An Open Letter to Politically-Disinterested Americans

And no, it isn't going to insult you.

If you read this, I encourage you to leave comments on the entry I linked. You can use your livejournal login to comment using OpenID, or your gmail to log into blogger.

They see me thinkin'... they hatin'...

A good quote was linked on another journal I read, and I thought I would relay it here. It's good.

[M]y problem is with the all too common accusation of intellectual arrogance being hurled at myself and most of my colleagues who defend science from pseudoscience, be that creationism, intelligent design, UFO claims, psychic powers, astrology or "alternative" medicine. The reasoning, such as it is, goes like this: how dare you, Dr. X (put here any name of any scientist who dares to write for the public), claim that so many people are wrong and you and a small number of other egg-headed intellectuals are right? Who are you to declare the truth of evolution and the falsity of intelligent design? What makes you the arbiter in deciding what is science and what is bunk? ...

Intellectual arrogance, in the utmost degree, is being displayed by those who dismiss out of hand the considerate opinion of someone who has studied a field for 25 years only because they cherish a particular religious worldview that has no independent foundation in reality. Arrogance, according to my dictionary, is "having an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities," and it seems to me to fit perfectly someone who has no technical background in a given field and yet pontificates endlessly about what is True and what is not.

-Massimo Pigliucci, "Intellectual arrogance" at Rationally Speaking

Here is where I assert what I know. I know some things about history, and the way cultures grow and develop. I know some things about religion, and what place it has for many people in their lives. I also know a couple of things about politics, particularly where it intersects with religion or culture (and in the latter case, this happens a lot). This isn't to say I'm actually an expert in any of these things. Sure, compared to someone without a degree in anthropology I've got decent credentials, but I have only a Bachelor of Arts, which in an academic subject means little. It means that most people I talk to with an education have a vastly higher amount of experience and expertise in the area they studied. It means that most people I talk to about anything important have at least studied something, and even if its only tangentially related they are coming to the discussion with a healthy respect for expertise, education, and fact.

Then there's the internet. The internet is where I find people who aren't college professors, or other folk who've proven themselves capable of studying various things. The internet is where I find people who glorify ignorance over education, and use anti-intellectualism as a shield and a mask for their own bitterness that they don't know jack, and for once they aren't getting away with pretending they do. The internet is where I find people who think that America will progress socially, economically, scientifically, and politically by being resentful of experts instead of being interested in what they have to say or how they came to their conclusions. The internet is where I find poor Republicans voting against their own interests, gay Republicans voting against their own interests, transsexual Republicans voting against their own interests, Pagan Republicans voting against their own interests, female Republicans voting against their own interests, and independents voting for whomever they can to avoid supporting "that popular guy."

The internet is where I'm reminded that even if the test scores are wrong and I am of average intelligence... that still means half the country is less intelligent than I am. And they'll never forgive me for it. These people are the same hateful brats I knew in grade school, the ones who encouraged smart kids to shut up, who still haven't forgiven kids like me who dared to get above ourselves and actually do our best. 

And this, my friends, is why I have not checked my friends page in days.

I'm not the captain of this ship...

...so there's no reason I should have to go down with it if McCain and Palin get elected. I'm evidently not the only person who feels this way.

From a link on admnaismith's journal.

Here is a link, and here's some of the text:

The bar was set so low for Sarah Palin's speech that she could have taken two giant dumps on the podium and been praised for not taking a third. She read the words on the teleprompter – written by George W. Bush's speechwriter – with gusto, but offered nothing but tacky denigrations of Barack Obama's character, along with a litany of complete and utter falsehoods.

(snip) 

In a way, tonight was calming. Because truly, if McCain/Palin wins an election over Obama/Biden, this country is so fucked as to warrant abandonment. If this guttersniping, lying marionette and her twisted, ghoulishly-grinning mentor are the people America wants, then the debate is over, les jeux sont faits, we know not to care anymore.

(snip)

I tell you, that's fine. Us elitists, you know, the ones with education, the ones that took an active interest in the world around us, the ones that flourished in the many-hued world of nuance and occasionally tried to make the world a better place - rather than hoarding as much as we could for ourselves and putting barbed wire and guns around it - We will opt out.

We might go to our own version of Coastopia, we might take our talents to another country. There will be a brain drain, the best and brightest fleeing to another place that doesn't make them sick to their stomach.

To be fair, it's begun already. America used to be the land where science advanced, and fifty years ago (or even about twenty years ago) the Hadron Collider would have been built here. Now it's in Switzerland, and whatever technology advances scientists make as a result of greater knowledge will create jobs on another continent.

And Americans don't even see it happening. They're too busy causing recurrances of preventable diseases, because they don't want to vaccinate their kids, killing not only themselves, but immunocompromised individuals depending on herd immunity. They're too busy keeping scientific knowledge about the advancement of life out of our schools because they don't want their kids learning theologically inappropriate truths. They're too busy preventing young people from learning to make responsible choices because they're far more afraid of free will than the Lord God who allowed Adam and Eve to eat of the Tree of Knowledge and become more like him than less.

They're too busy turning our reputation for producing scientists into a reputation for producing xenophobic fanatical anti-intellectuals to realize that it is to our detriment to be xenophobic fanatical anti-intellectuals. They won't know until it's too late, and it's possible they won't even see it then.

And there's nothing I can do. There can be no dialogue here. There are a lot of people out there with nothing better to say than, "I hate intellectuals and I can't trust them and neither should you. Trust me instead, because I have no evident credentials and that makes me more credible."

I have a degree in a social science, which means neither of us can listen to the other without sanity loss. I don't know what to do but wave it away and walk off shaking my head.

Dear Sarah Palin:

Madame, please to be stopping all this lying every time you open your mouth.

-Ashley

Don't Know Enough About Obama?

His resume is available, and presumably has been for a while.

Undergraduate Education

Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA
Undergraduate, 1981-1983

Columbia University
B.A. Political Science with specialization in international relations
Thesis topic: Soviet nuclear disarmament

Graduate Education

Harvard Law School
J.D. magna cum laude 1988-1991

President, Harvard Law Review

Organizing and other work experience

1983-1984 Writer/Researcher for Business International Corporation. Helped companies understand overseas markets in the “Financing Foreign Operations” service and wrote for the “Business International Money Report”

1984-1985 Community Organizer for New York Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), promoting personal, community, and government reform at City College in Harlem.

