ITS A MYSTERY!!!

uh....no, i don't!! who is the other anti-semite?! mel gibson? walt disney's cryogenically frozen corpse? hitler? wagner? is will.i.am. secretly anti-semetic??

someone solve this puzzle!

greatest.independent.ad.ever.

keith olbermann and race

you know that keith olbermann idolizes edward r. murrow (his "good night, and good luck" stuff), but its really nice to see when he has an opportunity for sincerity instead of duking it out on bill o'reilly's terms. this is a phenomenal comment.

the "voter fraud" fraud

hi,

i've been busy/away for a week and im away for the next week which will make it tough to post. but there's been a lot of press about ACORN and Obama's ties to it, so I thought I'd post a link.

Voter fraud isn't real. At least, it isn't a real problem. Study after study has demonstrated that voter fraud is either completely, or mostly, a myth. It mostly serves as a clever front to enact widespread voter disenfranchisement and intimidation, 2 things that are a huge problem. Exaggerating a negligible fear in order to further one's political agenda....does that sound familiar? Don't buy into more of this GOP-sponsored bullshit. Slate sums it up pretty well.

And by the way, this Joe the Plumber nonsense is just that, nonsense. I'm sorry, but his claim to Obama that he was "planning on starting a small business making between 260 and 280 thousand dollars a year"...first of all, who exactly thinks of a business they are starting in terms of its yearly gross? Jesus. Make your plants a little less obvious. For example? Try to make sure that they're not related to Charles Keating. Oh, you should probably also make sure that he is a registered voter who doesn't owe back taxes. Oh yeah, and he probably shouldn't compare Obama to Sammy Davis, Jr.

I think Tina Fey said it best: "If [McCain/Palin] wins, I'm leaving Earth."

Nature News: Presidential Candidates and the Future of Science

From Nature News:

Barack Obama accepted Nature's invitation to answer 18 science-related questions in writing; John McCain's campaign declined. Obama's answers to many of the questions are printed here; answers to additional questions (on topics including biosecurity, the nuclear weapons laboratories and US participation in international projects) can be found at http://www.nature.com/uselection. Wherever possible, Nature has noted what McCain has said at other times on these topics.

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080903/full/455446a.html

Ahh, McCain. What priorities you have.

sketchy shenanigans

People in Rensaelaer County in New York got ballots with "Barack Osama" listed as the candidate? Really? And this was checked by 6 people before the ballots went out? COME ON!

http://gawker.com/5062194/ny-sends-absentee-voters-osama-ballots

Frighteningly stupid people - the McCain-Palin Mob

Via Blogger Interrupted. this dude went to a McCain-Palin rally in Strongsville, Ohio the other day and talked to some mccain-palin supports, who of course, think he's a terror-loving terrorist. (TM tina fey)

Do not wear your Obama button, etc. when you vote on Nov 4

Err on the safe side: don't wear your Obama buttons/gear to the polls. Apparently in some states, showing partisanship can DQ you from voting.

At least 10 states -- Delaware, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, New York, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Vermont -- explicitly prohibit the wearing of pins, buttons, stickers, labels, or other "political insignia."

You just know some republican goon is gonna be out there monitoring for this, so just be on the safe side.

TPM quick blurb on this: http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/09/do_not_wear_your_obama_hoodie/

Classically Perfect

just because i can't pass up the chance to annoy tosh:



the new york times had this dumb article the other day about a beautification software that uses algorithms of nose to philtrum length, width b/w the eyes, etc. to transform faces into "beautiful ones." its so dumb, Hi trying to make people devoid of any character. BUT this made me laugh.

"The before and after shots of the actor James Franco were almost indistinguishable, suggesting his classically handsome face is already pretty perfect."

