium, and somebody stands at the podium at the front and gives a lecture about some academic issue, you know, what drugs to prescribe for what condition. But instead of that, he - Hasan apparently gave a long lecture on the Koran and talked about how if you don't believe, you are condemned to hell. Your head is cut off. You're set on fire. Burning oil is burned down your throat.

And I said to the psychiatrist, but this could be a very interesting informational session, right? Where he's educating everybody about the Koran. He said but what disturbed everybody was that Hasan seemed to believe these things. And actually, a Muslim in the audience, a psychiatrist, raised his hand and said, excuse me. But I'm a Muslim and I do not believe these things in the Koran, and then I don't believe what you say the Koran says. And then Hasan didn't say, well, I'm just giving you one point of view. He basically just stared the guy down.

Note, this may not be true (why would the Feds investigate some things Hasan said online but not when he gave an unprecedented religious rant about the Joy of Murder?), but hey, when you need to reduce the 'warning signs' to zero, some evidence gets thrown out.

Yet, back on The Styx's planet, it's predictable: every time there's some massive disaster or mass murder, the news agencies are quick to say that there were no warning signs. Besides the problem of retrojecting warning signs (Hasan was quiet! Killers are quiet!) there happen to be in almost every case huge red flags. As we saw with the VTech killer (a psychotic off his meds who published videos and stories about mass murder) Hasan gave numerous signals. Sure, most people seem to be dense, and it would have been nice had he told people explicitly - like John David Stutts - that he was about to go nuts. But honestly, what more do we need?

New Rule of Debate

I guess one step is to make it harder to buy a gun, but that would be unconstitutional. And guns don't kill people - nutjobs who easily buy guns do. And anyway, the media people - including most blogs I read - have emphasized that it is unseemly to use a mass murder (using handguns) to advance my partisan position of gun control.

Except, uh, two things: (1) In general, I don't take ethical lessons from journalists, and more importantly, (2) I am not a partisan on gun control. Were I to have an emotional connection to guns (e.g. an innocent loved one was gunned down, or I was saved by a gun) then you can say that I am partisan. But when do the Grand Ethicists allow a neutral person, like me, use evidence to make a decision about gun control?

In fact, the only people who demand that an incident not be used as evidence are the partisans themselves. So, OK - you can accuse me of being a partisan, but when that can be demonstrably gainsaid, then I claim that the incident is fair game.

Application of this Rule

So here goes: (1) I am neutral about guns. I happen to like them and would love to own one, shoot one every day, and if the opportunity presents itself, to kill someone who - if allowed - would have killed me or someone I care about.

(2) Yet, as an intelligent, judicious, and educated person, I have determined that the chances of my using a gun correctly is low while the possibility of inadvertent tragedy is high. I have three kids.

(3) It appears, from numerous major tragedies, that easy access to firearms has led to mass murder. As such, I believe that our gun rules are more likely to hurt me than to help me.

(4) When a new mass murder occurs, I see ways to prevent another one. Hence in this case, I want to bring up - as it is very relevant - that the killer used a handgun to destroy innocent people.

Conclusions?

To be honest, I think - beyond the gun control issue - the real 'cause' of this - and the reason why the warning signs were ignored - is from the breakdown of resources in the military. If we weren't stretched to our limit, it's more likely that this guy would have been stopped earlier. But, IRONY ALERT, because we needed mental health professionals to help with crazy soldiers, this crazy solider was forced to keep his crazy.

Quick Update

A quick clarification, and prediction: I predict that we'll discover (and if not, then it's a probable coverup) that Hasan would have been diagnosed as a security risk had it not been for our insane need for active-duty retention. The army paid a lot of money to make this psycho a doctor and they were not going to allow his being psycho make them lose their money. Even if we find out that he was convinced to go on a suicide mission by a Crazy Cleric, all that will show is that the crazy clerics could recognize the warning signs. As such, if we *was* recruited, it will show that his psychosis was even more evident. Take it from me, there are always warning signs. I'll expand on this with my long-awaited "Jaws" Essay.

