Dear folks, I am at present in Roosevelt Hospital recovering from an amazing operation to provide me, in essence, with a new set of vocal cords. Prognosis is terrific, but I am myself too weak and exhausted to even post some nice music I might like listening to. Make this an open thread, and I'll certainly be back!
Per austerum ad astra
Updated 4/24/2012
You know how they always say a country is just like a family, in that it has to gather around the kitchen table (well, OK, a family with an eat-in kitchen) and figure out what we need to give up in order to make ends meet? And we always say back that it's a stupid analogy, and end of conversation?
Maybe it's not the analogy that's the problem, but the way it's worked out. Not only is this imaginary family exceptional in the size of its kitchen, it's also exceptional in that it doesn't seem to have to consider the possibility of going into debt. "Oh, we'll trade in the Cadillac for a Subaru and send little Tyler to public school."
If you think of the family vertically, as a succession of generations, and not just as an island of Mom and Dad and the kids, then it's clear that most of us are in fact in a state of debt as permanent as the United States. As the older generation starts to slide out from under, the younger generation starts to slide in, with the school loans, and the car loan, and the credit cards, and ultimately the mortgage.
What we don't ever do if we can avoid it is decide Tyler can't afford to go to college so he'll have to stay home and pick peas, or we can't afford to redo the roof so we'll just have to let it slowly rot away. The boy is going to go to college so he can earn some real money and get out of our hair; the roof will get fixed so we can sell the damned house and move to Far Rockaway (I hope not!). We borrow money to guarantee a future in which we'll be able to pay it back and have some left over.
You can't make any money without spending some. You have to take a shower and put on some clothes before you go to the job interview. You have to do the rail network and the electricity grid and the education system before you can get growth. National austerity budgeting is like the couple in that ghastly Maupassant story that lost the diamond necklace, bought a replacement on credit and retired into obscure penury to spend the rest of their lives in menial jobs trying to pay it off. There's no way they're going to make enough money to pay off all the Euro banksters unless they show up in town ready to do business!
Apparently people in the Netherlands don't like austerity for themselves nearly as much as they like it for others. As they howled about bailouts for those reprehensible countries in the south of Europe, the center-right Dutch government was overshooting the E.U. deficit targets by about 50% (it's supposed to stay under 3%, but is expected to rise to 4.6%). But the package of spending cuts and tax increases they proposed can't make it through Parliament, so the prime minister is going to have to visit the queen and there will be early elections, maybe in September.
The Czech center-right government looks set to collapse over an austerity program too. Their case is a little less bizarre than the Dutch one, which is complicated by the fact that the most right-wing party of all—the Freedom Party of Islamechthriac Geert Wilders—is the one that is toppling the government, presumably in the belief that they will do well in the elections, whereas the Czech voters are most likely to simply turn back to the good old center-left.
And it looks as if France is set to take a center-left turn, as you've no doubt heard by now, with the first round of the presidential elections going as expected to the Socialist candidate (not very Socialist, though perhaps well to the left of the party's lamented great rich hope, Dominique Strauss-Kahn) and the second round in two weeks not very likely to go to anybody else (although the scary right did much better than the real left).
And then, if experience is any indication, all the new center-left governments will roll up their sleeves and, sadly, implement some austerity programs, just as in Greece and (by then, no doubt) Spain, and get voted out for their trouble. Oh, well.
Update 4/24
The Times thinks austerity is going out of fashion all over Europe, as Spain goes back into recession and Timmy Geithner begs them to try some kind of stimulus:
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| "Oil's up another $3 a barrel... Looks like we'll have to sell you, Bud!" "Aw, Dad, can't I just get a paper route?" |
Maybe it's not the analogy that's the problem, but the way it's worked out. Not only is this imaginary family exceptional in the size of its kitchen, it's also exceptional in that it doesn't seem to have to consider the possibility of going into debt. "Oh, we'll trade in the Cadillac for a Subaru and send little Tyler to public school."
If you think of the family vertically, as a succession of generations, and not just as an island of Mom and Dad and the kids, then it's clear that most of us are in fact in a state of debt as permanent as the United States. As the older generation starts to slide out from under, the younger generation starts to slide in, with the school loans, and the car loan, and the credit cards, and ultimately the mortgage.
What we don't ever do if we can avoid it is decide Tyler can't afford to go to college so he'll have to stay home and pick peas, or we can't afford to redo the roof so we'll just have to let it slowly rot away. The boy is going to go to college so he can earn some real money and get out of our hair; the roof will get fixed so we can sell the damned house and move to Far Rockaway (I hope not!). We borrow money to guarantee a future in which we'll be able to pay it back and have some left over.
You can't make any money without spending some. You have to take a shower and put on some clothes before you go to the job interview. You have to do the rail network and the electricity grid and the education system before you can get growth. National austerity budgeting is like the couple in that ghastly Maupassant story that lost the diamond necklace, bought a replacement on credit and retired into obscure penury to spend the rest of their lives in menial jobs trying to pay it off. There's no way they're going to make enough money to pay off all the Euro banksters unless they show up in town ready to do business!
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| Cécile de France as Mathilde in La Parure for TV, by Claude Chabrol. From Linternaute Television. |
The Czech center-right government looks set to collapse over an austerity program too. Their case is a little less bizarre than the Dutch one, which is complicated by the fact that the most right-wing party of all—the Freedom Party of Islamechthriac Geert Wilders—is the one that is toppling the government, presumably in the belief that they will do well in the elections, whereas the Czech voters are most likely to simply turn back to the good old center-left.
And it looks as if France is set to take a center-left turn, as you've no doubt heard by now, with the first round of the presidential elections going as expected to the Socialist candidate (not very Socialist, though perhaps well to the left of the party's lamented great rich hope, Dominique Strauss-Kahn) and the second round in two weeks not very likely to go to anybody else (although the scary right did much better than the real left).
And then, if experience is any indication, all the new center-left governments will roll up their sleeves and, sadly, implement some austerity programs, just as in Greece and (by then, no doubt) Spain, and get voted out for their trouble. Oh, well.
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| "Mr. Viguerie says if we get this batch out in time he'll send us a chicken on Reagan's birthday." |
The Times thinks austerity is going out of fashion all over Europe, as Spain goes back into recession and Timmy Geithner begs them to try some kind of stimulus:
“The formula is not working, and everyone is now talking about whether austerity is the only solution,” said Jordi Vaquer i Fanés, a political scientist and director of the Barcelona Center for International Affairs in Spain. “Does this mean that Merkel has lost completely? No. But it does mean that the very nature of the debate about the euro-zone crisis is changing.”
Happy Earth Day!
The good news, from Think Progress, is data showing that efforts to reduce carbon emissions do not harm the economy; to the contrary, they may help.
