Matt Taibbi winces in the face of idiocy so you don't have to

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Don't miss Matt Taibbi's newest Rolling Stone article, "Tea & Crackers." He goes on the long, pointless excursion to find out just what is up with Tea Partiers, and finds that they're pretty much being led around by the noses. Duped, if you will.

Along the way, Taibbi hits on exactly my explanation for all the "anti-government" fronting these Medicare beneficiaries do.

Early in his campaign, Dr. [Rand] Paul, the son of the uncompromising libertarian hero Ron Paul, denounced Medicare as "socialized medicine." But this spring, when confronted with the idea of reducing Medicare payments to doctors like himself — half of his patients are on Medicare — he balked. This candidate, a man ostensibly so against government power in all its forms that he wants to gut the Americans With Disabilities Act and abolish the departments of Education and Energy, was unwilling to reduce his own government compensation, for a very logical reason. "Physicians," he said, "should be allowed to make a comfortable living."

Those of us who might have expected Paul's purist followers to abandon him in droves have been disappointed; Paul is now the clear favorite to win in November. Ha, ha, you thought we actually gave a shit about spending, joke's on you. That's because the Tea Party doesn't really care about issues — it's about something deep down and psychological, something that can't be answered by political compromise or fundamental changes in policy. At root, the Tea Party is nothing more than a them-versus-us thing. They know who they are, and they know who we are ("radical leftists" is the term they prefer), and they're coming for us on Election Day, no matter what we do — and, it would seem, no matter what their own leaders like Rand Paul do.

I was going to make this a short post, but the article is too full of flavor bursts of awesome.

Taibbi mostly focuses on the Tea Party's inevitable cooptation into the Republican party, especially as illustrated by Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul's change from opposition to embrace of the Republican establishment.

But I savor the Us-versus-Them-isms. Here's one where Taibbi has asked a Tea Partier, whose wife is on Medicare and who as a tax appraiser has received check after check from the government, why he's anti-government spending.

"Well," he says, "there's a lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it. Too many people are living off the government."

"But," I protest, "you live off the government. And have been your whole life!"

"Yeah," he says, "but I don't make very much."

Them. The undeserving and ill-defined them!. When will True Americans be free of their tyranny?

It would be inaccurate to say the Tea Partiers are racists. What they are, in truth, are narcissists. They're completely blind to how offensive the very nature of their rhetoric is to the rest of the country. I'm an ordinary middle-aged guy who pays taxes and lives in the suburbs with his wife and dog — and I'm a radical communist? I don't love my country? I'm a redcoat? Fuck you! These are the kinds of thoughts that go through your head as you listen to Tea Partiers expound at awesome length upon their cultural victimhood, surrounded as they are by America-haters like you and me or, in the case of foreign-born president Barack Obama, people who are literally not Americans in the way they are.

It's not like the Tea Partiers hate black people. It's just that they're shockingly willing to believe the appalling horseshit fantasy about how white people in the age of Obama are some kind of oppressed minority.

I'll go one further and say that calling the Tea Partiers racist is lazy and short-sighted. Sure, a lot of their attitudes amount to racism, but that's just a fragment of their whole oppositional outlook.

"They're [the medical death panels are] going to look at your age, your vocation in life, your health, your income. . . ." says a guy active in the Northern Kentucky Tea Party.

"Your race?" I ask.

"Probably," he says.

"White males need not apply," says another Tea Partier.

"Like everything else, the best thing you can do is be an illegal alien," says a third. "Then they won't ask you any questions."

An amazing number of Tea Partiers actually believe this stuff, and in the past year or so a host of little-known politicians have scored electoral upsets riding this kind of yahoo paranoia.

Go give it a read!

Both Sides Do It

It seems a little unfair to pick on the right-wing conspiracy theorists and tribalists exclusively, I admit. But the simple fact of the matter is that you're not going to find this kind of lunacy and outright disrespect for reality in a Democratic Senatorial candidate:


The clip (lovingly compiled by Talking Points Memo) includes these classics:

-"...Because I dabbled in witchcraft; I hung around people who were doing these things"
-"One of my first dates with a witch was on a Satanic alter, and I didn't know it."

