This election season has gotten so bad that the other day I had two women come to my door and I was relieved that they were Jehovah's Witnesses. A co-worker today had twenty messages on her answering machine. I have enough mailers to, well, I'm not sure what one does with 500,000 sheets of paper. So without further ado, here's what's on my mind.
-My plan for tomorrow is to get up early, head to the polling place at 7:00 AM as soon as they open so I don't have to wait in line for 90 minutes like my roommate Becky did, or see a 4-hour long line wrapping around an entire shopping mall like my roommate Nick did. (I know I could have mailed it in, but it's just not the same.) Then I will come back home, read news and radio stuff until going to work at 10 AM. At 7, I will get off work and dip into my election night scotch bottle, in honor of my and Senator McCain's Scottish heritage. ( I'd drink something in honor of Obama too, but I don't know what they drink in Kenya or Kansas. Besides, I'm not a wine guy which he seems to be.) At this point I will most likely also talk Bob off of a bridge and get calls from people rubbing my face in the results (which is cool, because I totally deserve it).
-I expect Obama to win by 4 points. The electoral college will probably be a little more one-sided than this. I don't feel like doing the math, but I think McCain will hold Florida , lose Colorado, and Ohio and Virginia are toss-ups. I don't think North Carolina or Nevada will be quite as close as the others I mentioned. Obama will win Pennsylvania by a thin margin, but not razor-thin, I think 4-6.
-The exit-polls will once again show the race as being more one-sided than it really is.
-Hopefully Dan Rather will be on the air. He's always hilarious on these things.
-The Democrats will not reach 60 in the Senate, but they might as well. They'll have 58 or so, so for all intents and purposes it will be filibuster proof since it won't be hard to find 2 Republicans on most bills. I don't want either party to have a majority that big.
-If Obama loses, much will be made of the fact that he lost among white males. What will be ignored will be the fact that he will probably get a higher percentage among this demographic than Al Gore or John Kerry, two of the whitest individuals I have ever laid eyes upon. The last Dem. to win this group was (I believe) Jimmy Carter in 1976.
-McCain will take a slightly larger percentage of Democrats than Obama will of Republicans. This won't matter much because the raw number of Democrats has increased since '04 and the number of Republicans has either shrank or not grown as fast (don't remember which and don't feel like researching it).
-The big X-factor right now is that a lot of polls are showing 8-11 percent undecided. What is that? These polls were taken this weekend. Who still hasn't decided? I think McCain will take more of this slice of voters than Obama, but not enough to make up the gap.
-Look for both sides to accuse the other of either inflating or suppressing votes. Look for me not to believe either side until solid evidence emerges (or, more likely, doesn't emerge).
-Is the period supposed to go inside the parentheses or outside?
-I honestly don't believe "blood will run in the streets" in either scenario.
-Too bad about Obama's grandmother. Would have been nice if she'd have been able to see her grandson elected president. It's weird that Obama's parents are both dead with him such a young man, but McCain's mom is still alive and getting speeding tickets with him being an old geezer. Not a political thought, just one of those oddities of life.
-George Bush will be in bed by 10 PM whether the race is decided or not.
-Who the Hell let Dick Cheney out? To campaign in Wyoming? Wyoming? Honestly?
-Obama has a truly kick-ass speech ready to go, guaranteed.
-If McCain loses he'll probably be "uncensored McCain" for the rest of his life, the way Barry Goldwater was toward the end.
-Either candidate will wind up governing from the center-left.
-All day Tuesday right-wing radio will talk about the inaccuracy/ bias of polls. Left wing media will be in a celebratory mood, only to turn hateful if things don't go their way. If McCain loses, look for the right to blame his centrism and try to move the party further right with disastrous consequences the way the Democrats did between 2000 and 2004.
-I think McCain will do better among white women than Bush did, but not by much. The idea that women will be turned off to Palin do to her anti-abortion stance has been pushed in the media. This flies in the face of every study I've seen. Most show men as being 4-7% more likely to identify as "pro-choice" than women, and vice versa for the "pro-life" position. Actually now that I think about it I don't remember what percentage Bush got since the scotch is taking effect, but I think McCain will do a point or two better.
-Nobody ever went broke underestimating the youth vote. Everything tells me this year will be different, and I think that could be the difference between a 3-point squeaker and a 7-point walk in the park.
-The latest tape where Obama (apparently) says something about bankrupting anyone building a new coal plant did not come out soon enough to cost him Pennsylvania or influence Ohio. (note: I haven't heard the context yet, so this could be yet another case where he was pontificating about something only to have his words ripped completely out of context to make him sound like an evil godless communist.)
-I don't really believe he's a communist, but it's fun to joke about. If the left is allowed to call me a Nazi all the time, I should be allowed a little exaggeration of my own. It's all in good fun.
-My uncle will be torn. He always votes for whoever the UAW tells him too. They take care of him so he does what they say. He also doesn't care for black people all that much. (He's not genocidal, or a believer in segregation, just a run of the mill racist. This is a bad thing but I wanted to differentiate the degree of bigotry.) He will vote for Obama, but he won't want to be reminded about it. My dad will needle him about it, probably wearing the Obama shirt I bought him.
-My dad will be among the Democrats voting for McCain. He may be the only person in the country who believes Bush should be tried for war crimes, but is voting for McCain. As he jokingly put it, "I'm not voting for John, I'm voting for Cindy."
-Whoever wins will not do worse than Bush. I'm not going to say that they couldn't do worse, which is completely illogical, just that I don't think they will. I realize this is setting the bar incredibly low, but you have to take one step at a time.
-Anyways, it will be a historic day. Whoever wins has a big job in front of him and will need all of our prayers. Good night and may God continue to bless America (and, what the Hell, everybody else too, just this once.)
Monday, November 3, 2008
One Question.
I was thinking lately: if I could ask each presidential candidate one question (and maybe slip them some kind of drug so I would be assured of an honest answer) what would they be? In my case each question would play to a strength of the opponent. Here they are:
-To Obama: "What is the most difficult situation you have ever been in? How did you get through it?" ( I realize this is 2 questions) Basically what I'd like to know is how would he deal with a crisis. He seems like a pretty calm guy, but most of what I've seen of him has been pre-packaged to say the least. So I'd like to know his thought process, how he's reacted to tough circumstances, etc. I'm wondering whether he's faced down adversity. Obviously, I wouldn't have to ask McCain this question. So...
-To McCain: "What is your vision for the role of the federal government over the next decade? And how is it different from that of President Bush?" (also 2 questions). This question is heavily dependent on the aforementioned drugging. I'm not even sure what kind of answer I'm looking for here, but I'm not talking about details like tax rates, etc. It's a question about his general philosophy; what would change fundamentally? This is an area he has been lacking in and it will probably doom his chances tomorrow. Again this question plays to Obama's strength which is his clear vision. This vision is of a Federal Government that is stronger and more active in every area of life. It is a vision is borne out in every policy position or proposal on his website. It is also a vision that scares the Hell out of me, since more power has never meant less corruption or greater accountability, and this is a vision that is diametrically opposed to my own. That being said, any vision beats no vision every time, especially in uncertain times like those we currently face.
Anyways those would be my questions, and as I've pointed out to people this is the one election where I will feel more pity for the winner than the loser.
-To Obama: "What is the most difficult situation you have ever been in? How did you get through it?" ( I realize this is 2 questions) Basically what I'd like to know is how would he deal with a crisis. He seems like a pretty calm guy, but most of what I've seen of him has been pre-packaged to say the least. So I'd like to know his thought process, how he's reacted to tough circumstances, etc. I'm wondering whether he's faced down adversity. Obviously, I wouldn't have to ask McCain this question. So...
-To McCain: "What is your vision for the role of the federal government over the next decade? And how is it different from that of President Bush?" (also 2 questions). This question is heavily dependent on the aforementioned drugging. I'm not even sure what kind of answer I'm looking for here, but I'm not talking about details like tax rates, etc. It's a question about his general philosophy; what would change fundamentally? This is an area he has been lacking in and it will probably doom his chances tomorrow. Again this question plays to Obama's strength which is his clear vision. This vision is of a Federal Government that is stronger and more active in every area of life. It is a vision is borne out in every policy position or proposal on his website. It is also a vision that scares the Hell out of me, since more power has never meant less corruption or greater accountability, and this is a vision that is diametrically opposed to my own. That being said, any vision beats no vision every time, especially in uncertain times like those we currently face.
Anyways those would be my questions, and as I've pointed out to people this is the one election where I will feel more pity for the winner than the loser.
My View on Colorado's Ballot Initiatives.
I'm voting NO all but one ballot measure. Here's a brief rundown of why:
-Amendment 46: Banning Affirmative Action. My vote: NO
I'd be all for getting rid of any kind of racial preferences or quotas as I think they wind up hurting those that they are intended to help. This is not, however, something I'm particularly passionate about. If this bill passes it will most likely mean a long court battle culminating in the Supremes declining to hear it, having already ruled in the University of Michigan case, and the state will have spent a lot of taxpayer money in the meantime.
-Amendment 47: "Right to Work". My vote: NO
I don't believe the state should be allowed to tell unions and businesses what kind of agreements they can or cannot enter into.
-Amendment 48: Redefine "Person" to Refer to Any Fertilized Egg. My vote: NO
In my view this goes way to far, not just banning abortion but perhaps birth control, stem cell research, etc. Also, this will likely be struck down by the courts after a long, expensive battle as being in conflict with federal law. Couple this with the fact that we are about to elect a president who is somewhere to the left of Kruschev on this issue, and clearly believes in more control by the central government (I'm going by actions here, since his actions and words do not match each other on this issue).
-Amendment 49: Allowable Paycheck Deductions. My vote: NO
This one is intended to weaken the unions of public employees. I'm against this one because it can be argued that unions are even more necessary to public employees than those in the private sector since the government often faces no competition for the services it provides. This makes it more necessary for the employees to have a strong organization on their side. It's not like firefighters, police officers, etc. can go work for a competitor (not without relocating anyway).
-Amendment 50: Raising the Stakes Limits in Colorado's Gambling Towns. My vote: YES
I view gambling and lotteries as taxes on the poor and the ignorant, for the most part. This amendment will raise the betting limit on blackjack and other table games from $5 to $100 (There are other provisions, but all minor issues). If people want to lose their money faster, I'm all for it. The extra revenue will go to community colleges and the towns themselves, so it's win-win as long as people keep going up there to lose.
-Amendment 51: Raise Sales Taxes to Help the Developmentally Disabled. My vote: NO
I feel kind of like a heartless bastard on this one. However I'm used to it because one of the more fun things about being a conservative is being treated like you are evil (Nazi, racist, imperialist, etc.). Some people can't handle this but I enjoy it, particularly because of the absurdity of the claims, i.e. checking identities is racist, less government spending is racist, every other policy I support makes me morally equivalent to past practitioners of genocide, you get the idea. The real reason I am voting against this is in favor of a county measure just like this one, and voting for both would be a larger increase than I'd favor. The county measure is a bigger increase but goes towards public safety and a new jail. As long as there are people who need to be locked up, I will support funding the facilities needed to do so.
-Amendment 52: Using Severance Tax Revenues for Highways. My vote: NO
This is a detailed measure that would shift money to highways from other areas. There are about 5 or 6 pages of details that don't hold my attention. For that reason, and because it could lead to less flexibility in spending, I'm voting no.
-Amendment 54: Limiting Contributions from Government Contractors. My vote: NO
Why single out one group of corrupt political contributors?
-Amendment 58: Severance Taxes on the Oil and Natural Gas Industry. My vote: NO
This one would raise taxes on people customers of the oil and natural gas industry. It says it will raise them on the companies, but those taxes (just like all business taxes) will be paid by the customers. Since I don't view the prices as being too low right now, I am voting no.
-Amendment 59: Education Funding and TABOR Rebates. My vote: NO
Again, I'm evil so I have to vote against education and for tax rebates. I agree TABOR has been a major disappointment, but one thing that annoys me lately is the unwillingness of some to call a tax increase a tax increase. The preferred euphemisms are "end tax breaks" ,or "close the loophole", or whatever phrase is most useful to obfuscate what is really happening. This amendment would raise taxes by not giving taxpayers rebates, but would use the money on education (P-12) spending. So, combining the tax increase factor with the bad wording of the amendment, I can't vote in favor of it.
-Amendment 46: Banning Affirmative Action. My vote: NO
I'd be all for getting rid of any kind of racial preferences or quotas as I think they wind up hurting those that they are intended to help. This is not, however, something I'm particularly passionate about. If this bill passes it will most likely mean a long court battle culminating in the Supremes declining to hear it, having already ruled in the University of Michigan case, and the state will have spent a lot of taxpayer money in the meantime.
-Amendment 47: "Right to Work". My vote: NO
I don't believe the state should be allowed to tell unions and businesses what kind of agreements they can or cannot enter into.
-Amendment 48: Redefine "Person" to Refer to Any Fertilized Egg. My vote: NO
In my view this goes way to far, not just banning abortion but perhaps birth control, stem cell research, etc. Also, this will likely be struck down by the courts after a long, expensive battle as being in conflict with federal law. Couple this with the fact that we are about to elect a president who is somewhere to the left of Kruschev on this issue, and clearly believes in more control by the central government (I'm going by actions here, since his actions and words do not match each other on this issue).
-Amendment 49: Allowable Paycheck Deductions. My vote: NO
This one is intended to weaken the unions of public employees. I'm against this one because it can be argued that unions are even more necessary to public employees than those in the private sector since the government often faces no competition for the services it provides. This makes it more necessary for the employees to have a strong organization on their side. It's not like firefighters, police officers, etc. can go work for a competitor (not without relocating anyway).
-Amendment 50: Raising the Stakes Limits in Colorado's Gambling Towns. My vote: YES
I view gambling and lotteries as taxes on the poor and the ignorant, for the most part. This amendment will raise the betting limit on blackjack and other table games from $5 to $100 (There are other provisions, but all minor issues). If people want to lose their money faster, I'm all for it. The extra revenue will go to community colleges and the towns themselves, so it's win-win as long as people keep going up there to lose.
-Amendment 51: Raise Sales Taxes to Help the Developmentally Disabled. My vote: NO
I feel kind of like a heartless bastard on this one. However I'm used to it because one of the more fun things about being a conservative is being treated like you are evil (Nazi, racist, imperialist, etc.). Some people can't handle this but I enjoy it, particularly because of the absurdity of the claims, i.e. checking identities is racist, less government spending is racist, every other policy I support makes me morally equivalent to past practitioners of genocide, you get the idea. The real reason I am voting against this is in favor of a county measure just like this one, and voting for both would be a larger increase than I'd favor. The county measure is a bigger increase but goes towards public safety and a new jail. As long as there are people who need to be locked up, I will support funding the facilities needed to do so.
-Amendment 52: Using Severance Tax Revenues for Highways. My vote: NO
This is a detailed measure that would shift money to highways from other areas. There are about 5 or 6 pages of details that don't hold my attention. For that reason, and because it could lead to less flexibility in spending, I'm voting no.
-Amendment 54: Limiting Contributions from Government Contractors. My vote: NO
Why single out one group of corrupt political contributors?
-Amendment 58: Severance Taxes on the Oil and Natural Gas Industry. My vote: NO
This one would raise taxes on people customers of the oil and natural gas industry. It says it will raise them on the companies, but those taxes (just like all business taxes) will be paid by the customers. Since I don't view the prices as being too low right now, I am voting no.
