Fun with Politics
jfiore | January 30, 2009The other day, perennial political tool Rush Limbaugh was on CNBC defending his now infamous "I want Obama to fail" comment. His argument went something like this (paraphrasing):
Yes, I want him to fail. His policies are liberal policies and I want liberal policies to fail. I want conservative policies to succeed.
I find this to be a stunning argument because what it really says is "I am an unrepentant partisan ideologue. I am a political clown." It's a shinning example of us-versus-them, as-long-as-my-side-wins-at-any-cost hackery. I guess it's nice to know that his position isn't personal…
jfiore | November 5, 2008Norm Coleman never ceases to amaze me. No matter how much of a scoundrel you may think he is, he can always manage to go one better. For example, consider this story from CNN describing the election results. In an excruciatingly close election, we find Coleman barely ahead with 42 percent of the vote and Al Franken at a hair less. Out of nearly 2.5 million votes cast (not including a third party), they are separated by a mere 720 votes. As far as I can determine, once the result is within 0.5 percent (about 15,000 in this instance), a recount is triggered. But what does Norm "The Weasel"…
jfiore | November 5, 2008Here you go, from MSNBC:
http://www.polls.newsvine.com/_question/2008/11/05/2074539-do-you-agree-with-the-gay-marriage-bans
Currently at only 57% No.
jfiore | November 5, 2008If I hear one more person yammer on about Sarah Palin being positioned perfectly for a 2012 presidential bid, I'm going to scream. It's not going to happen for a couple of reasons.
First, there is no historical precedent. Being the losing VP didn't help John Edwards or Joe Lieberman. It didn't help Jack Kemp, or Bentsen, or Ferraro, or Mondale. You have to go back to 1920 and FDR before you can find a failed VP candidate who later became president. I think the reason why this is so was best articulated by General George Patton: "America loves a winner. America will not tolerate a loser." A…
jfiore | November 3, 2008An article from the Buffalo News offers some fuel for the "elitism fire". From Ohio, we learn of voter George Pounder:
Pounder looks at Obama and sees a Harvard-educated lawyer who talks in fancy words that don't necessarily resonate with the guys on the factory floor.
"We're basically blue-collar Democrats, here, and it doesn't seem like he's for us" Pounder said. "He doesn't relate to the working man, to the union man. He never got his hands dirty once in his life."
Wait a minute. Obama doesn't relate to the working man but McCain does? What? Have you ever read about their backgrounds? And…
jfiore | November 3, 2008I picked up the newspaper the other day and found a short article declaring that the news media have been biased toward Obama and against McCain. The article claims that reporting was favorable to the Democrats about 2/3rds of the time and that the only relatively "equal" outlet was Fox News. Hmmm.
The article referred to a report produced by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a self-proclaimed non-partisan watchdog group. A quick look at SourceWatch and even Wikipedia shows that this is no non-partisan group. The group was founded with seed money from notable conservatives such as Pat…
jfiore | October 31, 2008So North Carolina Democratic hopeful Kay Hagan is suing Elizabeth Dole over a TV ad in the race for US Senate. I really have mixed feelings about this story. The implication is that Hagan is an atheist (or at the very least is strongly associated with atheists) and that's patently untrue as she is an elder in her Presbyterian church. But, Hagan's suit declares that "the advertisement ... injures (Hagan's) good name and reputation in the community". The Dole camp counters that this information is something that Hagan is trying to keep quiet.
See? You don't even have to be an atheist to be evil…
jfiore | October 29, 2008Given the same players, how would changing the presidential tickets influence your vote? For starters, consider swapping the president and vice-president seats. A Biden/Obama ticket probably wouldn't change my overall view of the ticket. That is, there are some things I like and dislike about Obama and some things I like and dislike about Biden, but on balance, I think they'd average out to no net change. A Palin/McCain ticket is another story. I simply cannot imagine Palin in the top spot in the real world. Her anti-intellectual streak just makes me shudder. It would definitely make me think…
jfiore | September 21, 2008No, not literally (yeow, there's an image I don't need). Harris had some wonderful commentary in Newsweek on the Republican VP candidate. Of particular worth is the following comment regarding "elitism" in US politics:
Ask yourself: how has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of…
jfiore | September 13, 2008Michael Medved's speech at the "Values Voter" Summit in Washington was a wonderful example of lunacy and demagoguery. I'll bypass the entire concept of a "values voter" to begin with as it implies that there's a voting segment that has "no values" (even Adolf Hitler had values, just not ones that most sane people share). I caught a chunk of his speech last night on CSPAN.
