Nate Silver, the young polling whiz of FiveThirtyEight, just received an email from John Lofton. Some months back, Lofton posted here and the two of us had a grand time (put his name in the search box on the right – not the upper one).
John Lofton, again
Wednesday, November 25, 2009 · Leave a Comment
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Tagged: John Lofton, Nate Silver
Gerry Mulligan and Antonio Carlos Jobin at work
Monday, November 23, 2009 · Leave a Comment
h/t Crooks and Liars
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Dylan does Santa
Wednesday, November 18, 2009 · Leave a Comment
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Perlstein
Wednesday, November 18, 2009 · Leave a Comment
You will not bump into much this week or next that is brighter than this discussion from Rick Perlstein…
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/perlstein-post-partisanship-millions
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Tagged: Rick Perslstein
Sunday stuff
Sunday, November 15, 2009 · Leave a Comment
The Evolution of the God Gene?
No, this isn’t why I moved here to Portland
For this IDF Chief Rabbi, God’s version of the Nuremburg war crimes trials has those who hestitate to drop cluster bombs on innocents as the ungodly damned.
On the other hand, there are those who are not utterly insane.
Quite a few of them in England…Seven out of 10 Britons back The Independent on Sunday’s call for a phased withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan as a landmark report by Oxfam this week exposes the real human cost of the war.
Auto purchase alert: if you are down in Texas and see a blue/white 2 million dollar Veyron listed in the Auto Trader at a surprisingly low price, check for rust and rotting dove-scrotum leather upholstery…
Conservative purging of the impure continues apace.
The Weekly Standard crowd do one of those way-cool and way-logically-compelling Glenn Beck this-links-to-this charts…
Conservatives with intellectual integrity. We don’t need a lot of fingers to count them up presently. Bruce Bartlett is one.
I don’t mean to imply that Europeanization is unambiguously good; only that it’s not unambiguously bad, as virtually all conservatives believe. There are many ways I think we could learn from the Europeans and they from us. One way we can learn from them is how to have a tax system that raises considerably more revenue as a share of the economy than ours does without killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.At a minimum, I think it’s safe to say that Hayek was wrong about the inevitability of totalitarianism arising from growth in the size of government. The collapse of communism is proof enough of that.
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Saturday Nov 14
Saturday, November 14, 2009 · Leave a Comment
Israel pumps up the propaganda under Bibi…but it would, wouldn’t it?
Doctors in Iraq’s war-ravaged enclave of Falluja are dealing with up to 15 times as many chronic deformities in infants and a spike in early life cancers that may be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting. And who imagines that Bill Kristol or Don Rumsfeld or Cheney or the board at Northrup Grumman might care even in the slightest?
And providing healthcare for citizens is an outrageous misuse of citizen taxpayer dollars while, on the other hand, spending far more on the big killing machine is just jim-dandy. It’s all about principle, you see.
Stephen Colbert claims Lou Dobbs audience.
Andrew Sullivan gets Bill Kristol right but could add that teaching people to hate serves the financial interests of the military/corporate complex very well indeed.
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Friday stuff
Friday, November 13, 2009 · 2 Comments
Goldstone responds to Peres et al
If you happened to see Wolf Blitzer’s interview with the lawyer defending the accused shooter at Ft. Hood, you may have wondered how such a pompous and really rather stupid man got and maintains his media postion. Here’s Michael Tomasky on the interview.
The neoconservative camp, even moreso than the typical conservative, continues to pump up the idea that Russia is a big bad dangerous creature in need of aggressive military opposition. During the Reagan era, these people were influential and that influence continued on under Bush 2 where, concentrating on this ‘issue’, they disregarded the threats that Richard Clarke and others advised would come from al qaeda. They are still at it. Anti-communism was the ideological center of seventies conservatism and neoconservatism and it’s no easy thing to have your center disappear. Of course, all of this makes rather more sense when one links together this militarist zest and the huge amounts of corporate money which arise from US militarism.
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Thursday’s Notables
Thursday, November 12, 2009 · Leave a Comment
Months ago the president of CNN/U.S., Jonathan Klein, offered a choice to Lou Dobbs, the channel’s most outspoken anchor. Mr. Dobbs could vent his opinions on radio and anchor an objective newscast on television, or he could leave CNN.
Michael Tomasky on the bizarre Washington Times
Rupert Murdoch wants to rule the world
Gordon Brown has “the most enormous personal regard” for media magnate Rupert Murdoch, Downing Street said today amid reports that the prime minister telephoned him directly to complain about the Sun’s criticism of his government’s handling of the war in Afghanistan.
