February 03, 2012
Fairness, Emotion, and the Republican Brand
In light of the omnipresent criticism of the GOP field, the Blog Princess has been noodling over what message she wishes the eventual nominee (whoever he might be) should focus on to unite voters with disparate backgrounds, political leanings, and interests and win the White House.
A post over at Grim's place helped this process along considerably. In it, he quotes several passages from Aristotle on rhetoric:
Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself....There are, then, these three means of effecting persuasion. The man who is to be in command of them must, it is clear, be able:
(1) to reason logically,
(2) to understand human character and goodness in their various forms, and
(3) to understand the emotions-that is, to name them and describe them, to know their causes and the way in which they are excited.
Grim's post bothered me a bit. I disagree with his assessment of the candidates, and yet the way he framed the discussion helped clear up something that has puzzled me:
... in our current Presidential contest, we have one man who is apparently good by general standards, which is to say Rick Santorum, the lowest-polling figure in the race; one man who is apparently not good, but who is a highly effective speaker, which is to say Newt Gingrich; one man who may or may not be good, but is a terrible speaker, which is to say Mitt Romney; and one man who is said by some to be good and others to be wicked, and by some to be a great speaker and by others to be a terrible one, but who is currently the actual victor of the last Presidential contest.
Grim's assessment here gets to the heart of what it means to be persuasive. Throughout the primary, I've been stunned at how people with roughly the same values can look at the same candidates and perceive diametrically opposite things about them. A case in point: Grim instinctively trusts Rick Santorum. Santorum has persuaded him, and yet Santorum's inability to build broad support even during the primaries (where he doesn't have to win over independents or moderates) suggests he is not broadly persuasive. Grim deems Santorum to be "a man who is apparently good by general standards". If we're talking about his personal life, the same is true of Mitt Romney, a man Grim deems to be "a man who may or may not be good". If we're talking about political integrity, there is ample reason to question whether Santorum is, in fact, good by general standards... and yet, Grim trusts him. This is important, I think.
Newt Gingrich is widely considered to be an effective and persuasive speaker. I don't argue that he is not verbally adept, but I find Gingrich to be the least persuasive of the Romney/Santorum/Gingrich trio (yes, I'm ignoring Ron Paul), even though I agree with many of Gingrich's stated positions on the issues. I can't get past the towering ego, the bombast, the conspicuous lack of self control and advance planning. I don't trust what he says because I wouldn't trust Gingrich farther than I could throw him. Because I don't trust him on a gut level, Gingrich's undoubted verbal facility actually works against him where I'm concerned.
And then there's Romney. Grim instinctively distrusts him. I instinctively trust him, but agree that he is anything but a natural politician. In my estimation, his too visible discomfort with the transparent asshattery of campaigning redounds to his credit. I don't trust people who enjoy campaigning and the last thing I want is a President who excels at playing upon the emotions of the electorate. Campaigns force candidates to say extremely stupid things the electorate wants to hear. Having the good sense to appear slightly ashamed and/or impatient with this is, in my mind, a good thing.
What explains Grim's and my conflicting impressions of the candidates? More and more, I believe it comes down to emotion. We choose with our gut and then, hopefully, rationalize the decision after the fact. I say hopefully because this rationalization process can temper our gut reaction or solidify it depending on the degree to which we're able to avoid the tendency to pay attention to only those facts that confirm a decision already made.
I'll bet you're wondering when I'll get around to fairness. Be patient - I'll weave it in momentarily.
Update: I will not, after all, be posting the second half of this post. I apologize to you all.
Posted by Cassandra at 08:26 AM | Comments (20) |TrackBack (0) |
February 02, 2012
Best. Comment. Ever.
"The real question is: When he stops blaming Bush, will he blame God?"
