10.30.2008
The Georgia Secretary of State Needs to Lose Her Job.
People who use the Voting Rights Act to explain why the polls can't stay open in a mocking way in a newpaper or other public forum shouldn't be responsible for enforcing it or any other election law.
(From the Atlanta Journal-Constipation)
By KAREN HANDEL
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Taking the lead from the Democratic Party of Georgia, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution advocates that Gov. Sonny Perdue and I make up election law just four days before Election Day. As the newspaper is very aware, even if the authority existed — which it does not — Georgia is covered under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which means that any changes in election procedures must be “precleared” by the U.S. Department of Justice before they can be implemented.
Usually, this newspaper is a stickler for following the law and procedures. I wonder what their position would be if another political party made a similar request? I’ll leave that to the imagination of the readers.
The facts are that Georgia voters enjoy perhaps the broadest ballot access of any state in the nation. Thanks to the 45 days of early and advance voting, approximately 1.5 million citizens have already cast ballots, and this is with the photo ID law in effect. By most measures, this would be considered a success. Even compared to Florida, our voters have much more time to vote.
Moreover, any changes now would introduce prohibitive legal, practical and logistical hurdles to our elections process. Maybe if Florida had followed our lead, Gov. Charlie Crist may not have had to declare a state of emergency and ask counties to stay open longer and over the weekend.
Of course, there are lines this week, and there will be lines on Election Day. Most Georgians reasonably expect that. My job is to ensure our counties are doing everything they can so voters are able to cast their ballots as quickly and easily as possible. The overwhelming majority of Georgia’s county election offices are properly managing this record turnout. Most elections officials made the necessary preparations and their voters have benefited from an efficient voting process. In the counties where there have been problems, their officials have reacted quickly — deploying additional resources and personnel. Today, the process is moving much more efficiently in these counties than it was earlier this week.
Georgians have been able to cast a ballot in this year’s general election with no excuse required since Sept. 22. The law requires, and the public expects, a definitive ending date to each election, particularly in a presidential election year. Georgians can be assured that my office is not going to attempt to change the rules to accommodate the political whims of groups or newspapers less than a week before Election Day.
• Karen Handel is Georgia’s Secretary of State.
(From the Atlanta Journal-Constipation)
By KAREN HANDEL
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Taking the lead from the Democratic Party of Georgia, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution advocates that Gov. Sonny Perdue and I make up election law just four days before Election Day. As the newspaper is very aware, even if the authority existed — which it does not — Georgia is covered under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which means that any changes in election procedures must be “precleared” by the U.S. Department of Justice before they can be implemented.
Usually, this newspaper is a stickler for following the law and procedures. I wonder what their position would be if another political party made a similar request? I’ll leave that to the imagination of the readers.
The facts are that Georgia voters enjoy perhaps the broadest ballot access of any state in the nation. Thanks to the 45 days of early and advance voting, approximately 1.5 million citizens have already cast ballots, and this is with the photo ID law in effect. By most measures, this would be considered a success. Even compared to Florida, our voters have much more time to vote.
Moreover, any changes now would introduce prohibitive legal, practical and logistical hurdles to our elections process. Maybe if Florida had followed our lead, Gov. Charlie Crist may not have had to declare a state of emergency and ask counties to stay open longer and over the weekend.
Of course, there are lines this week, and there will be lines on Election Day. Most Georgians reasonably expect that. My job is to ensure our counties are doing everything they can so voters are able to cast their ballots as quickly and easily as possible. The overwhelming majority of Georgia’s county election offices are properly managing this record turnout. Most elections officials made the necessary preparations and their voters have benefited from an efficient voting process. In the counties where there have been problems, their officials have reacted quickly — deploying additional resources and personnel. Today, the process is moving much more efficiently in these counties than it was earlier this week.
Georgians have been able to cast a ballot in this year’s general election with no excuse required since Sept. 22. The law requires, and the public expects, a definitive ending date to each election, particularly in a presidential election year. Georgians can be assured that my office is not going to attempt to change the rules to accommodate the political whims of groups or newspapers less than a week before Election Day.
• Karen Handel is Georgia’s Secretary of State.
10.28.2008
Sirius Halloween
From October 29 through October 31, Sirius channel 119 will be playing radio versions of famous Alfred Hitchcock movies. And Halloween night Sirius Radio Classics (118) will be playing Orson Welles' infamous and brilliant "War of the Worlds" broadcast.
But why isn't one of the metal stations going all Rob Zombie? Maybe next year...
But why isn't one of the metal stations going all Rob Zombie? Maybe next year...
Alabama Fans Are Sexier
You know you want it...
Does wearing the color red give you a sexual edge? Maybe, according to a new study, which found that men find women sexier if they're sporting a crimson hue rather than, say, blue or green.But then you get this:
However, red won't make you look smarter or more competent
How could this guy possibly look smarter and more competent? According to science, he's sexy bitches!Of course, wearing orange makes you an asshole.
A Move Against the Christers
I can get behind this.
A rebellion is beginning to take place among American conservatives, many of them influential commentators who are denouncing the takeover of the Republican Party by a mixture of anti-intellectual populists and political extremists.
