Category Archives: Deep Thoughts

Why are we here? Besides “to blog”, I mean?

It Needs Occasional Reiteration

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This was forwarded to me in an email chain the other day – one of those “please forward to your friends” kinds of things.

Now, I never, ever forward email.   I probably don’t even forward email that I should, sometimes.

But this, I figured, was worth forwarding to a lot more people than I could ever pick out of my email address book:

Holocaust denial isn’t exactly mainstream today – but since I first interviewed high-profile revisionist Ernst Zündel in 1987, it’s gotten a lot less outlandish, too.

And that’s bad; the worst evils are the ones that have become banal and commonplace.

Fifty Shades of Biden

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It’s not the size of the gaffe that counts, it’s the motion of the back-pedaling

Joe Biden isn’t known for subtext – just text.

While the national media has treated Biden as something between a 21st Century Spiro Agnew and that crazy uncle who overstays his welcome during the holidays, Republicans have (dare I say?) celebrated Joe’s Bidenisms as occasional forays into the truth.  If Barack Obama represents the modern Democratic Party’s super ego, Biden represents it’s id – the innate instinctive impulses and primary processes.

All of which makes Joe’s latest bombast not terribly surprising:

Campaigning in southern Virginia on Tuesday, Vice President Biden told an audience that Mitt Romney’s approach to regulating the financial industry will “put y’all back in chains,” a remark that triggered a flurry of Republican criticism, including a sharp rebuke from the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.

“Look at their budget and what they’re proposing,” Biden said. “Romney wants to let the – he said in the first hundred days, he is going to let the big banks once again write their own rules. Unchain Wall Street. They are going to put y’all back in chains.”

Biden made the comments at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research in Danville, where he kicked off a two-day campaign tour of southern and southwestern Virginia. He spoke before what appeared to be a racially varied audience of 900 people, and one prominent Republican suggested that his language could be interpreted as racially divisive.

The fallout fell on equally predictable lines.  The Romney camp tweeted that the comments were “outrageous” and reporters spent the afternoon filing bylines with stories repeating the VP’s gaffe.  If anything didn’t go according to script, it was the Democrat response – refusing to acknowledge any error in judgement and actually doubling down on the comment.  Biden’s attempt at “clarifying” his words still repeated the claim that Romney/Ryan would “shackle” the middle class.

Are Biden’s comments “outrageous”?  No, not by comparison to the media’s attempt to quasi-defend them by providing the sort of context that often seems to be missing from similar Republican errors.  Soledad O’Brien led off Anderson Cooper’s 360 by looping numerous Republican officials using the term “unshackle” (ergo, Biden was justified).  Politico decried the “death of the high-minded campaign” and despite having only one negative Romney example (in which he hit Biden for a 2007 comment about coal killing more Americans than terrorists), the website placed cover page photos of both contenders, suggesting that both camps have equally contributed to the debasing of the campaign.

Such defenders of context were no where to be found just days ago when Mitt Romney’s factual ad hitting Obama’s new welfare policies had politicos and pundits seeing racial politics.  Dan Milbank even unleashed a column that Romney’s ad “incites bigotry.”  Perhaps a conservative commentator will rush to pen a piece that explains how Biden’s comments were an attempt at “dog whistle” politics to African-American voters that not only will get published in a major newspaper but go by unchallenged by the Praetorian Guard of the Old Media.  But I wouldn’t suggest anyone hold their breath.

The issue shouldn’t be whether or not Joe Biden said something racial but that its become an acceptable part of the political discourse to accuse your opponents of putting voters in a form of bondage that doesn’t involve a safe word.  Such a mangled attempt to turn a phrase may pass for the talking heads at MSNBC or on whatever ham radio frequency that Air America continues broadcasting from, but without negative consequences, politicians will continue to feel free to double down on the harshest language possible.

Animal Farm

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In 2004, lefty commentator Thomas Frank published a book “What’s The Matter With Kansas” – which analyzed the growing conservative majority in America’s heartland…

…in the most patronizing, contemptuous way I’d heard until the mainstream media’s response to the Tea Party five years later.  Frank hammered on the idea that conservatives in the heartland were “voting against their interests” by voting Conservative.

The ‘Interests”, of course, were limited to “having government take care of you, provided you send it enough taxes” (my phrase, not Frank’s)..  ”Kansas” – Frank’s home state on the one hand, and his and every lefty pundit’s short-hand for “all those dumb rubes I left behind when I went to an Ivy League school” on the other – has “interests” that begin with getting farm subsidies and end with single-payer health care.

Frank’s thesis, in other words?  States, and citizens, are dependents.  Like pets.  Like a herd of cattle for which a noble farmer is responsible; it’s in the cattle’s interest to make the farmer’s life easy.  Or maybe like children – little people who aren’t quite fully formed, who depend on the older, wiser, parents to keep them on the straight and narrow until a majority that never comes.

And it highlit one of the big disputes between “progressives” and conservatives:  what is the role of a person, a citizen?  To a liberal, it’s “vote when told to vote, pay your taxes when told to pay taxes, and don’t get in the way”.  To a conservative, it’s to be one of the free association of equals that consents to having a government, and – make no mistake – controls that government.

This argument came to the nation, and Minnesota, this past few months.

Last spring, Representative Mary Franson from the Alexandria area took nationwide heat for a comment which some of the local Sorosphere’s ‘dimmer bulbs yanked out of context (and a few of the less less-bright ones correctly called out as a dumb hit) which was, in its entirety, correct; long-term dependence on welfare does, in fact, treat people like animals.  Like pets, at best; little critters for whose well-being the master – the owner, or government, depending on which end of the metaphor you’re talking about – is responsible.

And about the same time the Sorosphere was denouncing Franson with florid indignation, the Obama Administration came out and proved that Franson was exactly right – that the government did in fact see citizens as monochromatic consumers, as ivestock, dependent on their owner/master/government for their ongoing wellbeing, with the fabulously inept and gloriously spoof-worthy and, beyond that, downright Orwellian “Julia” campaign.