1985-1988 Director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland on Chicago's South Side. While director grew the DCP staff from 1 to 13 and their budget from $70,000 to $400,000.

1992 Led Chicago's Project Vote! push. This effort resulted in a record number of voter registrations, over 600,000 in Chicago. 1)

Teaching

1993-2004 Visiting Law and Government Fellow, then Senior Lecturer, in Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago Law School. Taught courses on the due process and equal protection areas of constitutional law, on voting rights, and on racism and law. Helped develop a casebook on voting rights.

Law Practice

1993-2002 Worked as an associate attorney with Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland. Represented non-profits and private individuals in urban development projects, voting rights cases, and wrongful firings. Filed major suit that forced the state of Illinois to enforce the Motor Voter Law and successfully argued a wrongful firing case before the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Illinois Senate 1996-2004

• Chairman, Health and Human Services Committee

• Spearheaded a successful bipartisan effort in Illinois to pass the broadest ethics-reform legislation by any state in 25 years, and also gained bipartisan support for his successful bills reforming death penalty interrogations and ending racial profiling by police. Worked with the Republican-led effort to reform welfare

• Also sponsored successful bills expanding tax credits and child-care subsidies for low-income working families, protecting overtime pay for workers, expanding health care for children, and providing job skills training for juveniles
  
  

Sponsored Bill Statistics

• Number of sponsored bills: 65

• Number of sponsored bills passed: 0

• Number of co-sponsored bills 364

• Number of co-sponsored bills passed: 5

www.opencongress.org

United States Senate 2004-present

• Member, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

• Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on European Affairs

• Member, Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions

• Member, Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

• Member, Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs

• Shares responsibility for the bipartisan Coburn-Obama Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, requiring full online disclosure of all entities receiving federal funds, and the bipartisan Lugar-Obama Cooperative Proliferation Detection, Interdiction Assistance, and Conventional Threat Reduction Act of 2006, deepening non-proliferation work with WMD and including surface-to-air missiles, land mines, and other weapons that may be used by terrorists

Bills / Amendments Passed

• Barack Obama has introduced nearly 300 bills during his time in the U.S. Senate, and cosponsored close to 1,000 others. If you would like a full look at his legislative efforts, search the 109th Congress at http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d109query.html and 110th Congress at http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d110query.html

• S.AMDT.1041 to S.1082 To improve the safety and efficacy of genetic tests.

• S.AMDT.3073 to H.R.1585 To provide for transparency and accountability in military and security contracting.

• S.AMDT.3078 to H.R.1585 Relating to administrative separations of members of the Armed Forces for personality disorder.

• S.AMDT.41 to S.1 To require lobbyists to disclose the candidates, leadership PACs, or political parties for whom they collect or arrange contributions, and the aggregate amount of the contributions collected or arranged.

• S.AMDT.524 to S.CON.RES.21 To provide $100 million for the Summer Term Education Program supporting summer learning opportunities for low-income students in the early grades to lessen summer learning losses that contribute to the achievement gaps separating low-income students from their middle-class peers.

• S.AMDT.599 to S.CON.RES.21 To add $200 million for Function 270 (Energy) for the demonstration and monitoring of carbon capture and sequestration technology by the Department of Energy.

• S.AMDT.905 to S.761 To require the Director of Mathematics, Science, and Engineering Education to establish a program to recruit and provide mentors for women and underrepresented minorities who are interested in careers in mathematics, science, and engineering.

• S.AMDT.923 to S.761 To expand the pipeline of individuals entering the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields to support United States innovation and competitiveness.

• S.AMDT.924 to S.761 To establish summer term education programs.

• S.AMDT.2519 to H.R.2638 To provide that one of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5 million or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee certifies in writing to the agency awarding the contract or grant that the contractor or grantee owes no past due Federal tax liability.

• S.AMDT.2588 to H.R.976 To provide certain employment protections for family members who are caring for members of the Armed Forces recovering from illnesses and injuries incurred on active duty.

• S.AMDT.2658 to H.R.2642 To provide that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5,000,000 or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee makes certain certifications regarding Federal tax liability.

• S.AMDT.2692 to H.R.2764 To require a comprehensive nuclear threat reduction and security plan.

• S.AMDT.2799 to H.R.3074 To provide that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5,000,000 or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee makes certain certifications regarding Federal tax liability.

• S.AMDT.3137 to H.R.3222 To provide that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5,000,000 or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee makes certain certifications regarding Federal tax liability.

• S.AMDT.3234 to H.R.3093 To provide that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5,000,000 or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee makes certain certifications regarding Federal tax liability.

• S.AMDT.3331 to H.R.3043 To provide that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5,000,000 or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee makes certain certifications regarding Federal tax liability.

• Senate Resolutions Passed:

• S.RES.133 : A resolution celebrating the life of Bishop Gilbert Earl Patterson.

• S.RES.268 : A resolution designating July 12, 2007, as “National Summer Learning Day”.

Other Bills Introduced

• S.J.RES.23: A joint resolution clarifying that the use of force against Iran is not authorized by the Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq, any resolution previously adopted, or any other provision of law.

• S. 453: Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act of 2007. The Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act of 2007 (H.R.1281), (S.453), would establish criminal penalties for acts of voter deception. Those who knowingly disseminate false information with the intention of keeping others from voting would face up to five years in prison under the legislation. The Act was sponsored by Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) and 60 cosponsors in the House, and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and 15 cosponsors in the Senate. (20 Cosponsors)

• S. 2030: A bill to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require reporting relating to bundled contributions made by persons other than registered lobbyists. (1 Cosponsor)

• S. 2111: Positive Behavior for Effective Schools Act. A bill to amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to allow State educational agencies, local educational agencies, and schools to increase implementation of early intervention services, particularly school-wide positive behavior supports. (3 Cosponsors)

• S. 2066: Back to School: Improving Standards for Nutrition and Physical Education in Schools Act of 2007. A bill to establish nutrition and physical education standards for schools.

