Rowhouse Logic - Breathtaking Inanity

There were several interesting posts yesterday on the 2006 senatorial campaign in Pennsylvania. Since it’s a bit late and I’ve never had much of a talent for concise summaries, I’ll just quote a little from each post and urge you to read them all in their entirety.

The post that started the day’s festivities was written by jpol and was posted on both Booman Tribune and Daily Kos. Here’s a little.

For those not familiar with this race, Bob Casey Jr. is the candidate the Democratic Establishment has anointed as its chosen candidate to oppose Santorum this fall. Most of the other potential candidates were muscled into withdrawing from a primary race to make way for Casey, though Chuck Pennacchio, a progressive running an insurgent campaign, remains in the race and is building an impressive grass-roots organization determined to capture the nomination for their candidate. Bob Casey Jr. is the state’s Auditor General and son of Bob Casey Sr., former Pennsylvania Governor. The Democratic Party hierarchy believes that Casey, a Conservative, is the best candidate to beat Santorum both because of his name recognition, and because they perceive of Pennsylvania as “blue” Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with “red” Alabama in-between. The problem is that it is often difficult to tell Santorum and Casey apart, much to the consternation of Progressive Pennsylvania Democrats. Casey is anti-choice and supports over-turning Roe v Wade. He opposes stem-cell research; supported Congressional intervention in the Terri Schiavo case; endorsed the Supreme Court nomination of Samuel Alito; supports capital punishment (Santorum actually comes down on the opposite side of this issue); supported going to war in Iraq and opposes an exit strategy with a timetable; supports prayer in schools; supports the Patriot Act; opposes gun control et al. Many of the same large corporate PACs have contributed to both the Santorum and Casey campaigns[…]

The Democratic establishment may be betting that Santorum-haters will vote for Casey simply because he is not Rick Santorum. I for one am working for Chuck Pennacchio. I will vote for Chuck Pennacchio in the May primary. I will not vote for Bob Casey Jr. this fall if he is the Democratic nominee, and if the progressive circles I travel in are any indication, there are a lot of Pennsylvanians who, while wanting desperately to send Rick Santorum packing, aren’t desperate enough to vote for a candidate like Casey, who many of us consider to be Santorum’s Democratic counter-part. How ironic if it ends up that head-in-the-sand Democrats end up re-electing an unpopular Rick Santorum to the United States Senate.

Jpol hits on a point that I’ve been trying to make for some time. Despite all the polling evidence to the contrary, I don’t feel that Casey is the best candidate to run against Santorum in November. Indeed, I can’t imagine a worse candidate. As jpol points out, Casey doesn’t have much support in the hard core, activist progressive base. While this, in and of itself, doesn’t constitute a huge number of votes, it represents the sort of person who will talk to their neighbors and leaflet their neighborhoods. These are the people who will staff phone banks, stuff letters, canvas door to door and work their asses off to get out the vote. Will they do that for Casey? Combine that lack of base support with Casey’s crap political instincts and lukewarm Vaseline stump presence and you have a recipe for disaster.

Chris Bowers disagrees.

The first thing that strikes me about this passage is that the author indicates that it is someone else’s fault that s/he plans to not vote in 2006. I find that a shameful and childish abandonment of responsibility. How can someone indicate that s/he isn’t going to vote in 2006, and then call people who are going to vote “head-in-the-sand” Democrats? Very sad.

The second thing that strikes me not about this passage, but instead about the entire article, is just how wrong it is about Casey’s chances in this election. To say that Casey will probably lose to Santorum is both preposterous and an indication that someone has never really paid attention to election horse-races before. Casey is over 50% in oevery poll against Santorum, even though he is the lower-name ID challenger and lower-name ID challengers receive the bulk of the undecideds in elections. This is called the incumbent rule, and you can read more about it here, and see my research on it here. Further, Casey has actually been pulling further and further ahead of Santorum over the past year according to the Q-poll trendlines. At this point last year Casey was only up five points on Santorum. Now, he is regularly up double-digits. Still further, Casey has over 3.5M in the bank, and has raised more money this cycle than any other Democratic challenger. Yet still further, on election night in 2004, Casey outperformed Kerry by 415,000 votes in Pennsylvania. It is not as though he is a newcomer to this. Thrown in the fact hat Casey’s unfavorables still have not crossed into double-digits despite 60% name ID, and you are looking not just at a Casey victory, but rather at a 15-20% blowout.

I just can’t respect the election analysis of anyone who would argue that Casey does not have an excellent chance to win this race. All evidence points to this being the best chance Democrats have had to defeat in incumbent Republican Senator in decades. If you let your personal animus towards Casey to keep you from recognizing that, then quite frankly I think you should reconsider you ability to analyze the rest of the world in an objective, reality-based fashion

I doubt that Chris has ever had any respect for me (why would he?), so I’m risking little by writing that I think Casey’s chances of beating Santorum in November are piss poor. Casey is trashing Santorum in public opinion polling right now - he’s absolutely murdering little Rick. That’s great as far as it goes. One thing to remember, however, is that one of the candidates listed in those polls is an extraordinarily talented politician who has made a career of winning improbable victories, despite the fact that his views are completely out of synch with the views of his constituents. That candidate isn’t Bob Casey. Another thing to remember is that one of the candidates listed in those polls has shown an unfortunate ability to blow huge leads and yank defeat from the jaws of victory. That candidate, sadly, isn’t Rick Santorum. Not only is this a classic lesser of two evils election, the candidate we presume to be slightly less evil, is politically inept.

Here’s a little of what Booman had to say about the previous posts.

Chris is right. Casey has an excellent chance to beat Santorum. But, what he ignores is that anyone would have a good chance of beating Santorum. The polls have almost nothing to do with how much money Casey has, how good of a organization Casey has, or how well Casey performs as a candidate. It also ignores other polls that show that the more people learn about Casey, the less they are inclined to support him. Jerry took a different analytical tack than Chris.

Jerry focused not on the current polls, or the coffers of the candidates, but on what future polls are likely to look like as voters become better informed about the candidates. The concern is that Casey’s support will erode substantially and perhaps fatally, once voters realize that he is a wingnut.

Chris, Jerry, and I all are supporting Pennacchio. We all know him personally, and his wonderful campaign manager. We are all working for him. We support him because he best represents our values. But after that, our similarities begin to differ. Chris is confident that Casey will win. I am modestly optimistic that he will win. Jerry is pessimistic. Chris and I will vote for Casey in November. Jerry won’t.

Obviously, I have my doubts about Casey’s ability to beat Santorum. But will I vote for him? Right now, I honestly can’t say if I will or I won’t, should it come to that. I’m not a single issue voter and I never will be. I don’t expect perfection out of any candidate and I’m not waiting around for the perfect Democrat with perfect positions. I do have at least a little grounding in reality. But here’s the problem, I don’t have a single issue problem with Bob Casey, I have an every issue problem with Bob Casey. Whether it’s stem cell research, the death penalty, the Iraq War, women’s rights, gun control, gay rights, living wages or universal healthcare, my views are 180 degrees from Casey’s. The only reason I can think of to support him is that, if elected, he may vote for Harry Reid to be Senate Majority Leader, and I’m not at all convinced he’ll even do that…

This is a very temporary aesthetic nightmare. Carry on.

Somebody emailed me earlier today and reminded me that I still haven’t posted all of the tunes from Miles Davis in Stockholm 1960 with John Coltrane. Towards that end, here is On Green Dolphin Street. Enjoy.

The NY Times asks, “Is there any aspect of President Bush’s miserable record on intelligence that Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is not willing to excuse and help to cover up?“

I’m pleased to announce that for the first time since early 2003, I have a valid driver’s license. Now If only I had a car, I could drive somewhere exciting like South Jersey or Staten Island without fear of prosecution. What fun! To be clear, there is a car in the family, though it’s not the sort of item that qualifies as “ours”, but rather “hers.”

I won’t get into all of the boring details of why I didn’t have a license for so long, but I will say that it involved a rented Lincoln Towncar traveling at about 120 mph through Central Illinois in the middle of the night. Apparently they don’t care for that sort of thing there.

Nothing like a cup of black coffee and a warm Rose of the Prophet Muhammad to start the day off right. It’s comforting to know that no matter what strange and foreign land you may find yourself in, that the resident hard right ideologues will behave in remarkably familiar ways.

Yes darlings, that’s a raspberry Rose of the Prophet Muhammad. Now would you please pass the Freedom Fries.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Sleep well. May all of your dreams be wiretapped for the good of the nation. Or is it the party? I can’t get it straight. Whatever. Somebody, somewhere wants to blow some shit up. You probably won’t be anywhere near where they do blow said shit up, but no matter. Be just as afraid and servile as you can, because that’s just what wards off the “blow some shit up” crowd. They pee their pants when confronted with unquestioning loyalty to the state.

Here’s an explanation of why this keeps getting posted.