David Clemens – in a piece called “Elvis Vs. Julia”, which is actually a defense of humanities education, the discipline of studying the why of humanity, which is in its entirely worth a read for its own sake - cuts to the reason “progressives” attitudes about the government / citizen relationship, as revleated by “Julia” are not just toxic, but dehumanizing:

This is why selling the Julia concept frightens me. She doesn’t yearn to be free, like a human; she yearns to be kept. Julia embraces the piano key life that the president offers, and like W. H. Auden’s Unknown Citizen, she will act and behave predictably, she will choose and think correctly.

But in literature (and life) we recoil from those who trade freedom for safety nets and soft landings. The great anti-utopian novelists warned us over and over what happens when we make that bargain: George Orwell’s Winston Smith, Aldous Huxley’s John Savage, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s D-503 would rather suffer or die than join the Party, take the soma, or blend into the One State.

So what I find most chilling about the Julia ad concept is its creators’ cynical view of Americans, particularly women. And what if her creators are right? As Michael Walsh writes, “It’s tough to accept that perhaps a majority of our fellow Americans would cheerfully trade liberty for a false sense of security.” That is, how many workforce-ready but literature-free voters see The Life of Julia and find her flat, subsidized, feckless life desirable? With the liberal arts in decline, how many “miss the connection?” One must have been exposed to Orwell, Huxley, and Zamyatin in order to see their relationship to Julia and hear the warning.

Clearly, much of the left does – or, worse, “gets it”, but feels the trade is worthwhile, or worst of all, sees themselves as the “shepherds” needed to manage all of us sheep, or Julias, or whatever line of metaphor you want to run with.

A perennial question that divides the political left and right is this: what sort of beings are we? Do we have an immutable, perhaps transcendent, nature that will surrender everything utopia for autonomy, agency, and freedom (Elvis) [who, it might be said, rebelled against the very security that his phenomenally-successful career ]? Or is there no inherent nature, and humans are just socially constructed, plastic, seeking nothing but safety and a reliable sense of well-being (Julia)? Political Science, Psychology, and Anthropology cannot answer that question, and the sciences can only measure what is measurable. The liberal arts and humanities, however, insist that we are like Elvis, and that those who trade liberty for comfort always live to regret it.

Well, some humanities observe this.  Others are waiting on their next NEH grant.

But the real question is – which is a better reflection of what humans are, and can be?  Conservatism, with its immutable standards and great consequences and sometimes greater hurdles?  Or a life bellied up to the government trough, like the one Obama and Mark Dayton clearly see for us?

What’s the matter with Kansas – and with Kansans like us?

We’re human, and we want to stay that way.

False Authority

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Joe Doakes of Como Park writes:

See, this is why I hate lawyers who write social commentary:. They commit the most obvious logical fallacy and expect us to ignore the error but genuflect to their credentials.

“As leaders of law firms, we write in our individual capacity.” What the Hell does that mean? Does that mean “Every lawyer in the entire Big Shot law firm opposes . . . “ or does it mean “Some guys who work at the Big Shot law firms oppose . . . ?” Clearly, “individual” means NOT on behalf of the firms; they’re writing as individual lawyers like any of 35,000 other lawyers in Minnesota.

But they’re lawyers and it’s a legal issue, doesn’t that add weight to their opinions? But it’s not a legal issue. If it were, the matter would be settled in court where lawyers’ opinions might matter. This is a legislative issue to be settled in the ballot box, an issue on which the opinions of every citizen are equally valid. Lawyers – even those at big law firms – get one vote each, same as the rest of us. Their law licenses adds no weight to their opinions.

But they work at Big Shot law firms, doesn’t that add weight to their opinions? No, it means for 20 years of schooling they were the most outstanding test-takers, brown-nosers, box-checkers and teacher’s-opinion-regurgitators so they got better grades and therefore got hired by big name firms. They may have higher IQs than you and I, but this isn’t an IQ test so that doesn’t make their opinions more valuable than ours. The firm name adds no weight to the writers’ opinions.

But they’re the managing partners, the guys who run the firms. They manage dozens, maybe hundreds of employees, doesn’t that add weight? Why should the individual personal opinion of the managing partner at Big Shot law firm on a social issue be entitled to more weight than the managing archbishop of the local diocese or the manager of the local road construction company? Why should the manager’s opinion on a social issue be entitled to more weight than the employees’ opinions? Just because you’re management instead of labor doesn’t give you any special insight into how basic societal units should be structured, whether “family” should be one-man-one-woman, same sex, or plural. No, being the managing partners adds no weight to their opinions.

“Appeal to Authority” is a fundamental logical fallacy and they commit it in the very first sentence of the column. Their opinions have no more weight than mine and “Because I said so” quit working when I was 5 years old. With that poison opener, the rest of the column doesn’t stand a chance of persuading me these writers have the authority to instruct me how I should vote on this issue. I’ll make up my own mind, thank you very much.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

RIght.  But Democrats, being fundamentally hive creatures, tend to defer to authority first, and ask questions later.

Defining

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As it happens, APM’s “Public Insight Network” is asking about the same bit fof the State of the Union that stuck in my craw the other night.

In his State of the Union Address to Congress, President Obama talked about what he called “the basic American promise” — that if people worked hard, they could afford a home, college for their kids and some savings for retirement.

Is that still YOUR expectation of America?

They’ve put it in the form of a survey question.

My answer went a little something like this:  It’s one of the questions that defines the difference between conservatives and liberals.

In my world, America isn’t defined by our government or any material possessions or financial status symbols.  It’s about opportunity and liberty; the opportunity to succeed by dint of my merits and talents (or fail through the lack of them).

My “expectation of America” is that the government that I elect will shut up and get out of the way and let private enterprise – me – take care of things.

That pretty much covers it!

Will The Real Conservative Please Stand Up, Part II – Dead Presidents

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In a sense, this is one of the most glorious elections I’ve seen in a quarter century; for the first time, there is no “moderate” Republican.