"And so when I talk about our financial institutions playing by the same rules as folks on Main Street, when I talk about making sure insurance companies aren’t discriminating against those who are already sick, or making sure that unscrupulous lenders aren’t taking advantage of the most vulnerable among us, I do so because I genuinely believe it will make the economy stronger for everybody. But I also do it because I know that far too many neighbors in our country have been hurt and treated unfairly over the last few years, and I believe in God’s command to 'love thy neighbor as thyself.'" "I know the version of that Golden Rule is found in every major religion and every set of beliefs — from Hinduism to Islam to Judaism to the writings of Plato," Obama added.The president said he often falls to his knees in prayer, and emphasized the role of his religious values in determining where to lead the country.
"I’d be remiss if I stopped there; if my values were limited to personal moments of prayer or private conversations with pastors or friends. So instead, I must try — imperfectly, but I must try — to make sure those values motivate me as one leader of this great nation."
Obama maintained that his call for the wealthiest to give up their tax breaks, he's doing so out of economic necessity, but also in line with biblical teachings.
"And I think to myself, if I’m willing to give something up as somebody who’s been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that’s going to make economic sense. But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that 'for unto whom much is given, much shall be required,'" Obama said, noting Jewish and Islamic teachings say much the same thing.
Cue the Uber-outraged Shreikery about separation of church and state in 5... 4... 3...
On second thought, strike that. This is obviously one of those arguments the media attack when they don't like the outcome, but embrace when they do.
Posted by Cassandra at 02:08 PM | Comments (8) |TrackBack (0) |
Well *That* Certainly Settles It...
All of the “institutions” of civil moderation of sexual relationship – marriage, children, families – are founded on the male urge to have sexual relations with women. Men don’t screw women to marry them or have babies or families. They screw them because they are horny. Babies, families, and marriage are the price they have to pay in order to scratch that horniness.
Huh. And here I always thought the male of the species was considerably smarter than that.
How depressing to be so convincingly informed otherwise.
Posted by Cassandra at 07:58 AM | Comments (10) |TrackBack (0) |
What We Need Is A More Authentic Inauthenticity
Any politician who starts shouting election-year demagoguery about the rich and the poor should be asked, "What about the other 90 percent of the people?"~ Thomas Sowell
It is with the heaviest of hearts that the Blog Princess confesses that her support for Mitt Romney is wavering. How can we trust a candidate whose every utterance is nicely calculated to please everyone and offend no one (except on the numerous occasions when he is accused of not being calculating enough)? What kind of man allows his statements to be truncated, neatly excised from their surrounding context, and mischaracterized? The completely unprecedented nature of this debacle is all the proof I need of Mr. Romney's hopeless incompetence.
An electable candidate would have the foresight never to say anything that could be distorted by his opponents.
I'm not going to link to Mitt's latest gaffe, nor will I quote it in full. By now we have all heard parts of it and perception is all that matters. I only know that I cannot support a candidate who coldly and calculatedly refuses to profess believable solidarity and deep, personal concern for the least fortunate among us.
An authentic conservative would have promised that under a Republican President, poorly educated members of the permanent American underclass with few or no marketable skills will compete effectively with the sizeable portion of the middle class who are currently also unemployed. And damnitall, he would have made us believe him.
Perhaps Mr. Romney doesn't actually feel any solidarity or concern for the very poor. But the least he could do would be to emote convincingly or say something that makes no sense, but doesn't offend anyone.
Yes, that would make me trust him.
Posted by Cassandra at 07:22 AM | Comments (35) |TrackBack (0) |
A Mother's Arms
For those of you who haven't seen this yet:
h/t: my Dad
Posted by Cassandra at 07:07 AM | Comments (1) |TrackBack (0) |
February 01, 2012
Why I Hate Valentine's Day
Reason #1: Articles like this:
What does your guy think of Valentine's Day?a) A great opportunity to express his love in an exciting, romantic way?
b) A pressure filled nightmare where he's forced to produce...or else?
Yes, the dreaded V-Day can be a minefield for men, says Marcus Osborne, of StraightMaleFriend.com. Sure, some guys absolutely love it or see it as an opportunity to score brownie points with their lady friends--even though couldn't care less about the holiday. But many guys live in fear--knowing it's going to be a night in the doghouse with Scooby Snacks for dinner if they don't come through.