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/10/08/fashion/20081009-SKIN_index.html

Four Days in Denver

Less than a month left. A nice behind-the-scenes video of the Obamas at the DNC. How can you not tear up at this stuff! I love this family. barack is seriously the coolest cucumber. the last 1 minute is really cool - can you imagine mccain ever being so light-hearted and jovial? plus michelle and barack slapping five because michelle arranged for malia and sasha to meet the jonas brothers? what super cool parents (the 10 year old in me would love it).

jason, michelle, tom, and the power of nightmares

after a little manny tearfest in my previous post, i owe a few props to jason bay, our return on the manny dump. there are so many things to like about this guy:

• toiled away in pittsburgh on an awful team, never once asking to be traded and putting up huge numbers
• has a sense of the moment (hitting 2 huge homeruns in the ALDS)
• has learned how to play the Monster well in less than half a season (well, either that, or it's not that hard, and we gave Manny waaaay too much credit)
• under 30, cost controlled, puts up >900 OPS. I don't think i really need to 'sell' this guy.
• i insist that everyone refer to him as "the canadian, jason bay."
  

follow this link to read a nice SI article (yes, sports illustrated still exists) on how Bay is the real deal.


do we need more proof that michelle obama is the freakin shit? one millionth case-in-point: she goes on larry king live and kicks ass in the way we want her to kick ass. She's first ladyesque in exactly the same lofty, inspirational way that barack obama is presidential, particularly in recent days: an ambitious campaigner, an aspiring policy maker, a proud mother, and absolutely uncompromising in any of these respects. Plus, she refuses to be baited by any of the rampant negative campaigning surrounding her and barack obama in recent days:

What you heard in that debate, when you saw his passion, it was when he was talking about the health care crisis, and he talked about his mother dying of ovarian cancer, and how angry it made him to see her worrying about the insurance company and the payments rather than worrying about getting well.
And that's what we're seeing. That's the kind of stuff that makes Barack angry. It's not the back and forth. It's not something said about him. I think Barack said today, he can take, you know, any name-calling or the back and forth that -- you know, that stuff doesn't bother him.
But the unfairness that we're seeing across the country, that makes him mad.

and on Sarah Palin, despite attacks by Governor Palin suggesting that her husband sympathizes with terrorists:

I think she provides an excellent of example of all the different roles that women can and should play. You know, I'm a mother with kids and I've had a career and I've had to juggle. She's doing publicly, what so many women are doing on their own privately. What we're fighting for is to make sure that all women have the choices that Sarah Palin and I have. To make these decision and do it without hurting their families.

Everyone should read the transcript of her amazing interview with Larry King. I truly come away with absolutely equivalent respect and admiration for her as for her husband every time I get to read or see anything about her. You rock, Michelle.

Contrast that with Cindy McCain on the stump, referring to Obama's campaign as "dirty" and suggesting that Obama voted to put troops at risk (when her husband voted for the same bill). It just emphasizes the differences between these 2 camps. The difference being that Michelle Obama is an accomplished professional whose behavior matches her ideals, whereas Cindy McCain inherited a beer company, and her negative campaigning complements her record of stealing prescription drugs from her own nonprofit to feed her drug addiction.

Taxation, Spending, Patriotism, Friedman.
There is an incredibly important point that was made eloquently by Thomas Friedman in a recent opinion piece. It speaks of McCain's, and even more so Palin's, characterization of taxation as unpatriotic, and as government programs as waste. Friedman disagrees:

Sorry, I grew up in a very middle-class family in a very middle-class suburb of Minneapolis, and my parents taught me that paying taxes, while certainly no fun, was how we paid for the police and the Army, our public universities and local schools, scientific research and Medicare for the elderly. No one said it better than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: “I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.”

And I agree with him. This demonization of taxes as unpatriotic is ridiculous. You might argue that the government is inefficient in how it uses taxpayer money (the bailout perhaps being a prime example), but the idea of paying taxes is woven into the fabric of what makes us a democracy: citizens donate a certain portion of their income that can be better utilized by a governing body for services that should be provided to everyone (military protection, health care, education, etc.) Am I wrong?

