Let Them Stand In All Their Awesome Majesty

Courtesy Derp.com

I just noticed I hadn't posted here for several days. It's not because I haven't been blogging; I've been writing at Politicususa. It's a very liberal blog and I'm trying to be the moderately profane voice of reason.

Aside from that, I'm still recovering from a move and that always leaves me flatter than a pancake for several weeks. But I have been paying attention to the news, and a number of things have struck me as being worth making a record of, as timeless indicators of our time. In other words, if I need to explain the following links, I'm not sure it would be worth the time it would take me to write, or you to read.

So Let These Stand In All Their Awesome Majesty

Radicals behaving radically...

"UNBELIEVABLE - Don't you people understand this is just what everyone expected and were waiting to happen!!!," one upset tea partier commented to Cucci's post. "Now everything we have fought so hard to accomplish will be wiped out by one headline 'Tea Party in Maine Eats It's Own'"

None dare call it "Jesuetical."

A Catholic "scholar" attempts to create an algebraic proof of the inferiority of homosexual marriage. 

E=MC² is a liberal conspiracy to promote "relativism", according to a Conservapedia entry.

In the entry, "Counterexamples to Relativity," the authors (including Schlafly) write:

The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world.[1]

To what does that reference lead? Why, a note by Schlafly:

See, e.g., historian Paul Johnson's book about the 20th century, and the article written by liberal law professor Laurence Tribe as allegedly assisted by Barack Obama. Virtually no one who is taught and believes relativity continues to read the Bible, a book that outsells New York Times bestsellers by a hundred-fold

Meanwhile, somewhere on the Road To Damascus...

"How my G.O.P. destroyed the U.S. economy." Yes, that is exactly what David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan's director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, "Four Deformations of the Apocalypse."

Bob Inglis Regrets the strategy now...

GOP Politician Confirms What Was Long Suspected: Republicans Intentionally Feed the Racism, Anger, and Paranoia of the Far Right

And then there was the digg censorship scandal and the increasing drumbeats for war against Iran, against all common sense and military wisdom.

I picked these links more or less at random, from things I'd dugg and stumbled. They all go to illustrate why for a while, the very idea of writing a coherent post on why any or several of these things are Bad just makes me Too Tired.

That strange sound you just heard was Lousiana Atty. Gen James D. "Buddy" Caldwell crapping his pants.

There's an old saying: A Conservative is a liberal who's just been mugged - and a Liberal is a conservative who's just been mugged by a cop. Guess where I'm leading with this?

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is reportedly "outraged" after security guards at a New Orleans-area hospital were accused of punching and tasing his epileptic nephew, a news report states.

The Gawker reports a titbit of personal gossip they sourced from Raw Story that might turn out to have vast implications over the next few years. Seems "security" at a New Orleans hospital saw fit to tase Justice Clarance Thomas' nephew because he was gettin' all above himself at folks who knew better what was best for him, him bein' a crazy black man with dreadlocks and all.


As for my headline - well, lessee. Gov. Bobby Jindal has certainly asked his Atty. General to look into this, in that certain special tone that comes from a Republican with ambitions to a Democrat he's about to stick with the shitty end of a situation.

Buddy best have his ducks in a row, and have all the information at his fingertips, brought to him by his staff of crackerjack, apolitical investigators, all of which have passed their constitutional purity tests.

Oh, but wait. This is Kingfish Country.  These are the people that brought you the fourth ward evacuation plan.

So needless to say, Buddy is all too well aware that what happened is very likely something along this line: a rent-a-cop employed by a hospital saw him some black, dread-locked street trash and proceeded to deal with 'em as they usually would. That is to say, in the "Ah See we have uh Failure to ComMUNicate" sort of way."

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is reportedly "outraged" after security guards at a New Orleans-area hospital were accused of punching and tasing his epileptic nephew, a news report states.

Derek Thomas was admitted to West Jefferson Hospital in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, Thursday, after a possible suicide attempt, reports ABC affiliate WGNO.

When the Supreme Court justice's nephew refused to put on a hospital gown and said he wanted to leave the hospital, doctors ordered security to restrain him.

Security guards "punched him in his lip, pulled out more than a fistful of his dreadlocks and tasered him to restrain him," a statement from Thomas' family said.

Shortly afterwards, family members say, Thomas suffered a "massive epileptic seizure."

The station reported that an "outraged" Justice Thomas is headed to Louisiana to look into his nephew's condition.

Members of Derek Thomas' family are trying to have him transferred to another hospital, but as of Friday afternoon, he was reportedly still a patient at West Jefferson.

The following video was broadcast by WGNO in New Orleans, July 9, 2010, and uploaded to the Web by the Chicago Tribune.

Hm... I foresee the possibility of a sudden US Supreme court shift in favour of the individual when confronted by police and security.

I'm Canadian; I Have No Time For This Bullshit

Ole Ole Olson, writing at News Junkie Post concludes (with graphs!) that what folks like me have been saying all along is true; that the bullshit to the right of us is so deep that you need a diving suit and a support vessel to find any useful nugget of truth. And to the left - well, it's still a challenge, but you don't need life-support.

Now, I'm probably too stubborn for my own good, still shouting out from time to time that I am, indeed a Conservative. An anti-authoritarian, to be sure. A minarchist to a degree. Occasionally I add that I'm a "Progressive Conservative," just to add a Canadian tinge of irony to my quixotic insistence on upholding the values of Burke, moderated by a good span of practice that has given us many ideas that seem well worth preserving. On occasion, this has been in the face of our dearest instincts and assumptions about economics and human nature.

But to a genuine Conservative, facts are facts and the truth is the truth. When something works, it works, and if it works despite your philosophy, it's your philosophy that must adapt.

Pro vs. Con. Are Both to Blame?

These blatant examples of conservative truthiness and propaganda will of course be dismissed by my critics on the right as nothing more than a biased partisan analysis in and of itself. They will try to claim that both sides do it, that it is only politics. Unfortunately, much of the public will again believe this, despite what the truth is. So let’s examine that premise. Does equal fault lie in the pro vs con debate?

When comparing the progressive and conservative sides of the political spectrum, we find that there is not a parallel. This is not just politics. Although there are certainly too many instances of distortions coming from the left, it appears to be the exception to the rule instead of the rule itself. According to an analysis of the date provided by Politifact, the non-partisan fact checking organization devoted to evaluate the truth behind the claims of politicians and important spokesman for the parties and political ideologies, there is a clear differentiation here.

As you can see, 40% of the claims made by conservative spokesman are lies, nearly double the rate of progressives. Only 30% of their claims are mostly true, compared to 50% progressives. Of course, these numbers may be tilted slightly by the disproportional numbers of compulsive liars in the conservative movement like Michelle Bachmann, Glenn Beck, and John Boehner, but a clear pattern is still present.

