Cindy McCain, apparently not happy with being upstaged by Sarah Palin in the category of Most Deluded McCain Sidekick, uncorked this whopper today:
"Cindy McCain said today that she expects her husband to clear the record at tonight's debate and let America know where he truly stands.
McCain, who stopped to visit a half-dozen children at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt today, said the presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama has "waged the dirtiest campaign in American history," and her husband Sen. John McCain will use tonight's debate to correct the distortions."
Yeah, its about time they called Obama on insinuating that McCain pals around with terrorists, that his only legislative accomplish was to teach sex ed to kindergartners, that he cancelled a visit with wounded troops because cameras weren't allowed, is going to raise everyone's taxes, wants a government-run health care system, and opposes offshore drilling and nuclear power.
No wait, that was McCain, waging the dirtiest campaign in history against Obama. I guess Cindy thinks we are going to forget about all that.
And let's be clear: if Obama was going to run a dirty campaign against McCain, he'd talk about his trophy wife hunting, his affair, how his imprisonment and torture probably made him mentally unbalanced and crazy, his senility, his age, and his cancer. THAT is what a dirty campaign from Obama would look like, and it doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to what has happened.
So Cindy McCain, welcome to the Liars for McCain Club. I'm sure you'll fit right in.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Why Republicans, Why?
Indeed Republicans, why? David from CA puts it well:
"When did our standards for real statesmanship sink so low?
Why haven't good Republicans risen up in mass revolt against this foolish lowering of expectations for our national leaders? Where is the knowledge, wisdom and greatness in Palin? She displays no genuine shade of it.
That's not good enough for my family. Why is it good enough for you, fellow citizen?
...
Palin offers nothing of the hugeness of mind, heart and soul we should seek in the men and women we place in high office.
I demand better, and I resent being asked to sign off on a counterfeit, just to win at any cost. No more for my family. We won't be voting for Palin."
Indeed, neither should anyone who puts country before party.
"When did our standards for real statesmanship sink so low?
Why haven't good Republicans risen up in mass revolt against this foolish lowering of expectations for our national leaders? Where is the knowledge, wisdom and greatness in Palin? She displays no genuine shade of it.
That's not good enough for my family. Why is it good enough for you, fellow citizen?
...
Palin offers nothing of the hugeness of mind, heart and soul we should seek in the men and women we place in high office.
I demand better, and I resent being asked to sign off on a counterfeit, just to win at any cost. No more for my family. We won't be voting for Palin."
Indeed, neither should anyone who puts country before party.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Intelligence, Ideology, and acceptance of Evolution
Razib has a very interesting analysis of the relationship of intelligence, ideology, and acceptance of evolution. Take a look at the graphs which plot skepticism of evolution against intelligence, particularly the 4th one which plots groups based on religiosity. There he gets the surprising result that, among fundamentalists, their skepticism of evolution actually goes up as their intelligence increases. He sums up the findings this way:
"And this last point is one I think which is worth keeping in mind. If you are a person who is liberal in orientation and you interact mainly with other liberals, then you will naturally see a strong relationship between intelligence and acceptance of evolution. If, on the other hand you are very conservative, that relationship will be harder to discern. Finally, if you are a fundamentalist Christian you won't see that relationship in your day to day life. Daniel Dennett's universal acid of Darwinism might not be so universal at all; among liberals it is rather acidic, especially as one goes up the ladder of intelligence and education. Among religious conservatives, far less so."
The whole article is worth a read.
"And this last point is one I think which is worth keeping in mind. If you are a person who is liberal in orientation and you interact mainly with other liberals, then you will naturally see a strong relationship between intelligence and acceptance of evolution. If, on the other hand you are very conservative, that relationship will be harder to discern. Finally, if you are a fundamentalist Christian you won't see that relationship in your day to day life. Daniel Dennett's universal acid of Darwinism might not be so universal at all; among liberals it is rather acidic, especially as one goes up the ladder of intelligence and education. Among religious conservatives, far less so."
The whole article is worth a read.