Novelist Christopher Buckley, the son of the founder of modern American conservatism, has endorsed Barack Obama for president. Columnists Kathleen Parker and Peggy Noonan have questioned John McCain’s judgment in picking Sarah Palin as his running mate. Another columnist, David Brooks, has offered a jeremiad against the Republican Party’s anti-intellectual bent.
More poignantly, they all decry what they perceive as a betrayal of conservative principles. Buckley put it succinctly when he wrote that George Bush’s government has brought America “a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance.” Brooks thinks the problem goes beyond the Bush years, stating that “modern conservatism began as a movement of dissident intellectuals” against the liberal domination of the academic world, but “what had been a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole.” Parker is even more forceful: “The well-fed right now cultivates ignorance as a political strategy. ... Years of pandering to the extreme wing ... have created a party no longer attentive to its principles.”
We don’t know if these symptoms of dissent will develop into a full-blown rebellion against the Republican establishment. Much will depend on the result of the presidential election. If McCain and Palin lose, the chances of an insurgency taking root within the party itself are significant.
The Republican Party has indeed deviated from conservatism as it is understood by those who consider Edmund Burke the founder of the conservative idea, William F. Buckley the intellectual midwife of modern-day American conservatism, and Barry Goldwater the flint that sparked a vast political movement in favor of small government in the United States.
This deviation expresses itself in different ways. First, in the confusion between Jeffersonian populism—a salutary mistrust of economic power allied to political power—and class-based populism, which is what Republican leaders promote when they scorn America’s coastal and big-city culture. Second, in the contradiction between a low-tax, low-spend policy and an interventionist foreign policy that, by definition, is costly—as every empire in the history of mankind eventually and painfully found out. Last, in modern-day Puritanism, which started, perhaps understandably, as a reaction against the cultural excesses of the 1960s but ended up turning into what H.L. Mencken described decades earlier as “grounded upon the inferior man’s hatred of the man who is having a better time.”
These fundamental deviations from conservatism crystallized in the Bush administration. The result was the biggest growth in government since the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, a loss of international prestige and, in purely political terms, the alienation of millions of people who could have been attracted to the Republican Party had its libertarian roots been preserved in dealing with social issues. Thus, the party that styles itself the champion of individual liberty has come to be seen by many in the United States and around the world as a special-interest group driven by factions and devoid of principle.
That many conservatives have finally decided to speak out is encouraging. That they are being vilified is even more encouraging—it means that they may just have a point. After the elections, conservatives will have to do some serious soul-searching and ask themselves a few simple questions: How was it that they let their movement and their party be hijacked by people who were hellbent on disfiguring the face of American conservatism? How was it that the self-styled party of individual liberty became, in the eyes of many, the party of big government, intolerance and jingoism?
The recent spats among the various strands of American conservatism are the harbinger of a transcendent fight for the soul of the movement. We don’t yet know who the leaders will be and much less who will emerge victorious. The search for a renewed Republican Party could, as in 1964 and 1980, produce a return to its roots. But this will not be a pretty picture. If the “root” conservatives are going to displace the faction that now controls the movement, they will need to displace some very unpleasant people.
A rebellion is beginning to take place among American conservatives, many of them influential commentators who are denouncing the takeover of the Republican Party by a mixture of anti-intellectual populists and political extremists.
Novelist Christopher Buckley, the son of the founder of modern American conservatism, has endorsed Barack Obama for president. Columnists Kathleen Parker and Peggy Noonan have questioned John McCain’s judgment in picking Sarah Palin as his running mate. Another columnist, David Brooks, has offered a jeremiad against the Republican Party’s anti-intellectual bent.
More poignantly, they all decry what they perceive as a betrayal of conservative principles. Buckley put it succinctly when he wrote that George Bush’s government has brought America “a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance.” Brooks thinks the problem goes beyond the Bush years, stating that “modern conservatism began as a movement of dissident intellectuals” against the liberal domination of the academic world, but “what had been a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole.” Parker is even more forceful: “The well-fed right now cultivates ignorance as a political strategy. ... Years of pandering to the extreme wing ... have created a party no longer attentive to its principles.”
We don’t know if these symptoms of dissent will develop into a full-blown rebellion against the Republican establishment. Much will depend on the result of the presidential election. If McCain and Palin lose, the chances of an insurgency taking root within the party itself are significant.
The Republican Party has indeed deviated from conservatism as it is understood by those who consider Edmund Burke the founder of the conservative idea, William F. Buckley the intellectual midwife of modern-day American conservatism, and Barry Goldwater the flint that sparked a vast political movement in favor of small government in the United States.
This deviation expresses itself in different ways. First, in the confusion between Jeffersonian populism—a salutary mistrust of economic power allied to political power—and class-based populism, which is what Republican leaders promote when they scorn America’s coastal and big-city culture. Second, in the contradiction between a low-tax, low-spend policy and an interventionist foreign policy that, by definition, is costly—as every empire in the history of mankind eventually and painfully found out. Last, in modern-day Puritanism, which started, perhaps understandably, as a reaction against the cultural excesses of the 1960s but ended up turning into what H.L. Mencken described decades earlier as “grounded upon the inferior man’s hatred of the man who is having a better time.”
