The Nappy Cat Chronicles

Pelosi missed a huge opportunity to become an historic speaker and instead invited comparisons to Tom DeLay by deciding to deliver a more partisan speech than necessary at the time. There would have been time for partisan politics AFTER the vote, but to do it before seemed like a strategic blunder.

Pelosi played into the stereotype she had been very adept at avoiding most of these last two years. That said, did it really cost any GOP votes? Unlikely. But it did give the House GOP leadership a talking point to deflect from its own failure.

Chuck Todd’s usually sober but this part of his analysis is unpleasantly histrionic. Historic speaker? Strategic blunder? After eight years, it’s bleedin’ obvious that, if most Republicans want something to pass the House or the Senate, it passes the House or the Senate. Attributing the nays to Pelosi’s speech and not to specific disagreements with the package made the Republicans look like pathetic wieners.

There is a lot to comment on regarding what has happened just in the past week of the Presidential Rat Race.  Most of which revolves around how we are slapped in the face again regarding the fact that everyone is giving into their emotions with their decisions.

And the whole experience argument borders on irrelevant.  No matter what side of it you are on.  It’s a futile question to even bring up.  Putting importance on experience means one of two things.  First, we can test it through an examination of sorts.  If you say we can’t test such a thing as experience, then that most likely means you’re providing a value on the ability for a leader to make decisions from “his gut.”

Nevertheless, why are we having these conversations?  Our congress can pass anything it wants into law.  Given a certain number of votes, a presidential veto also would prove to be irrelevant..

Overwhelmingly, I wonder if there is a yearning for an authoritarian father figure, and if we manifest that desire in our own politics.  Each day, we can witness people who want a leader to tell them what to do, or they want to tell other people what to do.  Fewer people seem to be holding only themselves accountable.  Rather, either they blame their problems on someone else, or they need to tell others what their problems are.

I agree with IOZ that our problems revolve around our enmeshment within an economic and political system, which claim to be transparent, but are hardly even visible to the average citizen.  However, Andrew Sullivan has also made claim to something that I think even IOZ might agree with (although I would not be surprised if he still disagreed).

Suppose for a moment that IOZ is right, and that there is no real difference between Barack Obama and John McCain.  As well, there is no difference between Democrat or Republican.  If - for whatever reason you have made up in your mind - you still find it necessary to vote only for a mainstream candidate, would not temperament make the difference in who you voted for?  Would that not mean Barack Obama is the man to vote for, as Sullivan suggests?

Here’s the rub though, what you want the president to have in terms of temperament is still entirely a judgmental choice on your part.  There are people out there who actually want an old father figure, who has an ability for daring stunts of drama in the White House.  You might argue that McCain is more hawkish than Obama, but that is also a futile argument considering that Obama displays just as much vehement support for our allies (e.g. Israel) as McCain.

In the end, I’ve found the more important questions revolve around how we got here.  Where, at some point, did politics become less academic, and more advertising and marketing?  It is at that point where you realize that your ability to make a difference relies on how much money you make, and how good you are at crafting a message.  Substance, at this point, is irrelevant.

“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”

- Thomas Sowell, Unsourced

The race, that is. From the McCain campaign:

“From the minute John McCain suspended his campaign and arrived in Washington to address this crisis, he was attacked by the Democratic leadership: Senators Obama and Reid, Speaker Pelosi and others. Their partisan attacks were an effort to gain political advantage during a national economic crisis. By doing so, they put at risk the homes, livelihoods and savings of millions of American families.

“Barack Obama failed to lead, phoned it in, attacked John McCain, and refused to even say if he supported the final bill.

“Just before the vote, when the outcome was still in doubt, Speaker Pelosi gave a strongly worded partisan speech and poisoned the outcome.

“This bill failed because Barack Obama and the Democrats put politics ahead of country.”

Dazed and confused at the Brunswick County school board meeting in Brunswick County, NC:

“It’s really a disgrace for the state school board to impose evolution on our students without teaching creationism,” county school board member Jimmy Hobbs said at Tuesday’s meeting. “The law says we can’t have Bibles in schools, but we can have evolution, of the atheists.”

The topic came up after county resident Joel Fanti told the board he thought it was unfair for evolution to be taught as fact, saying it should be taught as a theory because there’s no tangible proof it’s true.

“I wasn’t here 2 million years ago,” Fanti said. “If evolution is so slow, why don’t we see anything evolving now?”