-"And then there's also the issue of murder, with Vincent Foster. That's a much more serious charge [against Bill Clinton] than failing to seek legal advice -- and yet we're all just blowing that off."

-"The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. You can't masturbate without lust!"

-"The total amount that we're spending currently on AIDS research and care with the Ryan White Act and Medicaid is over $8 billion, and our position is that there is a gross, disproportionate allocation of funds when it comes to treatment of AIDS, as opposed to the number-one killer, which is heart disease."

-"A lot of the money that we're spending goes to things that we know will not prevent AIDS, but will indeed continue to spread the disease. When a lot of our money goes to distribute condoms in high schools, when a lot of our money goes to distribute material that is literally pornographic..."

-"But these groups admitted that the report that said, 'Hey, yay, we cloned a monkey' -- now we're using this to clone humans."
[Bill O'Reilly]: "Let them admit anything they want -- They won't do that here in the United States unless all craziness is going on."
[O'Donnell]: They are doing that here in the United States! American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains."

So, "witchcraft" and Satan are real things, the U.S. spends too much on a deadly communicable disease, condoms and "pornography" cause AIDS, American companies are cloning humans and cross-breeding mice and people to make super-brained mice!

And that's just this one Tea Party-backed candidate -- there's still Sarah Palin, Dick Armey, Newt Gingrich, Rand Paul, Debra Molina, various Tea Party leaders like Mark Williams, and their conspiracy factories Betsy McCaughey, Alex Jones, Orly Taitz, and on and on and on.

But Dennis Kucinich believes in UFOs!

Folks like The Beast's John Avlon depend on drawing a false equivalence between liberals and conservatives -- possibly because they're blind, but more likely because they're unwilling to take sides, believing that stance as a mark of true objectivity.

Heck, I'm reading Avlon's book, "Wingnuts -- How the radical fringe is hijacking America", and the best examples he can find for the left-leaning fringe include no Democratic leaders, candidates or officeholders -- just Cindy Sheehan, Code Pink, Keith Olbermann, MoveOn.org (who he says "took heat" when contributors to their contest compared Bush to Hitler!), and various protest signs. The rest of the book is an enumeration of conservative wingnuts. But he sticks to the centrist article of faith that "both sides do it," despite the evidence of his lying eyes.

The Dupes are a right-wing phenomenon at this point in history. It's about time we all recognized it.

Misunderstand, Exaggerate, Fear ... and WIN!

What is it with right-wing tribalists and insidious conspiracies? Why the incessant need to exaggerate their enemies' threat/size/power/organizing prowess?

[Jihadwatch.org's Robert] Spencer has been one of a handful of neocons -- along with Frank Gaffney and Daniel Pipes, among others -- who have been sounding the alarm about Sharia law for years. They warn that Sharia, a system of laws defined by the Koran, is taking hold in the United States, and that it will eventually threaten the very Constitution.

Their warnings, so long spoken from the fringe, are now at the heart of today's anti-mosque rhetoric.

I've mentioned before the Tea Partiers' (and other right-wing partisans') weird inability to understand their enemies' motivations -- for want of a better word, their total lack of empathy. Maybe their mirror neurons are malfunctioning. Anyway, this belief that Teh Enemy is covertly working to undermine Amerka from within is somehow related. Certainly, ignoring your opponent's real motivations makes it easy to ascribe your own, but I don't see why Tea Party Dupes and their ilk are so ready to believe that their opponents are so formidable.

Now, it's easy to understand why Tea Party leaders would want to exaggerate Teh Dread Sharia Law Threat!!!11one! Enhancing group cohesiveness and fervor, of course. But is it just the bizarre, overriding in-group loyalty and "follower" mentality that causes the Dupes to fall for this kind of bullshit?