The chart, by Environment New Jersey, compares the 9 northeastern states in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to the rest of the states in measures of reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (dark blue) and economic growth (light blue) between 2000 and 2009; pollution reduction is 20% better, but growth is twice as good:
It's all about something bigger than reality, you see, it's about Governor Christie's "principles", whose truth is so transcendent that it's OK to lie in their defense.*
Also in good news, it's raining in the Northeast! It was starting to look like a drought.
*It's interesting how conservatives are always accusing somebody else of doing this. As I've mentioned before, there is a kind of direct progression between the original Know-Nothings, who feared the Jesuits and their permission from God to slant the truth with a "mental reservation", and those of today, who fear Muslims and their doctrine of taqiyya. As the Sadlys always remind us, IT'S ALWAYS PROJECTION.
The Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity actually claimed that RGGI would drive [electricity] rates up in New Jersey by 90%. And New Jersey Governor Chris Christie pulled his state out of the program, calling it a “gimmicky tax."But in point of fact
The program has helped stimulate more efficiency and renewable energy, it has helped local businesses grow, it has added enormous economic value to the region, and it has not driven up electric rates.... According to program administrators, proceeds from carbon credit auctions brought $29 million to New Jersey in 2010, leveraging $3 to $4 in benefits for every dollar invested.Not that the facts would matter to Christie in particular, would they? For instance, now that it's clear he was lying about the costs of the ARC railroad tunnel under the Hudson when he shut down the project (even though, he said, he believed in its merits), what does he do? Bluffs some more, of course:
And "he did not directly mention the report or address its specifics."“So when they want to build a tunnel to the basement of Macy’s, and stick the New Jersey taxpayers with a bill of three-to-five billion dollars over — no matter how much the administration yells and screams, you have to say no,” he said in a speech at a conference on taxes and the economy in Manhattan held by the George W. Bush Institute.
“You have to look them right in the eye, no matter how much they try to vilify you for it, and you have to say no,” the governor told an audience that included Mr. Bush, Karl Rove and other prominent Republicans and business executives. “You have to be willing to say no to those things that compromise your principles.”
It's all about something bigger than reality, you see, it's about Governor Christie's "principles", whose truth is so transcendent that it's OK to lie in their defense.*
Also in good news, it's raining in the Northeast! It was starting to look like a drought.
*It's interesting how conservatives are always accusing somebody else of doing this. As I've mentioned before, there is a kind of direct progression between the original Know-Nothings, who feared the Jesuits and their permission from God to slant the truth with a "mental reservation", and those of today, who fear Muslims and their doctrine of taqiyya. As the Sadlys always remind us, IT'S ALWAYS PROJECTION.
Real thing
Updated 4/22/2012
An Italian contemporary art and design blog entitled CocaColla.it, apparently quite a good one, gave up the ghost a couple of weeks ago—it had existed since 2010—under assault from a certain large international company with a similar-sounding name, for infringement of copyright.
You can read about it, in somewhat undependable English, here, and a more extended text in Italian and English here. I don't think there's anything that can be done about it, but there is some other Coke news: [jump]
Coca-Cola and Pepsi have revised the way they prepare the caramel coloring used in the drinks, not so that it won't give their customers cancer, but so that they won't (according to California law) have to warn their customers that it might give them cancer—
A New Zealand coroner's inquest heard evidence on Friday that the heart attack death in February 2010 of 30-year-old stay-at-home mother of eight Natasha Harris, of Invercargill, South Island, may have been caused by her daily consumption of more than two gallons of Coke per day, which left her body dangerously depeleted of postassium.
Update 4/22
ABL at Raw Story and Balloon Juice notes that noted Twitter twit Senator Chuck Grassley has sent out a missive in his inimitable style inviting a boycott of Coca-Cola:
As ABL indicates, Grassley will be warming to Coke again once his handlers tell him how much corn they buy (corn syrup is the principal ingredient of the drink).
Isn't it something to think of Grassley being a legislator (without ever learning to spell "succumb") since 1959, the year the Dalai Lama fled Tibet, Hawaii became a state, and Buddy Holly died? And did he once see Shelley plain?
An Italian contemporary art and design blog entitled CocaColla.it, apparently quite a good one, gave up the ghost a couple of weeks ago—it had existed since 2010—under assault from a certain large international company with a similar-sounding name, for infringement of copyright.
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| Found at Bloggokin.it. |
Coca-Cola and Pepsi have revised the way they prepare the caramel coloring used in the drinks, not so that it won't give their customers cancer, but so that they won't (according to California law) have to warn their customers that it might give them cancer—
"While we believe that there is no public health risk that justifies any such change, we did ask our caramel suppliers to take this step so that our products would not be subject to the requirement of a scientifically unfounded warning," [spokesperson Diana] Garza-Ciarlante said in an email.
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| Natasha Harris. Photo from AP. |
Vivien Hodgkinson said her daughter-in-law would “go crazy if she ran out… she would get shakes, withdrawal symptoms, be angry, on edge and snappy.”And what do you suppose ever happened to the other Coca-Colla, this one in Spanish, the Bolivian energy drink launched with great fanfare by President Evo Morales in April 2010? It was a bit of the Real Thing! I can't find any references to it from later than that summer.
“We never knew it was any harm because it was soft drink with no warning labels, I’ve never seen her drink anything else the fridge was always full of Coke,” she said. “Maybe it needs warning signs.”
Coca-Cola Oceania told Fairfax [Media] that excessive consumption of any liquid, including water, could have health impacts.
Update 4/22
ABL at Raw Story and Balloon Juice notes that noted Twitter twit Senator Chuck Grassley has sent out a missive in his inimitable style inviting a boycott of Coca-Cola:
U might think abt not drinking Coca Cola since companysucombed to pressure fr Leftist not to support ALECObviously the American Legislative Exchange Council is dear to the Senator's heart. What's not to love, for a legislator, about an organization that writes your legislation for you, for free, leaving you that much extra time for your main work, tweeting and dialing for dollars? You can bet he would have loved to have ALEC around during his 15 years in the Iowa state legislature. Of course they didn't have Twitter then either (1959-74; ALEC was founded in 1973), so he had a lot more free time.
— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) April 22, 2012
As ABL indicates, Grassley will be warming to Coke again once his handlers tell him how much corn they buy (corn syrup is the principal ingredient of the drink).
Isn't it something to think of Grassley being a legislator (without ever learning to spell "succumb") since 1959, the year the Dalai Lama fled Tibet, Hawaii became a state, and Buddy Holly died? And did he once see Shelley plain?
Cheap shots and chasers 4/20
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie denied newspaper reports that he fell asleep during a recent Bruce Springsteen concert, saying he closed his eyes while having a “spiritual” moment during the song “Rocky Ground.” (Bloomberg, 4/19/2012)Christie gets spiritual at Springsteen concerts? Eew.