Presidential Debate II, and why the Slanders Won't Work
The second presidential debate has come and gone, and aside from the candidates mostly repeating the same stump speeches there really wasn't much to comment on on substance. Boring might be too strong a description, but not far off. Still there were some notable moments.
McCain's disdain for Obama couldn't have been more clear than when he pointed to him and said "that one". That one what John? That uppity one perhaps? And what was it with McCain roaming around while Obama was talking. With McCain's posture this seemed poor strategy: he looked like a little troll wandering around, especially at the end when he walked right in front of the camera as Tom Brokaw was signing off.
It was notable that McCain kept everything above the belt: no talk about Ayers, or Obama being a terrorist, or any of the other things that McCain's pit bull running mate has been spewing of late. Their strategy seems clear: have Palin attack Obama mercilessly with any slander she can find, while keeping her away from the press, who might ask troublesome questions, and have McCain play good cop. Palin has become just another McCain 527.
But it won't matter, and we got our indication of that during the debate if you were watching CNN as I was. There they had a running vote of undecided Ohio voters giving a positive or negative rating on a sliding scale based on what the candidate was saying. It was not surprising that Obama was getting the better of the average ratings, often going to the top of the positive, whereas McCain spent a lot of time around zero, or even negative. But what stood out was the difference in the way those undecided voters reacted when the candidates attacked each other.
When Obama attacked, it was a mixed bag: sometimes the rating would increase, others it would stay the same or drop a little. McCain's attacks, on the other hand, consistently caused his rating to drop considerably. This is all about credibility. When the voters heard the criticisms, they reacted based on who they believed, and it was never John McCain. All the lying, and subterfuge regarding Sarah Palin, has apparently caught up to the McCain campaign. They have no credibility any more. It doesn't matter what they accuse Obama of, no one will believe them. McCain gave up the one thing he wanted to be known for: straight talk. Now it's all crooked talk, and the voters have caught on. Only Obama can beat Obama now.
McCain's disdain for Obama couldn't have been more clear than when he pointed to him and said "that one". That one what John? That uppity one perhaps? And what was it with McCain roaming around while Obama was talking. With McCain's posture this seemed poor strategy: he looked like a little troll wandering around, especially at the end when he walked right in front of the camera as Tom Brokaw was signing off.
It was notable that McCain kept everything above the belt: no talk about Ayers, or Obama being a terrorist, or any of the other things that McCain's pit bull running mate has been spewing of late. Their strategy seems clear: have Palin attack Obama mercilessly with any slander she can find, while keeping her away from the press, who might ask troublesome questions, and have McCain play good cop. Palin has become just another McCain 527.
But it won't matter, and we got our indication of that during the debate if you were watching CNN as I was. There they had a running vote of undecided Ohio voters giving a positive or negative rating on a sliding scale based on what the candidate was saying. It was not surprising that Obama was getting the better of the average ratings, often going to the top of the positive, whereas McCain spent a lot of time around zero, or even negative. But what stood out was the difference in the way those undecided voters reacted when the candidates attacked each other.
When Obama attacked, it was a mixed bag: sometimes the rating would increase, others it would stay the same or drop a little. McCain's attacks, on the other hand, consistently caused his rating to drop considerably. This is all about credibility. When the voters heard the criticisms, they reacted based on who they believed, and it was never John McCain. All the lying, and subterfuge regarding Sarah Palin, has apparently caught up to the McCain campaign. They have no credibility any more. It doesn't matter what they accuse Obama of, no one will believe them. McCain gave up the one thing he wanted to be known for: straight talk. Now it's all crooked talk, and the voters have caught on. Only Obama can beat Obama now.
Palin on Global Warming
Here's Sarah Palin trying to answer a question from Katie Couric on global warming:
"You know there are - there are man's activities that can be contributed to the issues that we're dealing with now, these impacts. I'm not going to solely blame all of man's activities on changes in climate. Because the world's weather patterns are cyclical. And over history we have seen change there. But kind of doesn't matter at this point, as we debate what caused it. The point is: it's real; we need to do something about it."