Gingrich has, likewise, seized on these Sharia fears (as have less famous politicians in Oklahoma). At the Values Voter Summit last weekend, he called for the U.S. government to ban Sharia law.

"We should have a federal law that says sharia law cannot be recognized by any court in the United States," Gingrich said to a standing ovation. "No judge will remain in office that tried to use sharia law."

'Course, it's nothing new:

Proponents of McCarthyism claimed that the CPUSA was so completely under Moscow's control that any American Communist was inevitably a puppet of the Soviet Union. As J. Edgar Hoover put it in a 1950 speech, "Communist members, body and soul, are the property of the Party." This attitude was not confined to arch-conservatives. In 1940, the American Civil Liberties Union ejected founding member Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, saying that her membership in the Communist Party was enough to disqualify her as a civil libertarian. In the government's prosecutions of Communist Party members under the Smith Act (see above), the prosecution case was based not on specific actions or statements by the defendants, but on the premise that a commitment to violent overthrow of the government was inherent in the doctrines of Marxism-Leninism. Passages of the CPUSA's constitution that specifically rejected revolutionary violence were dismissed as deliberate deception.

In addition, it was often claimed that the Party did not allow any member to resign, so a person who had been a member for a short time decades previously could be considered as suspect as a current member. Many of the hearings and trials of McCarthyism featured testimony by former Communist Party members such as Elizabeth Bentley, Louis Budenz, and Whittaker Chambers, speaking as expert witnesses.

Tea Partiers don't mind a little war spending; it's spending on others that really hurts

The Iraq War's cost is way beyond their original estimate of $3 trillion, say economist Joseph Stiglitz and public policy academic Linda Bilmes in the WaPo today.

This price tag dwarfed previous estimates, including the Bush administration's 2003 projections of a $50 billion to $60 billion war.

That means the war cost 50 to 60 times as much as Bush said it would.

Where were the Tea Partiers? Perhaps waving flags somewhere. If I'm right about Tea Partiers' Us-versus-Them outlook, war spending feels acceptable, while social spending -- which helps another category of "Them" -- is just an outrage. Here's an April NYT/CBS poll comparing Tea Partiers' views with those of average Americans on spending on the poor:

Tea Partiers also choose against the government directly helping others when it comes to spending on "jobs" versus the "federal budget deficit":

But ask them to choose between money for themselves or the deficit, and priorities change:

Who did they blame for the deficit in April, despite the war?

Of course. Not Bush.

Where did the deficit really come from? The NYT's David Leonhardt counted it up last year, concluding:

There are two basic truths about the enormous deficits that the federal government will run in the coming years.

The first is that President Obama’s agenda, ambitious as it may be, is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying. The second is that Mr. Obama does not have a realistic plan for eliminating the deficit, despite what his advisers have suggested.

Here's a graph Matt Yglesias made from that research (note the date on all this is June 9, 2010).

But we'll be hearing a lot more about all that awful health care reform than we did about the war. That money is for helping Our side or hurting Their side, and that's final.

Oh, and here's Stiglitz and Bilmes on the war's effect on the debt. When you're ideologically committed to more and more tax cuts, stuff like this is easy to forget.

There is no question that the Iraq war added substantially to the federal debt. This was the first time in American history that the government cut taxes as it went to war. The result: a war completely funded by borrowing. U.S. debt soared from $6.4 trillion in March 2003 to $10 trillion in 2008 (before the financial crisis); at least a quarter of that increase is directly attributable to the war. And that doesn't include future health care and disability payments for veterans, which will add another half-trillion dollars to the debt.

As a result of two costly wars funded by debt, our fiscal house was in dismal shape even before the financial crisis -- and those fiscal woes compounded the downturn.

It's Us versus Them, and they've got the Illuminati

A couple days ago, a close relative of mine said something that perfectly encapsulates a lot of conservative thinking. It's like a fractal chunk of right-wing thought, as I see it.

We heard on the radio that under health care reform, we will have to pay for treating drug addicts.