These fundamental deviations from conservatism crystallized in the Bush administration. The result was the biggest growth in government since the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, a loss of international prestige and, in purely political terms, the alienation of millions of people who could have been attracted to the Republican Party had its libertarian roots been preserved in dealing with social issues. Thus, the party that styles itself the champion of individual liberty has come to be seen by many in the United States and around the world as a special-interest group driven by factions and devoid of principle.
That many conservatives have finally decided to speak out is encouraging. That they are being vilified is even more encouraging—it means that they may just have a point. After the elections, conservatives will have to do some serious soul-searching and ask themselves a few simple questions: How was it that they let their movement and their party be hijacked by people who were hellbent on disfiguring the face of American conservatism? How was it that the self-styled party of individual liberty became, in the eyes of many, the party of big government, intolerance and jingoism?
The recent spats among the various strands of American conservatism are the harbinger of a transcendent fight for the soul of the movement. We don’t yet know who the leaders will be and much less who will emerge victorious. The search for a renewed Republican Party could, as in 1964 and 1980, produce a return to its roots. But this will not be a pretty picture. If the “root” conservatives are going to displace the faction that now controls the movement, they will need to displace some very unpleasant people.
"Redistribution" Obama Radio Interview from 2001
This particular bugbear has me riled becasue it is taken way out of context. Here is a good review and it even leads to a youtube of the interview, from the New Republic.
In the last few days, the McCain campaign has portrayed Barack Obama as a "socialist," and apparently the campaign and others are combing through Obama's past statements to see if he has ever favored "redistribution."The latest ridiculousness, featured in a screaming headline on the Drudge Report and described under the title "Shame" on the National Review website, involves some remarks made by Obama on public radio in 2001.In that interview, Obama was discussing efforts, in the 1960s and 1970s, to redistribute resources through the federal courts. Obama said that the Warren Court was not so terribly radical, because it "never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society." He complained, not that the Court refused to enter into those issues, but that "the civil-rights movement became so court-focussed,"In answering a caller's question, he said that the court "is just not very good at" redistribution. Obama added, with approval, that the Constitution "is generally a charter of negative liberties."Obama's principal claim--about the institutional limits of the courts--was made by many conservatives (including Robert Bork) in the 1960s and 1970s: Courts should not attempt to guarantee "positive" rights, or interpret the Constitution to redistribute wealth. Obama is squarely rejecting the claim that was made by many liberal lawyers, professors, and judges at the time--and that is being made by some today.Apparently, though, some people are thinking that Obama is displaying his commitment to redistribution, at least in principle. We have to make some distinctions here. The word "redistribution" is easily politicized, but, in terms of actual policy, it seems to include the Social Security Act (which redistributes wealth), the Americans with Disabilities Act (which also redistributes), educational reform that would improve schools in poor areas, Head Start programs, statutes allowing parental leave, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the progressive income tax, and much more. Almost all candidates for public office (including Senator McCain) favor significant forms of redistribution. With his court-skeptical statements in 2001, Obama was referring to the sorts of claims being made in courts in the relevant period, for which the word "redistribution" has often been used. (Those claims involved denials of education and medical care, and discrimination in welfare programs.)It is true that Obama supports the Earned Income Tax Credit (an idea pioneered by Republicans). It is also true that Obama supports the minimum wage. It is true too that Obama is centrally concerned with decent education for all -- and the right to education was at stake in perhaps the most important case that Obama is discussing. It is true, finally, that Obama wants to make health care available for all. But it is truly ridiculous to take Obama's remarks in 2001 as suggesting that the nation should embark on a large-scale redistributive scheme.
In the last few days, the McCain campaign has portrayed Barack Obama as a "socialist," and apparently the campaign and others are combing through Obama's past statements to see if he has ever favored "redistribution."The latest ridiculousness, featured in a screaming headline on the Drudge Report and described under the title "Shame" on the National Review website, involves some remarks made by Obama on public radio in 2001.In that interview, Obama was discussing efforts, in the 1960s and 1970s, to redistribute resources through the federal courts. Obama said that the Warren Court was not so terribly radical, because it "never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society." He complained, not that the Court refused to enter into those issues, but that "the civil-rights movement became so court-focussed,"In answering a caller's question, he said that the court "is just not very good at" redistribution. Obama added, with approval, that the Constitution "is generally a charter of negative liberties."Obama's principal claim--about the institutional limits of the courts--was made by many conservatives (including Robert Bork) in the 1960s and 1970s: Courts should not attempt to guarantee "positive" rights, or interpret the Constitution to redistribute wealth. Obama is squarely rejecting the claim that was made by many liberal lawyers, professors, and judges at the time--and that is being made by some today.Apparently, though, some people are thinking that Obama is displaying his commitment to redistribution, at least in principle. We have to make some distinctions here. The word "redistribution" is easily politicized, but, in terms of actual policy, it seems to include the Social Security Act (which redistributes wealth), the Americans with Disabilities Act (which also redistributes), educational reform that would improve schools in poor areas, Head Start programs, statutes allowing parental leave, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the progressive income tax, and much more. Almost all candidates for public office (including Senator McCain) favor significant forms of redistribution. With his court-skeptical statements in 2001, Obama was referring to the sorts of claims being made in courts in the relevant period, for which the word "redistribution" has often been used. (Those claims involved denials of education and medical care, and discrimination in welfare programs.)It is true that Obama supports the Earned Income Tax Credit (an idea pioneered by Republicans). It is also true that Obama supports the minimum wage. It is true too that Obama is centrally concerned with decent education for all -- and the right to education was at stake in perhaps the most important case that Obama is discussing. It is true, finally, that Obama wants to make health care available for all. But it is truly ridiculous to take Obama's remarks in 2001 as suggesting that the nation should embark on a large-scale redistributive scheme.