• S. Con. Res. 46: A concurrent resolution supporting the goals and ideals of Sickle Cell Disease Awareness Month

• S. 2044: Independent Contractor Proper Classification Act of 2007. A bill to provide procedures for the proper classification of employees and independent contractors, and for other purposes. (6 Cosponsors)

• S. 2519: Contracting and Tax Accountability Act of 2007. A bill to prohibit the awarding of a contract or grant in excess of the simplified acquisition threshold unless the prospective contractor or grantee certifies in writing to the agency awarding the contract or grant that the contractor or grantee has no seriously delinquent tax debts, and for other purposes.

• S. 2433: Global Poverty Act of 2007. A bill to require the President to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to further the United States foreign policy objective of promoting the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people worldwide, between 1990 and 2015, who live on less than $1 per day. (9 Cosponsors)

• S. 2330: Veterans Homelessness Prevention Act. A bill to authorize a pilot program within the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development with the goal of preventing at-risk veterans and veteran families from falling into homelessness, and for other purposes. (1 Cosponsor)

So uh, yeah! That's totally the same as "doing nothing." It's completely impossible to discern what Obama thinks about anything. His education background tells you nothing, his background as an educator means nothing, and as a community organizer and legislator he did nothing.

Seriously, guys. I don't care who told you that Obama doesn't have any qualifications to speak of, but clearly they didn't check first, and you didn't check after hearing it.

He's not an unknown. It's pretty easy to see where he stands on all kinds of things. The problem isn't that he's vague or inconsistent. The problem is people who feel they have to make a big show of active participation in our government, but who don't actually want to think when they do it. People who feel pressure to vote, but no pressure to vote intelligently. They believe the first thing they hear from Rush Limbaugh or sourceless emails, or the same old lies from the McCain campaign that have been debunked again and again for people who care to look. Except many people don't, and McCain is counting on that.

He is counting on you being a lazy, gullible nitwit. That should be enough to motivate you to prove him wrong. Repeated lies do not become true just because they're repeated, or because they're repeated by people who got shot down in 'Nam. 

Prove McCain wrong. Think. It's not as hard as his campaign is hoping you'll believe.

Damn preppy popular kids!

Just when you think you've left behind all those kids in high school and junior high who hated popular kids and everything they liked just because they were popular, you start talking to people who mock Obama supporters for having a popular candidate, and who refuse to even look at his voting record or read his speeches simply because nothing popular can possibly be good.

So instead, like the goth kids smoking during lunch, they find a group willing to be noncomformists in the same comfortable ways they are. They've moved beyond dressing alike, standing alike, and smoking alike. We're adults now. Now all we have to do to be different for its own sake is say the same things because we all hate the same guy for the same reason.

Because they like him. Lots of people like Obama, and rather than disappear into a crowd of people who surely must be drinking the poisoned Kool-Aid of celebrity worship, we'll band together and drink a different flavor of Kool-Aid secure in the knowledge that at least there are fewer of us. And that makes us better.

I don't think that all the automatic and thoughtless dismissal of Obama is because of race. I don't. I don't think everyone who decided to vote against him and thought of excuses why only after the fact is doing it because they can't stand supporting a black guy. I think a great many of them still can't stand supporting something popular.

Compassion and Choice

I'm going to be charitable and assume that the pro-life stance is not just primarily about protecting children, but is solely about protecting children. Let's take away all those debates about economic and social parity between men and women. Let's take away all the questioning of heteronormative gender roles and Christonormative social norms, and the adoption system that reinforces them.

Let's talk about protecting children.

Currently in America there are 500,000 children in foster care, according to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

On any given night in America, over a million children are homeless. Being homeless doesn't just mean no shelter, compromised hygeine, and no guarantee of safety. It also means a staggering rate of mental illness and compromised educational opportunity, according to the National Mental Health Association.

Every day, worldwide, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes according to The Lancet.

About 20 million children are homeless and over 2 million are dead because of armed conflicts worldwide in the last decade, this according to UNICEF.

This is why, if I ever raise children, I feel a strong moral imperative to adopt. This is why, if I ever call a young person my son or daughter I do not plan for them to be of my own blood.

This is why, if I become pregnant, I will do my damndest to have an abortion. Y'know why? Because if I'm going to pour resources into a child, I can think of children who need it a lot more than the one I'd be producing.

Stop telling me I hate children. That I'm a babykiller. That I'm a destroyer of families, a reaver of responsible moral values. I intend to have an abortion to stop the introduction of more children into a world that's got enough needy children already. You want to turn every single abortion discussion into an appeal to emotion? You really want to go that low?

I can play that game, too.

I think every single person who deliberately conceives children of their own instead of taking in a child in need (and they're all around us, guys) is being self-serving and short-sighted. I do. I think these people are allowing themselves to be complicit in a system where the only children that are recognized as needing safety, food, and love are one's own, where the children we value most are still aspirin-sized parasites, while real living, breathing, thinking, feeling, suffering children are left to their plights because millions of parents who could be doing something for them are creating more and more children instead.

Every time I'm slurred as a babyhating militant women's libber out to destroy families I have bitten my tongue when it comes to this particular argument because I didn't want to come out and say it. But now I will.

You say I'm devaluing the lives of children by planning to have an abortion should I become pregnant. I say that pro-lifers are devaluing the lives of children by sanctifying a fetus above a needy child who quite simply to them matters less.

I use two forms of protection and am still considering more permanent sterilization options (that, let's face it, are expensive and invasive for women). But you can bet that if I become pregnant despite that, I will have an abortion. Without hesitation. Without guilt. Without permission.

And I'll be thinking of you. I'll remind myself how glad I am that "pro-lifers" and their lust for forced birthing don't get to force me to make the wrong choice, to make a choice that I believe will be exacerbating a global child welfare disaster that could easily be fixed if more people cared for existing children as much as they cared for a smear of cells less distinct from my own body than the normal flora in my gut.

I'll be wondering why the hell more women aren't right here with me, putting live children first.

So don't rail at me about protecting children like it's never occurred to me that they need it. I am a thinking, discerning, moral human being, and thinking, discerning, moral human beings are able and obligated to decide for themselves how best to serve the world in their time here. We are able and obligated to choose. I choose contraception and abortion, as many times as I want them. I choose adoption, every time I want a child.

