Flying Pigs (in Lipstick, Even)

I never thought I'd say this, but Sarah Palin was correct. Her assertion that "dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time" is irrefutably accurate, and I stand wholly corrected. Never again will I mock her claims that she has "seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks [of dinosaur fossils]."

I concede the point entirely, and come bearing evidence proof positive:



Now let's put that lady one melanoma-stricken heartbeat away from the big red button!

Got Legs?

Yesterday I saw a man in a wheelchair wrestling with his keyring in the building where I work. Both of his legs had been amputated at the knee. As I walked behind him I glanced at his t-shirt. Poking above the top of the chair's seat was the image of a frog. The caption above?

That's right.

"Got legs?"

I. am. not. making. this. up.

I have secretly named him Mr. Beckett because he is clearly that kind of awesome.

And in completely unrelated news, your Moment of Zen, featuring break-dancing Russians who really love Sarah Palin (like really a lot):



Aaaand here's a direct link.

Whatniaks?

The only thing better than watching the vice presidential debate every four years is watching it with a group of people all equipped with food to throw at the TV when one of the candidates devolves into spouting talking points and gibberish. Four years ago it was Cheney and lunch meat. This year it was Palin and popcorn (we have a new TV).

Confessedly, one of the moments that elicited the most raised eyebrows from my highly unscientific living room poll was Joe Biden's reference to "Bozniaks" living in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I mean, it's Bosnians, right? Silly Joe.

Except for not. Apparently, Bozniaks is indeed the correct term for Muslims living in the region. And we weren't the only ones who were confused. Even Cokie Roberts chastised Biden for this perceived gaffe. Silly Cokie.

As for me, I'm just glad to be casting my vote for someone who knows more about foreign policy than I do. I mean, no offense to soccer moms, but I'd rather have the guy who knows the difference between Bosnians and Bosniaks (let alone Sunni and Shia) a heartbeat away from The Button.

McCain Would Tax Health Care Benefits

Earlier this week, I wrote about the differences between the tax plans proposed by Obama and McCain and the comparative benefit of Obama's plan for working class and middle class people. When I wrote that, there was something I didn't know about John McCain and taxes — something that puts the two candidates in even starker contrast.

Despite having claimed publicly and repeatedly that he would not raise any taxes, McCain's tax plan would in fact do exactly that. (Some people have a word for that. It starts with an L.) If John McCain becomes president, he will tax your employer-provided health care benefits. That means if you're a teacher like me, with absolutely no change to your actual income, McCain's plan would in effect treat you as though you'd just received a huge raise of thousands of dollars.

His so-called offset for this proposal would be to provide a tax credit of $2,500 per person, or $5,000 per family. Never mind the fact that the average employer-provided health care costs employers roughly $8,000 dollars a year. McCain is more than happy to treat you as though you've just received a $3,000 raise.

Why are middle-class people and fiscal conservatives voting for this man?

Calling All Fiscal Conservatives

Today's Website O' Awesome is brought to you by Alchemy Today, a burgeoning political blog:

ObamaTaxCut.com

Using data compiled by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center and further publicized in the Washington Post, Alchemy Today has created a widget that allows you to compare the tax cuts you would receive under the tax plans proposed by Obama and McCain.

It's actually quite fascinating. Under McCain's tax proposal, my husband and I would receive a $40 tax cut. Under Obama's plan, we would receive a $971 tax cut. Our present income would have to more than triple before we'd get a better deal under McCain. Furthermore, we'd have to make more than $250,000 before Obama would increase our taxes.

The bottom line: If your combined household income is $200,000 or less, you will pay less taxes under Obama than McCain.

Plus, widgets rock.

Added note: Further research into the the Washington Post's findings indicates that you would have to make more than $600,000 a year before you'd see a tax increase under a President Obama. Huh. I guess Rush Limbaugh must have just been, you know, misinformed or something.

If Only She'd Had My Vote to Lose

The City of Wasilla, home of Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, has responded to "a flurry" of requests and begun today to release public files to the media. Anyone with access to the internet can access the documents through the City of Wasilla's website here.

One item of interest to me is the city's response to requests regarding Palin's book-banning attempts. According to The New York Times, Palin attempted to have Wasilla's librarian fired for "disloyalty" (apparently a big Palin peeve) after she resisted the then-mayor's suggestions that book-banning ought to be considered. The firing attempt was blocked by public outcry.