-Amendment 59: Education Funding and TABOR Rebates. My vote: NO
Again, I'm evil so I have to vote against education and for tax rebates. I agree TABOR has been a major disappointment, but one thing that annoys me lately is the unwillingness of some to call a tax increase a tax increase. The preferred euphemisms are "end tax breaks" ,or "close the loophole", or whatever phrase is most useful to obfuscate what is really happening. This amendment would raise taxes by not giving taxpayers rebates, but would use the money on education (P-12) spending. So, combining the tax increase factor with the bad wording of the amendment, I can't vote in favor of it.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Upcoming Posts.
Over the next week or so I plan to start getting back to blogging on a regular basis. Here are a few things I'm thinking about blogging about.
-I am taking a paid holiday from work next Wednesday and will post my post-mortem on the election. This will most likely be several posts to include: my analysis of the numbers and what they mean, the key turning points of the campaign, and most likely separate posts about how Obama won and how McCain lost.
-After the election is over, and I'm no longer fixated on the horse-race aspect, I'll probably find myself moving a little closer to the center. The campaign season (I think do to the competition factor) seems to push people a little further to the poles, and I have been no exception.
- I am going to continue to pretend that they are not having a college football season this year.
-I'm working on a post about the difference between fairness and equality, how the two are not the same and in certain instances can be antithetical to each other.
-I'm planning to post pics of my new AK-47. If Obama follows through with his plan to bring back the "assault weapons" ban, I hope to sell it at some point in the future for a tidy profit.
-I'm looking for some kind of widget that will show a tally of how much money I've saved, how much I've prolonged my life, etc. since I quit smoking 2 weeks ago.
-I intend to write about my political journey over the past year or two, how I went from far right to center to inching leftward to moving back to somewhere a little right of center.
-I'm going to try to right about things that aren't overtly political, but that piss me off about our "post-adulthood" society in general.
-If McCain wins I will be insufferable and you should consider yourself lucky you don't have to be around me. If Obama wins, I will take credit for predicting it in the very first post I wrote on this blog in either late December or early January.
-I am taking a paid holiday from work next Wednesday and will post my post-mortem on the election. This will most likely be several posts to include: my analysis of the numbers and what they mean, the key turning points of the campaign, and most likely separate posts about how Obama won and how McCain lost.
-After the election is over, and I'm no longer fixated on the horse-race aspect, I'll probably find myself moving a little closer to the center. The campaign season (I think do to the competition factor) seems to push people a little further to the poles, and I have been no exception.
- I am going to continue to pretend that they are not having a college football season this year.
-I'm working on a post about the difference between fairness and equality, how the two are not the same and in certain instances can be antithetical to each other.
-I'm planning to post pics of my new AK-47. If Obama follows through with his plan to bring back the "assault weapons" ban, I hope to sell it at some point in the future for a tidy profit.
-I'm looking for some kind of widget that will show a tally of how much money I've saved, how much I've prolonged my life, etc. since I quit smoking 2 weeks ago.
-I intend to write about my political journey over the past year or two, how I went from far right to center to inching leftward to moving back to somewhere a little right of center.
-I'm going to try to right about things that aren't overtly political, but that piss me off about our "post-adulthood" society in general.
-If McCain wins I will be insufferable and you should consider yourself lucky you don't have to be around me. If Obama wins, I will take credit for predicting it in the very first post I wrote on this blog in either late December or early January.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Debate BINGO II
I'm doing this in a little different format this time. I've got 12 phrases or words from each candidate, and will pick 16 of them to put on one card. (these may be any combination 8-8, 12-4, etc.) So here is my list.
Obama:
-"Failed policies of the last 8 years"
-"Al Qaeda"
-"Renewable energy"
-"Regulation"
-"Tax on health care benefits"
- "Government that works for you."
- "Middle-class"
- "$250,000"
-"Scare tactics"
-"Hope"
-"Working Americans"
-"Warren Buffett"
McCain:
-"Judgment"
-"Reach across the aisle"
-"Petraeus"
-"Liberal"
-"Corruption"
-"Reform"
-"Fannie Mae"
-"Ronald Reagan"
-"KGB"
-"Earmark"
-"Capital Gains"
-"Ebay" (I just have a feeling about this one.)
Obama:
-"Failed policies of the last 8 years"
-"Al Qaeda"
-"Renewable energy"
-"Regulation"
-"Tax on health care benefits"
- "Government that works for you."
- "Middle-class"
- "$250,000"
-"Scare tactics"
-"Hope"
-"Working Americans"
-"Warren Buffett"
McCain:
-"Judgment"
-"Reach across the aisle"
-"Petraeus"
-"Liberal"
-"Corruption"
-"Reform"
-"Fannie Mae"
-"Ronald Reagan"
-"KGB"
-"Earmark"
-"Capital Gains"
-"Ebay" (I just have a feeling about this one.)
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
My Debate BINGO cards.
This is something I'm going to do to keep myself entertained during tomorrow's Presidential debate. The momentum all seems to be headed in Senator Obama's direction. I'm about 75% sure he'll win at this point, barring something good happening economically for a change or McCain being able to jump-start his campaign again. This doesn't look like it will happen given the recent focus on Bill Ayers, a strategy which seems very likely to back-fire. I'm also sure there will be nothing new revealed to me about either candidate. (I've listened to them, researched their voting records, read all of their books, etc.) I've decided to keep the debate interesting by playing debate-BINGO. So I've made a card for 16 of each candidate's most overused phrases and will check off a square each time they say one. I'm interested to see who fills their card first.
These are McCain's:
1)"maverick"- This one was used up a long time ago.
2)"naive"- I will count it if he says "naivete" as well.
3) "surge"- This one of course will only count if used with regard to Iraq.
4) "General Petraus"
5) "clean coal"- I'm going to confess here. I have no idea what the difference is.
6)"voted against funding the troops"- This one won't have to be word for word. If the first three are used, but with some other term for our armed forces, I'll still count it.
7) "reached across the aisle"- I like it when he uses this phrase because I can always hear teeth grinding to the right of me.
8) "on the job training"- Because he doesn't need it, and the other guy probably does, get it?
9) "country first"
10) "earmark"- I'm actually going to do a word-count on this one.
11) "nuclear"- How cool is it to actually have a Republican candidate that can pronounce this word? It's been a while.
12) "reform"- Another one I will be keeping a word-count on.
13) "my friends"- I kind of like this one actually. Makes him seem like a really bad-ass version of Mr. Rogers.
14)"liberal"- People on the right say this word with as much scorn as people on the left say the word "oil".
15) "experience"- Hey, why not? If you look at the last 50 years, the less experienced guy hardly ever wins.
16) "second highest corporate tax rate in the world" -Did you know the United States has... well, I guess you do now.
Now for Obama.
1) "change"- This one was so obvious I almost left it out. I will do a word count on this one, only counting it if it appears more than 5 times.
2) "hard-working Americans"- This is my current least favorite political cliche'. It has replaced the terms "middle-class" and "working poor" which actually, you know, meant something.
3) "failed policies of the last 8 years"-This is the phrase that will most likely carry him to the big 270. I will also be keeping a word-count on this one
4) "tough diplomacy"- This one is so vague as to be absolutely meaningless, but people seem to be buying it. I see saying that you'll "use diplomacy" to solve the Iran crisis as being about as helpful as saying you'll "use economics" to solve the mortgage crisis.
5) "from the bottom up"
6) "3rd term"- No need to re-invent the wheel here, just keep running against Bush.
7) "top 1%" -An evil group of people, aside from Hollywood celebrities and Warren Buffett.
8) "green jobs" - We will also accept "5 million new jobs". Hey why not promise 10 million? or 100 million? People who believe government creates wealth, rather than just moving it around will probably be even more impressed.
9) "ethics reform"- At which point I will laugh. A searchable database to see all the ways our money is being pissed away? How did the Republic survive so long without this guy?
10) "Dick Lugar"
11) "hurting"- as in "people are hurting" or "hard-working Americans are hurting"
12) "corporate greed"
13) "regulation"- I will only accept this if it is specifically referring to the mortgage/financial crisis.
14) "NATO allies"- A cooler sounding way of saying "Europe".
15) "tax cuts"
16) and no list would be complete without the obligatory "opposed this war from the beginning"
Ultimately, this winds up being one election where I feel sorry for the winner. I also want to throw in a plug here for Bob's new blog, it looks promising so far.
These are McCain's:
1)"maverick"- This one was used up a long time ago.
2)"naive"- I will count it if he says "naivete" as well.
3) "surge"- This one of course will only count if used with regard to Iraq.
4) "General Petraus"
5) "clean coal"- I'm going to confess here. I have no idea what the difference is.
6)"voted against funding the troops"- This one won't have to be word for word. If the first three are used, but with some other term for our armed forces, I'll still count it.
7) "reached across the aisle"- I like it when he uses this phrase because I can always hear teeth grinding to the right of me.
8) "on the job training"- Because he doesn't need it, and the other guy probably does, get it?
9) "country first"
10) "earmark"- I'm actually going to do a word-count on this one.
11) "nuclear"- How cool is it to actually have a Republican candidate that can pronounce this word? It's been a while.
12) "reform"- Another one I will be keeping a word-count on.
13) "my friends"- I kind of like this one actually. Makes him seem like a really bad-ass version of Mr. Rogers.
14)"liberal"- People on the right say this word with as much scorn as people on the left say the word "oil".
15) "experience"- Hey, why not? If you look at the last 50 years, the less experienced guy hardly ever wins
16) "second highest corporate tax rate in the world" -Did you know the United States has... well, I guess you do now.
Now for Obama.
1) "change"- This one was so obvious I almost left it out. I will do a word count on this one, only counting it if it appears more than 5 times.
2) "hard-working Americans"- This is my current least favorite political cliche'. It has replaced the terms "middle-class" and "working poor" which actually, you know, meant something.
3) "failed policies of the last 8 years"-This is the phrase that will most likely carry him to the big 270. I will also be keeping a word-count on this one
4) "tough diplomacy"- This one is so vague as to be absolutely meaningless, but people seem to be buying it. I see saying that you'll "use diplomacy" to solve the Iran crisis as being about as helpful as saying you'll "use economics" to solve the mortgage crisis.
5) "from the bottom up"
6) "3rd term"- No need to re-invent the wheel here, just keep running against Bush.
7) "top 1%" -An evil group of people, aside from Hollywood celebrities and Warren Buffett.
8) "green jobs" - We will also accept "5 million new jobs". Hey why not promise 10 million? or 100 million? People who believe government creates wealth, rather than just moving it around will probably be even more impressed.
9) "ethics reform"- At which point I will laugh. A searchable database to see all the ways our money is being pissed away? How did the Republic survive so long without this guy?
10) "Dick Lugar"
11) "hurting"- as in "people are hurting" or "hard-working Americans are hurting"
12) "corporate greed"
13) "regulation"- I will only accept this if it is specifically referring to the mortgage/financial crisis.
14) "NATO allies"- A cooler sounding way of saying "Europe".
15) "tax cuts"
16) and no list would be complete without the obligatory "opposed this war from the beginning"
Ultimately, this winds up being one election where I feel sorry for the winner. I also want to throw in a plug here for Bob's new blog, it looks promising so far.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Quick Hits 10: A Star is Born.
Here is my semi-complete rundown of my take on the events of the RNC week. And what a week it was.
-We started off the week with many on the left and in the media drooling over the prospect of Hurricane Gustav wrecking the Gulf Coast and ruining the RNC. The sense of disappointment on Monday night was palpable. It was sad and amusing at the same time.
-Bobby Jindal really seemed to be on top of things in the few days leading up to the storm.
-That picture of Governor Palin holding the M-16 is probably the hottest thing I've ever seen in my life.
-On Monday afternoon I went to cnn.com to get the latest info on the storm. The top 3 stories on the web page were about Bristol Palin's pregnancy. The fourth was about the hurricane. No ideological agenda there. It's too bad the baby's father isn't John Edwards. If that were the case the mainstream media would have declared that it "wasn't news" and the LA Times would have banned any discussion about it on their website.
-I'm not sure if the McCain campaign was laying an ambush for the Obama campaign, hoping that they'd rail against Palin's inexperience, but if it was they walked right into it. I thought it was funny that Obama supporters of all people cared about experience, and I knew she would probably address this when she spoke, but I was completely unprepared for the devastating manner in which she did so.
-The press release from the Obama campaign deriding the fact that she was the "mayor of a town of less than 9,000" was probably ill-advised given the earlier comments Obama has made with regard to "guns and religion" as well as the statement that Americans embarrass him because we can't speak more languages. I for one would like to see the U.S. government run more like that of a small town. You know, with spending restraint, priorities, etc.
-I'm glad my parents' professional lives don't hinge on what my judgment was like at age 17. Aren't you?
-I liked the fact that Obama seemed genuinely pissed off when he told the reporters that peoples' children should be off-limits. Of course he was completely ignored by the press, who apparently decided they still haven't sucked enough blood yet.
-Now, on to the convention itself. I thought the three-day format actually wound up being better. The major speakers were kept but there wasn't nearly as much filler material. This made for much better television, in my opinion.
-I noticed that they didn't do a lot of fake-diversity stuff like they have in the past few. In the 96-04 conventions it seemed like they had every black republican in the country sitting within 50 feet of the stage, in an effort to make the party look more diverse. Black voters, however, were not fooled by this. This time they just said "ah screw it. Let's just put all the hot chicks up front." Which brings me to my next point.
-I thought it was a very good-looking crowd. It seemed like every crowd shot had some very attractive women in it. By contrast, a lot of crowd shots in Denver reminded me of the bar scene from Star Wars. What does that have to do with anything? Nothing. It's just the kind of thing I notice.
-Another contrast was the people being celebrated. Nearly every speaker or video was celebrating achievement. They had videos of past presidents, Medal of Honor winners, etc. and a lot of the speakers were people who've built successful businesses. The Democratic convention, on the other hand was a celebration of victimhood. It seemed like every other person to get up there was somebody who'd lost their job, gotten sick, or lost their health insurance. I understand that victim status is the highest honor the Left can bestow, but after that you'd think the unemployment rate was 30% and there was no such thing as "health insurance". Are we in rough times economically? Yes. Are we living in some kind of Dickensian nightmare? No.
-I was hoping the Bush appearance would get canceled entirely and we would only see Laura. I was also glad that Dick Cheney was not seen, heard from, or mentioned the entire week. Hopefully this keeps up until the election.
- Fred Thompson's tub-thumping speech on Tuesday was the best I've ever seen him give. He wasn't that passionate when he was the one running for president. The part about taxing businesses was funny and on-target at the same time.
-Liebermann better hope there's a cabinet position waiting for him if McCain wins.
-I felt sorry for the woman trying to speak when Papa Bush walked in and the crowd cheered for several minutes before she could start speaking.
-Mitt Romney did absolutely nothing for me in his speech. He sounded like his party was the one that had been out of power for 8 years. Huckabee was good as always.
-I knew beforehand that Rudy was going to be coming after 'em. Rushing the passer, if you will. He did not disappoint. "nothing. nada." His shots on Obama and Biden were a hit with the crowd. I thought he would be a pretty tough act to follow, and that Palin would have a hard time topping him. I couldn't have been more wrong.
-After several days of talk about her inexperience and people on the left questioning McCain's judgment, I expected that Governor Palin would give a pretty good speech and hit on some of the areas where her resume' matches up pretty well to Senator Obama's. I was not prepared for what came next. She gave the best speech of the convention season. That's right, better than Obama's. And it was perfectly set up by all of the inexperience talk. This allowed her to go on the attack without coming across as being quite as mean. I remember thinking during Obama's speech that there were a few softballs he left hanging over the plate that could be hit back if the GOP was on it's game, like the line about him and Biden "fighting for you". She hit all of them out of the park. She was very conversational, not preachy. She came across as very confident, and from everything I've gathered over the past few days, she has absolutely electrified the base. For example, the next morning Michael Reagan wrote a column entitled "Welcome Back, Dad." Yeah, that's what we're dealing with here. I can't believe the Obama people didn't see this coming with all the inexperience talk. I also found it ironic that the Obama people are now saying that it's not about personality. If that were the case Hilary would be the nominee.