The board allowed Fanti to speak longer than he was allowed, and at the end of his speech he volunteered to teach creationism and received applause from the audience.

When he walked away, school board Chairwoman Shirley Babson took the podium and said another state had tried to teach evolution and creationism together and failed, and that the school system must teach by the law.

“Evolution is taught because that’s what the General Assembly tells us to teach,” Babson said, adding that she doesn’t agree with it, but that students must learn it to graduate.

Now, I’m 100% sure that Joel thinks he’s a nice guy. He runs some sort of nonprofit ministry and it looks like he and his wife have adopted two children and live as pleasantly fruity Christians:

I have been and continue to be a blessed man. God has given me a family that I am thankful for. I have been married nearly 13 years. I have been back in North Carolina since 1997. My focus is living the life that is pleasing to God so that it leads others to Him.

There are a lot of earnest Joels out there who will continuously organize and whine. The Joels are half of why I support the teaching of the creation myth in place of evolution provided the school board approves.

The consequences of teaching creation as science encompass the other half of my support. It’s fun to organize and it’s fun to fight. But, the darkness that follows the expulsion of scientific inquiry is not fun. And, if the residents of these school districts are not brave enough to confront the lies of the Joels, they deserve to suffer under the patriarchy and the emotional and psychological brutality of organized religion.

“You can’t be as old as I am without waking up with a surprised look on your face every morning: ‘Holy Christ, whaddya know - I’m still around!’ It’s absolutely amazing that I survived all the booze and smoking and the cars and the career.”

- Paul Newman, 1925 - 2008

TPM has a great rundown of the talking head blather about McCain’s decision to “suspend” his campaign and “postpone” the first presidential debate. Unsurprisingly, this move by McCain seems to have caught all of them off guard. Look, this is McCain’s modus operandi. He doesn’t care about the presidential debates. He doesn’t care about the quality of his veep pick. He does care about becoming president and believes that his odds improve if he pretends to be president during every crisis. Remember Georgia? The immigration legislation? To pull it off, though, he needs the media to Lewinsky him after every bold proclamation. Unfortunately for him, it looks like the sore throat virus is especially contagious this week.

The one piece of news that’s getting lost amongst this bailout brouhaha and McCain’s decision to-I doubt that this is the correct word-suspend his campaign is Sarah Palin’s CBS interview. It’s a god-awful train wreck:

I do give her points though for wearing considerably less makeup than Couric and for possessing the ability to be so confusing that, while your brain is processing her words, you suddenly realize that their semblance is meaningless because you’ve forgotten the question.

Just so we are clear, “the market” is that thing managers put our money in for us and put it where they think is best.  So, even though we have not actually taken away our money from a certain stock, someone else has done that for us.  Therefore, technically, we have no confidence in the market.

And now, in order to restore confidence (that we apparently do not have) in markets (that I apparently participate in), our government (that we apparently run) will spend money (which I know we do not have) in order to help qualm the crisis of confidence (that apparently is ruining the economy).

Well then, hooray for the consumer driven economy.

To think that this all started with over-valuation of assets; that is to say homes.  Many of those homes were financed by mortgages under terms that were not exactly friendly to the owners.  A long story made short: a consumer driven economy that relied on money and credit from the value of homes, which were overvalued.

I’m afraid this will not end, until the market prices for homes are realized.  And the most frightening aspect is that we have so many politicians who yell out for “free market capitalism,” yet, are here about to give taxpayer money to help firms with their bad choices.  I guess the free market isn’t so free after all.

I may be showing my age but I just realized that this commercial

is selling nuclear power and not some sort of Sim City spin-off. Apparently, nuclear is the new suede.

Since I had no idea when he was going to post here for the first time, I completely forgot to give him a proper introduction. My superior chum, Michael, is joining me. You may remember him from such posts as that time I commemorated his love of struggling against fascism with a half naked picture of Rob Thomas.

Michael and I have been friends since high school. We bonded over AP US History homework and race wars in my stomach. Since we mostly hate the same things, he’s an intelligent man and I’m happy that he has decided to join me.

His first post here deals with political branding. Since I mentioned high school, let me just say that I always picture conservatives as the jocks and liberals as the nerds. There’s a little scenario that I imagine called the “coming in her ear” scenario:

Jock: Look nerd. I’m just asking if there’s a chance.

Nerd: No, I keep telling you: Coming in her ear won’t make her pregnant!

Jock: Shit. What do you know, nerd. I’m going to keep fucking her ear. It’s bound to work.

