Quote

If the conservative movement in America is mostly about getting the federal government off our backs, then why does the Republican platform promote constitutional amendments to force prayer in schools, force women to have children they do not want and make it a crime to express political dissent by burning a flag?

Rack Jite

Quote of the day

Barack Obama can't help it if he's a magna cum laude Harvard grad and you're a Wal-Mart shopper who resurfaces driveways with your brother-in-law. Americans are so narcissistic that our candidates have to be just like us. That's why George Bush is president. And that's where the McCain camp gets its campaign strategy: Paint Obama as cocky and arrogant and wait for America to vote him off, like the black guy in every reality show. A black president? Half of Pennsylvania isn't ready for black quarterbacks. Forget Obama, they think Will Smith needs to be taken down a peg.

--Bill Maher

video moment of the day

Did anyone else catch the CNN camera pointing at someone in the back holding up a banner saying "MCCAIN VOTES AGAINST VETS"?

Alternate Reality Land

Cindy McCain bio film: "It was love at first sight." No mention that John was married to someone else at the time.

Cindy McCain: A woman picks a husband by what kind of father he'll be, and she hit a home run in John. No mention that John's kids were raised by his FIRST wife... the one he committed adultery on, then dumped. Spare me about what a good family man he is.

Paeans to individual responsibility, after a night mocking those who organize citizens to take care of themselves.

Did you know McCain was a hero in Vietnam?

Did she just claim with a straight face that he wasn't a Washington insider?

And that he always speaks the truth no matter what the cost?

Who, exactly, is she talking about again?

Oh, Snap! Part 2

Since last night, the Republicans have reported a burst of new donations, with $1 million in contributions since yesterday.

The Obama campaign reports raising $8 million since last night, and on track to have raised $10 million by the time John McCain takes the stage tonight.

It does indeed appear that the base has been energized--for both parties.

[h/t: Marc Ambinder, by way of Andrew Sullivan]

Quote of the day 2

If we never question our religions or their motives, they will ultimately destroy our freedom to do so.

William H. Reynolds, Creationism: The Fossil Record and the Flood

[h/t: PZ Myers]

Oh, snap!

Last night Palin said this:

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities.

This morning the Obama campaign said this:

Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack's experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed.

Let's clarify something for them right now.

Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies.

[h/t: Pam Spaulding. That post also has a picture of Palin in what was almost certainly an unintentional pose, that's still disturbing]

Quote of the day

Actually from yesterday, but I just stumbled on it this morning:

Obama hasn't confused his base for the country. These guys don't seem to know the difference.

--Ta-Nehisi Coates

Palin's speech: the morning after

A lot (most) of it was the same culture-war GOP boilerplate we've been hearing for years. And it didn't address any of the substantive issues. It wasn't anything we haven't heard before. And as the Republicans have reminded us, there's a lot more to the job than giving good speeches. She's got a background in broadcasting, we know she's good at reading copy written by someone else. Giving a good speech doesn't qualify her for the job.

The Republicans were never going to just lay down and die. They're going to fight back, and not give up power easily. No one does, why should they be different? Yes, Palin's speech was infuriating. But it wasn't, to use this year's over-used phrase, "game-changing."

It rallied the base; it was clearly aimed at the people in the convention hall, and it clearly succeeded with them. But if I were a middle-of-the-road voter, doing relatively OK but a little worried about my mortgage payment, OK with being in Iraq but not happy with Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo...would I have heard anything there appealing to me? Or just standard GOP culture-war boilerplate?

Addendum: A bit of linkage:

PZ Myers: This is how we will lose

WaPo: In a more diverse America, a mostly white convention

Gail Collins, NYT: Palin seems an awful running mate, until you look at the alternatives

NYT blog: Still one step behind (apparently written before Palin speech)

AmericaBlog: Sarah stretches the truth

RBC: Palin was at 2006 Alaska Independence Party Convention

CNN's online quick poll:

How do you rate Republican VP choice Sarah Palin's convention speech?

Thumbs up	43%	81618
Thumbs down	34%	64820
Didn't watch	22%	41694
Total Votes: 188132

Oh, and as for Romney's ripping into "liberal" Washington: who exactly does he think has been in charge for the last 8 years?

Quote of the day

"If the Obamas had a 17 year-old daughter who was unmarried and pregnant by a tough-talking black kid, my guess is if that they all appeared onstage at a Democratic convention and the delegates were cheering wildly, a number of conservatives might be discussing the issue of dysfunctional black families."

--Byron York

[h/t: Andrew Sullivan]

And the nation yawned...

Overnight reaction to the conventions, based on CNN online survey, the holy grail of political polling:

What did you think of the GOP convention's Tuesday night program?

Thumbs up					26%	23444
Thumbs down					27%	25038
Didn't watch					47%	42875
Total Votes: 91357

Liveblogging the GOP convention 2

8:45 PM: Laura Bush walking on. Crowd going wild at the sight of the only member of the Administration not personally touched by corruption or illegality. McCain is a hero, Palin is an executive and reformer! Lots of women in the GOP! Laura loves George! He's a "man of character whose principles will not change." [Nor his ideas, in spite of facts.] George loves America! Lots of opinions lately, not many facts, so here we go with some straight talk. No Child Left Behind. Supreme Court Justices! (crowd going APE. Well, as much as Republicans do.) Faith-based initiatives. AIDS relief in Africa. (All snark aside, that's been a success.) "Change you can really believe in." Bush takes credit for Bill Gates' malaria initiative. We liberated Iraq & Afghanistan! There hasn't been another 9/11! [Question: Why is Osama Bin Laden still at large?] Yay for the troops! [question: Why don't we honor them with more than our thanks, by expanding some benefits and medical care?]

Bush coming on monitor. Crowd going nuts.

Can't be at convention because he's busy working & carrying out his duty. Gustav work underway. Bush on McCain: I know what it takes to be President. I get briefings, threat assessment. McCain's life has prepared him to make tough choices. He commanded his unit. Senate career. Service! He was a POW. [crowd almost missed their cue for an applause line] If the Hanoi Hilton couldn't break him, "the angry left never will." He'll protect human life. He's committed to principle! (how can he say that with a straight face?) He'll make tax cuts permanent, lift ban on driling, support new technologies. (the ones he voted against?) He's independent! He's a maverick! He's honest! The Democrats were threatening to cut off the troops & retreat, but McCain had faith in them! [the troops, not the democrats.] Quote from mccain about rather lose an election than lose a war, leaving the comparison (canard) unspoken. 9/11! 9/11! Palin will be great! I'm optimistic! America is great! Americans are great! Freedom is great! Americans will look at judgment/policies/experience & vote McCain/Palin! Laura's great! God bless everyone!

Laura's back. McCain has what it takes. Cindy supports John! Cindy's made PR trips to different countries! She can make even more! Yay for America!

9:05 PM: Reagan bio film. The media hated Reagan! Some called him a maverick! (McCain, you're no Reagan.) Reagan ran on conviction politics. Yay for America! Yay for Reagan! McCain knew Reagan! [no word on Reagan's surprise when McCain dumped his injured wife to marry the millionaire heiress he'd committed adultery with.] Everything was better under Reagan! Reagan put country first and "saved *our* America."

9:09 PM: Fred Thompson speaks. [My ghod, it just hit me just how much he sounds like Foghorn Leghorn.] Will always have challenge, but yay for America! Palin is a "breath of fresh air." (Unlike the phrasing of his speech.) Having small-town values isn't enough. "Media bigshots" are criticizing someone who was actually governor & not just a talking head on tv. "I say, I say, give me a governor..." he's in full foghorn mode. The crowd's eating it up. She's not part of the beltway crowd. The selection has "the other side & their friends in the media" in a panic. She's not afraid to take on the establishment. (good thing they got a professional actor to give this speech, no one else could give it w/ a straight face.) She knows how to field-dress a moose! They're going to drain the swamp in washington. (that'd be the one Bush has been in for 8 years.)

