What we saw last night was the real Obama–a bright but incurious and inexperienced man who four years ago was promoted well beyond his level of competency. The Obama that guys like [Chris] Matthews and [Andrew] Sullivan expected instead was a character in a fairy tale–a fairy tale written by guys like Matthews and Sullivan.
Western Motel in Pink
Have a Nice Day
. . . and the dance ends, the joke is forgotten; and strength vanishes, and youth is past. — Kierkegaard
“Creating Jobs” and Other Fallacies
Almost everything appertaining to the circumstances of a nation, has been absorbed and confounded under the general and mysterious word government. Though it avoids taking to its account the errors it commits, and the mischiefs it occasions, it fails not to arrogate to itself whatever has the appearance of prosperity. It robs industry of its honours, by pedantically making itself the cause of its effects; and purloins from the general character of man, the merits that appertain to him as a social being.
My fellow Americans —
I’m hearing in the pre-debate analysis that voters are looking for the candidate who’ll help them have a better life.
Speaking as someone who was there at the beginning, I can tell you that helping you have a better life was not America’s original value proposition. Everyone was welcome to come here and try to make a better life for himself and his family — unless he was from Africa or Asia, of course — but there wasn’t what we now call a “safety net.”
If you tried to make it and failed — and a lot of people did — you had to go back where you came from. No guarantees! You tried, you failed, let the next man have a chance.
I still believe that the majority of Americans want a government that gives them the freedom to succeed or fail or their own merits, and not a government that “helps them have a better life.” I don’t believe it’s a large majority, but I still believe it’s a majority.
Politicians over the last 200 years or so have doen a masterful job of convicing Americans that all of the good things in life come from government. As my friend Tom Paine says in the quote above: government takes the credit for everything and the blame for nothing.
If business is booming during my term of office, the credit goes to me and my policies.
If business is bad, it’s because my policies haven’t had a chance to work yet. Or because my opponents obstructed me. Or because the last guy in the job screwed things up so bad that nobody can fix them.
Anyone who thinks about this notion that government is making good things happen sees what a fallacy it is . . .
If President Obama could “create jobs,” give me one good reason why he hasn’t done it. Do you think he wants to run on a record of increased unemployment, increased poverty, increased debt, plummeting net worth . . .?
Please don’t tell me that Republicans in Congress are preventing him from doing it. How would that work? I want to hire a man and a Repubican congressman shows up and stops me from doing it?!
BULLSHIT!
If politicians could “create” jobs, they’d be doing it all the time.
Overheard
Self-Reliance: Another Idea That Never Caught On
One of the TVs at the gym this morning was tuned to a political panel discussion . . . someone named Roland Martin, a black man with an enormous forehead, said that voters are asking themselves which candidate will help them have a better life.
Yes — that’s the 47 Percent.
Someone once said, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” It’s a shame that never caught on.
Never be afraid to tell the world who you are. — Anonymous
Pug with Glockenspiel
The (Limited) Importance of Success
I don’t have a problem with someone using their talents to become successful, I just don’t think the highest calling is success. Things like freedom and the expansion of knowledge are beyond success, beyond the personal. Personal success is not wrong, but it is limited in importance, and once you have enough of it it is a shame to keep striving for that, instead of for truth, beauty, or justice.
Replacement Refs Are Just What the Sport Needs
I hope the NFL keeps replacement refs around forever. I hope they bring in a new batch of them every season. I hope they bring in replacement refs for the replacement refs.
Why do people think the “real” refs are actually good? Was last night’s Seattle-Green Bay game really worse than the “Tuck Rule”? Was it worse than 2006 when the “real” refs cost the Seahawks the Super Bowl?
Sports fans are the biggest cretins on the planet. When their team wins, they gloat, usually in the first person: We won! We beat those guys!
There are no bigger mental and emotional retards than people who refer to sports teams in the first person. It’s an inability to separate fantasy from reality. (Imagine a Roger Federer fan screaming, “I just won Wimbledon!”
When ther team loses, they blame it on one of two things: 1) Bad coaching; 2) Bad officiating.
Replacement refs play right into #2. It’s perfect. Every jackass fan now has a built-in excuse as to why his team lost.
The NFL will be more popular than ever.
Tips for Effective Visualizations
I’m taking a Social Network Analysis class on Coursera . . .
The first week’s lecture included advice from Edward Tufte on visualization and graphic design. I thought I’d already posted this a couple of years ago after attending a Tufte course, but after further review, I see that I haven’t, so here it is.
The success of a visualization is based on deep knowledge and care about the substance, and the quality, relevance, and integrity of the content.
Tufte: Five Principles in the Theory of Graphic Design
- Above all else show the data.
- Maximize the data-ink ratio, within reason.
- Erase non-data ink, within reason.
- Erase redundant data-ink.
- Revise and edit.
The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem. — Theodore Rubin
Randy Newman: “I’m Dreaming”
Randy Newman has a new song and video out — “I’m Dreaming” — about a voter who casts his ballot solely based on skin color.