First pic was self-made, second from this site.

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.

Tom Toles Wins the Internet, Again

Part of Toles metaphor, that's implied, is that Obama has not received any "honeymoon" by the GOP. The party is committed to destruction - of Obama, of the US, and as Toles puts so well, of themselves.

Update:

The GOP, and the "journalists" (which includes political cartoonists) who slavishly carry their water, are trying to maintain the culture of falsehood and aggression that was successful from 1994-2006. In some ways it still worked from 2006-2008, but since Rove as out of a job, and following Katrina, the press rebelled slightly. They resisted some of the gross falsehoods yet happily swallowing most. We saw this in the 2008 Election when the press largely gave McCain's clear falsehoods a pass and only choked a bit when they needed to swallow Sarah "W2" Palin.

So this is why the GOP has fought Obama from the git-go. Even when Obama gave them concessions - specifically large tax-cuts - the GOP voted unanimously against his bill. Let me repeat the crucial point: the Republicans unanimously voted against a tax cut. That's the level of intensity of their aggression.

Gary Varvel is one of the more craven of GOP cartoonist lackeys, as we see in the accompanying cartoon. He depicts Obama happily accepting only Democratic ideas while the GOP ideas are put in the trash. Har. Except, of course, that it's pure falsehood. Does Varvel know it's false? Does he *believe* the GOP's press releases and just ignores the facts, or does he know the truth and is willing to print slander in order to make sure his "team" wins?

Most of these Right Wing Cartoonists have the latter attitude; especially because they are often single issue voters: abortion. Glenn McCoy, a bad artist and worse thinker, is a good case in point (as the third cartoon attests). He likely hates the Democrats, and Obama, because of abortion and as a result needs to destroy everything his opponants do even if it's not related to abortion.

Whatever their reasons, the Vast Right Wing Idiocracy is desperate to extend their bullying of the truth because were the press to report accurately, and the American people to be better informed, then the GOP will be in deep trouble. But an aggressive, oppositional, defense is all the GOP has right now. And while Obama was referring to Islamic terrorists when he talked about those who destroy rather than build, it is also a good description of the GOP.

William Kristol Finally Given the Boot

According to the tagline under his NYTimes column: "This is William Kristol’s last column." Kristol is by far the worst of the existing neocon morons and the fact that he was *still* employed by a non-neocon publication was a scandal. The NYTimes has done some stupid things in the past (among the many evil along the way: exhibit 1, ignoring the Holocaust, exhibit 2, actually liking it when Israelis are killed by terrorists), but hiring - and retaining - Kristol over the past year has to rank as one of the stupidest things in the past half-century.

Yeah, it's nice to have a balanced editorial page - it's one reason why I read daily, and subscribe to the print version of, the Atlantic - but that should require the editors to find columnists who are *honest* and (preferably) intelligent. But based on the living muppets Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd - both whom might be too stupid to feed themselves - the Times columnists have been steadily shrinking in quality. Dowd is haphazardly opinionated, vapid, and holds a blinding vendetta against the Clintons and all male Democrats. Friedman's crimes against facts and sense are well documented.

Kristol took the NYTimes' callowness and idiocy into a new, twisted level. After Rove was ousted in 2006, Kristol became the de-facto head of the Republican party (the "intellectuals" at least) - it was he who pushed for Sarah Palin early and often, and managed to override the GOP nominee to install his own, hand-picked, meathead.

Kristol regularly lies in his written columns and all in the direction of purposefully helping the Republican party. Why should the Times participate in helping a pure partisan further his aims?

Well, as I've prediction many times before, when Obama/Democrats took over, the Press - who from 2000-2008 were willing to swallow whole whatever garbage the Republicans spewed - now realize that they have new overlords. This will persist as long as Obama stays popular.

J.M. Marshall, of TPM, has long contended that the Beltway pundits weight the opinions of Republicans/Right Wingers as more serious than those views on the left... and I agree with his assessment. Which means that as soon as Obama's popularity dips, so Kristol will be taken seriously again.

See here and here (which has links to criticism of Kristol) for more data on the NYTimes decision. Pic from here.