Pivot to McCain's character. He's a veteran! His sons are in the military! [Again the moving-hurricane-clouds backdrop. wth?] Introduction of McCains in the audience.

Phone ringing. Going offline.

10:07 Back online... and it seems to be winding down for the night. Talking heads are on.

Signing off for the evening.

Liveblogging the GOP convention

Why not...

8:09 PM: Just tuned in via CNN's streaming video. Shanna Hanson is speaking. What's up with the vertigo-inducing cloud-motion backdrop? Are they trying to make it look like the speaker is on the mountaintop or something? Is it intended to remind people of Gustav?

8:11 PM. Empty seats everywhere. The crowd looks bored. TR bio starting.

8:11 PM: History flick. Yay for Lincoln! (Lincoln was the best creator of 1-liners in US history? Until Reagan?) Remember how much the Democrats hated Lincoln! They called him a bad speaker!

8:13 PM: OOooh, risky. Pointing out that Lincoln protected the Constitution. Note the contrast with President Doofus. And here we go, Lincoln put country before self.

8:14 PM: CEO of Raza Development Fund speaking. Democrat who likes McCain. Establishing his credentials as a Christianist. News flash: McCain was a POW! Yay for God! John McCain is a nice guy! Bible quote! Hm, mention of immigrants. How will that play with the base? Biggest cheer yet: "sanctity of life," "sanctity of marriage." Yay for America!

8:20 PM: G. H. W. Bush Bio film starting. He was a war hero! He served his country! Desert Storm! Country First! Bush waves, crowd cheers.

8:24 PM: Putting others first! Service! Hooray for farmers and the private nonprofit no-govt-money agencies that help them! They can't make a living, they can't survive during a crisis--we plant/harvest crops but don't give them money, if they're morally deserving (a "crisis," i.e. not their fault, because low crop prices aren't affected by govt policies, and intrusive government safety regulations are part of the problem). Service! Service!

8:29 PM: Retired army captain. (Retired? at captain?) McCain is a hero. My story isn't as good, but whose is? (That's right, McCain is the GREATEST AMERICAN HERO EVER.) Injured, complications, almost died. Got better. [crowd shot: They look bored.] America is great! Life is tough. America is land of opportunity.

First reactions: I'm struck by the difference in tone. The Democratic convention speeches were scrappy, and policy based. They talked about issues. Sometimes they demagogued, but they talked about issues. It was more than feel-good yay-for-America stuff. Granted, this is warming-up-the-crowd... But so far I haven't heard a single reason why I should vote for McCain other than he's an ex-POW who loves America and God. I haven't even heard any reason why Republicans are better suited to lead than Democrats.

To be fair, I also haven't heard the sort of "We love America and that other party doesn't" rhetoric the GOP sometimes falls into, either.

AFK a bit being domestic. Back later.

McCain Just Didn't Do His Job

So it also turns out Sarah Palin may have been briefly involved with the Alaska Independence Party, which views the USA as a colonizing power and wants AK to be an independent state. She's just now hiring a lawyer for troopergate. She was all about getting earmarked money for her hometown when she was mayor. Her daughter's pregnancy was apparently an "open secret" around the town, but no one in the campaign knew about it. And lots of people who should have been asked as part of a vetting process, weren't.

He's had six months since he wrapped up the nomination. More than just about any candidate in history. And basic work wasn't done.

Some are speculating he wanted Lieberman or Ridge, but they're both unacceptable to the theocrats, so he caved. And, it does seem as if the theocratic wing of the GOP is the only one happy with this selection. And of course, if he can't stand up to activists in his own party, how's he going to deal with Ahmedinejad?

Oh, but wait. He's doing this to win. After all, if he doesn't win, there won't BE a McCain administration to take on Iran. But, of course, this pretty much undercuts his 'maverick' image who's willing to stand up to conventional wisdom and do what he thinks is right.

Either he's incompetent, or he's a moral coward. Or he's just another politician willing to say or do whatever it takes to get to 51%.

What happened to the tough, courageous POW?

Addendum: David Brooks has a guffaw-worthy column today in which he tries to argue that it doesn't really matter, that he knows John McCain and everything McCain does is virtuous and right, simply because McCain does it. But even he is forced to concede:

If McCain is elected, he will face conditions tailor-made to foster disorder. He will be leading a divided and philosophically exhausted party. There simply aren’t enough Republican experts left to staff an administration, so he will have to throw together a hodgepodge with independents and Democrats. He will confront Democratic majorities that will be enraged and recriminatory.

On top of these conditions, he will have his own freewheeling qualities: a restless, thrill-seeking personality, a tendency to personalize issues, a tendency to lead life as a string of virtuous crusades.

He really needs someone to impose a policy structure on his moral intuitions. He needs a very senior person who can organize a vast administration and insist that he tame his lone-pilot tendencies and work through the established corridors — the National Security Council, the Domestic Policy Council. He needs a near-equal who can turn his instincts, which are great, into a doctrine that everybody else can predict and understand.

Rob Portman or Bob Gates wouldn’t have been politically exciting, but they are capable of performing those tasks. Palin, for all her gifts, is not. She underlines McCain’s strength without compensating for his weaknesses. The real second fiddle job is still unfilled.

So, again, McCain hasn't found someone suitable for the job.

Memo to the candidate: When even David Brooks is concerned, you really blew it.

A question of judgment

Again and again and again: The issue is not Sarah Palin. (Well, not entirely; there's evidence leaking out to be concerned about, more signs that she wasn't properly vetted.)

The issue is what this selection says about McCain's decision-making. In picking a relative unknown, we have 70 days to get familiar with her and learn if she's any more than someone convenient who passes all the right-wing ideology criteria. In selecting her, McCain invites the (false) conclusion that there are no Republican women better qualified. (Kay Bailey Hutchinson has more experience in national and international affairs. Carly Fiorina has more executive experience. Elizabeth Dole has more of both, having served in the Executive Branch as well as the Senate. I'd disagree with all of them and wouldn't want to see any of them in office--but that's because of policy questions, not concerns about basic experience and temperament.)

E. J. Dionne has a good column up today over at WaPo about how this may play out in Convention Week and beyond, and how his own decision complicates McCain's job badly. He also calls out movement conservatives who were horribly concerned about Harriet Meier's lack of experience, but have no problem with Sarah Palin's lack of experience. (Hint: It's not nearly as much about experience as it is about maintaining power and making sure someone is really one of them.) Money quote:

In picking Biden as his running mate, Obama made a prudent choice. It is McCain who is asking us to roll the dice. You'd think that people who call themselves conservative would have a problem with that.

Ordinarily I'm wary of reading too much into the small human-interest details that get tossed into bio puff pieces. But: Obama plays low-stakes poker, a game about deducing how things look from the other person's perspective, making the most of limited information, and adjusting your strategy to the nuances at the table. He plays conservatively, and rarely bluffs. McCain plays higher-stakes (what would be very high stakes for me, but for a man of his wealth not excessive) craps, a game in which the odds are fixed, nuances are few, and letting winnings ride so everything is determined by the next throw of the dice is encouraged.

In this case, gaming preferences may be diagnostic.

McCain's Fundamental Lack of Seriousness

Michael Kinsley has a must-read over at Slate about the GOP's tossing away the experience argument, and the suddenness with which the punditocracy has done so. Suddenly it's not about experience, it's about something else. We're not quite sure what, yet, but it's definitely something. Best zinger statistic:

Why, before her stint as governor of Alaska, population 670,000, she was mayor of a town of 9,000. Remember when the Republicans mocked Bill Clinton for being governor of a "small state"? That would be Arkansas, population 2.8 million. As it happens, 670,000 is the population of metropolitan Little Rock.

Money quote:

How could anyone truly believe that Barack Obama's background and job history are inadequate experience for a president, and simultaneously believe that Sarah Palin's background and job history are perfectly adequate? It's possible to believe one or the other. But both? Simply not possible. John McCain has been—what's the word?—lying. And so have all the pundits who rushed to defend McCain's choice.

Yeah. What he said.