At one point Medved was discussing the difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. He stated that Republicans agree on the big issues. For example, while there might be some disagreement in the Republican…
jfiore | September 12, 2008There's a great piece over on The Nation by Katha Pollitt regarding Sarah Palin. Pollitt offers a dozen questions that I'm sure will never be asked on a televised "debate" but should.
jfiore | September 4, 2008There have been some particularly inane comments regarding Sarah Palin's "experience" including this bit of craziness from Steve Doocy of Fox News (and echoed by Cindy McCain a short time later). Applying the same sort of logic, we naturally arrive at the following top-ten list.
10. Alaska is the land of the "Midnight Sun", consequently, Palin must be an expert on solar energy.
9. The Iditarod race commemorates a rush to supply vaccine to Nome, and therefore Palin has obvious experience with health care delivery.
8. Mount McKinley is the highest peak in North America, and thus the closest…
jfiore | August 5, 2008Enough already with the "Obama flips-flops on offshore drilling"! You can really tell when the news networks need a lead story: They simply leave out some salient details and allow their talking heads to spin. If you haven't seen the original interview that appeared in The Palm Beach Post, here's the most important bit:
"My interest is in making sure we've got the kind of comprehensive energy policy that can bring down gas prices," Obama said in an interview with The Palm Beach Post.
"If, in order to get that passed, we have to compromise in terms of a careful, well thought-out drilling…
jfiore | June 18, 2008If you happened to be watching C-SPAN last night you got to see a parade of conservative Republicans prattling on about House Resolution 284 (AKA National Year of the Bible) and related concerns. It's gotten to the point that a showing of middle-aged and older conservative white guys from Texas, in all their doughy glory, has become a caricature of itself. You know what they're going to say and you know it's usually full-tilt crazy. But Texas isn't alone and folks sometimes forget that. Take Ohio. Last night, representative Jim Jordan had the floor for a few minutes and spoke about his…
jfiore | March 9, 2008Once again, Daylight Savings Time is upon us, and this year it's arrived earlier than ever. Undoubtedly, you'll hear someone mention the supposed energy savings due to the earlier switch-over, but I'll counter that with an item from The Chimp Refuge's closet of past goodies: Don't Bank on This Savings.
bushwells | February 5, 2008
Frankly, I think the Pan troglodytes pictured here could do a better job than some of our congress critters, but never mind that cheap shot of a slippery banana peel. However, I wonder if our presidential candidates could identify the genus and species of our close primate cousins or if they could estimate the percent of homology at the DNA level between humans and chimps? Perhaps those are not burning scientific issues for a presidential candidate to consider but certainly there are others which are scorching hot. With that in mind, the Science Debate 2008 is rolling right along.…
jfiore | January 18, 2008Suppose you're driving down the highway at 70 MPH due west to a destination some 100 miles distant. Which of the following constitute "change"?
Speeding up to 85.
Stomping on the brakes.
Leaving the highway to travel due north at 30 MPH through a freshly mowed field.
Swinging the car around and proceeding due east at 70 MPH.
Abandoning the car and continuing west by somersaulting head-over-feet down the median.
Of course, all of these constitute "change". And that brings us to this little video of Barack Obama referring to Ronald Reagan as an agent of change in a way that neither Nixon nor…
jfiore | January 6, 2008Too lazy to follow the positions of the presidential candidates? Try this quiz. It presents 25 questions. You answer whether you oppose or support the item and whether its importance is minimal, important, or key. It will then rank the candidates according to how they line up with your answers, with large positive values being in highest agreement and large negatives opposite. The quiz is certainly not perfect as there are some missing issues and not as much flexibility as there could be, but it's interesting none the less. It should also be noted that it includes some candidates who have…
bushwells | December 31, 2007So John Lynch (Stranger Fruit), Chad Orzel (Uncertain Principles - edited for egregious spelling error *smacking my forehead*) and PZ (Pharyngula) already tacked up The 50 Most Loathsome People for 2007. Because of crossreadership (the Refuge begging for scraps from aforementioned blogs) or simply because every acid-hearted cynic who reads the Refuge might also be inclined to read The Beast, you've likely already perused through the list. I'd say the selection must have been rather easy for The Beast's staff. Fish in a barrel and all that jazz.
The text is funny, but I'm partial to…