... it's all rugged individualism around here.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Michael Moore thinks people should start to practice the words 'President Romney.'"
Interesting, not really intended so much a prediction as a cynical remark about campaign finance. But that's not why somebody emailed me that link. Somebody emailed me that link because of the thing that made me scream at 0:21.
"Firestone wanted to eliminate the following things: sex roles, procreative sex, gender, childhood, monogamy, mothering, the family unit..."
"... capitalism, the government, and especially the physiological phenomena of pregnancy and childbirth. She wanted to mechanize reproduction — gestating fetuses in artificial wombs — and raise the offspring communally, treating them no differently from adults at the earliest possible age."
Shulamith Firestone, dead now, at the age of 67.
Shulamith Firestone, dead now, at the age of 67.
Why did Firestone want to eliminate gender? She argued - taking Marxism and skewing it -- that all forms of oppression were rooted in an antagonism between men and women.Here's the book — have you read it? — "The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution," published in 1970.
The shape of the glass affects the speed of beer-drinking.
It's a study!
People drink more quickly out of a curved glass. But not for a soft drink. We're talking about beer:
People drink more quickly out of a curved glass. But not for a soft drink. We're talking about beer:
While it took around seven minutes for people drinking from a curved glass to polish off their half pint, it took 11 minutes for those drinking from a straight glass....It's because it's alcohol that people try to pace themselves. And apparently the curves are confusing.
The researchers thought that curvy glasses made it harder to pace drinking because judging how much was in the glass became more difficult owing to its curved shape.
The happiest students are at the University of Wisconsin—Madison.
It's a HuffPo top 10 list, and we're #1.
Details here. Our highest-rated factor is sports culture, beating out political activity, which is second. Politics only second? That's a lot of sports! Go Badgers!
Details here. Our highest-rated factor is sports culture, beating out political activity, which is second. Politics only second? That's a lot of sports! Go Badgers!
"MSNBC pundits said Clint Eastwood’s GOP convention speech Thursday night was a 'bizarre' and 'embarrassing' 'disaster'..."
Key word: MSNBC.
ADDED: I hope if anyone does any comedy at the Democratic convention that Ed Schultz will be fair and balanced enough to say it demeans the presidency. Maybe he should be a little more concerned about what demeans journalism.
AND: Here's the whole Eastwood performance. Is it really that hard to get? No, they're merely playing dumb (and humorless), even though they want the other party to be known as "the stupid party."
UPDATE: I just rewatched the performance. It was great! Hilarious... subtle... well-paced.... The haters are totally bullshitting and playing dumb (assuming they are not actually dumb). And what they are trying to do is scare other celebrities: Toe the line or we will destroy you. That crushing repression is the opposite of what the performing arts should be about.
ALSO: "Why the criticism and mockery of Clint Eastwood will backfire."
“Clint Eastwood was a disaster,” Lawrence O’Donnell said.Ha ha ha. That wasn't even a comedy routine (as Eastwood's performance was).
“I thought Clint Eastwood was bizarre,” Ed Schultz said. “It was demeaning to the presidency.”
ADDED: I hope if anyone does any comedy at the Democratic convention that Ed Schultz will be fair and balanced enough to say it demeans the presidency. Maybe he should be a little more concerned about what demeans journalism.
AND: Here's the whole Eastwood performance. Is it really that hard to get? No, they're merely playing dumb (and humorless), even though they want the other party to be known as "the stupid party."
UPDATE: I just rewatched the performance. It was great! Hilarious... subtle... well-paced.... The haters are totally bullshitting and playing dumb (assuming they are not actually dumb). And what they are trying to do is scare other celebrities: Toe the line or we will destroy you. That crushing repression is the opposite of what the performing arts should be about.
ALSO: "Why the criticism and mockery of Clint Eastwood will backfire."
Goodbye to Chatsworth Osborne Jr.
The comically irritating rich kid on my all-time favorite sitcom "Dobie Gillis" was played by an actor named Steve Franken, who has died, at the age of 80. The original rich jerk on the show was Milton Armitage, played by Warren Beatty, but he left the show early and Chatsworth stepped in to be totally unlikeable and ridiculous.
I wish I could find a good clip of him as Chatsworth on YouTube. But here's Franken playing a drunken waiter in the 1968 movie "The Party" (with Peter Sellers). It's not a silent movie, but Franken's role is silent (and very funny).
I wish I could find a good clip of him as Chatsworth on YouTube. But here's Franken playing a drunken waiter in the 1968 movie "The Party" (with Peter Sellers). It's not a silent movie, but Franken's role is silent (and very funny).
Eric Holder announces the end of "the Obama administration’s limited effort to scrutinize the counterterrorism programs carried out under President George W. Bush."
The NYT reports:
The Justice Department did not say publicly which cases had been under investigation. But officials had previously confirmed the identities of the prisoners: Gul Rahman, suspected of being a militant, who died in 2002 after being shackled to a concrete wall in near-freezing temperatures at a secret C.I.A. prison in Afghanistan known as the Salt Pit; and Manadel al-Jamadi, who died in C.I.A. custody in 2003 at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where his corpse was photographed packed in ice and wrapped in plastic.It's one thing to run for office, quite another to occupy it. You can criticize and express all manner of outrage from the sidelines, but when you are on the inside, it's different, and by cycling the Democratic Party into power, the American people got to learn something about what the Bush Administration did. Those who don't like Obama should see the value of what we learned.
Mr. Holder’s announcement might remove a possible target for Republicans during the presidential campaign. But the decision will disappoint liberals who supported President Obama when he ran in 2008 and denounced what he called torture and abuse of prisoners under his predecessor.
624 comments on the live-blogging thread last night.
Did the spam-bots find out I'd turned off word verification for commenting? I'll check it out. There's our liberal commenter Lindsey Meadows, who said (at 6:24 PM):
I didn't say much about Romney's speech last night, because I was way too tired by then. Our liberal friend Alex said: "ROmney talking too much about his family and church. Where are the policy initiatives? Obama is going to be speech-ifying policy like crazy next week." (Yeah, lotsa policy wonkery, that would have kept me awake.)
And our liberal Lindsey said: "I just watched Mitten with the sound on...sound on/sound off...same amount of policy specifics. Meade must be in seventh heaven." Oh, she wants policy too. If only they'd have bored us all to tears all week with specifics.
Shouting Thomas continued his lugubriousness:
Ah! No spam. Maybe some not-so-admirable comments in there, but nothing robotic, and so Morning on the Althouse Blog continues (i.e., no word verification for commenting). And I just want to say one thing about this supposed lack of policy specifics from the GOP and the implication of Democratic superiority on said specifics. I mean I want to quote something from Paul Ryan's speech:
I think I'll just have casual sex tonight. After Romney, I couldn't possibly feel more violated (or bored).When Clint Eastwood came on at 9, the liberal commenters, offset by Meade, went ageist:
elkh1 said... Clint is really really wobbly old.2 of the long-time conservative commenters picked up the age theme:
Meade said... Clint looks great.
Alex said... Clint looks old and jittery. Remember folks he's 82. When he was in his 40s, it was scary.... Clint is just embarrassing right now. There is a reason for the old folks home and you're seeing it. Shoot me before I ever get like this. Senile.
Pogo said... Old, jittery, but vicious as hell.What I liked about Clint's routine — which you had to trust not to feel nervous about — was when he said "We own this country... Politicians are employees of ours... When somebody does not do the job, we've got to let them go." As I said in this post, this was a play on something Romney said, something that's been used against Romney: "I like being able to fire people." Clint imposed the correct interpretation on that: When somebody does not do the job, we've got to let them go.
Shouting Thomas said... Unfortunately, Clint is really struggling. Sad to see the great man suffering the humiliation of old age.
Pogo said... No way, ST, he's an elderly man whose body betrays him a bit, but he's hitting a million right notes. Hurrah!
I didn't say much about Romney's speech last night, because I was way too tired by then. Our liberal friend Alex said: "ROmney talking too much about his family and church. Where are the policy initiatives? Obama is going to be speech-ifying policy like crazy next week." (Yeah, lotsa policy wonkery, that would have kept me awake.)
And our liberal Lindsey said: "I just watched Mitten with the sound on...sound on/sound off...same amount of policy specifics. Meade must be in seventh heaven." Oh, she wants policy too. If only they'd have bored us all to tears all week with specifics.
Shouting Thomas continued his lugubriousness:
Romney played small ball. I think that's what we need. He doesn't have an overriding theme, only the promise that he has the technical and managerial skills to lead.Meade responded:
Obama will promise social justice and payoffs to his favored groups.
The debates should be interesting.
Exactly right. What we need now is boring small ball competence. Time to put obama's failed presidency behind us. Romney will be a fine president.Lindsey with the liberal lady's focus on sex not baseball had no trouble seeing the opportunity to say:
Well by all appearances, you got a guy with small balls. I was actually hoping that all the non-policy fluff was just to woo the far right but I am now pretty locked into that being all he has. Sad really.If a man had said something equivalently sexual about a woman, Democrats would cry "war on women." If that kind of rhetoric is okay, we ought to call out Lindsey for her "war on men."
Ah! No spam. Maybe some not-so-admirable comments in there, but nothing robotic, and so Morning on the Althouse Blog continues (i.e., no word verification for commenting). And I just want to say one thing about this supposed lack of policy specifics from the GOP and the implication of Democratic superiority on said specifics. I mean I want to quote something from Paul Ryan's speech:
[President Obama] created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report.It was loaded with specifics.
He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing.Ryan put a long pause between "did" — the action word — and "exactly nothing."
"30 Best Quotes" from the GOP convention.
As seen by John Hawkins, with #1, #5, and #14 coming from Mike Huckabee. Was Huckabee that good? Here's the #1 quote:
By the way, speaking of what Democrats say, I can easily picture Democrats calling that quote racist. Why? For comparing Obama to children. Why doesn't somebody review each speech with an eye toward eliminating things like that? The Democrats in my head — whom I can hear giving their spin on any and everything — are saying: Because they really do want to reach white people in that residual racist part of their brain.
“The Democrats say we ought to give Barack Obama credit for trying. That sounds like the nonsense of giving every kid a trophy for showing up. Friends, we’re talking about leading the country, not playing on a third-grade soccer team! I realize this is the man who got a Nobel Peace Prize for what he would potentially do, but in the real world, you get the prize for producing something, not just promising it.”I don't think the Democrats are saying "we ought to give Barack Obama credit for trying," and the everybody-gets-a-trophy trope is hackneyed. It was a reasonably spiffy quote though, like something Rush Limbaugh would say ad libbing on his show in any given hour.
By the way, speaking of what Democrats say, I can easily picture Democrats calling that quote racist. Why? For comparing Obama to children. Why doesn't somebody review each speech with an eye toward eliminating things like that? The Democrats in my head — whom I can hear giving their spin on any and everything — are saying: Because they really do want to reach white people in that residual racist part of their brain.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Live-blogging Day 3 of the GOP Convention.
6:04: Settle in. It's going to be a long night. Are you looking forward to anything other than Rubio and Romney?
6:30: A Mormon invocation, from Ken Hutchins, thanking God for "the beauty of the heavens and the earth... a lasting testament of Thy love for us."