Predictably, whenever any person or organization speaks out against right wing truthiness, they are usually subject to a character assassination campaign or at least verbally attacked. Despite their non-partisan nature, Politifact has not been immune from this assault. Besides Politifact, there have been attacks on Factcheck.org (even though they are owned by the conservative Annenberg Foundation), fivethirtyeight, NPR, Snopes, and even the CBO (nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office). Conservatives even started their own Wikipedia competitor to counter this imaginary liberal bias called Conservapedia, which contains such gems as:

“An apparent Muslim, Obama could use the Koran when he is sworn into office.”

“Liberals support the legalisation of marijuana and other drugs, which are major causes of psychiatric illnesses”

“studies have long indicated that homosexuals have a substantially greater risk of suffering from psychiatric problems”

“…pairs of each dinosaur kind were taken onto Noah’s Ark during the Great Flood and were preserved from drowning”

“All the prevailing, atheistic theories of the origin of the Moon were completely disproved by the lunar landings and studies of the lunar rocks afterwards.”

This seems to be a pattern among conservative websites in general, as well as with media outlets such as talk radio and Fox News, the latter having organization such as Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) and Media Matters (MMFA) focused exclusively on debunking the truthiness.

The reasons for the contrast between progressives and conservatives are still unclear. There have been a couple interesting psychological reports released in the last couple years, one which demonstrates that conservatives are more prone to bow to strong authority figures. Another indicates that:

“a specific region of the brain’s cortex is more sensitive in people who consider themselves liberals than in self-declared conservatives. The brain region in question helps people shift gears when their usual response would be inappropriate, supporting the notion that liberals are more flexible in their thinking.”

Of course, as the case with non-partisan or bipartisan organizations who speak out negatively about them, conservatives are sure to dismiss or attack the results of these findings. This might explain why only 6% of all the scientists in the US are Republican (usually the party of conservatives in America). From the crowd estimates at Becks 912 rally to health care reform, from science to the birther movement, conservatives tend to believe that a ‘truth’ is known intuitively. It is something “from the gut” without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.

Now, let's read that last paragraph again. We have left the realm of politics. There is no "left or right" here. There is no possible way to intelligently discuss the merits of a free market solution to Health Care Reform, as opposed to, say, a Social-Welfare or a Mixed-Economic approach with people who lie and gibber. Indeed, we cannot even seem to have a sensible discussion as to what a good outcome would look like, when the most influential Conservatives seem incapable of comparing their delusional assumptions to actual, real, publicly available numbers.

Support for the food stamp program reached a nadir in the mid-1990s when critics, likening the benefit to cash welfare, won significant restrictions and sought even more. But after use plunged for several years, President Bill Clinton began promoting the program, in part as a way to help the working poor. President George W. Bush expanded that effort, a strategy Mr. Obama has embraced.

The revival was crowned last year with an upbeat change of name. What most people still call food stamps is technically the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
By the time the recession began, in December 2007, “the whole message around this program had changed,” said Stacy Dean of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington group that has supported food stamp expansions. “The general pitch was, ‘This program is here to help you.’ ”

Now nearly 12 percent of Americans receive aid — 28 percent of blacks, 15 percent of Latinos and 8 percent of whites. Benefits average about $130 a month for each person in the household, but vary with shelter and child care costs.

In the promotion of the program, critics see a sleight of hand.

“Some people like to camouflage this by calling it a nutrition program, but it’s really not different from cash welfare,” said Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, whose views have a following among conservatives on Capitol Hill. “Food stamps is quasi money.”

Arguing that aid discourages work and marriage, Mr. Rector said food stamps should contain work requirements as strict as those placed on cash assistance. “The food stamp program is a fossil that repeats all the errors of the war on poverty,” he said.

Now, to call the restrictions on US welfare "mean spirited" would be a conservative understatement indeed. But aside from that, any time you have 12 percent of your population in need of extra food, it's not due to a sudden epidemic of laziness. It's because there's insufficient work. That is rather obviously true from other indicators.

And yet, Mr. Rector is one of many delusional sorts that are of the opinion that if you or your children become hungry enough, somehow a Job will Appear from On High - despite, of course, the obdurate opposition of folks who fund the Heritage Foundation to actually doing anything that might actually create those jobs.

The idea that if a person is Virtuous, a Job will Appear, and if they are Not Virtuous, they deserve nothing at all (and they are proven Not Virtuous by the fact that they are jobless and starving) is a peculiar and vicious artifact of the Calvinist poison that has infected our body politic. Recall, it IS an article of faith. It has no foundation in fact at all.

Oh, and of course, let us not forget that in the hindbrains of these xenophobic approximations of humanity, the term "poor" and "black" is interchangeable. Indeed, the very idea that a black man could be successful, deserving of any outcome other than a life of miserable toil and obscurity is an affront to them.

When exceptions happen - well, see for yourself:

Via the BBC: The US Secret Service says it is investigating after an effigy of Barack Obama was found hanging in the home town of former President Jimmy Carter.

 TV footage showed the doll hanging by a noose in front of a red, white and blue sign that reads "Plains, Georgia. Home of Jimmy Carter, our 39th President".

Witnesses said the effigy had President Obama's name on it.
Plains Mayor LE Godwin III said the fire department had been called to take it down.
In Washington, US Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan confirmed that the agency was investigating the case.

Footage on local television station, WALB, showed a large black doll hanging over the sign, which is located above a shop on the main street in the rural town.

Residents who saw it thought the effigy must have put in place during the night, WALB reports.
One Plains resident said the Secret Service had already interviewed local people.

"We wish it hadn't happened. It's not the kind of publicity the town of Plains likes," Jan Williams, who runs a hotel, was quoted as saying by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

She described Plains, which has a population of fewer than 700 people, as a "nice, quiet town".

...clearly, some remarkable exceptions to "nice" exist.

But, back to the dangerously "liberal" presumption that feeding hungry people is an inherent good.

It takes a remarkable lack of common sense and compassion to think that the average person would abandon all hope and ambition in exchange for a hundred thirty bucks worth of groceries. Aside from being delusional, it is vile. And facing attitudes such as that, it's really no wonder at all to me that a significant fraction of the American people prefer the risk of jail to the prospect of starvation. But then, all black/poor people are criminals, aren't they? Might as well just get ahead of the curve!

Would I grow pot, smuggle meth, steal cars or participate in a gang, if the alternative to starving alone in an alleyway in a cardboard box? If course. So would you. And hell, we are speaking of the foundations of civilization. People "ganged together" to ensure their mutual survival. If you exclude people from belonging to the "Ahumurikin" gang - because "poor people" don't deserve to belong - they won't just starve politely. They will band together to mess you up, take your stuff and, ultimately, do unto y'all what the Vandals and Visigoths did to Rome. And you will deserve it.

If you want to keep people from taking "illegitimate" jobs, you have a damn obvious responsibility to make sure that legitimate ones are plentiful.  Domestically. Indonesia and China can take care of their OWN damn poor people.

I do hope (and rather expect) that some fraction of the karma these people have earned by mindlessly forestalling sane public policy and any humane approach to poverty, health care, the economy and a thriving, job-creating middle class will come directly home to roost in a way where the casual relationship is personally, directly and unavoidably instructive.

Let's start with the obvious sociopaths.

When such people are underfoot,  it makes developing a sane or sensible public policy position about anything impossible. So the first step is to stop wasting any time upon them. They are some combination of evil and stupid, and it's up to them to figure out how to behave in public among civilized people. We certainly need not treat their spew as if it made sense.

Take John Shelby Spong on that point. In his manifesto, he was quite blunt about where he sees his duties, and they don't include any necessity to entertain the missaprention of vicious, mean-spirited fools.

The battle in both our culture and our church to rid our souls of this dying prejudice is finished. A new consciousness has arisen. A decision has quite clearly been made. Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. Therefore, I will from this moment on refuse to dignify the continued public expression of ignorant prejudice by engaging it. I do not tolerate racism or sexism any longer. From this moment on, I will no longer tolerate our culture’s various forms of homophobia. I do not care who it is who articulates these attitudes or who tries to make them sound holy with religious jargon.

I have been part of this debate for years, but things do get settled and this issue is now settled for me. I do not debate any longer with members of the “Flat Earth Society” either. I do not debate with people who think we should treat epilepsy by casting demons out of the epileptic person; I do not waste time engaging those medical opinions that suggest that bleeding the patient might release the infection. I do not converse with people who think that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans as punishment for the sin of being the birthplace of Ellen DeGeneres or that the terrorists hit the United Sates on 9/11 because we tolerated homosexual people, abortions, feminism or the American Civil Liberties Union. I am tired of being embarrassed by so much of my church’s participation in causes that are quite unworthy of the Christ I serve or the God whose mystery and wonder I appreciate more each day. Indeed I feel the Christian Church should not only apologize, but do public penance for the way we have treated people of color, women, adherents of other religions and those we designated heretics, as well as gay and lesbian people.

Life moves on. As the poet James Russell Lowell once put it more than a century ago: “New occasions teach new duties, Time makes ancient good uncouth.” I am ready now to claim the victory. I will from now on assume it and live into it. I am unwilling to argue about it or to discuss it as if there are two equally valid, competing positions any longer. The day for that mentality has simply gone forever.

He's speaking toward the fight over the exclusion of homosexuals from the body of the Church, but to me it's all of a piece.



It's the same people, with the same little minds and the same fear-ridden dispositions who demand that middle-eastern males be strip-searched, that howl that the application of the Constitution and the Rule of law will result in the inevitable fall of Civilization, who insist that the genome be purged of such inferior stock as myself, for fear of... what? They don't know. But in every single case, they use "toleration" and "compassion" as if they were words even worse than "motherfucker" or even "liberal" while claiming a religious right to impose their will on those of us who think being kind to one another IS a fundamental "Principle."

"Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you." I believe that IS how it goes?

And in point of fact, in my experience, after fifty odd years of life, I've learned that that approach to life works very well indeed, particularly when coupled to a strong acquired allergy to lies and self-delusion. "As you have sown, so shall ye reap," so I'm careful about what seed I buy, from whom, and I'm very attached to facts. I've learned that operating on a basis of wishful thinking can have embarrassing, if not starkly dangerous outcomes. So I've come to love facts - whether I particularly LIKE the facts in hand or not.

Now, let's get back to my Canadian Progressive Conservatism. I'm a typical Canadian in many respects. I am attached to the middle of the road. I do not hark back to a glorious past - because I'm conversant with history, which includes many more lice and bedbugs and far fewer unalloyed glories than the magical thinkers would suggest. I value a stately progress of Civilization. I adore such things as railroads, the Enlightenment and indoor plumbing. I particularly revere the remarkably successful collision of fate that is Canada, a chimerical construct that is neither Conservative nor Liberal, but spots of each and each most treasured where those sorts of ideas and the minds that hold them do the most good.

We have very LIBERAL welfare and medical care. We have extraordinarily CONSERVATIVE banking laws. And the reason we have both - and will continue to have both - is in great part due to the horrible examples provided by our neighbors, who have achieved the exact opposite.

That is not because we are free of such fools. We just don't allow them to speak with the expectation that their ideas are "just as good as anybody's." If they have ideas "just as good" they could prove it. Indeed, our current government is arguably Conservative, though it's starting to try my patience. 

Honest causes and honorable persons need neither lies nor bullshit - nor do they tolerate them on either side of the issue. That is part of the secret to maintaining a civil society - tolerance up to the point incivility makes civility an unsustainable prospect.


So don't listen to known and famous liars. It's a waste of time you could spend far better in almost any imaginable way.

Our society, our nation - in concert with many other civilized nations that value jusctice, human rights and compassion as being fundamental and unquestionable positive values - thrives. Canada IS her people, and her people are Canada. All of them. Even those such as I.

We are neither bankrupt nor are we enslaved. Indeed, the average Canadian enjoys a greater degree of practical freedom and an arguably better standard of living than the average American - and we certainly enjoy a far higher assurance of personal security and safety, at a far lower price in blood and treasure. That is due in part to the fact that those of us who do deal directly with issues of national security are expected to live in full contact with reality. Ordinary citizens may enjoy the luxury of wishful and uncritical thinking. People who's job it is to govern and defend our nation may not permit themselves more "preferential reality" than what is humanly unavoidable.


Perhaps due to that conservative preference for fact over fancy, we are rather more reluctant to blow people up more or less at random as one of our "principles" of foreign policy. This is - I assure you - quite unrelated to the concept of "liberal squeamishness." It's a very conservative reluctance to add a very large number of unaccountable random factors to a situation. This is the entire REASON for "due process."

Aside from that, we believe that even dangerous people with whom we disagree with on many levels nonetheless have both inherent human rights and some - albeit self-limited - inherent value to society, and that any limitation is best addressed with deliberation, and certainly with every consideration toward the feelings and concerns of those, who, due to family or other ties, may feel affection or obligation toward them.

Or to misquote the Mythbusters. "We are professionals. But you really might want to try this at home."

Strategic Vision, LLC - False Front Fraud?

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Nate Silver over at fivethirtyeight.com just dropped a grenade into the wonkosphere. If you aren't familiar with fivethirtyeight, it's where you go if you want to know how good polling numbers are and the best publicly available insight into what those numbers mean.

One of the things I learned while exploring the statistical proprieties of the Iranian election, the results of which were probably forged, is that human beings are really bad at randomization. Tell a human to come up with a set of random numbers, and they will be surprisingly inept at trying to do so. Most humans, for instance, when asked to flip an imaginary coin and record the results, will succumb to the Gambler's Fallacy and be more likely to record a toss of 'tails' if the last couple of tosses had been heads, or vice versa. This feels right to most of us -- but it isn't. We're actually introducing patterns into what is supposed to be random noise.

Sometimes, as is the case with certain applications of Benford's Law, this characteristic can be used as a fraud-detection mechanism. If, for example, one of your less-trustworthy employees is submitting a series of receipts, and an unusually high number end with the trailing digit '7' ($27, $107, $297, etc.), there is a decent chance that he is falsifying his expenses. The IRS uses techniques like this to detect tax fraud.

Yesterday, I posed several pointed questions to David E. Johnson, the founder of Strategic Vision, LLC, an Atlanta-based PR firm which also occasionally releases political polls. One of the questions, in light of Strategic Vision LLC's repeated failure to disclose even basic details about its polling methodology, is whether the firm is in fact conducting polling at all, or rather, is creating fake but plausible-looking results in order to increase traffic and attention to its core business as a PR and literary firm.

I posed that question largely as a hypothetical yesterday. But today, I pose it much more literally. Certain statistical properties of the results reported by Strategic Vision, LLC suggest, perhaps strongly, the possibility of fraud, although they certainly do not prove it and further investigation will be required.

The discussions on his threads tend to be both sprightly and incomprehensible - with perl code and statistical expressions used without regard to the safety of bystanders.

SCIENCE!

If you want to see what "getting your ass peer-reviewed all over the bar" looks like, go watch. Nate seems to be holding his own, but it's kinda like watching fencing without knowing the rules, which are statistics and math.

But there are a number of other questions regarding the credibility of Strategic Vision, LLC, (http://www.strategicvision.biz ) one of which being that it is NOT the polling firm, Strategic Vision, Inc, (http//www.strategicvision.com)

So, not only confusingly similar names, but similar domain names. Similar enough to be grounds for legal action, I would think.

I'd consider that, coupled by the low-rent, post-office-box "Offices" to be a classic indicator of a possibly questionable group, as is the immediate reaction of Strategic Vision, LLC to earlier, more basic questions by Nate. Parsing this requires no understanding of the math or the science. It just requires an appreciation of human nature.

...in regards to Nate Silver's statements, we categorically deny them and will refute them. We have a call into our attorney on this and fully intend to take action that will vindicate us. I wish Nate had contacted me directly yesterday when he began this tirade, I could have answered his questions fully to his satisfaction prior to damage being done to our reputation. Now that he has made these accusations and posted them online, I must and will defend our company's reputation through all legal avenues available. The reason that we are going the legal route is he has attempted to do severe damage to our reputation and what is he going to do when we disprove him just say I am sorry. That isn't enough at this point.

The issue that concerned Nate Silver was that SV(LLC) does not disclose their methodology - how they collect their data from whom they collect their data, by what means, and what do they do with the data once they get it in order to wring meaning from it. Actually, he was more blunt than that, asking the most fundamental questions that one should never HAVE to ask firms of this type:

1. Are you actually polling anyone at all? Or are you just throwing some numbers up on a webpage and hoping nobody calls you on it?

2. What is the location of your "offices" in Tallahassee, Madison and Dallas? Why is there no street address or phone number listed in association with them? How come none of the locations show up in a Yahoo! or Google search?

3. Why would you pick the name "Strategic Vision, LLC" for your company when the name "Strategic Vision, Inc." was already in use by an extremely well regarded, San Diego-based research firm that has been in business for more than 30 years? Are you deliberately trying to confuse your potential clients and leverage Strategic Vision, Inc.'s much stronger brand name?

"We have a call into our attorney " is really all the answer a conscious human being needs, as
a commenter on the tampabay.com story cited below points out.

Wow. This is a public relations firm we're talking about? That sort of response is what I expect from an engineer-turned-CEO or frat-boy-turned-CEO who will hire a PR professional in a few days to undo the damage they just did.

And their attorney is going to tell them that filing suit is pretty much the dumbest thing they could possibly do because it will give Nate Silver the opportunity to look at all of their data and question their employees and principals under oath, and then discuss his conclusions in a public forum where he can't be sued for what he says (litigation privilege).

As things stand, they can fall back on "well, Mr. Silver didn't have all of the data, and he made some minor errors, and it's all really just a big understanding" but that won't work if they've had to produce everything in discovery and the defense has had weeks or months to go over it with a fine-toothed comb. Litigation gives Nate Silver a bigger magnifying glass to search with and a bigger megaphone to announce his conclusions.

Posted by: blakdawg | September 25, 2009 at 09:56 PM

Which leaves everyone wondering - what value can be placed on the SV(LLC) polls, which tend to break in favor of Republicans when SV(LLC) polls people about politics. It should be observed that many polling firms DO have a "house effect" that breaks one way or another, and that their polls are nonetheless considered entirely respectable. These firms generally ARE transparent about their data collection and data analysis. But there's a difference between a "house effect" and "lying," and if the question can arise, it must be resolved, so that nobody gets confused as to the difference.

The question is fairly important to Nate, considering that's what he does - evaluate polls. It's also a matter of concern to the polling industry as a whole, and that's how this whole mess arose. Jim Galloway explains:

[T]he American Association for Public Opinion Research, a kind of brotherhood of pollsters, publicly censured Strategic Vision for its failure to cooperate in an investigation into voter surveys conducted during the 2008 presidential primaries.

New Hampshire was the main focus – you’ll remember that Democrat Hillary Clinton surprised everyone with her win there. Twenty-one organization were asked to provide their statistical internals in order to help figure out what went wrong.

A final report was published in April. One finding: Techniques for developing polling models – weighting and such – are becoming increasingly murky. Often they’re declared to be trade secrets, and protected as such. The AAPOR argues that transparency is the only way to maintain public confidence in polling.

Said the association today, in a statement posted on its Web site:

Strategic Vision LLC was the only polling firm that did not provide sufficient methodological information (as defined by the AAPOR Code) about its surveys and refused to provide that information in response to AAPOR’s repeated direct requests.

For more than one year, AAPOR was unable to obtain the following basic information about Strategic Vision LLC’s polling in New Hampshire and Wisconsin: who sponsored the survey; who conducted it; a description of the underlying sampling frame; an accounting of how “likely voters” were identified and selected; response rates; and a description of any weighting or estimating procedures used. AAPOR considers the release of this information for public polls to be a minimum requirement for professional behavior among those who conduct public opinion research.

The important part of the story for me, is this:

“What we are asking for is people in the profession to behave in a professional manner, and to release the methods through which they do their research – because these are crucial to understanding it,” Miller said. [Peter Miller, president of the AAPOR, is a professor associated with the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.] “That’s our whole interest. That’s all we care about. We’re not trying to make some claim about the quality of Johnson’s research or anybody else’s.”

Here’s the catch:

“We’re saying we can’t know anything about quality if we don’t know what you did,” Miller said.

The argument in the thread at fivethirtyeight has raised the question as to whether Nate's analysis of SV(LLC's) polls (he used data from over a hundred polls they had done) has succeeded in pointing out data manipulation, or if it has simply detected noise that would ordinarily result from their sampling and data analysis.

I have no idea. At this point, I doubt anyone else does.

But then - as the The American Association for Public Opinion Research pointed out - that's precisely the problem.

Them librul city slickers jus' cain't get good redneck irony laik this.