-I also like the fact that she talked about her family and the media, but didn't come across as whining.
-They made a big deal about the Bush speech writer, who I'm sure was thrilled to finally write one for somebody who can actually speak.
-There has been a run on the Kawasaki 704 glasses frames that Sarah Palin wears.
-I saw an article in an actual "respected" newspaper criticizing the way her hair was done for the speech. I'm not going to claim a double standard or anything, but the morning after Biden spoke I don't recall reading the phrase "hair plugs" one time in any newspaper story.
-I was afraid going in about overdoing the Vietnam stuff, and it was mentioned by every speaker, but I'm not sure you can tell the McCain story without talking about a formative experience like that. I mean five and a half years is longer than I've lived in Colorado, which seems like a long time.
-Senator Graham actually did less for me than Mitt Romney.
-Pawlenty wasn't bad. "Who voted against securing loose nukes in the former USSR?" (paraphrased). That one passed unanimously as I recall as well.
-I would have done more to point out the details of those 2 ethics reform bills Obama touts. One had 47 co-sponsors and passed the Senate unanimously. The other had 18 and passed 96-2, with 2 senators not voting. Not exactly tough legislation that has to be rammed through. If Obama had vehemently opposed them it would have made zero difference. Zero.
-The Cindy McCain video was very moving. She is clearly not a professional speaker, and I think the speech was not written very well in terms of being easily delivered. There were too many multi-comma'ed sentences. That said, the actual content about her charity work over the years in some of the most miserable places on the planet was incredibly touching. I can't help but contrast this to Mrs. Obama who was excellent in delivering her speech but whose biggest applause came because she doesn't hate America. I think a lot of the Michelle stuff has been unfair, but the way this went off kind of reminded me of her earlier statement.
-McCain started off kind of slowly and looked a little distracted when all the idiot protester stuff happened at first. It's kind of funny that to some people on the left, trying to interrupt and shout down a man while he's giving a political speech is actually considered an exercise in free speech. I wonder if a persons brain can atrophy to that level simply from lack of use, or does it require ingesting narcotics on a constant basis for a long period of time? Liberalism will always bare any burden to defend your right to agree with it. Okay, maybe it isn't fair to blame liberals for this one instance since most of the people I saw were from a Communist front group known as Code Pink(perhaps best known for donating $600,000 to the families of Fallujah insurgents).
It still makes me regret not carrying out my plan to disrupt the Obama speech. I know I wouldn't have been able to sneak a sign in, but security has no way of knowing that someone's going to get naked and try to run around the stadium. Missed opportunity, I guess.
-Would you be in any hurry to tackle a naked guy? I can't say I would.
-Anyways, back to McCain. I thought he got a lot better as the speech went along. Some of the domestic policy ideas mentioned in the middle of the speech sounded interesting and will hopefully be rolled out in detail once we get into debate season. This is one area where I think the Democrats are the ones living in the past. They'd like to try to stuff the Globalization Genie back into the bottle and go back to a time when manufacturing jobs were the back-bone of the economy. So would I. It just isn't going to happen, I'm sorry to say. His speech got better and better the closer he got to the end. When he ended with the call to service with the crowd going absolutely nuts and multiple shots of crying people, it was the best imagery I've seen from the right in a long time.
-All in all I thought the convention was well done, but without as much economic focus as I would have liked to see. It was also strictly about McCain and Palin as opposed to the party as a whole. This was kind of weird as well. Whether the enthusiasm can sustain itself remains to be seen, but it looks like another long night November 4th.
-We started off the week with many on the left and in the media drooling over the prospect of Hurricane Gustav wrecking the Gulf Coast and ruining the RNC. The sense of disappointment on Monday night was palpable. It was sad and amusing at the same time.
-Bobby Jindal really seemed to be on top of things in the few days leading up to the storm.
-That picture of Governor Palin holding the M-16 is probably the hottest thing I've ever seen in my life.
-On Monday afternoon I went to cnn.com to get the latest info on the storm. The top 3 stories on the web page were about Bristol Palin's pregnancy. The fourth was about the hurricane. No ideological agenda there. It's too bad the baby's father isn't John Edwards. If that were the case the mainstream media would have declared that it "wasn't news" and the LA Times would have banned any discussion about it on their website.
-I'm not sure if the McCain campaign was laying an ambush for the Obama campaign, hoping that they'd rail against Palin's inexperience, but if it was they walked right into it. I thought it was funny that Obama supporters of all people cared about experience, and I knew she would probably address this when she spoke, but I was completely unprepared for the devastating manner in which she did so.
-The press release from the Obama campaign deriding the fact that she was the "mayor of a town of less than 9,000" was probably ill-advised given the earlier comments Obama has made with regard to "guns and religion" as well as the statement that Americans embarrass him because we can't speak more languages. I for one would like to see the U.S. government run more like that of a small town. You know, with spending restraint, priorities, etc.
-I'm glad my parents' professional lives don't hinge on what my judgment was like at age 17. Aren't you?
-I liked the fact that Obama seemed genuinely pissed off when he told the reporters that peoples' children should be off-limits. Of course he was completely ignored by the press, who apparently decided they still haven't sucked enough blood yet.
-Now, on to the convention itself. I thought the three-day format actually wound up being better. The major speakers were kept but there wasn't nearly as much filler material. This made for much better television, in my opinion.
-I noticed that they didn't do a lot of fake-diversity stuff like they have in the past few. In the 96-04 conventions it seemed like they had every black republican in the country sitting within 50 feet of the stage, in an effort to make the party look more diverse. Black voters, however, were not fooled by this. This time they just said "ah screw it. Let's just put all the hot chicks up front." Which brings me to my next point.
-I thought it was a very good-looking crowd. It seemed like every crowd shot had some very attractive women in it. By contrast, a lot of crowd shots in Denver reminded me of the bar scene from Star Wars. What does that have to do with anything? Nothing. It's just the kind of thing I notice.
-Another contrast was the people being celebrated. Nearly every speaker or video was celebrating achievement. They had videos of past presidents, Medal of Honor winners, etc. and a lot of the speakers were people who've built successful businesses. The Democratic convention, on the other hand was a celebration of victimhood. It seemed like every other person to get up there was somebody who'd lost their job, gotten sick, or lost their health insurance. I understand that victim status is the highest honor the Left can bestow, but after that you'd think the unemployment rate was 30% and there was no such thing as "health insurance". Are we in rough times economically? Yes. Are we living in some kind of Dickensian nightmare? No.
-I was hoping the Bush appearance would get canceled entirely and we would only see Laura. I was also glad that Dick Cheney was not seen, heard from, or mentioned the entire week. Hopefully this keeps up until the election.
- Fred Thompson's tub-thumping speech on Tuesday was the best I've ever seen him give. He wasn't that passionate when he was the one running for president. The part about taxing businesses was funny and on-target at the same time.
-Liebermann better hope there's a cabinet position waiting for him if McCain wins.
-I felt sorry for the woman trying to speak when Papa Bush walked in and the crowd cheered for several minutes before she could start speaking.
-Mitt Romney did absolutely nothing for me in his speech. He sounded like his party was the one that had been out of power for 8 years. Huckabee was good as always.
-I knew beforehand that Rudy was going to be coming after 'em. Rushing the passer, if you will. He did not disappoint. "nothing. nada." His shots on Obama and Biden were a hit with the crowd. I thought he would be a pretty tough act to follow, and that Palin would have a hard time topping him. I couldn't have been more wrong.
-After several days of talk about her inexperience and people on the left questioning McCain's judgment, I expected that Governor Palin would give a pretty good speech and hit on some of the areas where her resume' matches up pretty well to Senator Obama's. I was not prepared for what came next. She gave the best speech of the convention season. That's right, better than Obama's. And it was perfectly set up by all of the inexperience talk. This allowed her to go on the attack without coming across as being quite as mean. I remember thinking during Obama's speech that there were a few softballs he left hanging over the plate that could be hit back if the GOP was on it's game, like the line about him and Biden "fighting for you". She hit all of them out of the park. She was very conversational, not preachy. She came across as very confident, and from everything I've gathered over the past few days, she has absolutely electrified the base. For example, the next morning Michael Reagan wrote a column entitled "Welcome Back, Dad." Yeah, that's what we're dealing with here. I can't believe the Obama people didn't see this coming with all the inexperience talk. I also found it ironic that the Obama people are now saying that it's not about personality. If that were the case Hilary would be the nominee.
-I also like the fact that she talked about her family and the media, but didn't come across as whining.
-They made a big deal about the Bush speech writer, who I'm sure was thrilled to finally write one for somebody who can actually speak.
-There has been a run on the Kawasaki 704 glasses frames that Sarah Palin wears.
-I saw an article in an actual "respected" newspaper criticizing the way her hair was done for the speech. I'm not going to claim a double standard or anything, but the morning after Biden spoke I don't recall reading the phrase "hair plugs" one time in any newspaper story.
-I was afraid going in about overdoing the Vietnam stuff, and it was mentioned by every speaker, but I'm not sure you can tell the McCain story without talking about a formative experience like that. I mean five and a half years is longer than I've lived in Colorado, which seems like a long time.
-Senator Graham actually did less for me than Mitt Romney.
-Pawlenty wasn't bad. "Who voted against securing loose nukes in the former USSR?" (paraphrased). That one passed unanimously as I recall as well.
-I would have done more to point out the details of those 2 ethics reform bills Obama touts. One had 47 co-sponsors and passed the Senate unanimously. The other had 18 and passed 96-2, with 2 senators not voting. Not exactly tough legislation that has to be rammed through. If Obama had vehemently opposed them it would have made zero difference. Zero.
-The Cindy McCain video was very moving. She is clearly not a professional speaker, and I think the speech was not written very well in terms of being easily delivered. There were too many multi-comma'ed sentences. That said, the actual content about her charity work over the years in some of the most miserable places on the planet was incredibly touching. I can't help but contrast this to Mrs. Obama who was excellent in delivering her speech but whose biggest applause came because she doesn't hate America. I think a lot of the Michelle stuff has been unfair, but the way this went off kind of reminded me of her earlier statement.
-McCain started off kind of slowly and looked a little distracted when all the idiot protester stuff happened at first. It's kind of funny that to some people on the left, trying to interrupt and shout down a man while he's giving a political speech is actually considered an exercise in free speech. I wonder if a persons brain can atrophy to that level simply from lack of use, or does it require ingesting narcotics on a constant basis for a long period of time? Liberalism will always bare any burden to defend your right to agree with it. Okay, maybe it isn't fair to blame liberals for this one instance since most of the people I saw were from a Communist front group known as Code Pink(perhaps best known for donating $600,000 to the families of Fallujah insurgents).
It still makes me regret not carrying out my plan to disrupt the Obama speech. I know I wouldn't have been able to sneak a sign in, but security has no way of knowing that someone's going to get naked and try to run around the stadium. Missed opportunity, I guess.
-Would you be in any hurry to tackle a naked guy? I can't say I would.
-Anyways, back to McCain. I thought he got a lot better as the speech went along. Some of the domestic policy ideas mentioned in the middle of the speech sounded interesting and will hopefully be rolled out in detail once we get into debate season. This is one area where I think the Democrats are the ones living in the past. They'd like to try to stuff the Globalization Genie back into the bottle and go back to a time when manufacturing jobs were the back-bone of the economy. So would I. It just isn't going to happen, I'm sorry to say. His speech got better and better the closer he got to the end. When he ended with the call to service with the crowd going absolutely nuts and multiple shots of crying people, it was the best imagery I've seen from the right in a long time.
-All in all I thought the convention was well done, but without as much economic focus as I would have liked to see. It was also strictly about McCain and Palin as opposed to the party as a whole. This was kind of weird as well. Whether the enthusiasm can sustain itself remains to be seen, but it looks like another long night November 4th.
A Big Week For Bob.
In addition to being a huge political week, last week was also a very big week for our very own Bob. He was able to get on the air with Rush Limbaugh (not an easy feat with an audience that size) to discuss the media's apparent fear of Sarah Palin. Then on Friday he went to the huge McCain-Palin rally in Sterling Heights, Michigan. When he asked if they had any "Veterans for McCain" signs they let him sit on the stage behind the candidates. He also got to shake hands with both McCain and Palin and even got Governor Palin to sign his poster. So congratulations, Bob, on a big week for any political junkie.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
The Speech.
Here are my random thoughts about Obama's speech Thursday night. First a few notes about the warm-up acts and the overall atmosphere.
-I tuned in an hour early to see Algore warming up the crowd. I expected him to put everyone to sleep, but in the last 8 years he's become a more passionate, dynamic speaker. He compared Obama to Lincoln more than once, the validity of which remains to be seen. Like a lot of the Obamamessiah stuff I thought it was a little unfair to the Senator to put that kind of expectation on him. I'd settle for a Taft at this point.
-The set looked a lot less gaudy than I expected from the descriptions I'd heard. All day on talk radio they'd been describing it as some kind of pagan temple. It looked very subdued when I actually saw it.
-The larger stadium crowd wasn't quite the visual I thought it would be. This may be because I'm used to seeing crowds that size at sporting events, or it may be that on tv a crowd of 20,000 or 80,000 are more similar than they would be in person.
-There were about 30 minutes of "ordinary people" speeches. The ordinary people were a little too ordinary. The one that stuck out most to me was an auto worker from Detroit who said: "Working class families were doing fine in Detroit until the Bush administration took over". Bullshit. I laughed out loud at that line. (Because Detroit was heaven-on-earth when I lived there in the mid-nineties) Detroit has been in a free-fall for about 40 years now. In that time the state and federal governments have been controlled by each party and the nation has had its ups and downs, but Detroit has only been run by one party and there haven't been too many "ups" to speak of.
-as to the speech itself, I thought it was very good, not quite as good as the one he gave in '04, but it served a different purpose. The '04 speech was soaring and inspirational, while this one had to be more workman-like.
-I thought the most effective part was where he directly addressed the "celebrity" stuff. This was important to show that he identifies with "hard-working Americans" (which may be my least favorite political buzz-word these days).
-For a lot of the speech I got the impression he was running against Bush. Not a bad idea, but they've been trying to tie McCain to Bush for about 6 months now, and I've seen no signs that it's working with the electorate so far. McCain's maverick reputation (rightly or wrongly) may very well be too entrenched in the minds of the public to be reversed.
-He's definitely a "big picture" guy rather than a policy wonk.
-Make no mistake about it. We are a nation of whiners. Remember how much whining ensued when Senator Gramm said that? They kind of proved his point.
-Both candidates are promising to end our dependence on foreign oil... and both will fail to deliver if elected.
-I thought he left McCain some openings to counter-attack by claiming McCain doesn't know what "ordinary" people go through, etc. Also this makes it a little easier for McCain to attack Obama without looking too mean-spirited.
-Overall, I thought it was a very good night for Senator Obama. I'd give the final night an A, and the rest of the convention a B-. It was kind of unfocused as Democratic Conventions usually are when compared to the absolute "message-discipline" that permeates Republican conventions. The high points for me were the speeches of Biden and Obama, as expected.
-I tuned in an hour early to see Algore warming up the crowd. I expected him to put everyone to sleep, but in the last 8 years he's become a more passionate, dynamic speaker. He compared Obama to Lincoln more than once, the validity of which remains to be seen. Like a lot of the Obamamessiah stuff I thought it was a little unfair to the Senator to put that kind of expectation on him. I'd settle for a Taft at this point.