The pair spoke on Tuesday at the height of a row over Brown’s misspelling of a dead soldier’s name in a handwritten letter of condolence to the victim’s grieving mother Jacqui Janes, published by the newspaper alongside her accusations of disrespect.
Rupert Murdoch insisted earlier this week that he regrets the way his papers have turned against Brown – but believes they are right to do so.
Rupert Murdoch’s flagship American tabloid newspaper, the New YorkPost, has been accused of an extraordinary litany of racist and sexist behaviour by a former senior editor who is claiming discrimination in her sacking in September.
Sandra Guzman has filed a discrimination lawsuit in the New York courts against Murdoch’s media empire, News Corporation, the New York Postand its editor-in-chief Col Allan. She claims that behind the Post’s famously pointed and cheeky headlines lies a “hostile work environment where female employees and employees of colour have been subjected to pervasive and systematic discrimination and/or unlawful harassment based on their gender”…
She also claims the Obama cartoon was part of a concerted effort by the paper’s management to undermine America’s first black president. The lawsuit alleges that Charles Hurt, the Post’s Washington bureau chief, once told her that the goal was “to destroy Barack Obama. We don’t want him to succeed.”
Pleasing God through murdering people
The Jerusalem District Prosecutor’s Office on Thursday charged alleged Jewish terrorist Yaakov (Jack) Teitel with two murders, three attempted murders and other acts of violence.
“It was a pleasure and an honor to serve my God,” said Teitel at the Jerusalem courthouse. “I have no regret and no doubt that God is pleased.”
The paranoid style of American politics in all its pathological glory
Speaking at a luncheon for a Midland County Republican Women’s group, Perry said that “this is an administration hell-bent toward taking American towards a socialist country. And we all don’t need to be afraid to say that because that’s what it is.”
Perry praised the tea party movement to the Republican activists in attendance, crediting the grassroots groups with discouraging some Democrats in Washington from pushing for a public option in the health care bill.
US at bottom of gender-gap stats across 31 nations
The hilarious Jon Stewart catch on Hannity’s propaganda trick this week represents just a tiny fraction of what Murdoch’s propaganda network has been up to all along.
That’s it for now. I’ll tack on more items if I have some time later.
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Tagged: news items thursday
Claude Levi-Strauss
Wednesday, November 4, 2009 · Leave a Comment
A very important intellectual figure has just died.
One afternoon, chatting with one of my Sociology profs in her office, I was handed an idea which has proved to be a source of continuing illumination into all the ways in which we humans can be seen to imagine reality.
That idea, from the fertile mind of this amazing man, was that when we consider abstract notions, we begin by using or assuming a pair of binary opposites – good/evil, black/white, etc. We impose that conceptual framing or architecture over what we are trying to understand or make sense of. It may not be, indeed probably rarely ever is, an accurate reflection of the real world but using this simplistic conceptual framework allows us to begin thinking about whatever the abstract subject is.
One interesting aspect to consider here is how some people in certain circumstances seem to be unable to formulate a more nuanced or complicated conceptual mapping (shades of grey, to use the cliche) but stand firm in their insistence/certainty that the simplistic framing of binary or polar opposities represents the most valuable and fundamental truth of things, a ‘truth’ which is in danger of being lost if one allows nuance and complexity. These are the humans that scare me.
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Walt Whitman sells Levis
Tuesday, October 27, 2009 · Leave a Comment
Now here’s a bloody bright ad. You move through wondering if it might actually foment a youth movement…
h/t Andrew Sullivan
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The Muslim threat to American rationalism
Tuesday, October 27, 2009 · Leave a Comment
Is the John Hagee/Joe Lieberman alliance of right-wing American Jews and evangelical Christians — based on the premise that God demands that all land, including the West Bank and Gaza, be possessed by Jews — devoted to the advancement of “the Western way of reason”? Is the platform of the Texas GOP — which calls for the criminalization of all sex between gay adults; the denial of all custody rights to gay people, even over their own children; the teaching of creationism in all public schools; and the denial of medical care to prisoners other than those who can pay for it — an example of “the Western way of reason”? How about the Catholic Church’s proselytizing against birth control in areas of the world drowning in poverty, AIDS and overpopulation? Are torture, Guantanamo, Bagram, disappearing people, immunizing war criminals and multiple decade-long wars shining examples of “the Western way of reason”? How about invading a country on totally false pretenses, shattering and destroying it, and causing the deaths of at least 100,000 human beings?