“But wait!  Romney’s a moderate!”.

Well, by some standards, and on some issues, sure.  But as I started explaining Monday, there are really three main currents in American conservatism:  about this for quite a while; we have…:

  • Northeastern Conservatism:  Comfortable with big government (and generally very hawkish on law-and-order issues), but generally pro-business and anti-government-intervention, at least in re the economy.  We’re talking Romney, Giuliani, Chris Christie, the earlier Rockefellers, and George H. W. Bush….
  • Southern Conservatives:   Think Mike Huckabee and, to an extent, George W. Bush. We’ll come back to that later.  Anyway – standing well aside and hectoring them both – these days, from the high ground, in virtual control of the GOP grass roots – are the…
  • Western Conservatives:  Libertarian on social issues (at least as re government is concerned) and budget hawks.  They are big on Small Government.  Ron Paul is as far out as the GOP gets in this department; most of us Hayek buffs fit in here.
Anyway – I read something yesterday that kinda made for a good explanation for the uninitiated, to try to help them untangle the whole “who is a conservative” bit.More tomorrow.

I was reading this bit here, by Walter Russell Mead, on the legacy of the battle between Hamilton and Jefferson in the founding of the Republican.

Jefferson, of course, was the godfather of the libertarians; he believed in a weak federal government facilitating a very decentralized nation run, at the end of the day, by a free association of equals.  He believed the US should reside in splendid isolation, at least as re intervening in foreign affairs (until the Barbary pirates became too big an issue to ignore, politically or economically, at which point he created the Navy and Marine Corps we have today.

Hamilton?  He believed in a republic led by an elite that had the power to intervene in society – including a strong federal government.  Hamiltonians are a big part of why the US is a major world power.  They’re an even bigger part of why we have a huge national debt and a rampant national bureaucracy.

And both Hamilton and Jefferson appear both to the right and left of center; “Progressive” Hamiltonians are behind everything from the New Deal to, well, everything Obama has done.  Conservative Hamiltonians – think “Northeastern Conservatives” – believe in federal power, if not necessarily the bureaucracy to feed off that power (for example, the conservative case for the healthcare individual mandate).   Southern Conservatives?  They’re a lot more Hamiltonian than you might think; it was federal power that brought the South into the 20th and 21st centuries.  Western conservatives are Jeffersonian, to a degree – except, in many cases, on defense.

So to a degree, nobody is a purist.

The last 100-years of American history has been largely Hamiltonianism run amok.

But what about our politics today?

Here’s my attempt to illustrate our current field:

All of this leads up to talking about the Mead article I cited above. More on that later this week.

The Ostentatiously Alinski-matic Smear Machine

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The Usual Suspects is one of my favorite movies.

In the movie, the legendary arch-criminal and unseen (?) antagonist, the Turkish uber-villain Keyser Söze, operates by the adage that to win, you need to be willing to go further than your opponent is – whatever that means.  To Söze, when his family was taken hostage by his drug-smuggling rivals, it meant killing the family first, as the rivals watched, dumb-struck – and then the rivals, leaving one alive to tell the rest of the cartel (before Söze killed him, and the rest of the cartel, and their families).

It makes for a great bit of movie characterization.

For politics in a representative republic?

Not quite as good.

———-

I’ve had one iron-clad policy on this blog; never, ever, Ever, EVER go after someone’s personal life, family or (non-elected) job just because their opinion differs from mine.  That’s how I run the blog – especially for my three pseudonymous co-bloggers; there is nothing in blogging lower than someone who uses anonymity or pseudonymity as a cover for unethical attacks..

In fact, I keep other bloggers’ personal lives and livelihoods completely out of bloggjng.  There’s a good reason for it.  For starters, it’s dangerous; peoples’ personal lives have nuances that can wash the unwary and the stupid up on the shores of Defamation Island without them knowing about it.  More importantly, it’s completely illogical; it’s the fallacy of the tu quoque ad hominem – the idea that some inconsistency in your opponent’s actions or claims yesterday undercuts his argument today.  Like, for example, if someone’s ever been ticketed for speeding, their opinion on transportation issues is discounted.

It’s stupid.

It’s also one of the most common themes in political communications, as practiced by the not-so-bright.  Accusing people of “flip-flopping” is generally dumb (I’ve “flip flopped” on gun control, abortion, government intervention, and conservatism itself since I was a kid; so did Ronald Reagan, for that matter.  To some Libs, that’s “flip-flopping”; to us, it’s a sign that we’ve thought about things, and gotten the right answer better late than never).

It’s a lot more sinister than that, of course; it goes way beyond discounting arguments.  There’s a school of thought – codified in Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals - that believes the best way to win in politics is to ratchet up the personal attacks about non-political issues to the point that none of your opponents can muster the emotional energy to stay in the contest; to bring things to the point where they fail Söze’s, and Alinski’s, test of commitment.

There is a pattern among the Twin Cities left; if you can’t debate someone on fact, you go for the smear.  The more outmatched they are, the more ugly and personal they get.

Which, given that a distressing number of leftybloggers usually has at most one round of “facts” to bring to a debate (because few of them have ever had to learn to debate like adults, since they’ve spent their entire lives in cities and colleges and unions run by “progressives”), means that almost any debate with a depressingly huge swathe of leftybloggers dives straight into the mud very early in any discussion.  It’s like the left, rhetorically, has raised a generation of kids with sense of how to carry on a civilized discussion, or manners, or conventional sense of right and wrong – but given them all guns and ammo.

Great example: one Twin Cities leftyblogger – a guy who shall remain unnamed, but is known to many on both sides of the aisle as “The Dwight Schrute of the Twin Cities leftysphere” – spent a few weeks waddling around grinning like a toddler who’d made a nice pants because he found a record of some checks I’d bounced, during a spell of short money and worse bookkeeping, almost eight years ago,.  Blathered it all over the place – as “evidence” that I shouldn’t talk about government budgets.  Now, I know the facts of the situation – something “Dwight” never had the integrity to ask about - so while it wasn’t anything i had cared to discuss publicly, it didn’t especially affect me.  The intention, of course, was to shut me up – not by dint of any facts “Dwight” could bring to an argument (he never has any) but by trying to make opposing them too costly in ways that have nothing to do with politics.  Because after ten years of failing at civil debate, it’s all they have.