I've often wondered how a fat cat goes to the church of his choice, hears all about the Sermon on the Mount, and comes out spiritually uplifted and energized to get back to screwing the poor. Christie's Brucism must be a little like that guy's Christianity.
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| Proposed interior, Los Angeles Roman Catholic Cathedral. From The Poor Church of the Rich and the Rich Church of the Poor. |
The report claims that a person’s CO2 emissions is directly related to his or her personal income — so a person making $110,000 per year will emit 10 percent more carbon than a person who earns $100,000 per year under the report’s methodology. Thus, because the report claims that each Mexican immigrant earns 53.2 percent of the average U.S. resident, it claims that these immigrants must also produce 53.2 percent of the carbon emissions.If there really was such a correlation, of course, getting rid of the immigrants wouldn't be the best way to deal with it—on the contrary, we need more! Most urgent, though, would be to ship more rich people to Mexico.
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| You could be burning next to no carbon at all! AP photo by Guillermo Arias. |
Digby thinks Romney is going to try to "thread the needle" of satisfying a decent quantity of Latino voters without giving apoplexy to his know-nothing nativist base. This plays into what I was saying the other day, about Romney's use of the attribution error to allow him to propose large early troop withdrawals from Afghanistan while rabidly denouncing Obama's proposals for large early troop withdrawals from Afghanistan. He could propose virtually the same DREAM act as Obama but he'd still say Obama's was socialist, and un-American, and cowardly and lazy and undignified and so on, because that's what Romney does!
Settling In and a Wedding Weekend
I have officially been living with my future hubs for a whole week now! Impressive. I know. And I'll just pretend we didn't pretty much live together before this. It just now makes a lot more sense that we're just paying one rent and I don't have to haul bags full of clothes back and forth.
And so far I love it! I have lived with ten different room(house)mates over that last 7 years or so...and no I'm not counting my parents.
Shhh! My roommates are sleeping!
You mean your parents?
Same thing!
*10 points if you know what movie that's from!
Anyway- it's fabulous to have my own kitchen and my own space. Well, yes I know I share it with the fiance, but it's different. He'll be my roommate forever, and honestly- he pretty well leaves the kitchen to me. Oh and I now have a walk in closet which is pretty glorious.
After work today, I'm heading down to the HC for a wedding of one of my close high school friends. We met way before high school when we were forced to sit together at a football game because our parents knew each other. And we didn't say a word to each other. The. Whole. Time. Fast forward a few years later and we were incredibly close and basically would never shut up (at least according to my dad!)
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| The bride on the left, myself and one of her bridesmaids/another close friend of mine |
Something kind of awesome about her wedding though...is that I get to preview a number of elements that will also be at my wedding! We have the same photographer (who I already know is awesome from our engagement pics), who I'm excited to see at work at an actual wedding. And we have the same florist. Again- I know she is amazing, but it will be cool to see her work at another wedding.
In addition to the wedding this weekend, I'll get to spend time with my parents, brother, sister-in-law, adorable niece, two of their couple friends who I love AND four dogs- who are all borderline neurotic. Should be fun
Cantor on the roof
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| The Third Temple for All Mankind, a hyper-ecumenical proposal by architect Moses V. Komsky. |
All week I've been walking past a headline in the Jewish Daily Forward:
Jews Cast Wary Eye on Evangelicals
I finally took the time to look it up online, and found it's reporting a poll from the Public Religion Research Institute that
Jeez, I wonder why that would be?asked Jewish respondents to rate the favorability of several religious groups. Mormons received a 47% favorability rating, Muslims 41.4%; the group [jump]described as “Christian Right” was viewed in favorable terms by only 20.9% of Jewish Americans. In contrast, the general American population, as shown by other polling data, views evangelicals more favorably than Muslims and Mormons.
“I find this shocking and concerning,” said Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder and president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, the first major group to engage evangelical Christians in support of Israel. Eckstein and other activists working on Jewish-evangelical relations expressed a sense of betrayal, accusing Jewish liberals of being prejudiced against Christian conservatives and of clinging to pre-conceived notions and stereotypes about evangelicals’ beliefs and goals.A sense of betrayal? American Jews are betraying Rabbi Eckstein by not trusting Pat Robertson? Maybe the poll respondents were totally not even thinking about Rabbi Eckstein. Maybe they were just feeling a little spooked by all the talk about evangelical Christians trying to sponsor the rebuilding of the Temple and raising red heifers for the sacrifices there and generally doing whatever they can to hasten the End Times when all the Jews are to convert to Christianity themselves, at least those that are left after the Antichrist puts an end to the final war (yes, the Antichrist belongs to the peace party).
Or maybe it's just a funny little feeling that the Evangelicals don't like Jews quite as much as they say they do. Apposite to this is the apparent resolution of the Eric Cantor mystery about why the House Majority leader made a $25,000 donation to Adam Kinzinger, the insurgent Republican who unseated Rep. Don Manzullo in a primary campaign, thereby behaving in extremely un–majority leader–like fashion.
It turns out that Cantor may have had one of those funny little feelings about Manzullo ever since he heard about Manzullo fretting that Cantor, the only Jewish member of the House Republican caucus, was not going to be "saved". Asked by Politico whether he thought there was any antisemitism in the caucus, he replied with vague generalities—
“I think that all of us know that in this country, we’ve not always gotten it right in terms of racial matters, religious matters, whatever. We continue to strive to provide equal treatment to everybody.” (via Think Progress)And pressed to apply what he was saying directly to the House Republicans, didn't say any more at all, but sat making faces until the interviewer thought of something else to talk about. Which sounds to some people who ought to know like, "Yes."
Eric, Eric, these people don't wish you well! We don't like you either, to tell the truth, but family is family, so come on over anyway.
Universal deniability
Q: Why did dey tell de crocodile to consult a psychotherapist?
A: Because he was in de Nile.
The Times's Richard J. Oppel concern-trolls Willard Mitt Romney a bit (technically, it's a news story, as you can tell in the print edition by the flush right margin—in the online Times everything is ragged right, which means that officially you can't tell the difference between news and analysis; I just noticed this for the first time and I find it strangely unnerving, [jump]
like a restaurant where the waitstaff are wearing the same aprons and toques and tomato stains as the cooks)—concern-trolls Willard Mitt Romney, I was saying, for the way he criticizes Obama on the Afghanistan war effort even though his ideas on Afghanistan and Obama's don't actually differ in any interesting way:
Well, (a) that's not going to happen (outside the cybercircus, anyhow; no doubt Think Progress will run a shocked paragraph). And (b)?
