Sen Obama Please Choose None Of The Above.

I fervently hope that sen Obama chooses someone not on the shortlists for his VP. Surprise us and make some news please Sen Obama.

Lieberman Idiocy On Parade

Lieberman just referred to "Al Qaeda in Iran" on Meet The Press.

Fading In The Polls?

I have read many posts across the blogosphere over the past few days talking up some fade in the polls that Sen Obama is supposedly experiencing. But when I look at the trend lines on sites like Pollster....



...the trend line appears to be headed up to me. How about you? This shows once again how poor we are at understanding trends intuitively. Obama is doing just fine in the polling so far. The McCain campaign is justifiably panicking. So would you if the only critique of you opponent you had in a popularity contest is that he is too popular.

Another Reason To Vote Against McCain

As reported at TNR he loves boxing but hates Ultimate Fighting so much he has worked to get it outlawed. He calls UFC 'human cock fighting'. But is an avid lifetime fan of boxing.

If you are a UFC fan his wishing to outlaw your entertainment should give you pause. If you like reason his ability to get so completely incensed over a distinction without a difference should give you pause.

PhDiva

I just discovered the blog of PhDiva. It is an excellent blog about the early years of our civilization. What to know what happened in ancient Greece or Rome on this date in history? Check out PhDiva.

The Evolution Of A Concept

Inception

Refinement

All Gayed Up!

News Flash! Poor Minortity Women Not Stupid!

This will only be news for those who have bought the harsh GOP spin and their Randian friends. The Brookings institute published an abstract of a study that shows that paying for birth control through Medicaid reduces the rate at which those on Medicaid have children.

Who would have thunk it? It turns out that even poor, uneducated, minority women can make good decisions and act on them when we do not withhold the means to do so from them.

I am going to make a new category to label posts of this kind of information under. It will be 'NO SHIT'. I will reserve it for studies that tell us what should be common sense but that entrenched political and societal forces fight against.

Thanks to Matthew Yglesias.

Proof That Women Are Less Competent Than Men

With her reply to one of my comments over at Womanist Musings Renee got me to thinking about suicide. I have been making this tongue in cheek observation for years but did not look up the statistics. Women actually perform worse than I had been saying. One only needs two statistics to prove that women are grossly less competent than men. Attempted suicides and the suicide rate.

Women were three times as likely to attempt suicide in 2001. In that year 24,672 men committed suicide compared to 5,950 suicides committed by women. That means that men commit suicide 4 time as often as women do with 1/3 the attempts. That means that men are 12 times as likely to succeed at trying to kill themselves.

Killing a human being is not a difficult task. It is no secret what it takes to end a life. It is especially easy to do if the victim is co-operative. In a suicide the victim is by definition co-operating with the killer because they are the same person. How incompetent does one have to be to fail at such a simple task.

/snark








Statistics are from suicide.org.

Veep Stakes

There is rampant speculation about the VP choices on both sides and timing. There is now speculation that McCain is going to make his pick tomorrow. I guess we are going to see that one every other day or so untill some one is right.

Here is my guess. Obama knows who he is going to pick and whenever McCain makes his choice Obama is going to stomp on the news cycle by announcing his choice. I also believe that the oposite is true. So each candidate is trying to out wait the other. Who ever moves first loses.

They should save the announcement for the conventions. Conventions have become non-news events but not knowing who the VP choice is would make it a real event that people would actualy watch.

Unless McCain is stupid enough to let Obama stomp on his news cycle we will be waiting for a while yet. (I hope he announces tomorrow. but doubt that even he is that dumb.)

Has A Surfer/Snowboarder Who Lives In A Van Rewritten Physics? Maybe.

I would love to be educated enough to have an opinion on wether this guy is right.

The Last Lecture

This is all over the net so you have probably seen it. If not push play.

Good Comeback

KAREN TUMULTY - Was there anything that you saw on this trip that changed your mind? John McCain, as you know, is saying, "Well, he already knew what he was going to think before he got there."

BARACK OBAMA - Well, I thought John also suggested that I'm always changing my mind, so he's got to make up his mind about what he says about my mind.

Citizenship

I am a citizen of Memphis.
I am a citizen of Tennessee.
I am a citizen of The United States of America.
I am a citizen of The World.

The Speech

I just watched the speech for the second time. I watched it live during my lunch today. I watched it again with my daughter just now. I was spell bound even upon the second viewing. This speech laid out Sen Obama's vision for our place in the world and it is a grand vision. He is the kind of leader who can sell that grand vision to the world. He will get us more cooperation from the other nations in securing our future by making it clear that it is their future as well. If you doubt what he will do - - - watch him tell you.