-The set looked a lot less gaudy than I expected from the descriptions I'd heard. All day on talk radio they'd been describing it as some kind of pagan temple. It looked very subdued when I actually saw it.
-The larger stadium crowd wasn't quite the visual I thought it would be. This may be because I'm used to seeing crowds that size at sporting events, or it may be that on tv a crowd of 20,000 or 80,000 are more similar than they would be in person.
-There were about 30 minutes of "ordinary people" speeches. The ordinary people were a little too ordinary. The one that stuck out most to me was an auto worker from Detroit who said: "Working class families were doing fine in Detroit until the Bush administration took over". Bullshit. I laughed out loud at that line. (Because Detroit was heaven-on-earth when I lived there in the mid-nineties) Detroit has been in a free-fall for about 40 years now. In that time the state and federal governments have been controlled by each party and the nation has had its ups and downs, but Detroit has only been run by one party and there haven't been too many "ups" to speak of.
-as to the speech itself, I thought it was very good, not quite as good as the one he gave in '04, but it served a different purpose. The '04 speech was soaring and inspirational, while this one had to be more workman-like.
-I thought the most effective part was where he directly addressed the "celebrity" stuff. This was important to show that he identifies with "hard-working Americans" (which may be my least favorite political buzz-word these days).
-For a lot of the speech I got the impression he was running against Bush. Not a bad idea, but they've been trying to tie McCain to Bush for about 6 months now, and I've seen no signs that it's working with the electorate so far. McCain's maverick reputation (rightly or wrongly) may very well be too entrenched in the minds of the public to be reversed.
-He's definitely a "big picture" guy rather than a policy wonk.
-Make no mistake about it. We are a nation of whiners. Remember how much whining ensued when Senator Gramm said that? They kind of proved his point.
-Both candidates are promising to end our dependence on foreign oil... and both will fail to deliver if elected.
-I thought he left McCain some openings to counter-attack by claiming McCain doesn't know what "ordinary" people go through, etc. Also this makes it a little easier for McCain to attack Obama without looking too mean-spirited.
-Overall, I thought it was a very good night for Senator Obama. I'd give the final night an A, and the rest of the convention a B-. It was kind of unfocused as Democratic Conventions usually are when compared to the absolute "message-discipline" that permeates Republican conventions. The high points for me were the speeches of Biden and Obama, as expected.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
The Speech: Media Reactions.
Tonight is Barack Obama's long-awaited acceptance speech, which I'm sure will be very good. I will be posting my thoughts on the speech tomorrow, but I'd like to look at the media response first. Now, of course the media response hasn't really happened yet but it isn't all that hard to predict. So here are some words and phrases you're almost sure to hear in the next few days.
-"He hit it out of the park tonight!"
-"The greatest political speech of my lifetime!"
-"Moving"
-"Inspirational!"
-"Transformational!"
-"Visionary"
-"Electrifying!"
-"How is McCain going to comeback from this?"
-" A knockout punch"
-" His poll numbers will go through the roof!"
- "This speech got him X-million votes!" (This will, of course, be impossible to verify until November.)
- "Substantive"
-"I was spasming uncontrollably the whole time!"
-" I want him to hope all over me!"
-"Wow!"
-"Historic"
-" I cried during his speech."
-"Eloquent"
-"Articulate"
-"He wrote most of it himself"
-"Answered the doubters." ( this will make me laugh the hardest. As one of his "doubters", his abililty to read a teleprompter was never something I doubted.)
-"Dr. King"
-" I am speechless!"
-"Inclusive or inclusionary"
-"Meteoric rise"
-"Changed the face of politics for a generation" (a bit soon for that, but I have a feeling I'll read those words.)
There will be a lot more fawning I'm sure, but this list is just the phrases I expect to read tomorrow. There will also be the usual gushing about how smart, compassionate, etc. he is. If the past several months are any indication, news articles from the left will sound mostly like they were written by teenagers describing someone they have a crush on, with some containing so much metaphysical New Age language that they read almost like an astrology reading. It should be fun. I'll be interested to see how much the speech and the convention do to boost his sagging poll numbers.
-"He hit it out of the park tonight!"
-"The greatest political speech of my lifetime!"
-"Moving"
-"Inspirational!"
-"Transformational!"
-"Visionary"
-"Electrifying!"
-"How is McCain going to comeback from this?"
-" A knockout punch"
-" His poll numbers will go through the roof!"
- "This speech got him X-million votes!" (This will, of course, be impossible to verify until November.)
- "Substantive"
-"I was spasming uncontrollably the whole time!"
-" I want him to hope all over me!"
-"Wow!"
-"Historic"
-" I cried during his speech."
-"Eloquent"
-"Articulate"
-"He wrote most of it himself"
-"Answered the doubters." ( this will make me laugh the hardest. As one of his "doubters", his abililty to read a teleprompter was never something I doubted.)
-"Dr. King"
-" I am speechless!"
-"Inclusive or inclusionary"
-"Meteoric rise"
-"Changed the face of politics for a generation" (a bit soon for that, but I have a feeling I'll read those words.)
There will be a lot more fawning I'm sure, but this list is just the phrases I expect to read tomorrow. There will also be the usual gushing about how smart, compassionate, etc. he is. If the past several months are any indication, news articles from the left will sound mostly like they were written by teenagers describing someone they have a crush on, with some containing so much metaphysical New Age language that they read almost like an astrology reading. It should be fun. I'll be interested to see how much the speech and the convention do to boost his sagging poll numbers.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Vacation Musings.
I'm currently in the middle of a week-long vacation, visiting my family in Michigan. It's been fun so far. I will be posting plenty of pictures (probably after I get home since the dial up connection here makes uploading pictures a very slow process). Some thoughts so far:
-Six A.M. is not such a bad time for a flight (especially one jumping a few time zones ahead), provided it's from a small airport that you can get into relatively quickly.
-This was the first time in the history of me flying that I actually spent the better part of a flight talking to the woman sitting next to me. I'm usually next to the snorer, the person who is freaked out, or the large coughing guy.
-O'Hare is a pretty nice airport. Which is good, because I will have four hours to kill there when I fly home next Wednesday. I like the fact that you are never more than 100 feet from a Starbucks, the adequate placement of moving walkways, and the fact that it doesn't smell nasty, which brings me too...
-Is there a nastier airport anywhere than Detroit Metro? Usually when I arrive and the entire terminal smells like the inside of a french-fry vat and there are leaks in the ceiling and peeling paint, I know I'm home. (I usually know by the inordinate number of veiled women as well)
-I'd forgotten how crappy humidity can be. Colorado Springs at 90 degrees isn't so bad. Michigan at 90 degrees means I need to change my shirt every time I come in from outside. The air just feels thick. I did feel like it was easier to do extended walking though, probably because I've gotten used to not having any oxygen in the air.
-I visited my Alma Mater today, and it looks way different. Buildings going up everywhere and all of them look way more expensive than they need to be.
-I drove through a few areas I hung out in when I was in college and took some pictures. They look really different too. The shack I used to rent surprisingly seems to have some one living in it, meaning it must not have been condemned like I expected.
-I went down to the beach to take pictures. Those will be up before long.
-My folks cooked me a very large steak tonight that has to be seen.
-Someone on the radio said it was getting kind of dry here. I laughed at that since they have this weird green-colored grass here rather than the normal brownish-yellow I'm used to at home.
-Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to actually post some of the pics I took of sailboats, steaks, my dog, etc.
-Six A.M. is not such a bad time for a flight (especially one jumping a few time zones ahead), provided it's from a small airport that you can get into relatively quickly.
-This was the first time in the history of me flying that I actually spent the better part of a flight talking to the woman sitting next to me. I'm usually next to the snorer, the person who is freaked out, or the large coughing guy.
-O'Hare is a pretty nice airport. Which is good, because I will have four hours to kill there when I fly home next Wednesday. I like the fact that you are never more than 100 feet from a Starbucks, the adequate placement of moving walkways, and the fact that it doesn't smell nasty, which brings me too...
-Is there a nastier airport anywhere than Detroit Metro? Usually when I arrive and the entire terminal smells like the inside of a french-fry vat and there are leaks in the ceiling and peeling paint, I know I'm home. (I usually know by the inordinate number of veiled women as well)
-I'd forgotten how crappy humidity can be. Colorado Springs at 90 degrees isn't so bad. Michigan at 90 degrees means I need to change my shirt every time I come in from outside. The air just feels thick. I did feel like it was easier to do extended walking though, probably because I've gotten used to not having any oxygen in the air.
-I visited my Alma Mater today, and it looks way different. Buildings going up everywhere and all of them look way more expensive than they need to be.
-I drove through a few areas I hung out in when I was in college and took some pictures. They look really different too. The shack I used to rent surprisingly seems to have some one living in it, meaning it must not have been condemned like I expected.
-I went down to the beach to take pictures. Those will be up before long.
-My folks cooked me a very large steak tonight that has to be seen.
-Someone on the radio said it was getting kind of dry here. I laughed at that since they have this weird green-colored grass here rather than the normal brownish-yellow I'm used to at home.
-Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to actually post some of the pics I took of sailboats, steaks, my dog, etc.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
The Power of Imagery
I've been too busy to blog much lately, but I've been following all the latest political developments. I think the best move made by either candidate so far is Obama's decision to move his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention from the Pepsi Center to Invesco Field. This will allow the speech to be delivered to a crowd of 70-80,000 people rather than the 19,000 or so who could fit in to the Pepsi Center. The image of a huge crowd going wild during the entire speech (which I'm sure will be as eloquent and inspirational as it is vague and platitude-laden), will help to further the image of Obama as a political phenomenon. It should stand in stark contrast to the more typical, boring McCain acceptance. This could have a greater impact on the electorate than the boring political positions of the candidates or their governing philosophies, things I like to call "substance". This kind of thing could go a long way toward making up for his inexperience, doctrinaire leftism, and utter lack of legislative accomplishment.Tuesday, July 8, 2008
CHOW Outline for 7/09/08
(note: this is the one I was really looking forward to teaching. I took a bare bones approach to the outline because I like the way the message tells the story and needed room on the page. I like to throw a little Hebrew at them early on to establish my credibility. As such I'm going to ask several questions and throw in some background that I didn't bother to print on the handout. I thought i'd throw the Hitchens quote at them in order to rile up the room a bit. I'm also going to spend some time going into how this story is viewed differently in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. I was able to pull a lot of good quotes from all three from the book: Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths, by Bruce Feiler.)
The Akedah
Genesis 22:1-19 (MSG)
1 After all this, God tested Abraham. God said, "Abraham!""Yes?" answered Abraham. "I'm listening." 2 He said, "Take your dear son Isaac whom you love and go to the land of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I'll point out to you." 3-5 Abraham got up early in the morning and saddled his donkey. He took two of his young servants and his son Isaac. He had split wood for the burnt offering. He set out for the place God had directed him. On the third day he looked up and saw the place in the distance. Abraham told his two young servants, "Stay here with the donkey. The boy and I are going over there to worship; then we'll come back to you." 6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and gave it to Isaac his son to carry. He carried the flint and the knife. The two of them went off together. 7 Isaac said to Abraham his father, "Father?" "Yes, my son." "We have flint and wood, but where's the sheep for the burnt offering?"
8 Abraham said, "Son, God will see to it that there's a sheep for the burnt offering." And they kept on walking together.
9-10 They arrived at the place to which God had directed him. Abraham built an altar. He laid out the wood. Then he tied up Isaac and laid him on the wood. Abraham reached out and took the knife to kill his son.
11 Just then an angel of God called to him out of Heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!" "Yes, I'm listening." 12 "Don't lay a hand on that boy! Don't touch him! Now I know how fearlessly you fear God; you didn't hesitate to place your son, your dear son, on the altar for me." 13 Abraham looked up. He saw a ram caught by its horns in the thicket. Abraham took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 Abraham named that place God-Yireh (God-Sees-to-It). That's where we get the saying, "On the mountain of God, he sees to it." 15-18 The angel of God spoke from Heaven a second time to Abraham: "I swear—God's sure word!— because you have gone through with this, and have not refused to give me your son, your dear, dear son, I'll bless you—oh, how I'll bless you! And I'll make sure that your children flourish—like stars in the sky! like sand on the beaches! And your descendants will defeat their enemies. All nations on Earth will find themselves blessed through your descendants because you obeyed me." 19 Then Abraham went back to his young servants. They got things together and returned to Beersheba. Abraham settled down in Beersheba.
· What is your first response to reading this story?
· Consider the following quotes:
· “"It is the strongest illustration of faith, undoubtedly, which has ever been evinced in our world."-Albert Barnes
· “… celebrating a father who puts a knife to his son’s throat because that’s how much he loves the dictator. I find that wicked.” -Christopher Hitchens
· I think all of us in this room would agree with the first quote, but on first reading the story, does Hitchens have a point or has he missed the point of the story?
· All three monotheistic religions share this story, but with different emphasis.
Read Hebrews 11: 17-22 (NIV)
17By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, 18even though God had said to him, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned”. 19Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death. 20By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future. 21By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph's sons, and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff. 22By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions about his bones.
· Does this passage change your initial view of Abraham’s ordeal?
· How about Isaac’s?
Read Romans 4:13-25
· If you had to sum up the meaning of this story in one sentence what would it be?
I forgot to include a question about similarities between Isaac and Jesus, but will hit that point when I actually do the lesson.
The Akedah
Genesis 22:1-19 (MSG)
1 After all this, God tested Abraham. God said, "Abraham!""Yes?" answered Abraham. "I'm listening." 2 He said, "Take your dear son Isaac whom you love and go to the land of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I'll point out to you." 3-5 Abraham got up early in the morning and saddled his donkey. He took two of his young servants and his son Isaac. He had split wood for the burnt offering. He set out for the place God had directed him. On the third day he looked up and saw the place in the distance. Abraham told his two young servants, "Stay here with the donkey. The boy and I are going over there to worship; then we'll come back to you." 6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and gave it to Isaac his son to carry. He carried the flint and the knife. The two of them went off together. 7 Isaac said to Abraham his father, "Father?" "Yes, my son." "We have flint and wood, but where's the sheep for the burnt offering?"
8 Abraham said, "Son, God will see to it that there's a sheep for the burnt offering." And they kept on walking together.
9-10 They arrived at the place to which God had directed him. Abraham built an altar. He laid out the wood. Then he tied up Isaac and laid him on the wood. Abraham reached out and took the knife to kill his son.
11 Just then an angel of God called to him out of Heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!" "Yes, I'm listening." 12 "Don't lay a hand on that boy! Don't touch him! Now I know how fearlessly you fear God; you didn't hesitate to place your son, your dear son, on the altar for me." 13 Abraham looked up. He saw a ram caught by its horns in the thicket. Abraham took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 Abraham named that place God-Yireh (God-Sees-to-It). That's where we get the saying, "On the mountain of God, he sees to it." 15-18 The angel of God spoke from Heaven a second time to Abraham: "I swear—God's sure word!— because you have gone through with this, and have not refused to give me your son, your dear, dear son, I'll bless you—oh, how I'll bless you! And I'll make sure that your children flourish—like stars in the sky! like sand on the beaches! And your descendants will defeat their enemies. All nations on Earth will find themselves blessed through your descendants because you obeyed me." 19 Then Abraham went back to his young servants. They got things together and returned to Beersheba. Abraham settled down in Beersheba.
· What is your first response to reading this story?
· Consider the following quotes:
· “"It is the strongest illustration of faith, undoubtedly, which has ever been evinced in our world."-Albert Barnes
· “… celebrating a father who puts a knife to his son’s throat because that’s how much he loves the dictator. I find that wicked.” -Christopher Hitchens
· I think all of us in this room would agree with the first quote, but on first reading the story, does Hitchens have a point or has he missed the point of the story?