I listened to it . . . it’s great, like every other Newman song I can think of, but didn’t this train leave the station in 2008? We already have a black president. (Yes, his mother was white, but “mixed-race” doesn’t get you 12 percent of the electorate.)
Will some people not vote for Obama because he’s black? Yes.
Will some people only vote for Obama because he’s black? Yes.
As Geraldine Ferraro said in 2008, “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is.”
Naturally, she was denounced as a racist by the Obama campaign.
Let’s move on already . . .
The Lives of Julia and Paul
David Henderson says — accurately, I think — that Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remarks can be paraphrased as “People who are dependent on government will vote for the candidate who credibly (to them, at least) promises to keep the programs that have created that dependence.”
Do you think President Obama disagrees with that? He doesn’t.
If you think he does, please see The Life of Julia on the president’s web site. It lays out a “typical” woman’s cradle-to-grave dependence on government assistance and describes how Obama will keep those programs going while Mitt Romney won’t.
The most insulting thing about it is that as you read about Obama funding this and Obama funding that, it sounds like he’s doing it all out of his own goddamn pocket. What a prince!
There’s no acknowledgement that Obama is taking from some and giving to others, and that all of Julia’s “free” stuff is paid for by me and people like me out of money earned by our own labor.
And we are struggling. We’re putting a kid through college, my wife has had an expensive medical condition, our home equity has plummeted, the roof leaks, my car is long overdue for new tires . . . there are unplanned expenses . . . next month, something else will break. That’s life.
As part of our middle-class existence, we pay a five-figure annual federal income tax bill. We pay for Julia’s babysitters, education, health care, etc., and Obama takes the credit. Not even a “thank you.” If we could keep even a fraction of that money, maybe we could afford to pay our own education and health care costs.
How about acknowledging that for every Life of Julia there’s a Life of Paul and presenting their stories in juxtaposition to show how, as with any policy, some people are better off and some people worse.
| Life of Julia | Life of Paul |
| As she prepares for her first semester of college, Julia and her family qualify for President Obama’s American Opportunity Tax Credit—worth up to $10,000 over four years. Julia is also one of millions of students who receive a Pell Grant to help put a college education within reach. | As they go into debt to pay for their own child’s college education, Paul and his wife are required to pay for Julia’s college tuition as well. |
You see the idea? Let’s try another one . . .
| Life of Julia | Life of Paul |
| Julia decides to have a child. Throughout her pregnancy, she benefits from maternal checkups, prenatal care, and free screenings under health care reform. | Paul’s wife is diagnosed with a life-threatening medical condition. Although they have health insurance, which they pay for themselves, there are deductibles, co-pays and out-of-pocket expenses, as well as the financial implications of his wife’s inability to work. They receive no government assistance, which is fine, but their financial woes are compounded by the fact that they are also required to pay for Julia’s “free” medical care. |
The money being used to buy the votes of millions of Julias out there is not coming exclusively or even primarily from unnamed “millionaires” on “Wall Street” . . . it’s coming from “middle class” “hard-working Americans” on “Main Street” who are struggling.
Overheard
I Have Heard What the Talkers Were Talking
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the
beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Poetry Slam: Whitman vs Dickinson
Emily Dickinson was good but Walt Whitman would have kicked her ass in a poetry slam.
Pleonasm of the Day: Offended Muslims
ple·o·nasm, noun
- the use of more words than are necessary to express an idea; redundancy.
- an instance of this, as free gift or true fact.
My fellow Americans —
U.S. embassies in Egypt, Libya and Yemen have been attacked by Muslims offended by a YouTube video.
“Offended Muslims” — there’s a pleonasm for you!
The embassy in Egypt, hoping to pacify the attackers, issued a statement opposing “continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.”
DISAGREE! We should be APPLAUDING efforts to offend religious believers. We should be STEPPING UP efforts to offend religious believers.
My friends and I risked everything — including our lives, that’s how important it was to us — to ensure that Americans could speak their minds without interference from government.
Religion is all horseshit anyway. There’s no God. There’s no Allah. It’s all a bunch of made-up bullshit. Fairy tales!
As John Lennon — an Englishman, but otherwise a good bloke — used to say: Imagine no religion . . .
The Obama Bounce Fades
And through it all, there is no presidential leadership. He’s too busy raising money to run ads so he can tell us what a great leader he is.
Everywhere we see, in ruins, Obama’s plans for our country. His foreign policy has encouraged revolutions that have brought our worst enemies to power in the Middle East . . . His education reforms have no teeth and he sits by passively as they are challenged by his own local teachers union.
Credit much of the quick end to his bounce to Romney’s ads which, right off the bat after the Democratic Convention closed, rapped Obama for trying to convince us that we are better off than we were four years ago. Obama’s campaign essentially poses the question: What will you believe — your own eyes or my speeches?
Provoke Not Your Children to Wrath
And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord . . .
