Sigh. Life without a political campaign to obsess over is so empty, somehow.

At least there’s still the Coleman/Franken recount (holding the possibility of Senate Democrat #59). Minnesota Public Radio has a website with some fun examples of challenged ballots from the ongoing recount, including this one:

More on that from Nate Silver: Minnesota: Is Franken Being Too Nice?

I was holding off posting this, but after catching up on the weeks posts and the resulting discussions I decided to go ahead.

Now it may seem that committing your loyalty to Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo is a world apart from committing to a political or religious stance – after all, the stakes of politics are the leadership and government of society and the world, and the stakes of metaphysical belief can seem even more serious to both atheists and theists. Why should videogame fanboys be so invested in their loyalty to one platform over another?

Remember that the parts of the brain activated in partisan response are those involved in assessing risk and reward, and cognitive dissonance is involved in protecting one’s prior decisions against disconfirming evidence. The reward in the context of videogame players is the enjoyment they will earn from playing the games on the various console systems, often in the form of fiero (triumph over adversity) – that hot and addictive emotional reward from overcoming immense challenge – but this is far from the only form of reward to be found in play. The decision each fanboy has made at some point in the past is which console will give them the greatest emotional reward from play – and for loyalists who stick with one console manufacturer from generation to generation, this decision was made a long time ago.

Take one tiny leap to replace the game manufacturers with political parties, and I feel the resolutely partisan arguments are explained.

from the site iHobo

Michael Hastings travelled with the Giuliani, Huckabee, and Clinton campaigns, working on a post-election story for Newsweek. In the end, he couldn’t handle it: Hack: Confessions of a political journalist.

This article sums up my biggest disappointment when it comes to the political blogosphere. Perhaps it is destined to be so, because anyone passionate enough to devoted the time and energy in keeping up with a daily post-count of items for the consumption of their readers is obviously going to be passionate about a candidate and their ideology as well. And in the end, many bloggers are seduced by the siren song of traffic volume, and maintaining links with other like-minded sites. It all could be an awesome source of checks and balance to our political system. We still see examples of real research and analysis that can bring real content to an issue. But instead it is only a shadow of what it could be. Truth is parceled out depending upon who, or what cause, it hampers or helps. Counter-facts are discounted, often disingeniously, in order to make sure one side wins the day, until the bulk of the blogosphere becomes extensions of their party’s campaign website. Political campaign operatives drop suggestions to favored bloggers and they do the dirty work of spreading a line of attack while campaign officials can maintain deniability and still get their message out.

The best recourse? I find it is to read respected blogs and media sources across the spectrum, keep an open mind, and realize the truth is slippery and can come from some unexpected places.

I’m curious what my favorite “thinking conservative” (Craig, I mean) thinks about this: Hell just froze over.

I’ve been following some of the back-and-forth in the comments on my last-but-one post, and I gather that Craig thinks Obama should have been more forthcoming about the real nature of his relationship with Bill Ayers. My own take on that is that Obama gave it as much forthcomingness as it deserved, back when Hillary raised it in the primary, and I don’t see why he’s obligated to say more about it now. But I’m willing to set that aside, and agree to disagree. Because I think we have more important things to talk about.

Craig, I wonder how you feel about the tactics being used at the McCain and Palin rallies over the last few days. I wonder if your views are similar to those of the “thinking conservatives” that Mills talks about in the piece I linked to above. And mostly, I wonder if you believe a case can be made that, given the realities of what the two campaigns have been saying lately, John McCain and Sarah Palin really are the best choice to lead the country for the next four years.

I’m willing to give such a case my careful, honest, sober consideration. And of all the people I can think of who might be willing to make it, I think you’re probably my best shot at getting it.

I missed this article when it first appeared in The New Yorker last February: Paul Kramer’s The Water Cure. It’s a review of the politics that (briefly) swirled around our government’s previous use of waterboarding as an instrument of state policy (during the Phillipine-American War, fought from 1899 to 1902).

It’s a depressingly familiar story.

I’ve been caught up in the emotion of the presidential campaign, but over my last few commutes I went back and re-listened to Lies.com podcasts 22 through 28, and it reminded me of how big a mess the new President Obama is going to have to clean up.