When Hammerskins pinup star "Joe the Plumber" complains that the black leader of the RNC is trying to redefine conservatism, he may actually believe he's saying something sensible about Conservatism - but almost nobody else does, regardless of their politics or racial bias. The cognitive dissonance is so damn loud that it drowns everything out.

TPMDC | Talking Points Memo | Joe The Plumber Blasts Michael Steele's "Hip Hop" Ambitions: "'You can't sell principles; either you have them or you don't,'"

Exactly. And whatever principles people say they have, you can figure out the ones they actually use by the way they go about doing things. Since Joe's whole gig revolves around being a shamelessly opportunistic phony, and since we have seen what the policies he's pimping lead to, there's really only one conclusion to make; to the extent you find yourself in agreement, it's time to rethink the principles you thought you had.

You know, kinda like the banks. When you dilute your principles in order to maximize interest, bad things happen.

Ethics, Law and Torture

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Glenn Greenwald sets it up.
Binding U.S. law requires prosecutions for those who authorize torture - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com:

International treaties which the U.S. signs and ratifies aren't cute little left-wing platitudes for tying the hands of America. They're binding law according to the explicit mandates of Article VI of our Constitution. Thus, there simply is no way to (a) argue against investigations and prosecutions for Bush officials and simultaneously (b) claim with a straight face to believe in the rule of law, that no one is above the law, and that the U.S. should adhere to the same rules and values it attempts to impose on the rest of the world. Last week, Paul Krugman stated about as clearly as possible why this is so:

I’m sorry, but if we don’t have an inquest into what happened during the Bush years — and nearly everyone has taken Mr. Obama’s remarks to mean that we won’t — this means that those who hold power are indeed above the law because they don’t face any consequences if they abuse their power.

It's just as simple as that. Once Eric Holder stated unequivocally that waterboarding is torture, and once a top Bush official used the word "torture" to describe what the U.S. did at Guantanamo using authorized techniques other than waterboarding, the "discretion" to investigate and prosecute disappeared-- at least for people who believe in the most basic precepts of the rule of law and equality under it, Western principles of justice established at Nuremberg, and the notion that the U.S. is bound by the treaties it signs. There simply is no way to argue against investigations and prosecutions (and no way to argue that we should use torture-obtained evidence against Guantanamo detainees) without fully rejecting all of those principles.

Precisely. And let us not fall into the trap of thinking this is a matter of political viewpoint, although, tragically, the breakdown is along political lines. But let us remember that if we leave these damnable precedents in place, if the international community does not demand an accounting in support of US "Leftists" such as Greenwald - then the precedent will stand that "It depends on who's doing it."

Here's the fundamental principle. Torture is an affront against human dignity. It is not just accidentally or coincidentally a form of terrorism, or a contributory factor to terrorism, it is and has always been a primary MEANS of state terrorism. It is always the first choice of oppressive states, and the fact that Saddam Hussein used torture was one of the favorite talking points for removing him from power.

Well, it was and remains a persuasive argument. And the fact that it is legally impermissible under law to NOT investigate and prosecute is a fortunate thing for the Obama administration, for if they present this fact to the American people, they can ensure that justice is done without undue political fallout.

Not that it should matter. Nor should it even be a question, any more than it should have ever occurred to the Bush Administration to USE torture in the first place.

But then, perhaps we should consider why it is so easy for the US to consider the use of torture and condone the abuse of authority in the first place. Perhaps citizens should consider why they condone domestic excesses that are not all that much different, save to degree, and factually much greater in scale.

But if the moral argument is insufficient, I point to a larger and very urgent concern: the economic argument.

As Kevin Phillips outlines in his book, Wealth and Democracy, a primary cause of the decline of the last three Western empires (Spain, Holland and Great Britain) has been bankruptcy through militarization.

As each of these empires became wealthy and powerful, it attempted to maintain its world position through military spending, each time imagining that its wealth and power were limitless. In each case, the vast military expenditures crippled the empire, leading directly to its decline. It should be obvious that the United States is well into this process of damaging itself with its own military expenditures. With a $10 trillion debt (much of it to countries that could easily use it against us) and an annual deficit that has been running close to $500 billion, the time is ripe to push for a maximum reduction in military spending (that could reduce the average deficit to zero). While our nation does not have moral right to forego those aspects of the military budget that pay for past wars (primarily veterans' benefits), transforming our military from an offensive weapon into an institution for national defense would be an affirmation of American principles stated in our founding documents, while saving our country from the historical course of all empires that turn toward militarism.

I am by no means a pacifist, nor do I discount the importance of a professional defense establishment. But it's utterly insane to devote more than half of one's economy to the miliatry. It's a stunning waste of money and human talent. The price of ignoring Eisenhower's advice to beware of the "Military-Industrial complex" has been high, and it's corrupted society to an extent that easily rivals the issues that faced the citizenry of the Eastern Roman Empire.

But the deeper problem, as David Hilfiker illustrates in the above-cited article, Now I Understand Why They Hate Us, is realizing that US culture has come to unquestioningly accept that force based approaches are the first and best way to deal with any issue, a mindset that expresses itself in everything from education to economics. The cultural cure for any complex problem is simply a bigger hammer.

And this leads to situations that are not merely made worse by the means of response, not merely more costly, not merely appalling from the viewpoint of honest ethical understanding, but which create situations which would allow Sun Tsu to kick the US and it's collective assets with a girl scout troop.

That is one significant reason why I have decided to return to Canada. While by no means a perfect nation, Canada is neither blind to the consequences of it's own action nor enslaved by a military-industrial fetish. It has a small, but extremely professional military and a government that has as it's primary ethos this motto: "Peace, Order and Good Government."

By contrast, the United States has not had peace, outside or inside it's borders, for more than fifty years. It certainly has no order. It cannot even make a pretense of good government. Yet these three things are things citizens of any government are entitled to, as a matter of obvious first principles; these are the things that make it desirable to have a government in the first place.

I'm fortunate in that I could choose to walk away. I decided that, while I have great hope that the United States will re-invent itself in a positive way, I could see many ways in which that process could fail, or take a great deal of time and cost much misery. I admit to being unwilling to be part of an army of change, particularly when I question the very oppositional paradigm that expresses.

I'm deeply concerned that the United States has become, in fact, two nations, at the very least, with entangled but uncommunicative populations that are unwilling to even consider, much less respect the viewpoints of others. I don't think it unfair to describe the culture of the United States as being violently insane.

I have come to the point where I doubt the utility of trying, even in my own small way, of resolving the difference between the various camps. Right now, I'm watching Barack Obama trying very hard to be seen as a president for all Americans. I'd advise him to make such an effort - but to expect it to be rejected and for his political and social enemies to emerge very quickly.

I would also advise him to see them as such - for in truth, the views generally described as Progressive and the views of the religiously-motivated Right Wing are antethetical. Actually, the views of the religiously motivated domininous right wing are antethetical to the Constitution, to the Enlightenment and to the very concept of individual liberty. I do not see this as a tension between Liberal and Conservative, but far more starkly; I see it as a matter of right and wrong.