That's my choice. Why should you get a veto? Why should the moral choice of this woman be worth so little, and dismissed so easily? I'm pro-choice, and we believe in morality, too.

If given a choice (and I will demand one), there is a direct moral conflict for me between bearing a child of my own blood and caring for suffering children who are already here. When in conflict (and I've stated that it always will be), my obligation will be to these living children first. Why are all these living children less important to "pro-lifers" than the children I may abort? Why do they want women like me to be forced to bear children, when I know in my heart that children worldwide are better served if I avoid breeding at all costs?

Call it the Bob Barker school of child welfare. Spay and neuter yourselves. Adopt a child in need.

To clarify: I'm not demanding that all people have enforced abortions until there are no more needy children. I can understand people choosing personally that, when they get pregnant, they're not comfortable getting an abortion. Oopsie babies happen, and I know not everyone can be as cavalier about it as I am.

What I can't excuse morally even if I understand it emotionally is deliberately creating more children when you know that there are already kids out there who need you. Resources are limited, and you can't take care of every kid. But I believe it is wrong to deliberately create a new child instead of adopting. Not everyone has to make that choice, but it is a moral choice I have made, and not mere selfishness as it gets portrayed by anti-choicers.

If all we're going to talk about is compassion for children, I think it shows a lack of compassion for children to deliberately breed more instead of caring for the ones who need care.

The Excuse of a Killer

I love The Curvature. Every time I read it I find something that pisses me off, but at the same time it's stuff I feel I should know.

Some of the most compelling entries for me about about violence against transgender individuals. It's startlingly common for a transgender person to be murdered and then have their deaths (and lives) trivialized by insinuations that murdering people whose gender identities don't match what's in their pants is somehow more understandable and excusable than murdering people who fall in love with others of the "wrong" sex. This next entry is not her most recent example of this, but it's the best one to start with, I think.

Killing a Woman Because She’s Trans “Not a Classic Hate Crime."

Angie Zapata was murdered in July. Allen Ray Andrade, who has admitted to beating Zapata to death, supposedly became uncontrollably “enraged” upon learning that she was transgender after a sexual encounter. This is, of course, a common defense in such murders (known as “trans panic”), and one that apparently plays into bigoted public sensibilities that transgender individuals are unethically “fooling” people and of course no one would ever knowingly have consensual sex with them. It’s also worth noting that Andrade claims to have only learned Zapata was transgender by sexually assaulting her, grabbing her genitals without her consent. He then saw it as an excuse to kill her.

(snip)

“This is not a classic hate crime, where an individual is beaten to death because of their orientation. This is a case when an individual reacted irrationally and unlawfully to learning they had been fooled,” said Robinson.

“Fooled.” “Not a classic hate crime.” Why isn’t it a classic hate crime? The argument doesn’t hold up — the defendant did kill Zapata because of her gender identity. He sexually assaulted a woman, in the process discovered that she was transgender, and as a direct result he chose to beat her to death. Ergo, he killed her because she was trans, and this is not hard to follow logic. So allow me to translate. What Robinson really means is: “This is not a classic hate crime, because this time the defendant had a good reason.”

There’s no other way to put it. There’s no other reason to use language like “duped” and “fooled.” There’s no other reason to use this as an argument unless you’re trying to show that there was an understandable, if “irrational” reason for the murder.

As this blogger cites in another entry, according to the Human Rights Campaign, "transgender individuals in America have up to a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered. One in twelve. Let that sink in." This is in contrast to the average person, whose chance of being murdered is about 1 in 18,000.

Not only are they more likely to be killed because they're trans, but their killers can get their charges reduced because even if you can't really excuse it, it's understandable to be faced with a transgender person (even when you were looking for one) and fly into a violent murderous rage, just because the surprise was so traumatic for you.

If anyone reading is looking for some way to help with this, I suggest making whatever donation you can to one of these organizations. At least check them out, and for the gods' sake if you hear people slurring transgender people, or you read it online or whatever, just remember how far people take that sentiment. Just remember what it really means to say, "Man, if I found out some hot girl had a dick I'd lose it." It's not just the excuse of a narrow-minded idiot. It's the excuse of a killer. Don't let anyone use it, no matter who they are.

Freedom of Assembly at the Republican... Assembly

Massive police raids on suspected protestors in Minneapolis

Several of those who were arrested are being represented by Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers' Guild. Nestor said that last night's raid involved a meeting of a group calling itself the "RNC Welcoming Committee", and that this morning's raids appeared to target members of "Food Not Bombs," which he described as an anti-war, anti-authoritarian protest group. There was not a single act of violence or illegality that has taken place, Nestor said. Instead, the raids were purely anticipatory in nature, and clearly designed to frighten people contemplating taking part in any unauthorized protests.

Nestor indicated that only 2 or 3 of the 50 individuals who were handcuffed this morning at the 2 houses were actually arrested and charged with a crime, and the crime they were charged with is "conspiracy to commit riot." Nestor, who has practiced law in Minnesota for many years, said that he had never before heard of that statute being used for anything, and that its parameters are so self-evidently vague, designed to allow pre-emeptive arrests of those who are peacefully protesting, that it is almost certainly unconstitutional, though because it had never been invoked (until now), its constitutionality had not been tested.

Federal government involved in raids on protesters

So here we have a massive assault led by Federal Government law enforcement agencies on left-wing dissidents and protesters who have committed no acts of violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by months-long espionage efforts to track what they do. And as extraordinary as that conduct is, more extraordinary is the fact that they have received virtually no attention from the national media and little outcry from anyone. And it's not difficult to see why. As the recent "overhaul" of the 30-year-old FISA law illustrated -- preceded by the endless expansion of surveillance state powers, justified first by the War on Drugs and then the War on Terror -- we've essentially decided that we want our Government to spy on us without limits. There is literally no police power that the state can exercise that will cause much protest from the political and media class and, therefore, from the citizenry.