Sigh. Once again, the difference between theory and practice turns out to be bigger in practice than in theory. Or, put another way, despite knowing as an intellectual matter that the McCain campaign has nowhere to go but down in terms of strategy, it’s still something of an emotional shock to see McCain and Palin engaged in what actually looks like a premeditated attempt to incite violence toward their opponent. First, check out McCain’s reaction when he asks, “Who is the real Barack Obama?” and a supporter shouts back “Terrorist!” loud enough for the microphone to pick it up:

There’s also this from Dana Milbank’s piece in the WaPo on Palin’s appearance yesterday: In Fla., Palin Goes for the Rough Stuff as Audience Boos Obama.

“And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, ‘launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'” she continued.

“Boooo!” the crowd repeated.

“Kill him!” proposed one man in the audience.

Palin continued with the same approach today: Obama Hatred On Display Again At Palin Rally, Supporter Screams “Treason!”

“[Obama] said, too, that our troops in Afghanistan are ‘air raiding villages and killing civilians,'” Palin said, mischaracterizing a 2007 remark by Obama. “I hope Americans know that is not what our brave men and women in uniform are doing in Afghanistan. The U.S. military is fighting terrorism and protecting us and protecting our freedom.”

Shortly afterward, a male member of the crowd in Jacksonville, Florida, yelled “treason!” loudly enough to be picked up by television microphones.

There’s video of the incident at the site if you follow the link.

So, what am I saying here? Politics famously ain’t beanbag; isn’t it fair for McCain and Palin to question Obama’s past associations and statements, even if they do so (as they are here) in a misleading manner?

Yes. But.

But the first: Even if you’re willing to believe that McCain and Palin weren’t intentionally provoking this reaction at first (which I guess I’ll give you, just for the sake of argument), they now have no excuse not to be aware of it. They are inciting crowds to express violent threats against Obama, and they know it. The question now is, will they continue to incite those threats?

But the second: What they’re doing here is being done in a particular context. McCain and Palin, by consciously choosing a strategy that involves whipping their most-ardent supporters into a violent frenzy, are opening a can of whoop-ass that taps into the ugliest currents of racist violence in our nation’s history. And yeah, I realize that having put all his chips in, having turned his campaign over to the same people who savaged him in 2000, having chosen to hazard his honor and reputation, McCain is not going to stop now. He’s going to go all the way, even if that means inciting what is, in essence, a lynch-mob mentality on the part of his followers.

But what does that really mean? Given the problems facing the nation, this sort of ugliness seems to me to be very unlikely to persuade the remaining persuadable voters. If anything, it is going to accelerate the movement of undecideds away from McCain. The only way I can see this whip-up-the-base strategy delivering the presidency to McCain is if he actually succeeds in inciting some crazed follower to assassinate Obama.

McCain knows those guys are out there. We all know it. We remember this incident from the DNC:

So, the ball’s in your court, McCain. Is this really the way you want to win the presidency? Are you really willing to sink that low? Because if you are, I’d like to suggest that the presidency, achieved in that manner, would not be worth the cost.

It’s an immutable law of political theater: It’s not the crime that gets you into the most trouble. It’s the (attempted) cover-up.

Let’s roll the tape. The fun part starts around 2:58 from the beginning:

Now look at what McCain’s foreign policy advisor, Randy Sheunemann, is saying:

Asked to explain McCain’s apparent shift in tone and position since April, Scheunemann gave almost no ground.

“In this week’s interview, Senator McCain did not rule in or rule out a White House meeting with President Zapatero, a NATO ally,” he said in an e-mail. “If elected, he will meet with a wide range of allies in a wide variety of venues but is not going to spell out scheduling and meeting location specifics in advance. He also is not going to make reckless promises to meet America’s adversaries. It’s called keeping your options open, unlike Senator Obama, who has publicly committed to meeting some of the world’s worst dictators unconditionally in his first year in office.”