It is simply astonishing how much ignorance this woman can cram into one paragraph. One could be forgiven for thinking she was speaking her second language the way she reverses her objects and subjects. The issue is blaming climate change on man's activities, not blaming man's activities on climate change. Second, I'm tired of these AGW deniers saying "weather patterns are cyclical". That says nothing about what causes the cycles, how extreme they are, and how long they last.
As for her last statement, this seems another stock argument from Republicans these days. We see that exact phase when talking about how we got mired in Iraq, or how our financial system got so screwed up. It doesn't matter what caused it? How are you going to "do something about it" if you don't know what caused it? We can't reverse the causes if we don't know what they are.
Ah, but looking into what caused these problems would result in some serious scrutiny, and possible rejection, of Republican dogmas about man's activities and the free market, as well as our entire outlook on the War on Terror (tm), and we can't have that now can we. It's akin to a fat guy wanting to lose weight, but having no interest in examining his diet for how he got that way in the first place. The person to blame never wants to look at who is to blame.
Now who is to blame for Sarah Palin's shoddy education, and why has our system allowed this imbecile to be one step from the White House? Those responsible should pay.
"You know there are - there are man's activities that can be contributed to the issues that we're dealing with now, these impacts. I'm not going to solely blame all of man's activities on changes in climate. Because the world's weather patterns are cyclical. And over history we have seen change there. But kind of doesn't matter at this point, as we debate what caused it. The point is: it's real; we need to do something about it."
It is simply astonishing how much ignorance this woman can cram into one paragraph. One could be forgiven for thinking she was speaking her second language the way she reverses her objects and subjects. The issue is blaming climate change on man's activities, not blaming man's activities on climate change. Second, I'm tired of these AGW deniers saying "weather patterns are cyclical". That says nothing about what causes the cycles, how extreme they are, and how long they last.
As for her last statement, this seems another stock argument from Republicans these days. We see that exact phase when talking about how we got mired in Iraq, or how our financial system got so screwed up. It doesn't matter what caused it? How are you going to "do something about it" if you don't know what caused it? We can't reverse the causes if we don't know what they are.
Ah, but looking into what caused these problems would result in some serious scrutiny, and possible rejection, of Republican dogmas about man's activities and the free market, as well as our entire outlook on the War on Terror (tm), and we can't have that now can we. It's akin to a fat guy wanting to lose weight, but having no interest in examining his diet for how he got that way in the first place. The person to blame never wants to look at who is to blame.
Now who is to blame for Sarah Palin's shoddy education, and why has our system allowed this imbecile to be one step from the White House? Those responsible should pay.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Townhall Censors Comments
Wow. I've become a victim of the Republican control machine. Townhall.com is censoring my comments. I commented here, and here, and yet my comments are nowhere to be found. There is proof I was there: in the Hawkins article, replies #55, #56, and #61 mention my post.
What was I doing that warranted this censorship? Simply calling the Republican BS for what it was, from the POV of a former Republican calling my mates to the way of reason. The Knight article I've given the full treatment. In the Hawkins article, I simply reminded them that common sense and Republican talking points are not synonymous, and asked them about the common sense that:
1) Borrowing and spending (what the last 3 Republican presidents did) is worse than taxing and spending.
2) Scientists know more science (ie evolution and global warming)than Joe Shiiteforbrains Dittohead does.
3) You can't control both houses of the government and the presidency for 6-8 years and blame the bad things that happen on your watch on the minority party.
Ironically, it is exactly this sort of behavior that I was ranting about in the censored comments. How far my once proud Republican party has fallen.
What was I doing that warranted this censorship? Simply calling the Republican BS for what it was, from the POV of a former Republican calling my mates to the way of reason. The Knight article I've given the full treatment. In the Hawkins article, I simply reminded them that common sense and Republican talking points are not synonymous, and asked them about the common sense that:
1) Borrowing and spending (what the last 3 Republican presidents did) is worse than taxing and spending.
2) Scientists know more science (ie evolution and global warming)than Joe Shiiteforbrains Dittohead does.
3) You can't control both houses of the government and the presidency for 6-8 years and blame the bad things that happen on your watch on the minority party.