The Palin selection raises serious questions about McCain's judgment, and about how seriously he takes the position. It's looking more and more as if she wasn't adequately vetted beforehand. If you seriously believe that terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism are the overarching issues of our day, how can you select someone with apparently no prior interest in foreign affairs at all as your running mate? If you truly believe your opponent is dangerously inexperienced, how can you select someone with even less national experience?

This says something about McCain's seriousness, his judgment, or his competence. Pick one.

Snarky Atheist Video of the Day

Why God Seems Nonexistent.

Nothing brilliantly original here, but well-executed.

And check the comments out. Poe's law still holds: No matter how over the top it is, someone will take it seriously.

[Hat tip: PZ Myers]

Embezzlers (?) For Jesus. Well, self-enrichers, at least.

PZ has the details.

It seems a small bank tried to do everything just as God wanted, including praying before all their meetings and giving 10% of their income to charity. (The article doesn't say whether that's gross or net income.)

It also seems they paid themselves exorbitantly well -- five or six times what bank officers at banks that size usually make.

I know there's something there about the workman being worthy of his hire, but isn't there also something about rich men, camels, needle's eyes, etc?

(Though actually the reference was to a very narrow gate in Jerusalem, called the Needle's Eye, that merchants had to go through. A loaded camel wouldn't fit; thus the camel had to be completely unloaded, with the friendly tax collector conveniently close by. This concludes today's historical aside.)

The FDIC is looking into things.

Obama's speech

Strong start, eh middle, strong finish. All in all, a success. But what in the hell is up with the action-movie-closing-credits music afterwards? It's not inspiring, not uplifting, it sounds like it's supposed to scare us. Better fit for a campaign of fear than hope.

Of candidates and choices

One more reason why PZ Myers is one of my favorite curmudgeons:

Fair enough, actually. It does represent a difference in values: that [Kay] Hagan may not be an atheist but is willing to speak with them says one thing about her values, and that Elizabeth Dole thinks atheists are un-American says something else about her values. It also says a lot about Dole that she is willingly affiliated with the party of bigotry and incompetence, the Republicans. These are choices made by candidates that are legitimate issues to help voters decide who they should elect.

The Republican party is not going to worthy of respect until the theocrats are fully repudiated. And one election cycle won't be enough to do it.

Noonan makes a good point

Peggy Noonan, who I've certainly disagreed with before, about a great many things, makes a very salient observation about the two parties:

Democrats in the end speak most of, and seem to hold the most sympathy for, the beset-upon single mother without medical coverage for her children, and the soldier back from the war who needs more help with post-traumatic stress disorder. They express the most sympathy for the needy, the yearning, the marginalized and unwell. For those, in short, who need more help from the government, meaning from the government's treasury, meaning the money got from taxpayers.

Who happen, also, to be a generally beset-upon group.

Democrats show little expressed sympathy for those who work to make the money the government taxes to help the beset-upon mother and the soldier and the kids. They express little sympathy for the middle-aged woman who owns a small dry cleaner and employs six people and is, actually, day to day, stressed and depressed from the burden of state, local and federal taxes, and regulations, and lawsuits, and meetings with the accountant, and complaints as to insufficient or incorrect efforts to meet guidelines regarding various employee/employer rules and regulations. At Republican conventions they express sympathy for this woman, as they do for those who are entrepreneurial, who start businesses and create jobs and build things. Republicans have, that is, sympathy for taxpayers. But they don't dwell all that much, or show much expressed sympathy for, the sick mother with the uninsured kids, and the soldier with the shot nerves.

Neither party ever gets it quite right, the balance between the taxed and the needy, the suffering of one sort and the suffering of another. You might say that in this both parties are equally cold and equally warm, only to two different classes of citizens.

Of Omens & Portents

PZ Myers, a self-described "godless liberal," is forced to admit that there may be something to omens & portents after all.

He may be on to something.... If there is a magic sky-fairy, he/she/it can't be pleased with the ninnies running around insisting that he/she/it wants them to have a tax cut and kick out the damn furriners as his/her/its top priority.

Hillary's Speech

A bit much boilerplate for my taste toward the beginning, but she ended with a strong finish. She laid out why supporting Obama is important, and her line about "was it just for me, or was it for the people who feel invisible" laid it out right there. If you're still angry about how the primaries went down and use that as an excuse to stay home, you're hurting the people who are going to be worse off with McCain.

On that note, Michael O'Hare has a great post over at RBC:

Someone should suffer for the wrongs done to Hillary, but anyone who thinks that will be Obama if McCain is elected either has no heart or no brain. It's like voting for Nader, compounding the careless, heedless pique of a child who punches a younger sibling because Dad turned off the TV with the wilful ignorance of tourists who yell at people who don't speak their language. And just as destructive. If the voter who chooses to act out that way is among the lucky upper middle class intelligentsia for whom the Bush years have been infuriating, but actually not all that personally injurious, all the more disreputable. [emphasis added]

Yeah. What he said.

Not feeling the Hillary-Love

Jack Cafferty has also had about enough Clintonian drama at this point.

It's not like they have been bending over backwards to help Obama get elected. Bill Clinton has barely been polite. He couldn't even bring himself to say he thought Obama is qualified to be president. Now, Bill Clinton is reportedly not happy about the topic of his speech Wednesday night.

Politico.com reports the former president wanted to talk about the economy under President Bush compared to his accomplishments during his term in office. The theme for Wednesday night is "Securing America for the 21st Century." It seems Bill Clinton is forever more interested in reminding us of what a charming guy he was while in office than in acting like one of the leaders of his party and trying to get his party into the White House.

Kind of sad, really.

Yet, Obama's people have gone out of their way to accommodate the Clintons this week in the hopes of achieving party unity. Obama told reporters on Monday that former President Clinton could speak about anything he likes.

Some of Hillary Clinton's supporters had threatened to disrupt the proceedings if their candidate wasn't shown the proper amount of respect. They're called PUMAs, an acronym for "Party Unity My Ass." They appear to be a humorless lot who cannot come to terms with the fact that the country didn't want Hillary Clinton to be president. So they have been throwing a hissy fit ever since the primaries ended.

It's always and everywhere about them.

Still not getting it

Marie Cocco has an article at today's WaPo about Hillary's thankless job, how it's slightly demeaning to expect her to support the nominee, who came from behind and stole what was rightfully hers.

A few observations:

1. She started with a huge warchest, near-universal name recognition, the support of a popular ex-President, and the best political machine in the business.
   
2. She ran a campaign marked by warring staff, unpaid vendors, and a complete lack of contingency plans after Super Tuesday, when she expected to have it wrapped up. (Remember how surprised they were by the Texas caucus rules, two weeks before the Texas vote? They hadn't even started organizing there, as they didn't expect there would possibly be any need to.)
   
3. Point two suggests a lack of executive ability. I'm just saying.
   
4. Her opponent ran a tightly-disciplined operation, mobilized new supporters, out-organized and out-hustled her. Yes, this was an exceptional year in that a relatively inexperienced Senator, and a black one at that, was able to be a serious contender. That doesn't change the fact that he ran a very good campaign. Much better than hers.
   
5. This is politics, not stickball. It ain't always fair, because life ain't always fair. If it were fair, the Swift Boat attacks on Kerry would never have been seen as anything but laughable. If it were fair, then impeaching a President for lying in a civil suit would have lowered the bar enough to demand impeachment for a President who authorized war crimes in direct violation of legally binding treaty--surely a "high crime or misdemeanor" if there is one.
   

Does Hillary have some bitter disappointment to deal with? Undoubtedly. It's no doubt painful, and having to do much of it in public can only make it worse.

But please. She's not a helpless victim here. She lost the campaign because of the campaign she ran.

Quote of the Day

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born to wealth, but that didn’t stop him from doing more for working Americans than any president before or since. Conversely, Joseph Biden’s hardscrabble life story, though inspiring, didn’t stop him from supporting the odious 2005 bankruptcy bill.