Bush Did Not Keep Us Safe

I know it's obvious to anyone with critical thinking skills but some things need to be said explicitly: Bush did not keep us safe.

1. He was asleep at the wheel for 9/11 despite clear warnings by the CIA and others. For that crime, he cannot be exonerated.
2. He drove us into a war based on false premises, killing thousands of our citizens (we call them "soldiers") - more than on 9/11 - and maiming thousands more. And killing/maiming hundreds of thousands of others. That's not "safe"
3. His direct actions have made the world much less safe to be an American.
   
4. The people of New Orleans were and are not safe.

There are more examples but between the Iraq War and Katrina, it is asinine to claim that Bush kept us safe.

Yes, there wasn't another 9/11 on our shores during his presidency (if you count the first 9/11 as a mulligan, and Katrina as a non-9/11) but that kinda irrelevant based on the other disasters. But it's the method of right wing idiots to move the goal-posts after the kick.

Update Here's Glenn "Freeper" McCoy to show you how stupid it is (he makes it worse by saying Bush "kept everyone alive" - a patent falsehood:
(click to enlarge)

More Thoughts, Part 3

See the first two parts below (and/or above):

1. Last night, before the 8pm returns, I spoke with my old college roommate (who I had once expected would be the first Black president) about what was happening. It also was his first wedding anniversary, so it was a nice occasion all around. Anyway, the conversation turned to why he (and I) would probably never be president: because we couldn't sit quiet at all the insane crap that Obama just took in stride. However, in deference to we mere mortals, Obama's absolute greatest skill is his supernaturally cool temperament. It is the very definition of 'cool.' That slang term has been around for a long time and hasn't fallen out of use for a good reason: there's a recognition that a valued quality of leadership is the ability to keep one's emotions under control. Passion is great, and I have it in excess, but for real leadership you need to be cool.
   
   And some people are cool because they are naturally so, and some just need to train themselves. In either case, it's a remarkably physical-mental skill and that's what sets Obama apart from the rest of us.
   
   Note, this quality is what got him tarred as 'arrogant.' The reason why the attitude didn't stick (as it did to Dukakis and Kerry) was that Obama's coolness seemed to come from deliberation. It reminds me of my Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Ahron Lichtenstein. One reason why I consider Rav Ahron a gadol is because he appears to deliberate and think about everything he says and does. I feel we can judge any so-called gadol by this ability: does he say things in anger or without thinking through the implications? By this I include utterances of prejudice and willful ignorance.
   
   Obama has this level of deliberation and I consider it to thus be even more than the mental-physical skill described above but also a moral skill. And no, I'm not saying Obama is on the level of a Gadol (for some craziness in this regard see this piece of idiocy.)
   
   This is seen also in Obama's ability to speak about complicated issues in accessible terms. His communication ability - denigrated by Goopers, Freepers and other crypto-racists - is more than a good speaking voice, or a trained actors ability. It comes from a thinking deeply about issues and trained skills in education. As I've said before: I am a professional public speaker, and I am praised for the same abilities that Obama demonstrates, except he is orders of magnitude better. But because we are similar, I can describe with confidence why he is great.
   
   
2. Many commentators are repeating the idea (which, because its so popular, tells us just how boneheaded it is... I should really create a rule for this, I can do that, I'm in sociology!) that we shouldn't think that race relations are going to change immediately and irrevocably because of Obama's win. Well, no, it just has changed and the change is huge. The implications are for (a) how Blacks as individuals are thought about in America, (b) how America considers its own identity and history vis-a-vis race, (c) how America considers etc itself vis-a-vis insiders and outsiders in power/politics, (d) how the World sees America in the contemporary world, (e) how the World sees America's place in world history, (f) how the world sees Blacks (and/or other persecuted minorities) in their own countries, (g) and how Blacks (and/or other minorities) see themselves in their own countries.
   
   And all these implications have been called under scrutiny because of last night. And, to contradict those who want to downplay the implications, all it takes is one person to become a potent and permanent symbol. And, even if it sounds like I'm overstating this, it's actually hard to overstate this.
   