6:43: "Once again, it's morning in America!" announces Connie Mack, gesturing exuberantly.
6:47: Another story of an immigrant who started a business. It's the American Dream, Mack tells us. "It's morning in America," he repeats, and the tribute video to Ronald Reagan begins.
6:53: "Whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone," says the voice of the departed President, "I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence, rather than your doubts. In this springtime of hope, some lights seem eternal. America's is." And so, we hear the theme of the night: hope, dreams... the very words that won the last election for the other party.
6:59: It's Callista and Newt Gingrich, here to liken Romney to Reagan and Obama to Carter. It's like 1980 again, you must understand, and it's striking how President Carter and President Obama both wrecked out hopes and dreams within only 4 years. They're speaking in this slow, methodical way. I think this would have been livelier without Callista, but she's bringing the woman... and the beauty... very crisp beauty.
7:03: Hispanics: We love you! We really, really love you. Your values are Republican Party values. Hard work. Entrepreneurship. The American Dream. The successful Hispanics have been Republican. Identify with success, o Hispanic people! [This was a video. I'll post it here when I find it.]
7:06: It's Craig Romney, the youngest Romney son. He speaks at some length in Spanish, and it sounds fluent to me. He's really handsome too, by the way.
7:12: Jeb Bush comes out and speaks his first few words in Spanish. I'm picturing the Democrats suddenly scrambling to put more Hispanic in their convention.
7:40: Grant Bennett, a friend and fellow church member of Romney's, explains the work Romney did within the LDS Church. This is beautifully stated, explaining a life of service to others. Meade says, "Community organizing!" And I say, "No, he was ministering to individuals." There was no organizing.
7:47: An array of church members testifying to Romney's religious ministry. [This is very touching, parents with children who suffered and died.]
8:37: More testimonials from businesses that were helped by Mitt Romney and from Olympians who benefited from Mitt's leadership. This section is well-done. I'm not particularizing it, but let me say I'm impressed by it.
9:03: Clint Eastwood!
9:10: Clint's talking to an empty chair representing Obama. Oh, I don't think it's possible for him to do that to himself.
9:13: We own this country... Politicians are employees of ours... When somebody does not do the job, we've got to let them go. Note the echo with Mitt Romney's famous: "I like being able to fire people."
9:14: Marco Rubio! About Obama: "Our problem is not that he's a bad person. It's that he's a bad President."
10:42: And now, Romney has given his speech. It was a Romney speech.
6:30: A Mormon invocation, from Ken Hutchins, thanking God for "the beauty of the heavens and the earth... a lasting testament of Thy love for us."
6:43: "Once again, it's morning in America!" announces Connie Mack, gesturing exuberantly.
6:47: Another story of an immigrant who started a business. It's the American Dream, Mack tells us. "It's morning in America," he repeats, and the tribute video to Ronald Reagan begins.
6:53: "Whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone," says the voice of the departed President, "I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence, rather than your doubts. In this springtime of hope, some lights seem eternal. America's is." And so, we hear the theme of the night: hope, dreams... the very words that won the last election for the other party.
6:59: It's Callista and Newt Gingrich, here to liken Romney to Reagan and Obama to Carter. It's like 1980 again, you must understand, and it's striking how President Carter and President Obama both wrecked out hopes and dreams within only 4 years. They're speaking in this slow, methodical way. I think this would have been livelier without Callista, but she's bringing the woman... and the beauty... very crisp beauty.
7:03: Hispanics: We love you! We really, really love you. Your values are Republican Party values. Hard work. Entrepreneurship. The American Dream. The successful Hispanics have been Republican. Identify with success, o Hispanic people! [This was a video. I'll post it here when I find it.]
7:06: It's Craig Romney, the youngest Romney son. He speaks at some length in Spanish, and it sounds fluent to me. He's really handsome too, by the way.
7:12: Jeb Bush comes out and speaks his first few words in Spanish. I'm picturing the Democrats suddenly scrambling to put more Hispanic in their convention.
7:40: Grant Bennett, a friend and fellow church member of Romney's, explains the work Romney did within the LDS Church. This is beautifully stated, explaining a life of service to others. Meade says, "Community organizing!" And I say, "No, he was ministering to individuals." There was no organizing.
7:47: An array of church members testifying to Romney's religious ministry. [This is very touching, parents with children who suffered and died.]
8:37: More testimonials from businesses that were helped by Mitt Romney and from Olympians who benefited from Mitt's leadership. This section is well-done. I'm not particularizing it, but let me say I'm impressed by it.
9:03: Clint Eastwood!
9:10: Clint's talking to an empty chair representing Obama. Oh, I don't think it's possible for him to do that to himself.
9:13: We own this country... Politicians are employees of ours... When somebody does not do the job, we've got to let them go. Note the echo with Mitt Romney's famous: "I like being able to fire people."
9:14: Marco Rubio! About Obama: "Our problem is not that he's a bad person. It's that he's a bad President."
10:42: And now, Romney has given his speech. It was a Romney speech.
Democrat sends out a mailer saying crime has gone up "over 50% in our negrohood so far this year."
Supposedly a typo, but how does a typo like that happen?
Imagine if a Republican had done that. People would be saying the mask has slipped and this shows what all the Republicans are really like.
Imagine if a Republican had done that. People would be saying the mask has slipped and this shows what all the Republicans are really like.
If Jason Biggs were an important actor...
... it might matter that he tweeted this. But presumably, his career means something to him, so it's interesting to see that Hollywood is a place where a person could think that stuff like this is appreciated.
It's not, is it?
It's not, is it?
Chuck Todd said "the stupidest thing" Josh Marshall has ever heard.
It's just painful for poor Josh to watch. Todd somehow actually says: "Democrats wish they had the diversity of speakers and deep bench [of the GOP] to show America...." Gasp!
"Important fact: This letter was to his first wife."
Key comment in a comments thread about a contract Kurt Vonnegut made with his pregnant wife in January 1947.
The contract comes from this collection of Vonnegut's letters, which will be released in October.
If you're looking for something to read now, here's that book "Mortality," which Christopher Hitchens wrote as he was dying.
And here's a biography of David Foster Wallace — "Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story" — which just came out today.
The contract comes from this collection of Vonnegut's letters, which will be released in October.
If you're looking for something to read now, here's that book "Mortality," which Christopher Hitchens wrote as he was dying.
And here's a biography of David Foster Wallace — "Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story" — which just came out today.
Email from John Kerry: "I have one message burned into my memory..."
What?! I can't believe Kerry would evoke his old "memory which is seared — seared — in me" line. If you don't have that seared in your memory, here's a 2004 WaPo article, "Kerry's Cambodia Whopper."
It's weird to get email from a character from the past and have it begin with, essentially, remember me, the big liar. The email reads:
Kerry's name came up in a different point in the show yesterday, when I caller said:
Why don't we hear more about it? I assume it's the same thing Ann Romney was talking about the other night: "Mitt does not like to talk about how he has helped others because he sees it as a privilege, not a political talking point." In my mind, this connects to what Jesus said about charity and good works:
Jesus said:
And... city on a hill. City on a hill! Talk about your Republican conventions.
It's weird to get email from a character from the past and have it begin with, essentially, remember me, the big liar. The email reads:
I have one message burned into my memory for everyone who cares about the outcome of this year's presidential election:Meanwhile, over on Rush Limbaugh's show, the complaint is that the Republicans are afraid to attack Obama. After the first night of the convention, he quotes Fox News commentator Ed Rollins, who said: "Not hitting on Obama was a perfect way to go. We all know the Obama record and don't need to have it reinforced." That exasperates Rush:
Respond quickly and powerfully to attacks from the other side...
If you tune in to the convention, you'll see that Mitt Romney and his allies have no qualms about misleading voters if it means defeating President Obama.
But their attacks won't work if enough people step up to protect the President's record.
Clearly what we've known for years is true. The Republican hierarchy, from its consultants on down, truly believes that mentioning Obama by name and then criticizing will cause these swing voters that [focus groupster Frank] Luntz had that I told you about to run straight back to the Democrats. It is clear they believe it.Did you notice the name John Kerry in there?
Naturally, I profoundly disagree.
But I think also it's obvious that these people don't see this as a turning point election. They see it as just another one in the cycle. Here's Joe Trippi. Joe Trippi is a Democrat consultant. Trippi ran Howard Dean's ill-fated campaign in 2004 when John Kerry (who served in Vietnam, by the way) ended up being the nominee. He was also on the Fox show this morning. After Ed Rollins said, "Yep, yep! Not hitting Obama was the perfect way to go," Joe Trippi said...
TRIPPI: Christie last night, there's been some disappointment he didn't go after Obama enough. But what he did was talk to the undecideds out there. If he had pounded on Obama in that way, I think it woulda turned those people off.
RUSH: Folks, I'm literally going insane hearing this. I want to know why these independents don't get turned off when Obama calls Romney a murderer and a felon. Why is it that independents only get turned off? Why is it that our guys are agreeing with a Democrat consultant? Why is it that the independents only get turned off when we're critical? And we're not even being "critical" when we tell the truth!
Kerry's name came up in a different point in the show yesterday, when I caller said:
You know what, Rush, I am so sick of the Democrats painting Mitt Romney as some out of touch rich guy. I mean, can we say John Kerry, John Edwards, Algore, and you know I see Kerry is scheduled to speak at the DNC next week.... So they're actually featuring the most out of touch rich guy at their own convention. I mean, how can they get away with this, Rush?Rush said:
'Cause he's a Democrat, and Democrats care about poor people and Republicans don't, and that's it. I'm doing this my 25th year. I have every day, for 24-plus years, said what you just said. I've been pointing it out. I've written columns about it. I've said it on TV. I've said it on radio. I've made speeches about it. Kerry is five times wealthier than Romney, and... he inherited it all, and he's much more flagrant in his consumption of his wealth.... than Romney is.I think he means that Kerry married into money. His wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry inherited her money, which Kerry married into.
Romney gave away his inheritance. He gave it away. He donated it to charity. Look, I understand your frustration, 'cause you don't like being on defense. Why do we have to respond to these guys? They feel the need to do it because the truth still isn't out there, and it's wrapped up in something that isn't complicated at all. Kerry is a Democrat; they care about the poor. Republicans only care about the rich and Wall Street, and that's what doofuses, morons, in this country believe. The people who are not informed, who think they're lifelong Democrats, born and raised hearing that every day of their lives, particularly if they're members of unions, that's what they've heard.I must say I did not know that Mitt Romney gave away his inheritance. I hear it said over and over that he was born into money, and I don't remember ever hearing that Romney gave the money he inherited from his father away. But it's true. He gave the money to found a school at Brigham Young University.
Why don't we hear more about it? I assume it's the same thing Ann Romney was talking about the other night: "Mitt does not like to talk about how he has helped others because he sees it as a privilege, not a political talking point." In my mind, this connects to what Jesus said about charity and good works:
Be careful! When you do good things, don't do them in front of people to be seen by them. If you do that, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.And yet the task at the moment is winning the Presidency (not heaven). We're told people don't find Romney likeable enough, and the Democrats pound away on the message that he's a horrible man. He doesn't care about people.