The (b) thing is that this is part of Romney's standard operating procedure, as we've been witnessing it for a year or so now with the health care thing, where he vilifies the PPACA with its dread mandate as if it were the worst thing since the October Revolution, even though his own Massachusetts plan is in outline the same damned thing. It doesn't bother him at all!
This seems to jibe with Romney's habit of lying about everything from his old digs in Paris to the wholly objective and easily Googlable question of whether US corporate taxes have gone up since 2009. Jonathan Chait in this week's New York Magazine argues—this is a pretty weird little column, as others have noted—that Romney does indeed lie a lot, but is not a liar:
Sometimes it's almost as if he enjoys getting caught, seeing people get the measure of his audacity, as when David Corn recorded him telling an audience that there was worse poverty in Europe than the US, directly caused by the European welfare programs;
Chait brings up a more interesting possibility when he refers to the social psychology concept of the "fundamental attribution error"—the way we explain what we ourselves do in terms of the situational context (I had to do it because of the position I was in) but attribute the behavior of others to their disposition (he did it because that's the kind of person he is). What Chait wants to use this for is actually to excuse Romney's lying, to show us how to see it from a situational rather than dispositional point of view—to go from "he lies because he's a liar" to "he lies because he needs to in order to accomplish his goal."
A quite different use of the attribution effect would be to explain the difference between liberals and conservatives: liberals tend to work to overcome correspondence bias (he's a criminal because his parents treated him badly) and conservatives do not (he's a criminal because he's a wicked person). This is a nutshell account of the whole IOKIYAR phenomenon: if Democrats abuse poor Mrs. Romney it is because they are depraved and dreadful people; if Republicans say something unpleasant about Mrs. Obama it is because... Oh, they were just joking, or why are you so defensive, or Mrs. Obama is a depraved and dreadful person.
This is possibly something Chait—as a kind of wet, New Republic–type liberal—doesn't understand: that the truly depraved do the same thing. Bashar al-Assad—say—doesn't delight in being evil like Shakespeare's Richard III; on the contrary, he insists that he's not evil at all, whines about how circumstances force him to this or that measure, and about how wicked others are.
In the same way, if Romney ever acknowledges to himself that he is telling a lie, it's for the kind of reasons Chait adduces; he just has to do it, and anyway everybody does, à la guerre comme à la guerre. But he is, in fact, a pathological liar.
And pari passu, if Romney signs off on a plan to provide everyone with health care by forcing them all to buy insurance, he understands that as a good idea, because it's his, and a response to a particular situation; but if Obama does, Romney finds that it's a bad idea, because it's Obama's, and carries Obama's personality defects (whatever those are).
Because if you're Romney, the ideas aren't the central point in any case; they're something you have to bring along, like the tie and the pocket square, but it doesn't signify much whether they are checked or polka dotted. The point is you, and you being a winner, acclaimed. And no, not all politicians are like that—just the psychopaths!
A: Because he was in de Nile.
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| From Openwaterpedia. |
like a restaurant where the waitstaff are wearing the same aprons and toques and tomato stains as the cooks)—concern-trolls Willard Mitt Romney, I was saying, for the way he criticizes Obama on the Afghanistan war effort even though his ideas on Afghanistan and Obama's don't actually differ in any interesting way:
Now that Mr. Romney has emerged as the likely Republican nominee and Afghanistan is again being tested by a Taliban offensive, his position on the war is likely to come under more scrutiny after a primary fight that gave him few opportunities to offer nuanced national security positions. Even so, analysts say he has reasons to be less than precise on Afghanistan: The war’s declining support among voters means there is little space for him to stake out a policy that provides both a sharp political contrast with Mr. Obama and keeps the war’s unpopularity at a distance.Oppel seems to think there is something gaffy about this (gaffish? gaffesque?), in the sense that it might inspire some otherwise docile reporter to ask, "Governor, you've said the White House plans for winding down the war in Afghanistan are 'dangerous' and 'naive', and yet your own program is pretty much the same thing. Does that mean you too are dangerous and naive?" And all hell will break loose.
Well, (a) that's not going to happen (outside the cybercircus, anyhow; no doubt Think Progress will run a shocked paragraph). And (b)?
The (b) thing is that this is part of Romney's standard operating procedure, as we've been witnessing it for a year or so now with the health care thing, where he vilifies the PPACA with its dread mandate as if it were the worst thing since the October Revolution, even though his own Massachusetts plan is in outline the same damned thing. It doesn't bother him at all!
This seems to jibe with Romney's habit of lying about everything from his old digs in Paris to the wholly objective and easily Googlable question of whether US corporate taxes have gone up since 2009. Jonathan Chait in this week's New York Magazine argues—this is a pretty weird little column, as others have noted—that Romney does indeed lie a lot, but is not a liar:
He says lots of things that are obviously false and that he clearly knows to be false – particularly, but not exclusively, about his own record. But it’s not clear that this tells us anything about Romney’s character. Lying is what politicians do when the truth stands between them and their goals. I don’t mean to completely dismiss the role of character here. Some politicians are more comfortable lying than are others. But circumstance plays a powerful role. It’s Romney’s bad luck that fate has dictated his only path to the presidency lies in being a huge liar....But I don't think this is a satisfactory account of what he's doing. In the first place, if it were purely instrumental lying, to attain a specific end, he'd be a little more parsimonious with it; he'd work harder at making it plausible, he'd try to hide truths that are less easy to discover.
Sometimes it's almost as if he enjoys getting caught, seeing people get the measure of his audacity, as when David Corn recorded him telling an audience that there was worse poverty in Europe than the US, directly caused by the European welfare programs;
"Do you believe," I asked [after the talk], "that there is more poverty in Europe than the United States?"Could it be that he's doing it for fun?
Is that before or after government payments, he responded.
You can define it any way you want, I said.
"Well, I'll have to think about that," he said, and started to shuffle away.
But, I said (quickly), you just stated that European-style welfare creates poverty.
"No, I didn't," Romney replied. "I said, look at Cuba, North Korea, and the former Soviet Union."
He hadn't said anything about those countries. He hadn't mentioned them once in his speech.
No, I insisted, you said European-style welfare leads to poverty. That's precisely what you said.
No, Romney repeated, I was talking about Cuba, North Korea, and the former Soviet Union.
It was hard to know how to respond to this utterly false denial. (Later on, I thought of an appropriate reply: "I'll bet you $10,000.")
Chait brings up a more interesting possibility when he refers to the social psychology concept of the "fundamental attribution error"—the way we explain what we ourselves do in terms of the situational context (I had to do it because of the position I was in) but attribute the behavior of others to their disposition (he did it because that's the kind of person he is). What Chait wants to use this for is actually to excuse Romney's lying, to show us how to see it from a situational rather than dispositional point of view—to go from "he lies because he's a liar" to "he lies because he needs to in order to accomplish his goal."