· All three monotheistic religions share this story, but with different emphasis.
Read Hebrews 11: 17-22 (NIV)
17By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, 18even though God had said to him, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned”. 19Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death. 20By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future. 21By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph's sons, and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff. 22By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions about his bones.
· Does this passage change your initial view of Abraham’s ordeal?
· How about Isaac’s?
Read Romans 4:13-25
· If you had to sum up the meaning of this story in one sentence what would it be?
I forgot to include a question about similarities between Isaac and Jesus, but will hit that point when I actually do the lesson.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
CHOW Outline For 7/02/08
(This was supposed to be my outline for a Bible study I tought, but I messed up and didn't have it printed out. So I was forced to go from my notes and memory. I wasn't sure how well it would go, but we got a lot of good discussion out of this passage. Next week is the one I am looking forward to. It's about the time Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac.)
The Heavenly Hope- Hebrews 11: 13-16
Hebrews 11: 13-16: All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. 14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
· What were the promises referred to here in verse 13?
· Does your faith ever make you feel like an “alien and stranger”?
· How is this experience the same today as it would have been for the patriarchs and the Hebrew believers this was originally written to? How is it different?
· Does the fact that they didn’t receive the promises make them a stronger example for us?
Read Hebrews 11:39-40: Not one of these people, even though their lives of faith were exemplary, got their hands on what was promised. God had a better plan for us: that their faith and our faith would come together to make one completed whole, their lives of faith not complete apart from ours.
· We, along with those this letter was first written to are a continuation of their legacy. Do you find that encouraging? Or is it kind of scary?
Read Psalm 39:12. What stands out to you about David’s words here, considering who is saying them?
· Verse 14 (and the end of 13) suggests that they embraced their uniqueness, their “foreignness”. (Genesis 23:4) Does the church do this too much today? Too little? The right amount?
Read II Corinthians 5: 6-9
· Verse 15 is reminds us that they could have given up at any point, and that they were volunteers.
· They knew there would be hardships ahead. (Gen. 15:11-13) Wouldn’t giving up have been the much easier option? Especially in light of the fact that they personally would not live to see the fulfillment of the promises mentioned in verse 13?
· How does going back to our old ways work out for us when we try?
Read Mark 8:38, Romans 1:16, and II Timothy 1:8
· In verse 16, we are reminded that ultimately they weren’t just promised an earthly nation, but that ultimately their goal was the same as ours.
· Given some of the things they did, wouldn’t God have every right to be ashamed of them? Doesn’t that go for us as well? I find it encouraging that God was willing to over-look their boneheadedness as long as they sincerely trusted Him and tried to follow him, even allowing Himself to be known as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Read Habakkuk 2:3-4, and Hebrews 10:35-39
Thursday, June 26, 2008
What About 'the Children'?
Apparently five members of the Supreme Court have not completely lost their minds. By a (frighteningly close) 5-4 vote the Supreme Court has ruled that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution (which states: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.") actually means that the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. The other four either a) believe that the amendment actually meant that the rights of the militia to bear arms or b) do not care what it says. Scalia dealt with the militia argument in his majority opinion (some highlights here and here). The case in question was with regard to Washington D.C. ( many parts of which I wouldn't care to visit, armed or unarmed) which had placed a complete ban on handgun possession within the city. Of course this only affected those who are inclined to obey the law in the first place. What amused me the most today were the reactions to what seems to me an obvious verdict. In the dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens seems to show open contempt for the Constitution saying the majority "would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons". Mind boggling. Yeah, that's absolutely the choice they made. Limiting the "tools" "available" to the State is kind of the purpose of the entire document. Have we learned nothing from the last century about the danger of governments with too many "tools available" to them? If you read the writings of the Founding Fathers, ( Jefferson in particular) they tend to be way more extremist than me on this issue. What's more disturbing in that statement to me is the "over 200 years ago" part. He seems to be implying that because the Constitution was written a long time ago, it shouldn't really apply. There is a system in place for dealing with obsolete portions of the Constitution. It's called "amendment", but that would require actually trusting the people and our elected representatives to do something right; much easier just to legislate from the bench. The mayor of D.C. in full-blown histrionics said "More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence". I mean think of the street gangs. What are they supposed to do now that someone might be able to shoot back? Aren't we too moral of a society for this? Isn't the civilized thing to do if someone is kicking in my front door to call the police and ask them to send another young man over to put his life on the line while attempting to capture the person(s) who murdered me in the ensuing ten minutes it took the police to arrive? I mean we've banned certain narcotics and now nobody can get ahold of those. I have no reason to believe a gun ban isn't equally effective.
The fact that four justices didn't see it this way gives me more reason to want to keep the Obamunists out of power this fall.
The fact that four justices didn't see it this way gives me more reason to want to keep the Obamunists out of power this fall.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Quick Hits 9: When the Oceans Started Receding.
I haven't posted anything lately because work has left me completely exhausted for the past few weeks. So here are a few things on my mind lately.
-So were finally down to two candidates. I find myself agreeing with George Will on a couple of points he has made about the upcoming election. He stated that Obama is the more volatile a choice than Hillary would have been. Hillary would have gotten between 48% and 52% of the vote pretty much regardless of what transpired between now and November. Obama, on the other hand, could rise as high as 55% or sink as low as 46% depending on what happens. He also said that this election really isn't about McCain. It will wind up being a referendum on Obama. McCain is a known quantity, so people pretty much already know where they stand with regard to him.
-If I were advising Obama, I would have him take a week to do nothing but sleep, with maybe a few radio interviews and other low intensity campaigning. Last week I heard him give an answer to a question (a couple of them actually) that was almost Bush-like in terms of verbal ineptitude. At one point he continually groped for the word "ventilator", at one point saying "breathalyzer" before settling on "inhalator". I can only assume this was due to the physical exhaustion of all the months of a grinding campaign schedule.
-If McCain has gained any traction in the past few months, I haven't seen much evidence of it.
-The Obama's Witness/Obamamessiah phenomenon seems to be returning after seeming to wane during all the talk about his nutty pastor. I can't decide if this is just the result of people wanting to believe in something so badly that they'll put this guy up on a pedestal, the result of the ongoing dis-enlightenment (a phenomenon I believe is perfectly summed up in a lot of the utterly meaningless and anti-rational language used in this article), or something he is actually working to cultivate. His speech after the last primaries makes me think that the latter may be the case. The lofty rhetoric about when we started "caring for the sick", receding oceans, etc. probably rallied the faithful, but left me chuckling and shaking my head. He does mention that he's not a miracle worker often enough, but which part do you think sticks in peoples' minds? Also whenever he says (paraphrasing) "it's not just about me it's about you" I feel like completing the sentence by saying "it's about your ability to elect me". This carries a risk of disillusionment if he is elected and doesn't bring about rapid economic growth, universal health care, or "end the war" (something he seems to me to be trying very careful not to promise).
-For all the talk of McCain not having any new ideas, I've heard two that interest me. The "League of Democracies" idea seems to be one that could be a good idea. And I really like his idea about having the president have to go before congress on a regular basis to get grilled the way the British Prime Minister has to in the House of Commons.
-If I were the Republican National Committee, I would pay for Howard Dean to be on one of the Sunday talk shows every week. The last time I saw him on there he dealt the race card at least 4 times in the course of 10 minutes. If the Dems want to alienate the electorate, screaming "racism!" for the next 5 months would be a good way to do it. I think they should save that for cases of, you know, actual racism. But I don't know if that's in there DNA. I guess it's one of the dangers of building an electoral coalition on identity politics and grievance-mongering.
-I read Barry Goldwater's book The Conscience of a Conservative recently. Having been written in 1960, some parts were dated but the majority of it is just as true today as the day it was written. Many of the principles he talks about have been completely repudiated (to their detriment) by the current Bush-led GOP. For example he says spending cuts need to come before tax cuts. The current plan is tax cuts and increased spending based on the ideas of Laffer, etc.
-I read an article that said the home town of Ernesto Guevara, tee shirt model and executioner for Castro, has built a bronze statue in his honor. Maybe Charles Manson's home town should build a statue in his honor. Okay, maybe that's not fair. Guevara was involved in a lot more deaths than Manson was. "Go ahead and try them tomorrow morning- but execute them NOW!"
-Gore Vidal reminded us this week (again) how a steady diet of ideological extremism can atrophy a person's brain when he suggested that perhaps John McCain wasn't really a POW in Vietnam. This seems odd to me given the fact that the North Vietnamese used him for propaganda videos, took pictures of his capture, and built a monument at the spot where he was pulled out of the lake. The odd part is not that Vidal would say something stupid (he's made a lucrative career out of that), but that he would actually disbelieve the claims of a communist regime. I guess there's a first time for everything.
-The tribute to Tim Russert on Meet the Press was very well done. I wonder who will take over hosting that show. I hope it will not be Chris Matthews or Keith Olbermann, both of whom are way too obnoxious for that show.
-Finally, I was talking to my mom last night about her recent trip to Europe. At one point while in Bavaria her tour group went to the site of a mansion that had belonged to Adolf Hitler. I cracked up when she told me that. The thought of my mom touring something associated with Hitler was hilarious, because I can't imagine two people farther apart on the spectrum of human behavior than Hitler and my mom.
-So were finally down to two candidates. I find myself agreeing with George Will on a couple of points he has made about the upcoming election. He stated that Obama is the more volatile a choice than Hillary would have been. Hillary would have gotten between 48% and 52% of the vote pretty much regardless of what transpired between now and November. Obama, on the other hand, could rise as high as 55% or sink as low as 46% depending on what happens. He also said that this election really isn't about McCain. It will wind up being a referendum on Obama. McCain is a known quantity, so people pretty much already know where they stand with regard to him.
-If I were advising Obama, I would have him take a week to do nothing but sleep, with maybe a few radio interviews and other low intensity campaigning. Last week I heard him give an answer to a question (a couple of them actually) that was almost Bush-like in terms of verbal ineptitude. At one point he continually groped for the word "ventilator", at one point saying "breathalyzer" before settling on "inhalator". I can only assume this was due to the physical exhaustion of all the months of a grinding campaign schedule.
-If McCain has gained any traction in the past few months, I haven't seen much evidence of it.
-The Obama's Witness/Obamamessiah phenomenon seems to be returning after seeming to wane during all the talk about his nutty pastor. I can't decide if this is just the result of people wanting to believe in something so badly that they'll put this guy up on a pedestal, the result of the ongoing dis-enlightenment (a phenomenon I believe is perfectly summed up in a lot of the utterly meaningless and anti-rational language used in this article), or something he is actually working to cultivate. His speech after the last primaries makes me think that the latter may be the case. The lofty rhetoric about when we started "caring for the sick", receding oceans, etc. probably rallied the faithful, but left me chuckling and shaking my head. He does mention that he's not a miracle worker often enough, but which part do you think sticks in peoples' minds? Also whenever he says (paraphrasing) "it's not just about me it's about you" I feel like completing the sentence by saying "it's about your ability to elect me". This carries a risk of disillusionment if he is elected and doesn't bring about rapid economic growth, universal health care, or "end the war" (something he seems to me to be trying very careful not to promise).
-For all the talk of McCain not having any new ideas, I've heard two that interest me. The "League of Democracies" idea seems to be one that could be a good idea. And I really like his idea about having the president have to go before congress on a regular basis to get grilled the way the British Prime Minister has to in the House of Commons.
-If I were the Republican National Committee, I would pay for Howard Dean to be on one of the Sunday talk shows every week. The last time I saw him on there he dealt the race card at least 4 times in the course of 10 minutes. If the Dems want to alienate the electorate, screaming "racism!" for the next 5 months would be a good way to do it. I think they should save that for cases of, you know, actual racism. But I don't know if that's in there DNA. I guess it's one of the dangers of building an electoral coalition on identity politics and grievance-mongering.
-I read Barry Goldwater's book The Conscience of a Conservative recently. Having been written in 1960, some parts were dated but the majority of it is just as true today as the day it was written. Many of the principles he talks about have been completely repudiated (to their detriment) by the current Bush-led GOP. For example he says spending cuts need to come before tax cuts. The current plan is tax cuts and increased spending based on the ideas of Laffer, etc.
-I read an article that said the home town of Ernesto Guevara, tee shirt model and executioner for Castro, has built a bronze statue in his honor. Maybe Charles Manson's home town should build a statue in his honor. Okay, maybe that's not fair. Guevara was involved in a lot more deaths than Manson was. "Go ahead and try them tomorrow morning- but execute them NOW!"
-Gore Vidal reminded us this week (again) how a steady diet of ideological extremism can atrophy a person's brain when he suggested that perhaps John McCain wasn't really a POW in Vietnam. This seems odd to me given the fact that the North Vietnamese used him for propaganda videos, took pictures of his capture, and built a monument at the spot where he was pulled out of the lake. The odd part is not that Vidal would say something stupid (he's made a lucrative career out of that), but that he would actually disbelieve the claims of a communist regime. I guess there's a first time for everything.
-The tribute to Tim Russert on Meet the Press was very well done. I wonder who will take over hosting that show. I hope it will not be Chris Matthews or Keith Olbermann, both of whom are way too obnoxious for that show.
-Finally, I was talking to my mom last night about her recent trip to Europe. At one point while in Bavaria her tour group went to the site of a mansion that had belonged to Adolf Hitler. I cracked up when she told me that. The thought of my mom touring something associated with Hitler was hilarious, because I can't imagine two people farther apart on the spectrum of human behavior than Hitler and my mom.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
May's Books.
May was a busy reading month for me. Here's the list.
-1776, David McCullough. ( A description of the first full year of the Revolutionary War. I was stuck by the youth of many of the key figures involved: General Nathaniel Greene- age 33, Colonel Henry Knox- age 25. I was also struck by how low the casualty figures of most battles were compared with the Civil War.)
-The Rage and the Pride, Oriana Fallaci. (This critique of Islam and the decline of Europe got her charged with a "hate crime" in France. She was one tough lady.)
-The Force of Reason, Oriana Fallaci. (She wrote this one shortly before she died of cancer and takes on the same subject again.)
-Why We Want to Kill You, Walid Shoebat. (He says he's a former Palestinian terrorist and that all of them want to kill all of us. I'm not sure I buy his story. I also found this book to be a little over the top. He seems to present all Muslims as though they are mindless followers of the most radical elements within their religion. I think a larger number are willing to follow those elements than we would like to admit, but not to the degree he describes.)
-A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn.
-No Name on the Bullet: A Biography of Audie Murphy. (Murphy was the most decorated soldier of WWII, winning every award for valor his country could bestow. The book follows him through his career in Hollywood and details how he was never really able to escape the way the war haunted him. He fought through the entire American campaign in Europe (no troop rotations back in those days), personally killing some 300 people. Some of the things he did couldn't be included in the movie (To Hell and Back: the Audie Murphy Story, starring Audie Murphy as Audie Murphy.) because they would seem to far-fetched for the viewing audience.)
-Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How Holy Rollers and Neo-cons destroyed the GOP. ( Not as good as I'd hoped. It was a very broad overview of the same failures that have been outlined in like 15,000 other books.)
-The Anti-Chomsky Reader, David Horowitz. (Pretty much what the title implies)
-The ProFessors, David Horowitz. (A look at how far out on the lunatic fringe a lot of college professors are)
-America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, Mark Steyn. (This was a good book. Steyn is currently on trial in Canada for the book being a "hate crime".)
-A Brief History of Crime, Peter Hitchens. (He details the slow painful death of law and order in Great Britain, and of Great Britain in general.)