There is an unbelievable amount of material on which I have yet to post, and I hope to get to it tonight. Including:

• The New England Journal of Medicine's report on the health care proposals of both candidates (thanks Amana)
• My increasing attempts to understand the basis and marketing of Democratic and Republican ideology, including a great piece Rosa sent me as well as an awesome documentary called The Power of Nightmares, which Todd showed me.
  
• Maybe a few thoughts on Alan Greenspan.
  

uh, i guess that's it for now

top 5 of today!

2 phenomenal pieces from the new yorker begin today's post:

1. the new yorker endorses barack obama. This campaign has been so long and wearying that it took quite a bit to inspire me. and the editors of the new yorker did just that, with this stirring piece in which they remind all of us of what we've forgotten. I had forgotten the extent to which the idea of Obama restores every facet of life in which we find ourselves betrayed by government. and this is important, when you turn to another riveting feature on
2. evaluating voter tendencies in ohio. george packer paints a compelling, if concerning, portrait of the struggles of ohio voters to accept a candidate of obama's mold: lofty, young, and liberal with a littany of promises. While Obama has the coherence to validate his proposals, is this marketable to low-income white voters who have been burned by democrats over the years and are conditioned by the subtle prejudices of race and class? a legitimate question, and a concerning when when you consider the critical swing states (colorado, nevada, florida, ohio, north carolina, pennsylvania, new hampshire, minnesota).

Next, paul krugman skewers the mccain health care plan. the argument is very simple. mccain cuts the tax breaks for employers to provide insurace. so obviously, they don't. then everyone gets some money to buy health care. people with money have some extra money to buy it -- great! sick people and poor people get fucked - bad. what encapsulates the mccain campaign better?

But the people gaining insurance would be those who need it least: relatively healthy Americans with high incomes. Why? Because insurance companies want to cover only healthy people, and even among the healthy only those able to pay a lot in addition to their tax credit would be able to afford coverage (remember, it’s a $5,000 credit, but the average family policy actually costs more than $12,000).

Meanwhile, the people losing insurance would be those who need it most: lower-income workers who wouldn’t be able to afford individual insurance even with the tax credit, and Americans with health problems whom insurance companies won’t cover.

Note: post-debate, this has got to be the biggest point that obama scored over mccain, particularly in noting how people with pre-existing conditions get left out. well, that and mccain's insane plan to buy all the bad mortgages, which is either a) already in the bailout, in which case, who cares, or b) not in the bailout, in which case, wtf is the bailout for, and c) way to increase government ownership, stalin. oh, and also mccain's insane "speak softly"/"next up, baghdad" gaffe.

Sarah Palin Ruminations
The new republic has a very nice piece entitled, "barracuda". the critical point here: palin often took challenges personally, turning dissenters into political opposition, and devoting herself to eliminating her detractors. does this sound...eerily familiar? (new york times subnote: cheney! cheney! cheney!) Part of the reason i found the article so fascinating was that it paints palin as motivated very little by logic, and very strongly by victory. and that seemed to work out quite well for her.
slate's ten to toss
i absolutely loved slate's "ten to toss" article. in this article, the awesome emily bazelon along with chris wilson tear apart 10 of president bush's most egregious executive orders (reminiscent of this american life's evisceration of bush's "signing statements"). from presidential secrecy to separation of church and state to violations of the geneva convention, there are are some great orders to toss in this list, and the list itself is a reminder that we did not have merely a well intentioned neophyte in office, but a president/VP tandem determined to covertly push forward a socially neoconservative agenda while protecting their consituency at every turn.

the red sox advance, defeating the angels 3-1. what are the key points here:

• jon lester. amazing. even if he didn't beat anaplastic large cell lymphoma, amazing. but he also did that.
  