When you give to the poor, don't be like the hypocrites. They blow trumpets in the synagogues and on the streets so that people will see them and honor them. I tell you the truth, those hypocrites already have their full reward. So when you give to the poor, don't let anyone know what you are doing. Your giving should be done in secret. Your Father can see what is done in secret, and he will reward you.
Jesus said:
People will insult you and hurt you. They will lie and say all kinds of evil things about you because you follow me. But when they do, you will be blessed. Rejoice and be glad, because you have a great reward waiting for you in heaven. People did the same evil things to the prophets who lived before you.But then, reading on, we see:
"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its salty taste, it cannot be made salty again. It is good for nothing, except to be thrown out and walked on.That's saying let your good works show. I don't want to say Jesus contradicted himself. Commenters will explain this seeming discrepancy, which is undoubtedly the subject of numerous sermons that I have not sat through. But I have read that passage many times over the years.
"You are the light that gives light to the world. A city that is built on a hill cannot be hidden. And people don't hide a light under a bowl. They put it on a lampstand so the light shines for all the people in the house. In the same way, you should be a light for other people. Live so that they will see the good things you do and will praise your Father in heaven.
And... city on a hill. City on a hill! Talk about your Republican conventions.
"I replied to ads people had posted to the casual encounters section of craigslist."
"I asked if I could photograph them in visual representations of their ads. Some said yes."
The link isn't NSFW, but what it links to definitely is.
The comment (at 2:21) — "Strange how many of the photographs are reminiscent of Abu Ghraib" — is written by me (under my Metafilter pseudonym, which predates this blog).
I think the photography project is quite brilliant, and I'm interested in how it made you feel, if you clicked through the photographs. How far did you click? How did your feelings progress? Why did you stop when you stopped?
The link isn't NSFW, but what it links to definitely is.
The comment (at 2:21) — "Strange how many of the photographs are reminiscent of Abu Ghraib" — is written by me (under my Metafilter pseudonym, which predates this blog).
I think the photography project is quite brilliant, and I'm interested in how it made you feel, if you clicked through the photographs. How far did you click? How did your feelings progress? Why did you stop when you stopped?
"And when Ryan riffed on the handful of jobs he briefly held, his Ayn Randian roots were clear."
Writes Joan Walsh at Salon. Here's what Paul Ryan said that Walsh thinks is "straight out of Rand, and ’50s anti-Communist paranoia":
But she doesn't think she's openly embracing it. She thinks Ryan is paranoid to imply that the Democrats favor "the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners." Pressed, she might — I assume — assert that it's fine for individuals to try to come up with their own ideas about what they want to do with their lives and to set out to achieve their goals, but that it's inaccurate to portray this enterprise as solitary and in defiance of the larger efforts of government and society (which they depend on no matter what they do).
But that's not what Walsh says. She's stirring up partisan discord and not inclined to concede that our differences, in the United States, are only a matter of leaning toward individualism or collectivism as we mostly keep to the middle of the road.
“When I was waiting tables, washing dishes, or mowing lawns for money, I never thought of myself as stuck in some station in life... I was on my own path, my own journey, an American journey where I could think for myself, decide for myself, define happiness for myself. That’s what we do in this country. That’s the American Dream. That’s freedom, and I’ll take it any day over the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners.”If you believe the individual can think and decide for himself and pursue happiness as he defines it... you're delusional — in Walsh's view. You see what she's saying? She's saying you didn't build that — the very phrase Obama is straining to disown. You didn't build that, you can't build that, and you're psychotic if you imagine that you can. She's deeply into the collectivism the Democrats don't want to openly embrace.
But she doesn't think she's openly embracing it. She thinks Ryan is paranoid to imply that the Democrats favor "the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners." Pressed, she might — I assume — assert that it's fine for individuals to try to come up with their own ideas about what they want to do with their lives and to set out to achieve their goals, but that it's inaccurate to portray this enterprise as solitary and in defiance of the larger efforts of government and society (which they depend on no matter what they do).
But that's not what Walsh says. She's stirring up partisan discord and not inclined to concede that our differences, in the United States, are only a matter of leaning toward individualism or collectivism as we mostly keep to the middle of the road.
No, I won't apologize for voting for Obama, but Meade regrets voting for McCain.
My refusal to apologize hinges on my 3 reasons for voting for Obama: 1. I wanted Democrats to have to take responsibility terrorism and security issues instead of being able to get away with sniping from the sidelines, 2. The central issue of the day was economics, and McCain had professed and demonstrated that he was unprepared to handle it, and 3. I believed Obama had the potential to advance us in some new way on racial matters.
In 2012, from my point of view: 1. Mission accomplished, 2. McCain isn't the alternative to Obama, and 3. Potential miserably squandered as a flailing Democratic party and its media facilitators use race any old way they want in the short-sighted pursuit of partisan goals.
And what about Meade? Last night, as we watched the GOP convention — and he fully intends to vote for Romney — he told me he's sorry he voted for McCain. Paul Ryan was speaking. This and more could not have happened without Obama. (I'll let Meade explain more in the comments, and I encourage you to try to understand why he's thinking this now.)
In 2012, from my point of view: 1. Mission accomplished, 2. McCain isn't the alternative to Obama, and 3. Potential miserably squandered as a flailing Democratic party and its media facilitators use race any old way they want in the short-sighted pursuit of partisan goals.
And what about Meade? Last night, as we watched the GOP convention — and he fully intends to vote for Romney — he told me he's sorry he voted for McCain. Paul Ryan was speaking. This and more could not have happened without Obama. (I'll let Meade explain more in the comments, and I encourage you to try to understand why he's thinking this now.)
"Support Prince Harry with a naked salute."
"Harry’s nude fans range from young women to male soldiers... all posed saluting the prince."
(No full nudity at the link. Lots of pics though.)
(No full nudity at the link. Lots of pics though.)
"I hope people remember George, and I think they will, for having the determination and the toughness and the persistence..."
"... to be able to see... our country through such a very difficult time after the terrorist attack," said Laura.
"There was never a taint of scandal around his presidency," said Bush the Elder. "And I think we forget the importance of that. But they'll remember him for being a good, honest president that got a lot of things done, but I think the thing I take pride in is integrity."
Video at the link. It's the video that was shown at the GOP convention last night, a convention where the party's last failed candidate spoke at great length. The party's 2 living Presidents appeared only in a charming, modest — overly modest — video. Sad. Almost shameful.
Was the Elder correct? Never a taint of scandal around W's presidency? Here's a Salon article, published in 2005 (before the second term), listing "34 scandals" from the first term — "every one of them worse than Whitewater."
Imagine if Salon were committed to maintaining a single standard for the meaning of "scandal" and had to make an equivalent list for the Obama administration. How many scandals would it list? It too absurd to imagine. Holding Obama to the insane standard that was imposed on Bush?!
Ironically, this is one of the reasons I voted for Obama and I won't apologize for that vote. I anticipated that Obama would have to own many of the policies that Bush — with his "determination and... toughness and... persistence" — followed. The Democratic Party would not be able to continue standing on the sidelines, calling everything outrageous, "a scandal," with the press amplifying each charge. They would do many of the same things and preen about their toughness on terrorism, and the press would boost them along.
And so now we are here in the fall of 2012, and that has been accomplished. Can you imagine where we would be if McCain had been President and the carping on the sidelines had continued all these 4 years? Would McCain even be attempting to get reelected?
"There was never a taint of scandal around his presidency," said Bush the Elder. "And I think we forget the importance of that. But they'll remember him for being a good, honest president that got a lot of things done, but I think the thing I take pride in is integrity."
Video at the link. It's the video that was shown at the GOP convention last night, a convention where the party's last failed candidate spoke at great length. The party's 2 living Presidents appeared only in a charming, modest — overly modest — video. Sad. Almost shameful.
Was the Elder correct? Never a taint of scandal around W's presidency? Here's a Salon article, published in 2005 (before the second term), listing "34 scandals" from the first term — "every one of them worse than Whitewater."
Imagine if Salon were committed to maintaining a single standard for the meaning of "scandal" and had to make an equivalent list for the Obama administration. How many scandals would it list? It too absurd to imagine. Holding Obama to the insane standard that was imposed on Bush?!
Ironically, this is one of the reasons I voted for Obama and I won't apologize for that vote. I anticipated that Obama would have to own many of the policies that Bush — with his "determination and... toughness and... persistence" — followed. The Democratic Party would not be able to continue standing on the sidelines, calling everything outrageous, "a scandal," with the press amplifying each charge. They would do many of the same things and preen about their toughness on terrorism, and the press would boost them along.
And so now we are here in the fall of 2012, and that has been accomplished. Can you imagine where we would be if McCain had been President and the carping on the sidelines had continued all these 4 years? Would McCain even be attempting to get reelected?
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Live-blogging Day 2 of the GOP Convention.
6:03: Ayla Brown — the erstwhile "American Idol" contestant and daughter of Senator Scott Brown — sings the National Anthem.
6:07: "Please release each one of us from ego"... part of the invocation, given by a Sikh.
6:08: The color guard are amputee veterans, which we see because they're wearing shorts, earning a new, immediate exception to my "men in shorts" rule.
6:10: A bombastic tribute to Ron Paul. "No, no, I'm not going to be elected," he said to his wife. "To be elected, you've got to be like Santa Claus." Rand Paul says one thing he likes about his father is the lobbyists don't even bother to come by his office.
6:29: I found it hard to watch Mitch McConnell. I almost got out my sketchbook and pen, though, because his face says "Caricature me!" So I moved from C-SPAN over to CNN. (I'm recording both, and also Fox News.) They had an interview with Paul Ryan, in which Gloria Borger prodded him about how he felt when, as a 16-year-old boy, he discovered his father dead. Ryan moved on to how you have to live knowing you could die at any time, so Gloria asked why he didn't live fast and run right away for President. He said there were others who could do that job, but he was the only one would could father his young children. Gloria did not proceed to ask why then is he taking on the VP slot, but I guess that's a very short campaign period and, frankly, once you get it, it's a lot less work than chairing the House Finance Committee. Then Piers Morgan was interviewing Michele Bachmann, and the 2 of them agreed that Ann Romney was just lovely and then enthused about the "miracle" of the 2 of them agreeing, which Wolf Blitzer then echoed, sending me back to C-SPAN which was showing the on-stage entertainer, a horrifying aging rock singer who was belting the line "I'm back in the game" over and over.
6:30: Rand Paul: "You know when the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare, the first words out of my mouth were 'I still think it's unconstitutional.'" Pushed to reflect, he reflected, and he still thinks it's unconstitutional. "The whole damned thing is unconstitutional." Meade says, "He said 'damned.'" And then, more seriously: "What we have here is crazy old Ron Paul" — and Meade makes a Ron Paul face — "morphing into Rand Paul."
6:50: Video of the Bushes, 41 and 43, and their wives, Barbara and Laura. So they weren't entirely banished from this place. They are circumspect, yet charming, claiming their place in history without seeming the slightest bit arrogant. Old Bush even does his Dana Carvey imitation imitation: "Not gon' do it. Wouldn't be prudent."