But in the world we actually live in, pro-corporate, inequality-increasing Republicans argue that you should vote for them because they’re regular guys you’d like to have a beer with, while Democrats who want to raise taxes on top earners, expand health care and raise the minimum wage are snooty elitists.

--Paul Krugman, today's NYT

Slant your coverage much, Wofl?

Check out Wolf "Anything-For-My-Pal-McCain"'s lede on CNN this morning:

And now the selling begins. The Democrats need to do some major marketing at their party convention in Denver, Colorado. First and foremost, they need to sell Sen. Barack Obama. They need to convince American voters that he's the right man to lead the country.

"Now the selling begins"? Um, last time I checked, Obama was leading in the polls. Most Americans are already convinced he's the right man to lead the country. And in case Wolf, being new to journalism and all, isn't aware of it, a convention does have some function beyond PR and 'selling.'

Although it is true that John McCain was a POW. It's not relevant in this context, but it gets trotted out to explain everything else, so I figured I'd beat the rush.

Of fighting back and looking weak

Andrew Sullivan asks:

Could it be that in this election cycle, the tactics of the far right are beginning to turn around and bite them?

In order for that to happen, the Democratic leadership would have to make a counterpunch. I don't see that happening. They (still!) haven't learned: When you tell yourself you're being lofty and ignore gutter attacks, you allow those attacks to become accepted as fact. (Thus decorated veteran Kerry was painted as a wimp by multiple-student-deferment Cheney and a candidate who spent the war years keeping the skies of Texas safe from the Viet Cong, until he "talked to the army" and didn't finish his enlistment.) And when you don't speak up to defend yourself because you think protesting might make you look weak.... You just look weak. And are therefore treated with contempt by a party that respects only strength.

Is it a case of lacking the killer instinct, or just the effect of being beaten up by Republicans so badly for so long they've become too timid to assert themselves? I don't know. I do know their "Maybe if we're nice, the Republicans won't be so mean to us" strategy isn't working, has never worked. And if a Democrat had had the kind of week McCain just had, it's all we'd be hearing about from now to election day.

Personally, I would love to see the GOP implode on itself, not only as poetic justice but as a necessary corrective for the last several years. But it won't happen unless it's helped along by a vigorous opposition, one the current Democratic leadership seems unable or unwilling to muster and the candidate seems to be having trouble mounting. Reagan said of the Soviet Union: It didn't fall, it was pushed. Today's Democratic Party won't give the Republican Party even a nudge.

Who's the Elitist Here?

Remember, taking a nine-car motorcade to Starbucks isn't elitist if an ex-POW does it.

I just thought I should clear that up.

"Gee, ya THINK?" Headline Of The Day. Possibly The Week.

From today's Washington Post:
----------
Houses Snag McCain Campaign

McCain's inability to remember how many homes he owns may disrupt plan to cast Obama as elitist.

-----------

McCain went to Annapolis on the basis of his father and grandfather both being admirals. After distinguished service and time as a POW, he returned home to find his wife, who had been raising his children during his captivity, had also been injured in a car accident and was disabled. So, naturally, he divorced her and married a beer heiress worth over $100 million. Today he owns six (or seven, or eight, and today I saw one source that said 10) homes, wears $500 shoes, spent over a quarter-million last year just on domestic help, and says that in order to be rich you have to make $5 million per year--which, coincidentally, is about the expected return on his wife's wealth.

And the kid who grew up in a single-parent home, sometimes on welfare, who worked his way through school, earned the editorship of the Harvard Law Review and a faculty position at the University of Chicago (neither noted for being hotbeds of affirmative action) is the elitist.

That doesn't even pass the laugh test.

Update: USA Today now has McCain at 12 houses, worth over $10 million. And you gotta love the closing graf:

McCain, who has portrayed Obama as an elitist, is the son and grandson of admirals. The Associated Press estimates his wife, a beer heiress, is worth $100 million. Obama was raised by a single mother who relied at times on food stamps, and went to top schools on scholarships and loans. His income has increased from book sales since he spoke at the 2004 Democratic convention.

[h/t: AmericaBlog]

We have gone hopelessly astray

Kathleen Parker has an excellent column pointing out just how fundamentally wrong and profoundly un-American the Saddleback Church meeting with the candidates was. Rick Warren is trying to insert himself into public life under the guise of "it's all about worldview," which is a codephrase for "evangelical Christianity."

Of course, the next day, he said flat-out that no Christian could vote for anyone pro-choice. Which sends a pretty clear signal about how he thinks everyone should vote.

Neutral, my ass. And expecting candidates to go through this is undignified, demeaning, and pandering of the worst sort.

Warren used to be someone I may not have agreed with but could at least respect. That's changing rapidly.

And though I'm sure he'd call it "anti-Christian bigotry," I think his insistence on bringing religion, faith, whatever you want to call it, into the political realm and making it a political issue is wrong. And I'm sure he'd deny any such bigotry. While also saying he would never vote for an atheist, no matter what that person's policy positions are. So you see, it's only bigotry when other people do it. When he does it, it's just looking for people who share his worldview. In other words, at least pretend you believe in the same magic sky-fairy he does, or at least in some magic sky-fairy, and he'll condescend to pretending he respects you.

Go read Parker's column, it's worth it.

Why Evolution Must Be Taught

No, I'm not a biologist. But an anti-science, anti-evidence attitude is toxic.

Excellent column at the Times today explaining more about why we can't let the nitwits win on this one.

Life is strange dept.

I had the opportunity last spring to participate in the Oxford Roundtable conference on regulating cyberspace. I submitted a paper based on my presentation to the Oxford Journal of Public Policy.

Unfortunately, my journal article was turned down.

But on the bright side, a photo I took while I was out sightseeing got selected for an online travel guide. So I guess now I can add "published travel photographer" to my resume.

There might be a lesson in here somewhere, but I'm not sure I want to know what it is.

Quote of the day

God has always resembled his creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved and he was invariably found on the side of those in power.

Robert G. Ingersoll, "Gods," 1879

[h/t: Pharyngula]

What went wrong

I've gently tweaked Andrew Sullivan a few times in this space (and not-so-gently blasted him in emails back & forth w/ a friend of mine). I read his stuff for the same reason I read George Will--he's usually wrong, but often in an interesting or thought-provoking way. And he occasionally goes completely off the rails, as in his latest contest, "Let's protest all the negative campaign ads by making our own negative campaign ads."

But when he's right, he's spot-on:

A critical part of what's gone wrong these past few years has been the tendency of a war president to bully opponents, distort their meaning, use base emotional appeals when we need far more rational discussion about how to counter a very complex, terrifying Islamist threat. The kind of campaigns Rove ran in 2002, 2004 and 2006 made all this far harder. It reduced important debates about priorities in the war, detention and interrogation policies, the wisdom of long-term enmeshment in the Middle East, the difficulties of securing loose nukes, the excruciatingly difficult calls on which allies to trust and how - into dumb-ass contests about who is the biggest bad-ass, who is a treasonous wimp and which opponent most belongs in a French hair salon.

Some Daily Mencken

I may make this a regular feature, I'd forgotten how good some of his stuff is:

The inferior man's reasons for hating knowledge are not hard to discern. He hates it because it is complex - because it puts an unbearable burden upon his meager capacity for taking in ideas. Thus his search is always for short cuts. Their aim is to make the unintelligible simple, and even obvious.

--HL Mencken

Stupidity as policy

Paul Krugman has a spot-on column today on how Know-Nothingism--"the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise"--has become accepted wisdom in the GOP.

Until we get over the poisonous anti-intellectualism rampant in this country, particularly our political discourse--the idea that those who think too much or learn too much are untrustworthy and deserve nothing but contempt, that "common sense" and childlike faith will always carry us through to victory no matter what--we can't hope to clean up the mess we've made over the last 20 years. Our economy is a mess, our standing in the world in tatters, and when a candidate points out a simple low-cost way to save as much gas as offshore drilling would gain for us, he's mocked for it, even though the numbers show he's right.

Given two choices, we keep opting for the stupid one, and then wonder why things don't get better.