Misplaced Mistaken Outrage

... over Sen. Kerry's use of the term 'tar-baby'. You will note that I did not say false outrage. I do not think that Renee over at Womanist Musings is being disingenuous when she claims to be outraged. She is outraged. But she is outraged in error. She has the video posted on her blog so you can watch it there to judge for yourself.

She is acting like he called someone a 'tar-baby'. He did not. He used the word in its original meaning - a sticky problem that only entangles you more them harder you struggle. What he did was not like calling a black man a 'spade'. What he did is like using the word 'spade' to refer to the black card suit with pips shaped like spear heads. This is an argument that will likely turn out to be a tar-baby for me but we must stop running from the difficult topic of race. People of good will must speak about these things in the effort to increase understanding across the color line for so long as it exists.

In her post and comments she argues that the common vernacular meaning of the word is the racist word. I cannot argue with that because I am not a part of her vernacular community. Neither is the Senator. He has probably spent less time in his life around openly racist people who use racial insults than I have. And I do not recall hearing this term used as a racial insult, even though I have been exposed to an amazing variety of these terms. I have encountered people who refer to it as one but not heard it myself. I have also not heard it used in its original meaning very often. It is rapidly falling out of use all together.

She also argues in the comments,

BTW what I deem to be racist against WOC is far more accurate than your determination simply because I inhabit the body that I do. This is one of those times Larry when you listen to views of POC and put aside your inclinations.

This is the sort of argument that by design is racist and shuts down the discussion rather than opens it up. She may be able to more accurately say what a WOC finds offensive than I am, but she does not have any special insight into the way that Sen Kerry and his peers use language and that is at least as central to this argument as how she feels about it. It is obvious from the context that the over-educated elite white male was ignorant of the racial implications of the word he used. He used it in a clearly non-racial context in its original meaning. He is likely to issue an apology because of the controversy that his ignorant choice of words caused but that firestorm has only served to distract from the actual content of what he was saying. He was defending Sen Obama from a scurrilous attack and no one will note his defense of our candidate because we had to digress into the language of personal affront.

Black In America (Hour One)

I intended to watch the full two hours of this CNN special tonight. I was defeated by its glacial pace. It was as if it was the producers goal to give the viewer as little information in as much time as possible. I simply could not force myself to sit through another virtually content free hour this evening.

The first hour gave me the following tidbits.

1. There are families that have both black and white branches to their family tree. This was no news to anyone who is paying attention to the world around them. We are all mutts. It is only the retarded white supremacist and melanists who claim that they are pure bred. I am not the sort of credulous individual who will buy their con.

2. Education is important. They told of the program that is paying children for grades. I think it is a fantastic idea.

3. More and more children are being born out of wedlock. The single mother rate in the black community is 70%. No news here. They had no suggested solutions either.

4. There are some otherwise intelligent people who believe a pseudo since theory that blacks die younger than whites because of "Salt tolerance". Why look to research when we can just make some good sounding crap up and BELIEVE!

That is four tidbits of information in an hour of "reporting". Only #4 was news to me and I really did not need to be exposed to that bit of misinformation. Just like I have no need to hear the BS arguments for young earth creationism except to be able to refute them.

McTrolling For Votes

On TPMCafe There has been much discussion of late about what makes a person a troll or a comment trollish. It is my opinion that the essence of what constitutes trolishness is the dishonest insult. If a person hurls hurtful invective that they know to not be true then they are a troll.

Sen McCain gave an excellent example of this behavior this week. He chose to try to gain political points by saying that Sen Obama wants to lose in Iraq. Sen McCain knows that this is not true. He knows that Sen Obama wishes for us to succeed in Iraq. He has a policy difference with Sen Obama. He thinks that Sen Obama's policy will lead to failure. Saying that is an honest critique of Sen Obama's positions. But he chose not to make a principled attack on Sen Obama's position. He instead claimed that if you disagree with his policy positions the you are in favor of losing. That is how he became a troll for a day.

We all make trollish comments from time to time. What makes a troll is consistently making trollish comments. I will be watching to see which personality wins. Will we see the campaign of the straight shooter McCain, or will we be treated to three months of Troll McBush?

You Ain't Cool...

till you do your thing on Sesame Street.

Tattooed White Trash Correction

I got the link wrong in my first post. It is fixed now.

GOP vs Democrats

I saw this in a comment by likelydemented over at TPM.

I say what is going on here is some kind of split--separate emotional universes. On one side are people who are essentially authoritarian by nature and who want rules, clarity, and predictability. They support cops, the military, and President Pinocchio. On the other side are people who, for whatever reasons, are able to put up with ambiguity and the messiness of democracy. They don't understand us; we don't understand them.

That is an excellent observation. My libertarian friends are missing the point by hanging out with the GOP which is the authoritarian party.

This was also a learning experience about bookmarking things you want to comment on. It took me forever to find this again today because I did not.