Hitch on Sarah and Science
This woman should not even be governor of Alabama. From the Slate
In an election that has been fought on an astoundingly low cultural and intellectual level, with both candidates pretending that tax cuts can go like peaches and cream with the staggering new levels of federal deficit, and paltry charges being traded in petty ways, and with Joe the Plumber becoming the emblematic stupidity of the campaign, it didn't seem possible that things could go any lower or get any dumber. But they did last Friday, when, at a speech in Pittsburgh, Gov. Sarah Palin denounced wasteful expenditure on fruit-fly research, adding for good xenophobic and anti-elitist measure that some of this research took place "in Paris, France" and winding up with a folksy "I kid you not."
It was in 1933 that Thomas Hunt Morgan won a Nobel Prize for showing that genes are passed on by way of chromosomes. The experimental creature that he employed in the making of this great discovery was the Drosophila melanogaster, or fruit fly. Scientists of various sorts continue to find it a very useful resource, since it can be easily and plentifully "cultured" in a laboratory, has a very short generation time, and displays a great variety of mutation. This makes it useful in studying disease, and since Gov. Palin was in Pittsburgh to talk about her signature "issue" of disability and special needs, she might even have had some researcher tell her that there is a Drosophila-based center for research into autism at the University of North Carolina. The fruit fly can also be a menace to American agriculture, so any financing of research into its habits and mutations is money well-spent. It's especially ridiculous and unfortunate that the governor chose to make such a fool of herself in Pittsburgh, a great city that remade itself after the decline of coal and steel into a center of high-tech medical research.
In this case, it could be argued, Palin was not just being a fool in her own right but was following a demagogic lead set by the man who appointed her as his running mate. Sen. John McCain has made repeated use of an anti-waste and anti-pork ad (several times repeated and elaborated in his increasingly witless speeches) in which the expenditure of $3 million to study the DNA of grizzly bears in Montana was derided as "unbelievable." As an excellent article in the Feb. 8, 2008, Scientific American pointed out, there is no way to enforce the Endangered Species Act without getting some sort of estimate of numbers, and the best way of tracking and tracing the elusive grizzly is by setting up barbed-wire hair-snagging stations that painlessly take samples from the bears as they lumber by and then running the DNA samples through a laboratory. The cost is almost trivial compared with the importance of understanding this species, and I dare say the project will yield results in the measurement of other animal populations as well, but all McCain could do was be flippant and say that he wondered whether it was a "paternity" or "criminal" issue that the Fish and Wildlife Service was investigating. (Perhaps those really are the only things that he associates in his mind with DNA.)
With Palin, however, the contempt for science may be something a little more sinister than the bluff, empty-headed plain-man's philistinism of McCain. We never get a chance to ask her in detail about these things, but she is known to favor the teaching of creationism in schools (smuggling this crazy idea through customs in the innocent disguise of "teaching the argument," as if there was an argument), and so it is at least probable that she believes all creatures from humans to fruit flies were created just as they are now. This would make DNA or any other kind of research pointless, whether conducted in Paris or not. Projects such as sequencing the DNA of the flu virus, the better to inoculate against it, would not need to be funded. We could all expire happily in the name of God. Gov. Palin also says that she doesn't think humans are responsible for global warming; again, one would like to ask her whether, like some of her co-religionists, she is a "premillenial dispensationalist"—in other words, someone who believes that there is no point in protecting and preserving the natural world, since the end of days will soon be upon us.
Videos taken in the Assembly of God church in Wasilla, Alaska, which she used to attend, show her nodding as a preacher says that Alaska will be "one of the refuge states in the Last Days." For the uninitiated, this is a reference to a crackpot belief, widely held among those who brood on the "End Times," that some parts of the world will end at different times from others, and Alaska will be a big draw as the heavens darken on account of its wide open spaces. An article by Laurie Goodstein in the New York Times gives further gruesome details of the extreme Pentecostalism with which Palin has been associated in the past (perhaps moderating herself, at least in public, as a political career became more attractive). High points, also available on YouTube, show her being "anointed" by an African bishop who claims to cast out witches. The term used in the trade for this hysterical superstitious nonsense is "spiritual warfare," in which true Christian soldiers are trained to fight demons. Palin has spoken at "spiritual warfare" events as recently as June. And only last week the chiller from Wasilla spoke of "prayer warriors" in a radio interview with James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who said that he and his lovely wife, Shirley, had convened a prayer meeting to beseech that "God's perfect will be done on Nov. 4."
This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.
In an election that has been fought on an astoundingly low cultural and intellectual level, with both candidates pretending that tax cuts can go like peaches and cream with the staggering new levels of federal deficit, and paltry charges being traded in petty ways, and with Joe the Plumber becoming the emblematic stupidity of the campaign, it didn't seem possible that things could go any lower or get any dumber. But they did last Friday, when, at a speech in Pittsburgh, Gov. Sarah Palin denounced wasteful expenditure on fruit-fly research, adding for good xenophobic and anti-elitist measure that some of this research took place "in Paris, France" and winding up with a folksy "I kid you not."