Anyone who could even possibly consider the justification of torture, much less brag of it and promote it as something that enemies deserve should have no place within any rational political discourse, within any proper civilized society, regardless of political philosophy. Some things, some ideas are simply wrong and they are wrong for very concrete reasons - because these ideas always lead to the downfall of the civiliztions that employ them.

"Joe the Plumber" may be an easy target....

But a bull's eye is still a bull's eye!



One commenter wonders - so that's a "Dirty Sanchez?" Yes, "Joe." Yes, it is.

Eh, Claudus? Arrest Bush 2009

The Raw Story | 'Arrest Bush 2009' plans Inauguration Day protest:

"A group calling itself 'Arrest Bush 2009' has announced its intention to hold a 'Yes We Can Arrest Bush' event in front of the FBI Building in Washington, DC during the Inaugural Parade.

However, coordinator Jose Rodriguez insists, 'It's not a protest; it's a celebratory event.'

Arrest Bush 2009, which is sponsored by the Washington Peace Center, After Downing Street, and Shoes For Bush, is demanding that Bush be arrested for war crimes and for lying to the American people."

It's also interesting to observe that the Bush Administration has managed to extend international law - in a morbid and disturbing way - by establishing the idea of "extraordinary rendition," and asserting the right to arrest fugitive individuals regardless of whether the sovereign government would permit it.

I wryly observe that even a small power can contemplate such an operation. And I would imagine that the Secret Service is contemplating that contemplation. One does wonder, however, what position they will take should they become aware of it as an operational possibility.

Eh, Claudius?

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Oh, Dana. Honey. Let me expain the facts of life.

There are certain standards of credibility for your office, Dana. Indeed, minimal though they are, the standards are significant enough that it could be argued that the standards for holding the office are, in fact, incompatible with "serving at the pleasure of the President."

This is what you get under a Bushite view of Affirmative Action.

"Government Won't Save You" is of course a neoconservative mantra. And lo, people such as you are the means by which that assertion is made true. But in fact, government is like anything else; you can do it honestly, competently and well, or you can be George Bush and govern like the life-long fuckup and remittance man that he is.

A spokesperson who is not clinically insane really must, in order to speak on behalf of someone, have some idea of who they are and what they mean; so I suppose you ARE speaking with some accuracy when you said the following:

The Hill's Blog Briefing Room » White House: Reid 'Isn't Really Taken Seriously': "White House: Reid 'Isn't Really Taken Seriously'
@ 4:14 pm by Hill Staff

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino issued a terse response to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) suggestion that President Bush is the 'worst president we've ever had.'

'The Senate Majority Leader isn't really taken seriously,' Perino said.

Reid, on 'Meet the Press' on Sunday, defended his past remarks that Bush was the worst president and the the Iraq war had been lost.

'I think you just have to call things the way you see them,' Reid said. 'I really do believe President Bush is the worst president we've ever had.'"

Dana, your response causes me to simply dismiss anything you may say from this point on as irrelevant nonsense. To call George Bush "the worst president ever" is charitable, it's a standard that could be met without actively subverting the rule of law, abusing the constitution and killing thousands upon thousands of people for no good reason. Harry is stopping well short of the the sort of bitchslapping this administration deserves.

I'm quite certain that George Bush in particular and the White House in general does not take the Senate Majority Leader seriously. That is in no sense a virtue. Good government absolutely depends upon criticism. But then, since the Bushite view of criticism is indistinguishable from lies and slander, I suppose they must presume this is true of their critics.

This obviously applies to all critics. Not only do they not take the criticism seriously, it's my observation that the typical Bushite can't even comprehend the arguments that make much of the criticism accurate and compelling - even when "criticism" amounts to documented violations of domestic and international law.

Sane people would be concerned about criticism that amounts to accusations that for normal people would have to be proved or disproved in a court, with orange jumpsuits the penalty for poor performance in that arena. "Na Na, Boo Boo, I can't HEAR you" is not an appropriate response to situations of this gravity. It's delusional.

I say this in a fine, bi-partisan way. I'm not all that impressed by Harry myself. He's not the leader I would have hoped for in these times. He and Nancy Pelosi have been as guilty as have the Republicans of seeing this crisis in terms of purely political advantage and disadvantage. But even in those terms, neither is an inconsiderable force and only a fool dismisses them causally.

When you deliberately insult the Senate Majority leader, you insult ordinary Democrats and many independents for good reason. When you manage to craft that insult in a way that also insults the intelligence of voters actually connected to the issues at hand, you do so at your peril.

Let me be blunt. Not only has this President committed impeachable acts, he's actually bragged of doing so in terms clear enough to make a trial a pure formality, were it possible to have that trial in an objective court. There is simply no question about the facts. The only question is, WILL there be such a trial?

There is a book that makes a persuasive case that he is guilty of murder. It's a good enough case that anyone else would be under indictment. Dana, you aren't helping on that front, either.

And then there ARE the war crimes. Torture is a war crime and the fact is, the Bush Administration is not just guilty of it, they are proud of the policy. They have celebrated and institutionalized it, they brag of it; they champion it in the face of the fact that it has unarguably magnified our casualties and made the war even more un-winnable in practice than it was on paper. A conviction in any honest court would be a formality. Regardless of the politics of the judges or the the nature of the venue.

Now, war crimes are a matter of international law. The ONLY way that persons guilty of war crimes may escape prosecution is if they can be sure that subsequent administrations will have no compelling reason to turn them over for trial. Your boss presumes that it would be too politically costly to do that.

But that would require not pissing away political capital on stupid insults. Again, Dana; Heckuva job.

I've criticized Harry for not pressing for action on these fronts, for thinking that these things might be mistaken as being "purely political." No. They are crimes, war crimes, and impeachable acts; things that if allowed to go unaddressed will surely bring the legitimacy of the US Government - which is now widely doubted - into certain, manifest contempt. That will apply to all aspects of government, every treaty, every interaction between citizen and authority, it will play out between cops and criminals, bankers and billionaires and it will all boil down to whether the United States can be trusted to deal justly with it's own mistakes. I assure you, the US cannot survive being found wanting by the rest of the world in this matter.

But the very mildest of such criticisms are not "taken seriously." Well, I'll tell you what happens to people who dismiss such "criticisms" in the real world. If they are fortunate, they end up serving a long stretch in a crowbar motel.

And yet you are foolish enough to give Harry and Nancy political cover and emotional motivation to slam your boss in jail? Not exactly a brilliant move, Dana.

George clearly believes he is somehow immune to consequences. This delusion seems to have permeated his entire gang. My best advice to US Citizens is this: get as far away as you can from any place, any institution, any location that is controlled by Bushites. If your job depends upon their largess, it's time to cut your losses. Remember how suddenly there were no Nazis after the fall of Berlin?

Which brings us back to Dana. Dana is a poster child for the rat who will go down with the ship, because there's still a little cheese aboard. And here's the question Dana should have asked herself before going to the podium (or indeed, taking the job.)