   Obama as the new American president is on the level of the moon landing: a fundamental change in how we understand our capabilities as humans. OK, that sounds overstated, but here's why it's not: Obama is the child of a single mother, a foreign father from a persecuted race, who through the opportunities of the American system of ideals and structure of society has just been elevated to the most powerful person on Earth. A man who could destroy the world with the touch of a button, who can impoverish or feed nations with a verbal command.
   
   I don't think this has happened before (others will write about this and I will check the historical knowledge) and even if there is a person somewhere (Napoleon? Genghis Khan?) the power Obama has acquired came peacefully and is more total.
   
   Because I am a born-American, I have learned about American exceptionalism and I believe it. In my classes in history and in philosophy, which is still largely Eurocentric, I get frustrated when the French Revolution is considered a milestone of human history. Sure, it was important to Europeans, and that's all nice if you happen to be a White Christian living in Europe (and the right Christian in the right country, at that) but in terms of World History the French Revolution is useless! For two big reasons: (1) the American Revolution was first, and (2) ours lasted! No reign of terror in the US; no return to Empire; a consistent land of freedom and opportunity. The Russian Revolution was pretty important too but, again, (1) no freedom, (2) it didn't last, (3) it was centuries late.
   
   America has a lesson to teach the world and world history. And it has long been incomplete. We made a great leap forward last night.
   
   
3. I can see disagreement with my point if you deny that symbols matter that much. I insist, though, that symbols matter because they affect cognition. Our comparisons for the "man as symbol" are Jackie Robinson, Jesse Owens, Thurgood Marshall, etc: men, and so far it's been men, who are superlative in their quality while breaking the race barrier. We see it more with sports than with other areas of leadership, but sports are important because it's an arena of quantitative verification and because the rules are manufactured and arbitrary. When these men succeeded (and it does require success, else we'll end up with Marion Barry) it permanently changed the status of African Americans. Blacks couldn't be considered inferior if there's even one notable proof otherwise (hence why Marshall is better than Robinson). If Obama is as decent a president as Clinton, and not a Carter-Bush disaster, then it will have massive long-lasting effect.

Ramirez and the Pulitzer

Michael Ramirez, political cartoonist for some Texas backwater rag, won the Pulitzer Prize last year. He's the scumbag who lost his job from the LA Times for his bigoted "Hate" cartoon about the Arab-Israeli conflict. This is odd, because most right wing morons are pro-Israel. Not Ramirez. Maybe he's one of those mythical all-around idiots that I keep worrying about.

Anyway, his cartoon from the other day (see below) shows the twisted weirdness of the Right Wing commentariat. For those without images, the picture depicts Obama as the successor for Herbert Hoover because, somehow, Obama/Democratic policies are similar to Hoovers.

Look, this is just strange. The only person alive who can be plausibly be compared to Hoover would be George W. Bush with John McCain a close second (deregulate and stand aside while everything goes kablooie).


This is classic crazy from the Right Wing: depict the enemy (which could be Democrats, liberals, Jews - evidently) as guilty of the crimes only associated with Republicans.

Does Ramirez know how stupid this is? I don't know.

What it does bring up, to me, is the issue of why should newspapers employ cartoonists/columnists who represent not only a very small part of the population (pro-Bushites, hovering at around 30%) and specifically a part of the population that is uninformed. A newspaper should combat ignorance, not perpetuate it! And I'm not being pollyannish - if a newspaper does not try to inform the public, then it's a sad abuse of the "freedom of the press."

Here's another example:


Sarah Palin is somehow just as qualified as Teddy Roosevelt. Yeah. Sure. Let's leave aside that he was a sitting VP when he took over the presidency (he was only in office a few months), and that his 'two years' as a governor was of *New Freakin' York* and not some moose-ridden backwater, he was Asst Scty of the Navy before that (interrupted by military service as head of the 'Rough Riders', head of the NYC Police before that, head of the Federal Civil Service for 6 years before that, etc. Teddy was also a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard (which means he didn't just attend to get a pedigree, he actually stayed to learn something).