It was in 1933 that Thomas Hunt Morgan won a Nobel Prize for showing that genes are passed on by way of chromosomes. The experimental creature that he employed in the making of this great discovery was the Drosophila melanogaster, or fruit fly. Scientists of various sorts continue to find it a very useful resource, since it can be easily and plentifully "cultured" in a laboratory, has a very short generation time, and displays a great variety of mutation. This makes it useful in studying disease, and since Gov. Palin was in Pittsburgh to talk about her signature "issue" of disability and special needs, she might even have had some researcher tell her that there is a Drosophila-based center for research into autism at the University of North Carolina. The fruit fly can also be a menace to American agriculture, so any financing of research into its habits and mutations is money well-spent. It's especially ridiculous and unfortunate that the governor chose to make such a fool of herself in Pittsburgh, a great city that remade itself after the decline of coal and steel into a center of high-tech medical research.
In this case, it could be argued, Palin was not just being a fool in her own right but was following a demagogic lead set by the man who appointed her as his running mate. Sen. John McCain has made repeated use of an anti-waste and anti-pork ad (several times repeated and elaborated in his increasingly witless speeches) in which the expenditure of $3 million to study the DNA of grizzly bears in Montana was derided as "unbelievable." As an excellent article in the Feb. 8, 2008, Scientific American pointed out, there is no way to enforce the Endangered Species Act without getting some sort of estimate of numbers, and the best way of tracking and tracing the elusive grizzly is by setting up barbed-wire hair-snagging stations that painlessly take samples from the bears as they lumber by and then running the DNA samples through a laboratory. The cost is almost trivial compared with the importance of understanding this species, and I dare say the project will yield results in the measurement of other animal populations as well, but all McCain could do was be flippant and say that he wondered whether it was a "paternity" or "criminal" issue that the Fish and Wildlife Service was investigating. (Perhaps those really are the only things that he associates in his mind with DNA.)
With Palin, however, the contempt for science may be something a little more sinister than the bluff, empty-headed plain-man's philistinism of McCain. We never get a chance to ask her in detail about these things, but she is known to favor the teaching of creationism in schools (smuggling this crazy idea through customs in the innocent disguise of "teaching the argument," as if there was an argument), and so it is at least probable that she believes all creatures from humans to fruit flies were created just as they are now. This would make DNA or any other kind of research pointless, whether conducted in Paris or not. Projects such as sequencing the DNA of the flu virus, the better to inoculate against it, would not need to be funded. We could all expire happily in the name of God. Gov. Palin also says that she doesn't think humans are responsible for global warming; again, one would like to ask her whether, like some of her co-religionists, she is a "premillenial dispensationalist"—in other words, someone who believes that there is no point in protecting and preserving the natural world, since the end of days will soon be upon us.
Videos taken in the Assembly of God church in Wasilla, Alaska, which she used to attend, show her nodding as a preacher says that Alaska will be "one of the refuge states in the Last Days." For the uninitiated, this is a reference to a crackpot belief, widely held among those who brood on the "End Times," that some parts of the world will end at different times from others, and Alaska will be a big draw as the heavens darken on account of its wide open spaces. An article by Laurie Goodstein in the New York Times gives further gruesome details of the extreme Pentecostalism with which Palin has been associated in the past (perhaps moderating herself, at least in public, as a political career became more attractive). High points, also available on YouTube, show her being "anointed" by an African bishop who claims to cast out witches. The term used in the trade for this hysterical superstitious nonsense is "spiritual warfare," in which true Christian soldiers are trained to fight demons. Palin has spoken at "spiritual warfare" events as recently as June. And only last week the chiller from Wasilla spoke of "prayer warriors" in a radio interview with James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who said that he and his lovely wife, Shirley, had convened a prayer meeting to beseech that "God's perfect will be done on Nov. 4."
This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.
10.27.2008
10.26.2008
This Is Alabama Football
After stomping evil Tennessee 29-9, shrugging off an upset prediction like the death of an unknown second cousin of a stepfather, and now with an 8-0 record (5-0 in the SEC), nothing but Bryant-era class:But all anybody wanted to talk about outside the Alabama locker room on Saturday night was the here and now. Sophomore middle linebacker Rolando McClain huffed when somebody brought up the fact that LSU had lost earlier in the day.Godspeed, and Roll Tide!"We don't really care about LSU," McClain said. "We'll get to them whenever we play them. Right now, we'll enjoy this for 24 hours and get ready for next week."
If he sounds like Saban, you're right. This whole team is starting to sound like Saban, which means it's highly unlikely that anybody is going to catch Alabama napping.
10.25.2008
10.22.2008
No On Prop 8
Superstitious twats are winning the money war on the fight to keep gay marriage legal in California (their own legislature voted to legalize gay marriage, Governor Terminator vetoed it, their supreme court ruled that discrimination is unconstitutional). The main culprits are Mormons, who are flooding the state with money to run deceitful ads saying that gays getting married is--somehow--dangerous, anti-marriage, and anti-equality. This from a religion that, just around 3 decades ago, discriminated against non-white races. But you can't expect rational responses from magically thinking dopes.
