Category: Politics

Well, the race is over, and now that the blinding terror that the possibility of a Romney-Ryan administration induced in me has passed, I thought I’d wrap up with a few thoughts on the whole thing.
1. As an upper-middle-class white heterosexual man, this election was, for me, an opportunity to choose sides based on whether I like liberal or conservative social and economic polcies better*(That said, even though I do prefer liberal social and economic policies, the reason I side with the liberals is because, regardless of whether or not their policies will be better for me personally, I feel a certain empathy for some of the groups I mention below and wouldn’t feel right kicking them to the curb.).
This just isn’t true for a lot of people, in both directions. If you’re a woman, then it doesn’t really matter if you think that conservative economic policies are good for the economy, because a vote for Romney is also a vote against fair pay for women and a vote against your right to make your own reproductive health decisions. If you’re a minority, it doesn’t matter if you think that a strong conservative stance on defence is good for the country, because a vote for Romney is also a vote for people who have been consistent in their use of race-baiting and racist dog whistles. If you’re gay, it doesn’t matter if you consider yourself in the line of Eisenhower and Reagan; a vote for Romney is a vote for you to never have the rights afforded you that are granted to the rest of humanity.
Contrariwise, if you’re a racist, it hardly matters if you think that the economic crisis was the result of underregulation; you’re voting for Romney anyway. And if you’re convinced that the life of a fetus trumps the rights of an adult woman, you have to hold your nose even if you think Mitt Romney is a psychopath. And if you’re a devout Catholic who feels the need to vote in a way consistent withthe teachings of the Church, well, it doesn’t really matter if you think Mitt Romney’s saber-rattling will bring about world war 3; the other guy wants to let two dudes get married.
2. President Obama won the election with only 39% of the vote among white men. Now, there are lots of reasons for that. White men, see 1, includes the group who got to choose their position based purely on whether they sided with liberal or conservative politics. And one thing that seems clear from trends is that the country is roughly evenly split between those positions, with perhaps a mild lean toward the conservative side. So the difference between the 50% we’d expect to find all things being equal and the 39% actual, and you get 11%. That’s the percentage of people who would have voted democrat, but were turned off by something. I’m not going to say what.
But it’s pretty much some combination of racism, sexism, homophobia, and the fear of losing their hegemon.
3. Also, President Obama won the election despite only having carried 39% of white men. For the first time in the history of the US, the decision as to who will lead this country for the next four years was made not by white men, but in spite of them. Hegemony’s over, guys. Relax. It’ll be great.
4. That Mitt Romney the Candidate was defeated is less important to me than that The Mitt Romney Campaign Strategy was defeated.
All politicians exaggerate, misrepresent, overpromise, mislead. This is a fact of life and part of the American political discourse ever since George Washington told the electorate that he could not tell a lie, and demonstrated this trait by making up a bullshit story about a cherry tree out of whole cloth.
But Mitt Romney’s political campaign displayed something I haven’t seen before. Mitt Romney has been accused of holding contempt for the truth. But that’s not it; the Mitt Romney campaign has displayed not contempt for the truth but rather an utter disinterest in the truth. Mitt Romney did not merely twist the truth or present misleading facts; he told bald-faced lies about things which were matters of public record, and when called on it, he showed no shame but rather was sort of insulted you’d dare accuse him of lying just because he knowingly told an untruth. This was a man who would literally say anything if he thought it would get him elected, not caring if it were true, false, or the exact opposite of the thing he’d said in his previous sentence.
And the electorate decided that wasn’t going to fly. Which is good, because if that strategy had proven a winning strategy, it would be impossible for anyone to ever win an election by caring about the truth. If it really is just as simple as “You can tell any lie you want,” there’s no winning strategy for telling the truth.
5. Lest anyone think I’m uncritical: In a sane world, Barack Obama would be the Republican candidate. Obama is not a socialist, he’s not even a liberal. President Obama is a reasonable, pragmatic, Eisenhower Republican. A proper liberal president would have stopped drone attacks, closed gitmo, given us single payer, and actually done something about the fact that our gun control laws were written by the gun manufacturer’s lobby. Such a candidate would probably lose to Barack Obama, but frankly, I’d rather have a chance to vote for a proper liberal who loses to a proper conservative, over voting for a faux-liberal who beats one of the sociopaths who took over the former party of responsibility. We used to have one party that dreamt big and one party that kept both hands on the wheel. Now we’ve got one party that keeps one hand on the wheel, and another that is intent on setting the car on fire.
6. By the way, an openly gay woman got elected to the United States Senate. Awesome.
7. Also, the people of three states voted in favor of same-sex marriage. So y’know what, fuck you, NOM.
8. Puerto Rico voted in favor of becoming the 51st state. Prompting me to discover that statehood was on the ballot in Puerto Rico.
Y’know, that seems like the sort of thing that the news might want to cover.
9. Good grief. Donald Trump has lost the rest of his mind.
10. So, the sun didn’t come up today. Crap. Chuck Norris was right.