Consumer issues

Followup to this post.

I received this email today:

Thank you for writing Crock-Pot ; a division of Jarden Consumer Solutions.

We do apologize that you have experienced trouble with our product. I have sent out a warranty replacement Crock-Pot, to replace the unit that was defective. Also, a pre-paid shipping label will be delivered separate from your new Crock-Pot. Please place the defective unit in the box and ship it back to us, free of charge to you.

Please write back if we can provide further assistance. You may also reach us at (800) 777-5452. We are open from 8:00am to 8:00pm, EST, Monday thru Friday.

Best Regards,

Danielle

Jarden Consumer Solutions

They misspelled my first name in the email, but that's a minor annoyance. But I posted a scathing review, I should also post that they responded by replacing the unit.

Now, if this one fails in the same way, I'm going to be, um, annoyed, to say the least. But they're at least making an effort.

But he's a nice guy!

Today's Post has a nauseating op-ed. The point of it seems to be, Ted Stevens' corruption indictment is a darn shame, and we ought to all just let bygones be bygones, because after all, he's really brought home the bacon and is a nice guy when you talk to him.

Disgusting.

This is the same entitlement mentality that argued that Scooter Libby shouldn't go to jail because, well, he shouldn't, because he's one of us. Baloney.

And the argument being made isn't the (quite legitimate) point that indictment isn't conviction, and we should avoid rushing to judgment. Rather, it seems to be, we shouldn't even ask the question, because he's one of us.

Disgusting, wrong, and a dangerous attitude.

Musical Break

Go watch these. They're worth it.

Quote of the day

The foundation of morality is to ... give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge.

--T. H. Huxley

Definitionses

In my facebook profile, I call myself an agnostic. I recently got a question about it from a friend of mine, who noted that I used to identify with a particular religion. What happened? Here's an excerpt from my reply, with minor edits for clarity.

Well, for a start, I haven't practiced in years. I did for a while after my divorce, and considered myself religious for quite a while after that. As I drifted away from organized religion, my beliefs gradually shifted, becoming less and less denominational, less and less specific...and, as time went on, less and less theistic at all. Today I'm not even sure I'd qualify as a Deist.

Mostly , it was a process of "Do I really believe this? Not 'do the people around me believe it,' not 'do I get patted on the back for saying I believe it'--do I really and truly, deep down, believe this?" And more and more, the answer came back, no, I don't. And while I've never been a literalist (well, not past the age of 10 or so, but that doesn't really count, does it?) the more I thought about it, the more skeptical I got.

Partly, I think, because so many of the arguments in favor of belief are so awful. I'm enough of an intellectual and skeptic (and all-around horse's ass, at times) that anything I claim as a belief is going to have to stand up to some fairly rigorous scrutiny, and most of the arguments for belief don't come close. And heck, even if Jesus Himself Touched My Heart And Gave Me New Eyes To See, all that would prove would be that I'd had some kind of emotional experience. See any number of previous blog posts for deconstructions & fiskings of various stupid arguments for God.

So, I've pretty much given up on any idea of a magic invisible daddy in the sky who loves me as his very own. It would be a comforting belief, but "Believing it makes me feel better, so I believe it" isn't a satisfying argument. (Though if someone else says they believe something because it comforts them, well, I can't very well argue with that, and need only respect their right to be irrational. When they say believing something comforts them, therefore *I* must also believe the same thing and am a rotten commie traitor who hates Baby Jesus if I don't--that's when I part company with them.)

I went with "agnostic" rather than "atheist" because I'm also not convinced of the atheist position. There's a difference between I don't know what's there and I know for sure there's nothing there. There's no conclusive rational proof of God, but disproof is also impossible. The most you can say is there's no evidence for it, therefore we shouldn't assume it's there unless we have some other good reason to. That's my beef with the Intelligent Design nitwits: "God did it" is not the simplest, most parsimonious, least-assumption explanation. I'm willing to be persuaded, but haven't heard a convincing argument yet.

So how do I reconcile that with active participation in a 12-step program that puts emphasis on reliance on a Higher Power? Almost 20 yrs sobriety has taught me, sometimes painfully, that if I do certain things, life tends to go a little smoother; if I do certain other things, I get a little crazy, and if I keep doing those other things, I'll probably get drunk. Whether or not there's a deity behind them, following certain principles keeps me on an even keel. "God" is a useful metaphor for something pulling me toward those principles, and regular prayer and meditation has put me into the habit of taking a few minutes and calmly reviewing my day before setting out in the morning, and again at the end of the day, and promptly trying to clean up any messes or unfinished business before it festers. It's put me into the habit of thinking of other people rather than myself first (at least, not thinking of myself first all the time), and evaluating my actions by whether I'm living up to the values I'm professing--values that don't necessarily need a magic sky-fairy to be legitimate. Am I being honest with others and myself? Can I disagree with someone without being disagreeable? Am I treating others with respect? Am I meeting my responsibilities as an employee, as a family member, as a citizen? If not, what can I do about those things? If I can't change everything at once, what can I change today? At the end of a meeting, I don't need to go off on magic sky-fairies while everyone else says the Lord's Prayer--that would be rude and disrespectful to their beliefs, even if I don't share them, while maintaining silence costs me nothing.

At the convention last weekend, I talked with a woman whose (non-12-step, no need for one) brother works for Anheuser-Busch in St Louis. They just got bought out, and no word yet on who's keeping their job and who isn't. She asked if he was worried about it, and he just shrugged and said, no, nothing he can do about it either way, so he's just doing his job until he hears otherwise. And she (and I) were boggled--how do normal people do that? How do they get it that simply? We have to bang our heads against the wall several times before we remember the serenity prayer about accepting what we can't change and all that.

So, yeah, "agnostic" is about the most accurate description of where I'm at now. Further bulletins as things develop.

Don't buy this product

I don't usually do product reviews, let alone get all suzy-homemaker, but I'm sufficiently annoyed about blatant shoddiness that maybe someone else can be warned off so they don't make the mistake I did.

I recently bought a large Crock-Pot slow cooker, model SCVS600. This model has a glass lid that is attached at one side, with a hinge on one side and a handle on the other. The lid can latch down for transportation, which is the selling point, as it's allegedly "portable."

DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT.

The handle on the lid, and the hinge mechanism, are made of a plastic that gets soft when heated. (Oddly enough, the lid of a slow cooker can get a little warm, and stay a little warm for quite a while, particularly if you're using it for, oh, say, cooking slowly.)

Thus, when you lift the lid, the handle can snap off in your hand, sending the lid crashing back down, and dropping a few small shards of soft plastic into your food.

Or, if you decide it's still usable and use it again a few weeks later, and leave it on high for 2 hours (not a particularly long time as slow-cooker standards go), the plastic around the hinge itself can give way, thus spilling more plastic bits into your food and in this case, the bonus effect of sending a hot glass lid down onto your countertop, good luck stopping it without grabbing onto anything hot.

DO NOT BUY THE CROCK-POT MODEL SCVS600,
THE ONE WITH THE HINGED LID.

I have no idea how their other models are, but THIS one is definitely NOT recommended, because of the poor quality of the plastic used in making the hinged lid. It falls apart--literally--within a few uses.

Yes, I've complained to the company. No response as of yet. Further updates (if any) as events develop.

Addendum: Looks like I'm not the only one.

Update: The company has responded. Text of their email here.

"Well, duh!" Headline Of The Day

From CNN:


I suppose there's a market for unattractive sex... but I don't think I care to know the details.

[Yes, yes, different people have different ideas about what "attractive" or "unattractive" may be, in this context, I know.]

Incidentally, here's the full story, if you want the details.

Reality Explained

[h/t: PZ Myers]

Mars Pulls Ad

It looks as if M&M/Mars has pulled the obnoxiously homophobic ad they were running.

How many times will they make the same mistake, I wonder?

Memo to David Brooks

Re: this morning's hit piece

David: Yes, JFK & Reagan made much more hard-headed speeches in Germany. They were specific. They talked about what America could and should do.