Nerd: But I have data that says that you’re not getting anywhere!

Jock: And I’m fucking a girl while you’re trying to get to first base with your calculator.

But, anyway, the jocks always seem to outbreed the nerds. So I’m sure they figure it out eventually.

Really though. I can envision this lineup as being a great thing for America.

Does anyone know why the game Apples to Apples chooses to have cards like Hiroshima in the game?  According to Wikipedia:

The judge’s decision is completely subjective; the official rules encourage the judge to pick the match that is “most creative, humorous or interesting”. Some might think it humorous if Helen Keller is played for senseless or touchy-feely, and might give that player the point.

So, when a card with the adjective of “deadly” or “war” comes up, it takes someone twisted to the brink of psychosis for the card of Hiroshima to not win.  At what point do we stop playing the game and admit one of two things?  Either that Hiroshima should not be a card in this game, or that when something so logical comes upon us, it cannot be denied (e.g. “Hiroshima exemplified a deadly atrocity, opposed to Britney Spears who exemplifies the tragedy of our media priorities.”)

Well, we never do any of those two things.  Just look at your current discourse in politics.  I have heard countless radio and TV pundits thanking God (big America fan by the way, that God) for our current Republican personnel in Washington.  At every chance we have had the possibility of a Democrat moving into Washington, they have espoused claims of, “Prepare to die as soon as you let that liberal into Washington.”

Sure, I think that the logic behind many of those “Democrats will be the end of us” arguments are pretty thin.  But you know what scares me more?  How Republicans think that they can make Governor Sarah Palin not seem like a foreign policy liability.  I’m assuming that’s because they all know that she will toe whatever the party line is during the day.

I just don’t understand it.  On one side, many “liberally minded” are saying that Obama and Biden are still too forceful in their language of foreign policy, and overall, pretty hawkish.  Meanwhile, the Republicans make them out to be little girls.  And I’m not talking about the girls that used to beat me up when I was in high school elementary school American Gladiators.

At some point, I just want the world to agree on facts again.  But if there’s anyone here who is going to tell you how perspective rules over us all, it’s going to be Will.

Rove on McCain:

WALLACE: All right, and for fair game, what is McCain doing that goes a step too far?

ROVE: Well, McCain has gone in some of his ads — similarly gone one step too far, and sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the 100-percent-truth test. They don’t need to attack each other in this way. They have legitimate points to make about each other that are beyond, you know, the…

WALLACE: Real quick question — 30 seconds. Do they need to be 100 percent passing the truth? Just, in other words, when you were running Bush’s campaign, did you care whether some fact-check organization…

ROVE: No, and look, you can’t trust the fact-check organizations, with all due respect. They’re human beings. They’re individuals. They’ve got their own biases built in there. But both campaigns ought to be careful about it. They ought to — there ought to be an adult who says, “Do we really need to go that far in this ad? Don’t we make our point and won’t we get broader acceptance and deny the opposition an opportunity to attack us if we don’t include that one little last tweak in the ad?”

Greg Sargent on Rove on McCain:

Wow. This is a bit like being labeled a sleaze merchant by Bob Guccione or Larry Flynt.

Rove’s words will make a nice news cycle soundbite for the Obama campaign, but Sargent is incorrect. The McCain campaign is blatantly lying. Rove is aware that, because every word and every image is archived, a campaign can’t get away with that. Instead, a campaign should use three basic strategies:

• First, a campaign should remove context from its opposition’s quotes and repeat ad naseum. All that matters is that it’s 100% true that those words can be attributed to the opposition.
• The second strategy is infinitely more devious: If the truth is being taken for granted, raise doubts. For example, if one of Obama’s daughters was relatively pale-skinned, the McCain campaign could have hinted that Obama’s wife had an affair with a white man. Or, perhaps Obama smoked crack and had sex with a disabled gay man. As an added bonus, “value voters” love to swallow this sort of shit and will repeat it for free.
• Finally, a campaign should always grant its candidate plausible deniability. If a campaign is going to blatantly lie or use the preceding strategies, it must use proxies. Otherwise, the candidate is made vulnerable to attacks from the very journalists who should be dutifully transcribing the attacks made by the proxies.

Rove has used these strategies to successfully win elections for years. So, in all fairness, Rove is not calling the McCain campaign sleazy. He’s calling both campaigns inept.

“To alcohol! The cause of.. and solution to.. all of life’s problems.”

- Homer Simpson