The author would like to apologize for the fact that this article was not posted a month ago when he wrote it. I don’t actually want to care all that much about gay marriage, but the whole idea that it is 2009 and a big percentage of the population zealously wants to class an entire segment of the population as subhuman and undeserving of the same rights as the rest of us creeps me the hell out. I’m getting married in a few months, and it really bugs me that there’s a huge movement that wants to cheapen *my* marriage by turning into an instrument with which to spread hate and oppression.

• During some bitching about the President, the conservative “expert” on The Situation Room today said that he was very disappointed in President Obama’s “stimulus pakistan”. At least, that’s what the closed captions said. Methinks the captioner needs a fresh pot of coffee.
• After a week of teabagging, the moral right went on to produce an advertisement through an organization called “NOM” denouncing gay marriage and claiming that they wanted to form a “rainbow coalition” to protect their “freedoms”. NOM’s other big project is called “2M4M”. “Teabagging”. “NOM”, “Rainbow coalition”, “2M4M”. Has the right just decided to stop trying and write The Daily Show‘s material for them?
• One of the fine folks who comments on Slacktivist hit the nail on the head about how gay marriage hurts the “freedoms” of heterosexuals: If you’re a homophobe, and homosexuality stops being socially stigmatized, suddenly you are no longer “normal” — you’re the weirdo who’s got an irrational beef with gay people. You’re the slightly shameful elderly relative no one likes to be seen with in public because she might forget that it’s no longer 1950 and she isn’t allowed to make a darker-skinned person give up their seat for her. The “threat” to their way of life is that their bigotry will suddenly make them what they most fear to be: atypical.
• And speaking of that NOM commercial, in it a doctor actress playing a doctor claims that if gay people can marry, she’ll be forced to choose between her profession and her religion, because the state will force her to (vague). Leaving aside for the moment that I can’t even imagine how her religious freedom could conflict with her duties as a doctor in regards to gay marriage (I mean, there is exactly one big obvious thing that a doctor’s religious conviction might stand in the way of them doing that comes up on a regular basis, and I suspect that married homosexuals have a remarkably low demand for abortions and contraceptives), I just want to point out: if your religious convictions are so strong as to prevent you from doing your job, perhaps you should have considered a profession which you do not enter by swearing an oath to Apollo!

One of the little corner-of-the-screen tags on CNN yesterday informed me that “The average American spends more on taxes than on food, shelter, and clothing combined!” And I’m outraged by this.
No, I’m not outraged that our taxes are so high, especially because they’re not; taxes in the US are lower than pretty much anywhere resemblign civilization, and if you want to know how great it is to live in a tax-free society, ask a Somalian.
I’m outraged at CNN for repeating someone else’s lie. This particular lie comes from The Tax Foundation, an organization whose raison d’etre is to announce that everything you earned between January 1, 2009 and April 13, 2009 was stolen by the government, and only now are you earning money for yourself instead of being a slave.
I suggest that we immediatelyt let anyone who wants it be declared exempt from all taxes. And then, at the end of the year, send them a bill for their usage of the roads, all public services, their share of national defense, police service, the fire department, and a hefty bill for the education of their children. After all, they’ll all be so much richer from having that extra 28% of their income that they surely won’t mind paying a fair market rate for all the tax-supported services they normally enjoy. Of course, that fair market rate would have to be two or three times as much as they’d pay in taxes, since they wouldn’t be able to leverage the same sort of government protections that tax-supported services do, but, hey, it’s their money.
(I’m declaring 2 PM “Boss Freedom Hour”, when I celebrate the fact that up until that point in the afternoon, the money made by my labor goes to my employer, not to me. But I actually totally made up the calculation since I have no idea how much my employer actually makes from my labor)
Anyway, about that outrage. I make a good living. I make a very good living. I’m not rich, even by the standards of pundits who claim that anything under $250k is “poor”. And my housing costs are ridiculously low. I bought my house shortly before the whole housing insanity that drove us into this recession. So I’m making a very good living, better than most. And I’m paying less than most for housing. (As a data point, Leah, until she moved in with me, rented. My monthly mortgage payment is less than half her monthly rent). A quick, back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that I spend 15% of my income on housing. If, as the Tax Foundation claims, the average American pays April 13 — sorry, 28% of his income in taxes, and that’s more than he spends on food, clothing, and shelter, then that means I must spend less than 13% of my income on food and clothing…
Now, I was taught in school that you spend 1/3 of your income on food no matter what. I thought this was impossible then, and I think it’s impossible now (It turns out that the 1/3 number came about because back in the 50s, the US government hired a Czechoslovakian immigrant to work out the poverty level, and she did, based on the fact that in Czechoslovakia, housing was incredibly cheap, and food was incredibly expensive), but if it were, that would mean that 33% + 15% + x% < 28% where x% is the amount the average American spends on clothing. So, the average American spends -20% of their income on clothing. I go down to the store, and I buy a new shirt, and the store pays me fifty dollars. But let's just assume for the moment that the Tax Foundation is right, and that the average American loses 28% of their income to Uncle Sam, and they lose a further something-less-than 28% on food, clothing, and shelter. That still leaves 44% of the average American's income unaccounted for. So, 44% of the average American's income, according to the Tax Foundation, is disposable, not used for anything necessary (Yeah, yeah, health care, but real men don't need health care. God gave you two kidneys for a reason). Almost half the money you make, you can use for anything you like. Which makes July 25 "Necessity Freedom Day", the day after which any money you earn is not used for food, clothing, or shelter, and you can just blow it on, I dunno, booze and hookers if that's where your heart lies. Call the office, I'm taking off the rest of the year.