But: they were already President at the time.

If Obama had loaded up his speech with policy prescriptions, with specifics about what should be done and how, you would undoubtedly excoriate him--and rightfully so--for making a campaign speech on foreign soil.

Is it the speech President Obama should have given? Absolutely not. However, for Presumptive Nominee Obama, it was about as specific as it could have been. He's one Senator out of a hundred, and does not set U.S. foreign policy.

Yet.

Really, is the idea of context all that hard?

Quote of the day

I think if I were truly evil, I would have to demand that all of my acolytes be celibate, but would turn a blind eye to any sexual depravities they might commit. If I wanted to be an evil hypocrite, I'd drape myself in expensive jeweled robes and live in an ornate palace while telling all my followers that poverty is a virtue. If I wanted to commit world-class evil, I'd undermine efforts at family planning by the poor, especially if I could simultaneously enable the spread of deadly diseases. And if I wanted to be so evil that I would commit a devastating crime against the whole of the human race, twisting the minds of children into ignorance and hatred, I would be promoting the indoctrination of religion in children's upbringing, and fomenting hatred against anyone who dared speak out in defiance.

--PZ Myers

300th post!

Well. What a landmark. Of sorts. Not sure what it means.

Rather like many of my posts, no doubt...

Not-feeling-the-love dept.

A London Times columnist on the Obama phenomenon:

In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.

And so it was, in the fullness of time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured forth - for the first time - to bring the light unto all the world.

Not-McCain's-Week Dept.

The political gods are not smiling on the McCain campaign, which had to cancel a campaign event including an oil-rig photo op... because of a nearby oil spill.

Savor the delicious taste of irony.

Give them enough rope...

Elaine Donnelly finally gets her big chance and testifies to Congress about how teh gayz will destroy the military. With no qualifications as a military expert or an expert on human sexuality, she still had plenty to tell the Congresscritters. And she did. And thus helped set back her own cause.

A double standard? Say it ain't so!

Some speculation on why the media isn't all over the Edwards-has-a-love-child-maybe-kinda-sorta story. Double standard? Duh. Of course.

Quote of the day

Maybe [Rick Warren] is representative of the country, though…superficially earnest and well meaning, with a seething core of stupid that means we'll do horrible things in spite of good intentions.

--PZ Myers

Violently Enforcing Stereotypes to Sell Candy Bars

M&M/Mars does it again, with a reekingly homophobic ad that suggests violence against insufficiently manly men is just lots of laffs.

It's not like I bought that much of their stuff to begin with... but they're off my grocery list for good. As is Heinz, who makes condiments for straight people.

Yes, they're free to sell their junk any way they want to. And I'm free to buy their competitor's products. Being part of their target demographic isn't exactly an aspiration for me.

Exposing abuses

An important article up at Salon about some of the Bush Regime's misconduct. A frustrating number of anonymous sources, but perhaps that's inevitable.

Go read it.

Quote of the day

To rebel against a powerful political, economic, religious, or social establishment is very dangerous and very few people do it, except, perhaps, as part of a mob. To rebel against the "scientific" establishment, however, is the easiest thing in the world, and anyone can do it and feel enormously brave, without risking as much as a hangnail. Thus, the vast majority, who believe in astrology and think that the planets have nothing better to do than form a code that will tell them whether tomorrow is a good day to close a business deal or not, become all the more excited and enthusiastic about the bilge when a group of astronomers denounces it.

--Isaac Asimov

The Dark Knight

It's dark. It's gloomy. It's filled with action. The plot had a couple of holes. It was, in places, unbearably pretentious as it hit the audience over the head--repeatedly--with its Serious Message.

It was, in short, a Batman comic on the big screen.

And since everyone's raving about Heath Ledger's performance: I agree with the BBC reviewer. It's very good; you see the madness, and the anguish behind the madness. A good actor who left us too soon. But at the end of the day, he's playing an iconic over-the-top villain, in clown makeup, in a superhero movie. He's doing it very well, mind you... But any posthumous Oscar will be because he died, not because of his performance.

And I didn't quite get the point of one reviewer who said it looked too much like Chicago, not enough like Gotham. Having seen the movie... I get it. And I agree. Not nearly gritty or claustrophobic enough for Gotham.

Playing the game

It's hardly an original observation that in America, a presidential candidate must at least appear to be religious. There are discussions about church activity, meetings with prominent clergy, etc.

Details of that faith, at least within certain bounds, are less important. Joe Lieberman is an Orthodox Jew. Most voters don't know or care John McCain's denomination, whether their Senator is Methodist or Episcopalian, etc. There are some limits--JFK's Catholicism was seen as a problem to be managed, though Kerry's wasn't. However, the persistence of the "Obama is really a Muslim" canard--and make no mistake, it's meant as a canard--shows we still have a way to go.

But at least no one's hinting that he's actually a closet atheist. That, for Americans, would be beyond the pale. A sixth of the country describes themselves as atheist or agnostic, and yet no politician can be seen acknowledging them, let alone sitting down and talking with them. A candidate who admitted to having reservations about the whole God question, let alone one who said flat out he didn't believe in any supernatural deity, benevolent or otherwise, wouldn't make it onto the primary ballot, let alone to the election.

A column in today's Times reminds us that it wasn't always this way. During an age we think of as being very religious, there were prominent humanists who were listened to and taken seriously, and their endorsements were actively sought.

Of course, that was an age intoxicated with the idea of throwing off the ideology of the past, rather than clinging to the idea that only the magic sky-fairy can protect us from the Brown Menace.

Spoke Too Soon Dept.

It seems Phil Gramm may be hanging around the McCain campaign after all.

And the Crony Express rides on...

Is this really the best they can do?

Salon has an interview up with James Carse, discussing religion as poetry, its continuing hold on human imagination, etc. But as for the basic question of why should one believe, he gets a little vague. His take on atheism is one of the most succinct expressions of the Courtier's Reply I've ever come across:

Are you talking about atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris?

Yes. There are several problems with their approach. It has an inadequate understanding of the nature of religion. These chaps are very distinguished thinkers and scientists, very smart people, but they are not historians or scholars of religion. Therefore, it's too easy for them to pass off a quick notion of what religion is....To be an atheist, you have to be very clear about what god you're not believing in. Therefore, if you don't have a deep and well-developed understanding of God and divine reality, you can misfire on atheism very easily.

Translation: there are entire colleges dedicated to studying the Emperor's boots, and shelves full of doctoral dissertations on the fineness of the plumage in the Emperor's hats! To therefore blandly say that the Emperor has no clothes reveals vast ignorance of all of this fine scholarship!

Apparently Carse is unfamiliar with universal quantifiers, as in, I don't necessarily believe any of it. Having complete floor plans and blueprints for castles in the sky doesn't mean those castles actually exist.

What makes it particularly silly is that Carse had just finished explaining that defining what it is you believe in, that is, defining God, is ultimately impossible. So, it's impossible, but atheists have to do it before they can say what it is they don't believe in.

And this line is particularly laughable:

To be an atheist is not to be stunned by the mystery of things or to walk around in wonder about the universe.

I've stood staring up at the night sky on clear July nights when the nearest streetlight was five miles away. I've gasped in awe at the Grand Canyon and the Colorado Rockies, and gazed into the eyes of my week-old niece and, years later, my great-niece. I've been stunned by the vistas of astronomy and marveled at the intricate precision of mathematics and biology. "Stunned by the mystery of things" and "in wonder about the universe" would both apply.

And yet, I don't feel the need to invoke any supernatural beings to legitimize any of that. Do I therefore, according to Carse, not exist? Once again, the old canard that we can have no sense of wonder without a magic sky-fairy, and that athiests are blinkered, gloomy souls. I can't help wondering if it's projection.

Addendum/Update: It looks like some of the letter-writers are noticing the same logical problems...

Really, I'd expected better from Carse. His Finite and Infinite Games was rather good.

P.P.S.: A letter-writer to Andrew Sullivan nails this as well.

Good riddance dept.