A quite different use of the attribution effect would be to explain the difference between liberals and conservatives: liberals tend to work to overcome correspondence bias (he's a criminal because his parents treated him badly) and conservatives do not (he's a criminal because he's a wicked person). This is a nutshell account of the whole IOKIYAR phenomenon: if Democrats abuse poor Mrs. Romney it is because they are depraved and dreadful people; if Republicans say something unpleasant about Mrs. Obama it is because... Oh, they were just joking, or why are you so defensive, or Mrs. Obama is a depraved and dreadful person.
This is possibly something Chait—as a kind of wet, New Republic–type liberal—doesn't understand: that the truly depraved do the same thing. Bashar al-Assad—say—doesn't delight in being evil like Shakespeare's Richard III; on the contrary, he insists that he's not evil at all, whines about how circumstances force him to this or that measure, and about how wicked others are.
In the same way, if Romney ever acknowledges to himself that he is telling a lie, it's for the kind of reasons Chait adduces; he just has to do it, and anyway everybody does, à la guerre comme à la guerre. But he is, in fact, a pathological liar.
And pari passu, if Romney signs off on a plan to provide everyone with health care by forcing them all to buy insurance, he understands that as a good idea, because it's his, and a response to a particular situation; but if Obama does, Romney finds that it's a bad idea, because it's Obama's, and carries Obama's personality defects (whatever those are).
Because if you're Romney, the ideas aren't the central point in any case; they're something you have to bring along, like the tie and the pocket square, but it doesn't signify much whether they are checked or polka dotted. The point is you, and you being a winner, acclaimed. And no, not all politicians are like that—just the psychopaths!
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| King K.Rool. From Gamerant. |
Uh-oh, mustachios!
Updated 4/18/2012
Heartiest congratulations to Thomas P. Friedman, and to his alter id, really, Tom Friedman, on his or their receipt of the Eschaton One True Wanker of the Decade Award passed out in honor of Atrios's 10th anniversary of pernicious bloggery.
It must be great to be recognized for all that slogging, for the ability to find the one neoliberal taxi driver in any town, no matter how exotic (everywhere I go all the taxi drivers are [jump]
Communists), to retain hope in the darkest hour (it'll just be another six months!), and to improvise platitudes, expressions that are so profoundly imbued with the conventional wisdom that they are clichés in spite of never having been uttered before!
For anyone lured here under false pretenses, I should explain that this has nothing to do with any actual wanking but with a literary metaphor for a certain kind of writing, smug, ponderous, and generally wrong about things, in which an author seems to be so wrapped up in his own earnest thoughts that it's as if he were making sweaty, strenuous love to them.
For the other kind of wanking, go read between the lines at Pajamas Media, although I should say that this little blog of mine may be the only one in history to have given recognition to noble endeavors in pro-bono wanking-for-real, in a note of last December on ex-congressman and notable Down-Under sperm donor Bill Johnson.
Update 4/18
In all the excitement, I didn't even notice Friedman's column in yesterday's Times. He doesn't make any direct reference to the Eschaton award, but I think there's a kind of acknowledgment there, in that it's among his all-time wankiest, in the Radical Centrism aspect. Here's a Shorter:
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| Mean Girls. From Mustachios on Everything. |
Heartiest congratulations to Thomas P. Friedman, and to his alter id, really, Tom Friedman, on his or their receipt of the Eschaton One True Wanker of the Decade Award passed out in honor of Atrios's 10th anniversary of pernicious bloggery.
It must be great to be recognized for all that slogging, for the ability to find the one neoliberal taxi driver in any town, no matter how exotic (everywhere I go all the taxi drivers are [jump]
Communists), to retain hope in the darkest hour (it'll just be another six months!), and to improvise platitudes, expressions that are so profoundly imbued with the conventional wisdom that they are clichés in spite of never having been uttered before!
For anyone lured here under false pretenses, I should explain that this has nothing to do with any actual wanking but with a literary metaphor for a certain kind of writing, smug, ponderous, and generally wrong about things, in which an author seems to be so wrapped up in his own earnest thoughts that it's as if he were making sweaty, strenuous love to them.
For the other kind of wanking, go read between the lines at Pajamas Media, although I should say that this little blog of mine may be the only one in history to have given recognition to noble endeavors in pro-bono wanking-for-real, in a note of last December on ex-congressman and notable Down-Under sperm donor Bill Johnson.
Update 4/18
In all the excitement, I didn't even notice Friedman's column in yesterday's Times. He doesn't make any direct reference to the Eschaton award, but I think there's a kind of acknowledgment there, in that it's among his all-time wankiest, in the Radical Centrism aspect. Here's a Shorter:
The Amtrak Acela is looking really decrepit, therefore Mike Bloomberg needs to run for president.Because nobody fixes escalators like Bloomberg does? Not quite. In fact, Friedman doesn't care if he even wins; he just wants him in there ennobling the discourse up to those Bloomberg levels.
Bloomberg doesn’t have to win to succeed — or even stay in the race to the very end. Simply by running, participating in the debates and doing respectably in the polls — 15 to 20 percent — he could change the dynamic of the election and, most importantly, the course of the next administration, no matter who heads it. By running on important issues and offering sensible programs for addressing them — and showing that he had the support of the growing number of Americans who describe themselves as independents — he would compel the two candidates to gravitate toward some of his positions as Election Day neared.The utter banality of the main idea, the Centrism that will save us all, combined with the extraordinarily daydreamy quality of the story chosen to embody it (think, "I dreamed I was an accountant in my Maidenform bra")—it's like a definition of what wanking is all about.
The Big Move!
I know, I know. I have been seriously MIA lately. But the last week has been complete chaos as my fiance and I finally moved in to our first place together!!!
We picked up the keys last Tuesday and spend the rest of the week packing up and transporting boxes to the new place. Thursday, our furniture was delivered and with a half day off for me on Thursday, we were able to clear out pretty much everything from our old places.
Friday was the official move. Doug's roommate has a very large truck and was able to help us get everything out of our respective homes into the apartment. Only took us about 3 hours and finally everything was in! Mind you, I completely hate unpacking- so we were far from finished (and we're still not quite there...)
And now for a mini photo tour!
And those two beers were the wonderful end to a long long weekend on Sunday.
We picked up the keys last Tuesday and spend the rest of the week packing up and transporting boxes to the new place. Thursday, our furniture was delivered and with a half day off for me on Thursday, we were able to clear out pretty much everything from our old places.
Friday was the official move. Doug's roommate has a very large truck and was able to help us get everything out of our respective homes into the apartment. Only took us about 3 hours and finally everything was in! Mind you, I completely hate unpacking- so we were far from finished (and we're still not quite there...)
And now for a mini photo tour!