This Is What the Class War Looks Like (via)
This is his argument? This is his argument? “I didn’t need the money, I didn’t want the money. I did it JUST TO HURT THE POOR BECAUSE I CAN MUAH HA HA.”
I have a vague theoretical notion that there was a time when you could be a conservative on the basis of sound economic and social principals, and not because you were a cartoon supervillain.
Purely theorhetical.

That guy who threw a shoe at former president Bush has been sentenced to three years in jail.
How is it that we’ve managed to turn the cradle of civilization into America’s running gag?
There is the best line from the article:

Zaidi became a folk hero of sorts in the Arab world after hurling both shoes at Bush, with considerable speed and accuracy, during a news conference Dec. 14. Bush, a nimble athlete with great reflexes, successfully ducked

There’s also this:

Zaidi’s siblings were angrier, as the crowd and police pushed and shoved each other. “Maliki is ready to give his wife to Bush just to keep him happy,” one sister said.

When you install a toilet, you actually place it directly on top of the finished floor, not against the subfloor.
The reason I point this out is because when I moved into my house, I had to cut about an inch off of the bathroom door. This is because years upon years of flooring had been installed without mining though previous generations. The floor in my bathroom is sheet vinyl. Under that sheet vinyl is vinyl tile. Under that, I believe, is a strata of linoleum, and beneath that, I dunno, maybe dinosaur fossils or spam or something. At the lowest layer is pine, which was the original floor of the entire house. As far as I can tell, the pine is still in fine shape, but many of the other layers have started to deteriorate. The result of this is that over the past few years, my toilet has started to cant to the right. A full repair of this is going to require reflooring the entire bathroom, a task I plan to undertake as soon as Leah and I can sort out exactly how we want it to look.
Unfortunately, though, earlier in the week, the tilt reached a point where it damaged the seal where water goes into the tank. Since this was kind of an urgent repair, I decided to go ahead and do it straight away rather than waiting for the weekend. So, I removed the supply pipe to the toilet, replaced the cracked plastic nut, and reattached everything, checked for leaks, and, right around eleven PM, Eastern Standard Time, Tuesday, November 4, 2008, I pulled myself out of the toilet.
And so did America.
Not bad for a night’s work.
Addendum: Proposition 8 is up in California. In a hundred years, teachers are going to be explaining how the same day we elected our first African-American president, we also voted to officially declare a whole class of citizens to be inferior and took away the right to marry which they had enjoyed for several months. Teachers will stress the irony of this. The students will probably think that Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama were childhood friends,

None of our enemies are afraid of Obama; why would they be? On the other hand, all of our enemies are afraid of John McCain

— Ed Rogers
The problem is, most of our allies are afraid of him too. And a pretty fair percentage of us are afraid of a Palin vice-presidency.
In other news, the McCain camp has recently discovered that Osama Bin Laden is a big fan of breathing an oxygen-nitrogen mixture. They have moved immediately to remove the substance, commonly known by its street-name, “Air”, from their campaign headquarters. The inexplicable choking deaths of several staffers has delayed the release of their new series of attack ads, titled “Obama: He performs many of the same biological functions as OSAMA BIN LADEN. And HITLER.”
In a shocking twist, however, certain republicans are now backing a dark horse independent candidate, Leo the MGM Lion, after discovering that while America’s enemies are afraid of John McCain, they are freaking terrified of lions.

