Bottom-feeding on the irony circuit

Since the following morsel is too small for the heavy hitters of political blogging, I suppose it's up to me to put it on the record. This, from President Bush's White House press conference today (transcript excerpt from Fox News, to which I will not link):

Question: I'm wondering if you can give us a little bit of insight into your thinking about this, and just explain to the American people what is lost by talking with those with when (sic) we disagree.

Bush: What's lost by embracing a tyrant who puts his people in prison because of their political beliefs? What's lost is it'll send the wrong message. It'll send a discouraging message to those who wonder whether America will continue to work for the freedom of prisoners. It'll give great status to those who have suppressed human rights and human dignity.

As if you, my most sophisticated and highly intelligent reader, need me to interpret for you, I will just point out that Bush's words could just as appropriately have been aimed at his own administration by the leader of any democracy that still abides by the Geneva Conventions and the various nuclear non-proliferation treaties.

The President's words were evidently a swipe at Barack Obama, who would glorify dictators by considering the use of diplomacy to solve international conflicts. Now, is anybody really worried that a competent Secretary of State couldn't easily achieve all key U.S. foreign policy goals with Cuba, Iran, and North Korea within a year? I'll bet it wouldn't take much more than secretly offering Castro, Ahmadinejad, and Kim each a few boatloads of swag, a bottomless expense account, and carte blanche at David Vitter's favorite brothel. Seriously.

Good riddance...

...to Bill Buckley, whose Cold War-era hallucination of conservatism (e.g., blacks shouldn't have civil rights, government spending is Socialism except when it's an investment in Empire, corporations shouldn't have to follow laws or pay taxes) played a key role in helping to create half a dozen intractable real-world national and international crises. His charming, polysyllabic patrician demeanor and "genius for friendship" was eulogized by David Folkenflik on NPR this afternoon. (Click the "Listen Now" link at the NPR page if you can stomach it, but I don't recommend it.)

"He drove the kooks out of the [conservative] movement," said Buckley's son, Chris. "He separated it from the anti-Semites, the isolationists, the John Birchers. He conducted, if you will, a kind of purging of the movement." Well, actually, no he didn't, Chris; he only got rid of the isolationists because they're not good allies when a guy is trying to intellectually justify turning a republic into an empire. And all those other "kooks"? They've been ruling us for 28 years.

I'm not a person who believes we are obligated to be polite about the dead if we strongly feel they were premeditated assholes who left the world a worse place than when they entered it. I will, at least, wish Mr. Buckley luck with his "genius for friendship" as he shakes hands with The Devil.

Dodd's an Obamaniac

This morning I received an email from Senator Chris Dodd informing me that he is endorsing Barack Obama for President. What's that? You haven't received your email from a U.S. Senator today? You must be a bad citizen!

I hope that Senator Dodd has extracted a promise from Obama to support all of his (Dodd's) efforts in the Senate to avoid further erosion of the Bill of Rights, and to withdraw the carte blanche for domestic surveillance that the Congress has "granted" the Executive Branch in recent years. (I put scare quotes around granted because the Congress has no more authority to "grant" the Executive Branch permission to ignore the Constitution than the Judicial Branch has to "grant" the presidency to its favorite candidate before all the votes have been counted. But, whatever.)

Anyway, Senator Dodd urges me to become involved in Obama's campaign. We'll see.

Troubling development that bears watching

At least this is getting some media play, if mostly only in political blogs. If you're younger than 45, you do not know what it's like to see three of the most charismatic leaders of your young life be gunned down in cold blood over less than 5 years. And that doesn't include Malcolm X. The Secret Service needs to know the whole world is watching (as they said in 1968, in Chicago, where there was teargas and blood). As Big Otis notes, we need to hope that Dion DiMucci never sees a need to reissue Abraham, Martin and John with a new verse. (Reproduction of picture believed to be fair use for same reasons stated on Wikipedia, from whence the image was borrowed.)

Prelude to "today's doke"

In order to move this blog a little further away from mediocrity and more in the direction of charming idiosyncracy, I have decided to change the title of my "humor corner" from "Today's chuckle" to "Today's doke." A fast search of The Google tells me that everybody and her giant embryo is using "today's chuckle" to flag their own so-called humorous content. Well, StuporMundi don't roll that way, mostly because everything he finds on the web tagged as "today's chuckle" just really sucks.