"Who will take Dana Perino seriously after this?"

I assure you Bushies, at all levels; the veil of the temple has been torn across; everything that you have done is becoming known. Enough IS known and IS on the public record to put many of you at direct personal risk of personal, if not serious legal consequence. You have a little time left. Perhaps you might consider a new life in Paraguay, or Dubai.

We assume that you can afford it. I mean, that WAS what it was all about. Your greed. Your lust for power, and your willingness to do "whatever it takes" to steal as much money and power away from those who had it, and had a better grasp of how to not fuck up.

People in general are no longer depending on the media you control to find out what's going on. The marks are getting wise. The internet is, for the first time, the place where more people go to fact-find than newspapers. Among young people, television and internet are tied, and the trend lines suggest that TV will cease to be the overall leader in two to three years. This is the passive component. Activists and responsible citizens are already heavily invested in the Internet and using it as the amazing intelligence-gathering and co-ordination tool that it is.

That can't end well, can it? Well, not for you. But for the rest of us, being rid of the likes of you can only be a good thing.

"We're votin' for the n***er!"

Typing "Racists for Obama" into Google brings in more results than you could believe. Could this be the end of the Southern Strategy? Via FiveThirtyEight:

So a canvasser goes to a woman's door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she's planning to vote for. She isn't sure, has to ask her husband who she's voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, "We're votin' for the n***er!"

Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: "We're voting for the n***er."

In this economy, racism is officially a luxury. How is John McCain going to win if he can't win those voters? John Murtha's "racist" western Pennsylvania district, where this story takes place, is some of the roughest turf in the nation. But Barack Obama is on the ground and making inroads due to unusually strong organizing leadership.

Meanwhile Here's some more small town Palin Patriots capering for your amusement. I must admit, I haven't verified that these cartoon characters are in fact Republicans. I'm making a prejudicial assumption based on prior bad acts of similar sorts by Republicans. Call it "political profiling." :>

A Mirror for Ms. Bachmann

I finally got to see Chris Matthews pay out the rope for Rep. Bachmann. I'd seen transcripts, with nuggets such as this, but so many people were clogging the tubes, I had to wait my turn.

"What I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out if they are pro-America or anti-America,"

Gee whiz, I'd kinda thought we'd established that witch-hunts were a bad idea, even BEFORE Jefferson's time. I was obviously wrong in believing that "Have you no decency, Sir?" was a phrase that still resonated. Clearly, millions disagree. Fortunately, those millions do not include the honorable old warrior Colin Powell.

"Mr. McCain says that he's a washed up terrorist, but then why do we keep talking about him? And why do we have the robocalls going on around the country trying to suggest that because of this very, very limited relationship that Senator Obama has had with Mr. Ayers, somehow Mr. Obama is tainted. What they're trying to connect him to is some kind of terrorist feelings. And I think that's inappropriate. Now, I understand what politics is all about, I know how you can go after one another and that's good. But I think this goes too far, and I think it has made the McCain campaign look a little narrow. It's not what the American people are looking for."

Powell also spoke passionately against the insinuations by some Republicans that Obama is a Muslim.

"Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian," he said. "But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, 'He's a Muslim and he might be associated [with] terrorists.' This is not the way we should be doing it in America."

Now, that's the most diplomatic bitch-slapping I've heard in recent times. It will never be all that quotable; Mr. Powell is, I'm afraid, no master of the pithy catch-phrase. But he's certainly capable of pithing essentialist idiocies.

..Mr. Obama is now [called] a socialist, because he dares to suggest that maybe we ought to look at the tax structure that we have. Taxes are always a redistribution of money. Most of the taxes that are redistributed go back to those who pay them, in roads and airports and hospitals and schools. And taxes are necessary for the common good. And there's nothing wrong with examining what our tax structure is or who should be paying more or who should be paying less, and for us to say that makes you a socialist is an unfortunate characterization that I don't think is accurate.

Powell has stated that he will be voting for Obama and that he still considers himself a Republican. I think it would be fair to assume that his conclusion is that people such as Mr. McCain and Ms. Bachmann do not meet his standards for probity and disciplined leadership.

Nor do I think Powell confuses reactionary social impositions with any sort of Conservatism, and while I might be wrong, I think he'd tend to guardedly agree with the next bit.

I personally think that the only decent position on matters of individual choice that should decently be considered to be private was best stated bluntly by one of the most contradictory, maddening and controversial politicians in North American history; one of the very few foreign leaders to ever be noticed by the American people - aside, of course, from Fidel Castro.

We take the position that there is no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation. * Comment in the Canadian House of Commons on the decriminalization of homosexuality (1967-12-22)

That's a very Libertarian idea, when you think about it. It's certainly widely quoted by Libertarians, though they tend to file off the serial numbers. And though he was a self-described Democratic Socialist, that was an economic, not a social position. I might add that he's been as much of an influence upon me as William F. Buckley - and for essentially the same reason; both men were far more interesting and useful when wrong than any two ordinary politically significant figures stumbling upon the right idea for the usual populist reasons.

I thought of Trudeau in reference to Mr. Powell, who has finally come to his parting of the ways with stupidity and who has taken the high ground as the only strategic and tactical option available.

He did not say it as eloquently as Trudeau on the eve of the FLQ crisis, but in essence we are seeing similar times and a similar impatience with those who think that violence and chaos are the proper response to political frustrations.

Pierre Trudeau - "There are very few times in the history of any country when all persons must take a stand on critical issues. This is one of these times; this is one of those issues. I am confident that those persons who unleashed this tragic sequence of events with the aim of destroying our society and dividing our country will find that the opposite will occur. The result of their acts will be a stronger society in a unified country. Those who would have divided us will have united us." - Announcing the War Measures Act to a national television audience, October 16, 1970

I hope very much that leaders and statesmen such as Colin Powell can indeed rise to this challenge, can indeed forestall what seems to me a crisis of spirit and a rising tide of intolerance. While it's not at all fashionable to equate the rhetoric of Palin and McCain with the actions of people responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing, it's damn clear that they are not as far apart as any reasonable person might wish.

Reasonable and civilized leaders do not foment hatred, do not cultivate suspicion of their rivals, do not brandish the noose and the burning cross even in the subtlest and most deniable way. The reason why should be brutally obvious, but perhaps McCain and Palin are indeed willing to "rule in Hell rather than to serve in Heaven."

But as with all Faustian bargains, the devil is in the details. The telling details are, in both cases, those who are willing to do "whatever it takes" (Palin's infamous phrase) leave a swathe of destruction behind them - and that echoing emptiness, that conspicuous, Shermanesqe path of political arson and the rape of propriety leads unfailingly to those responsible.

The Karma comes due when such people meet principled opposition and act toward that opposition as if that person were their own mirror image, projecting on that other all the evils, all the spitefulness, all the shameful guilty reservations about their own progress to power that they believe to be known only to themselves.

With Palin, McCain and their few remaining apologists, it's simple to discern their mistakes, their failures, their regrets and their gaps of leadership and comprehension, for all those things are precisely what they accuse their opponents of. They are unused - sadly - to contestation with their betters.