"Valentine's Day is the holiday where only the guys can really lose," Marcus insists. "Because even though he could not give a rip about being on the receiving end of a V-Day gift, he knows full well he'd better bring it for his lady love. Every guy knows that even if she tells him, 'Oh you don't have to worry about getting me anything for Valentine's,' he'd damn well better worry about getting her something for Valentine's."
Speaking of that "something," Marcus adds, a smart guy knows there are bonus points if his gift is better than the ones her girlfriends' guys got them.
It's hard to think of anything less likely to make a man feel loving towards his partner than setting up what amounts to an arbitrary relationship test and then letting him know he's being graded on his performance.
The idea that people should take time periodically to do the kinds of things they did when they were courting isn't a bad one. We all get busy, we all get complacent, and we all tend to magnify our own contributions to a relationship and gloss over the many things our loved ones do for our sake.
But I'm not sure that spending money on a woman is the best way to show her you care. I can remember the first year The Spousal Unit and I were married. For Valentine's Day, I cooked him a special meal and wheeled our son into town (a 3 mile walk) to buy my husband a card. I picked fresh flowers and put them on the table. And he came home, after working and attending class, late. With nothing.
And I was very hurt, not because I really cared whether he'd gotten me a card or not but because of what I assumed it meant about how much he valued me.
The thing is, had I just looked inside my wedding ring, I would have seen evidence of his love and thoughtfulness: he had our initials and the date of our wedding engraved inside. I didn't think of anything that special for him. Had I looked around our small apartment, I would have been reminded that he cared enough and was responsible enough to go to work and provide for his wife and son at an age when most young men don't even want to commit to a second date.
The thing I dislike most about Valentine's Day is that it encourages us to focus on the wrong things. Contrasted with flamboyantly romantic gestures, the immense worth of what we already have fades into the background.
And yet it is what happens on the other 364 days of the year that has the power to make us happy or miserable. The odd thing is that over the years I've found that the more I remember to thank my husband for the thousand small things he does every single day, the more likely he is to remember the romantic gestures that make me feel like a young girl on her first date.
Funny how that works.
Posted by Cassandra at 08:22 AM | Comments (26) |TrackBack (0) |
January 31, 2012
Dangerous Ideas
After yesterday's Nature vs. Nurture post, spd reminded the Editorial Staff of an article we had pestered some of the Oink Cadre with many moons ago. What fascinated me was the notion that there are ideas (and I'm shifting the emphasis here slightly from facts to ideas) that we suspect have real merit, but which we resist because their implications challenge or threaten something we hold dear:
There are dangerous facts, the knowledge of which threatens certain people, institutions, the social order, and so forth. Must they be made public no matter what? I think as a general matter, the presumption has to be on the side of disclosure, but that’s not a mandate. That’s simply to say that the more “dangerous” a fact, the greater the discretion that must be employed when deciding whether or not to make it public. If a reporter in wartime gets a tip about troop movements, he doesn’t have the moral right (or, as it happens, the legal right) to broadcast that information. If a reporter discovers during wartime that a general is taking bribes from a defense contractor, the moral equation shifts. Many times people who believe facts dangerous to themselves should be suppressed do so under the excuse of the common good (I’m thinking about you, Your Grace). But the fact that authorities can and do abuse discretion to cover their own backsides does not mean that discretion itself is a discredited concept.Five years ago, the science site Edge.org published a scientific symposium in which respondents — most of them prominent scientists and science journalists — answered the question: “What’s your dangerous idea?” The question was bounded like this:
The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious. What is your dangerous idea? An idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?
I had no trouble thinking of several such ideas. But there's an even more interesting twist on the notion of dangerous ideas that takes the form of arguments we dismiss out of hand when used to question a core belief, but embrace wholeheartedly when used to defend a core belief:
“’Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation,’ said Dr. Haidt, who called himself a longtime liberal turned centrist. ‘But when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations.’”