So starting now, and until such time as I realize that this is stupid, I hereby re-christen my funny stuff as "Today's doke." A doke happens to be anything that is very funny, especially to a childish person, whether it is a joke, peculiar-sounding flatus in a somber setting, or a frat boy driving to Foosland with sand in his gas tank. As far as I know, the inventor of the doke is Big Otis, who known by many names (as is Lucifer). We experienced many dokes from the time I was a toddler. Often they involved such merriment as my breaking Nana's tear-shaped eyeglasses from the top bunk bed, or putting a thumbtack on The Music Man's kitchen chair before dinner. And to inaugurate "Today's doke," as a matter of fact, I present an original portrait of The Music Man, by Big Otis (c. 1964). It was probably BO's response to some long-forgotten humiliation, or maybe to having his little head put through the Beatle drywall one Beatle time too many during a fab Beatle weekend. All this should serve as more than enough information on the topic. And the image is copyright 2008 by the artist known as Big Otis.

Today's chuckle

The passion of St. McCain

Snarky bloggers call John McCain "Saint" because the establishment press worships him. Because he's a war hero. Unlike John Kerry or Al Gore or George McGovern or John F. Kennedy or Walter Mondale. (Gore and Mondale might not be "heroes," but they're veterans.)

But McCain's "story of redemption and rectitude" has more holes in it than Albert Hall, to quote the Beatles and the Firesign Theater. And the McCain campaign's response to this first salvo, which was undoubtedly ginned up by the right-wing McCain-haters' club, invokes the Senator's "hero" status and claims that St. McCain has never "violated the public trust" or "the principles that have guided his career." Well, depending on what those principles might be (e.g., venality, opportunism), the second statement may be true. But I doubt that the first statement really is.

Now we have an allegation, from unnamed New York Times sources from McCain's 2000 campaign, of some potentially Bill-Clintonian behavior with a female lobbyist. If this story plays out to be a sordid mess for McCain, I wonder if you'll see lefties wearing purple band-aids of mockery on their double chins like wingnuts did when the Bush campaign's surrogates repeatedly smeared Kerry in 2004. Heroes....

Rapid-fire update: Wow, now the Washington Post is piling on, too. We may be be headed for a deadlocked GOP convention yet! I'd almost feel sorry for St. McCain if he wasn't such a sleazy and dangerous man. One can almost hear the slabs of plaque spalling off the artery walls right now.

Today's chuckle

Why criminals need immunity from prosecution

The U.S. Director of National Intelligence, one Mike McConnell, believes that telecoms need blanket retroactive immunity for breaking federal eavesdropping laws because "[t]he issue is liability protection for the private sector. We can't do this mission without their help."

That's correct: our right-wing U.S. government, despite controlling all three branches of the federal government (including Republican-loving Democrats in both houses of Congress), cannot successfully implement a permanent police state without the "help" of the private sector.

Interesting. I wonder how these people would like it if our "unitary executive" (i.e., Fuehrer*) is a brown man or wears control-top panty hose. Maybe Final Call will get to "eavesdrop" on Dick Cheney's business dealings, or Bust can perform a warrantless investigation on the office wives of George Bush.
____________
* Fuehrer is German for "Leader." What did you think it means?

Today's chuckle

This is a real quote from the Bullwinkle show, after the network dropped Moose and Squirrel's option. The situation: Rocky thinks he may have met Boris and Natasha before.

Rocket J. Squirrel: That voice. Where have I heard that voice?

Captain Peter Peachfuzz: Rocky, you hear more voices than Joan of Arc.

Shooter sanctimony, part 1

I suppose that people who make their living selling firearms designed to kill humans should find another way to earn their living; I'd always counsel friends and family to stay away from that line of work. But this sort of sanctimony, in my opinion, falls into the category of unhelpful liberal claptrap. Moralistic posturing like this is not a helpful way to start a public policy discussion of campus shootings and how to prevent them. So the visionary Mithras stands firm, against time and tide, in opposition to random mass murder committed by the mentally ill. Bravo!

Despite the warm feelings of moral superiority that often plague us, society's response to school shootings (and workplace shootings and mall shootings) can't be all about confiscating guns and demonizing gun owners. That's the same approach wingnuts use to attack the practice of planned parenthood by demanding to outlaw abortion while demonizing people who have sexual relations with no reproductive intent. The people who actually operate government have to deal with a lot of stuff that people of the right, left, and center wings consider icky, but pragmatism has to win out in order to develop a functional policy.

So what would be helpful in terms of discussing campus massacres? I'll make a suggestion in a follow-on post.

Bear with me

As seen through a link on Eschaton. But he doesn't need the traffic, so thanks to me you can just click through to the original source.

Good "get," Hillary

Our heroes over at TPM write that Hillary will soon pick up "a big Ohio endorsement: former U.S. Senator John Glenn."

Yes, that U.S. Senator John Glenn. Of Keating 5 fame. And looky who is right next to Glenn in the Keating 5 WikiPix: U.S. Senator John McCain!

