Category: Thoughts

I don’t pretend to understand the current accounts deficit, much less know what a safe value for it is. However, look at the last paragraph for an obvious lie by Bush:

Bush argues that Mr. Kerry, playing to a labor union constituency, has begun flirting with protectionism as an answer to the nation’s trade gap; he contrasts that with what he says is a strong White House effort to negotiate more trade agreements with individual nations, regional groups and at the World Trade Organization.

OK, what about the steel and textile tarrifs? What about the way you torpedoed the Cancun talks? Doha, anyone? I don’t understand how anyone can vote for this man. Here’s a good example of the rhetoric of people who support him. It’s a constant exercise in self-delusion. How long can you pretend to be the party of fiscal responsibility while tearing the economy apart?

This reminds me of being at a party at a friend’s house; his girlfriend was visiting from out of town and everyone but me was already drunk when I arrived. The girlfriend had tripped on a sidewalk (where she’s from, they don’t have huge potholes) and skinned her knee. I advised washing the wound, applying Neosporin and bandaging with gauze or something from the nearby convenience store. The boyfriend figured they’d be fine with paper towels and duct tape. She listened to the boyfriend.

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been so angry at them. She was obviously going to listen to him, because she was drunk and he was her boyfriend. At the time, I was totally unable to comprehend how anyone could ignore the obviously correct statements I was making and decide to bandage a cut with paper towels and duct tape. But a lot of things seem like a good idea when you’re drunk and your hot boyfriend suggests them.

Like Bush. He’s hot. You’re drunk on American imperial power. He’s wearing a flight suit and adjusting his package and saying Mission Accomplished. He’s already fucking you, it must be love. You’ll regret it when you wake up, but by then he’ll be on his heavily fortified ranch in Crawford with a billion dollars in gold and some assault rifles, and you’ll be homeless and sick and denied health care because you’re poor and not religious enough.

This is the only possible explanation for voting for Bush.

Learn from the news about: getting the attention of nerds.
The best and worst methods of euthanizing puppies (apparently it’s illegal to kill them yourself– you have to have someone else do it for you. Plus if you try to do it yourself they might fight back.)

If soybeans contain phytoestrogens, would a Soy Bomb (see also the soy bomber manifesto) be something like the gay bomb that our terrorist enemies are rumored to be producing?

Tell me Fox isn’t biased. I dare you. Or that our science research system is not being corrupted by the right. If you aren’t outraged, you aren’t paying attention.

Disjointed notes on the theme of superheroes:

Awhile ago, Fafblog noted disappointment in the Kerry/Edwards ticket, wishing instead for Kerry/Batman. I told my father about it, and he responded that he actually met someone named Batman while he was in Australia. You know, Jeff Batman.

You know, if my last name were “Mann” I would totally name my kid “Super” and not “Bat.”

Earlier this week I woke up in the middle of the night mumbling about how Batman had been impersonating me and going on a murderous rampage. I don’t remember this dream or telling Bookdwarf about it, but I think it means either a) I am worried that my subconsious will force me to do something I’ll regret later, or b) I am afraid of someone else doing horrible things that will affect me. Can it be both?

Regardless, if I had a superpower, it would totally be x-ray vision or invisibility or the power to stop time– anything that would let me know things I couldn’t normally know. I would use it to spy on naked ladies, and also for securities fraud. The delivery of next week’s Wall Street Journal would work, too.

Andrea Lafferty, of the Traditional Values Coalition, says, “There’s an arrogance in the scientific community that they know better than the average American.” Perhaps that’s because scientists are are educated and knowledgeable enough that “knowing more than the average American” is actually their job, just like “being better at fixing cars than the average American” is how an auto mechanic gets paid to fix cars by average people who respect that expertise. The fact is that if Andera Lafferty actually represents the average American citizen, then America is a nation so mired in barbarous superstition that it opposes the very concepts of science, research, and the advancement of knowledge.

My old spanish teacher, Señor MacDonald, often said “You pays your money, you takes your choice.” I think he meant that there were limited choices in life and that you were supposed to do what you could. Play the hand they deal you. That sort of thing.

We all make compromises. At least, most of us do. The rest of us, depending on the nature of the desires on which we refuse to compromise, are called idealistic, pigheaded, quixotic, exacting, annoying, stupid, or insane.

Recently I wonder about bicycle helmet laws. Lady K, friend of the nauseated bloggers, died in part because she wasn’t wearing a helmet. I blame the car, of course, more than I blame her or the helmet. But would a helmet law have saved her life? Would constantly mussed hair have ruined her artistic career? Would a helmet law make it too inconvenient or too expensive for some people to bicycle, make them walk more, be late more, lose their jobs, exercise less, ultimately creating greater obesity and killing more people than it would save? What about the lives of the sweatshop workers in Indonesia manufacturing the helmets, ruined by the sudden popularity of newly mandated styene foams?

You pays your money, you takes your choice.

Brilliant new blog: Winning Argument. It’s like a cocktail-party political cheat sheet, or maybe a set of talking points for reasonable people. Each day they explain, in simple terms that you can remember and discuss with others, why we’re being ruled by, as Brad DeLong says, “these imbeciles,” or as I would say, fucktard wing-nuts. It reminds me, for some reason, of D-Squared’s challenge to the general world: show me one thing those nutscrapes have done right.

Ken MacLoed has posted a short elegy for the better days of our nation, and the Gadflyer is writing about Moonies and their theocratic billiionaire leader hanging out with senate types.

Maybe Fafblog! really is the only one that can explain how this world works.

Good: I’m in Brad DeLong’s Blogroll! I hate the word “blogroll.” It sounds like “bog roll” which in British means toilet paper.

Bad: The Garfield Movie: NYT Review: “I have a feeling ‘Garfield: The Movie,’ which opens nationwide today, is only the beginning. I’m bracing myself for ‘Cathy,’ for ‘Ziggy’ and, of course, for ‘Marmaduke.'” Don’t fail to miss it, kids.

Crazy: Angry man in armored bulldozer. Not just angry, but patient and determined: he spent months armoring his bulldozer, then welded himself inside it, and knocked down the businesses of people who’d done him wrong. Now that is some serious western-style revenge.