-A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq, Christopher Hitchens. (One of the few "liberal hawks" who has stuck to his guns for the past 7 years, Hitchens (here and in his writings since) lays out the best case in favor of the war I've come across so far.)
-Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription, William F. Buckley. (Some of the more interesting letters National Review has received over the years, with responses by the always pithy Buckley.)
-The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric, George Will. (A collection of his columns from 1994-1997.)
-With a Happy Eye But..., George Will. (A collection of his columns from 1998-2002.)
-South Park Conservatives. (South Park "anti-liberals" might have been a more appropriate title.)
There could have been a few more, but A People's History really slowed me down.
-1776, David McCullough. ( A description of the first full year of the Revolutionary War. I was stuck by the youth of many of the key figures involved: General Nathaniel Greene- age 33, Colonel Henry Knox- age 25. I was also struck by how low the casualty figures of most battles were compared with the Civil War.)
-The Rage and the Pride, Oriana Fallaci. (This critique of Islam and the decline of Europe got her charged with a "hate crime" in France. She was one tough lady.)
-The Force of Reason, Oriana Fallaci. (She wrote this one shortly before she died of cancer and takes on the same subject again.)
-Why We Want to Kill You, Walid Shoebat. (He says he's a former Palestinian terrorist and that all of them want to kill all of us. I'm not sure I buy his story. I also found this book to be a little over the top. He seems to present all Muslims as though they are mindless followers of the most radical elements within their religion. I think a larger number are willing to follow those elements than we would like to admit, but not to the degree he describes.)
-A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn.
-No Name on the Bullet: A Biography of Audie Murphy. (Murphy was the most decorated soldier of WWII, winning every award for valor his country could bestow. The book follows him through his career in Hollywood and details how he was never really able to escape the way the war haunted him. He fought through the entire American campaign in Europe (no troop rotations back in those days), personally killing some 300 people. Some of the things he did couldn't be included in the movie (To Hell and Back: the Audie Murphy Story, starring Audie Murphy as Audie Murphy.) because they would seem to far-fetched for the viewing audience.)
-Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How Holy Rollers and Neo-cons destroyed the GOP. ( Not as good as I'd hoped. It was a very broad overview of the same failures that have been outlined in like 15,000 other books.)
-The Anti-Chomsky Reader, David Horowitz. (Pretty much what the title implies)
-The ProFessors, David Horowitz. (A look at how far out on the lunatic fringe a lot of college professors are)
-America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, Mark Steyn. (This was a good book. Steyn is currently on trial in Canada for the book being a "hate crime".)
-A Brief History of Crime, Peter Hitchens. (He details the slow painful death of law and order in Great Britain, and of Great Britain in general.)
-A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq, Christopher Hitchens. (One of the few "liberal hawks" who has stuck to his guns for the past 7 years, Hitchens (here and in his writings since) lays out the best case in favor of the war I've come across so far.)
-Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription, William F. Buckley. (Some of the more interesting letters National Review has received over the years, with responses by the always pithy Buckley.)
-The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric, George Will. (A collection of his columns from 1994-1997.)
-With a Happy Eye But..., George Will. (A collection of his columns from 1998-2002.)
-South Park Conservatives. (South Park "anti-liberals" might have been a more appropriate title.)
There could have been a few more, but A People's History really slowed me down.
Friday, May 30, 2008
A Dying Breed.
I've recently been reading some books by George Will (The Woven Figure) and William F. Buckley (Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription), in reading their writings I can't help but be struck by the contrast between the tone and approach to political thought taken by these elder statesmen of the conservative movement and that taken by most of the popular political writers today. The late Mr. Buckley's style was one of laying out rational arguments for his worldview. This is a far cry from the current crop on the right and the left. It seems that the entire conservative movement has become a moral crusade, while the left is driven by a guilt-based crusade. A good percentage of the political books I've read in the last year have consisted of attacks on the morality (or intelligence) of the other side rather than a comprehensive case for the author's own political views. There are exceptions, like Christopher Hitchens, but he's persona non grata on the left due to his unflinching support for the Iraq War and the right probably isn't crazy about his anti theism. There are still intelligent people in both movements, but it seems that raw emotion is the driving factor in the political discourse. I find this to be one of the more disturbing developments in politics over the last 15 years or so.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Worst Book 3: Return of the Moon Bat
Part 3 of our Marxist tour guide Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.
-The biggest characteristic of the section of the book covering the period spanning from the late-1970's to present is the repeated and (of course) unsourced use of questionable statistics. I'm not going to go into too many of those since by the time I got to this section I had spent about two weeks on this book and wasn't about to spend hours researching each claim. So these (along with what I've presented so far) are by no means the only inaccuracies of the book. Some weren't interesting enough for me to include here and I'm sure others slipped past me unnoticed. Other parts don't fall into the category of "inaccuracy" but seem to me to be distorted by ideology.
-On page 573 he attacks the U.S. for its opposition to various "revolutionary movements" in the Caribbean. I think "Soviet and Cuban backed terrorist movements" might have been a more accurate term.
-On page 578 he claims that "Unemployment grew in the Reagan years". This is the exact opposite of the truth, unless when he says "grew" he means "dropped". When Reagan was inaugurated in January of '81 the unemployment rate was 7.5%. When Reagan left office in January of '89 the unemployment rate was 5.4%. Read it and weep.
-On page 585, Zinn praises the accomplishments of "a popular Sandinista movement" in Nicaragua and tells us how good they were for that country. He claims that the opposition Contras "seemed to have no popular support inside Nicaragua". I guess he's hoping none of us remember what happened when free elections were finally held in 1990. He also makes no mention of Soviet or Cuban military assistance to the Sandinistas. Apparently he feels the foreign interference was only on the part of the United States.
-He gives Reagan no credit for the end of the Cold War. On page 592, he tries to give the credit to Kruschev due to his "liberal reforms" enacted in the late 50's/early 60's. I guess this is kind of a relative argument but sandwiched between Stalin and Brezhnev pretty much anyone would look like a liberal reformer, even "the Butcher of the Ukraine".
-On page 638, we get one of very few mentions of Soviet Communism. He states that the "false socialism of the Soviet system had failed". Remember, the first rule of Socialism is that Socialism that exists in reality is "false Socialism". Conversely, Socialism that exists in one's imagination is "real Socialism".
-On page 646, Zinn implies that the FBI started the Waco fire that killed the Branch Davidians. He's smart enough not to state "the FBI started the fire". Instead he implies it, saying: "the FBI attacked with rifle fire, tanks, and gas resulting in a fire...". This clearly insinuates that the fire was not started by the cultists inside the compound. He then quickly transitions into a gruesome description of some of the bodies. Anyone who makes it this far into the book should realize that it is not your intellect that is being appealed to. It is the reader's emotional response that matters to the author. It is imperative to his "social aims" that you view America (and more importantly capitalism) as a force for nothing but evil in the world and the biggest threat to mankind.
-On the very next page he talks of the need to release people from jail, and states "violent crime continued to increase" during the 90's. Again this is the exact opposite of the truth. The 1990's saw a historic drop in virtually every category of crime. Explanations as to why this happened vary, but to claim that it didn't happen is nothing more than a politically motivated fantasy.
- U.S. military intervention in Somalia was wrong. The U.S. not intervening in Rwanda was wrong .(pp. 654,655) He's trying to have it both ways. You can't cry "imperialism" in one case and call for the same thing in the other (unless it could help your political agenda I suppose).
-In keeping with the "left-wing despot love-fest" he states on page 657 that Cuba "had no bloody record of suppression". I'm sure a lot of folks in Miami would beg to differ. As would these human rights groups.
-Can anyone explain to me why the far-left is so in love with people who murder police officers? As I should have seen coming, on page 668 Zinn talks about cop-killer (and hero to fringe leftist morons everywhere) Mumia Abu Jamal. Zinn states: "Jamal was a respected black journalist who had been tried and sentenced under circumstances that suggested his race and his radicalism, as well as his persistent criticism of the Philadelphia police, were the reason he now sat on death row." Actually, the reason he now sits on death row is because he is more guilty than OJ and Mike Tyson combined. Like most Jamal supporters, Zinn shows no interest in the facts of the case. I will briefly describe them. Far from being "a respected black journalist", Jamal had been fired from a local radio station for poor attendance and was driving a taxi at the time of the murder. On the night of the murder, officer Daniel Faulkner was trying to arrest Jamal's brother when Jamal saw the scuffle and ran over and shot officer Faulkner in the back from about 12 inches away. Before officer Faulkner fell, he shot Jamal in the chest (also from about a foot away). Jamal then shot Faulkner 3 more times while he (Faulkner) was lying on the ground, before finishing him off with a 5th shot which struck officer Faulkner between the eyes, killing him instantly. Jamal then staggered over to a sidewalk a few feet away and sat down. When more officers arrived less than 90 seconds later, they found Faulkner dead, Jamal sitting on the sidewalk wearing and empty shoulder holster, and Jamal's brother yelling "I ain't got nothin' to do with this". Laying on the sidewalk next to Jamal was the murder weapon, a .38 special revolver legally registered to Mumia Abu Jamal and containing 5 empty shells in the cylinder. 4 eyewitnesses also testified that Jamal had killed Faulkner. So yeah, sounds like he totally got railroaded to me. He later became a left-wing celebrity due in large part to radio interviews conducted from prison. If you've never listened to one, he talks in this mellow, deep voice about the injustice of the white man's legal system and his sympathy for all the oppressed people of the world. So this gets played on college radio stations where black militants, delusional leftists, and spoiled little white girls here it (who by this point would no doubt be willing to have the guy's baby) decide they need to do everything they can to keep him from getting the lethal injection he so richly deserves.
Now that the history is out of the way we come to Zinn's vision for the future. This chapter is titled The Coming Revolt of the Guards. He lays out a vision of a Socialist utopia where we all rise up and "seize the reigns of power" (exactly what the hell that means and how it is accomplished are for someone else to figure out). By this point he wants his readers to feel so guilty about their nation's history that they're willing to embrace anything, even an ideology as destructive as Marxism. He never gives a good reason to embrace the only ideological system (political, religious, economic, etc.) in human history that can claim responsibility for 100,000,000 deaths in one century. The reason for this is that there isn't one. He merely spits out Socialist cliches so fast and furious that it seems as though they're being fired from a machine gun. A telling passage about the delusional nature of his goals is this one. "Work of some kind would be needed by everyone, including people now kept out of the workforce-children, old people, "handicapped" people. ... Everyone could share the routine but necessary jobs for a few hours a day, and leave most of the free time for enjoyment, creativity, labors of love, and yet produce enough for an equal and ample distribution of goods. Certain things would be abundant enough to be taken out of the money system and be available-free-to everyone: food, housing, health care, education, and transportation." The word that comes to mind is "fantasy". This kind of seems to rehash the old Communist canard that it hasn't worked because "it hasn't been tried by the right people". That's because the "right people" are a figment of your imagination. It always has started with grand visions and ended with famine, shortage, and brutal repression. This is lost on today's "Libertarian-Socialists" (a term that makes about as much sense as "carnivorous vegetarian"). But then, you see, people like Howard Zinn are luxury-Socialists who live in nice houses, have cushy jobs, and make big dollars speaking about the need to redistribute (presumably other people's) wealth. Practical Socialists, on the other hand, do the redistributing themselves and wind up in jail. These are the more consistent ones in my view. Not the ones who live in the fantasy world of Acadamia. If you'd like to see what this ideology does to people check out these pictures of a gathering in a large, (sort of) American city, and remember each face in these pictures is one family's tragedy.
I am now in search of a new "worst book". I'm not sure where I'll find something worse, maybe a Noam Chomsky book, or some 9/11 "truth" garbage.
-The biggest characteristic of the section of the book covering the period spanning from the late-1970's to present is the repeated and (of course) unsourced use of questionable statistics. I'm not going to go into too many of those since by the time I got to this section I had spent about two weeks on this book and wasn't about to spend hours researching each claim. So these (along with what I've presented so far) are by no means the only inaccuracies of the book. Some weren't interesting enough for me to include here and I'm sure others slipped past me unnoticed. Other parts don't fall into the category of "inaccuracy" but seem to me to be distorted by ideology.
-On page 573 he attacks the U.S. for its opposition to various "revolutionary movements" in the Caribbean. I think "Soviet and Cuban backed terrorist movements" might have been a more accurate term.
-On page 578 he claims that "Unemployment grew in the Reagan years". This is the exact opposite of the truth, unless when he says "grew" he means "dropped". When Reagan was inaugurated in January of '81 the unemployment rate was 7.5%. When Reagan left office in January of '89 the unemployment rate was 5.4%. Read it and weep.
-On page 585, Zinn praises the accomplishments of "a popular Sandinista movement" in Nicaragua and tells us how good they were for that country. He claims that the opposition Contras "seemed to have no popular support inside Nicaragua". I guess he's hoping none of us remember what happened when free elections were finally held in 1990. He also makes no mention of Soviet or Cuban military assistance to the Sandinistas. Apparently he feels the foreign interference was only on the part of the United States.
-He gives Reagan no credit for the end of the Cold War. On page 592, he tries to give the credit to Kruschev due to his "liberal reforms" enacted in the late 50's/early 60's. I guess this is kind of a relative argument but sandwiched between Stalin and Brezhnev pretty much anyone would look like a liberal reformer, even "the Butcher of the Ukraine".
-On page 638, we get one of very few mentions of Soviet Communism. He states that the "false socialism of the Soviet system had failed". Remember, the first rule of Socialism is that Socialism that exists in reality is "false Socialism". Conversely, Socialism that exists in one's imagination is "real Socialism".
-On page 646, Zinn implies that the FBI started the Waco fire that killed the Branch Davidians. He's smart enough not to state "the FBI started the fire". Instead he implies it, saying: "the FBI attacked with rifle fire, tanks, and gas resulting in a fire...". This clearly insinuates that the fire was not started by the cultists inside the compound. He then quickly transitions into a gruesome description of some of the bodies. Anyone who makes it this far into the book should realize that it is not your intellect that is being appealed to. It is the reader's emotional response that matters to the author. It is imperative to his "social aims" that you view America (and more importantly capitalism) as a force for nothing but evil in the world and the biggest threat to mankind.
-On the very next page he talks of the need to release people from jail, and states "violent crime continued to increase" during the 90's. Again this is the exact opposite of the truth. The 1990's saw a historic drop in virtually every category of crime. Explanations as to why this happened vary, but to claim that it didn't happen is nothing more than a politically motivated fantasy.
- U.S. military intervention in Somalia was wrong. The U.S. not intervening in Rwanda was wrong .(pp. 654,655) He's trying to have it both ways. You can't cry "imperialism" in one case and call for the same thing in the other (unless it could help your political agenda I suppose).
-In keeping with the "left-wing despot love-fest" he states on page 657 that Cuba "had no bloody record of suppression". I'm sure a lot of folks in Miami would beg to differ. As would these human rights groups.