Corporate media: not "mainstream"

Big Otis sent me this link from CommonDreams. The article makes what I think is a critical point about the predicament Americans find themselves in today. The lunacy of right wing extremist politicians and insane free-market economic policies could not have dominated the U.S. landscape for a generation without the systematic intervention of corporate mass media. Specifically, there have been two principal corporate interventions: (1) withdrawal of support (in the form of funding and employment) from impartial investigative reporting units, and (2) the staffing of high-profile celebrity journalism positions with corporate apologists and their political fellow-travelers. Reagan Administration officials helped to make this possible by undermining, then revoking, the Fairness Doctrine. Throw in the concentration of media ownership under a handful of transnational corporate logos, and the consequence is that American society today bears little resemblance to the mid-20th century version. Thanks, "liberal media"!

Yes, we should expect to hear from political extremists from either side (or no side) of the spectrum in a liberal democracy, because that comes with the territory where there is freedom of speech. And sometimes we may even expect extremists to hold sway over the discourse, especially in time of national hysteria. But the genius of the system always has been that it self-corrects --- something that many of us have taken for granted, but never should have. The rise of malignant corporate media has just about annihilated this feature of our system, like a virus can do to an organism's immune system.

The first step toward a cure is to recognize the problem. Huge step... and huge problem.

Coincidence? You decide!

In case you think the cute little cartoon executioner in the 8 February post looks familiar, maybe this quote from the recent, pre-New Hampshire past will help to jog your memory-bones:

"The 16 people I carried out execution on in Arkansas would hardly say I'm soft on crime," Huckabee told supporters while campaigning in Indianola, Iowa, over the weekend. [Stephen Dinan, The Washington Times, 31 December 2007]

I might add that the 16 people he "carried out execution on in Arkansas" would hardly say anything at all these days, except maybe "Aaaarrrghhhh! Stop poking me with that infernal pitchfork, Satan!" The felicitous appearance of the Reverend Governor Huckabee's likeness in a book of vintage advertising art, along with his stunning sitzkrieg victory in Kansas today, proves to me beyond a doubt that there is a Prime Mover.

Some advice for white folks

If you're a white person some of whose best friends are black, I will use the news hook of African American History Month to offer some advice. Starting now, try to actually get to know at least one of your black friends. I mean really, personally. Find an opportunity to have a candid discussion about something important to him or her. By "discussion," I mean that, mostly, you need to listen and let your friend talk. Avoid the temptation to blurt out what you think, and certainly avoid the stupidity of telling your black friend what he or she "should" think. Or what they "really have to understand" about white people.

This is not a short-term task, or anything along the lines of gallantly celebrating Take A Negro To Lunch Day. For one thing, your friend may not want to let you in. Or you may feel punked as soon as you hear something that you'd prefer not to think about. This endeavor is not one in which you call the shots. But I strongly suggest that you try it anyway. Shut up, listen, and learn.

Why? Not simply to be noble or to become a better person. But because you need to, Caucasoid. It is of the utmost importance to your future. You have a lot to learn. Because of this. Click on the link. Read the article. Then read it again. And again. Until you really understand it. Then click through the links in the post and read those, too.

Here's the issue: if the Congress doesn't start jailing Executive Branch criminals for Contempt of Congress soon, and start impeachment proceedings against any senior Justice Department appointee who refuses to impartially enforce the laws of this land, then you and I no longer live in a democracy. The U.S. Constitution no longer means anything insofar as your civil liberties (i.e., Civil Rights) are concerned. You have none, if that's what the Justice Department, or its private-sector designee, decrees. Of course, this has pretty much always been Standard Operating Procedure for the application of laws to African Americans, so they have "institutional expertise" that the rest of us don't have a clue about.

White people do not understand this, though. We deny it. Very few white people, psychologically, can afford to even contemplate the oppression of blacks too deeply. Directly and indirectly, white people in America always have been beneficiaries of that oppression. But now, whether you believe it or not, your lily white complexion guarantees you no protection against arbitrary execution of the law. No white person will ever know what it is like to be a "nigger," but every one of us could benefit from earnestly trying to understand what it must be like. Because that is exactly what we all are now in the eyes of the Executive Branch. And your African American friend may see fit to share some insights on the subject with you, if you're lucky. And if she does, you'd better listen.

International Journal of Nana Studies 1(3)

Background and Objective

Nana employs routine conversational skills and auto-recursive reasoning techniques to tease out and share new facts about the world around her. The objective of this report is to investigate one recent example of the subject methodology and form a hypothesis concerning it.

Field Investigation

This form of nanoconversation begins with a question about a self-evident aspect of the surroundings. The example documented here occurred in a car driving south on Mattis Avenue, Champaign, Ill., after consuming half of a "Farmer's Scramble."