Be sure to read the list of alternate explanations towards the end of the short article. Close to the top of my Dangerous Ideas list would be one promulgated by Dr. Haidt himself: that regardless of our ideological leanings, we arrive at moral judgments using our guts and employ reason after the fact to lend the appearance of dispassion or objectivity to what amount to emotional/aesthetic judgments.
Luckily for you, I can explain that away :) A big reason I write online is that having to justify my initial take on an issue often opens my eyes to arguments I hadn't considered. How much of what consider to be great ideas are really only our passions, dressed up for public display?
Discuss amongst yourownselves, you hypocritical racist, ignorant, inbred, snake handling Red Staters, you.... :)
Posted by Cassandra at 08:27 AM | Comments (5) |TrackBack (0) |
Wrong Answer
One of my guilty pleasures is occasionally reading Dear Prudence, an advice column I find immensely gratifying because for the perennially unclueful, what goes around nearly always comes around to bite them in the tuckus.
One of my all time favorite questions came from a man who had pressured his wife of 4 years relentlessly to have sex with another couple. Eventually, the poor woman gave in and the two of them hooked up with another married couple and did what people generally do in these situations - have lots of hot, nasty monkey sex.
The husband wrote in with a heart wrenching dilemma: having cajoled, threatened, and pestered his wife into doing something she did not want to do, he was now tortured by recurring visions of his spouse screaming in ecstasy for 2 hours while another man had sex with her.
[thud]
Like I said, it's a guilty pleasure. But even I can't laugh at today's sad tale of woe:
Q. Friend Has Revised One-Night Stand Story: A friend recently called me and said she had a one-night stand after drinking too much. She was beating herself up over drinking too much and going home with a guy she met at a bar. I reassured her that everyone makes mistakes and didn't think much more of the account. However, since then, she has told many people that she was a victim of date-rape—that the guy must have put something into her drink . She spoke to a rape crisis line, and they said even if she was drunk, she couldn't have given consent so she was a victim of rape. She now wants to press charges—she has the guy's business card. I have seen her very intoxicated on previous occasions, to the point she doesn't remember anything the next day. I'm not sure on what my response should be at this point. Pretend she never told me the original story?
Leaving aside for a moment the utter inanity of people writing in to an advice columnist hoping she will let their conscience off the hook (or the amusing thought of a fiendish, would be date rapist who thoughtfully leaves his business card so the victim will have no trouble finding him), I am just stunned.
Pretending you never heard the original story is NOT an option here. We're talking about someone making a false criminal accusation that could land an innocent man in jail.
The right answer is to go to your friend and tell her that if you find out she has filed rape charges against this man, you will have no choice but to contact his defense attorney and offer to testify in his behalf.
**************
Quite possibly the funniest thing I've read in ages.
Posted by Cassandra at 07:06 AM | Comments (14) |TrackBack (0) |
January 30, 2012
Random Gender-Related Links
A while back it seemed that everyone had something to say about the behavior of the men on that sinking Italian cruise ship. Depending on the agenda of the writer, the failure to adhere to "women and children first" was heralded as the fault of evil feminists, the beginning of the end of western civilization, or simply human nature.
At the time I wondered whether we'd see a similar analysis of the behavior of the female passengers and crew. This is only a single data point:
The body of Peruvian ship’s waitress Erika Soria has been recovered from the wreck of the Concordia. It has been revealed that as the ship went down, and Captain Schettino was busy being one of the first off the ship, the young Peruvian waitress, working on her third cruise, stayed back to help dozens of passengers into the lifeboats. The last time rescued passengers saw her, she was giving her lifejacket to an elderly man.
Three cheers for decency, no matter where it is found.
On a somewhat related note, I was intrigued by this article about a culture where women have the upper hand in most things and men are fighting for equal rights under the law:
Mr Pariat, who ignored age-old customs by taking his father's surname is adamant that matriliny is breeding generations of Khasi men who fall short of their inherent potential, citing alcoholism and drug abuse among its negative side-effects."If you want to know how much the Khasis favour women just take a trip to the labour ward at the hospital," he says.