So the author of the second cartoon, Steve Breen, who surprise surprise won a Pulitzer in 1998, is either purposefully stupid or ideologically trying to obfuscate and in that sense *harm* the reader.

I know that Bush is still in power, Lieberman has hijacked the Senate, and so Fox News and Associated Gooper Idiots still are considered legitimate 'news' agencies. But, seriously, we shouldn't have to take this anymore. Breen, Ramirez, etc are jokes and an insult to the 'news' business.

Conservative & Liberal Today

Kleiman at The Reality Based Community brings up a point I've been making for some time:

A former publisher of the National Review has endorsed Barack Obama as the “conservative” candidate in this year’s Presidential race. That may sound like a paradox, but it makes perfect sense if you go back to what the word “conservative” originally meant.

“Conservatism” has many meanings. To my somewhat jaundiced eye, the primary practical content of American conservatism as embodied in the Republican Party is a preference for the interests of rich people and employers over non-rich people and workers, combined with hostility to the demands of “outsiders” for equal treatment. All the rest — the preference for “small government” that is nonetheless active in dictating sexual morality, hostility toward environmental protection, hostility toward science, nativism — follows from that basic stance. (The current tendency on the right to support the executive power over the legislative power is merely temporary and partisan.)

Of course there are tensions on both interest-group and ideological lines. Employers tend to be anti-nativist. Many “small government” types are anti-imperialist. Libertarians don’t like the sexual-purity agenda.

But the thing American conservatism most lacks is “conservatism” in the proper sense in which “conservative” is the opposite of “progressive”: a sense of the costs of rapid change and a distrust of pervasive schemes of reform, in the tradition of Burke, Hayek, and Oakeshott. Steve Teles has pointed out, for example, how utterly un-conservative it is to propose drastic changes in Social Security, and of course the same might be said about the project of making Iraq safe for democracy.

As relentlessly partisan as I am on most left/right issues, I find myself right in the middle on the progressive-conservative axis. The Second Reconstruction was a frankly revolutionary effort, and had quite as many unintended side-effects as Burke himself could have expected, but it was no less necessary or glorious for all of that. The same was true of the New Deal, and is true now of the movement toward regulating the environmental impacts of private economic activity. But I still find myself nodding in agreement when someone says “The basic cause of problems is solutions.” Both the freeway and the public housing project seemed like good ideas at the time.

Thinkers with an Oakeshottian cast of mind have been drawn toward Republicanism by the relentlessly progressive mood of the Democrats. And some of them, revolted by the past eight years, are now looking for another option. One of the attractions of Barack Obama’s candidacy was his capacity to speak to those people. I don’t know how many of them are actually out there, but it’s good to know that there are some.

Sounds familiar, no?

Backpost finished 2009-12-07.

Fine Chickenhawk Smackdown

This comes from TNC via Sullivan, it's a Huffpo post by Robert Mackey commenting on a Michael Goldfarb statement. Got all that. OK. Goldfarb is a former editor of the Weekly Standard and now McCain's deputy communications director, and (sadly) a Princeton grad who is a doughy Jewish Republican. Mackey's bio states:

Dr. Robert Mackey, Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army (Retired), is a combat veteran of the invasion of Panama, Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was Assistant Professor of Military History at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and served on the Army Staff and Joint Staff at the Pentagon.

Now on with the show.

Goldfarb, evidently believing that he is himself John McCain, stated this:

It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others.

Mackey responded in a post entitled "Cloak of Stupidity +5, or the Art of the False Political Assumption." I am posting the majority of his response because it is so very sweet:

Ok, second admission. I played Dungeons and Dragons for years. Started with the old "blue" rule book from 1977-78, graduated to the 2nd Edition hardback books later, waiting eagerly on a small family dairy farm in northwest Arkansas for the newest module or book to come out. Working a part time job to make enough cash to afford the hobby and spending weekends staying up all night trying like hell to survive Tomb of Horrors.