It's like a crystal cube, it's so perfect. All the parts are there -- you only have to tweak it a bit to get almost any conservative whine.

--Credibility attributed to a forgotten / Questionable Source?
Check.

--The Victims are "We", "Us", "Americans", "Real Americans" or other tribal identification that excludes the Villains?
Check.

--The Villains are members of a despised out-group who gain from suffering Victims?
Check.

--The implication of a Conspiracy or malevolent tendency among some Villains that harms the Victims?
Check -- in this case, apparently nobody knew 'till now that the Democrats' Affordable Care Act would bring about this indignity.

--A profound Lack of Empathy or the inability to understand another person's point of view?

--And, of course, the Conflation of two Villains or the implication that they're working together?
Check! Here, it's the Democratically controlled Congress and the Obama Administration in cahoots with drug addicts.


These are the basic elements driving the conservative / Tea Party / Birther / John Birch freakout we're seeing, and it's nothing new. What's weird is that anyone takes these people seriously -- or rather that there's no concerted effort to single them out, ridicule them, and use their idiotic pronouncements as political weapons against Republicans.

I'm not talking about all Republicans, of course. But there is a significant portion whose reasoning, attribution of source credibility, and grasp of simple facts about the world are completely useless. And these folks have always been there, always will be. Sometimes they're on the left, but the bulk of them have been with conservatives for a long time now.



As it happens, these Dupes, as I call them, were the only adults I knew until about age 14. They fascinate me endlessly -- they're normal, caring, thinking people who somehow believe that nefarious forces are working together in the shadows to screw over good folks.

Graham bails and bails again

I know Lindsey Graham has been under a lot for fire from his do-nothing obstructionist colleagues for doing what he is paid to do: legislating on the issues of immigration and climate change with the Democratics (Chuck Schumer and John Kerry respectively) across the aisle. He's even been writing joint articles on these important issues with his legislative colleagues here and here. Bravo.

However, Harry Reid was absolutely right on with his criticism of Senator Graham's bailing ship on the bipartisan climate change bill (because of some misguided concern about immigration taking priority).

I will not allow him to play one issue off of another, and neither will the American people. They expect us to do both, and they will not accept the notion that trying to act on one is an excuse for not acting on the other.

And today we learn that Graham also seems to be bailing on immigration reform too. This time because he thinks that border security is more important than immigration reform. Huh? Is border security not a part of immigration reform?

Graham's schizophrenia aside, I say "come now people!" These issues are important to the American people. Our government can and must do both. Let's not let the Rush Limbaughs of the world convince us that compromise is impossible and consensus is impractical. Of course we come from different places, culturally, economically, and politically, but we should all agree that these issue need a federal response now.

Economically to the right... Socially to the left

"I'm economically to the right... but socially to the left", someone recently told me at a party. Hilarious.

She's probably a Schwarzenegger Republican. Came out against Proposition 8. Supports stem cell research, some aspects of the recent health care reform, and climate change legislation. Perhaps she believes in a woman's right to choose. Not so bad.

"Economically", she probably believes in unfettered free-marketism. She wants lower taxes, fewer governmental employees, and less "red tape". She probably has a knee jerk reaction about wasteful Democrats and thinks that Republicans are somehow more trustworthy on economic issues.

This last assumption is a little debatable. Historically, Democratic presidents tend to be more effective in combating unemployment (see Bureau of Labor Statistics). Even Obama's administration, after months of plummeting payrolls, has seem some improvement (see the "bikini" graphic here). Similarly, under Democratic leadership, despite common knowledge about wasteful "entitlement programs", federal debt has generally decreased (see historical data in recent federal budget).

There is some disagreement on how important these numbers are. Although a number of fiscal conservative disagree, Dick Cheney famously once said that "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." Not sure what he meant by that, but conservative think tanks would probably say that the best way to combat debt is to grow the economy and to cut "entitlement" programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

Now, another name for these "entitlement" programs is social programs, because they provide social services which go beyond what the free market can provide. In that these programs take care of people who cannot take care of themselves, these programs reflect our social values. I am not saying that keeping social programs solvent is easy, but I do think we need to be reminded that they exist for a reason. Poverty, health and old-age are social issues not purely economic realities.