7:00: John McCain. Why is he here and not George Bush? McCain lost. Bush won twice. Meade says: "Because Bush is through with politics." McCain gives a paean to foreign wars in the cause of freedom, and the crowd's response is tepid.
7:50: Danny Gokey — another "American Idol" person. Another Wisconsin person.
8:00: Rob Portman, the short-list guy who came up short. "We need Romney/Ryan and we need them now." He seems perfectly fine, but I am glad he was not Romney's choice. There's some insurmountable dullness about him, no matter what he says, no matter how enthusiastically.
8:31: Another VP also-ran, Tim Pawlenty. He's reading jokes. For example: Obama is "the tattoo President" — it seemed cool at the time, but you look at it and say "What was I thinking?"
9:15: Huckabee and Rice both gave very long speeches that were neither bad nor good. Here's some text from Rice's speech.
9:19: Biggest cheer of the night comes when Gov. Susana Martinez says: "I carried at 357 Smith & Wesson Magnum" (referring to her experience, as an 18-year-old, working for her parents security guard business, protecting the Catholic church at bingo times). She's a good speaker. A nice edge of passion in her voice. With toughness.
9:29: Both Meade and I thought: We may be looking at the first woman President of the United States.
9:30: Paul Ryan. Meade says: "He looks like a young JFK only healthy." I'm struck by this quote, directly attacking Obama: "I have never seen opponents so silent about their record and so desperate to keep their power. They've run out of ideas. Their moment came and went. Fear and division is all they've got left."
9:40: As Paul Ryan expresses his love for the state of Wisconsin, the C-SPAN camera closes in on Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, and we see there's a tear rolling down his cheek.
That was pointed out by Meade, who confesses to a tear of his own.
9:55: Paul Ryan gives a moving tribute to his mother, who, as a new widow, commuted 40 miles a day to Madison — to my school, the University of Wisconsin — to learn the skills she used to build a new business and a new life in which her happiness was not just in the past and to become his role model. After a long ovation from the crowd, Ryan moves into what will be the greatest iteration of what has been the convention's them: You did build that. He says:
6:07: "Please release each one of us from ego"... part of the invocation, given by a Sikh.
6:08: The color guard are amputee veterans, which we see because they're wearing shorts, earning a new, immediate exception to my "men in shorts" rule.
6:10: A bombastic tribute to Ron Paul. "No, no, I'm not going to be elected," he said to his wife. "To be elected, you've got to be like Santa Claus." Rand Paul says one thing he likes about his father is the lobbyists don't even bother to come by his office.
6:29: I found it hard to watch Mitch McConnell. I almost got out my sketchbook and pen, though, because his face says "Caricature me!" So I moved from C-SPAN over to CNN. (I'm recording both, and also Fox News.) They had an interview with Paul Ryan, in which Gloria Borger prodded him about how he felt when, as a 16-year-old boy, he discovered his father dead. Ryan moved on to how you have to live knowing you could die at any time, so Gloria asked why he didn't live fast and run right away for President. He said there were others who could do that job, but he was the only one would could father his young children. Gloria did not proceed to ask why then is he taking on the VP slot, but I guess that's a very short campaign period and, frankly, once you get it, it's a lot less work than chairing the House Finance Committee. Then Piers Morgan was interviewing Michele Bachmann, and the 2 of them agreed that Ann Romney was just lovely and then enthused about the "miracle" of the 2 of them agreeing, which Wolf Blitzer then echoed, sending me back to C-SPAN which was showing the on-stage entertainer, a horrifying aging rock singer who was belting the line "I'm back in the game" over and over.
6:30: Rand Paul: "You know when the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare, the first words out of my mouth were 'I still think it's unconstitutional.'" Pushed to reflect, he reflected, and he still thinks it's unconstitutional. "The whole damned thing is unconstitutional." Meade says, "He said 'damned.'" And then, more seriously: "What we have here is crazy old Ron Paul" — and Meade makes a Ron Paul face — "morphing into Rand Paul."
6:50: Video of the Bushes, 41 and 43, and their wives, Barbara and Laura. So they weren't entirely banished from this place. They are circumspect, yet charming, claiming their place in history without seeming the slightest bit arrogant. Old Bush even does his Dana Carvey imitation imitation: "Not gon' do it. Wouldn't be prudent."
7:00: John McCain. Why is he here and not George Bush? McCain lost. Bush won twice. Meade says: "Because Bush is through with politics." McCain gives a paean to foreign wars in the cause of freedom, and the crowd's response is tepid.
7:50: Danny Gokey — another "American Idol" person. Another Wisconsin person.
8:00: Rob Portman, the short-list guy who came up short. "We need Romney/Ryan and we need them now." He seems perfectly fine, but I am glad he was not Romney's choice. There's some insurmountable dullness about him, no matter what he says, no matter how enthusiastically.
8:31: Another VP also-ran, Tim Pawlenty. He's reading jokes. For example: Obama is "the tattoo President" — it seemed cool at the time, but you look at it and say "What was I thinking?"
9:15: Huckabee and Rice both gave very long speeches that were neither bad nor good. Here's some text from Rice's speech.
9:19: Biggest cheer of the night comes when Gov. Susana Martinez says: "I carried at 357 Smith & Wesson Magnum" (referring to her experience, as an 18-year-old, working for her parents security guard business, protecting the Catholic church at bingo times). She's a good speaker. A nice edge of passion in her voice. With toughness.
9:29: Both Meade and I thought: We may be looking at the first woman President of the United States.
9:30: Paul Ryan. Meade says: "He looks like a young JFK only healthy." I'm struck by this quote, directly attacking Obama: "I have never seen opponents so silent about their record and so desperate to keep their power. They've run out of ideas. Their moment came and went. Fear and division is all they've got left."
9:40: As Paul Ryan expresses his love for the state of Wisconsin, the C-SPAN camera closes in on Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, and we see there's a tear rolling down his cheek.
That was pointed out by Meade, who confesses to a tear of his own.
9:55: Paul Ryan gives a moving tribute to his mother, who, as a new widow, commuted 40 miles a day to Madison — to my school, the University of Wisconsin — to learn the skills she used to build a new business and a new life in which her happiness was not just in the past and to become his role model. After a long ovation from the crowd, Ryan moves into what will be the greatest iteration of what has been the convention's them: You did build that. He says:
Behind every small business, there's a story worth knowing. All the corner shops in our towns and cities, the restaurants, cleaners, gyms, hair salon, hardware stores — these didn't come out of nowhere. A lot of heart goes into each one. And if small business people say they made it on their own, all they are saying is that nobody else worked 7 days a week in their place, nobody showed up in their place to open the door at 5 in the morning, nobody did their thinking and worrying and sweating for them. After all that work and in a bad economy, it sure doesn't help to hear from their President that government gets the credit. What they deserve to hear is the truth: Yes, you did build that!11:10: Ryan did a brilliant job. It was much more than a fine speech and an excellent delivery. He embodied that speech. We saw a brilliant candidate.
"The Suffragette Summer School, a two-day feminist training camp... promises to help 'budding Pussy Rioters' hone headline-grabbing techniques."
"Feminism can be quite isolating because it is so stigmatized... It can be quite hard to tell people you don’t know that you’re a feminist, because of these persistent stereotypes — people think feminists are anti-men, are humorless, have to dress in a certain way — so the very act of coming together can be quite powerful."
The very act of coming together... Oh, my. That does suggests a headline-grabbing technique.
Now, don't get mad at me. You wanted to show you're not humorless.
I know: That's not funny.
The very act of coming together... Oh, my. That does suggests a headline-grabbing technique.
Now, don't get mad at me. You wanted to show you're not humorless.
I know: That's not funny.
"I was Episcopalian, he was a Mormon," said Ann Romney, and Ross Douthat says that was "straining to make an affinity sound like an impediment."
Douthat lumps Episcopalians and Mormons together. He's got a big theory about it. Mormons are the WASPs of the West or something. Douthat isn't talking about the religious aspects of these religious groups but "a communitarian spirit and a flinty work ethic, and an attitude toward their own success that mixed self-effacement and noblesse oblige."
Her best line evoked generations of reticent, public-spirited Brahmins: “Mitt does not like to talk about how he has helped others because he sees it as a privilege, not a political talking point.” The same was true of her strongest passage:No one will work harder. No one will care more. And no one will move heaven and earth like Mitt Romney to make this country a better place to live.
After only 1 day of the convention, Romney gets a 5 point bump.
From The Hill:
Romney had a 43-percent favorable and 44-percent unfavorable rating in nine battleground states heading into the convention, according to an average compiled by Real Clear Politics.
A survey conducted by Wilson Perkins Allen Opinion Research in nine battle ground states Tuesday evening found Romney’s favorable rating among likely voters had jumped to 48 percent. His unfavorable rating dipped to 39.
If a man dares to horse around with children he doesn't know... he could get into trouble.
Look what happened to Madison's Brett Hulsey, who just pled "no contest" to a disorderly conduct charge for —as the police put it — "the totality of the events that happened," mostly "engaging in horseplay with a child who is a stranger to him -- in the water, no less."
According to Hulsey, he chided a boy about splashing some girls and then, as he walked past him, shouted "boo" — causing the boy to roll off his inner tube into shallow water.
Supposedly, this creeped out the parents and grandparents. The mother, according to the police reports "worried if this individual may have done this before or may do more in the future."
Why not fight the charge? Hulsey says he wants to "move on." Does that work in a political career?
There are many old posts on this blog about Brett Hulsey, who represents my district in the state legislature and was a prominent figure in the 2011 Wisconsin protests. Here he is saying "boo" to Meade:
ADDED: Part of "the totality of the events" was photographing the children. Is that wrong? Here's some discussion of that topic:
1. "A pair of photographers began taking pictures of a large group of kids swimming in the Frog Pond at Boston Common when they were told they were not allowed." ("If I am on assignment covering a parade or some type of event, I photograph kids if I see a cool picture, but then I try to talk to the parents and hand them my card and even show them the photo, not that I have to, but I really don’t want to be labeled a pedophile.")
2. "Parents Forbidden From Photographing Own Kids At Public Pool."
3. "Is it ok to post pictures of other people's kids on the internet?" ("Yesterday I ended up in a conversation with a stranger on Facebook in which she said that she took pictures of her kids and their friends at events like her kids' birthday parties and posted them on Facebook for her friends to see. I was gobsmacked...")
4. "Posting Photos of Other People’s Children." ("We all take photos at school plays, sporting events, graduations, whatever our children are involved with.... But do we have the right to impose our decisions about what is public and private on other people’s children?")
According to Hulsey, he chided a boy about splashing some girls and then, as he walked past him, shouted "boo" — causing the boy to roll off his inner tube into shallow water.
Supposedly, this creeped out the parents and grandparents. The mother, according to the police reports "worried if this individual may have done this before or may do more in the future."
Why not fight the charge? Hulsey says he wants to "move on." Does that work in a political career?
There are many old posts on this blog about Brett Hulsey, who represents my district in the state legislature and was a prominent figure in the 2011 Wisconsin protests. Here he is saying "boo" to Meade:
ADDED: Part of "the totality of the events" was photographing the children. Is that wrong? Here's some discussion of that topic:
1. "A pair of photographers began taking pictures of a large group of kids swimming in the Frog Pond at Boston Common when they were told they were not allowed." ("If I am on assignment covering a parade or some type of event, I photograph kids if I see a cool picture, but then I try to talk to the parents and hand them my card and even show them the photo, not that I have to, but I really don’t want to be labeled a pedophile.")