Discussion:

Kevin Drum: No Mas:

Conventional wisdom said it was just a minor gaffe. Or maybe John McCain didn’t hear the question right during his radio interview with WSUA 1260 in Miami yesterday. But no: it turns out that, as a matter of policy, McCain refuses to commit to meeting with the prime minister of Spain if he’s elected president.

Joshua Marshall: Chin-scratching bigtime on McCain’s Zapatero Gaffe:

Whether it was because of ignorance, confusion or inability to understand what the interviewer was saying, McCain clearly didn’t understand what he was being asked. And rather than stop and say, I didn’t understand your question, could you restate it?, (Or, who are you referring to?) he decided to wing it and assumed he was being asked a question about another Latin American strong man bad guy. This is simply the only credible explanation that takes account of all the evidence. I think it’s a generous read to conclude that the only issue was that McCain couldn’t understand the interviewer’s accent. But it’s definitely possible. Even that, though, puts McCain in a pretty bad light.

Equally bad, Randy Scheunemann would rather further inflame Spanish-American relations by ridiculously insisting that McCain knew exactly what he saying than admit the obvious — that he didn’t understand the question. It wouldn’t be that surprising. But given McCain has premised his whole campaign on foreign policy experience they’ve clearly decided it would simply be too damaging to admit he was either a) confused, b) ignorant or c) reckless enough to spout off aggressive remarks when he didn’t even know who he was being asked about.

hilzoy: McCain Chose Vanity:

Think about it. There are a lot of things that the campaign could have said about this incident, many of which are more plausible than what Scheunemann actually said. For instance, they could have said that McCain simply misheard the interviewer, and that of course he would be more than happy to meet with the Prime Minister of Spain. This might well be true; it would certainly be a lot more plausible than saying that his comments about leaders in the hemisphere were somehow responsive to a question about the Prime Minister of Spain. But it would have involved admitting a mistake, and possibly suggesting to some voters age-related concerns like hearing loss.

There are two basic responses to this predicament. First, admit the mistake anyways. Admitting mistakes is tough, but this one is pretty easy to minimize, and probably won’t be that big a deal. In any case, the only thing that really suffers any kind of damage at all is McCain’s vanity. Second, insist that McCain knew who the interviewer was talking about, and meant exactly what he said. In this case, you don’t have to admit error; you just have to say that you really did mean to dis a foreign leader whom we are committed, by treaty, to defend, whose troops are presently fighting in Afghanistan, and whom we have absolutely no earthly reason not to have good relations with.

It’s a choice between vanity and the interests of the country. McCain chose vanity. That’s an important thing to know.

Thanks to Hiro for pointing this out to me: History of the browser user-agent string.

In the beginning there was NCSA Mosaic, and Mosaic called itself NCSA_Mosaic/2.0 (Windows 3.1), and Mosaic displayed pictures along with text, and there was much rejoicing.

I’m currently getting ready to go do some volunteering in my son’s 5th grade class, teaching them some basic Web stuff, and thinking back to those early days has me feeling nostalgic. Anyway, I really liked this. It builds to a nice climax.

Summing up the latest spin from the McCain campaign and its supporters, Jon Stewart gives us this:

What’s that definition of a “gaffe”? “When a public figure accidentally tells the truth”?

Check out conservative pundits Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan from earlier today, being interviewed by Chuck Todd of MSNBC, and then, after he cuts away, their audio stays live, and you get to hear what bigwigs on the right are actually saying to each other (and to their chums in the evil “liberal media”) about the Palin situation when the little people aren’t watching:

Transcript:

Chuck Todd: Mike Murphy, lots of free advice, we’ll see if Steve Schmidt and the boys were watching. We’ll find out on your blackberry. Tonight voters will get their chance to hear from Sarah Palin and she will get the chance to show voters she’s the right woman for the job Up next, one man who’s already convinced and he’ll us why Gov. Jon Huntsman.
(cut away)

Peggy Noonan: Yeah.

Mike Murphy: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor world: Engler, Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. I mean, these guys — this is how you win a Texas race, just run it up. And it’s not gonna work. And —

PN: It’s over.

MM: Still McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.

CT: I also think the Palin pick is insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too.