Beyond that, there is a widespread sense that the targets of these raids deserve what they get, even if nothing they've done is remotely illegal. We love to proclaim how much we cherish our "freedoms" in the abstract, but we despise those who actually exercise them. The Constitution, right in the very First Amendment, protects free speech and free assembly precisely because those liberties are central to a healthy republic -- but we've decided that anyone who would actually express truly dissident views or do anything other than sit meekly and quietly in their homes are dirty trouble-makers up to no good, and it's therefore probably for the best if our Government keeps them in check, spies on them, even gets a little rough with them.

After all, if you don't want the FBI spying on you, or the Police surrounding and then invading your home with rifles and seizing your computers, there's a very simple solution: don't protest the Government.

This is why we need judicial review. I know there are people on my friends list who don't like the idea of the Judicial branch "making law," since that's the Legislative branch's job. However, the Judicial branch is here to evaluate laws that are brought to them and determine whether they're Constitutional or not. If they're not, the Judicial branch has the legitimate power to strike down those laws, effectively changing our legal code by ruling that certain parts of it should never have been passed.

By what understanding of the First Amendment is this crap okay? Our courts had better do their damned jobs here, even if it gets them labelled "activist judges." This shit, now that it's been invoked and can be challenged, needs to be thrown out and America needs to take a good hard look at itself, wondering how we let ourselves come to this.

Mediocrity

Thank you, Ezra Klein.

I just want to note, if only for the record, that in a saner country, the fact that Sarah Palin wants us to teach our children lies rather than biology, and doesn't believe in man-made global warming, should be enough to cost the Republicans the election. The other way of stating those two position is that part of her platform is telling schools to misinform kids and telling the government to ignore a preventable ecological catastrophe that could cost countless lives. But for whatever reason, those positions are considered totally acceptable in American political debate, but god forbid someone comes out for single payer health care or a gun ban. Now that would be crazy.

At first I didn't mind her too much, but the more I learn about her the more astonished I become. Evidently it turns out I can't credit her for her state's fairly respectable record on providing contraceptive access, since Palin herself only supports abstinence-only sex ed. Evidently her scorn for research (AKA reality?) also extends to evolution in addition to sex ed, and the human impact on the Earth's climate.

Does she trust experts on anything? Or is this philosophy over fact all over again?

Do we really want another administration that thinks evolutionary biologists don't understand biology? That thinks that the CDC and everyone else studying teen pregnancy and STD rates don't understand teen pregnancy or STD rates? That thinks ecologists don't understand ecology?

We've already seen McCain's willingness to ignore economists with his little gas tax holiday (and his offshore drilling plan), since evidently economists don't understand the economy either.

I'm sick of this. Really, I am. Is it just the Dunning-Kruger Effect?

The Dunning-Kruger effect is the phenomenon wherein people who have little knowledge (or skill) tend to think they know more (or have more skill) than they do, while others who have much more knowledge tend to think that they know less. Dunning and Kruger were awarded a 2000 Ig Nobel prize for their work.

The phenomenon was demonstrated in a series of experiments performed by Justin Kruger and David Dunning, both of Cornell University. Their results were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in December 1999.[2]

Kruger and Dunning noted a number of previous studies which tend to suggest that in skills as diverse as reading comprehension, operating a motor vehicle, and playing chess or tennis, "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" (as Charles Darwin put it). They hypothesized that with a typical skill which humans may possess in greater or lesser degree,
1. Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
2. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
3. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
4. If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.

I hope so. Disgusting as it is, at least it's an explanation. It also explains why so many people in America truly believe that the Judicial Branch should have no power. The legislative branch is elected by the people. That makes them qualified to have legislative power and the power of the judicial branch. Why do people believe this? Because they mistrust expertise. Experts are scary, holding dark and arcane knowledge that makes them dangerous. The fewer experts we have involved in government the better! Apparently.

Even if you don't believe it, those of you who plan to vote McCain had better get really comfortable with this really fast. Because this is the trend you're playing into. There are people out there who believe that truth is a matter of consensus, not of... well, truth. These are the people who want local governments to vote on whether to teach their children science or religion in science classes, as if by voting they could determine the truth. These are the people who want local governments to vote on whether to teach children sex ed that works, or sex ed that sounds good to parents who're afraid their kids may one day grow up. These are the people who want the majority to determine the rights of the minority, as if justice were also merely a matter of majority rule.

These are the people who mistrust experts because experts erode the notion that one person's vote of confidence in a complicated matter is as good as any others. They claim to know more than you do. Those assholes. Who do they think they are, anyway? Elitist bastards. We don't need them. We don't need science at all. We'll just put everything to a vote and decide on whatever sounds best... not necessarily what those nasty elitist experts and their "research" indicates.

There are fewer of them anyway, how much can they possibly know? We're the people. Vox populi, vox dei. If we vote that something is so, damn the facts. We voted.

A vote for McCain-Palin is a vote for the disrespect of education and the disrespect of truth. And do you know why?

"Mediocrity know nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius."
-Sherlock Holmes

McCain and Palin are mediocre representatives of a mediocre party that elevates mediocrity itself above expertise. Do they represent you?

Political Animal on Sarah Palin

Finally! Blogs caught up. Was a pain in the ass trying to find real info on her this morning. But I thought this entry from today was pretty good.

A CONFOUNDING CHOICE.... Charles Homans offers some very helpful background in an item below about Sarah Palin, but I have to admit, I'm still struggling to understand what on earth the McCain campaign is thinking here.

* McCain has spent the last several years insisting that the most important qualities in a candidate for national office are experience and a background in national security. Sarah Palin was, up until recently, the mayor of a town of 9,000 people, and is currently the governor of a small state with a part-time legislature, with one-and-a-half years under her belt.

* McCain may want to improve his appeal among women voters, but he skipped right past more qualified Republican women -- women he actually knows -- such as Kay Bailey Hutchison, Elizabeth Dole, and Olympia Snowe, all of whom would have brought genuine credibility to a ticket.

* In an election season in which voters desperately want change, McCain has picked a hard-right conservative. I mean, really conservative. We're talking about a former activist for Pat Buchanan, staunch opponent of reproductive rights, global-warming denier, and skeptic of modern biology. There's a reason every right-wing group in America is jumping up and down with glee this afternoon.

* The usual pattern is for Republicans to reach national office and then face ethics investigation for alleged wrongdoing. This year, the GOP seems willing to reverse this, putting a governor on the national ticket who's already facing an ethics investigation.