2. "Parents Forbidden From Photographing Own Kids At Public Pool."
3. "Is it ok to post pictures of other people's kids on the internet?" ("Yesterday I ended up in a conversation with a stranger on Facebook in which she said that she took pictures of her kids and their friends at events like her kids' birthday parties and posted them on Facebook for her friends to see. I was gobsmacked...")
4. "Posting Photos of Other People’s Children." ("We all take photos at school plays, sporting events, graduations, whatever our children are involved with.... But do we have the right to impose our decisions about what is public and private on other people’s children?")
That semi-starvation diet that was supposed to make you live longer — based on monkey experiments?
After 25 years, the results are in: The starved monkeys didn't live any longer than the unstarved monkeys. Cancer, heart disease — again, no difference. So if you've been straining toward semi-immortality by counting grains of brown rice or whatever... have a sandwich and a good cry.
Then there is Mark Mattson, chief of the laboratory of neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging, who was not part of the monkey study. He believes there is merit to caloric restriction, but his routine is to do it intermittently, eating much less, but not every day. It can help the brain, he says, as well as make people healthier and probably make them live longer.It can help the brain, he says... demonstrating not the most impressive brain.
Dr. Mattson, who is 5 foot 9 and weighs 130 pounds, skips breakfast and lunch on weekdays and skips breakfast on weekends.
“I get a little hungry,” he acknowledged. “But we think being hungry is actually good.”
"It was only when the store opened I learnt Hitler had killed six million people."
Says the owner of a clothing store — in India — called "Hitler" (which has a swastika as the dot on the "i").
"I will change it (the name) if people want to compensate me for the money we have spent -- the logo, the hoarding, the business cards, the brand," Rajesh Shah...
Shah insisted that until the store opened he did not know who Adolf Hitler was and that Hitler was a nickname given to the grandfather of his store partner because "he was very strict."
"I didn't know how much the name would disturb people...."...
The row evoked memories of a controversy six years ago when a Mumbai restaurant owner called his cafe "Hitler's Cross" and put a swastika on the hoarding, claiming Hitler was a "catchy" name.
Morning-after thoughts about the first night of the GOP convention.
Why didn't I live-blog the GOP convention last night? I'd thought I would, and I think I live-blogged every day of both parties' conventions in 2004 and 2008. I watched part of the afternoon roll call and all of the evening show. But I didn't want to say something about each of the speeches as I listened, though this morning I wish I had.
I watched on C-SPAN. I cannot tolerate the channels that have people who talk about what is going on while it's going one. They are obviously not listening, so what are they doing — other than getting in the way? But when you watch on C-SPAN, it's just a bunch of speeches. Speeches are speeches. There's a sameness to them. A good line now and then. A nice line reading. Themes emerge. It seemed to me that the main theme was that Americans work hard and construct their own families' economic well-being. There were a lot of "We Built It" signs (playing off the Republican's favorite Obama quote, "You didn't build that").
Chris Christie, the keynote speaker, was the main speaker who had his own distinctive theme: Truth. Americans are ready to hear the truth about government and economics. He told the truth in New Jersey, and he got elected, and he fixed things, and now this truth thing is going national. Without checking the text, I'm not sure how directly Christie associated Obama with not telling the truth, but I note that Obama was always the "dreams" guy. Talking tough about truth may be the perfect counterbalance to Obama's supremely — unfairly! — effective "hope" theme.
Who was the best speaker last night? Maybe it wasn't Christie. Maybe it was Rick Santorum. What am I saying? All that hands-touching-hands business. It got to me, and I am not a social conservative. I cried when he talked about Bella. Santorum was off the "we built it" theme. He was the one speaker — as I remember it — who talked about caring for people. But who votes based on caring? Don't those people vote Democrat?
I say that to Meade, and he goes on about how fixing the economy is the best way for government to care for people. That's not my point. Of course, that's true. That's rational. But I'm talking about the voters who imagine suffering children and feel the importance of love as they arrive at an emotion-based decision. Those people vote Democratic, don't they?
ADDED: Ann Romney carried the main "We Built It" theme by portraying Mitt as building his own wealth, starting out from nothing... basement apartment... ate a lot of pasta and tuna.... And her grandfather was a coal miner. In Wales.
But did she humanize him? I read in the press about a thousand times that it was her job to humanize him. Isn't it racist and sexist to portray Mitt Romney as inhuman?
I watched on C-SPAN. I cannot tolerate the channels that have people who talk about what is going on while it's going one. They are obviously not listening, so what are they doing — other than getting in the way? But when you watch on C-SPAN, it's just a bunch of speeches. Speeches are speeches. There's a sameness to them. A good line now and then. A nice line reading. Themes emerge. It seemed to me that the main theme was that Americans work hard and construct their own families' economic well-being. There were a lot of "We Built It" signs (playing off the Republican's favorite Obama quote, "You didn't build that").
Chris Christie, the keynote speaker, was the main speaker who had his own distinctive theme: Truth. Americans are ready to hear the truth about government and economics. He told the truth in New Jersey, and he got elected, and he fixed things, and now this truth thing is going national. Without checking the text, I'm not sure how directly Christie associated Obama with not telling the truth, but I note that Obama was always the "dreams" guy. Talking tough about truth may be the perfect counterbalance to Obama's supremely — unfairly! — effective "hope" theme.
Who was the best speaker last night? Maybe it wasn't Christie. Maybe it was Rick Santorum. What am I saying? All that hands-touching-hands business. It got to me, and I am not a social conservative. I cried when he talked about Bella. Santorum was off the "we built it" theme. He was the one speaker — as I remember it — who talked about caring for people. But who votes based on caring? Don't those people vote Democrat?
I say that to Meade, and he goes on about how fixing the economy is the best way for government to care for people. That's not my point. Of course, that's true. That's rational. But I'm talking about the voters who imagine suffering children and feel the importance of love as they arrive at an emotion-based decision. Those people vote Democratic, don't they?
ADDED: Ann Romney carried the main "We Built It" theme by portraying Mitt as building his own wealth, starting out from nothing... basement apartment... ate a lot of pasta and tuna.... And her grandfather was a coal miner. In Wales.
But did she humanize him? I read in the press about a thousand times that it was her job to humanize him. Isn't it racist and sexist to portray Mitt Romney as inhuman?
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
"I never thought I'd say this, but we're going to be the New Jersey of the West."
"Oregon is going to be the next red state on the left coast."
Just now, as the roll call proceeds at the GOP convention.
UPDATE: "The 51st State"... Puerto Rico!
UPDATE 2: I recorded Governor Scott Walker announcing the Wisconsin vote:
Just now, as the roll call proceeds at the GOP convention.
UPDATE: "The 51st State"... Puerto Rico!
UPDATE 2: I recorded Governor Scott Walker announcing the Wisconsin vote:
Photos from the Go Topless Protest at the White House.
Warning, lots of large photos of breasts at the link, which I recommend not for the usual gawking at breasts, but for the careful contemplation of the expression and demeanor of the various women. The pictures tell a story, and each woman is different — not just in the size and shape of her breasts — but in her attitude about joining this demonstration... and the way that attitude evolves as the demonstration progresses and as the various women perceive the differences in breasts and attitudes of the other women. There are some men too... and onlookers taking all the photographs they want, which is part of the evolving scene. It's humanity at its most hilarious. Highly recommended!
"Reclaim Women’s Equality" rally at the Wisconsin Capitol draws only 100 people.
"Wendi Kent... had hoped enough would attend to encircle the Capitol...."
I love this picture of what "I am woman, hear me roar" looks like in Wisconsin nowadays.
She said she invited Republican and Democratic state lawmakers. She told me a representative from Madison Rep. Brett Hulsey’s office was the only one who responded, to say he couldn’t attend.Good old Brett Hulsey. At least he responded!
I love this picture of what "I am woman, hear me roar" looks like in Wisconsin nowadays.
Fish politics, insect politics.
You may know I'm a longtime fan of the 1986 movie "The Fly," especially the part where the main character, the scientist-turned-fly, has his rant about "insect politics." ("Have you heard of insect politics? Neither have I. Insects don't have politics.... they're very brutal. No compassion.... no compromise. We can't trust the insect. I'd like to become the first insect politician. I'd like to, but.... I'm an insect.... who dreamed he was a man, and loved it. But now the dream is over, and the insect is awake.")
I'm always alert to stories that can take my blog tag "insect politics."
And I love lawprof/public intellectual Stanley Fish, who's written many cool books and in recent years has been doing a column on the NYT website. I was already delighted to see that Fish had put up a new column on the Dinesh D'Souza movie "2016: Obama's America," but my delight bubbled over into ecstasy when I arrived at the insect politics:
Now, let's get serious. Fish says D'Souza "founders on the fallacy of assuming that the adjective 'American' has a fixed meaning with which everyone, or everyone who is right-thinking and patriotic, agrees." Here we go! No fixed meaning... Fish himself is was part of the intellectual stew in which young Obama was immersed in college and law school.
Fish says D'Souza's ideas are not ideas. Is that an idea? Fish says D'Souza is doing "demonization." Is Fish demonizing D'Souza? Who gets to say what can be said in this contest over the meaning of America? Must one side don boxing gloves while the other side punches back — "twice as hard" — bare-fisted?
I'm always alert to stories that can take my blog tag "insect politics."
And I love lawprof/public intellectual Stanley Fish, who's written many cool books and in recent years has been doing a column on the NYT website. I was already delighted to see that Fish had put up a new column on the Dinesh D'Souza movie "2016: Obama's America," but my delight bubbled over into ecstasy when I arrived at the insect politics:
Unlike the once glorious but fallen empires [D'Souza] recalls reading about as a child in India, America, he declares, is an “empire of ideals” — individual rights, freedom of choice, upward mobility limited only by your willingness to work hard; and the fact that the nation has not always lived up to its ideals is a testament to the power they exert even as they are being breached.Ant-colonialist authors! This sounds very brutal! I thought Obama was the "empathy" guy, that he was 22 points out ahead of Romney when people were asked who cares about you. But now... No compassion. Whatever happened to the dream?
In contrast, Obama, first at Columbia and later at Harvard, is influenced by leftist teachers like Edward Said and Roberto Unger, immerses himself in texts by Marxist, feminist and ant-colonialist authors, and thus fleshes out the lineaments of “his father’s third world collectivism.”
[D'Souza] rejects birtherism, the contention that Obama was born in Kenya and is hence not an American citizen; but he replaces it with a back-door, or metaphorical, birtherism when he characterizes Obama as an alien being, as a fifth-column party of one who has pretended to be an American, and technically is one, but really is something else.You mean... the ant-colonialist?
Now, let's get serious. Fish says D'Souza "founders on the fallacy of assuming that the adjective 'American' has a fixed meaning with which everyone, or everyone who is right-thinking and patriotic, agrees." Here we go! No fixed meaning... Fish himself is was part of the intellectual stew in which young Obama was immersed in college and law school.