Ironically, it is exactly this sort of behavior that I was ranting about in the censored comments. How far my once proud Republican party has fallen.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Robert Knight - All Mistakes are Not Created Equal
In an effort to rationalize Sarah Palin's embarrassing lack of knowledge of, well, anything, those still willing to publicly support McCain/Palin are playing a subtle game of equivocation with the terms "mistake" and "gaffe". Robert Knight demonstrates:
"When a liberal misspeaks, it’s a slip of the tongue. We all make mistakes. If you are a conservative, however, you commit an unforgivable sin that must be revisited a thousand times until you are out of Purgatory – or office, whichever comes first."
The assumption that all mistakes are equal, and should be treated identically, is never stated. Yet it is the backbone of the argument, and it is, on its face preposterous. This shouldn't need explaining, but saying "Kansas" when you meant "Kentucky" isn't nearly the mistake saying "the Kremlin" would be. Some mistakes are just worse than others. The things politicians say always must be interpreted in context as well, especially those things that sound troublesome. Was it an off-the-cuff comment the candidate himself regrets, or does he defend it? Was it a simple slip of the tongue that was actually the opposite of what the candidate believes, or did it reveal a shoddy association with the facts? Does it indicate a lack of understanding of important issues, or just a momentary lapse?
These are all crucial issues to evaluating what politicians say, and yet when these comparisons are made, they are almost always absent. Over and over when someone says something like Knight above, what will invariably follow is a comparison of quotes from the two candidates, and the different reactions to them, resulting in an (to the speaker) inarguable case that there is an unfair bias.
The problem is that the mistakes compared are rarely identical, and often are not comparable in any sane way. This election is a primary example of it, as the Palin supporters scramble to try to find some way to excuse the idiocy that she vomits forth daily. They tend to answer their own questions, if they paid attention at all to the implications of what they say. Again, Knight does not disappoint:
"Good Morning America, like NBC’s Today Show and CBS’ The Early Show, played clips of Tina Fey doing her mocking impersonation of Palin on Saturday Night Live. When did comic impersonations become news?"
I'll tell you when Mr. Knight. It became news when it used actual quotes from the candidate. It became news when the GOP decided to insult the intelligence of the American electorate and nominated a completely unqualified, ignorant person who holds borderline insane beliefs about the history of the earth, to the 2nd highest office in the land. You made the joke, you have no business complaining that comedians noticed, and that we all see the similarities.
Let's review. Sarah Palin couldn't name a Supreme Court decision that she disagreed with other than Roe v. Wade, she couldn't name a periodical she reads, couldn't give an answer to the relevance of the proximity of Russia and Alaska to her foreign policy experience, thought the founding fathers wrote the pledge of allegiance, and thought health care was a major issue in the recent financial meltdown.
So what Joe Biden mistakes does Knight want to compare to this?
"Last week, Biden said in a speech that, “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television” to calm the nation. The stock market crashed in 1929, before TV and before Roosevelt was president.
No problem. The liberal media have Joe’s back and won’t make a big deal of it. Palin made no notable errors last week, yet she was still the one to be savaged. It’s a pity Saturday Night Live can’t remove their ideological blinders. What a great skit Biden might have inspired! Imagine Bill Murray coming back to portray Biden: “It’s just like when George Washington climbed up on a tank to rally the troops at Gettysburg…” "
Where to begin? How about with what kind of mistake Biden made. No, FDR did not get on TV to talk to the nation when the market crashed in 1929. FDR was not president until 1933, and television did not appear until 1939. What Roosevelt did do was become president in the middle of the depression, and he had his famous "fireside chats" on the radio. So boiled down to the essentials, Biden misplaced Roosevelt's talks with the nation during the depression by a few years, and got the medium wrong.
So what? This is Knight's idea of a major error? In what way? Does it reveal any underlying ignorance of major events? No. Does it reveal a lack of conceptual understanding of any issues? It does not. The man made mistakes on matters of trivia. The spirit of what he said was true: FDR did soothe the nation during troubled financial times.