Peter Daou:

I know the assertion that [supposedly neutral or liberal] reporters favor rightwing narratives blows your mind; after all, the liberal media fiction is hard-wired into the right’s political nervous system. But why should I believe your foregone conclusion that these people are left-leaning? Just because you say it with such conviction? Give me concrete examples of bias, not of negative coverage. (How can there not be negative coverage of the mess in Iraq? Or Katrina? Or the Plame outing? Or the NSA fiasco? Or do you want our media to simply fawn over the government? Is anything less than total pro-Bush propaganda considered media bias?)

Susie frames a picture for us.

One of the new Abu Ghraib pictures is a prisoner who is - how do I put this? dripping a milky, viscuous substance from his mouth. And since the accompanying story says some of the as-yet unpublished pictures show men being forced to masturbate, my not-illogical conclusion is this man was either forced to swallow his own ejaculate - or someone else’s. That’s some weird, twisted psychosexual shit.

And I’ve been thinking about that. What kind of political party do we have running this country which puts so much effort into punishing men who swallow semen voluntarily - but have no problem whatsoever with forcing men to do it via threats and brutality?

The Editors

The loyalty “owed” a President, or any government official, or any policy of the same, by a private citizen, is this much loyalty: zero. Let me say that again: the loyalty I, or you, or anyone “owes” to someone in the government, or to some course of action they favor, is none whatsoever. To think otherwise, Teddy Roosevelt might comment, is “unpatriotic and servile”. Now, this is not to say you can’t give your loyalty to the President or his policies - it’s a free country, and you can do any non-treasonous thing you want with your loyalty - but that’s your decision, and nobody has to live with it but you (and all the people who suffer from the consequences of your stupid choice of loyalties, of course.) Personally, I think the President is a horrible fucking stupid cunt and his policies are for shit. Your results may vary. But if someone tells me that I “owe” it to the President or his crap policy to act like I don’t think that, well, that person can get in the big long line with WPE and the rest of folks who really desperately need to go fuck themselves.

But Democracy gets even worse. The President and the President’s policies owe me loyalty. The President and his policies are supposed to be working for the good of the country and her people. That’s how the loyalty flows. The President is required to act for my (ok, “our”) benefit; if he does not, the betrayal is his, and the sorts of things which you’d like to call “disloyalty” become duty. Does Gore’s speaking out against torture “undermine” the country? That’s a tricky position to hold if you oppose torture. Does it “undermine” the policy? I wish. No, it does this: it reminds the world that however fucked up our government is, it isn’t us, it doesn’t speak for us, and it can never, ever make us quiet down. And I do say God Bless America.

My server is hosed at the moment so I don’t want to waste time writing new posts as they will likely be deleted. Here’s a rerun of a fairly recent post that isn’t particularly topical. Wheeee!

One of the ideas that has been floating around for a few years now is that if universal health care is ever established in the United States it will be due to pressure from big business rather than the efforts of socialist do-gooders. I’m not an economist so forgive me if I’m completely mistaken here, but my general understanding is that American business faces a competitive disadvantage when going head to head against businesses based in nations with subsidized health care. This is due to the huge cost of insuring employees. Some of that burden has been shifted to the employees over the last few decades, but even with those concessions the cost of insurance makes American workers very expensive. This is exemplified in the current dire financial plight of both General Motors and Ford. Needless to say, the self proclaimed Libertarians of the world will fight any effort to establish universal healthcare tooth and nail. Most will say that this is because they are morons, but I’d also add that they are immoral, spiteful and hateful.

That brings me to a bit of personal history and a strategy for recouping some money I never thought I’d see again. This is a bit embarrassing, so forgive me if I’m not totally forthcoming. You see, I have an entire warehouse of these things rotting away in Shanghai.

That, my friends, is the ProjectGastro Self Surgery Kit. The plan was to sell them for $299 to those with no access to affordable healthcare and to companies looking to cancel their employees’ healthcare coverage. It was the late 90’s and do-it-yourself was all the rage. Why not self surgery? Here’s the original marketing pitch:

The ProjectGastro Self Surgery Kit marks a Major Breakthrough in over the counter consumer health care. Utilizing cutting edge surgical techniques, devices and pharmaceuticals the ProjectGastro Self Surgery Kit allows anyone to perform major surgery on themselves, their loved ones and their neighbors. This remarkable product is designed with the average consumer in mind and is so easy to use that even children and the feeble-minded will be performing major surgery on themselves in days.

Sounds perfect doesn’t it? I bet you’d love to get your hands on one. The thing is, you can’t. Not a chance. The damn things are illegal. My initial mistake was in approaching the Food and Drug Administration for approval during the Clinton administration. Clinton had packed the FDA with goody two shoes pencil necks with degrees from accredited universities and a serious grudge against the kind of innovation I was bringing to the table. Wimps.