I have given money to the cause of keeping gay marriage legal in California. Fight the Mormons: give some too. Even $10 will help.
California can't lose this right: doing so will set us gays back a decade. And you don't want to see me in those clothes (what was I thinking?).
Why Not A Flat Tax?
This Presidential campaign has been rife with "I'll give tax cuts here" and "I'll give tax cuts here too and then some." As a single male, I'm disgusted: I never fit any of the qualifications. Why do I get nothing when others get tax cuts for irresponsible, annoying dumb shit like having children? I have no problem paying taxes; I do have a problem with deficits and debt.
So why not a flat tax? Increases for everyone when spending increases; decreases for everyone when spending decreases.
Not to be conspiratorial, but here's one reason why:
I remember him: I gave his campaign money over a decade ago...And where in the hell is Kemp?
So why not a flat tax? Increases for everyone when spending increases; decreases for everyone when spending decreases.
Not to be conspiratorial, but here's one reason why:
And what does that mean for us?A new study based on unpublished Internal Revenue Service data shows the rich are different when it comes to paying taxes: They hide more of their income.
The previously unreported study estimates that taxpayers whose true income was between $500,000 and $1 million a year understated their adjusted gross incomes by 21% overall in 2001, compared to an 8% underreporting rate for those earning $50,000 to $100,000 and even lower rates for those earning less. (The "net misreporting rate" as the IRS calls it, includes both underreported income and inflated deductions.)
In all, because of their higher noncompliance rates, those with true incomes of $200,000 or more received 25% of all income, but accounted for 40% of net underreported income and 42% of underreported tax in 2001, the new analysis finds.
The Slemrod/Johns analysis uses unpublished data from special research audits the IRS conducted on a sample of 45,000 individual returns filed for 2001. It was the IRS' first such research effort since 1988, and it led the agency to estimate the 2001 gross "tax gap" at $345 billion.That's half a Wall Street bail-out! In one year! Here's an idea: we all pay up fairly. Anyone with me?
I remember him: I gave his campaign money over a decade ago...And where in the hell is Kemp?Conservative Defence Of Christopher Buckley's Endorsement Of Barack Obama
From Kathleen Parker of National Review Online:
The truth few wish to utter is that the GOP has abandoned many conservatives, who mostly nurse their angst in private. Those chickens we keep hearing about have indeed come home to roost. Years of pandering to the extreme wing — the “kooks” the senior Buckley tried to separate from the right — have created a party no longer attentive to its principles.Few wish to utter? In private? Libertarians have been saying this shit for 8 long years. What kind of "personal responsibility" party proposes buying people's houses or thinks that war debts magically ("Lord make a way!") go away? What kind of "reduce government spending" party holds Congress for a decade and only succeeds in increasing spending at a rate that would make a true socialist blush? What kind of "get the government out of our lives" party wants more government intervention on adoption, abortion, local school systems, gays, need I go on? What kind of "let local charities do their work" party delves out billions to churches while cutting needed spending in science? What kind of "holding government accountable" party lets Iraq go as it did, lets the "drug war" go as it has, lets Washington-subsidized Wall Street go as it did, lets new military weaponry come out over budget and far beneath expectations, need I go on? Hence:
Republicans are not short on brainpower — or pride — but they have strayed off course. They do not, in fact, deserve to win this time, and someone had to remind them why.I don't feel so guilty now. I guess I'm just not a "real" American: I value my rights and opportunities more than flags and Jesus.
Christopher Buckley, ever the swashbuckling heir to his father’s defiant spirit, walked the plank so that the sinking mother ship might right itself.
No doubt his seafaring father is cheering from heaven: “Ahoy there, Christo! Well done, my son.”
Leçons from France via Walid Phares
In the Western debate on how best to counter the rise and expansion of the Jihadi movement, particularly the Salafists, within liberal democracies, European experiences are important because of the sheer numbers of militants and the dissemination within many urban areas. France's counter terrorism experiences are one among these learning processes for all other European Govenrment but also for North American CT planning as well. In an article I published in the Middle East Times today I commented on France's Interior Minister remarks on the state of confrontation with the Jihadists. In a recent series of seminars in Paris, which I will report about on CTB, I also interacted with a number of French legislators and CT officials dealing with the French involvement in Afghanistan and the Sahel. In short, France is heading towards "increasing engagement with al Qaeda on two continents, Asia and Africa, as well as at home.Read it all at Counterterrorism Blog.
10.20.2008
McCain Campaign worried about small donations from millions of Americans
I've had enough. Now the campaign is complaining that millions of people are giving Obama a few bucks each. Micro donations through the internet should be protected, it's the best way to cut out special interests. After this election we are going to see a lot of this as the anti-political speech agenda that McCain has had for a long time. If there are agruments that micro donations should be restricted that don't disenfranchize Americans please let me know, I'd like to hear them. As it is, disenfranchizement is the only goal that limitations would gain. Here are some notes on a confrence call by McCain Campaign Manager Rick Davis (Link to article) :
Obama is refusing to release any of his donors under $200.00 per person. Obviously in order to raise 150 million he's had to include hundreds of thousands possibly a million new donors.
It's important to note that this is the first campaign since the watergate era that has taken a primary fundraising effort and driven into general election. This is the first time that all primary funds could be used for general, this raises questions about whether his donors are qualified. Why isn't the Obama Campaign reporting them?