"If it's a girl, there will be great cheers from the family outside. If it's a boy, you will hear them mutter politely that, 'Whatever God gives us is quite all right.'"
Mr Pariat cites numerous examples of how his fellow brethren are being demoralised. These include a fascinating theory involving the way that gender in the local Khasi language reflects these basic cultural assumptions.
"A tree is masculine, but when it is turned into wood, it becomes feminine," he begins.
"The same is true of many of the nouns in our language. When something becomes useful, its gender becomes female.
"Matriliny breeds a culture of men who feel useless."
I talk to Patricia Mukkum, the well-respected editor of Shillong's daily newspaper. She assures me that her heritage is only one of the reasons why she has risen to the level she has and points out that the tradition of excluding women from the political decision making process is still very strong in their culture.
As a mother of children by three different Khasi fathers however, she is the first to admit that their societal anomaly has afforded her ample opportunities to be both a mother and a successful career woman.
Making reference to the routine problems facing women just over the border in West Bengal, Miss Mukkum is resolute.
"Our culture offers a very safe sanctuary for women," she declares.
I found the second bolded portion of the article particularly interesting as apparently, excluding women from the political sphere has not guaranteed equal treatment for men. As a side note, it would also appear that a society run by women is not the egalitarian utopia it is so often conjectured to be.
A lot of people's smug assumptions are confounded here.
Finally, not gender related (except in the sense that I suspect my amusement is somewhat enhanced by having two x chromosomes):
I'm a rational anarchist.
I'm a market anarchist.
I'm an anarcho-capitalist.
I'm a crypto-anarchic small-L left libertarian Republican.
Really, I just like blowing stuff up.
Posted by Cassandra at 08:26 AM | Comments (2) |TrackBack (0) |
Nature, Nurture, Or Both?
The "monogamy is unnatural" meme is a fairly widespread tenet among those who view [their own, but not other people's] biological urges as intrinsically good and self control as unnatural and harmful. But what if culture is intrinsic rather than extrinsic?
...culture is an adaptation, which exists because it conferred a reproductive advantage on our hunter-gatherer ancestors. According to this view many of the diverse customs that the standard social science model attributes to nurture are local variations of attributes acquired 70 or more millennia ago, during the Pleistocene age, and now (like other evolutionary adaptations) “hard-wired in the brain.” But if this is so, cultural characteristics may not be as plastic as the social scientists suggest. There are features of the human condition, such as gender roles, that people have believed to be cultural and therefore changeable. But if culture is an aspect of nature, “cultural” does not mean “changeable.” Maybe these controversial features of human culture are part of the genetic endowment of human kind.This new way of thinking gained support from the evolutionary theory of morality. Defenders of nurture suppose morality to be an acquired characteristic, passed on by customs, laws and punishments in which a society asserts its rights over its members. However, with the development of genetics, a new perspective opens. “Altruism” begins to look like a genetic “strategy,” which confers a reproductive advantage on the genes that produce it. In the competition for scarce resources, the genetically altruistic are able to call others to their aid, through networks of co-operation that are withheld from the genetically selfish, who are thereby eliminated from the game.
If this is so, it is argued, then morality is not an acquired but an inherited characteristic. Any competitor species that failed to develop innate moral feelings would by now have died out. And what is true of morality might be true of many other human characteristics that have previously been attributed to nurture: language, art, music, religion, warfare, the local variants of which are far less significant than their common structure.
The implications of this dangerous idea would place Progressive public policy squarely in opposition to Science:
If we follow the evolutionary biologists, therefore, we may find ourselves pushed towards accepting that traits often attributed to culture may be part of our genetic inheritance, and therefore not as changeable as many might have hoped: gender differences, intelligence, belligerence, and so on through all the characteristics that people have wished, for whatever reason, to rescue from destiny and refashion as choice. But to speculate freely about such matters is dangerous. The once respectable subject of eugenics was so discredited by Nazism that “don’t enter” is now written across its door. The distinguished biologist James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA, was run out of the academy in 2007 for having publicly suggested (admittedly in less than scientific language) that sub-Saharan Africans are genetically disposed to have lower IQs than westerners, while the economist Larry Summers suffered a similar fate for claiming that the brains of women at the top end are less suited than those of men to the study of the hard sciences. In America it is widely assumed that socially significant differences between ethnic groups and sexes are the result of social factors, and in particular of “discrimination” directed against the groups that seem to do less well. This assumption is not the conclusion of a reasoned social science but the foundation of an optimistic worldview, to disturb which is to threaten the whole community that has been built on it.