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| Living room, with our brand new couch and love seat |
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| Part of the guest room (twin bed will soon be upgraded to a full when we get our queen) Doug also has his clothes and desk in here...to make it not a pain in my butt when he wakes up at 5:30 for work! |
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| Annnd this is where I still have yet to unpack. Our bedroom- with boxes that have all my crap. Oops. |
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| The balcony with super cute table and chairs my brother and sister-in-law got as a housewarming gift for us. |
The help, help!
Updated 4/16/2012
Updated 4/17/2012
Frank Bruni's heart bleeds for Mrs. Romney, who was so grievously insulted by Hilary Rosen, who said she'd never worked a day in her life, because of his own dear mom, who raised four kids without venturing into the cash economy, and clearly worked her ass off.
I would be remiss in my duty to my own mother, who brought up five of us in the same way back when that was a normal thing to do, and to the one of my three sisters who has had the opportunity and inclination to do the same, with four, if I did not stop here to say, No, Frank, your mom is not the same as Mrs. Romney. [jump]
Not to say that she never did any work; Rosen's complaint was unartfully worded, to say the least. I have no reason to doubt young Ben Romney:
Which is where the story starts, as Romney stories tend to do, getting a little weird. Huffington Post reports:
That's a total amount that would barely pay a half-time housekeeper for a 2000–sq.ft. townhouse in the Boston area, not to mention the
And is that really the whole story? Quite sure there wasn't anybody who was maybe not getting her FICA paid, who was maybe not carrying the right sort of residency permission or none at all, who was maybe sent off in the middle of the year, just as happened with the Guatemalan groundskeepers in 2008 ("I'm running for office, for Pete's sake!").
Whatever the case, you can bet Mrs. Romney had lots more help than Mrs. Bruni, or Mrs. Yastreblyansky for that matter, and that's not the important thing anyway. The point is that Romney has designated his wife as his principal (unpaid) advisor on women's issues—you're not supposed to suspect him of not knowing anything about women's issues because he can always just ask Ann—but what evidence is there that she knows any more about them than he does?
Update 4/16
Meanwhile, Willard is still saying that poor women need to be forced to take jobs, even if they have two-year-olds at home. "It’ll cost the state more providing that daycare, but I want the individuals to have the dignity of work."
But you just said staying at home with the children was... Wait a minute!
Update 4/17
I know, rich ladies who stay at home with their kids are different from poor ones because they're job creators. Think of them as small businesses primarily active in identifying tax-shelter options for their dad-partners.
Recycled from comments at Whiskey Fire.
Update 7/21
Updated 4/17/2012
Frank Bruni's heart bleeds for Mrs. Romney, who was so grievously insulted by Hilary Rosen, who said she'd never worked a day in her life, because of his own dear mom, who raised four kids without venturing into the cash economy, and clearly worked her ass off.
I would be remiss in my duty to my own mother, who brought up five of us in the same way back when that was a normal thing to do, and to the one of my three sisters who has had the opportunity and inclination to do the same, with four, if I did not stop here to say, No, Frank, your mom is not the same as Mrs. Romney. [jump]
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| La Jolla, California. The one that's only half the size it needs to be. From Celebrity Networth. |
Not to say that she never did any work; Rosen's complaint was unartfully worded, to say the least. I have no reason to doubt young Ben Romney:
“Growing up, we never had a nanny or a ‘mommy’s helper.’ Never went to daycare,” Ben wrote. “I was just one out of five, but always felt like I was the most important thing in her life.
“When I left for school in the morning (after she had made me breakfast), she was there. When I came home at the end of the day, she was there. She drove me to HOURS of my sports lessons and competitions (baseball, tennis, basketball, etc), and was my #1 fan in the stands. She encouraged my musical interests, and cheered me on at my piano recitals and high school band concerts. I could go on and on.”But the nanny and the day care center are for moms who need to go to an office somewhere (and Disney Poppins moms, out demonstrating for women's suffrage, the wicked things, but of course Poppins will teach them better), and they're taking on the fun part of the job. What about the other servants?
Which is where the story starts, as Romney stories tend to do, getting a little weird. Huffington Post reports:
IRS forms released Tuesday by Mitt Romney's presidential campaign show that despite reporting income of $21.7 million, the couple paid only $20,603 in taxable wages for household help in 2010. This figure was divided among four women: Rosania Costa ($4,808), Kelli Harrison ($8,667), Susan Moore ($2,238) and Valerie Cravens Anae ($4,890).(Harrison, said to have functioned in a personal assistant–type role, was an employee of Romney's Free and Strong America PAC as well in 2010.)
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| Lake Winnepesaukee, New Hampshire. Photo by Battle Architects. |
5,400 sq. ft. lake house on 11 acres in Wolfeboro, N.H., and a beach house in La Jolla, Calif., that is undergoing renovations to double its size.Do Willard and the boys and their wives and children do a really fantastic job of cleaning up after themselves over all this territory? Do the Romneys employ a cleaning service to take care of the New Hampshire place? (It wouldn't have to be mentioned in the tax returns, since the service is the employer liable for taxes.) Was there really no cook, with all the entertaining people in that class need to do? Did the four women mentioned work in parallel, coming in every so often special occasions, or a couple of hours here and there, or did they work in serial, each replacing the previous one after she proved unsatisfactory?
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| Tagg's place in Belmont, Mass. From Parade. |
Whatever the case, you can bet Mrs. Romney had lots more help than Mrs. Bruni, or Mrs. Yastreblyansky for that matter, and that's not the important thing anyway. The point is that Romney has designated his wife as his principal (unpaid) advisor on women's issues—you're not supposed to suspect him of not knowing anything about women's issues because he can always just ask Ann—but what evidence is there that she knows any more about them than he does?
Update 4/16
Meanwhile, Willard is still saying that poor women need to be forced to take jobs, even if they have two-year-olds at home. "It’ll cost the state more providing that daycare, but I want the individuals to have the dignity of work."
But you just said staying at home with the children was... Wait a minute!
Update 4/17
I know, rich ladies who stay at home with their kids are different from poor ones because they're job creators. Think of them as small businesses primarily active in identifying tax-shelter options for their dad-partners.
Recycled from comments at Whiskey Fire.
Update 7/21
The vacation home of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney rests beside Lake Winnipesaukee in Wolfeboro, N.H. The 13-acre estate features a six-bedroom house, a horse stable with guest apartments above it, a $630,000 boat house, tennis and volleyball courts and a shoreline stretching 768 feet — more than double the length of a football field — according to public property records. Romney and his wife, Ann, purchased the home in 1997 for $2.5 million and later bought adjoining land. This year, records show, the estate was assessed at $8 million. (Washington Post 7/2/2012 )
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| From CBS News. |
Doctor? Mr. M.D.?