But the meaning of America is continually contested in essays, books, backyard conversations, talk shows and, most of all, in elections. It is often said, and it is true, that the opposing parties in an election have “different visions for America.” There are many ways of describing the alternative visions offered to us in a year like this; but describing one of them as un-American and its proponent as a foreign intruder is not to further discussion but to foreclose it and to replace the contest of ideas with the rhetoric of demonization.Let's assume Fish is right and "the meaning of America is continually contested." D'Souza is simply fighting hard in that contest. He's got a powerful argument. And Fish wants D'Souza to disarm. You can't make that argument. It doesn't "further discussion." It "foreclose[s] it." Another way to put that is: D'Souza is winning the argument! It's too good of an argument. It doesn't give the other side enough of a chance to win. Hey, if it's a contest, both sides get to fight.
Fish says D'Souza's ideas are not ideas. Is that an idea? Fish says D'Souza is doing "demonization." Is Fish demonizing D'Souza? Who gets to say what can be said in this contest over the meaning of America? Must one side don boxing gloves while the other side punches back — "twice as hard" — bare-fisted?
Who's playing the playing-the-race-card card?
It's hard to tell who, if anybody, is playing the race card. (That's done subtly, if it's done by anybody worth taking down for doing it.)
But lots of people are playing the playing-the-race-card card.
I just want to be the first person to play the playing-the-playing-the-race-card-card card.
But lots of people are playing the playing-the-race-card card.
I just want to be the first person to play the playing-the-playing-the-race-card-card card.
Does Rush Limbaugh accuse the government of faking the hurricane reports to screw up the GOP convention?
The storm was headed right for Tampa, then suddenly re-aimed at New Orleans. Rush talks about the evidence without making a direct accusation.
What I spent the first hour trying to tell you was how it was being reported in a way that resulted in the Republicans canceling their convention today when it's nowhere near there. And that there were model runs Saturday night that showed Tampa was not gonna be hit at all, massive shift of models that was not reflected by the hurricane center for 12 hours. That's all I'm saying. And now we got the media jazzed like I haven't seen 'em in a while because now Hurricane Isaac is casting a pall. How dare the Republicans even do a convention with a hurricane bearing down on the Gulf Coast. How do they even do that? How do they have a convention where they celebrate anything when people's property is being destroyed?
So the effort is on with the media here to try to pressure the Republicans to cancel the whole thing, is what I think is happening.....
Monday, August 27, 2012
"The Wisconsin Capitol's new police chief said Monday that he plans to crack down on protesters who don't follow the building's rules..."
"... because he wants to restore a sense of normalcy and safety to the statehouse."
Chief David Erwin [said] that he respects people's right to petition their government, but that he believes some protesters' behavior has crossed into intimidation.
"I understand it's a political environment," Erwin said of the Capitol. "(But) there's a line. We're better than that."
"[M]en don’t believe as strongly as women that fruit and vegetable consumption is an important part of maintaining health..."
According to some new study, which supposedly suggests that men are less "receptive" to "messages" that we ought to eat more fruits and vegetables. It also looked at something called "the theory of planned behavior," which (if I understand this correctly) says that people construct beliefs to match their behavior. Then there's this additional idea that it's because men are less able to get their fruits and vegetables that they develop the belief that it's not really so much of a problem.
By contrast, women — who get their fruits and veggies — end up thinking this food will make them good-looking and long-lived. So, if only men did eat more fruits and vegetables, they'd arrive at the appropriate beliefs. But how do you get men to do that unless they believe it's good?
See how they're trying to reverse things? Do it, and then you'll believe it's good. We don't want to have to convince you that you should do it so that you'll do it. We just want you to do it, and the belief that it's good will follow, pursuant to the theory of planned behavior.
But wait. Is it good? When was it ever proved that eating fruits and vegetables is important? Maybe men don't believe it because it's just been mostly nothing but a folk belief all this time. Why assume the women are the norm and men are misbehaving? Maybe men demand evidence and don't simply follow the dictates of experts.
I got this link from Instapundit, who just says: "FEAR OF E. COLI? Why men don’t eat vegetables." Maybe there is an instinctive resistance at least to raw foods. What I'm resisting is the ever-irritating bullshit science that presents whatever is true of women as what's good.
By contrast, women — who get their fruits and veggies — end up thinking this food will make them good-looking and long-lived. So, if only men did eat more fruits and vegetables, they'd arrive at the appropriate beliefs. But how do you get men to do that unless they believe it's good?
See how they're trying to reverse things? Do it, and then you'll believe it's good. We don't want to have to convince you that you should do it so that you'll do it. We just want you to do it, and the belief that it's good will follow, pursuant to the theory of planned behavior.
But wait. Is it good? When was it ever proved that eating fruits and vegetables is important? Maybe men don't believe it because it's just been mostly nothing but a folk belief all this time. Why assume the women are the norm and men are misbehaving? Maybe men demand evidence and don't simply follow the dictates of experts.
I got this link from Instapundit, who just says: "FEAR OF E. COLI? Why men don’t eat vegetables." Maybe there is an instinctive resistance at least to raw foods. What I'm resisting is the ever-irritating bullshit science that presents whatever is true of women as what's good.
"I'd rather see a movie that helps me be a nicer person, not a sharper arguer."
Writes Chip Ahoy (in the comments to the thread about the "Obama's America" movie). I thought this was a nice topic, this topic of niceness.
Is there some movie that could help Chip Ahoy be a nicer person? The answers don't need to be Chip Ahoy specific. I'm wracking my brain trying to come up with a movie that oriented me toward greater niceness. I can think of movies that might help you become a better person, but it's usually in the sense of becoming bolder, more independent, more resolutely opposed to evil and oppression. But nicer? Can you think of a movie in which the central character, someone you identify with, is especially polite and the politeness isn't basically something he must overcome in order to succeed.
A-ha! The answer: Every Shirley Temple movie.
Is there some movie that could help Chip Ahoy be a nicer person? The answers don't need to be Chip Ahoy specific. I'm wracking my brain trying to come up with a movie that oriented me toward greater niceness. I can think of movies that might help you become a better person, but it's usually in the sense of becoming bolder, more independent, more resolutely opposed to evil and oppression. But nicer? Can you think of a movie in which the central character, someone you identify with, is especially polite and the politeness isn't basically something he must overcome in order to succeed.
A-ha! The answer: Every Shirley Temple movie.
"The good thing is that this is so insipidly solipsistic that I think she's going to have ruined the Vagina book like Cutthroat Island destroyed the pirate film."
"Might be 15 years before someone gambles with Vaginas of the Caribbean."
Also at that link: "My Vagina is Large; It Contains Multitudes. Who knew the female sex-organ was so chatty?"
Hey, remember the role of "Leaves of Grass" in the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal?
Also at that link: "My Vagina is Large; It Contains Multitudes. Who knew the female sex-organ was so chatty?"
***
The passage...Do I contradict myself?... has 19 highlighters in my Kindle version of "Leaves of Grass."
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Hey, remember the role of "Leaves of Grass" in the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal?
Feb. 28: After she attended the taping of Clinton's radio show, she had her picture taken with him. He told her to see his secretary Betty Currie because he had something for her. Currie accompanied Lewinsky into the study next to the Oval Office. Then Currie walked into the nearby pantry, where she waited for about 15 minutes while Lewinsky and the president had a sexual encounter -- their first in 11 months. Then he gave her a hat pin and Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass." Lewinsky later discovered that the blue dress she had worn that day was stained with his semen.Speaking of containing multitudes!
"The music starts faintly, as if in a vintage pleasure palace..."
"... with the band — the stalwarts who've played with Dylan for a while and join him on the Never-Ending Tour — playing rock and roll ragtime off in the corner. The electric guitars sound almost like clarinets. Everybody's swinging! But what's that in the distance? Dylan himself unleashes the rubbery guitar chord change that repeats for the rest of the song...."
You can pre-order the new album, "Tempest" here. The song at the link, which you can play in full, is "Duquesne Whistle."
ADDED: While over at Amazon, I happened to click on another link and see this new Art Garfunkel 2 CD set, "The Singer," which becomes available tomorrow. Funny, seeing "Duquensne" in the Dylan song got me thinking about a conversation Meade and I were having earlier this morning about the Simon and Garfunkel song "America." That came up in the context of the post from last night about the WaPo writer "searching for the 'authentic America'" in Madison, Wisconsin (of all places). In the comments, Pogo did a parody of the old S&G song:
Anyway. Back to today's conversation. Songs that contain the names of places. I was saying "Saginaw" is a cool name. What are the other songs where the writer liked the sound of a place name? Maybe "Duquesne Whistle" is one.
Meade brought up that song "I've Been Everywhere," and I dismissed it on the ground that it just named a lot of songs, but looking at the list of place names, I can see they're pretty amusing names. Muckadilla, and so forth. Wait. That's the Australian version. Australia has some funny sounding place names. The American version is more just a lot of names, thought I like Baraboo and Kalamazoo (and Baraboo is in Wisconsin). But if you're going to have Baraboo, Kalamazoo, why not Waunakee, Kankakee?
There are lots of songs with place names. Don't be naming all of them. I want songs with place names where you genuinely believe the place was named because the songwriter loved the sound of the word.
You can pre-order the new album, "Tempest" here. The song at the link, which you can play in full, is "Duquesne Whistle."
ADDED: While over at Amazon, I happened to click on another link and see this new Art Garfunkel 2 CD set, "The Singer," which becomes available tomorrow. Funny, seeing "Duquensne" in the Dylan song got me thinking about a conversation Meade and I were having earlier this morning about the Simon and Garfunkel song "America." That came up in the context of the post from last night about the WaPo writer "searching for the 'authentic America'" in Madison, Wisconsin (of all places). In the comments, Pogo did a parody of the old S&G song:
Emily said as we boarded a Greyhound in DCMeade had been singing that and, referring back to the old Paul Simon lyrics, began musing about why it took "four days to hitchhike from Saginaw" (to, apparently, Pittsburgh), and we were talking about songs that named a lot of places. I seemed to know that Simon used "Saginaw" because he liked the sound of the word. Yes, I vaguely remember blogging about that. Ah. Here. Now, I see it's that he declined to cancel a concert in Saginaw because "he said he had to see what a city named Saginaw looked like." Hey, that's a crazy old post from last month, tripping from topic to topic. That's the kind of post that this blog is really about. Did you know that?
"Madison seems like a dream to me now"
It took her four days to hitchhike from Washington
She's gone to look for America
"Emily, I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was drinking
I'm empty and aching and I don't know why
Could be those cheese curds from authentic supper clubs
WaPo's gone to look for America
All gone to look for America
All gone to look for America
Anyway. Back to today's conversation. Songs that contain the names of places. I was saying "Saginaw" is a cool name. What are the other songs where the writer liked the sound of a place name? Maybe "Duquesne Whistle" is one.
Meade brought up that song "I've Been Everywhere," and I dismissed it on the ground that it just named a lot of songs, but looking at the list of place names, I can see they're pretty amusing names. Muckadilla, and so forth. Wait. That's the Australian version. Australia has some funny sounding place names. The American version is more just a lot of names, thought I like Baraboo and Kalamazoo (and Baraboo is in Wisconsin). But if you're going to have Baraboo, Kalamazoo, why not Waunakee, Kankakee?