Nana: Is that a bookstore?
StuporMundi: Is what a bookstore?
Nana: That sign...
StuporMundi: What did the sign say?
Nana: "Books."
StuporMundi: [Laughter.]
Nana: [Nonverbal question mark, blending delight and confusion about the laughter.]
StuporMundi: No, Mom, it was a hardware store.
Nana: [Giggling.] Well, the sign wasn't attached to a building. It was just there.
StuporMundi: So you're asking if the sign was a bookstore?
Nana: No. I was wondering if the sign meant that they sell books in one of those buildings.

Discussion and Analysis

This form of nanoconversation [see erratum to Int'l Journ. Nan. Studies 1(1)] begins with a preliminary request for self-evident information. Typically, a non-obvious premise or motivation for the question is withheld from the initial query. Such unknown antecedents are sometimes drawn out by answering Nana's initial question in a hyper-literal or ironic manner; sometimes both approaches are required. Then, through little-understood cognitive processes, Nana re-synthesizes her original question to sound less ambiguous, but no less unnecessary. This form of nanoconversation can become highly iterative.

Conclusion

This method of nanoconversation, Way 3, shares certain characteristics with Pretzel Logic. However, instead of being a deliberately recursive method of logical fallacy invoked to emulate the exercise of reason, Way 3 is a self-perpetuating method through which Nana investigates the world around her but learns little from it. This method superficially resembles deductive logic, but continually returns to a refined restatement of the original query. The technique is referred to as Circular Interrogation. It borrows its name from the wind musician's technique of circular breathing.

Super Bowl drool

I just returned from a Lynn Street Super Bowl party that provided me pleasure insofar as the Pinot Noir had the desired numbing effect and the Patriots lost. It's enjoyable to see a non-Chicago team choke for a change when it comes down to the wire. Haha.

Oh yes: the company was pleasant and almost altogether agreeable, except for a moment when I expressed doubt that anyone could ride a mountain bike for miles through 8 or 9 inches of snow. After being brutally scolded for my skepticism, I backed down for the sake of The Children. For me, the highlight of the night was that a visitor from Spain --- a young lady who knows even less than I do about football --- won the in-house betting pool for three of the four quarters. Twenty-four bucks and six bits, I believe. Now she knows what America is all about.

One wonders why there is such breathless anticipation stored up for the TV commercials rolled out especially for the Super Bowl. Do we really forget how lame they are, year after year? The 2008 crop featured (1) at least three ads for energy drinks, or amped-up pop in one case, all featuring (wait for it) people and/or CG characters energetically boogeying beyond all expectations, (2) an Anheuser-Busch commercial making fun of Indians (the ones from south Asia --- ahh-oooooo-gah!), and (3) an alternately sentimental and humorous spot about the little Clydesdale that couldn't... until he was (this is just so out-of-the-box you won't believe it) trained to pull a freight train... by a Dalmatian dog!!! Oh yes, and there was another crop of those darn mischievous squirrels that cause auto accidents, or near misses, or something. One year they're working for an insurance company; the next for a purveyor of radial tires. I never know who, or care, because every year the game is all about people getting together to eat, drink, and watch a game they don't care about. No one watches the show in order to find out how to set up an e-Trade account so he can set up a new account at the dawn of a worldwide economic collapse. (I wonder how Busch would like it if a billion Indians from India decide to boycott their products for all time.)

Undoubtedly there were many more commercials exhibited during the game, but all of them (N x $3 million) were totally wasted on the highly desirable demographic in attendance at the swanky Lynn Street venue. I've been to Super Bowl parties for the past 10 years (when all of a sudden, without explanation, I suddenly became popular enough to be invited). In that time, I really don't remember a single party where the room was ever quiet enough to hear the text of a commercial. Tonight, everyone (except me, apparently) was looking forward to a commercial that promised to present a joke which only deaf people "get," or something like that, but evidently it ran around halftime when everybody was in The Cat In The Hat's kitchen putting cheese and gravy and mushrooms all over baked potatoes. Once, during the 4th quarter, the room did become eerily quiet when Victoria's Secret ran an ad, but silence was not necessary to get the gist of the message. Furthermore, the model --- by reason of her appearance --- gave strong indications of being a skank, so I for one did not feel that tempted to run home and start leafing through all the VS catalogs I keep in the bathroom.

So, in summary, this year's Lynn/Healey Super Bowl party was a huge success. And I think that tonight we were all winners. Except all those miserable bastards in the Patriots' locker room after the game, and their betrayed fans. Haha! Oh, darn, the alcohol is wearing off now. Ouch....

Retrospective metaphor

In yesterday's post, a prescient allegory. Today: something also like that, but flipped on its head through the canyons of time. The screengrab below came from HuffingtonPost today at about 1335 Central Time. If you changed "Females" to "Male" and sent the headline back in time to 20 March 2003, it might be criticized for its lack of respect toward the mentally retarded, but not for any fundamental inaccuracy.