President Bart

From an interview with Bill Cosby:

Q: Now that some time has passed, what do you make of people who say that “The Cosby Show” paved the way for Obama’s presidency?

A: I’ve had a chance to think it over, so I’ve had a chance to say something funny. If that is the case, that “The Cosby Show” is Obama and family — then when he comes out of office, the next one is going to be whoever is going to represent Bart Simpson.

Wait

I think this from Gruber covers the instinct to wait for Gen2 well:

If you bought an original iPhone and regretted it a year later, though, you probably ought to skip the original iPad.

I did and I never did. I'm just trying to be frugal!

A Person Or An Animal

Stephen Fry:

The iPad does perform tasks — it runs apps and has the calendar, e-mail, Web browsing, office productivity, audio, video and gaming capabilities you would expect of any such device — yet when I eventually got my hands on one, I discovered that one doesn't relate to it as a "tool"; the experience is closer to one's relationship with a person or an animal.

I also love this quote from Steve Jobs, in the same article:

"I don't think of my life as a career," he says. "I do stuff. I respond to stuff. That's not a career — it's a life!"

Well I Do

Some clear writing from Captain Erickson:

It may come as a surprise to many of you, but RedState writers do not get paid. Well, I do, and I forever remain guilty that I’m the guy getting the check living off the fine writing of others in this community.

I love how he blames "the Obama economy" for an associate not having a job for a while.

Last Thing

Tap, tap. Hello?

What with my other life blogs goin', I've been neglecting this one.

But fear not, there are lots of things to quote and point out on the internet: John Cole:

I’m going to make the bold declaration that the last god damned thing we need in this country is “youth model” shotguns.

Maybe I need a Tumblr.

Rachel!

I love her.

Found here.

Rembering Granny D

Doris Haddock, aka Granny D, passed away yesterday after a full life. At the age of 89 ten years ago she walked 3200 miles across the country in support of campaign finance controls. Let's remember her with a few quotes.

After the recent SCOTUS ruling on corporate speech

“The Supreme Court, representing a radical fringe that does not share the despair of the grand majority of Americans, has today made things considerably worse by undoing the modest reforms I walked for and went to jail for and that tens of thousand of other Americans fought very hard to see enacted. The Supreme Court now opens the floodgates to usher in a new tsunami of corporate money into politics.”

Court statement in 2000 after being arrested reading the Declaration of Independence

Your Honor, it is now your turn to be a part of this arrest. If your concern is that we might have interfered with the visitor's right to a meaningful tour of their Capitol, I tell you that we helped them have a more meaningful one. If your concern is that we might have been blocking the halls of our government, let me assure you that we stood to one side of the Rotunda where we would not be in anyone's way. But I inform you that the halls are indeed blocked over there.

In a BBC interview during her walk across the country

This country has become one in which, in order to run for office, a poor man has to sell his soul, or he has to be a multi-millionaire. That's not democracy

From a Democracy Now! interview with Amy Goodman when she ran for senate against Judd Gregg in 2004 (and got 34% of the vote!!)

My main interest is campaign finance reform, and until we get public funding in this country, we will be in the mess that we’re in today. There is no other way to save our democracy and no other way to keep it a democracy, except through public funding.

But I care about the fact that we are the only civilized nation in the world that doesn’t have national health. We are letting our schools go to pieces. On one side, you have a country club-type of school; on the other side, you have a place that our children are ashamed to go into. That’s not fair. We are supposed to be a fair nation. And we’re not being fair at all.

What an incredible woman. Hats off.

"Political Capital" ... yawn.

As the health reform debate continues, the pundits are again throwing out a tired cliché. The left is saying that Obama squandered his "political capital" by not acting decisively on progressive issues. The right props up grassroots campaigns using corperate money and then says that Obama's has less "political capital" because his is further left than a few angry government skeptics.