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| American constipation victim. |
You know American Thinker, the blog whose gravatar for some reason represents Uncle Sam in knee breeches working out something painful on a rough-hewn backwoods privy?
I normally don't go there, so to speak, since there are talented and more or less professional bloggists to do it for me. But Cerberus, the current curator over at the Sadlys, covers each story in such depth that he has to let most of them go, so I thought it might be fun to take a look at the crud left at the bottom of the net.
There's a fabulous indictment of "Justice Sonia Sotomayor's shocking ignorance" by Jason Lee, who notes one of her questions in the PPACA health care debate:
"What percentage of the American people who took their son or daughter to an emergency room and that child was turned away because the parent didn't have insurance?"....
Cerberus thinks it's a "Shorter" when it's only four minutes long.
I have a precise answer for Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
The percentage of American people who took their son or daughter to an emergency room and were turned away because the parent didn't have insurance is exactly zero.But hang on a second, Jason. You are right to remark that it's illegal for an emergency room to deny emergency care to anybody who needs it. The trouble is the patients who don't need emergency care. The emergency rooms don't have to treat them at all after getting them through triage, and they are increasingly charging for it, demanding upfront payment.
Kim Bailey, research director for the consumer group Families USA, said the tactic lets hospitals turn away uninsured patients who often fail to pay their bills and are a drag on profits. While the uninsured pay upfront fees as high as $350, depending on the hospital, those with insurance pay their normal co-payment and deductible upfront.And people have died, though nobody knows how many, while hospitals that are too generous with the emergency care close down. Then again, the Affordable Care Act is doing something about that, as in the case of the Martin Luther King Hospital in Los Angeles, maintained in existence as a Multi-Service Ambulatory Care Center after its closing in 2007:
First, because their public health center will receive substantial federal funds under the portion of the Affordable Care Act funding community health centers, thanks to Senator Bernie Sanders. Second, because they can develop a financial plan that actually delivers health care before it becomes an emergency, and that delivery will be paid for under the Affordable Care Act. (Crooks & Liars, 20 January 2011)So while it might have been shocking if it was Sotomayor's ignorance, it's only Jason's; dog bites man and all that.
Then there's a jeremiad against "cafeteria Catholics" by Jim Mahoney. He's not talking about Catholics who reject the church's teaching on social inequality or capital punishment, though, just birth control pills again. His own understanding of American sexual behavior, however, seems to come from being a really creepy character himself, driving by middle schools at lunchtime to eyeball the sixth-grade sluts (if they're not actually there he can easily imagine them), and spending the rest of his time in unsavory neighborhoods of the Internet:
Drive by any middle school to see how degraded tomorrow's mothers are. These children, like most of us alive today, never knew a time when babies weren't preventable. Why shouldn't a girl give herself away to gain the things a child craves? It'll be years before she realizes what she's done to herself.
By then, after a series of recreational couplings, perhaps she'll settle down with a boy who grew up on pornographic fantasies. When they encounter the day-to-day realities of adult life, neither will find the "fulfillment" he or she sought, but only a dreary sense of emptiness and loss. Eventually they'll divorce, leaving more fatherless children to repeat this cycle, while two more adults grow old seething with rage, resentment, and guilt.Yipes! And what's driving this process is nothing less than Modernism! Freethinkers and Freemasons, Jacobins, the Tübingen school of theology, and I'll bet those Jews are behind it somewhere. And the Affordable Care Act, of course:
In the course of 200 years, the Revolution learned that murder makes martyrs. Today, the Revolution mounts its final assault. It no longer needs to shoot priests on the altar or march them to the scaffold. It can simply force the congregation to pay for its own destruction.The fiends!
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| Obispo Telescopio. From Ecclesia Primus, "The Oath against Modernism Betrayed" |
If you're suffering from a non-urgent condition please don't go to the emergency room! Try listening to some Angela Gheorghiu:
Angela Gheorghiu helpfully explained to Italian newspaper "la Repubblica"
that she, in fact, has been known to heal the sick.
Well, not Angela personally. Her voice.«Basta la mia presenza per diffondere emozione. E ho questa voce che regala struggimento. Ci sono persone che dicono di essere guarite da una malattia sentendomi cantare»
In English:"My simple presence is enough to spread excitement. And I have this voice that expresses longing. There are people who say they were sick and were healed when they heard me sing".(Operachic Milano)
Demimonde
In Lille, they say, Dominique Strauss-Kahn couldn't tell the difference between a naked prostitute and "any other naked woman". He clearly expects to see naked women hanging around, waiting for a glimpse of him, and also clearly doesn't habitually ask them about their occupations. In New York, of course, clothes didn't help either; he couldn't tell the difference between a prostitute and a chambermaid. It's a whole different world, ain't it, in the 1%.
What a swell party this is!
A bit of a setback in Egypt in the news that the Supreme Presidential Election Commission, presumably military-run, has barred ten candidates from the election, including some we don't like—the hard-line Salafist Hazem Abu Ismail whose mother became a US citizen before she died, and the Mubarak intelligence chief Omar Suleiman. No reasons were given, according to the Guardian, but the New York Times speculates that in the cases of the likewise barred Muslim Brotherhood candidate Khairat el-Shater and the classy old liberal Ayman Nour it was their prison records.
And how did they get prison records? Jailed by Mubarak, of course, for political activity. They can't run for president because the disgraced criminal ex-dictator didn't like their politics! Looks like premature anti-fascism is still a crime, and that can't be good news.
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| From The Albinophant blog. |
Here's another depressing little irony: Guess who doesn't like austerity, in Italy and Ireland? Small-business owners and entrepreneurs, and it's not very funny, either, because they're killing themselves: unable to pay their debts in County Cork (190 suicides from 2008 to 2011), creditors of a deadbeat government in the Veneto (more than 30 small-business suicides in the past three years). All those job creators just need to man up a little, I guess. Look at Mitt Romney! He doesn't whine.
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| Why is this man smiling? Photo by Sean Gardner/Reuters. |
The presumptive Republican presidential candidate couldn't get his taxes done on time, though! He's filed an extension, the same day Barack Obama and Joe Biden publicly released their 2011 returns. Luckily, he'll totally get it done before the election.
"Earlier this year, Gov. Romney released his 2010 tax return and an estimate of his 2011 income and taxes. This is an extension for filing his 2011 actual return, similar to what he has done in prior years," Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in a statement. "Sometime in the next six months, and prior to the election, Gov. Romney will file and release the 2011 return when there is sufficient information to provide an accurate return."
The Romneys estimate a total tax liability of $3,226,623 for 2011, according to Saul. They made payments of $3,434,411 in 2011. They made an estimated payment of $887,000 for 2012.Naturally Obama has it easier—he works for the government, doesn't he? Just goes to show how out of touch Obama really is.