Along comes January of 2001; a new administration in office and a fresh chance. These people didn’t care about delusional notions of public safety - surely not where money was involved. At the time I wrote these hopeful words.

Unfortunately, if you live in the United States you can’t get the Self Surgery Kit. This is due to the extreme left wing, anti-capitalist leanings of the Food & Drug Administration (FDA). Our hope is that the incoming Bush administration will significantly weaken consumer protections and allow the approval of the Self Surgery Kit. At present, the only area of the world where one can legally obtain a ProjectGastro Self Surgery Kit is in Southeast Asia, where consumer protections are very nearly nonexistent. ProjectGastro encourages interested consumers to call their Senators and Congresspersons to protest the communist, anti-corporate leaning of the FDA.

Alas, it was not to be. As it turns out, when you elect people into government who hate government, they aren’t so effective at the whole governance thing. Last I heard, my application to the FDA was being used as a paper hat in an interdepartmental game of cops and robbers. Such is life.

I listened in on a discussion the other evening about establishing a futures market for vaccines. Sort of an Enron of pandemic prevention and it seemed a brilliant strategy, though I must admit to being shade north of too intoxicated to really participate in any meaningful way. Nevertheless, it reminded me of that little warehouse in China and dreams I thought long dead. If we can have an Enron of vaccine, surely we can have self surgery. Perhaps now is the time?

Addendum, clarification and a little madness after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here is the pictorial version of my server move. Wheeee!

This website is a bomb. The site is on a new server now, but the data transfer went very badly. Not Michael Brown bad, but shitty nevertheless. Several entire databases and applications are either missing or destroyed. What fun! Anyway, I’m in no mood for this crap right now. Once the smoke clears, I’ll try to figure out how to put this mess back together again. See you then.

My server is on its very last legs and is being replaced tomorow (I hope). The poor old bastard is spewing smoke and stinks like compost. Anyway, I’m going to stay quiet until it’s fixed as posting is nearly impossible at the moment.

I’m such a loser with fonts. This one is too small, isn’t it? I’ll work on it tommorow (or not). To make up for my aesthetic lapse, I offer you a picture of my chubby little cat in a basket. Say hello to Zoe.

If I was going to write anything about the nasty business with the cartoons, I would want it to be exactly like what The Editors wrote. Since The Editors already wrote exactly what I would want to write, if I could write like The Editors, I’ll restrain myself.

One, not so gentle way your body has of reminding you that you do indeed have a lower abdomen is with a hernia. Sigh. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to cross my legs a few times and contemplate a few more pain killers.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Here’s an explanation of why this keeps getting posted. There are newer posts below.

To help ease the pain of this oft repeated post, I offer a picture of Su Lin.

Washington Post:

“Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war,” Pillar wrote in the upcoming issue of the journal Foreign Affairs. Instead, he asserted, the administration “went to war without requesting — and evidently without being influenced by — any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq.”

“It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between [Bush] policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community’s own work was politicized,” Pillar wrote.

Pillar’s critique is one of the most severe indictments of White House actions by a former Bush official since Richard C. Clarke, a former National Security Council staff member, went public with his criticism of the administration’s handling of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and its failure to deal with the terrorist threat beforehand.

It is also the first time that such a senior intelligence officer has so directly and publicly condemned the administration’s handling of intelligence.

Pillar, retired after 28 years at the CIA, was an influential behind-the-scenes player and was considered the agency’s leading counterterrorism analyst. By the end of his career, he was responsible for coordinating assessments on Iraq from all 15 agencies in the intelligence community. He is now a professor in security studies at Georgetown University.

We somehow find ourselves in an era where the paragraphs quoted above, and the story they are pulled from, warrant little more than a yawn. No matter how awful the revelations get, it doesn’t seem to matter. None of this is new, or even less than a year old. It didn’t matter before. It won’t matter now.

In the not so distant past, the Post article quoted above would likely have lead to the downfall of the government. Not now. Not even close. Not even with Bush’s polls in the toilet. That same basic story, with different insider sources, has been running since late 2001, and the only things that have changed have changed for the worse. How the hell did we get here, and how do we get back out?

Oh how pathetic the shrill shrieks of ineptitude from the left seem to me. Today we are reborn in the knowledge that we are led by a great and wise man and we shall rejoice. Even I have been shown the way. Now that we have all learned that the Bush administration foiled the ‘blow your own feet off before you storm the cockpit’ plot of 2002, how can anybody who isn’t a depraved, godless, anti-American, hate monger spewing bile continue to question the administration on anything ever?