* She recently asked what a Vice President does all day. How encouraging.

* Can anyone, anywhere, explain why Sarah Palin would make a good president? Given that McCain is a 72-year-old man with a history of health trouble, isn't this a rather important question right now?

I realize Palin is new, which necessarily generates some excitement. But I can't help but find this announcement utterly bizarre, and completely devoid of seriousness.

I heartily endorse Kevin's take: "This whole thing is crazy.... I'm just stunned by the cynicism of the whole thing. I'm sure Palin is a fine person, loving mother, devoted wife, learning her way as governor, and so forth. But a heartbeat away from the presidency? ... You gotta be kidding."

Seriously. The life expectancy for a white American male is 76, according to the CDC. Presidents of the United States are placed under incredible stress (which is why they always come out of it looking ten years older than when they went in). The odds that McCain will die in office and we'll end up with this for a president is pretty alarming.

Thankfully there's another candidate who's served in legislative bodies on the state and national level, who taught Constitutional law at a prestigious law school, and who's been proven right on foreign policy again and again. Let's vote for him, shall we?

Let Palin go back to Alaska and help dig her buddy Ted Stevens out of the pile of corrupt political manure he created for himself.

Sarah Palin for McCain's VP Pick!

I'm curious about McCain's VP choice. The obvious comment is "Ah, look. McCain respects women after all! He's willing to run alongside Republican Mom number six thousand seventy-five."

On the one hand, she's the only person in this election (as either a Presidential or VP candidate) with executive experience, McCain included(though unfortunately only about two years of it, which is less stellar). On the other hand, she's got no legislative experience, which makes it much harder for voters like me to figure out what the hell she believes and whether it represents us. Voting records are good quick and dirty ways to get a ballpark idea of who believes what.

ontheissues.org is generally a pretty good site for this, so I guess I'll go through here first. Lots of areas on here are unknowns, which means we either have no idea what she wants or plans... or she doesn't actually have any plans yet.

She's pro-life, which is to be expected. My opinions of pro-life women notwithstanding, at least this'll make it clearer to women who (somehow) still believe that McCain is pro-choice. Her main stance on civil rights is that marriage should be between one man and one woman. Pretty standard. Death penalty is also A+ by Palin. I guess her state's administration is so efficient by now that they don't wrongly convict people anymore like the rest of us. Good for her! [/sarcasm]

Pretty sure she also wants to open up the Alaskan wildlife refuge for drilling, and that's all we know about her stance on energy and oil. Judging from this she'll probably be on board with McCain's discredited offshore drilling plan.

What our health care system needs is competition. Evidently the free market will fix it. Again, pretty standard. She does, however, disapprove of taxes which discourage small businesses, which I can agree with her on. Favoring corporations at the expense of the smaller businesses has proven... unwise. So as far as her faith in the free market, she's being consistent here. She thinks competition is good, so she isn't simultaneously discouraging it by fellating big corporations. Good for her on this one.

Overall, she's clearly made her constituency happy. She's got a high approval rating, and that's something. Better than Bush (whom McCain believed was right more than 90% of the time) and that means that at the very least Palin has more sense than McCain. She certainly pisses off oil companies more, something McCain has been too scared to do. We'll see if she and McCain end up clashing here.

So! I think she'll make conservatives happy. I think she'll give them something to point to besides their abysmal record to claim they respect women, and that's gotta make them feel good. She also seems to actually be doing many of the things McCain abandoned years ago: mainly disagreeing with her party now and again.

My main issues with her are her social policies, since we don't have too much information on anything else. I mean, hell. They called Obama an unknown but at least he had a voting record. I'm having to cobble together a profile of her in my head from scattered statements she's made about issues that matter to me.

So I'll look at Alaska, and assume that if she's governor she agrees with things that're going on there in cases where she hasn't expressed disapproval.

Alaska ranks well as far as access to contraception and public funding for reproductive health services. Their laws and policies rank 14th in their ability to facilitate access to those services (which isn't fantastic, but it's better than my state which is 42nd). Their teen pregnancy rates are pretty good, since 29 states out of 50 have them beat. Contrast this with McCain's state, which is number two. Despite being pro-life, Palin was in charge of a state that's actually doing sensible things to decrease unwanted pregnancies (particularly among young women).

Their stand on gay rights... not so good. Palin supports their 1998 amendment barring gays from receiving equal marriage benefits, because she believes that married gays threaten "the family structure." However, it's not all sour notes here. She did veto a bill that she thought was too discriminatory against gays, suggesting that while she doesn't want gays and straights to be equal there are at least limits to how unequal she wants them to be.

So she's not as bad as McCain. He arguably picked a woman with more sense than he has, with a better ability to make consistent moral decisions. This is lukewarm praise from me, though, since McCain set the bar pretty low to begin with.

Edit:

She's also a creationist, who thinks we should "teach the [nonexistent] controversy." People everywhere who believe in science... start cringing.

Edit: She does not believe that humans can cause climate change, but acknowledges that her own state would be hard hit by such changes.

Woman's Shelter in Sioux Falls, South Dakota Needs Help

One of the groups in America that has it hardest when it comes to the safety of women is Native Americans.

Things are so bad on reservations that it strains belief. But choose to believe it or not, the CDC's got numbers.

Why do I bring this up now?

I've got something to repost from naamah_darling.

Passing this along, in the hopes that you'll do the same.

My Sister Friends' House is a shelter for women fleeing from domestic violence. It primarily serves Native American women.

They have lost their grant funding, and face a host of issues that they must overcome if they are to continue operation. They need $11,000 by August 31 if they are to keep operating through the next month, and they are hoping for $35,000 by the end of September.

If you have a minute, familiarize yourself with the situation, and perhaps donate a little.

If you don't have money, you could always mail them some material donations like diapers and basic first aid stuff. It'll go a long way for these women, because Native American women have it really rough when it comes to domestic violence and sexual assault. Lend them a hand if you can.

Enough.

"But the record's clear: John McCain has voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time. Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush was right more than 90 percent of the time? I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to take a 10 percent chance on change."

Enough Bush, enough bullshit.

Enough said.

Gustav Predictions

Poor New Orleans. Not again...