Hey – look over there. Muslims. They’re waging war on reason and taking over. We have to unite to stop them. Glenn Greenwald
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Tagged: utter fucking insanity
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world
Monday, October 26, 2009 · Leave a Comment
Lynn Vincent made headlines when she was selected as the ghostwriter for Sarah Palin’s soon-to-be-bestselling memoir, “Going Rogue.” As an editor at the Christian World magazine, Vincent has railed against abortion rights, gay marriage and the theory of evolution. She is also the coauthor of the book “Donkey Cons,” which purports to prove, among other claims, “how Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy were elected with the help of the mob.” Her coauthor on that book, Robert Stacey McCain (no relation to John McCain) has spoken outagainst interracial marriage.
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Tagged: Lynn Vincent, Sarah Palin
Dolphin football
Sunday, October 25, 2009 · Leave a Comment
h/t crooks and liars
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If Gypsy’s ruled the world
Wednesday, October 21, 2009 · Leave a Comment
h/t crooks and liars
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Cheney v 2.0
Thursday, October 15, 2009 · Leave a Comment
As I suggested below, the RNC types may be setting up Liz Cheney for a political run at the presidency or, perhaps more likely, the VP slot. It’s a bit difficult to game out what these incredible jerks are up to.
As announced recently, Cheney is being pushed forward as one of the heads (along with Bill Kristol) of “Keep America Safe”. Maureen Dowd writes:
Kristol joked to Politico’s Ben Smith that the venture might serve as a launching pad for Liz to run for office. (A Senate bid from Virginia, where she lives, or Wyoming, which she still calls home?)
That raises the terrifying specter that some day we could see a Palin-Cheney ticket, promoted by Kristol.
Sarah would bring her content-free crackle and gut instincts; Liz would bring facts and figures distorted by ideology. Pretty soon, we’re pre-emptively invading Iran and the good times are rolling all over again.
Michelle Cottle at TNR adds her thoughts here
We’ll recall that one of the valid and biting arguments against George W Bush running for the presidency was that he was a mental lightweight and that the addition of Dick Cheney to the ticket (Cheney was in charge of choosing a VP and chose himself) added “gravitas”. This notion was all the rage in punditry at the time. And (with the help of the Supreme Court) it worked. An immature, ex-alcoholic, anti-intellectual with a C average gained the position of President and did the posturing while Cheney pretty much ran the show.
We might be looking at a reprise.
Update: Scott Horton has more on “Keep America Terrified”
h/t Andrew Sullivan
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The illustrated book of Genesis, delivered by the hand of Crumb
Tuesday, October 13, 2009 · Leave a Comment
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Tagged: Old Testament, R. Crumb
Bright and imaginative as hell, but one understands the “banned” status
Wednesday, October 7, 2009 · Leave a Comment
h/t andrew sullivan
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Tagged: banned VW ad
Kinda cool
Wednesday, October 7, 2009 · Leave a Comment
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Tagged: NASA, Saturn
Cheney?
Monday, October 5, 2009 · Leave a Comment
Interesting bit in this Carville/Matalin interview on CNN yesterday. It isn’t Carville’s observation that Glenn Beck is both nuts and seriously stupid about everything. Rather it is Matalin’s attempted narrative…
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/10/05/beck-pundits-sunday/
“So what he [Beck] has tapped into is really, really what I think is going to be the dispositive future for us. Maligned mothers.”
I’ve heard Matalin use “dispositive” before and it’s always awkward because the word is almost never used outside of a legal context and because few people know the term (I had to look it up to make sure my sense of it was correct).
But aside from that, the really interesting point here is the “future for us” (Republicans/conservatives) will be “maligned mothers”.
First, have any of you heard Beck talking about maligned mothers? I haven’t.
Second, it’s pretty obvious who Matalin is speaking of here and that’s Palin. More accurately, the Palin of propaganda narrative…media/liberal victimized and maligned female with offspring. Dollars to donuts that narrative will be a/the key narrative in Palin’s book.
How does this serve (or hope to serve) Republican propaganda and electoral purposes? As with PUMA, Clintons4McCain etc, it’s an attempt to pull women towards voting Republican, obviously. Second, it’s another means to make the mainstream media (the non conservative noise machine media structures) look invalid or biased. Third, it’s a means to forward Palin as a candidate OR to use Palin (who won’t run) as a supportive voice in forwarding another female candidate. And if that’s it, that other female would be Liz Cheney.
(cross-posted at Plumline)
Update: It is difficult to imagine that the Republican crowd does not have hopes and plans for Ms Cheney. But I wanted to note an opinion on Palin advanced by Joe Trippi last evening. He suggested that she would be used for fundraising (which of course also means motivating an activist base). That’s a smart take on this and a clear possibility.
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Tagged: Liz Cheney, Palin
Bernie Latham