Which brings us to Eric Austin.  He writes the Outstate Politics blog.  I’ve always gotten along with the guy..

But a while ago Austin apparently jumped onto one of the left’s most demented memes; that any “family values” Republicans whose family lives and histories aren’t pristine are “hypocrites” and beyond the ethical pale, rightly subject to any manner of ugliness.  He spotlighted a Republican legislator, Mary Franson, who’d recently been divorced, publishing some rumors about the circumstances behind the split.

As Lady Logician wrote yesterday at True North, Austin wrote about these rumors – as he put it, based on “two independent sources” who confirmed it to his own satisfaction.

Is Austin’s story true, or not?  Who cares.  It’s none of my business, or Austin’s, or yours for that matter (and if you’re someone who ever said “move on” or “it was just sex” during the Clinton administration, think veeeery carefully about your next answer).  Chalk it up to giggly prurience if you want – but that short-changes the depravity of the act.  It’s really part of the Alinski-ite dictum to scorch the opponent’s earth; to make engaging in politics against liberals too personally and emotionally costly to sustain.

LL posts a recording of a phone conversation between Franson and Austin – listen to it at the link above.

LL’s contention is that the story is a rumor; Austin apparently believes his “sources” are plenty good enough to justify writing…

…what?  A story about what should be the personal business of two people whose marriage was unravelling, with all the emotional shrapnel that always accompanies divorce?

Is it worth slopping the worst details of the worst episode in a family’s life out in front of the public – embarassing the parents, sure, but doing much, much worse for the children – to take a whack at a poliitician you disagree with about legislative politics?

Those last questions are usually rhetorical, academic ones.  In this case, unfortunately, it’s very literal.  LL notes, in what is the real crux of the article:

Then there is the point that Rep. Franson’s daughter was being bullied as a direct result of [what Austin wrote]. His only response was to accuse Rep. Franson of being directly responsible for the bullying of gay teens. His logic is highly flawed.

Listen to the recording, around the 2:30 mark; Franson notes that Austen’s allegations caused her daughter to get bullied at school.   Listen to his response after 2:30.  I’ll closely paraphrase; “so what about gay kids that get bullied?”

Catch that?

The message is this: Disagree with us, and not only are we going to work over every nook and cranny of your personal life, without regard to damage we may be adding to your family, but we will condone and abet the torture of your children – because you disagree with us”.  

LL notes:

 First off, there is the old adage that two wrongs don’t make a right. Second, Rep. Franson had no direct action in these children being bullied.

So what does Franson believe about bullying gay kids?  I don’t know – and it’s for sure that if Austin knows, it doesn’t matter to him; Franson and her daugther are bones to be chewed in service to Austin’s point. For all we, and Austin, know, Franson has risked life and limb to thwart gay-bashers in her private life. Speaking as someone who has put more on the line against the bullying of gays than Eric Austin ever has or will (long story), I believe bullying is bullying. no matter who it’s aimed at.  But in Austin’s world, the fact that I oppose a bill to create a special, double-dog class of victims makes me not only the same as a bully, but justifies smearing my personal life and making my childrens’ lives hell?

In re Austin’s apparent defense (via the audio in LL’s article) of Franson’s daughter getting tormented at school over what he’d written, LL writes:

Austin’s weak defense is even weaker when you realize that this man is a…

Y’see, there’s my conundrum.  I said I never, ever go after peoples’ (non-elected) jobs – and I don’t.  But Austin works in a field where he’s supposed to look after the best interests of kids.

And yet there he is, saying things that could reasonably be interpreted as justifying bullying.

I’m the kind of guy who gives the benefit of the doubt way too easily – but I’ll entertain some explanations.  Was Austin flustered and mis-speaking his real intent?  Did he try to drive down a rhetorical road that he didn’t have the gas to come back from?   Is there some context tucked in there that I missed? I’m open to suggestions.

But let’s take him at his apparent word.  What do you suppose Eric Austin – or the rest of the Minnesota leftyblog community’s pack of Alinsky-addled ethical Oompa Loompas – would say if Medtronic sold their grandmother a pacemaker that was 20% defective, because of Obamacare’s hike on medical device taxes?  Or if their restaurants cut Democrats’ portions 15% to make up for revenue lost to the smoking ban?

If, say, a conservative college professor docked students grade points equal to the tax increases the students favored?

They’d howl like stuck cats.

Rightly so; it’s unethical, and in the first case illegal.

There’s really little point in conservatives doing more than pointing this sort of behavior out.  It is all most of the Minnesota leftysphere can do.

The takeaways:  Conservatives have to not only smarter than their opponents, they and their families and their supporters have to be a lot tougher.

Bonus question:  There’s a technical term for someone who uses fear to affect a political end.  What is it?

———-

We all know how The Usual Suspects ended, right?

Continue reading →

Fractured Aphorisms

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If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day.

If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for life.

If you toss a man a can of bait worms and tell him to figure it out, you feed him for life and give him the problem-solving skills he needs to truly succeed. Or feed him for a day.  One or the other.

Neuropathological

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Politics may not be rocket science, but apparently it is brain surgery.

Understanding the genesis of political orientation has long been a subject of biological interest, with every few years a new study suggesting our ideological differences aren’t skin-deep, they’re sub-atomic. 

Add to the list the findings of the University College London, which takes the theory of different liberal and conservative genes to another level.  Liberals and conservatives have always thought the other had their brains wired differently and, according to the University, physically speaking they’re right.