We are so Dicked!
Look out, Tom Friedman, here comes the centrist candidate of your nightmares, with his own blog and Twitter account. I mean Dick Nixon at Nixon Rising, rested, mean as they come, and contemplating another run:
It’s a new kind of day. We need a new kind of president to bring this country to its rightful place. Richard Nixon has been to hell. Not just through hell—he lived there. He knows hell like he knows China. And now he’s back. It’s Richard Nixon’s time again. The United States is ready for her first Undead-American president. An extraordinary man for extraordinary times.
I don't know how long he can keep up the perfect-pitch style, at his age, but here's hoping he lasts a long time!
Richard Nixon is counting on your support. And he’ll get it. One way or another, he’ll get it.
The good news from Meteor Blades at Kos.
Superheroes
I'm so opposed to political personality cults that it's almost as crazy as belonging to one; I really want my politicians to have feet of clay—give me Danton over Robespierre and over your precious Marquis de Lafayette too, any time.
So when I first started hearing about Cory Booker, the perfect candidate, coming out of Oxford and Yale as a documentary-film hero to get rid of Sharpe James, the wicked old scoundrel mayor of Newark, New Jersey, I was skeptical: there's no way, I told myself, that anybody this precisely configured is not a corporate tool.
But what the hell? When there's a blizzard he's there in person to clear away the snow, when there's a hurricane he tours the flood-soaked streets, and now he rescues girls from blazing buildings! So I give up.
And then there's the tortured Batman to Booker's sunny Superman, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, a Dark Knight of the noblest aspirations and the most suspect methods; I expect him to be up to no good and he keeps doing things I approve of, absolutely behind my back. Now, unable to persuade the state legislature to set up the health insurance exchange required under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, he's just gone and taken care of it himself. I'll take it!
So when I first started hearing about Cory Booker, the perfect candidate, coming out of Oxford and Yale as a documentary-film hero to get rid of Sharpe James, the wicked old scoundrel mayor of Newark, New Jersey, I was skeptical: there's no way, I told myself, that anybody this precisely configured is not a corporate tool.
But what the hell? When there's a blizzard he's there in person to clear away the snow, when there's a hurricane he tours the flood-soaked streets, and now he rescues girls from blazing buildings! So I give up.
And then there's the tortured Batman to Booker's sunny Superman, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, a Dark Knight of the noblest aspirations and the most suspect methods; I expect him to be up to no good and he keeps doing things I approve of, absolutely behind my back. Now, unable to persuade the state legislature to set up the health insurance exchange required under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, he's just gone and taken care of it himself. I'll take it!
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| Ethnic superheroes. From Light-Skinned-ed Girl. |
Thar she trumpets!
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| From Beyond Dots. |
The court relied on a 1994 law stipulating that sitting judges and parliamentarians may not be involved in constitutional revisions, lest they misuse their position to give themselves more power.Assuming the decision stands, this means the constitution will have to wait until after the presidential election next month, meaning that the new president will take power under the old Mubarak constitution, which could mean a lot of power indeed. That could be a matter of concern, especially since there's no predicting who that president will be (another court has declared that the ultraconservative Hazem Salah Abu Ismail is qualified to run even though his mother was a US citizen because nobody had officially informed the Egyptian government about it, but this decision could easily not survive).
I'd still keep arguing that it's not the end of the world if the Muslim Brotherhood dictates the constitution (their main goal seems to be to make the presidency weak); but it has to be heartening that liberals will be more involved, especially since they seem to be acting more effective at last:
Ahmad Baha’ al-Din Shaaban, founder of the Egyptian Socialist Party, said that the country’s leftists and secularists would continue to agitate for a fair constitution whether the ruling was upheld or not.
Leftists have been mounting street protests against the constituent assembly, and gradually everyone from the Coptic Christians to the traditional clergy of al-Azhar seminary to labor unions and secularists have dissociated themselves from it. The court’s decision is the right one, and most Egyptians are breathing a sigh of relief....
Polling does not find that most Egyptians are fundamentalists, and, indeed, there is evidence that they have become more secular in the past year. Mansour Moaddel’s polls find half of Egyptians now say they are Egyptians first and Muslims second, up from 8% only a few years ago.
Psychopath Watch
Santorum Not Yet Toasted
At least, grammatically speaking. You read it here first:
It's a good example of how a thought expresses itself almost automatically in the form of a lie: a less twisted politician just says, "I'm not a quitter" as he or she is quitting, Santorum makes not quitting the subject of his announcement, while suggesting that the campaign just sort of quit on its own, when nobody was looking.
Betcha David Brooks won't be reporting on this one:
At least, grammatically speaking. You read it here first:
“We made a decision over the weekend that while this presidential race for us is over, for me, and we will suspend our campaign today, we are not done fighting,” Mr. Santorum said as tears welled in the reddened eyes of his wife and the aides and friends who ringed the room.That is "we are not done fighting" is the decision, and "the presidential race is over" is a kind of part of the environment, as in "we made a decision that while it's too cold to go to the beach, we are making a Rick Santorum sand sculpture."
It's a good example of how a thought expresses itself almost automatically in the form of a lie: a less twisted politician just says, "I'm not a quitter" as he or she is quitting, Santorum makes not quitting the subject of his announcement, while suggesting that the campaign just sort of quit on its own, when nobody was looking.
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| The likeness of Rick Santorum is demolished as the Democratic Women of Horry County secured the rights to demolish the Republican 2012 Primary Debate Sand Sculpture dubbed "Mount Myrtle," in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Steve Jessmore/Myrtle Beach Sun-News. |
Berkeley psychologists Paul Piff and Dacher Keltner ran several studies looking at whether social class (as measured by wealth, occupational prestige, and education) influences how much we care about the feelings of others. (Scientific American, via Huffington Post)For instance,
luxury car drivers were more likely to cut off other motorists instead of waiting for their turn at the intersection. This was true for both men and women upper-class drivers, regardless of the time of day or the amount of traffic at the intersection. In a different study they found that luxury car drivers were also more likely to speed past a pedestrian trying to use a crosswalk, even after making eye contact with the pedestrian.And so on, through four more studies showing that "as people climb the social ladder, their compassionate feelings towards other people decline." Toward the end, the reporter asks, a little plaintively,
But why would wealth and status decrease our feelings of compassion for others? After all, it seems more likely that having few resources would lead to selfishness. Piff and his colleagues suspect that the answer may have something to do with how wealth and abundance give us a sense of freedom and independence from others. The less we have to rely on others, the less we may care about their feelings.Or couldn't it just as easily be the other way around? I mean, the more psychopathic a person is to start with, the more likely to claw her-or-his way up that ladder?
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| From All about Eve. |
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