Yes, I'm a card carrying geek. And at the ripe age of 17, I raised my right hand and swore to "uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and bear true faith and allegiance to the same." Just like Senator McCain. Just like all veterans do. And you know what? In basic training, in the streets of Panama City, in the deserts of Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and in fact, all over the U.S. military, there were D&D players. It was one of those things you never expect.

Why? I wonder what the fine folks at the McCain camp think about things like teamwork, loyalty, duty, honor, responsibility, friendship, and good old wholesome family entertainment -- all things I learned and practiced playing D&D. Apparently, not too much, as noted in the quote above. It seems Mr. Goldfarb, with the blessings of his employer, has decided that anyone who plays Dungeons and Dragons is some sort of anti-social uber nerd, incapable of manly activities, such as political blogging or being shot down over Hanoi.

Well, as anyone with half a brain should know, not all D&D players live in their parents' basement. Some live upstairs.

And others, the vast majority of them, became doctors, lawyers, excelled in business, the arts, and even politics. And a more than a few of them put on the uniform and stand by the colors. And more than a few of them have come back from the very wars that men like Mr. Goldfarb have sent them covered in the colors, the same colors that are given to grieving mothers, wives, and girlfriends.

Yes, Mr. Goldfarb, I play Dungeons and Dragons. And I have, in my home, a very large box filled with medals and decorations that prove my service to this nation. Where were you, sir, when your country called? Oh yes, writing for the Weekly Standard.

While gaming geeks rallied around the flag.

Yeah, I'm a AD&D fan from my early days. And I am a non-veteran. And a geek. And I love a good smackdown, don't you?

Pic is of Goldfarb taken from an above website and motivated by me. Backpost finished 2009-12-07.

Glenn McCoy - Voice of the Wingnuts

Political cartoonist Glenn McCoy not only can't draw that well (or at least he makes his figures purposefully disquieting) but he has one of the lowest common denominator minds of the idiot Right Wing. For a quick primer in what the wingnuts are thinking (or, a better term for right-wing nut: freeper), just read Glenn "W is God" McCoy.

These cartoons are from September 2007, but McCoy is as persistent as all small minds, so what holds back then, still holds for today.

Exhibit 1 (Aug 14 2007)

Exhibit 2 (Aug 8 2007)

Exhibit 3 (July 26 2007)


Exhibit 1: A standard Freeper view is that the media is unabashedly liberal. I disproved that canard here, - and it's pretty obviously a lie to anyone who pays attention - yet it's a rock solid axiom of the right wing.

Exhibit 2: Heh heh heh. Up until she actually left the race in June, the freepers believed with absolute certainty that Hillary was going to be the democratic nominee. It came from two coincident axioms: (1) The Clintons were unbeatable (proven by the fact that they hadn't been beaten) and (2) that the Democrats were so stupid, venal, evil that they would naturally choose Hillary.

Exhibit 3: Same with #2. Extra points for making Hillary look monstrous.

Summary: The key question is does Glenn - and by extension the rest of his freaky-right-winger ilk - actually believe this narrischkeit? Yeah, they're convinced, like most radicals, that the press is against them. The secret truth, that the press is on their own side, doesn't penetrate (but that's a different screed). But about Hillary? Or are they just trying to stack the deck in favor of who they think is the worse candidate, Hillary? This is what Rush Limbaugh did, with his Operation Chaos, and I at least give him credit for knowing that he's on the side of evil (same with Rove). So I guess the real question is: is Glenn in on Rush/Rove's joke?

Backpost, started 9/4/07, finished 2009-12-07.

Why McCain's Age Matters

Bob Gorrell, one of the more heinous of idiots to work a political cartooning pen has this 'toon up to decry a media double-standard:
Styx Commentary: The whole point behind racism and sexism is that they MAKE NO SENSE. There's no behavioral difference from being dark or light skinned. And while there may be significant differences between how men and women think, stand up comedians have long established that it's mainly in the realm of asking directions. But age?? Only a partisan hack will deny that age doesn't matter (or just in this case). It's as chronic a condition as any illness.

Backpost finished 2009-12-06.