Where the hell did this expression come from?

Well, Bush used it after the 2004 election to derscribe the strength of his mandate. "I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style." he said after beating Kerry. But that was not the first time Bush used the term. As Chris Suellentrop points out in his excellent article on Slate (http://www.slate.com/id/2110256), Bush was more than a little obsessed with the term all throughout his political career.

In Bush's mind, it probably meant simply political goodwill, generally and for particular initiative as well. Although I disagree with Bush's math (he only won in 2004 by less than 2 percent in the popular vote), an election does probably give you a window of opportunity to layout priorities and achieve accomplishments. Perhaps it could be described as political momentum or support.

Etymologically, the word "capital" comes from the latin capitalis which means "of the head." In that sense, the political capital is the "seat of goverment." In another way, the political capital can be ascertained by an actual counting of heads, by means of an election or a census. This meaning is where the expressions "capital goods" and "capital gains" come from, because capital is the actual count of animal stock. Historically, "head" has also become synonymous with "life" thus giving way to such terms as "capital punishment".

What is surprising about how Bush entertains the idea is his emphasis on spending political capital. "He probably likes the way it paints him as a CEO-president" says Suellentrop. True, but there is also something downright cynical about how Bush sees his role as lead representative of our country if his executive authority is thought of as an investment. There is a sense that his political captial bank account has only so many funds and that once used up, there is nothing left. Isn't authority given by way of elections because of shared values? I imgaine that he got used to receiving a weekly allowance from his family to pay for expenses at Yale, but that's no excuse. It's as if he already knew his policies would be unpopular.

Although Bush was probably not aware of the connection, sociology for many years has talked about the concept of social capital. This term means a whole lot more to the workings of democracy than Bush's pet term. It refers to connections within and between social networks and the potential of these connections to effect and eventually improve the lives of people (create value for them). These connections are not simply goodwill but fundamental building blocks to civic institutions: characteristics such trust, reciprocity, information, and cooperation.

The decay in social capital in recent American history history is seen by some as the reason for a decline in civil engagement, including decreased voter turnout, lower public meeting attendance, less involvement in political parties and social committees. Robert Putnam used the example of of bowling to illustrate what problems arise from this increased isolation. Apparently, over the last 20 years, although the number of people who bowl has increased, bowling leagues have seen a substantial decrease in participation. According to Putnam, "bowling alone" decreases the opportunity to partake in social interaction and thus civic discussion about daily life. I, for one, am definitively guilty of bowling alone.

Putnam's ideas are actually much larger than bowling and provide insight into today' political landscape. They provide a roadmap for understanding how diversity and civics intertwine and perhaps help us understand a little better the ebb and flow of political engagement. A recent article by Thomas B. Edsall in the New Republic suggests that the Tea Party Movement is actually an example of an organization founded on some of the more negative characteristics of social capital such as protective exclusivity, distrust in institutions, and decreased altruism. Very interesting shit if you ask me.

Obama, with history as a community organizer, is probably quite sensitive to how social capital can effect political momentum. Whether he has "political capital" he can spend makes no difference at all in my mind. However, whether or not he can garner and harness social capital to improve the living conditions of Americans as a whole is what matters. And health care is a perfect opportunity. Let's act now.

Values of Military ≠ Values of Society as a Whole

In the United States, military voices are present in the national political debate. For issues of strategic importance, news shows continually invite military thinkers and generals to comment on the important decisions of the today. Should there be surge in Afghanistan? Should we continue to fund F-22 production despite the cost? We trust these people's judgment. No doubt it comforts us to see all the medals on General Patraeus' chest.

We listen to them because they embody the principals we hold dear. Military men are trustworthy. They are persistent, devoted, and honest. They are strong and reliable, efficient and motivated.