Enron millionaire, Swiss bank executive, and soft-core porn investor Phil Gramm has resigned from the McCain campaign. This is the second of two national co-chairs for the campaign that have stepped down in some kind of scandal.

But a campaign in chaos doesn't say anything about McCain's executive ability as President. He was a POW, and that's all we need to know.

The Stupid, It Burns

I was busy yesterday and didn't comment on the ignoramus in Oklahoma who put out a crudely-drawn, highly-bigoted, unintentionally hilarious comic book about how he's on the side of the angels (literally) and anyone opposing him is Satanic.

However, the story has now gone (as Princess Sparkle Pony so perfectly expressed it), "magnificently viral." She's got a roundup of reaction links.

Happy Birthday, 3 days late

I just realized... last Tuesday marked one year since this blog's first post (helpfully entitled, "First post"). Though the first substantive post was this one. Where has the time gone? I find myself agreeing with Calvin: Here I am in the future, and it looks a lot like that past. Where are the flying cars? The jetpacks? The personal robot servants?

Quote of the day

Some H. L. Mencken:

"Even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he please, provided only he does not try and inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge."

She gets it

I've tweaked Gail Collins a time or two in this space. Her columns, while usually pleasant to read, are occasionally wildly misinformed or risibly Manhattan-centric.

On the other hand, today's column on gay marriage is a gem. Money quote:

It is very possible that we’ll be having a number of depressing discussions about gay rights over the next several months. Just this week we learned that California is going to have a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would bar same-sex marriages. And John McCain was unable to come up with a clear position on whether gays should be allowed to adopt.

But the forces of history are only on one side here. There’s going to be a long-term happy ending.

Media Watch Edition, Day 4

FINALLY, the Washington Post deigns to notice.

Every time I think I'm becoming jaded and cynical, I realize my real problem is that I'm still not jaded and cynical enough.

Abolishing "Darwinism"

Olivia Judson has a very good entry on how much the field of biology has changed since Darwin's day, how much he got right, and how his few simple ideas have turned out to have so much explanatory power.

And she correctly notes that the term Darwinism to refer to all this implies something that simply isn't true:

I’d like to abolish the insidious terms Darwinism, Darwinist and Darwinian. They suggest a false narrowness to the field of modern evolutionary biology, as though it was the brainchild of a single person 150 years ago, rather than a vast, complex and evolving subject to which many other great figures have contributed. (The science would be in a sorry state if one man 150 years ago had, in fact, discovered everything there was to say.) Obsessively focusing on Darwin, perpetually asking whether he was right about this or that, implies that the discovery of something he didn’t think of or know about somehow undermines or threatens the whole enterprise of evolutionary biology today.

And she's absolutely correct, of course. Her concluding paragraph, pointing out that we don't call aeronautical engineering Wrightism, is very good.

My own observation, for what it's worth. Those most likely to use the term Darwinism seem to be creationists of various ilks, looking for a convenient tag to cover evolutionary biology, genetics, and whatever else they're worked up about that day. It also seems to be a symptom of the religionist mindset: Truth is something eternal, that is revealed by prophets. Therefore, if someone believes incorrectly, they must have been led astray by a false prophet. Obviously, the false prophet must be discredited. Therefore the assault on Darwinism.

Of course, in science, truth is contingent, peer-reviewed, and evidence-based. It turns out Darwin was wrong about some specific examples, and he didn't know enough about genetics to understand how traits could be inherited. (No one knew enough about genetics at the time, the basic principles were still being worked out and the existence and role of DNA wasn't even suspected.) Do Darwin's mistakes mean the entire edifice comes crumbling down? Not at all! Gaps are filled in, mistakes corrected, and the science moves on. Indeed, if it turned out that every one of Darwin's examples was wrong (they weren't, but suppose for argument), evolutionary biology would continue just fine.

By casting it as "Darwinism vs Christianity," as though both are religions, the creationists attempt to frame the debate in a method most likely to appeal to their supporters, and reveal the biases of their own thinking. (Is my thinking biased? Undoubtedly. But I maintain that a bias in favor of testing against evidence leads to better results than a bias in favor of listening to self-proclaimed prophets.)

Predictable Reactions Dept.

Slate insists the New Yorker cover is no big deal.

Tell that to the WingNutDaily readers.

Late update: Jon Swift weighs in.

And still no sign that I can see of the GOP access-for-dollars story in the corporate media.

This resonated a bit too much for comfort...

I am NOT having a midlife crisis!

But he's right... I've wanted a convertible since I was about 8... I may be able to afford one my next car (if I can afford the gas). If I buy a car I've wanted for over 30 years, is it a midlife crisis if I can finally afford it? "Losing a few pounds" used to mean skipping desserts and going easy on the fried stuff for a few days; now it takes a bit more effort. So if I try to do something to stay healthy and looking reasonably good (as much as I've ever looked), is it a midlife crisis if it takes more effort than it used to?

If I'd dyed my hair for 20 years, continuing to do so might not mean anything... If I took it up at this stage, it might be different.

Media Watch Update

Nothing in the NY Times, Washington Post, or CNN this morning about the bribes-for-access story.

Has this regime made such an art form of corruption that something like that isn't even news anymore?

Update: Pam's House Blend, AmericaBlog, and (of all places) Princess Sparkle Pony have picked this up. Possibly some others as well; Pam has an update on her site suggesting the blogs are starting to pick up on this. But nothing from the mass media yet.

Media Watch Edition, Part II

God save us from our friends.

I'm stunned. I'm sure I'll have something to say beyond "Yeah, what John said!" at some point, but nothing's coming to mind at the moment. I'm just trying to figure out what on earth they could possibly have been thinking?

And of course, we can count of plenty of "outrage" from the talking heads, with lots of full-screen shots of just what they're so "outraged" about.

Update: Andrew, of course, thinks it's "quite funny."

Media Watch Edition

The London Times is reporting this morning that a fundraiser for the still-in-planning George W. Bush Presidential Library is offering access to senior Administration figures in return for large cash donations.

Stephen Payne, who claims to have raised more than $1m for the president’s Republican party in recent years, said he would arrange meetings with Dick Cheney, the vice-president, Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, and other senior officials in return for a payment of $250,000 (£126,000) towards the library in Texas.

Payne, who has accompanied Bush and Cheney on several foreign trips, also said he would try to secure a meeting with the president himself.

Now I would, of course, be shocked--shocked--to learn that any politician, certainly one as upright as the leader of the squeaky-clean W. administration, would do anything so blatantly favoring the wealthy and well-connected.

Of more interest will be whether the US media picks up on the story at all.

My prediction: It becomes a minor story for one news cycle at most. Odds are better than 50/50 that no domestic sources pick it up at all. I'm willing to be proven wrong, but don't think I will be.

Back where we started

Frank Rich has a must-read op-ed about the degree of damage the Bush Administration has done not only to our moral standing, but to our security. The risk of a major terrorist attack today? About where it was in July 2001.

Go read it.

More sectarian whining

It is one thing to engage in free, if disrespectful, debate. It is another to repeatedly assault and ridicule and abuse something that is deeply sacred to a great many people.

--Andrew Sullivan, today

So it's okay to be disrespectful, as long as you don't hurt their feelings. Because the sentiments of the religious, no matter how silly the superstition, are paramount.

To be fair, when reports came out about some jackass in Guantanamo flushing a Koran down the commode, Andrew called them out about that, too. But it was a purely pragmatic argument--this is going to enrage them against us and serves no good purpose--rather than being out of lines because of some general rule that ridiculous ideas can be ridiculed unless they're ridiculous ideas about magic sky-fairies.

Or at least, about his magic sky-fairy.

Update 11:20 PM: I just noticed that apparently some other people called Andrew on this. And, to his credit, he posted the replies.

Update 7/12: He's taken most of it back. Oh, and he now claims he defended Myers' right to say whatever he wishes. Funny, I can't seem to find that in the original post. Here's the full text of what he said:

It is one thing to engage in free, if disrespectful, debate. It is another to repeatedly assault and ridicule and abuse something that is deeply sacred to a great many people. Calling the Holy Eucharist a "goddamned cracker" isn't about free speech; it's really about some baseline civility. Myers' rant is the rant of an anti-Catholic bigot. And atheists and agnostics can be bigots too.