But the University’s study is also a case example in the sideshow of the politicization of science – namely, “proving” that conservatives are mentally (or genetically) deficient:

Using data from MRI scans, researchers at the University College London found that self-described liberals have a larger anterior cingulate cortex–a gray matter of the brain associated with understanding complexity. Meanwhile, self-described conservatives are more likely to have a larger amygdala, an almond-shaped area that is associated with fear and anxiety.

Using every inch of my larger amygdala, it’s hard not to notice how many of these studies inevitably lead to a conclusion that liberal physiological differences are viewed as genetically preferable – if not superior.  A similar outlook could be found just this last year with the ballyhooed discovery of a so-called “liberal gene”:

As a consequence, people with this genetic predisposition who have a greater-than-average number of friends would be exposed to a wider variety of social norms and lifestyles, which might make them more liberal than average. They reported that “it is the crucial interaction of two factors — the genetic predisposition and the environmental condition of having many friends in adolescence — that is associated with being more liberal.”

Outgoing, popular kids equals well-balanced, politically liberal adults?  Conservatives are creepy, adolescent shut-ins?  Curse my shriveled anterior cingulate cortex for reading anything into that study.

Of course, not all scientists are inferring that our political and genetic differences are so stark as to invite a Cro-Magnon/Neanderthal comparison.  In fact, some recongize the potential for political bias in such a report and actively work to tap down any broad-based partisan conclusions…including the actual authors of the study:

While the London study does find distinct differences between Democrats and Republicans, its authors caution that more research needs to be done on the subject. One unknown is whether people are simply born with their political beliefs or if our brains adjust to life experiences–which is a possibility, Kanai writes.

“It’s very unlikely that actual political orientation is directly encoded in these brain regions,” he said in a statement accompanying the study. “More work is needed to determine how these brain structures mediate the formation of political attitude.”

Talk about burying the lead.  And I thought we were just told that larger anterior cingulate cortexs led to understanding complex subjects better. 

Truthfully, we want our differences to be genetic for they absolve us of needing to convince others.  And seeking to find that absolution – that genesis of political thought – in the genius of others brings to mind the words of the discoverer of the double helix, J.D. Watson: 

“One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.”

The Depraved Gourmet

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Call the dour Calvinism of my Scandinavian anscestry rearing its head, but the wave of epicureanism – the Food Network’s various paeons to gluttony – have always rubbed me the wrong way.  Part of it is that the whole notion of glorifying ostentatious consumption strikes me as just wrong; you’re taking what you just plain don’t need (rural Scandinavians were crunchycons long before there was a term for it).  Part of it is the the way some “foodies” have turned gluttony into a secular religion, a cult of satiation.

B.R. Myers, writing in Atlantic, tackles the cult.  It’s a long read – four jumps – but very, very worth it.

Conclusion?

I used to reject that old countercultural argument, the one about the difference between a legitimate pursuit of pleasure and an addiction or pathology being primarily a question of social license. I don’t anymore. After a month among the bat eaters and milk-toast priests, I opened [former Motley Crue drummer] Nikki Sixx’s Heroin Diaries (2008) and encountered a refreshingly sane-seeming young man, self-critical and with a dazzlingly wide range of interests. Unfortunately, the foodie fringe enjoys enough media access to make daily claims for its sophistication and virtue, for the suitability of its lifestyle as a model for the world. We should not let it get away with those claims. Whether gluttony is a deadly sin is of course for the religious to decide, and I hope they go easy on the foodies; they’re not all bad. They are certainly single-minded, however, and single-mindedness—even in less obviously selfish forms—is always a littleness of soul.

Jumping to the conclusion, though, shortchanges you of a great read.  Go do that when you get a moment.

A Semiotician, A Rabbi And An Astrophysicist Walk Into A Bar…

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This American Life, an NPR program, is a wildly mixed bag of a radio show; it’s frequently excellent, evocative, and sometimes leads you to some wondrous insights.  For a show that is entirely by, for, and about upper-middle-class, college-educated, espresso-guzzling, Prius-driving white liberal hipsters, it’s very often worth the hour it takes to listen.

Still, for those of you in my audience that produce TAL, I feel I need to clarify something.

Funny: The Onion, America’s great parody newspaper.  While it’s not quite as quirky and unpredictable as it was ten years ago (the move to New York from Madison didn’t make the paper any funnier), it’s still a weekly treat.

Not Funny: Listening to The Onion’s editorial panel not only making the sausage (which is mildly interesting)…:

…but analyzing the process to death, like they’re a group of philosophy professors debating the meaning of existence itself.   A bunch of journalism profs at a Columbia forum couldn’t possibly sound more pretentious and joyless.

Note to Onion and TAL staff; you’re not curing cancer.  Lighten up already.

All Wheel Drive Anxiety

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I apologize.

You see when it snows like this – you know, constant, fine, light snow, the roads get slippery and when you hit the gas you slip and slide.

You sit and spin.

The thing is…ever since I got this car with all-wheel-drive, when I hit the gas, I just go.

Rain, snow, small animals, volcanic ash. Nothing can stop me!

Yes!!! It’s like I’m a God!!!!!

Lord of the Lanes! Baron of the Boulevard! Potentate of the Interstate!

Four-wheeled power – an advantage, right?! Sure…if you’re not in front of me when the light turns green.

And when you are, I get so very anxious. I’ve become an all-wheel-drive snob and I’m not proud of it.

“C’mon! Letsgo letsgo letsgo letsgo letsgo letsgo letsgo letsgo letsgo! What?! Are you paid by the hour!!!”

(not that there’s anything wrong with that)

It’s like being the guy that gets frustrated and everyone thinks is so annoying because his Mensa IQ affords him the luxury of “getting” things so much quicker, but then he has to wait until everyone else catches up while he rolls his eyes.

He’s not the one that gets the girl, is he.

Like that insipid commercial for AT&T where the portly passenger with the fastest network gets the download quicker than everyone else in the car, and laughs out loud. Thirty more seconds go by and the rest of the passengers get the download and do the same.

They’re the popular ones. They’re late, but having all the fun.

It’s lonely at the top.

This winter we’ve had way more than our share of snow and as a result we’ve been sitting in lines, three lanes wide, like cattle in a slaughter line, waiting waiting waiting to get to the office or home.

And there I sit, with the power to go go go!!!  …if it weren’t for the 1985 Crown Vic in front of me.

It’s like a curse.

God I miss my Harley.

Whilst Going About Your Business

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I wasn’t going to write about this until I saw he’d written about it first.

Ryan Rhodes – who’s been running the “Rambling Rhodes” (among many other names) blog for about as long as anyone in Minnesota has been blogging, and has been a regular commenter on this blog ever since I’ve had comments – had a rough December.  He and his wife’s twins – Finn and Zoey – were born very, very prematurely, weighing a pound and a half apiece.

Finn died on New Years’ Eve.  But Zoey is hanging in there.

Unfortunately, the tragic turn of events that greeted us at the end of December, as well as the gaping hole left in our lives by Finn’s passing, has numbed my wife and me considerably when it comes to the sheer medical miracle that Zoey is still with us and fighting strong. We’ve been so mired in grief and sorrow, the everyday fact of Zoey’s continued existence almost seems like it’s the least fate could give us. Nay, owes us.

But, she is alive. And, it is rather miraculous.

She was delivered via C-section at a paltry 1 lb. 4.5 oz. I like to use the analogy of her being the size of a TV remote control, but that doesn’t really convey the reality. Her tiny size didn’t register for me until I saw her footprints alongside the footprints of my first son, Aiden, when he was born at 8 lb. 15 oz. The difference is truly staggering, like Andre the Giant next to Vern Troyer. And I remember thinking, 15 months ago, how the hell we were going to keep AIDEN ALIVE.

The delicate balance of drugs, medications, fluids, oxygen and general environment required to keep a 24-week old preemie alive is ridiculously complex. Each time I visit Zoey, I have to practically squint past the banks of machines and monitors to see the little wriggling putty of flesh that is my daughter.

He walks through the concentric miracles of both technology and infant physiology that are helping Zoey hang in there:

The lungs, which are about the most undeveloped organs in their whole bodies, can somehow be persuaded to kick things into developmental gear. It’s not an exact science, but the organs that are normally one of the last ones asked to perform can be coaxed from the bench and perform a game-saving series of plays that can make even the most die-hard pessimist hope, optimistically, for a victory. Preemie lungs are the Detroit Lions or the Cincinnati Bengals, or an expansion team.

Today was a good day. A much-needed good day. For all of us.

Tomorrow? Who the f*** knows?

But, you know what? I’m hopeful, and that’s huge.

So I’ll urge your to direct your prayers, karmic imprecations, best wishes or whatever your worldview calls for to Ryan, his wife, Aiden and, of course, Zoey.

To Air Is Human

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Perhaps it’s the circle of radio life.  The First Team of the Northern Alliance gets shown the door…

…and Mark Dayton takes to the air:

Gov. Mark Dayton plans to do a governor’s radio show soon.

“I wish I could be on the air somewhere tomorrow,” Dayton said. “I can’t wait to get on the air. It is just a question of where and going through the proper procedure.

Dayton having a weekly radio show follows a tradition of past governors. Both Govs. Jesse Ventura and Tim Pawlenty had Friday morning shows on WCCO that were required, and sometimes interesting, listening for political geeks.

So gubernatorial radio will go from vain, to vapid, to…uh, is there a synonym for odd that starts with ‘v’?

Ventura and Pawlenty’s shows had their moments, but “fireside chats” they were not.  Ventura used the forum as a ricktey soapbox from which to deliver a folding chair to his opponents while Pawlenty’s often politics-lite interviews were professional but dryer than a Martini in the Sahara.  Unless Dayton wants to reminisce on his Haight-Ashburyesque days, 60 minutes of dead air might be more entertaining.

MITCH ADDS:  While First Ringer would have no reason to know this, I’ll add that the First Team wasn’t “shown the door”.  There were some revenue-driven schedule changes; management and John and Brian couldn’t agree on a change to the First Team’s schedule that worked for everyone.   There were no aspersions cast on either side; the logistics and timing for both the station and John and Brian couldn’t be made to match up.

It stinks; I was one of the First Team’s biggest fans.  But them’s the breaks in Freebie Radio.

Merry Christmas!

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This past year, I’ve been vastly more blessed than I could ever deserve; wonderful friends, my kids whom I love so much, great opportunities – and even a few gnarly challenges requiring some creative solutions that, in the end, have turned out to be blessings, so far.

And like all of us, I’m blessed to live in a country where I can write this.  If you are, or have ever been, in the military, thank you for the Christmases you’ve spent away from home, standing on that wall brushing snow off your rifle or tank or F16 or destroyer while the rest of us drank eggnog somewhere behind you.

What can I say but “Merry Christmas”, and God bless you all!

So on behalf of Johnny Roosh, First Ringer and Bogus D, thanks for another great year, and whatever the holiday means to you, I hope you find it in spades!

If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding, how can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat!

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Does Bill Cosby Know This?

the substance used to make Jell-O, as well as many gummy candies, marshmallows, puddings and taffies – is often made from the skin, bone and tendons of animals, usually cows or pigs. The manufacturer grinds up these animal parts, treats them with a strong acid or base for a few days to help release the collagen, then boils the mixture. Then, they scrape the gelatin, which rises to the top of this boiling mixture, from the vats. One big user, Kraft, sells 300 million boxes of Jell-O in the U.S. each year and offers 158 products under the Jell-O brand name. (Jell-O is even the “Official State Snack” of Utah.)

“I am proud to be an American. Because an American can eat anything on the face of this earth as long as he has two pieces of bread.” Bill Cosby

A Matter Of Choice

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As I’ve written in the past, single-sex marriage is not my marquee issue, personally.

Oh, I know what I believe; that marriage is about having kids, and kids grow up best with functional parents of both genders.  It’s a belief that should inform a lot of family-law issues (which is why I support gay adoption; two functional same-sex “parents” are not preferable to different-gender parents, but they are much better than a single parent, if that’s the choice.