On the fancy Army recruitment site goarmy.com (http://www.goarmy.com/life/living_the_army_values.jsp), there is a list of important army values

• Loyalty
• Duty
• Respect
• Selfless Service
• Honor
• Integrity
• Personal Courage

All very impressive qualities. On the Navy site, I found a list of principles outlined by the current Deputy Secretary of Defense and previous Secretary of the Navy, Gordon R. England:

1. Provide an environment for every person to excel
2. Treat every person with dignity and respect — nobody is more important than anyone else
3. Be forthright, honest and direct with every person and in every circumstance
4. Improve effectiveness to gain efficiency
5. Cherish your time and the time of others — it is not renewable
6. Identify the critical problems that need solution for the organization to succeed
7. Describe complex issues and problems simply so every person can understand
8. Never stop learning — depth and breadth of knowledge are equally important
9. Encourage constructive criticism
10. Surround yourself with great people and delegate to them full authority and responsibility
11. Make ethical standards more important than legal requirements
12. Strive for team-based wins, not individual
13. Emphasize capability — not organization
14. Incorporate measures and metrics everywhere
15. Concentrate on core functions and outsource all other

Again, very impressive qualities. Undoubtedly, these are some of the values that make our military the force which it is today.

Although grateful I am for the role the military has had in defending the freedoms we have in the country, every once and a while I am reminded that military has its own agenda which does not reflect the values of a democratic society. Back in December, a story emerged of a Maj. Gen. Anthony Cucolo in Iraq threatened to jail woman solders who have become pregnant and the men who impregnate them. The policy was not implemented but the fact that it was even discussed is absolutely ludicrous.

Of course, our men and women in the military give up rights that many of us citizens take for granted, but are these the values we hold dear in the rest of society. Can not another solution involving more sex education or more emphasis on the importance of duty be found? Seriously.

Historic Moment

Hillary Clinton issues Statement on Google Operations in China:

We have been briefed by Google on these allegations, which raise very serious concerns and questions. We look to the Chinese government for an explanation. The ability to operate with confidence in cyberspace is critical in a modern society and economy. I will be giving an address next week on the centrality of internet freedom in the 21st century, and we will have further comment on this matter as the facts become clear.

On Behalf Of Al-Qaeda

Eric Martin on the underwear bomber:

If the attack were a success, I'm not suggesting that fact should be suppressed - and some form of initial emotional overreaction is understandable, even if counterproductive in the end.  But in the present case, it's as if some people were bending over backwards to try to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat...on behalf of al-Qaeda.

Exclamation Point

Ta-Nehisi Coates on Harry Reid:

I think you can grant that, in this era, the term "Negro dialect" is racially insensitive and embarrassing. That said, the fair-mind listener understands the argument--Barack Obama's complexion and his ability to code-switch is an asset. You can quibble about the "light skin" part, but forget running for president, code-switching is the standard M.O. for any African American with middle class aspirations.

But there's no such defense for Trent Lott. Lott celebrated apartheid Mississippi's support of Strom Thurmond, and then said that had Thurmond won, "we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years.'' Strom Thurmond run for president, specifically because he opposed Harry Truman's efforts at integration. This is not mere conjecture--nearly half of Thurmond's platform was dedicated to preserving segregation. The Dixiecrat slogan was "Segregation Forever!" (Exclamation point, theirs.) Trent Lott's wasn't forced to resign because he said something "racially insensitive." He was forced to resign because he offered tacit endorsement of white supremacy--frequently.

Play Attention

I find this fascinating and a little bit terrifying:

LONDON - A new software that will help reduce hyperactivity among kids is slated for release this month.

Karen Pine, professor of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, examined the effects of EEG (electroencephalography) biofeedback, a learning strategy that detects brain waves, on children with an Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

They used a system called Play Attention, supplied by not-for-profit community interest company, Games for Life, three times a week for 12 weeks.

The system involves the child playing a fun educational computer game while wearing a helmet similar to a bicycle helmet. It picks up their brain activity in the form of EEG waves related to attention.

As long as the child concentrates, they control the games, but as soon as their attention wavers the game stops.