Three years after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Louisiana coast, New Orleans residents on Wednesday again faced the prospect of an evacuation as Tropical Storm Gustav loomed.  

Not since Katrina and Hurricane Rita, which followed in its wake, have residents faced government orders to evacuate their homes and businesses. Many are still struggling to rebuild their lives in a city famed for its jazz clubs and Mardi Gras festival.

On Wednesday, two days before the third anniversary of Katrina's August 29, 2005, landfall, Gustav drifted away from Haiti and the Dominican Republic after killing 22 people. It could hit the U.S. Gulf Coast around Monday.

You wanna know what's really great about this? What's going to make this oodles of fun for New Orleans to manage another natural disaster?

Guess where much of Louisiana's National Guard is.

Come on! You can guess this one! I believe in you!

Their second deployment to Iraq!

I'm sure this is going to be handled at least as poorly as the last one, which considering the area's infrastructure has been fucked once by Katrina and has now been further handicapped by troop redeployments.... yeah.

Damn Mexicans!

So I read someone complaining about the reason so many people in the US are out of a job is that Mexicans have stolen them.

Now, the obvious first point is that many of these people supposedly believe in the free market above all else. For them to cry "wait that's not fair!" when they lose out to competition that's willing to work more for less... it's just a little disingenuous.

That's not what got me thinking, though. What got me thinking was the similarity between these claims and claims by various ethnic groups that they have to compete with other ethnic groups for marriage. I remember hearing men in my family complain when I was a child that lots of women want to date black men because they have bigger cocks. Really. That's the only reason. "That's just not fair, them comin' in with them huge cocks! They stealin' our wimminz!"

Even in Europe where they're supposedly so much more comfortable with other cultures than America is... there's a long history of warring ethnic groups putting out propaganda explicitly aimed at convincing like to marry like. "Our girls marry our girls. Your girls marry your girls." Yes, this is about ethnic and cultural purity, but it wouldn't be a problem if men in each culture weren't so afraid they would prove unable to "measure up" against (read: "compete with") the foreigners.

I have no sympathy for this. Women aren't refusing to date these white guys because their dicks aren't big enough. Women are probably refusing to date them because (like my father) they're narrow-minded blockheaded assholes. In short: they aren't succeeding in the market because they themselves aren't competitive, not because someone else has an unfair advantage. The solution is for these men to adjust to the market demands for guys who aren't assholes, not to bitch about how the ones who're succeeding don't really deserve it. When someone else offers something that makes them more competitive (whatever it may be), the rules of the free market state that they're not cheating. They're competing.

So to all those people bitching about how Mexicans are stealing your jobs (just like Irish people used to steal our jobs and Italians used to steal our jobs and Chinese people used to steal our jobs) ask yourself how badly you want that strawberry-picking job. Badly enough to compete for it as vigorously as the Mexicans? Badly enough to work for almost nothing with no job security and no benefits with an employer who will likely abuse you physically or sexually?

Do you really want that job you just lost to a Mexican?

No?

Then it's not their fault you don't have a job, is it? It's yours, for not being willing to flow with the market. No wonder you got left behind, eh?

Granted, this only applies to people who can simultaneously believe that A) the free market will solve all problems, but B) that they've somehow been slighted by the introduction of competition for jobs.

You guys. You wouldn't even be worried about this shit if we didn't have unions that pushed decades ago for things like minimum wage and job benefits. If this were the Industrial Revolution, you'd be willing to compete on an equal ground with the Mexicans because you'd be used to working the way they work: in unsafe conditions and for a pittance.

These people just annoy me because it doesn't seem like they're thinking very carefully about all these things they're claiming simultaneously. I want several things from them. If you're going to cry foul every time competition doesn't work out in your favor, maybe you could also adjust your own demands to make yourselves more competitive. Or, and here's a thought, you should re-evaluate how strong your faith in the free market really is now that you're the one losing out.

I don't care which you do. Just start making sense, please.

Philosophy and Fact

So... if you had to choose between doing something that kept with your principles and doing something that had a better chance of achieving the end you're looking for, which would you choose?

Classic example, sex ed as a way to reduce teen pregnancy, STDs, etc. If you're a conservative Christian, you're faced with a choice. Will you advocate for your values as they were given to you (meaning, teach only abstinence)? Or will you compromise your values to do what the facts indicate will actually achieve the end you desire (teaching about contraceptives and even abortion)?

To me this highlights a common conflict between liberals and conservatives. In keeping with the sex ed example, conservative Christians are ostensibly trying to protect families and children. Since they believe that premarital sex is wrong, they would rather discourage that than compromise on their hardline stand to achieve the result they claim they care about most.

And this means one thing: to conservative Christians, the means are more important than the ends... to the point that they completely disconnect from the reality of the situation. This is why showing statistics about teen pregnancy and STDs and high school dropout rates to conservative Christians will not convince them that children should learn anything but "abstinence good, sex bad." It won't convince them because the end isn't the point. The result isn't the point. They don't care nearly as much about the actual fates of children as they do about their moral high ground.

This is why you see liberals advocating for practical sex education, even if it means allowing for the possibility that young people will have premarital sex. Sure, it'd be nice if they weren't, but if our end is really to reduce teen pregnancy and STD rates... we've gotta do what we've gotta do.

That practicality is completely lost on many conservatives. Even if they support their arguments with facts and predictions of results, in the end the results are secondary. 

You've heard this before.

"Teaching teens about contraceptives may reduce the rates of teen pregnancy and accompanying dropout rates (which would result in economic and social benefits for those teens who would otherwise have dropped out), but it's wrong! Teaching them how to have responsible sex is... well, it's teaching them to have sex!" Link.

"Some wealth redistribution may reduce our deficit and reduce the tax burden on poor and middle-class families to fund our whole economy. Sure. But it's wrong! Did you know Hitler was a socialist?!" Link.

"Sure, entering peace talks with countries hostile to us might help us handle global challenges. But damn it, we're America! We'll handle global problems ourselves, our way, and you'd better either help us or get the heck out of our way." Link.

So at this point you have to ask yourself. How dedicated are you to the principles behind your goals? Are you dedicated enough to the principle to sacrifice the goal?