• jason bay. the kind of 5 tool player i love.
• theo epstein. this red sox team is the 4th iteration since their first championship. they continue to be competitive in a way that's one step ahead of the market by being flexible. by the way, this is also a testament to terry francona's managing.
• justin masterson. jesus, the guy is a rookie. he's not ready to be your 8th inning setup guy. okajima and delcarmen can do the trick. save masterson for 6th/7th innings eating. trust me; with daisuke, you're going to need to fill those middle innings.
• the rays are a great team that terrifies me. great pitching, good OBP guys, great defense, great speed. we'll see.

i'll leave you with a graph that teaches us what makes people go to grad school. sad, really.

www.phdcomics.com

random thoughts, part 1: baseball, disenfranchisement

it's really tough for me to comprehend, as the baseball playoffs start, that i'm not going to see manny donning a red #24 and hitting cleanup for the red sox ever again. my personal history with baseball is a weird one. when my family moved to boston, i was 6, and looking for a hobby. i settled on baseball cards, and adopted the red sox as my baseball champions. i really loved baseball as a kid, especially because my dad would often score tickets to baseball games (i didn't go to a basketball game until I was in college, and I barely remember the one football game I attended.) I went through a lull in my fandom from about age 8-16, mostly because I wasn't in Little League, and additionally because of the baseball strike. My love for baseball was brought back by 3 seminal Red Sox: Nomar Garciaparra, Pedro Martinez, and Manny Ramirez. Nomar, a brilliant but brooding hitter, took business negotiations from the front office personally and was sent packing in 2004. Pedro helped deliver the first Red Sox championship in 86 years before cashing in on one last paycheck (sorry Mets fans), but Manny stuck it out until this year. From a fan's perspective, Manny was always a joy to watch. We loved his goofy personality (including ridiculous handshakes individualized for each of his teammates, my favorite being his 'gunslinger' handshake with Millar) that served as a perfect counterpoint to how locked-in he always was at the plate. I'll never see anything in baseball as great as the 1-2 punch of Manny and Ortiz: Ortiz with his ability to just muscle anything over the fence, and Manny, the hitting savant par excellence.

But the other reason I loved Manny is that he recognized baseball for what it is: a game. He loved baseball, worked hard at it, and was great, but his life didn't end on the field and he said as much. Sportswriters hated this about him, and always got on his case about not being the kind of 'gritty, dirt-dog, hustler' types that they always love. Here's a hint about why writers hate Manny and love David Eckstein. The gritty dirt-dogs? They're always white. Guys who 'play the game the right way'? Always white. Guys like Manny, whose combination of athletic ability and work ethic make his at-bats look easy? They're lazy (and they're usually black or hispanic). These are the same guys who think that the great era of basketball was in the 80s, because everyone was slower, and Larry Bird was amazing. Anyways, I'll miss you, Manny, and if the Sox go down in the playoffs, I'll be rooting for the Dodgers, no doubt. Well, actually, maybe not. I'll probably root for the Cubs, with their 100 year drought, or for the Phillies (because I'm getting slightly worried about the psyche of Philadelphia sports fans). But I'll watch the Dodgers, and when Manny hits a bomb, watches it for 3 seconds too long, jogs around the bases, and does a 14-move handshake with a bewildered and slightly annoyed Jeff Kent, I'll cheer.

By the way, the Sports Guy wrote an awesome article about Manny, so if you're a sports fan, read it.

And in other thoughts, voter disenfranchisement! I went to rolling stone to read an awesomely vicious takedown of John McCain's seemingly spotless biography (I loved it, but if you like McCain, you'll hate it, and maybe hate me) and ended up reading a 23 page report on voter disenfranchisement in Ohio in 2004. In an example of everyone's tendency to revise history in order to make it more palatable, I had completely forgotten about how overwhelmingly exit polls had favored Kerry and how incomprehensible it was that the polls were off by as much as they were (John Zogby called the explanation for the discrepancy, that democrats had participated more in exit polling than Republicans, "preposterous.") Well this piece painstakingly reconstructs all of the separate voter intimidation, voter exclusion, and plain old fradulent tactics conducted in Ohio, at the behest of the GOP. Upon reading this, I immediately thought 3 things:

1. It's really sad that voter disenfranchisement may be my number one fear about why Obama might not win on November 4th. After all, we've already seen examples of voter intimidation in Michigan, and I certainly don't feel confident that the type of organized intimidation orchestrated in the last 2 elections is going to either suddenly cease or be overcome in this election.
2. There's a really interesting article in the Times that talks about George W. Bush, and how his likeability may very well increase when he is a former president, as his personality shifts to the forefront and his policy decisions fade into the background (the article notes similar transformations for Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter). But I think its important that we not forget that beneath his charm, and even beneath his "aw shucks, I'm not that smart" populist sensibilities was someone not afraid to break the rules to win, and certainly not hesitant to expand executive power to push his agenda forward, even if it included trampling basic rights of American citizens to privacy, habeas corpus, etc. If anything, I think in the future, I'll look back on President Bush as a genius for hoodwinking everyone into believing he was too dumb to be sinister. And this brings me to my most important point:
3. Potential voters need to recognize the GOP they are voting for. Republicans at this point (no matter what talking points they parrot) are not the party of small government and self-reliance. They're the party of lobbyists, fat cats, and influence that say that if you can't win by the rules, make sure you've got enough money and power to change the rules, and make sure of it by buying off all the people who've got the money and enforce the rules. It's a smart plan, honestly, but its vile, and lets not pretend that it has anything to do with the party of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. This is a party that guts the financial security of Middle America by preying on their hatred of gays, immigrants, and abortion so they can give kickback to the billionaires that illegally finance their re-election campaigns.
   

More soapboxing after the VP debate. The Times had tons of weird, non-political stuff, and I plan to talk about it. For now, enjoy Homer Simpson's attempts to vote!

so much cooler stuff to offer

ive got a pretty wonky post building up, but for now, enjoy this clip about roe v. wade. not because it continues to make me wonder if sarah palin has a slowly growing subdural hematoma, but because it shows how reasoned and, honestly, likeable, joe biden is.


Watch CBS Videos Online

Sarah Palin and Feminism

Quick post because I really wanted to share this link: I know there have been oodles of articles about what Sarah Palin's candidacy means in terms of the feminist movement, but this pretty much sums it up. Perfectly articulates what I and so many of my wonderfully intelligent and accomplished friends have been feeling-- that it's tragic how Sarah Palin is our first chance att having a woman in the white house.

The queen of glittering generality

Found this interesting article in the Christian Science monitor written by Andrew Halcro. He debated Palin for the governorship 2 years ago and knows her tactics.

From the article:

On April 18, 2006, Palin and I sat together in a hotel coffee shop comparing campaign trail notes. As we talked about the debates, Palin made a comment that highlights the phenomenon that Biden is up against.

"Andrew, I watch you at these debates with no notes, no papers, and yet when asked questions, you spout off facts, figures, and policies, and I'm amazed. But then I look out into the audience and I ask myself, 'Does any of this really matter?' " Palin said.

While policy wonks such as Biden might cringe, it seemed to me that Palin was simply vocalizing her strength without realizing it.


http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1001/p09s01-coop.html

sarah P on the flute

i don't even know why i am posting this. i don't want to mock her skills, i played the flute and i was really bad. it's just so surreal to watch these clips, LOL.

NYT video breakdown of Biden-Palin debate

Some prospective thought about the debate tomorrow from the NYT website. They found vids of Sarah Palin's debates from when she ran as governor in Alaska.

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=ebfac2eaf3489d19fc07c79758598d8b02b3dcbb

i don't know how to make this a pretty link like santosh does.

the audacity of government

good morning,

i didn't have time to load my usual podcasts this morning, so i re-listened to the podcast that really got me into this american life, called The Audacity of Government. In case anyone missed it at the time, its worth hearing.