PN: Saw Kay this morning.

CT: Yeah, she’s never looked comfortable about this —

MM: They’re all bummed out.

CT: Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

PN: The most qualified? No! I think they went for this — excuse me– political bullshit about narratives —

CT: Yeah they went to a narrative.

MM: I totally agree.

PN: Every time the Republicans do that, because that’s not where they live and it’s not what they’re good at, they blow it.

MM: You know what’s really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical.

CT: This is cynical, and as you called it, gimmicky.

MM: Yeah.

Writing about the coverage of the Palin selection, Dan Froomkin of the WaPo says:

One of the problems with modern political journalism is that when something manifestly absurd takes place, as long as there are people willing to argue both sides, our top reporters feel obliged to treat it as deserving of serious debate…

What possible reason is there to nominate someone so lacking in gravitas for the vice presidency? In this case, of course, it couldn’t be more obvious that Palin’s selection has everything to do with politics and nothing to do with governance. Palin’s gender and her hard-right credentials were clearly seen by McCain’s top advisers as just what the campaign needed.

Whether that was a clever or suicidal political calculation remains to be seen. It’s certainly looking more and more like it was a reckless one. But it doesn’t just strain credulity – it pulverizes it – to suggest that she is the best and most qualified person McCain could find for the job.

It’s a tremendous failure of political reporting that such patent spin from McCain supporters is being treated like a supportable position. By contrast, it seems to me that anyone suggesting that Palin was selected for anything other than political reasons should be considered presumptively a liar from this point on.

I’m not sure what category to put this in, but I found this article on the war in Georgia by the “War Nerd” pretty fascinating on a couple levels.

First, it’s an interesting realpolitik-perspective summary of just what’s going on there, which — correct or not, I don’t know enough to say — is the sort of thing I’ve been wanting, since the reasons and timeline of that conflict have not at all been clear to me. Perhaps somebody else knows better, but his analysis at least has a ring of truthiness to it.

But second, apparently this War Nerd Guy — a military obsessive with an amoral, but well-informed sense of history, and a lame white-collar day job — is apparently a complete fabrication of some writer, who uses him to write about this stuff with a certain bent… sort of like “fake Steve Jobs”, who brings a certain fake-but-true perspective to Apple and its fandom. I find this fascinating because, well, if I ignore my more higher judgment about what I should be taking pleasure in, I know what he’s talking about: this is sort of the perfect adolescent armchair military enthusiast war, with clear-cut historical precedent and textbook military tactics. I’m not sure what that says about the writer (or me), but it’s worth a read anyway.

I just came across these US military patches. As a graphic artist I was really interested in the really high level of humor these displayed. I don’t see anything here as portraying any kind of contestable sentiment, but rather wondering if the humor implied is the result of coping with a stressful situation.

Anyway, where they are.

So, I’ve finished Julia’s and my entry in the Weepies’ “Hideaway” video contest. It’s not very relevant to Lies.com’s usual subject matter, but if you want to see what I’ve been doing for the last month or so that has helped keep me from posting the usual inanity here, you can check it out:

Some totally good news, for once. Black Mountain were on Conan last night. I cannot say enough good things about these guys, check it out.

Clip

How about some Sports-related lies, for a change of pace.

Former BFF’s Brian McNamee and Roger Clemens aired their tiff on Capital Hill yesterday. Now, this circus has plenty of good sideshows, such as the creation of new words (misremembers), and a race to see who has the dumbest attorneys (i.e., allowing Clemens and his legal team to talk to a witness before giving access to the government investigators; suggesting that President Bush will pardon Clemens, despite not being charged with anything (yet), due to “the corrupt proclivities of his (Bush’s) administration.”). With lawyers like that, I might opt for self-representation.

I prefer to focus on a couple of other things. The media is getting a lot of play with their take on the deposition by Roger’s buddy, Andy Pettitte. The message seems to be that Andy really hung Roger out to dry with some very damming statements. ‘Pettitte confirms that Roger used HGH’ and so on. The problem is, it’s not true.