The RNC is going to update all their stuff online so you'll be able to search every donation that McCain AND RNC has ever raised.
What is Obama's excuse for not doing this? He has the technology.
During the primary Obama constantly badgered opponents. If he were the nominee and the Republican agreed, he'd take Government funds. But he didn't. His fundraising machine grew and grew; Nobody knows how or why.
He repeatedly made pledges to the public that he'd take government funds if the Republican candidate did. He looked in the camera and said, "I will call John McCain, and I will negotiate with John McCain..."
He never called John McCain, and we all learned in a blog post that he'd forgo public financing.
We need to have a public dialog about this.
We don't want to find out there has been impropriety in the donations he's received. If there's problems we need to find out about them and publish them. There have been discussions between Obama's campaign and the FEC to clean up his donations. People on the Gaza strip have been buying teeshirts. It's against the law.
We could go on with more and more examples of these and that's just from the disclosed ones.
We want sunshine and transparency on this issue. The RNC has filed a complaint with the FEC to see if they can get to the bottom of these three hundred million in "secret donations" I say secret because I have no doubt that the vast majority are probably legitimate but they are being kept secret by the Obama campaign for no good reason. I looked everywhere I could to find out why they don't disclose these and other than the explanation during the primary that there were "Technical Limitations" on doing it I can't find any explanation. They have the resources to do it.
The RNC says they can make all their donations publicly searchable in 24 hours. If the RNC can do it, why can't the Obama campaign do it?
To finish up: this pattern of non-disclosure & setting his own rules is consistent with what we've seen from Senator Obama. Doesn't answer ACORN questions. Just puts out enough information to get through each day. We dribble out information.
Where's the disclosure? RElationships. I don't want this call to devolve into a relationship call but "Just one of my friends in the neighborhood" but now we know Ayers had a much deeper much more involved relationship with Obama.
When will we learn more about the least experience Presidential nominee from the Democratic party?
One report from FEC says this could result in the largest fine ever.
Obviously Obama wants to obey the law. Obviously his campaign wants to adhere to requirements.
One other disturbing aspect of this issue is that because John McCain took funds, their campaign will be audited by the FEC. Because Obama didn't take funds, there's a "lingering question" as to whether or not there will be an audit of his fundraising. That raises "larger spectre" over voluntary cooperation that Obama isn't showing.
Congrats to Obama on money raised, but shame on them for not letting the public see where coming from.
Obama is refusing to release any of his donors under $200.00 per person. Obviously in order to raise 150 million he's had to include hundreds of thousands possibly a million new donors.
It's important to note that this is the first campaign since the watergate era that has taken a primary fundraising effort and driven into general election. This is the first time that all primary funds could be used for general, this raises questions about whether his donors are qualified. Why isn't the Obama Campaign reporting them?
The RNC is going to update all their stuff online so you'll be able to search every donation that McCain AND RNC has ever raised.
What is Obama's excuse for not doing this? He has the technology.
During the primary Obama constantly badgered opponents. If he were the nominee and the Republican agreed, he'd take Government funds. But he didn't. His fundraising machine grew and grew; Nobody knows how or why.
He repeatedly made pledges to the public that he'd take government funds if the Republican candidate did. He looked in the camera and said, "I will call John McCain, and I will negotiate with John McCain..."
He never called John McCain, and we all learned in a blog post that he'd forgo public financing.
We need to have a public dialog about this.
We don't want to find out there has been impropriety in the donations he's received. If there's problems we need to find out about them and publish them. There have been discussions between Obama's campaign and the FEC to clean up his donations. People on the Gaza strip have been buying teeshirts. It's against the law.
We could go on with more and more examples of these and that's just from the disclosed ones.
We want sunshine and transparency on this issue. The RNC has filed a complaint with the FEC to see if they can get to the bottom of these three hundred million in "secret donations" I say secret because I have no doubt that the vast majority are probably legitimate but they are being kept secret by the Obama campaign for no good reason. I looked everywhere I could to find out why they don't disclose these and other than the explanation during the primary that there were "Technical Limitations" on doing it I can't find any explanation. They have the resources to do it.
The RNC says they can make all their donations publicly searchable in 24 hours. If the RNC can do it, why can't the Obama campaign do it?
To finish up: this pattern of non-disclosure & setting his own rules is consistent with what we've seen from Senator Obama. Doesn't answer ACORN questions. Just puts out enough information to get through each day. We dribble out information.
Where's the disclosure? RElationships. I don't want this call to devolve into a relationship call but "Just one of my friends in the neighborhood" but now we know Ayers had a much deeper much more involved relationship with Obama.
When will we learn more about the least experience Presidential nominee from the Democratic party?
One report from FEC says this could result in the largest fine ever.
Obviously Obama wants to obey the law. Obviously his campaign wants to adhere to requirements.
One other disturbing aspect of this issue is that because John McCain took funds, their campaign will be audited by the FEC. Because Obama didn't take funds, there's a "lingering question" as to whether or not there will be an audit of his fundraising. That raises "larger spectre" over voluntary cooperation that Obama isn't showing.
Congrats to Obama on money raised, but shame on them for not letting the public see where coming from.