There are lots of songs with place names. Don't be naming all of them. I want songs with place names where you genuinely believe the place was named because the songwriter loved the sound of the word.
The "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh seeks more religious freedom in prison.
He's serving a 20-year sentence in the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, and the request is for more group prayer — his sect "requires group prayer if it is possible" — and he also objects to needing to pray in his prison cell because he's too close to the toilet. He's represented by the ACLU, which characterizes the prison's rules as discriminating against religion (and not merely denying a special privilege to religion):
"This is an open unit where prisoners are basically out all day," said ACLU legal director Ken Falk, noting that inmates are allowed to play basketball and board games, watch television and converse as long as they speak English so the guards can understand.The government, citing a "radical, all-Arabic sermon" by Lindh, argues "that religious activities led by Muslim inmates are being used as a vehicle for radicalization and violence in the CMU."
"They can do basically any peaceful activity except praying," he said. "It makes no sense to say this is one activity we're going to prohibit in the name of security."
"We are going to start treating mopeds the same as we do automobiles."
The moped free-for-all here on campus is over.
University officials say the policy will make UW safer and less congested, but riders say it makes their mopeds "obsolete."If you're a student who spent your money on a moped, would you have bought it if you'd known you wouldn't be able to use it to get easily and quickly from place to place on campus?
"It's not a matter of laziness, it's a matter of getting some place in time," said sophomore and moped owner Anthony Winchell.
"Most voters won’t be watching much of the upcoming national political conventions..."
"... and over one-third of independent voters plan to tune them out completely."
Predictably, 90% of Republican and 81% of Democrats intend to watch at least some of their respective party conventions. But just 16% of voters not affiliated with either of the major parties plan to watch most of the GOP convention, and 21% of these voters say the same about the Democratic convention.You don't have to watch the conventions to be influenced by them. Why not just read about them and watch some video clips?
"I mind my own business. And I don’t eat junk food."
In case you're assuming that the secret to longevity is whatever it is that is true of a person who happens to have lived to be very old.
Ever met somebody who minded her own business, didn't eat junk food, and died young?
I followed a link yesterday to some article — I forget where — that said maybe having a lot of orgasms would increase your life span. Knock yourself out. I mean... it also said that being lonely would shorten your life span but having relationships would lengthen it. So get out there and find somebody to love. Preferably not a murderer.
Ever met somebody who minded her own business, didn't eat junk food, and died young?
I followed a link yesterday to some article — I forget where — that said maybe having a lot of orgasms would increase your life span. Knock yourself out. I mean... it also said that being lonely would shorten your life span but having relationships would lengthen it. So get out there and find somebody to love. Preferably not a murderer.
"So why did Apple sue Samsung, the Galaxy hardware manufacturer, and not Google, maker of the phone's Android software?"
"Apple sees Google as its chief competitor—this is no secret."
Steve Jobs so hated Google's Android that, even as he struggled with cancer, he told biographer Walter Isaacson: "Google . . . ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off. I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. . . . I'm willing to go thermonuclear on this."
"There are no conspiracy theories about Obama’s birth, religion, Social Security number, passport, or college transcript."
"Instead, there is a deep dive into Barack Obama’s known Communist associates, his late father’s avowed socialism, and his mother’s radicalism," writes David Weigel, about the Dinesh D'Souza movie that did so well at the box office over the weekend. Weigel, a political writer, not a movie reviewer, makes a go of fact-checking the movie. (Has the Obama campaign responded to it yet?)
Stanley Ann Dunham was drawn to Obama Sr. when she was 17. The association didn't last long and didn't have much reality to it, but she nurtured the dream version and taught it to young Obama. Her second husband disappointed her, after they moved to Indonesia, the third world country that fit with her young dreams, because he turned to Western-style politics and commerce. Obama heard Lolo and Ann arguing about her refusal to attend dinner parties where he wanted to network with Westerners to advance his career. In this setting, Ann plied the young Obama with stories about his father and his — really, her — ideas about the rich and the oppressed.
D'Souza culls many of his facts from "Dreams."* The movie mostly organizes and presents information within a template, demonstrating a theory. D'Souza is doing what lawyers do. And as in a legal case, we can't necessarily ever know the truth for certain, but we do need to make decisions and move forward. And as in law, we combine our opinion about how likely something is to be true with our assessment of the risks of deciding one way or the other, and we decide. The D'Souza movie is like a closing argument, displaying some facts and theories about how the facts fit together, along with pressure to see the huge risks if Obama gets a second term.
So I decide to buy D'Souza's book, and now I see that it's 2 books: "Obama's America: Unmaking the American Dream" (published this month) and "The Roots of Obama's Rage" (published last October). I can see why I avoided "The Roots of Obama's Rage." You have to think of Obama as rageful, before you're up for investigating the roots of the rage. ("Roots"?!)
I guess the first book packaged the material for hardcore Obama-haters who were ready for a hearty meal a year before the election. The new book is a tie-in to the movie, and the movie — and presumably the new book — were cooked up to suit mainstream tastes, for those picky eaters known as swing voters. I could buy them both and test out that theory, but I'm just going to buy the new one.
_______________________________
* Here's the passage from "Dreams From My Father," much of which we hear — read by Obama himself — in the movie:
ADDED: Here's the corresponding material in the D'Souza book "Obama's America":
Obama, according to D’Souza, was an anti-colonialist. “He adopted his father's position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder,” wrote D’Souza. “Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America.”...The movie is based on a book by D'Souza, which I ignored at the time, because I didn't see much basis to think that Obama had absorbed his father's ideas. Obama did — oddly (aptly?!) — call his book "Dreams From My Father," but he spent almost no time with his father. Though I read "Dreams," I hadn't thought much about the pathway of the father's "dreams" into the son. The movie made mesee that pathway: the mother.
Stanley Ann Dunham was drawn to Obama Sr. when she was 17. The association didn't last long and didn't have much reality to it, but she nurtured the dream version and taught it to young Obama. Her second husband disappointed her, after they moved to Indonesia, the third world country that fit with her young dreams, because he turned to Western-style politics and commerce. Obama heard Lolo and Ann arguing about her refusal to attend dinner parties where he wanted to network with Westerners to advance his career. In this setting, Ann plied the young Obama with stories about his father and his — really, her — ideas about the rich and the oppressed.
D'Souza culls many of his facts from "Dreams."* The movie mostly organizes and presents information within a template, demonstrating a theory. D'Souza is doing what lawyers do. And as in a legal case, we can't necessarily ever know the truth for certain, but we do need to make decisions and move forward. And as in law, we combine our opinion about how likely something is to be true with our assessment of the risks of deciding one way or the other, and we decide. The D'Souza movie is like a closing argument, displaying some facts and theories about how the facts fit together, along with pressure to see the huge risks if Obama gets a second term.
So I decide to buy D'Souza's book, and now I see that it's 2 books: "Obama's America: Unmaking the American Dream" (published this month) and "The Roots of Obama's Rage" (published last October). I can see why I avoided "The Roots of Obama's Rage." You have to think of Obama as rageful, before you're up for investigating the roots of the rage. ("Roots"?!)
I guess the first book packaged the material for hardcore Obama-haters who were ready for a hearty meal a year before the election. The new book is a tie-in to the movie, and the movie — and presumably the new book — were cooked up to suit mainstream tastes, for those picky eaters known as swing voters. I could buy them both and test out that theory, but I'm just going to buy the new one.
_______________________________
* Here's the passage from "Dreams From My Father," much of which we hear — read by Obama himself — in the movie:
Looking back, I’m not sure that Lolo ever fully understood what my mother was going through during these years, why the things he was working so hard to provide for her seemed only to increase the distance between them. He was not a man to ask himself such questions. Instead, he maintained his concentration, and over the period that we lived in Indonesia, he proceeded to climb. With the help of his brother-in-law, he landed a new job in the government relations office of an American oil company. We moved to a house in a better neighborhood; a car replaced the motorcycle; a television and hi-fi replaced the crocodiles and Tata, the ape; Lolo could sign for our dinners at a company club. Sometimes I would overhear him and my mother arguing in their bedroom, usually about her refusal to attend his company dinner parties, where American businessmen from Texas and Louisiana would slap Lolo’s back and boast about the palms they had greased to obtain the new offshore drilling rights, while their wives complained to my mother about the quality of Indonesian help. He would ask her how it would look for him to go alone, and remind her that these were her own people, and my mother’s voice would rise to almost a shout.What I remember from the movie and am not seeing in the book (at least not in that part) is that Obama not only heard Stanley Ann and Lolo fighting, but that she told Obama stories about his father, who opposed Westerners, thus making the father into some sort of ideal that the mother preferred to her current husband. We're invited to imagine how the boy, missing his father and hearing those fights, built up the "dream" of that father, and how that anti-Western ideology therefore became the framework of his psyche.
They are not my people.
... She had always encouraged my rapid acculturation in Indonesia... She had taught me to disdain the blend of ignorance and arrogance that too often characterized Americans abroad.
ADDED: Here's the corresponding material in the D'Souza book "Obama's America":
Obama spent four years in Indonesia, and during that period he became very close to Lolo. Indonesia was, at least at first, an elusive and strange place, and Obama recalls that “it was to Lolo that I turned for guidance and instruction.” After all, “his knowledge of the world seemed inexhaustible.” He offered the young boy “a manly trust.” Mostly Lolo taught Obama that the world was a tough place and that men must learn self-reliance. At one point Obama asked Lolo, “How many beggars are there on the street?” Lolo replied, “Better to save your money and make sure you don’t end up on the street yourself.” Lolo taught Obama to box and frequently gave his step-son lessons in the importance of strength. “Better to be strong,” he said. “If you can’t be strong, be clever and make peace with someone who’s strong. But always better to be strong yourself.”A right-wing influence!
While Obama relished having a step-father, Ann was dismayed to see her husband becoming more pro-American and pro-capitalist. After leaving the army, he took a job with the Jakarta branch of the Union Oil Company of California. He moved his family into a bigger house with three bedrooms, a library, and a terrace; he employed domestic staff, including a cook, a houseboy, and two other female servants. He joined the Indonesian Petroleum Club, where he socialized with Europeans and Americans. He began to listen to American music; his favorite song was “Moon River.” While many other women might appreciate these trappings of success, Ann couldn’t stand any of it and got into fierce arguments with Lolo. As Obama writes, “I would overhear him and my mother arguing in their bedroom, usually about her refusal to attend his company dinner parties, where American businessmen from Texas and Louisiana would slap Lolo’s back and boast about the palms they had greased to obtain the new offshore drilling rights, while their wives complained to my mother about the quality of Indonesian help. He would ask how it would look for him to go alone, and remind her that these were her own people, and my mother’s voice would rise to almost a shout. ‘They are not my people.’”In the genes. So says the mother — the mother who is at odds with the stepfather and summoning up the persona of the absent biological father. Remember the subtitle to Obama's book: "The Story of Race and Inheritance."