Note to the media: let’s do something creative, like, for example, actually read Pettitte’s deposition! Yes, Andy says that he recalled back in 1999 that Roger mentioned using HGH. He also very clearly said he doesn’t remember anything specific about the conversation itself, other than taking away the idea that Roger said he used HGH. In 2005, during the Congressional investigations about steroids in baseball, he asked Roger what he would do if reporters asked Roger about drug use. When Roger acted puzzled, Andy relayed his prior conversation with Roger about HGH. Roger said that he wasn’t talking about himself during that earlier conversation, he was referring to his wife. Andy stated that from that point on he “kinda felt that I might have misunderstood him.” When the deposition questioner asked, “Do you think its likely that you did misunderstand?”, Andy said that he “was under the impression” that Roger had told him that he had used HGH, but after the 2005 conversation, “I took it for that, that I misunderstood him”. Even Roger’s half-witted lawyers could take that tentative “accusation” and make it worthless. And yet, the media would have you believe that Pettitte hammered his buddy with a devastating accusation. Please.

Next, many talking heads in the media are at a loss for just why McNamee would want to discredit Clemens. Again, the deposition provides at least one possible scenario. Pettitte talks about a time in 2003 or 2004 when he was working out with Brian and he seemed very angry. It seems that Brian was trying to work out a deal with a vitamin company and get Roger and Andy to endorse the product, since they both used it. Brian was in line to get some money for arranging this deal, but Roger wanted too much compensation for his endorsement and it appeared to block the deal from happening. It was in this agitated state that Brian told Andy that Roger had used steroids. Now, you could say that Brian was going to use some dirt on Clemens to get back at him. Or, you could say the Brian was going to create some dirt on Clemons to get back at him. But at least there appears to be a vendetta angle that could be at work here.

Also, there appears to be a couple of other stories in which Brian dropped Andy’s name, and Andy could not confirm their accuracy. Both were alleged conversations that involved Roger and steroid talk. Brian said Andy was present for the conversations but Andy had no recollection of them. Bad memory or overreaching storytelling?

Finally, some people were questioning why Pettitte got a pass on appearing at this dog and pony show. My guess, as Pettitte alluded to in his deposition, was that he doesn’t want an aspect of his family’s personal life (i.e. his father’s series of medical and mental issues) to be potentially discussed on a national stage. Andy had mentioned, during the questioning, that his father provided him with some HGH in 2004.

In summary, someone is lying, and neither one of the main players came out looking very clean. But let’s hope the media can at least provide a depth of information beyond the type of reporting that is equivalent to backyard gossiping.

Next up, health care. This is far from a new issue, but it has come into focus this year with the quorum of democratic candidates pushing openly for various flavors of “universal” health insurance, and republicans staunchly against anything with the stench of government-run health care.

Like trade, there are a range of plans from our candidates here. As a start, I’d like to ask all of you — no matter where on the spectrum you are — two direct questions:

• Do you believe that the goal should be to cover every American or are you willing to accept a system that allows some to be uninsured? The unemployed who can’t afford it? The very poor without employer insurance? Where do you draw the line on who should be left uninsured and why?
• Whether you favor free-market insurance, government-run insurance, or a mix; how do you believe your preferred solution best serves the interests of the public?

I’d like to take a moment to get a cross-section of the lies.com readership (yes even you quiet ones), but rather than gather uninteresting lists of pro-this/anti-that stances, let’s have a little fun.

Responding to public outcry, you have declared your candidacy for the President of the United States in 2008. You have the cult of personality on your side, but the American public wants to know where you stand on the issues and where your priorities lie. Lies.com, the undisputed and unbiased voice of the people, has asked you to answer the people’s call in the comments of this post.

I’ll get the format started with my response including a some general and hot-button issues. You must include your stance on all of the issues listed, although you may reorder based on your priorities and your stances may be as brief or lengthy as you wish (but keep it within reason — I’m looking at you, knarly). If you’re not sure or you don’t have an opinion on an issue, say so. Oh, and pretend that you would rather stick to your convictions than get elected.

So I came across the link to a site called Fox News Porn yesterday. I think they editorialize a bit, but honestly their basic premise is solid. Enjoy.