10.17.2008
Movie Review: Midnight Meat Train
I don't know how completely predictable Midnight Meat Train would be to a viewer who has not read horror-homo Clive Barker's short story. But even though I knew the whole deal (and I'm guessing it won't take too long for most people to figure it out), I still thoroughly enjoyed this movie: it is gloriously sick.Visually the movie is pretty interesting, the acting isn't awful (except for Brooke Shields), and the plot has its moments of uncomfortable tension. But the best part of this film is the gore, which is plentiful, twisted, and inventive (hammer-fu has never been done better). And while the plot and ending may be a bit overdone and obvious, the movie still lets some bat-shit craziness go fancifully unexplained.
A definite must-see for fans of Clive Barker, total gross-out, or gore-fu.
If this comes to pass, perhaps the other party will stop genuflecting to the religulous.
The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.
P. J. O'Rourke
A Liberal Supermajority
Get ready for 'change' we haven't seen since 1965, or 1933.
WSJ
P. J. O'Rourke
A Liberal Supermajority
Get ready for 'change' we haven't seen since 1965, or 1933.
WSJ
If the current polls hold, Barack Obama will win the White House on November 4 and Democrats will consolidate their Congressional majorities, probably with a filibuster-proof Senate or very close to it. Without the ability to filibuster, the Senate would become like the House, able to pass whatever the majority wants.
Though we doubt most Americans realize it, this would be one of the most profound political and ideological shifts in U.S. history. Liberals would dominate the entire government in a way they haven't since 1965, or 1933. In other words, the election would mark the restoration of the activist government that fell out of public favor in the 1970s. If the U.S. really is entering a period of unchecked left-wing ascendancy, Americans at least ought to understand what they will be getting, especially with the media cheering it all on....
10.13.2008
900-Pound Giant Squid Joins Cast Of 'The View'
According to fans of the show, the squid's most memorable moment thus far occurred last week, when it got a little testy during a discussion on whether teenage girls are getting "too sexy too soon" and squirted 12 gallons of ink onto Sherri Shepherd.
Hitchens on Election. As a "one issue" voter.
I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that "issue" I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity. Obama is greatly overrated in my opinion, but the Obama-Biden ticket is not a capitulationist one, even if it does accept the support of the surrender faction, and it does show some signs of being able and willing to profit from experience. With McCain, the "experience" is subject to sharply diminishing returns, as is the rest of him, and with Palin the very word itself is a sick joke. One only wishes that the election could be over now and a proper and dignified verdict rendered, so as to spare democracy and civility the degradation to which they look like being subjected in the remaining days of a low, dishonest campaign.
Link to article
Link to article
10.12.2008
10.08.2008
Geek Heaven
Jay Walker's personal library:
"Is that a Sputnik? (Yes.) Hey, those books appear to be bound in rubies. (They are.) That edition of Chaucer ... is it a Kelmscott? (Natch.) Gee, that chandelier looks like the one in the James Bond flick Die Another Day. (Because it is.) No matter where you turn in this ziggurat, another treasure beckons you—a 1665 Bills of Mortality chronicle of London (you can track plague fatalities by week), the instruction manual for the Saturn V rocket (which launched the Apollo 11 capsule to the moon), a framed napkin from 1943 on which Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined his plan to win World War II."
in Wired.
10.04.2008
Gee, thanks, Barney
Lawmaker Accused of Fannie Mae Conflict of Interest
By Bill Sammon
WASHINGTON — Unqualified home buyers were not the only ones who benefitted from Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank’s efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae throughout the 1990s.
So did Frank’s partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the agency’s push to relax lending restrictions.
Now that Fannie Mae is at the epicenter of a financial meltdown that threatens the U.S. economy, some are raising new questions about Frank's relationship with Herb Moses, who was Fannie’s assistant director for product initiatives. Moses worked at the government-sponsored enterprise from 1991 to 1998, while Frank was on the House Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over Fannie.
Both Frank and Moses assured the Wall Street Journal in 1992 that they took pains to avoid any conflicts of interest. Critics, however, remain skeptical.
"It’s absolutely a conflict," said Dan Gainor, vice president of the Business & Media Institute. "He was voting on Fannie Mae at a time when he was involved with a Fannie Mae executive. How is that not germane?
"If this had been his ex-wife and he was Republican, I would bet every penny I have - or at least what’s not in the stock market - that this would be considered germane," added Gainor, a T. Boone Pickens Fellow. "But everybody wants to avoid it because he’s gay. It’s the quintessential double standard."
The two lived together in a Washington home until they broke up in 1998, a few months after Moses ended his seven-year tenure at Fannie Mae, where he was the assistant director of product initiatives. According to National Mortgage News, Moses "helped develop many of Fannie Mae’s affordable housing and home improvement lending programs."
....
Critics say such programs led to the mortgage meltdown that prompted last month’s government takeover of Fannie Mae and its financial cousin, Freddie Mac. The giant firms are blamed for spreading bad mortgages throughout the private financial sector.
Although Frank now blames Republicans for the failure of Fannie and Freddie, he spent years blocking GOP lawmakers from imposing tougher regulations on the mortgage giants. In 1991, the year Moses was hired by Fannie, the Boston Globe reported that Frank pushed the agency to loosen regulations on mortgages for two- and three-family homes, even though they were defaulting at twice and five times the rate of single homes, respectively.
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