Yet Knight and many of the McCain people want us and the media to treat this as the same sort of mistake as thinking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were public institutions, or yammering about Russian air strikes into Alaska? Talk about a lack of perspective and scale. It shows in Knight's hypothetical SNL skit above, where he compares Biden's mistake of a few years, and one level of technology, in the proper historical event, with a mistake of almost a century that used the wrong historical event and technology dramatically different from the reality! (For any Palin supporters reading this, Gettysburg was a battle in the Civil War, and Washington fought in the American Revolutionary War, nearly 100 years earlier).
Knight's second example is just as bad:
"Another suitable moment for carving into a media bat came after John McCain showed his metal bracelet worn in memory of Cpl. Matthew Stanley, who was killed in Iraq. Obama noted that he, too, wore a bracelet for a fallen soldier. Then he forgot the name of Sgt. Ryan David Jopek and had to look down and read it.
It’s not awful, and could happen to anyone, but can anyone honestly imagine that the media would have ignored this had McCain been the forgetful one?"
Notice the use, as seems an epidemic among conservatives these days, of a hypothetical speculation in place of a fact at the end. Knight presents no evidence that the media would have treated this differently had McCain done it. He simply speculates about it and pretends it is evidence. It's not. To prove it, I'll illustrate what such evidence would look like, and why his original point is wrong. Take this quote from Sarah Palin's Couric interview, where she is talking about the relevance of Russia and Canada:
"Well, it certainly does because our-- our next door neighbors are foreign countries. They're in the state that I am the executive of."
Palin said that Russia and Canada were IN Alaska. Not near it, in it. It's a clear mistake, and yet the horrible anti-Palin media said nothing. Now why would that be? Simple. It was not a substantive mistake. Her tongue slipped, it happens to everyone from time to time, and it is simply not worth focusing on. THAT would be Gotcha Politics. Yet that is not what we see.
The same argument can be made about Obama reading the soldier's name. So what? Do we expect every politician to remember every name that crosses their path? Do we even know he looked because he forgot? Maybe it was an act of respect, trying not to mangle a difficult name. However, even if he forgot the name, do the Republicans really want to compare this to McCain forgetting, on three separate occasions, that Czechoslovakia no longer exists? They aren't the same thing at all, and they shouldn't be treated the same.
Knight likes football analogies, but he misses the easy one. He wants us to treat the Democratic incomplete passes with Republican interceptions.
"When a liberal misspeaks, it’s a slip of the tongue. We all make mistakes. If you are a conservative, however, you commit an unforgivable sin that must be revisited a thousand times until you are out of Purgatory – or office, whichever comes first."
The assumption that all mistakes are equal, and should be treated identically, is never stated. Yet it is the backbone of the argument, and it is, on its face preposterous. This shouldn't need explaining, but saying "Kansas" when you meant "Kentucky" isn't nearly the mistake saying "the Kremlin" would be. Some mistakes are just worse than others. The things politicians say always must be interpreted in context as well, especially those things that sound troublesome. Was it an off-the-cuff comment the candidate himself regrets, or does he defend it? Was it a simple slip of the tongue that was actually the opposite of what the candidate believes, or did it reveal a shoddy association with the facts? Does it indicate a lack of understanding of important issues, or just a momentary lapse?
These are all crucial issues to evaluating what politicians say, and yet when these comparisons are made, they are almost always absent. Over and over when someone says something like Knight above, what will invariably follow is a comparison of quotes from the two candidates, and the different reactions to them, resulting in an (to the speaker) inarguable case that there is an unfair bias.
The problem is that the mistakes compared are rarely identical, and often are not comparable in any sane way. This election is a primary example of it, as the Palin supporters scramble to try to find some way to excuse the idiocy that she vomits forth daily. They tend to answer their own questions, if they paid attention at all to the implications of what they say. Again, Knight does not disappoint:
"Good Morning America, like NBC’s Today Show and CBS’ The Early Show, played clips of Tina Fey doing her mocking impersonation of Palin on Saturday Night Live. When did comic impersonations become news?"
I'll tell you when Mr. Knight. It became news when it used actual quotes from the candidate. It became news when the GOP decided to insult the intelligence of the American electorate and nominated a completely unqualified, ignorant person who holds borderline insane beliefs about the history of the earth, to the 2nd highest office in the land. You made the joke, you have no business complaining that comedians noticed, and that we all see the similarities.