-Can anyone explain to me why the far-left is so in love with people who murder police officers? As I should have seen coming, on page 668 Zinn talks about cop-killer (and hero to fringe leftist morons everywhere) Mumia Abu Jamal. Zinn states: "Jamal was a respected black journalist who had been tried and sentenced under circumstances that suggested his race and his radicalism, as well as his persistent criticism of the Philadelphia police, were the reason he now sat on death row." Actually, the reason he now sits on death row is because he is more guilty than OJ and Mike Tyson combined. Like most Jamal supporters, Zinn shows no interest in the facts of the case. I will briefly describe them. Far from being "a respected black journalist", Jamal had been fired from a local radio station for poor attendance and was driving a taxi at the time of the murder. On the night of the murder, officer Daniel Faulkner was trying to arrest Jamal's brother when Jamal saw the scuffle and ran over and shot officer Faulkner in the back from about 12 inches away. Before officer Faulkner fell, he shot Jamal in the chest (also from about a foot away). Jamal then shot Faulkner 3 more times while he (Faulkner) was lying on the ground, before finishing him off with a 5th shot which struck officer Faulkner between the eyes, killing him instantly. Jamal then staggered over to a sidewalk a few feet away and sat down. When more officers arrived less than 90 seconds later, they found Faulkner dead, Jamal sitting on the sidewalk wearing and empty shoulder holster, and Jamal's brother yelling "I ain't got nothin' to do with this". Laying on the sidewalk next to Jamal was the murder weapon, a .38 special revolver legally registered to Mumia Abu Jamal and containing 5 empty shells in the cylinder. 4 eyewitnesses also testified that Jamal had killed Faulkner. So yeah, sounds like he totally got railroaded to me. He later became a left-wing celebrity due in large part to radio interviews conducted from prison. If you've never listened to one, he talks in this mellow, deep voice about the injustice of the white man's legal system and his sympathy for all the oppressed people of the world. So this gets played on college radio stations where black militants, delusional leftists, and spoiled little white girls here it (who by this point would no doubt be willing to have the guy's baby) decide they need to do everything they can to keep him from getting the lethal injection he so richly deserves.
Now that the history is out of the way we come to Zinn's vision for the future. This chapter is titled The Coming Revolt of the Guards. He lays out a vision of a Socialist utopia where we all rise up and "seize the reigns of power" (exactly what the hell that means and how it is accomplished are for someone else to figure out). By this point he wants his readers to feel so guilty about their nation's history that they're willing to embrace anything, even an ideology as destructive as Marxism. He never gives a good reason to embrace the only ideological system (political, religious, economic, etc.) in human history that can claim responsibility for 100,000,000 deaths in one century. The reason for this is that there isn't one. He merely spits out Socialist cliches so fast and furious that it seems as though they're being fired from a machine gun. A telling passage about the delusional nature of his goals is this one. "Work of some kind would be needed by everyone, including people now kept out of the workforce-children, old people, "handicapped" people. ... Everyone could share the routine but necessary jobs for a few hours a day, and leave most of the free time for enjoyment, creativity, labors of love, and yet produce enough for an equal and ample distribution of goods. Certain things would be abundant enough to be taken out of the money system and be available-free-to everyone: food, housing, health care, education, and transportation." The word that comes to mind is "fantasy". This kind of seems to rehash the old Communist canard that it hasn't worked because "it hasn't been tried by the right people". That's because the "right people" are a figment of your imagination. It always has started with grand visions and ended with famine, shortage, and brutal repression. This is lost on today's "Libertarian-Socialists" (a term that makes about as much sense as "carnivorous vegetarian"). But then, you see, people like Howard Zinn are luxury-Socialists who live in nice houses, have cushy jobs, and make big dollars speaking about the need to redistribute (presumably other people's) wealth. Practical Socialists, on the other hand, do the redistributing themselves and wind up in jail. These are the more consistent ones in my view. Not the ones who live in the fantasy world of Acadamia. If you'd like to see what this ideology does to people check out these pictures of a gathering in a large, (sort of) American city, and remember each face in these pictures is one family's tragedy.
I am now in search of a new "worst book". I'm not sure where I'll find something worse, maybe a Noam Chomsky book, or some 9/11 "truth" garbage.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Worst Book: Part 2
Part 2: "You say you want a revolution?"
-On page 421 he states that "more than 100,000 people died in the fire-bombing of Dresden". The actual number is between 25,000 and 35,000. I guess that wasn't startling enough, hence the need to multiply it by 4. In my research I came to the conclusion that most people pushing a figure of 100,000 or higher were doing so to push a leftist agenda. And that anyone claiming over 200,000 is a Fucking Nazi.
-The World War II chapter was probably the worst in the book.
-His section on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is particularly bad. (pp 422-424) He paints a picture of a Japan that has been trying for months to surrender, and were already about to do so when the A-bombs were dropped. He also scoffs at the notion of how many lives an invasion would cost (as he gets ripped apart for here). I realize there is debate on this, but I haven't said anything truly inflammatory since I started this blog, so I'd like to take the opportunity to do so right now..... If ever there was a society that earned the right to have 2 nuclear weapons used against it it was Imperial Japan. Japan used chemical and biological weapons against China, killing somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 with biological agents, also evidenced by over 700,000 shells containing various chemical munitions they left behind in China that are still killing people. Hiroshima prefecture was the home of a poison gas factory (this gas was used to kill around 80,000 Chinese), and they were doing things that would almost make even the Nazis cringe. (for more info, google the phrases "unit 731", "unit 516","rape of Nanjing","Bataan death march","Japanese treatment of POW's", "comfort women", "Okunoshima", "battle of the Philippines", "Japanese forced labor", etc.) Also, given the most recent example the Allies had, the battle of Berlin in which the combined casualties on both sides exceeded 200,000, they had every reason to believe that an invasion of Japan would be just as brutal. Zinn claims that the only condition for the Japanese with regard to surrender was the continued rule of the emperor, omitting the other 3. 1) No occupation 2) No handing over of war criminals 3) They would be in charge of their own demobilization. Needless to say these were unacceptable. The Pottsdam declaration also contained a warning and terms of surrender, but it was rejected by the Japanese. Another thing that always stuck out to me in this debate is that generally if someone's already going to surrender...they probably would surrender after the first bomb was dropped. The fact that there even had to be a second bomb leads me to believe that they may have been willing to fight it out until total societal collapse was inevitable. If they had surrendered within a few months, how many Chinese, Koreans, etc would have died in that time frame? Does this make the bombings morally justified? Maybe not. But in my opinion it made them absolutely necessary. I understand and to some degree sympathise with those who disagree with me on this issue, but when facts are distorted or omitted from the argument that tends to fall flat with me. To frame this issue as innocent civilians dying in massive numbers vs. no innocent civilians dying is also inaccurate; the only question here was whether they were dying in Japan or in China, Indochina, Korea, etc.
-Also, on page 424 he states "the bombing of Nagasaki seems to have been scheduled in advance, and no one has ever been able to explain why it was dropped". He seems to think it was because the U.S. wanted to use Nagasaki as a guinea pig for the "fat man" bomb design (even though this design was very similar to the one tested in New Mexico). Actually Nagasaki was not the intended target when Bock'scar left the ground that day. The target was Kokura, but due to cloud cover they diverted to Nagasaki. Perhaps he means that the idea of a second bomb was scheduled well in advance but without citing any documentary evidence he doesn't back up this claim at all. As to why it was dropped, I think maybe it was because they didn't surrender after the first one was dropped. So again, we can debate Hiroshima but they had no one but themselves to blame for Nagasaki.
-His views on the Korean War plumb new depths in terms of delusion. He presents it as if the Chinese were just minding their own business until forced to enter the war. (p.428) One would be well served to remember who invaded who.
-On page 439 he tells us what a great guy his friend Fidel Castro is (was?). He set up "a nationwide system of education, of housing, of land distribution to landless peasants". No mention of firing squads or secret prisons. At this point it becomes obvious that he doesn't think it's enough just to bash the U.S. (which again is fine with me, he has the right to say any stupid thing he wants) but he has to glorify our enemies simply because they are our enemies, no matter how horrendous their crimes. More on Cuba still to come.
-His love for Ho Chi Minh seems to be unconditional. On page 469 he tells us about the Vietnamese declaration of independence (written by Ho) states that "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator....(you know the rest)" And I have no doubt that Zinn actually believes Ho Chi Minh believed in those things. The true hallmark of a "useful idiot".
-On the same page he states that the U.S. made "a maximum military effort" against a "nationalist revolutionary movement in a tiny, peasant country". Maximum military effort? Not even close. I would also point out that at the time Vietnam had a population of around 75 million, making it one of the 20 largest nations on earth. Here we see the first appearance of a pattern of using the word "revolutionary" to refer to Communist dictators. In Zinn's view a group of revolutionaries who implement a Constitutional government are dictators, but Soviet-backed dictators are "revolutionaries"
-Still on the same page he says " it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won." At this point I laughed so hard I almost dropped the book. The only human beings who "won" were the ones who escaped the living hell that country was when the "revolutionaries" took over. This chapter had a lot of promise. You'd think that a person writing an anti-American book would have a lot of good material to work with when it comes to Vietnam, but his unvarnished cheer leading and apparent glee over that regime's victory (rivaled only by fellow moonbat and left-wing totalitarian apologist Noam Chomsky) makes it hard to take him very seriously. The phrases "reeducation camps" and "boat people" appear no where in the text. The North Vietnamese are portrayed as true believers in freedom, justice and equality who never committed any atrocities. This makes it very hard for me to view the author as a guy who just wants peace.
-He spends about half the chapter (the "revolutionaries"=good half, not the U.S.=bad half) telling us how much better the Communists made life for people in the North, so I was kind of surprised when we reach the end of the war and he doesn't tell us how wonderfully things turned out once the "imperialists" were driven out. No mention of how happy people were, or the reconciliation and era of plenty that ensued. One can only dream about living in such a Socialist paradise I suppose.
-On page 551 he tells how an American cargo ship was captured in 1975 "in Cambodia, where a revolutionary regime had just taken power" He then describes how friendly they were to the crew. He doesn't say anything else (literally, not one word) about these "revolutionaries". He doesn't tell us how they were a group of nice people called the Khmer Rouge, or that they were led by a wonderful man named Pol Pot. They were true underdogs, unable to afford things like bulldozers or lots of bullets. Still they persevered. They made people dig their own graves and used iron bars to "club their brains out like baby seals". They overcame these disadvantages and managed to cause the deaths of somewhere between 1,200,000 and 1,700,000 people in just 4 years! That is an amazing accomplishment even by communist standards considering the short time frame and the fact that there were only 7.5 million people in the country to begin with.
-On page 554, he states as a fact that "[the CIA] had introduced African swine fever into Cuba in 1971, bringing disease and then slaughter to 500,000 pigs." I assume he means literal pigs, not capitalists. I had to search for hours to find any reliable source on this, one way or the other. After viewing about 500 Marxist, pro-Castro, and "CIA created AIDS" type websites (and the CIA "family jewels"). I finally found that this claim had been pretty much debunked in a study by Raymond Zilinskas. It was published in a paper called "Cuban Allegations of Biological Warfare by the United States: Assessing the Evidence" in Critical Reviews in Microbiology, 25:3 (1999) pp.173-227. So the question is who do I believe? 500 wack-job websites or one peer reviewed scientific journal? That's a pretty easy choice. The only thing I found to back up the claim was the word of Castro (always reliable) and an interview from the San Francisco Chronicle in the late seventies with an anonymous person who claimed to have worked for the CIA and delivered a vial of this stuff to some Cuban dissidents. I've got news for you. This nation's mental hospitals are full of people claiming they work for the CIA. To pass off this claim as though it were an established fact in an alleged history book seems to me, at best, negligent.
-The last point I will include in this section is this: on page 570 he rips Jimmy Carter because he "opposed federal funding to poor people who needed abortions". Needed? or wanted? This one wouldn't have bothered me in a book that wasn't being used in high schools across the country. But again, this at least pretends to be a history book. (Although the pretext becomes flimsier and flimsier the further the book moves along, by the time we reach the modern era it's painfully obvious that this is a run of the mill Marxist tract. And not a very good one at that.)
That's all for part 2. The next section will run from 1980 through our Socialist Wonderland future.
And believe me, it's equally inaccurate, but with more nuttiness thrown in.
In the mean time check out this parody of Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky doing audio commentary for the first Lord of the Rings movie.
-On page 421 he states that "more than 100,000 people died in the fire-bombing of Dresden". The actual number is between 25,000 and 35,000. I guess that wasn't startling enough, hence the need to multiply it by 4. In my research I came to the conclusion that most people pushing a figure of 100,000 or higher were doing so to push a leftist agenda. And that anyone claiming over 200,000 is a Fucking Nazi.
-The World War II chapter was probably the worst in the book.
-His section on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is particularly bad. (pp 422-424) He paints a picture of a Japan that has been trying for months to surrender, and were already about to do so when the A-bombs were dropped. He also scoffs at the notion of how many lives an invasion would cost (as he gets ripped apart for here). I realize there is debate on this, but I haven't said anything truly inflammatory since I started this blog, so I'd like to take the opportunity to do so right now..... If ever there was a society that earned the right to have 2 nuclear weapons used against it it was Imperial Japan. Japan used chemical and biological weapons against China, killing somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 with biological agents, also evidenced by over 700,000 shells containing various chemical munitions they left behind in China that are still killing people. Hiroshima prefecture was the home of a poison gas factory (this gas was used to kill around 80,000 Chinese), and they were doing things that would almost make even the Nazis cringe. (for more info, google the phrases "unit 731", "unit 516","rape of Nanjing","Bataan death march","Japanese treatment of POW's", "comfort women", "Okunoshima", "battle of the Philippines", "Japanese forced labor", etc.) Also, given the most recent example the Allies had, the battle of Berlin in which the combined casualties on both sides exceeded 200,000, they had every reason to believe that an invasion of Japan would be just as brutal. Zinn claims that the only condition for the Japanese with regard to surrender was the continued rule of the emperor, omitting the other 3. 1) No occupation 2) No handing over of war criminals 3) They would be in charge of their own demobilization. Needless to say these were unacceptable. The Pottsdam declaration also contained a warning and terms of surrender, but it was rejected by the Japanese. Another thing that always stuck out to me in this debate is that generally if someone's already going to surrender...they probably would surrender after the first bomb was dropped. The fact that there even had to be a second bomb leads me to believe that they may have been willing to fight it out until total societal collapse was inevitable. If they had surrendered within a few months, how many Chinese, Koreans, etc would have died in that time frame? Does this make the bombings morally justified? Maybe not. But in my opinion it made them absolutely necessary. I understand and to some degree sympathise with those who disagree with me on this issue, but when facts are distorted or omitted from the argument that tends to fall flat with me. To frame this issue as innocent civilians dying in massive numbers vs. no innocent civilians dying is also inaccurate; the only question here was whether they were dying in Japan or in China, Indochina, Korea, etc.
-Also, on page 424 he states "the bombing of Nagasaki seems to have been scheduled in advance, and no one has ever been able to explain why it was dropped". He seems to think it was because the U.S. wanted to use Nagasaki as a guinea pig for the "fat man" bomb design (even though this design was very similar to the one tested in New Mexico). Actually Nagasaki was not the intended target when Bock'scar left the ground that day. The target was Kokura, but due to cloud cover they diverted to Nagasaki. Perhaps he means that the idea of a second bomb was scheduled well in advance but without citing any documentary evidence he doesn't back up this claim at all. As to why it was dropped, I think maybe it was because they didn't surrender after the first one was dropped. So again, we can debate Hiroshima but they had no one but themselves to blame for Nagasaki.
-His views on the Korean War plumb new depths in terms of delusion. He presents it as if the Chinese were just minding their own business until forced to enter the war. (p.428) One would be well served to remember who invaded who.
-On page 439 he tells us what a great guy his friend Fidel Castro is (was?). He set up "a nationwide system of education, of housing, of land distribution to landless peasants". No mention of firing squads or secret prisons. At this point it becomes obvious that he doesn't think it's enough just to bash the U.S. (which again is fine with me, he has the right to say any stupid thing he wants) but he has to glorify our enemies simply because they are our enemies, no matter how horrendous their crimes. More on Cuba still to come.
-His love for Ho Chi Minh seems to be unconditional. On page 469 he tells us about the Vietnamese declaration of independence (written by Ho) states that "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator....(you know the rest)" And I have no doubt that Zinn actually believes Ho Chi Minh believed in those things. The true hallmark of a "useful idiot".