But I think that as a rule government should stay out of most personal choices; that people should be able to sign a civil contract that ties them into a legal construct that gives them all the legal rights that a “Married” couple has – and that people like me should be able to opt out of the government contract and follow the purely religious contract that we believe in.  And if you belong to a religious demomination that can come up with a theological justification for it, then that’s your first amendment right – just as it’ll be mine to debunk it.

I’m not going to argue about it, either.

But the fact is that while Tom Emmer is not focused on gay marriage – this election is, quite rightly, about jobs to him – he also stands in sharp contrast to Dayton and Horner in that he does not want the issue decided by a DFL-dominated legislature or an “elite” court that jams the issue down the state’s throat.

Which is the subject of this ad:

Let the legislature do its damn job. For that matter, let the courts do their job, and interpret laws, not create them from whole cloth.

Emmer is right on this issue.  I think most Minnesotans agree.

Dayton wants our self-appointed “elites” to decide this issue.  Horner too, although he’s irrelevant.

Pass the word.

Prayers

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The rescue of 33 Chilean miners, is underway.  The men, trapped for 69 days half a mile undergound, are supposed to start coming out soon.

The missile-like capsule that will carry 33 miners to fresh air and freedom was lowered into a nearly half-mile-long rescue tunnel Tuesday night. Steam rushed from the hole into the frigid desert air — a sign of the humid, sauna-like conditions the men have endured for 69 days.

It’ll be one of the great rescues in history:

The rescue attempt is risky simply because no one else has ever tried to extract miners from such depths, Davitt McAteer, who directed the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration during the Clinton administration. A miner could get claustrophobic and do something that damages the capsule. Or a rock could fall and wedge it in the shaft. Or the cable could get hung up. Or the rig that pulls the cable could overheat.

“You can be good and you can be lucky. And they’ve been good and lucky,” McAteer told the AP. “Knock on wood that this luck holds out for the next 33 hours.”

Prayers, invocations of karma, or best wishes of whatever kind you prefer are all pretty much required here.

Video from the scene.  As this is written, it looks like the capsule is being pulled up.

9:06 – looks like the capsule is near the surface – wow, there is is.  Looks like a tight fit, in the tunnel and inside the cage.   Empty – must have been the dry run.

9:09 – they’re loading up Manuel Gonzales Pavez, the mine rescue expert.

Pavez

Pavez

It looks like the President Echenique of Chile was giving him a pep talk.  There was a loud cheer…followed by more waiting.

9:19 – and Pavez is on his way.

9:30 – Group at the shaft head is singing songs to pass the time.  Accoridng to the schedule, Pavez should be half way down.

9:36 – Video from the mineshaft.

Courtesy ABC/Chilean State TV

Courtesy ABC/Chilean State TV

9:51 – the capsule is loaded and ready to haul up.

Capsuled hauled up just before midnight, Chilean time.

Capsuled hauled up just before midnight, Chilean time.

10:11 – The first miner makes it to the surface.  His son and wife were there to meet him; the boy – sixish – burst into tears as he ran to meet him.

The first miner out.

The first miner out.

32 to go.

10:16 – Roberto Rios Seguel, a Chilean Navy special forces medic, is going to go down in the next car to help triage the men below.

Seguel

Seguel

10:41 – Seguel arrives 2,000 feet below the surface.

Chilean Navy medic Seguel arrives in the mine.

Chilean Navy medic Seguel arrives in the mine.

11:08 – Mario Sepulveda is getting near the surface:

Wife of Mario Sepulveda

Wife of Mario Sepulveda

11:10 – Mario Sepulveda, the second miner to get out, is on the surface.

Mario Sepulveda sees the first air in over two months.

Mario Sepulveda sees the first air in over two months.

Obama’s Morning In America

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The chirping of the bird outside your window sounds like a scrap-metal shredder.  Your eyes wrench themselves open into the searing early-morning sun blazing through your window. 

Your body does a silent status check.  Head:  a searing toxic void.  Esophagus: Making room for expansion.  Stomach:  Calling out “Outoing!”.

You shamble to your feet, and lurch for your door as you dimly remember yelling “Yes, we CAN…play quarters with Windsor!”.  You half-stagger down the hall, bouncing off the wall twice, as you race the impending stream of toxic heat racing up from the stomach to the bathroom.

You slap the door aside with your forehead and fall to your hands and knees in front of the throne, barely in time for the high-pressure jet of toxic spew blast forth from your mouth, nostrils and, near as you can tell, ears.   As your stomach spasms and your mouth curdles from the acid and your brain tries to hammer its way out the back of your head, you dimly remember telling a sternly disapproving-looking Macalester Womyn’s Stydies major “I hope you change your mind” and trying to remember what “extended middle finger” meant before everything went all cloudy.  You will your eyes to stay closed even as they roll open to see a roiling toilet bowl full of things you remember the nuns warning you about.

You crawl downstairs and lay on the couch, and lie in the fetal position as the air conditioner roars like a Stuka on its attack run, a stack of bills staring at you accusingly, mocking you for the fun you had the night before.

It’s morning in America.

Bananas, Crackers & Nuts

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Perhaps Woody was just merely testing a plot to the sequel?

Woody Allen has a strange take on the democracy that allowed him to become rich and famous.

The “Scoop” director said it would be a cool idea for President Barack Obama to be dictator for for a few years.

Why?

So he could get things done without all the hassle of opposing views getting in the way.

In an interview published by Spanish language newspaper La Vanguardia (that we translated), Allen says “I am pleased with Obama. I think he’s brilliant. The Republican Party should get out of his way and stop trying to hurt him.”

But wait – there’s more!

The director said “it would be good…if he could be a dictator for a few years because he could do a lot of good things quickly.”

In other news, Allen revealed that he has redubbed Obama’s inaugural address and centered it around a secret egg salad recipe.

What The Hell Do We Do About The MNGOP Platform?