According to the city's records, no books were actually banned as a result. Good. Nonetheless, this raises some serious questions about Sarah Palin's commitment to democratic (small d) ideals.

For now, there's plenty to dig through. Kuddos to Wasilla for releasing these documents to the public. Assuming they weren't thoroughly scrubbed.

Ich bin ein...

Those are Berliners. Citizens of the world. Waving an American flag. Not burning it.

Oh please let it be January.

Win-Win. Win.

Gosh, why didn't anyone just think of this sooner? We're saved!

McCain: I'll Cut the Deficit by Winning Iraq War

Considering McCain's assertion that U.S. troops staying in Iraq for 100 years would be "fine with him," I can't say this gives me a lot of economic confidence in a McCain presidency.

Not that I really had any, given that he's already admitted he's "not an expert" on "this stuff." Of course, he now denies having said that. Someone really needs to tell McCain about the YouTube:

Q&A with LOL Cats

Q: What, pray tell, is a LOL cat?

A:


Q: Who, pray tell, have the LOL cats endorsed?

A:


Lo and verily, it is true. They even have an Obama campaign website, the aptly titled Yes We Can Has.

But perhaps the real question is this:

Q: Why, pray tell, is a LOL cat?

A:

Two Percent of Oregon

According to the United States Census Bureau, Oregon has 3,700,758 residents. According to the Portland Fire and Rescue Department, 75,000 people turned out today to see Barack Obama speak — by far the largest crowd Obama (let alone any other politician) has drawn this election cycle.

To put that in perspective, that is one out of every 50 people in the state of Oregon.

Here's what that looks like:





Of course, not everyone is excited. Here's what username Sarah Alton had to say in response to an article about the rally on the Wall Street Journal website:

"Obama - the Candidate as Anti-Christ.
Consider his rockstar status among young voters, his ability to continuously lie without impunity, his connections to mob members and terrorist both real and wannabes. His strong and unscrupulous desire for raw power, at any cost, regardless what it does to others, (he became senator simply by disqualifying his opponents). His empty words and changing promises, his desire to be friends with those who wish to destroy us. His wife Michele has expressed her hatred for this country and has publicly announced her husband as the messiah.
Perhaps you will need to explain to God why you voted for an antichrist, but I am not going to be on that dark list on judgment day."

For the record, a big old [SIC] to all that. Sadly for Sarah Alton, I don't think the Ku Klux Krazypants rallies are drawing 70K crowds these days.

Who Needs Profs When We've Got Podcasts

Today John McCain gave a speech in which he described what the world will look like in 2013, at the end of his first term. While you'll be pleased to know that we won't have been attacked by terrorists (but only if we vote for him and not that Hammas-loving Nazi appeaser), I'd like to focus on McCain's comments on education. Remember, he's speaking in the present-tense about things that haven't happened yet:

"Public education in the United States is much improved thanks to the competition provided by charter and private schools; the increase of quality teachers through incentives like merit pay and terrific programs that attract to the classroom enthusiastic and innovative teachers from many disciplines, like Teach for America and Troops to Teachers. Educational software and online teaching programs endorsed by qualified non profits are much more widely in use, bringing to the smallest classrooms in America some of the greatest math, English, and science teachers in the country. This revolution in teaching methods has especially benefited rural America. Test scores and graduation rates are rising everywhere in the country."

Allow me to repeat for emphasis:

"Public education in the United States is much improved thanks to the competition provided by charter and private schools."

You'll notice there is no mention whatsoever about increasing funding for education, nor is there any mention of eliminating underfunded federal mandates (*cough*No Child Left Behind*cough*). Just a promise that good old Adam Smith capitalism will solve all of our problems, because clearly the only reason that our schools are so rotten (which, point of order, they are not) is because we're just not scared enough about the competition. We're being lazy, see, because we're the only gig in town, so you can take your crappy teachers and you can like it or lump it!

Problem: As federal mandates increase and state economies tank, education nationwide is becoming increasingly underfunded. In California this is presently resulting in a tens of thousands of teachers being laid off; predictably, as teacher layoffs become the norm, enrollment in teacher credentialing programs is declining. Just last week one of my students who has wanted to be a teacher for the three years I've known her told me she's going to be majoring in business in the fall because she figures if she becomes a teacher she'll just get fired. Now, I don't know if John McCain knows this or not, but private school teachers? Charter school teachers? They get recruited from those same teaching programs where enrollment is rapidly dropping off.