Let's review. Sarah Palin couldn't name a Supreme Court decision that she disagreed with other than Roe v. Wade, she couldn't name a periodical she reads, couldn't give an answer to the relevance of the proximity of Russia and Alaska to her foreign policy experience, thought the founding fathers wrote the pledge of allegiance, and thought health care was a major issue in the recent financial meltdown.
So what Joe Biden mistakes does Knight want to compare to this?
"Last week, Biden said in a speech that, “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television” to calm the nation. The stock market crashed in 1929, before TV and before Roosevelt was president.
No problem. The liberal media have Joe’s back and won’t make a big deal of it. Palin made no notable errors last week, yet she was still the one to be savaged. It’s a pity Saturday Night Live can’t remove their ideological blinders. What a great skit Biden might have inspired! Imagine Bill Murray coming back to portray Biden: “It’s just like when George Washington climbed up on a tank to rally the troops at Gettysburg…” "
Where to begin? How about with what kind of mistake Biden made. No, FDR did not get on TV to talk to the nation when the market crashed in 1929. FDR was not president until 1933, and television did not appear until 1939. What Roosevelt did do was become president in the middle of the depression, and he had his famous "fireside chats" on the radio. So boiled down to the essentials, Biden misplaced Roosevelt's talks with the nation during the depression by a few years, and got the medium wrong.
So what? This is Knight's idea of a major error? In what way? Does it reveal any underlying ignorance of major events? No. Does it reveal a lack of conceptual understanding of any issues? It does not. The man made mistakes on matters of trivia. The spirit of what he said was true: FDR did soothe the nation during troubled financial times.
Yet Knight and many of the McCain people want us and the media to treat this as the same sort of mistake as thinking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were public institutions, or yammering about Russian air strikes into Alaska? Talk about a lack of perspective and scale. It shows in Knight's hypothetical SNL skit above, where he compares Biden's mistake of a few years, and one level of technology, in the proper historical event, with a mistake of almost a century that used the wrong historical event and technology dramatically different from the reality! (For any Palin supporters reading this, Gettysburg was a battle in the Civil War, and Washington fought in the American Revolutionary War, nearly 100 years earlier).
Knight's second example is just as bad:
"Another suitable moment for carving into a media bat came after John McCain showed his metal bracelet worn in memory of Cpl. Matthew Stanley, who was killed in Iraq. Obama noted that he, too, wore a bracelet for a fallen soldier. Then he forgot the name of Sgt. Ryan David Jopek and had to look down and read it.
It’s not awful, and could happen to anyone, but can anyone honestly imagine that the media would have ignored this had McCain been the forgetful one?"
Notice the use, as seems an epidemic among conservatives these days, of a hypothetical speculation in place of a fact at the end. Knight presents no evidence that the media would have treated this differently had McCain done it. He simply speculates about it and pretends it is evidence. It's not. To prove it, I'll illustrate what such evidence would look like, and why his original point is wrong. Take this quote from Sarah Palin's Couric interview, where she is talking about the relevance of Russia and Canada:
"Well, it certainly does because our-- our next door neighbors are foreign countries. They're in the state that I am the executive of."
Palin said that Russia and Canada were IN Alaska. Not near it, in it. It's a clear mistake, and yet the horrible anti-Palin media said nothing. Now why would that be? Simple. It was not a substantive mistake. Her tongue slipped, it happens to everyone from time to time, and it is simply not worth focusing on. THAT would be Gotcha Politics. Yet that is not what we see.
The same argument can be made about Obama reading the soldier's name. So what? Do we expect every politician to remember every name that crosses their path? Do we even know he looked because he forgot? Maybe it was an act of respect, trying not to mangle a difficult name. However, even if he forgot the name, do the Republicans really want to compare this to McCain forgetting, on three separate occasions, that Czechoslovakia no longer exists? They aren't the same thing at all, and they shouldn't be treated the same.
Knight likes football analogies, but he misses the easy one. He wants us to treat the Democratic incomplete passes with Republican interceptions.
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