-On the same page he states that the U.S. made "a maximum military effort" against a "nationalist revolutionary movement in a tiny, peasant country". Maximum military effort? Not even close. I would also point out that at the time Vietnam had a population of around 75 million, making it one of the 20 largest nations on earth. Here we see the first appearance of a pattern of using the word "revolutionary" to refer to Communist dictators. In Zinn's view a group of revolutionaries who implement a Constitutional government are dictators, but Soviet-backed dictators are "revolutionaries"
-Still on the same page he says " it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won." At this point I laughed so hard I almost dropped the book. The only human beings who "won" were the ones who escaped the living hell that country was when the "revolutionaries" took over. This chapter had a lot of promise. You'd think that a person writing an anti-American book would have a lot of good material to work with when it comes to Vietnam, but his unvarnished cheer leading and apparent glee over that regime's victory (rivaled only by fellow moonbat and left-wing totalitarian apologist Noam Chomsky) makes it hard to take him very seriously. The phrases "reeducation camps" and "boat people" appear no where in the text. The North Vietnamese are portrayed as true believers in freedom, justice and equality who never committed any atrocities. This makes it very hard for me to view the author as a guy who just wants peace.
-He spends about half the chapter (the "revolutionaries"=good half, not the U.S.=bad half) telling us how much better the Communists made life for people in the North, so I was kind of surprised when we reach the end of the war and he doesn't tell us how wonderfully things turned out once the "imperialists" were driven out. No mention of how happy people were, or the reconciliation and era of plenty that ensued. One can only dream about living in such a Socialist paradise I suppose.
-On page 551 he tells how an American cargo ship was captured in 1975 "in Cambodia, where a revolutionary regime had just taken power" He then describes how friendly they were to the crew. He doesn't say anything else (literally, not one word) about these "revolutionaries". He doesn't tell us how they were a group of nice people called the Khmer Rouge, or that they were led by a wonderful man named Pol Pot. They were true underdogs, unable to afford things like bulldozers or lots of bullets. Still they persevered. They made people dig their own graves and used iron bars to "club their brains out like baby seals". They overcame these disadvantages and managed to cause the deaths of somewhere between 1,200,000 and 1,700,000 people in just 4 years! That is an amazing accomplishment even by communist standards considering the short time frame and the fact that there were only 7.5 million people in the country to begin with.
-On page 554, he states as a fact that "[the CIA] had introduced African swine fever into Cuba in 1971, bringing disease and then slaughter to 500,000 pigs." I assume he means literal pigs, not capitalists. I had to search for hours to find any reliable source on this, one way or the other. After viewing about 500 Marxist, pro-Castro, and "CIA created AIDS" type websites (and the CIA "family jewels"). I finally found that this claim had been pretty much debunked in a study by Raymond Zilinskas. It was published in a paper called "Cuban Allegations of Biological Warfare by the United States: Assessing the Evidence" in Critical Reviews in Microbiology, 25:3 (1999) pp.173-227. So the question is who do I believe? 500 wack-job websites or one peer reviewed scientific journal? That's a pretty easy choice. The only thing I found to back up the claim was the word of Castro (always reliable) and an interview from the San Francisco Chronicle in the late seventies with an anonymous person who claimed to have worked for the CIA and delivered a vial of this stuff to some Cuban dissidents. I've got news for you. This nation's mental hospitals are full of people claiming they work for the CIA. To pass off this claim as though it were an established fact in an alleged history book seems to me, at best, negligent.
-The last point I will include in this section is this: on page 570 he rips Jimmy Carter because he "opposed federal funding to poor people who needed abortions". Needed? or wanted? This one wouldn't have bothered me in a book that wasn't being used in high schools across the country. But again, this at least pretends to be a history book. (Although the pretext becomes flimsier and flimsier the further the book moves along, by the time we reach the modern era it's painfully obvious that this is a run of the mill Marxist tract. And not a very good one at that.)
That's all for part 2. The next section will run from 1980 through our Socialist Wonderland future.
And believe me, it's equally inaccurate, but with more nuttiness thrown in.
In the mean time check out this parody of Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky doing audio commentary for the first Lord of the Rings movie.
The Worst Book I Have Ever Read.
(Note: this is another massive post. But it's not every day that I read a 700 page Marxist tract. For that reason I have split it into three parts)
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, not their own facts."-Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
I have recently read A People's History of the United States, by Comrade Howard Zinn. I may have read a worse book at some point in my life, but I would be hard pressed to think of one. I normally wouldn't waste my time with something this far out of the mainstream, but since this is a very popular text in the political indoctrination centers we call public schools I thought I would check it out. I want to point out up front that my problems with this book don't stem as much from the author's politics as they do from the approach he takes toward history. I have just as much objection to revisionist historians like the ones found in the religious right. My objections also don't stem from patriotism or a naive belief that the U.S. has never done horrendous things. My objections mainly have to do with presenting a Marxist (not liberal, Marxist) political tract as a history book. Dr. Zinn admits this in the opening chapter of the book and makes no apologies for it, believing that it is more important to "inspire social change" than to deal accurately with the events of history. He fits in with a common postmodern dis-enlightenment school of thought that objectivity is a myth, and thus it is okay to bend events to suit your ideological predispositions rather than vice versa.(People have always done this, they just don't even bother to pretend any more.) He also presents all historical events as being caused by class struggle, thus finding a simple overarching "magic bullet" theory to explain even the most nebulous and complex historical events. Events are virtually never placed in context, are often distorted, opinion is presented as fact, and in several cases factual claims are made that are patently false. Every formal logical fallacy I know of makes an appearance in the book: reductio ad absurdum, appeal to popular opinion, straw-man, false dichotomies, etc. I should say that this could have been a good book if he had been willing to leave well enough alone. The chapters on the civil rights movement, and some of the sections on slavery were very good, and I found the section about the American war against the Philippines to be pretty good. Also, before ripping the book I should give credit where credit is due and say that I appreciate Dr. Zinn's work in the civil rights movement, dating back to before most Americans knew there was a civil rights movement. I also appreciate his service to the nation in World War II. That being said here is a list of things I didn't like about the book. (This is by no means a complete list. Only the things that jumped out to me enough to write them down and research them.) I am also including a number of links to resources that refute some of the various claims, and wherever possible I have chosen sources from the left side of the political spectrum. All page numbers are from the 2003 edition of the book.
- The major problem that appears throughout the book (and one which is, to me, unforgivable) is the complete absence of source citations. Often something is claimed as a fact with no support whatsoever. If I had handed in a paper like that during my days as a poli. sci. major at Western Michigan I would have received a big fat F. Dubious claims and statistics are presented throughout the book in this manner with nothing to back them up. This is probably more confusing to the reader who is not very familiar with American history (which honestly seems like the type of person this book is targeted at), when coupled with the way his opinions are consistently presented as fact no matter how outlandish. This also made researching the claims that were questionable enough to jump out at me much more difficult. I spent more time researching dubious claims than I did actually reading the book. (I've been exposed to more moonbat websites of communists, Fucking Nazis, aids-conspiracy types, etc. in the last two weeks than in my entire life.) Almost the only time he tells where he got certain information is when he directly quotes another author (The authors he quotes are overwhelmingly Socialists). There is a bibliography which reads like a who's who of leftist whack-jobs (Chomsky,etc.), but he doesn't ever tell what claim came from whom. For example, on page 49 he says "A historian" concluded that "in 1770 1 percent of Boston owned 44 percent of the wealth". Really? What was the name of the historian? What was the specific source material?
-Throughout the book "the rich" and "the powerful" are portrayed as a monolithic entity responsible for all of the ills that fall upon "the people". This oversimplification really sums up the message of the book as a whole.
-Prior to the American revolution, nothing happened except slavery and genocide. No decisions were made by anyone apparently that did not have slavery and genocide as the intended outcome. And of course, slavery and genocide spring from capitalist greed.
-On page 59 he states that the founding fathers "created the most effective system of national control devised in modern times" when referring to the constitution. He presents the constitution as a document designed to protect the interests only of rich white men as well. This is sheer idiocy and crosses over the line into delusional. The best way to control the population and expand the power of government is to write a document limiting the powers of said government? It would have been far more effective to point out the ways in which the constitution has not been lived up to over the years, but instead he indulges in conspiracy theory. He pretty much restates the position of early 20th century socialist historian Charles Beard, which is pretty well dismantled by progressive author and Air America host Thom Hartmann here (he bashes Bush at the same time, so this article has something for everyone).
-On page 85 he states "George Washington was the richest man in America." Nope. He wasn't even the richest man in Virginia. It would fit in great with Marxist mythology if he was though, wouldn't it?
-In a chapter about the treatment of women in the early 1800's he makes no comparison between the U.S. and other societies of the same era. Sexism is presented as being almost unique to the United States. Where comparisons are made they are made between the America of 200 years ago and the America of today. He also seems to be linking sexism to capitalism, as though non-capitalist societies do not oppress women. Some of the stories are interesting though.
-Lincoln gets no credit for freeing the slaves. The Civil War was all about greed.
-An entire chapter expounds on the horrors of how some people became rich in the late 1800's (of course because they all exploited "the people". On page 263, philanthropy is presented as a way for the elite to strengthen their control by producing an army of middle-men who would protect "the system". It is a recurring theme that any time the government does something good it is just a desperate measure intended to shore up its control of the proletariat.
-He suggests that the shelling of Veracruz in 1914 was a ruse to divert the nation's attention from labor unrest, including a miners strike that was going on in Colorado at the time. (p.357) Again all events must be connected by a unifying force and any events occurring simultaneously must be directly related.
-On page 387 he states that the onset of the Great Depression showed that the capitalist system is "by its nature unsound" and "a sick an undependable system". As opposed to the plan of starvation that is Marxism, of course
-I'm not sure if the chapters got worse as I got closer to the modern era, or if it just became easier to spot inaccuracies and unsound logic as it got into events I was more familiar with. In the next section I look at the WW2- Vietnam eras. In the mean time check out this hilarious site.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, not their own facts."-Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
I have recently read A People's History of the United States, by Comrade Howard Zinn. I may have read a worse book at some point in my life, but I would be hard pressed to think of one. I normally wouldn't waste my time with something this far out of the mainstream, but since this is a very popular text in the political indoctrination centers we call public schools I thought I would check it out. I want to point out up front that my problems with this book don't stem as much from the author's politics as they do from the approach he takes toward history. I have just as much objection to revisionist historians like the ones found in the religious right. My objections also don't stem from patriotism or a naive belief that the U.S. has never done horrendous things. My objections mainly have to do with presenting a Marxist (not liberal, Marxist) political tract as a history book. Dr. Zinn admits this in the opening chapter of the book and makes no apologies for it, believing that it is more important to "inspire social change" than to deal accurately with the events of history. He fits in with a common postmodern dis-enlightenment school of thought that objectivity is a myth, and thus it is okay to bend events to suit your ideological predispositions rather than vice versa.(People have always done this, they just don't even bother to pretend any more.) He also presents all historical events as being caused by class struggle, thus finding a simple overarching "magic bullet" theory to explain even the most nebulous and complex historical events. Events are virtually never placed in context, are often distorted, opinion is presented as fact, and in several cases factual claims are made that are patently false. Every formal logical fallacy I know of makes an appearance in the book: reductio ad absurdum, appeal to popular opinion, straw-man, false dichotomies, etc. I should say that this could have been a good book if he had been willing to leave well enough alone. The chapters on the civil rights movement, and some of the sections on slavery were very good, and I found the section about the American war against the Philippines to be pretty good. Also, before ripping the book I should give credit where credit is due and say that I appreciate Dr. Zinn's work in the civil rights movement, dating back to before most Americans knew there was a civil rights movement. I also appreciate his service to the nation in World War II. That being said here is a list of things I didn't like about the book. (This is by no means a complete list. Only the things that jumped out to me enough to write them down and research them.) I am also including a number of links to resources that refute some of the various claims, and wherever possible I have chosen sources from the left side of the political spectrum. All page numbers are from the 2003 edition of the book.
- The major problem that appears throughout the book (and one which is, to me, unforgivable) is the complete absence of source citations. Often something is claimed as a fact with no support whatsoever. If I had handed in a paper like that during my days as a poli. sci. major at Western Michigan I would have received a big fat F. Dubious claims and statistics are presented throughout the book in this manner with nothing to back them up. This is probably more confusing to the reader who is not very familiar with American history (which honestly seems like the type of person this book is targeted at), when coupled with the way his opinions are consistently presented as fact no matter how outlandish. This also made researching the claims that were questionable enough to jump out at me much more difficult. I spent more time researching dubious claims than I did actually reading the book. (I've been exposed to more moonbat websites of communists, Fucking Nazis, aids-conspiracy types, etc. in the last two weeks than in my entire life.) Almost the only time he tells where he got certain information is when he directly quotes another author (The authors he quotes are overwhelmingly Socialists). There is a bibliography which reads like a who's who of leftist whack-jobs (Chomsky,etc.), but he doesn't ever tell what claim came from whom. For example, on page 49 he says "A historian" concluded that "in 1770 1 percent of Boston owned 44 percent of the wealth". Really? What was the name of the historian? What was the specific source material?
-Throughout the book "the rich" and "the powerful" are portrayed as a monolithic entity responsible for all of the ills that fall upon "the people". This oversimplification really sums up the message of the book as a whole.
-Prior to the American revolution, nothing happened except slavery and genocide. No decisions were made by anyone apparently that did not have slavery and genocide as the intended outcome. And of course, slavery and genocide spring from capitalist greed.
-On page 59 he states that the founding fathers "created the most effective system of national control devised in modern times" when referring to the constitution. He presents the constitution as a document designed to protect the interests only of rich white men as well. This is sheer idiocy and crosses over the line into delusional. The best way to control the population and expand the power of government is to write a document limiting the powers of said government? It would have been far more effective to point out the ways in which the constitution has not been lived up to over the years, but instead he indulges in conspiracy theory. He pretty much restates the position of early 20th century socialist historian Charles Beard, which is pretty well dismantled by progressive author and Air America host Thom Hartmann here (he bashes Bush at the same time, so this article has something for everyone).
-On page 85 he states "George Washington was the richest man in America." Nope. He wasn't even the richest man in Virginia. It would fit in great with Marxist mythology if he was though, wouldn't it?
-In a chapter about the treatment of women in the early 1800's he makes no comparison between the U.S. and other societies of the same era. Sexism is presented as being almost unique to the United States. Where comparisons are made they are made between the America of 200 years ago and the America of today. He also seems to be linking sexism to capitalism, as though non-capitalist societies do not oppress women. Some of the stories are interesting though.
-Lincoln gets no credit for freeing the slaves. The Civil War was all about greed.
-An entire chapter expounds on the horrors of how some people became rich in the late 1800's (of course because they all exploited "the people". On page 263, philanthropy is presented as a way for the elite to strengthen their control by producing an army of middle-men who would protect "the system". It is a recurring theme that any time the government does something good it is just a desperate measure intended to shore up its control of the proletariat.
-He suggests that the shelling of Veracruz in 1914 was a ruse to divert the nation's attention from labor unrest, including a miners strike that was going on in Colorado at the time. (p.357) Again all events must be connected by a unifying force and any events occurring simultaneously must be directly related.
-On page 387 he states that the onset of the Great Depression showed that the capitalist system is "by its nature unsound" and "a sick an undependable system". As opposed to the plan of starvation that is Marxism, of course
-I'm not sure if the chapters got worse as I got closer to the modern era, or if it just became easier to spot inaccuracies and unsound logic as it got into events I was more familiar with. In the next section I look at the WW2- Vietnam eras. In the mean time check out this hilarious site.
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