No, Senator Nostradamus McCain, the problem with education isn't that we need to be kept even further on our toes — we're already damn ballerinas — the problem is that we need stable, adequate funding and a confident, well-qualified recruitment pool.

Private or not, administrators are going to be facing increasing difficulty in staffing schools with qualified teachers. And I'm sorry, but using "online teaching programs endorsed by qualified non profits" to beam in "some of the greatest math, English, and science teachers in the country" is simply not going to serve as an adequate replacement for an actual human being in the classroom. Anyone with a teaching credential (read: not McCain) knows that no eight-year-old is going to learn math from watching some guy lecture about it. The notion would be laughable, except McCain's not kidding.

I suspect even Adam Smith would be put off. In his seminal The Wealth of Nations he wrote, "The education of common people requires, in a civilized and commercial society, the attention of the state."

Racists: Obsolete

In an interesting political discussion with my family last night, my parents hypothesized that should Barack Obama become the Democratic nominee he would lose to John McCain because a large swath of Americans are still unwilling to vote for a black man as president. They may be right, but the thing is, a large swath of Americans don't have to.

There's an excellent analysis of why that is here (and it really is worth the read), but if you're in a hurry, what it boils down to is this: more people in more states have voted for Obama than any other candidate running and more than all of the Republican candidates combined. Furthermore Democratic turnout has trounced Republican turnout in every single contest so far, and based on mathematical regression models (same link — go read it!), this trend seems likely to repeat itself in the general election. Worthy of note is the fact that Democratic turnout was universally larger even when the Republican contest was more contentious than the Democratic contest (oh, the halcyon days of January). So sure, Kentucky won't elect Obama... but Colorado very likely will, and that's a state that John Kerry lost.

In short, Obama's November success isn't predicated on a moratorium on racism; it's predicated on attaining 270 electoral votes. Even conservative pollster Rasmussen has spent the last several months quietly reflecting the steep uphill electoral battle that McCain will face once the Democrats stop chewing on each other and start chewing on him.

And on a side note, I'd like to take a moment to personally thank George Stephanopolous for the fact that this scintillatingly newsworthy headline came across my Google feed reader this morning: Obama Wears Flag Pin to West Virginia Rally.

Sturm und Drang Makes Me Hungry

Having spent the evening watching primary coverage, I find myself with absolutely no desire to talk about politics and an overwhelming desire to talk about palatics. Here is a list of the top five things I wish I'd been consuming instead of MSBNC election coverage (no offense to Keith "Absurdly Fabulous" Olbermann):

1. Fake Meat Burritos — The more guac the better, and surprisingly good with black olives.

2. Tofu/Asparagus/Mushroom Stir Fry — There's something very satisfying about making a stir fry chock full of the stuff you find yourself picking through the bok choy to get to in restaurants.

3. Three Cheese Lasagna — Doesn't really matter to me what the three cheeses are... ricotta, parmesan, mozzarella, even cottage; toss in a few cloves of garlic for good measure and you have a little bit of Buddha in your mouth, seriously.

4. Goat Cheese and Strawberry Salad — Best with balsamic, and really, the greens are kind of optional.

5. Broccoli Wokly and Cheddar — Because sometimes I feel like being five, and that's okay.

My Kingdom for a New Sex Scandal

I'm beginning to suspect that this puts me in the minority, but truth be told, I could care less if the President's pastor believes that human beings are descended from gigantic talking bananas. Reverend Wright screaming "God damn America" has far less to do with my vote than the candidates' positions on education, health care, the economy and, oh yeah, that war thing. I guess I'm not very good at being a scared white voter, but honestly, if this guy shoves himself into the spotlight one more time, I think my head will explode from the tedium.

And if we're really being honest with ourselves I think we'll all agree that the question is not whether Reverend Wright loves America as much as Barack Obama does (a question which will hopefully live infamy due to its being chiseled onto George Stephanopoulos' headstone by vandals) . Rather it's whether he loves America as much as this dog does:

Clinton and the Cold War

Twice now in the past week Hillary Clinton has suggested that the United States President should use the threat of nuclear attack to cow Iran into submission. Twice now in the past week she has failed spectacularly to distinguish herself from the militaristic Machiavellis who dragged our nation into a foolish and tragically costly war which has placed Americans in greater peril than we were in prior to its commencement.