I don't see any defense of Myers' right to anything in there. Really, the posturing on this is incredible. Of course, what set off Myers in the first place was the fact that for stealing a cracker, terms like "hate crime" and "kidnapping" were being tossed around, there's a movement afoot to get the student expelled, death threats were made, and there is now an armed guard at Mass at the campus chapel, to make sure no more cracker-napping occurs. I wonder if Andrew read the entire story in the first place?

Quote of the day

The [Christian] supremacists who lead the anti-gay crusade are wrong morally. They are wrong because justice is moral, and prejudice is evil; because truth is moral and the lie of the closet is the real sin; because the claim of morality is a subtle sort of subterfuge, a strategem which hides the real aim which is much more secular. The supremacists don't care about morality, they care about power. They care about social control.

Urvashi Vaid (April 25, 1993)

[h/t: PZ Myers]

Short version of Andrew Sullivan

I wasn't wrong, but maybe I wasn't as right as I could have been, and in any event, we've kinda-sorta got something that maybe looks like the rule of law so I'm okay with it. Besides, it's the president's fault, not the companies, that they broke the law--it's not like AT&T or Verizon could afford a lawyer or anything. And it's natural to panic and toss the rule of law overboard when we're in a national panic, which we all were, especially me, so let's just move on.

When the man is right, he's right, but he periodically has episodes of recto-cranial inversion that are mind-boggling in their intensity.

Quote of the day

It's funny how so many defeated Democrats -- Al Gore, John Kerry, John Edwards and now Clinton -- seem to become more progressive after they learn that pandering can't protect them from the attacks of the GOP and its friends in the media. Let's hope Obama doesn't have to learn that lesson the same way.

--Joan Walsh

More reasons why FISA is bad law

There's an excellent summary here of just how much damage the FISA provisions do to the rule of law.

Quote of the day

However, as a practical matter I doubt that conservatism without its accompanying bigotries could ever command a voting majority. The targets of bigotry shift over time: Jews and Catholics, for example, are no longer fashionable hate-objects, and blacks, career women, and gays are becoming less and less so. That's why the Good Lord made Muslims, atheists, and "illegal aliens."

-- Mark Kleiman

Still a few bugs in the system

It seems the face-recognition technology used to verify the age of cigarette vending-machine users in Japan still has a few bugs.

The facial recognition problem is hard, and trying to use specific features to estimate age for a generic face is even harder. Then ruling out doctored photos, makeup tricks, etc., and it gets exponentially harder.

So kudos for trying, and it's not surprising there are problems. I'm just surprised it's being deployed at this stage.

[H/T: Andrew Sullivan]

The truth shall set you free, indeed...

Go read this. Then laugh.

[H/T: PZ]

Worse odds than you thought

Not only is a state-run lottery a tax on people who don't understand math... the state's cut is even better when there's literally no chance of winning.

Let's see, we have to have the state running the lottery because the private sector will run corrupt, crooked games that prey on the foolish and poorly-educated... While, of course, state-run lotteries are always above board and scrupulously fair.

Riiiight. Tell me another one.

Still stuck in the 50's..

As the Bush Regime's War On Privacy (tm) continues, we're getting the finishing touches on an agreement to exchange large amounts of personal information with European agencies. Or rather, demand that they supply that information to us:

The United States is negotiating deals with European countries to exchange fingerprint and DNA data in criminal and terrorist cases, and in some circumstances to transfer data on race or ethnic origin, political and religious beliefs, or sexual orientation.
. . .
Senior Bush administration officials said the data exchange is crucial for spotting dangerous people before they enter the United States and for furthering criminal and terrorist investigations.

[emphasis added in both cases]

Explain to me how sexual orientation is a useful part of a terrorist investigation. Useful for compiling an enemies list and indulging in some good old-fashioned bigotry? Sure, I'll grant you that. But how is it actually useful for, you know, the purpose it's allegedly being gathered for?

But some European lawmakers fear that, taken together, the accords will lead to a far-reaching exchange of personal data without appropriate safeguards and that eventually the United States will seek access to Europe-wide databases. "We seem to be opening the floodgates, left, right and center," said Sophie in't Veld, a European Parliament member from the Netherlands. "It seems to me there are hardly any restrictions left."

No kidding.

[A DHS official] said the United States has agreed to limit the purpose for which the data are sought, not to share it with other governments and not to retain data if they are no longer useful -- if there is no match on a fingerprint, for instance. He said errors in records will be corrected.

But Schaar, who is independent from the government, said he found no "clear rules on purpose limitation" or on the storage period. "First," he said, "which data are of concern is not really completely clear. Second, who are the competent authorities on the U.S. side? Third, and most important, there is a lack of independent supervision in the United States over data protection." In European states, independent privacy commissions safeguard the privacy rights of citizens, he said.

Exactly. The gummint promises they won't ever misuse any of this data and they'll get rid of it as soon as there's no use for it anymore. And they decide when that is, and whether it should be done, and whether or not they're following their own rules, so there's no need for anyone else to know anything about it.

Of course, every time in the past when they've had the authority to go fishing, it's been misused to after political opponents and people engaging in unpopular but fully legal political activity. And recently the FBI was trying to recruit people to infiltrate vegan potlucks in Minnesota as a pre-emptive move against radical vegans disrupting the Republican National Convention.

So am I supposed to be reassured that they're gathering all this data, but show several signs of incompetence, so they probably won't be successful at any nefarious misuses?

Still not a theist...

A quick followup to this long-ago post: Being a theist requires believing in several things. Specifically,

• 
  

That God exists;

That God is benevolent;

That God is able to communicate with us in a way we can perceive;

That God is willing to do so;

That God has done so;

That this communication has included God's preferences regarding our behavior;


That we have noticed this communication;

That we have understood or interpreted it correctly.

One further thought: Acceptance of any one of those propositions, or all of them up to some specified proposition, implies little to nothing about the truth-value of the next. That is, assuming, for example, that God exists and is benevolent, says nothing about whether it is possible for a (presumably-infinite) being to interact with finite beings in a way they can perceive; whether any such communication has been made; and so on.

Not only are the assumptions very large, the causality connecting them is tenuous at best.

UPDATE: One further assumption should be slid in there: that any communication about preferences for our behavior have been unambiguous and non-contradictory.

Followup on false positives

This post from a few days ago has another implication as well.

Recall that our hypothetical screening system is 95% accurate at detecting terrorists. In our hypothetical population of 1,000 truly dangerous terrorists, we found 950, leaving 50 still at large and passed screening as non-dangerous.

This implies that any act of terror that is carried out will quite possibly, in fact probably, be carried out by someone who was screened, and passed screening. So think about it. Another big incident, and it turns out the perp had been investigated, perhaps asked a few questions, and then let go as not a serious threat.

What happens to the screening procedures when it turns out "someone slipped through"? It gets even more draconian, we lose a few more liberties...and very little additional safety is gained.

Ultimately, the only way to be sure we've locked up all the terrorists is to lock up everybody. But instead of accepting a calculated risk, we've become a nation of cowards who refuse to accept that life has risks, and some risks can only be mitigated, not entirely eliminated.

Contrary to his rhetoric, the President doesn't take an oath to protect American lives or even American interests. He takes an oath to defend the Constitution. Certainly the Framers knew that requiring warrants and due process and trials by jury would hinder the efficiency of the government and probably result in some criminals going free. That's part of the price of liberty. Trying to achieve absolute safety, at the expense of essential liberties, is not only impossible, it's un-American. And remembering that is more important than ever when passions are running high and people are scared.

Blunt but accurate

Christopher Hitchens, as usual, pulls no punches. The outpouring of sentiment over Helms' "legacy," and the tiptoeing around, or blatant ignoring, of how much racism and bigotry that "legacy" includes, is nauseating.