They are sadly shallow people, quite apparently proud of their inability to deal intelligently with complex issues, or at least unwilling to be caught thinking in public, lest "Joe the Plumber" accuse them of being "elitist." As Obama has been pilloried for saying, "it's as if they are proud of being ignorant."

No "as if." They are proud of it. They celebrate it. And they persecute anyone and any thing that bodes even the slightest possiblity of penetrating their shells of willful parochialism. These are Palin's Patriotic Americans.

I'm quite sure that the majority of her supporters would enthusiastically agree that yes, they ARE "Good, patriotic, "God-Fearing Uhmurikins" with no discernment of why this condemns them as both Unchristian AND Unamerican in their abuse of both Christ and Constitution.

Aside from being wrong, it's the sort of dumb-as-dirt wrong that leads to the sort of mess the world is now in, thanks to George Bush and the half-smart and the fully stupified folks who put the crap-flinging Chimp in power.

Well, frankly, I think it's my damn right to expect the best and the brightest, and my responsiblity to support them whenever I can. Since and including Ronald Regan, and not sparing either Clinton or Carter, all successful presidential and indeed most congressional candidates have been or styled themselves as being "low bid candidates;" the champions of Joe Six-Pack and the true and natural representative of the dumb-ass wings of each party.

In this, they were not entirely disingenuous, in that they were as easily bribed with shiny trinkets and meaningless photo-ops as were their constituents. Can we say "Keating Five?" Can we say "Enron" and "Energy Policy?" Oooh, I KNEW that we could!

I'm not one to worship at the altar of Obama. I think him a skilled politician, a remarkably good speaker, certainly a potential statesman and certainly as smart as any cracker's whip - but I do not think him better than what we should ordinarily expect of our elected leaders. I think he is a good example of what sort of people we should consider our due. It's not that difficult to choose to be an honest broker, to choose to act according to principles and to try, as often as humanly possible, to achieve something worthwhile along the path of fulfilling one's own ambitions. That is my minimum standard for myself and for anyone I choose to associate with. I do not think that a particularly high standard.

And I think that it's a standard we - not as citizens of this country or that, but as civilized persons participating in our various cultures and societies - should realize we MUST live up to in order to have a civil society to prosper within.

But I have my doubts that the United States will survive that realization. It certainly will not, cannot and should not pass through this trial unchanged. It may not survive without violence, it may not survive in recognizable form. The irresponsible and unconscionable efforts by Right-Wing conservatives, the social subversions committed by traitorous theocrats have carved out rifts between people that could well be fatal to any meaningful resolution. More personally, I found myself less and less inclined to even wish to live in a society that included people who see nooses as "fair comment" and the conscious, deliberate and malicious bearing of false witness against their neighbor as being "their Christian duty."

Fuck 'em, said I, knowing that that would be the least worst fate they envisioned for me. It was all too easy to see me and mine shoved into a cattle car on a one-way trip to a nuclear-powered microwave incinerator.

I, personally, see no profit in trying to fight that good fight there when I could do as much here in Canada and, bluntly, for a Canadian society that has far less bad karma coming due. I make no apologies for the fact that I prefer to live in a culture, a nation and a society where none of the party leaders are people who's positions insult my intelligence or who think it proper to appeal to my most base instincts.

Je suis un Canadian! Vive la Confederation! Vive la Civilization! VIVE La Banque du Canada!

It's not difficult to point to Ms. Bachmann as being an exemplar of all that is wrong with the United States in general. But in fact, Ms. Bachmann is the direct responsibility of those who elected her, those who contributed to her campaign and those colleagues in Congress that permit her to caucus with them, valuing political expediency over the consequences of tolerating such a poster child for petty partisan patronage.

It's inconceivable to me that such a lackwit could have gotten on a ballot by any fair, legitimate, intelligent process. The fruits and nuts point to the health of the tree and it's roots. Bachmann and her ilk in elected office at all levels are the bitter fruit of a poisoned tree.

"Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship."

Sorry, Dad, I'm Voting for Obama - The Daily Beast

The son of William F. Buckley has decided—shock!—to vote for a Democrat.

Let me be the latest conservative/libertarian/whatever to leap onto the Barack Obama bandwagon. It’s a good thing my dear old mum and pup are no longer alive. They’d cut off my allowance.

Or would they? But let’s get that part out of the way. The only reason my vote would be of any interest to anyone is that my last name happens to be Buckley—a name I inherited. So in the event anyone notices or cares, the headline will be: “William F. Buckley’s Son Says He Is Pro-Obama.” I know, I know: It lacks the throw-weight of “Ron Reagan Jr. to Address Democratic Convention,” but it’ll have to do.

I am—drum roll, please, cue trumpets—making this announcement in the cyberpages of The Daily Beast (what joy to be writing for a publication so named!) rather than in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column. For a reason: My colleague, the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker, recently wrote in National Review Online a column stating what John Cleese as Basil Fawlty would call “the bleeding obvious”: namely, that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that. She’s not exactly alone. New York Times columnist David Brooks, who began his career at NR, just called Governor Palin “a cancer on the Republican Party.”

In reaction to this, readers of the National Review demanded Buckley's head; proving once and for all that irony, historicity and a decent regard for those who have legitimately worked to earn the status of "arrogant elitist bastard" have long vanished from the Republican Party.

Christopher did the proper thing; offering his resignation in a gesture that, under such circumstances, is properly taken as both noble and properly symbolic. It was accepted by the editor with what one might refer to as "unseemly haste."

(As former editor of several minor print publications, I learned that columnists that could provoke such visceral outrage were pearls beyond price. This is an editorial decision that will go down in history as being akin to trading Gretzky to the LA Kings.)

In a subsequent article for what appears to be his new online digs, Buckley is much kinder than I would be to his former fellows:

I have been effectively fatwahed (is that how you spell it?) by the conservative movement, and the magazine that my father founded must now distance itself from me. But then, conservatives have always had a bit of trouble with the concept of diversity. The GOP likes to say it’s a big-tent. Looks more like a yurt to me.

While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of “conservative” government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case.

So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.

I can argue with only one thing in the statement above; the assertion that Reagan was a "Real Conservative." Indeed, I consider him to be the beginning of the end for real conservatism in US politics; a man adept at supplying simple answers suited for simple minds.

Sarah Palin is the final insult to those of us who consider ourselves conservative in the proper sense; a sense that can be summed up in that fine old Midwestern phrase; "Don't piss on my boots and tell me it's raining."

It's been "raining" since 1980 in America. I mean that in an hemispheric sense; it's time for real conservatives of all nations and languages of Columbia to hoist the black umbrella, shielding all below from the "trickle down" twaddle of Voodoo Viziers of the Reganite Rabble. For the fruits of a thing one pays for by taxes - government - should go to those who pay, rather than those who use it steal from and abuse those who have paid and will have to pay even more in the future.

Credit: Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship by webcarve