The two instances to which I refer are last week's farce of a debate and Clinton's appearance on Countdown this evening in which she stated unequivocally that the United States must threaten to respond to Iran's currently non-existent nuclear weaponry with "massive retaliation." Piercing my feelings of horror and dismay, I feel that a particular element of Clinton's newly emerging foreign policy position needs to be thoroughly and immediately explored: her decision to model the United States' treatment of Iran and the Middle East after the Cold War foreign policy of the post-war world.

In her conversation with Keith Olbermann today, Hillary Clinton made the following chilling statement:

"Well what we were talking about was the potential for a nuclear attack by Iran, if Iran does achieve what appears to be its continuing goal of obtaining nuclear weapons, and I think deterrence has not been effectively used in recent times. We used it very well during the Cold War when we had a bipolar world, and what I think the President should do and what our policy should be is to make it very clear to the Iranians that they would be risking massive retaliation were they to launch a nuclear attack on Israel."

There are two fundamental problems with Clinton's unfortunate decision to use the lens of the Cold War to frame our current relationship with Iran and nations in the Middle East. The first is philosophical in nature and the second is strategic; both are disturbing and to use Obama's terminology, "wrongheaded."

I'll begin with my philosophical objection. The Cold War was one of ideology, pitting the capitalist West against the communist East (oversimplified for the sake of a larger point). The goal of each contender was not to achieve some sort of conciliatory understanding or peaceful coexistence; the explicit goal was to crush the other ideology and its faithful adherents.

In framing the growing tensions between the United States and Iran through this "with us or wiped from the face of the Earth" lens, Clinton affirms the worst suspicions of U.S. foreign policy — that we not only view Western ideology (Christianity) as superior to Eastern ideology (Islam), but that we understand the goals of each "side" to be the utter destruction of the "enemy ideology." Clinton's A-bomb rattling is precisely the sort of language that incites the spread of violent extremism, and is very, very dangerous.

There are also two strategic issues that arise from modeling U.S. foreign policy towards the Middle East after the Cold War.

First and foremost, the Cold War consisted of a stand-off between two nations that already had nuclear weaponry. In an attempt to assure that neither party deployed that weaponry, both sides engaged in a mad and costly arms race. The goal was not to prevent the other side from developing nuclear weapons; the goal was simply to have bigger, better, faster, more weapons ourselves.

This is a very bad model to use in our dealings with Iran for the obvious reason that the objective is very different: currently, it is in our best interest to convince Iran that they do not need nuclear weapons at all. Threatening to use our already existing nuclear arsenal against them is likely to accomplish the opposite. Granted, Clinton claims that "what we were talking about was the potential for a nuclear attack by Iran." But how is it wise to base our current foreign policy and choose our current words towards Iran on the assumption that they will already do the thing we are hoping they will not do? Is it not wiser to adopt an approach, a message, that will entice Iran into believing that we do not want to bomb the bejeezus out of (or perhaps into) them?

There is a second strategic problem with using the Cold War as a template in approaching the Middle East. While it was a conflict of ideology, the Cold War was fought on two physical fronts — the military and the economic. Not only did the proxy military confrontations between the United States and the so-called Evil Empire(s) result in wasted lives and resources, they were ultimately ineffectual in ending the Cold War. It was the economic front that resulted in the West ostensibly winning. The Cold War worked as a war of attrition; through effective use of embargo the United States was able to, for all intents and purposes, starve the Soviets into submission. They had nothing we wanted (well, needed), and we were more than able to thrive economically absent the USSR as a partner in trade.

It seems to me there is a rather massively glaring difference between that situation and our present economic position vis a vis the Middle East today. I'm more than supportive of a decrease in our dependence on foreign oil (or oil in general, for that matter), but I think it is foolish to assume that our Middle Eastern rivals (if we insist on constructing them as such) will spend 30 years glaring at us from afar and them implode.

And again, the underlying philosophical assumption if we adopt this Cold War model would be that upon the imploding of our "Islamo-fascist" enemy, our "winning" would result in replacing their problematic ideology with our superior version. There is no scenario in which a Cold War strategy of "deterrence" as thusly described results in a peaceful, long-term relationship between the United States and Iran.