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One of the most useless exercises at any business is the process of “writing a mission statement”.  If you have a business that has a chance at success, the mission is pretty self-evident.  “The Mission of Muffy and Ian’s Kites ‘n Koffee is to provide better coffee and kite supplies to the consumers of West Buyaloopup, Oregon”.   

Most management know better than to ask me for a mission statement anymore – because for the past fifteen years, I’ve told ‘em all the same thing; there’ve been two mission statements in all of history that serve as templates for all others:  Baron Manfred Von Richthofen (“My mission is to patrol my sector and shoot down anything I see.  All else is bullsh*t”) and Conan the Barbarian (“The greatest joy mission is to drive my enemies before me and hear the lamentation of his women”).

The simple fact is, for most businesses the mission is bone simple, to the point of self-explanatory.  It’s true for most entities, whether people (“My mission is to be the best person, father and citizen I can be”), families (“The mission of the Berg family to make sure Bun and Zam grow up to be good people and citizens”), blogs (“the mission of Shot In The Dark is to drive liberals before it and hear the lamentation of whatever liberals’ distaff community is determined to be; all else is bullsh*t”), organizations (“The mission of the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers is to provide a social outlet for bloggers and blog readers”), or whatever.

With political parties, it’s just as simple; the mission of a political party is to embody the principles that reflect their members’ vision of what government is supposed to be.    All the thousands and millions of ‘em.

The Minnesota DFL platform actually does a fine job of conveying that vision.  It states a long list of principles – most of them launching from the notion of “society” doing something, or government fully-funding this or that.  The DFL platform presents a grandiloquently statist vision - a high-level “to-do” list for big government – in elegantly-crafted wrapping paper.

The Minnesota GOP platform [danger - PDF file], on the other hand, is a dog’s breakfast of talking points.   It’s circulated in tabloid form at precinct caucuses; I’ve seen people try to make heads or tails of it, watched their eyes glaze over, and put it down, eyes rolling.   The document is literally written by committee – not just any committee, but one of the biggest committees in all of Minnesota.  At every year’s precinct caucuses, thousands of resolutions get forwarded for consideration to BPOU, Congressional District and finally State scrutiny; few actually get into the platform…

…but “few” of thousands still makes for a huge platform.  There are nine sections to the platform, each with 15-20 planks.  It comes to nearly 20 pages.

And it includes an amazing assortment of things – from lofty ideals (“…policies that reflect that every innocent human being, born and unborn, has an inalienable right to life from conception to natural death”) to practical principles (“Improving the quality of education by maximizing parental choice through expanded support for charter schools, school choice programs, parental rights to home school their children and more competitive and accountable public school systems”) to bald-faced sops to special interests (“Making the Eddie Eagle Gun Safety Program available annually in every Minnesota
elementary and middle school “) to low-level exercises in social micromanagement (“…pornographyblocking software should be installed on all computers having internet access in publicly financed institutions “) to things that principled conservatives should find abhorrent, if they thought about it (” The Minnesota legislature should pass legislation increasing the legal age for gambling in Minnesota to 21 years of age”) to stuff that just doesn’t make sense (“Opposing efforts to put all land and water under the control of the federal government” – I don’t think even Obama has suggested trying this yet). 

It’s time to put the platform on a diet – and make it focus on the things that a political party should focus on; the principles that should guide the party’s members, and especially the party’s candidates and elected officials.

A small group of conservative GOP activists – who shall remain nameless for the moment – have written a rough draft of a statement of princples; they intend, at some point or another, to introduce it as at least the beginnings of a discussion to replace the current War And Peace-sized platform with something a bit more accessible and to-the-point.

Here it is:

Individuals, businesses and the country succeed and prosper when government stays out of the way of the people – those who act on their own initiative, and who lead the way with integrity, responsibility, charity, hard work, humility, courage, gratitude and hope. 

Goverment has a role in our society – but that role is carefully enumerated in the United States Constitution.  The Republican Party of Minnesota believes that a good government does not eclipse roles that are best carried out by families, houses of faith, charitable organizations or businesses.

We, the members, candidates and elected officials of the Republican Party of Minnesota, support the following principles:

1) America is a great nation; we have been a “Shining City”, an exemplar of virtues for all other nations and their people.  The greatness of the American nation, the virtues of its people, and the success of the American experiment are a beacon of hope for the whole world.

2) Liberty is essential for our society to advance and prosper.  The freedom to explore advances in culture, business, faith, science, and government politics improves all of our lives; on the other hand, excessive government regulation and control hinder that development. The ability and freedom to disagree with each other and our government must also be
protected; any hindrance to the free market of ideas will sap the ability of America to advance and to better herself.

3) We have more hope and trust in the individual than the government to solve society’s problems, and to lead us into the future.  We value and protect the freedoms and the rights of the individual in preference to those of government.

4) Faith is where we derive our moral compass and come to understand the eternal rules of order and rights in which our creator has ordained. We believe each person needs to be free in order to explore their faith.

5) Life is sacred; it must be protected and defended from government control.

6) The Family is among our society’s most important institutions.  Government must not be allowed to infringe on the sanctity of the family.

7) The Pursuit of Happiness is essential to our existence, we support equal opportunities,  not equal results.

8 ) Charity comes best from the heart of individuals, and cannot be forced or coerced via taxation and regulation.

9) All citizens are equal before the law.

10) The law abiding citizen must be trusted to defend their life, family and property.

These are the principles we, the people of this nation and the members of this party, believe lead to a just society, a secure nation, and a better future for our children.

The committee struck out someone’s suggestion for a final line; “…, and to hear the lamentation of their women, and all else is bullsh*t”, but otherwise I like it.

Comments?  Feedback?  Leave a note in the comment section (and be advised that while all commentary is welcome, this is MN GOP business, and thus limited to the grownups; criticism is fine, but addlepated anti-Republican buncombe will be mutilated for the sole amusement of the blog owner.  While my comment section is generally the most open forum anywhere in the American media, this thread will be controlled.  Deal with it).