Ann made new friends, mostly left-wing academics from the West and an assortment of Indonesians: newspaper editors, artists, academics, foundation program officers, and local activists. To this group, she scorned Lolo.... Soon Ann and Lolo were living in different worlds, and a divorce between them seemed imminent.
Ann recognized, of course, that Lolo was just trying to survive in a Third World country where corruption was a way of life. Lolo found Ann’s leftist and anti-American sympathies impractical; he thought in terms of power rather than ideals. “Guilt,” he once told her, “is a luxury only foreigners can afford.” Ann understood this, but she understood it in terms of Lolo being an ideological sellout. Obama puts the point very well. “Power. The word fixed in my mother’s mind like a curse . . . . Here power was undisguised, indiscriminate, naked, always fresh in the memory. Power had taken Lolo and yanked him back into line just when he thought he’d escaped, making him feel its weight, letting him know that his life wasn’t his own . . . . And so Lolo had made his peace with power.” This fact, Obama writes, created an “unbreachable barrier between them.” Yet she had an option. “She could always leave if things got too messy.” But then it struck Ann with the force of a revelation that her son admired Lolo, and might pattern his life after him. “She looked out the window now and saw that Lolo and I had moved on, the grass flattened where the two of us had been. The sight made her shudder slightly, and she rose to her feet, filled with a sudden panic. Power was taking her son.”
Right here we see why Ann Obama packed up her son, age ten, and sent him back on his own to America. She didn’t want his values to be shaped by Lolo. She viewed Lolo as a sellout, a power-seeker who had made his peace with capitalism and with America. She wanted her son to be a principled anti-capitalist, anti-American, like her and like someone else she used to know: Barack Obama Sr. Obama writes that his mother “had taught me to disdain the blend of ignorance and arrogance that too often characterized Americans abroad.” Lolo, from Ann’s point of view, was undermining these lessons, and in her conflicts with him, Obama writes, “She had only one ally . . . and that was the distant authority of my father.... His life had been hard, as hard as anything that Lolo might have known. He hadn’t cut corners, though, or played all the angles. He was diligent and honest, no matter what it cost him. He had led his life according to principles that demanded a different kind of power, principles that promised a higher form of power. I would follow in his example, my mother decided. I had no choice. It was in the genes.”
Sunday, August 26, 2012
A WaPo writer "searching for the 'authentic America'" is delighted to travel to Madison, Wisconsin.
"We’d always heard about that mythically quirky place called Madison, a free-spirited land with far fewer chain stores and BlackBerry addicts than Washington," enthuses Emily Wax. Man, living in Washington, D.C. really lowers your standards of authenticity.
Influenced by the 2011 documentary “Wisconsin Supper Clubs: An Old-Fashioned Experience,” Wax goes to the restaurant called Old Fashioned, which is fairly new, and not one of the funky old places I think of as "supper clubs." She eats some fried cheese curds and says she has no idea how to tell whether cheese curds are especially good. (Answer: They squeak. Except they don't squeak if they're fried.)
She drinks the cocktail called an Old Fashioned, and then on another day she has another Old Fashioned and proclaims "How Madison!" On another day, "my husband and I headed for a romantic dinner at the sexy, dimly lit Tornado Steakhouse," which supposedly "has a wonderful menu."
And so did she achieve it, that sense of authenticity infusing the city, of delight with mythical quirkiness all around her, of free-spirited energy rushing through everything alive? Myself, I'm over-indulging in deep-fried prose tonight and wondering if I need to see a surgeon to get my neural pathways reconnected. I'm losing it somehow, as I gaze out on the treetops of Madison.
Influenced by the 2011 documentary “Wisconsin Supper Clubs: An Old-Fashioned Experience,” Wax goes to the restaurant called Old Fashioned, which is fairly new, and not one of the funky old places I think of as "supper clubs." She eats some fried cheese curds and says she has no idea how to tell whether cheese curds are especially good. (Answer: They squeak. Except they don't squeak if they're fried.)
She drinks the cocktail called an Old Fashioned, and then on another day she has another Old Fashioned and proclaims "How Madison!" On another day, "my husband and I headed for a romantic dinner at the sexy, dimly lit Tornado Steakhouse," which supposedly "has a wonderful menu."
And so did she achieve it, that sense of authenticity infusing the city, of delight with mythical quirkiness all around her, of free-spirited energy rushing through everything alive? Myself, I'm over-indulging in deep-fried prose tonight and wondering if I need to see a surgeon to get my neural pathways reconnected. I'm losing it somehow, as I gaze out on the treetops of Madison.
A young man, angry at academia, becomes a ghostwriter for students....
... taking money to help them cheat. And then he quit:
And he wrote a book: "The Shadow Scholar: How I Made a Living Helping College Kids Cheat."
I'm not really recommending that you read that book. You'd be better off with "Outliers." (Or something else from Amazon through the Althouse portal, which allows you, costlessly, to reward me for providing you with all this deceit-free writing.)
Eventually, the strain of 20-hour workdays, arguments with self-righteous clients, and the looming sense that he could be doing something better with his life got to him.Note his almost complete lack of guilt over the deceit.
A discussion about two years ago with a friend about Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers crystallized his discontent. In that book, Mr. Gladwell describes 10,000 hours as the amount of time someone needs to truly master a skill. Mr. Tomar did a rough calculation of how much time he had spent writing papers since 2000. At a minimum, he had spent 25,000 hours doing it. He was done.
And he wrote a book: "The Shadow Scholar: How I Made a Living Helping College Kids Cheat."
I'm not really recommending that you read that book. You'd be better off with "Outliers." (Or something else from Amazon through the Althouse portal, which allows you, costlessly, to reward me for providing you with all this deceit-free writing.)
"Man convicted of molesting a dead deer and shooting horse to have sex with it 'assaulted female cop after shoplifting from Walmart.'"
Now, there's a headline! And it happened in Wisconsin. In the aptly named city of Superior.
More amateur art restoration...
... in the inimitable style of Cecilia Jimenez.
IN THE COMMENTS: John Lynch says:
IN THE COMMENTS: John Lynch says:
"The Scream," looks the same.LOL. And Mitch H. says, "By definition, she is not inimitable." Yes, good point. Now that she's done it, it's easily imitated. What was hard was being that hilariously bad in the first place. She's a true original in that regard. She — deservedly! — has a lot of fans, and I count myself as one of them.
"To my astonishment and dismay, while my orgasms were as strong and pleasurable as ever, something very different was happening after sex, to my mind."
Said feminist attention-seeker and erstwhile Al-Gore-adviser Naomi Wolf.
Of course, she has a new book. It's called "Vagina: A New Biography."
Is it really the story of her vagina? Seems more like the story of a few of her vertebrae. But it's all connected. Elaborately. Complexly. Mysteriously. Now, shut up while I gaze upon the treetops outside the bedroom of my little cottage and contemplate the extent of my euphoria.
ADDED: She's writing the kind of claptrap that feminists used to quote for the purpose of mockery.
IN THE COMMENTS: In Wolf's cogitations, Scott Bradford hears something familiar: "I first became aware of it, Mandrake during the physical act of love.... Yes, a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily, I was able to interpret these feelings correctly."
"I realised one day, as I gazed out on the treetops outside the bedroom of our little cottage, that the usual post-coital rush of a sense of vitality infusing the world, of delight with myself and with all around me, and of creative energy rushing through everything alive, was no longer following the physical pleasure."Something is infusing my world right now, I'll tell you that.
"I felt I was losing somehow, what made me a woman, and that I could not face living in this condition for the rest of my life."May I suggest wearing earth-toned clothing? Oh... no... I see... you found the solution in surgery.
[New York gynaecologist Dr Deborah] Coady told her it could be a problem with the pelvic nerve - her area of expertise - being compressed and [causing] numbness....Yes, once again we learn that we women are so fabulously multidimensional and men are so simple. So let me tell it to you straight: Cough up the tax money to pay for the fancy diagnostics of our neural misalignments and the surgery to reconnect us so we can have "the ‘blended’ clitoral and vaginal orgasms" that will return women to "the sense of deep emotional union, of post-coital creative euphoria, of joy with oneself and one’s lover… and the sense that all was well in some existential way, that [Naomi Wolf] thought [she] had lost for ever." And don't be raising any of your war-on-women objections.
She was referred to Dr Jeffrey Cole, an expert in muscular-skeletal medicine who x-rayed her back and found a crumbling of her vertebrae, even though she had never experienced pain or back problems....
Dr Cole told her: ‘All women’s wiring is different. That’s the reason women respond so differently from one another sexually. The pelvic nerve branches in very individual ways for every woman. These differences are physical’.
He added that men’s sexual wiring is much more uniform.
Of course, she has a new book. It's called "Vagina: A New Biography."
Is it really the story of her vagina? Seems more like the story of a few of her vertebrae. But it's all connected. Elaborately. Complexly. Mysteriously. Now, shut up while I gaze upon the treetops outside the bedroom of my little cottage and contemplate the extent of my euphoria.
ADDED: She's writing the kind of claptrap that feminists used to quote for the purpose of mockery.
IN THE COMMENTS: In Wolf's cogitations, Scott Bradford hears something familiar: "I first became aware of it, Mandrake during the physical act of love.... Yes, a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily, I was able to interpret these feelings correctly."
We saw the movie "2016 Obama's America" in Madison, Wisconsin.
Of all places. There were about 50 people in the audience for the 12:40 show. I talked to a couple women who thought they'd arrived at a pro-Obama movie and then, half way through, realized it was against him. One wisecracked "I'm a Republican now." And then, again, in a humorous tone, "It almost makes you pro-colonialism."
I said Dinesh D'Souza was not against anti-colonialism but against the kind of anti-colonialism that developed in the 20th century and involved left-wing, collectivist ideology unlike the anti-colonialism of the American founding. One of the women said, "That's pretty complex," as if that wasn't the idea spelled out extremely clearly over the course of the 90-minute movie they'd just watched.
The movie is doing quite well:
It fits with the movie's theme that Americans didn't try to learn more about Obama before voting him into the Presidency. If we didn't take much care about that, why would you expect us to pay any attention to what movie seat we're plunking our asses into?
ADDED: Here's what I think is the key clip that's used in the movie:
I said Dinesh D'Souza was not against anti-colonialism but against the kind of anti-colonialism that developed in the 20th century and involved left-wing, collectivist ideology unlike the anti-colonialism of the American founding. One of the women said, "That's pretty complex," as if that wasn't the idea spelled out extremely clearly over the course of the 90-minute movie they'd just watched.
The movie is doing quite well:
Mr. D'Souza's co-director, John Sullivan, said in an interview that even he was surprised by the strong weekend showing. He credited talk radio, a bastion of conservative thought, as a key megaphone for the film....Don't exclude the possibility that people are wandering in there under the impression that they're going to a pro-Obama show. Why else would it be playing in Madison/Manhattan/Leftytown?
Mr. Sullivan said that, perhaps counterintuitively, some of the movie's strongest earnings have originated at a theater in Manhattan's Union Square, far from any conservative stronghold.
It fits with the movie's theme that Americans didn't try to learn more about Obama before voting him into the Presidency. If we didn't take much care about that, why would you expect us to pay any attention to what movie seat we're plunking our asses into?
ADDED: Here's what I think is the key clip that's used in the movie:
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