Today Hillary Clinton has succeeded in validating every worst suspicion of United States foreign policy and the Middle East. God help us if she wins — and I don't care which one.

I'd Like to Meet a Lapel Pin Voter

Here are the four things that ABC moderators attempted to hammer Barack Obama on during the first half of tonight's Democratic debate in Pennsylvania:

- Not wearing a flag pin on his lapel (curiously, Hillary Clinton's bare lapel somehow eluded notice);
- Reverend Wright;
- Being "elitist"; and
- His so-called connections to a domestic terrorist group that was active in the 1960s (although strangely they neglected to ask Clinton about her connections to the same group, even though her husband pardoned two of them).

Here are four things that were not brought by the moderators at any point during the debate:

- The plummeting value of the U.S. dollar;
- Today's Supreme Court decision that use of lethal injection does not constitute not cruel and unusual punishment;
- Admissions this week that Still-President Bush was actively aware of his administration's approval of torture techniques; and
- Education, environment and the economy (okay, technically that's three, but they're linked — especially somewhere like Pennsylvania — and not one of them was brought up anyway).

But I suppose considering the fact that one of the moderators was former Bill Clinton advisor George Stephanopoulos, I should settle for being pleasantly surprised that they didn't ask Obama if his wife's status as a Marxist Islamo-fascist baby-eater would adversely influence his presidency.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Crazypants

Dude. James Carville is totally Voldemort!

Although if James Carville is Voldemort, then George W. Bush is not, which means that John McCain is not his horcrux after all.

This theory requires massaging.

There Are Dogs, and There Are Dogs, and There Are Dogs

The Good: "They spent months in an Iraqi war zone cementing a special bond. But after more than a month of being apart, Marine Maj. Brian Dennis began to worry if Nubs the dog would still remember him, especially in a new place like San Diego.

Their reunion early Saturday at Camp Pendleton clearly showed otherwise. The 2-year-old old dog, named for his two nubby ears, drenched Dennis' face with doggie kisses and said hello with excited whimpers.

'You remember that, huh?' Dennis said as he rubbed the dog's head."

Source: SignOnSanDiego

The Bad: "This week, however, Senator Clinton put a pistol to the head of her own campaign and put it out of its mathematical misery. Matthew Yglesias quotes Hillary saying in a speech earlier this week:

'I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia, and as Togo said, there was a saying around the White House that if a place was too small, too poor, or too dangerous, the president couldn't go, so send the First Lady. That’s where we went. I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.'

That sounds terrible. (If you'd like, you can read the original speech at Senator Clinton's campaign site). But join me as we flashback 1996 and then return to this week."



Source: Daily Kos

The Ugly: "America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known. ... We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude? ... Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?"

Source: Pat Buchanen's Blog

Beyond Putting Food on Your Family

Barack Obama's campaign has recently been surrounded by controversy over what many view as incendiary preaching on the part of his pastor, which you presumably already know since you do not live under a rock. Today Obama delivered a speech in response, addressing not only the present situation but also larger issues of race in American society. I can only imagine where the country would be today if we'd received this sort of immediate and bracingly honest response to potential crises from our president over the past seven years (as opposed to, say, grammatically butchered lies). Take half an hour and watch the whole thing. It's worth the time.



Here's a link to full text of the speech, and here's link to my favorite response, pointing out that the guy actually wrote the damn thing himself — something no president or presidential candidate has done since 1969.

1969!

Be still my geeky heart.

There Is a Specter Haunting Laughter Shrapnel

So, I appear to be a bit of a commie, having scored a -9.75 on Political Compass' economic continuum (-10 being the greatest possible left-leaning score). My merrily Marxist -9.75 is paired with a -8.36 on the Libertarian/Authoritarian scale, which means that I literally make Gandhi look conservative.

I just need some pasty, tea-fed troops to lie down in front of, I guess.

The Political Compass' U.S. primaries page is also worth a look. This bit made me laugh:

"While Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel are depicted on the extreme left in an American context, they would simply be mainstream social democrats within the wider political landscape of Europe. Similarly, Hillary Clinton is popularly perceived as a leftist in the United States while in any other western democracy her record is that of a moderate conservative."

Sadly, the only candidate even in the same time zone as my clearly insane level of leftyness is Ralph Nader; meanwhile, Mitt Romney is a fascist.