This is one of the sticking points for me when talking to my very conservative friends (and yes, I do have them). It seems most of the time like they'll uphold all these great and noble goals, but they have little interest in achieving them or actually working toward them. They feel teen pregnancy is a tragedy, but they reject any practical means of reducing it. They moan about the economy, but cling to Bush's "principled" stance that there's nothing more important than protecting the wealth of the wealthy. They sigh that America's always having to pick up other people's messes and finish other people's fights, but they don't want to admit that we don't have all the answers, that other nations may have something to bring to the table.

At this rate, there is nothing I can do to convince them. I can't offer facts or expert opinions, because those are merely result-based. My "reality-based thinking" has no impact because we're not really talking about the same thing. This is why every discussion with conservatives I've ever had has become a philosophical debate and not a practical one.

Most conservatives I've spoken with (particularly conservative Christians) truly are interested in philosophy first and results second. If I can't somehow argue that my solution doesn't just work but also fits into a philosophical model of America as God's Chosen Blessed Land of Opportunity, they don't care. The fact that a plan could work for the goal we agree upon doesn't matter if it requires a shift away from a comfortable philosophical model.

I don't know if this helps anyone reading this, but here's my summary.

To conservatives: If you're talking to a liberal, be honest when you're upholding principle most highly, and when you're upholding results. It will muddle the discussion much less if you make your priorities clear.

To liberals: Conservatives are listening, honest. Odds are you're just not talking about what's really on their minds. When they reply to studies or statistics by reasserting their philosophy, they're trying to reiterate what matters to them in the debate. They may not intentionally be shifting the goalpost onto philosophical terrain; odds are that to some conservatives that's where it's been the whole time.

Don't bring around a cloud to rain on my parade...

I don't know if you heard about this, beloved readers (all, what, five of you?), but I thought it would entertain you.

See, there were Christians pushing each other to pray for rain at the DNC.

"Focus on the Family is asking for "abundant, torrential" downpours to flood Denver and silence Senator Obama when he accepts the Democratic Party's presidential nomination on August 28."

Evidently rain of "Biblical" proportions to flood out the liberals would show them that God is displeased with their war on his poor marginalized believers in this country that has so little tolerance for them. Never mind that rain of Biblical proportions would kill lots of people. The point is to show that nasty liberal candidate that God is a republican. You can check out the video here.

Well, there was a flood of sorts.

No, really!

There was a sprinkler malfunction that flooded part of the Pepsi Center..

The sprinkler was located on the club level in a skybox which had recently been renovated to host a news crew. It appears the skybox belongs to Fox. ...All of the equipment in the skybox had to be removed quickly due to the possible electrical issues. No one was injured.

Oh yes. Oh ho ho ho yes.

Fundies may not have a great sense of irony, but someone up there sure does.

Damn, Dana.

Dana Hunter, one of my favorite bloggers, has decided to write up what might be the best take-down of John McCain's insistence that his experience as a POW exempts him from all criticism.

It's here, and I think that by quoting it only in part I'm doing it a disservice, but I know that most of you won't read it if you don't at least see a sample bit.

Being a rape survivor does not make me an unimpeachable expert on rape, the combatting thereof, and all things remotely related to it. Being a POW does not make John McCain an expert on war, the fighting thereof, and all things remotely related to it. It apparently doesn't even make him an expert on torture, because if it had, he wouldn't have worked so hard to allow America to engage in it. (Imagine me redefining my rape as somehow "not rape" so that sexual violence could be legally perpetrated against women. Morally repugnant? I think so. But that's essentially what McCain has done.)

(snip)

Being a rape survivor does not mean I get to claim that I'm a better person than my opponents because I survived rape and they didn't. McCain is no better than the people he smears - in fact, he's far less of a good man than they are. If we're going to be claiming higher ground by virtue of our travails, we'd better be fucking standing on it.

I can't use my status as a rape survivor to disclaim responsibility for the actions I take, the things I say, the people I hurt, and all my many failures. It infuriates me that McCain thinks this status as a POW allows him to do all of that and so much more.

Get it? Go read.

"Worse than no change"

Check out this Op-Ed Column from the NYT.

What we have learned this summer is this: McCain’s trigger-happy temperament and reactionary policies offer worse than no change. He is an unstable bridge back not just to Bush policies but to an increasingly distant 20th-century America that is still fighting Red China in Vietnam and the Soviet Union in the cold war. As the country tries to navigate the fast-moving changes of the 21st century, McCain would put America on hold.

What Obama also should have learned by now is that the press is not his friend. Of course, he gets more ink and airtime than McCain; he’s sexier news. But as George Mason University’s Center for Media and Public Affairs documented in its study of six weeks of TV news reports this summer, Obama’s coverage was 28 percent positive, 72 percent negative. (For McCain, the split was 43/57.) Even McCain’s most blatant confusions, memory lapses and outright lies still barely cause a ripple, whether he’s railing against a piece of pork he in fact voted for, as he did at the Saddleback Church pseudodebate last weekend, or falsifying crucial details of his marital history in his memoirs, as The Los Angeles Times uncovered in court records last month.

What should Obama do now? As premature panic floods through certain liberal precincts, there’s no shortage of advice: more meat to his economic plan, more passion in his stump delivery, less defensiveness in response to attacks and, as is now happening, sharper darts at a McCain lifestyle so extravagant that we are only beginning to learn where all the beer bullion is buried.

But Obama is never going to be a John Edwards-style populist barnburner. (Edwards wasn’t persuasive either, by the way.) Nor will wonkish laundry lists of policy details work any better for him than they did for Al Gore or Hillary Clinton. Obama has those details to spare, in any case, while McCain, who didn’t even include an education policy on his Web site during primary season, is still winging it. As David Leonhardt observes in his New York Times Magazine cover article on “Obamanomics” today, Obama’s real problem is not a lack of detail but his inability to sell policy with “an effective story.”

(snip)

The Bush White House is now poised to alight with the Iraqi government on a withdrawal timetable far closer to Obama’s 16 months than McCain’s vague promise of a 2013 endgame. As Gen. David Petraeus returns home, McCain increasingly resembles those mad Japanese soldiers who remained at war on remote Pacific islands years after Hiroshima.