Joe the Plumber Speaks (via Politco

McCain was solid in his performance,” he says. “I still don’t know where he stands,” he says of Obama. “I’m middle class. I can’t have my taxes raised any more.”
He also says he actually isn’t in the bracket where Obama would raise his taxes — but he’s worried that Obama will shift the bracket down.
He also said that, in his encounter with Obama, the Illinois Senator “a tap dance…almost as good as Sammy Davis, Jr.”

So… Obama won’t raise your taxes, but you don’t trust him because maybe he’s lying. But McCain on the other hand you just trust implicitly. McCain, many of whose statments have been proven to be lies, many of whose statements Karl Rove has said do not pass the test of truth — Karl Rove — you’re going to believe without question. McCain’s tax plan cuts your taxes less than Obama’s, but you’re thinking “But maybe Obama’s Tax Plan is a lie and he’s really going to raise my taxes.” But never would you broke the idea that John McCain might be lying. McCain, who sat there and told bald-faced lies which have been thoroughly debunked you believe, while Obama is “tap dancing.” How could you now know where he stands? He just told you where he stands.
You know the truth. You have been told the truth. You are choosing to ignore the truth.
Repeat the chorus, folks, “That’s not stupidity. That’s insanity”
It’s funny how no one ever says “Y’know, McCain’s plans all sound good… But what if he’s lying and really hates America? I mean, there’s no evidence, but how can we know for sure that he didn’t go all Stockholm Syndrome while he was a POW and now hates America and if elected will raise taxes for everyone and, I dunno, eat babies?”

Bill Ayers is a Distinguished Professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also founded an organization which did some violent terrorist-y things many years ago. He was never convicted of being a terrorist, but neither has he ever recanted his radical views.
He’s been fundamental in the reform of Chicago’s school system, and was Chicago’s 1997 Citizen of the Year.
He was heavily involved with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Project and the Woods Fund of Chicago.
Senator Barack Obama (D-Illinois) was on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Project and was involved with the Woods Fund of Chicago.
To Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, this is hugely important. After all, if Obama really loved America, he wouldn’t associate with a Citizen of the Year former convicted terrorist.
According to John McCain, when presented with an opportunity to be part of a project which distributed a $50 million grant to public schools in Chicago, or with a project that in 2006 distributed $3.1 million to local organizations in order to help with poverty relief, Senator Obama should have said “Sorry, charity is not as important as snubbing a man who did something really bad a very long time ago and has done lots of good things ever since.”
Things Senator McCain seems to dislike:

• Charity
• Unconvicted former domestic terrorists
• Sex education

Things Senator McCain seems to like:

• Pedophiles
• Houses
• Cars

Incidentally…
Among Senator McCain’s 13 cars is a 2007 Ford half-ton pickup truck. About Henry Ford, someone once said “I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration.” That someone was Adolph Hitler. Now, why would a true patriot like John McCain drive a car made by a company founded by a raging antisemite and Nazi-sympathizer?

New York Times Collumnist David Brooks has said, “Obama‘s problem is he doesn‘t seem like a guy who can go into an Applebee‘s salad bar and people think he fits in naturally there.” That is, it’s just not fair to us working-class stiffs that Obama is getting away with seeming like a Normal Folksy Person, when he really wouldn’t be caught dead in a Family Style Restaurant.
Mr. Brooks: When trying to score cheap political points by insinuating that a candidate is too much of an elitist to go to a Good Old Fashioned Normal Working Class Person’s Favorite Family Restaurant, you may want to try harder not to reveal that you yourself are too much of an elitist to even know which Good Old Fashioned Normal Working Class Person’s Favorite Family Restaurant has a salad bar.
In other news, Obama has been accused of “plagiarism” because a speech he gave about the price of oil had a similar message to a speech given by Mario Cuomo back in the 1980s. I suspect the person responsible for making this claim is my sister’s computer science professor, who recently accused my sister of “the most blatant case of plagarism” she’d ever seen, because she quoted a source, giving proper credit and citation (The source in question was Wikipedia), because “Even if you cite the source and put it in quotation marks, you still have to change the wording.”
‘Sides, I don’t see President Bush being accused of plagarising President Clinton, or Clinton plagarising Bush, or Bush plagarising Regan, or Regan plagarising Carter, or Carter plagarising Ford. And yet, I’m fairly certain all of them delivered a speech whose message was “The state of our union is strong,” many of them several times.