If morality is a natural survival strategy that confers tangible benefits on both individuals and groups, then it follows that government really should be in the business of encouraging moral behavior. That dangerous idea presents challenges for both progressivism and conservativism.
Posted by Cassandra at 07:28 AM | Comments (13) |TrackBack (0) |
January 27, 2012
Nagging In Marriage Is....
[fill in the blank]
I'm pretty sure your take will differ depending on whether you're a man or a woman. Men almost always talk about it as though it were something women do for no reason. And most women view it as a response to being repeatedly ignored/blown off - in other words, as a two-way dynamic in which neither party is without fault:
Nagging—the interaction in which one person repeatedly makes a request, the other person repeatedly ignores it and both become increasingly annoyed—is an issue every couple will grapple with at some point. While the word itself can provoke chuckles and eye-rolling, the dynamic can potentially be as dangerous to a marriage as adultery or bad finances. Experts say it is exactly the type of toxic communication that can eventually sink a relationship.Why do we nag? "We have a perception that we won't get what we want from the other person, so we feel we need to keep asking in order to get it," says Scott Wetzler, a psychologist and vice chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Montefiore Medical Center in New York. It is a vicious circle: The naggee tires of the badgering and starts to withhold, which makes the nagger nag more.
Google's assessment of my gender notwithstanding, I take the latter view. If, when asked to do something, the other party responds by:
a) Doing it within a reasonable amount of time, which is NOT the same as "immediately",
b) Saying, "I can't/won't do that now but I will do it by [insert self-imposed deadline here]", and then following through, or
c) Says, "No, I won't do it",
.... there is no reason ever to bring the matter up again.
I don't like nagging. It does sometimes work (that's why women - and some men - do it). But the whole dynamic is dysfunctional: the nagging itself is disrespectful but so are the passive aggressive avoidance techniques that provoke the response in the first place.
My husband is the more consciencious of the two of us and I am the more laid back one. So he has more reason to nag me than I, him. But there are times when I have asked him to do something and for whatever reason, he doesn't get to it. When that happens, I usually try to choose a good moment to sit down with him and explain why whatever I've asked him to do is really important to me and that I just need to know when he might be able to do it, or if not, whether I should just hire someone.
The thing is, I don't ask him to do things very often and he doesn't ask me to do things for him. For the most part, when either of us wants something done we just do it ourselves.
So. Much. Easier. than getting all bent out of shape.
Posted by Cassandra at 12:49 PM | Comments (38) |TrackBack (0) |
Why Is Google Embracing Sexist Gender Stereotypes?
According to Google, the Blog Princess is an [older] man living in a woman's body:
Many websites are part of the Google Display Network, a service which enables Google to show ads on those websites. Now since Google wants to show you ads that are relevant to you and your interests, it doesn't want to select them just based on the content of the sites you visit. So it quietly keeps track of the types of sites you visit in the Google Display Network and on partner sites in order to discover what appears to interest you the most.Now before you panic, you should know that — according to Google — no personal information is recorded during this tracking process.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiight....
I seem to remember some text parser years ago telling me that VC was written by a man. It's a good thing I'm secure in my womanliness.
[sob!!!!]
Posted by Cassandra at 12:32 PM | Comments (8) |TrackBack (0) |
Well That Settles It....
Camel Predicts Giants Over Patriots In Super Bowl XLVI:
Princess, the star of New Jersey's Popcorn Park Zoo, has correctly picked the winner of five of the last six Super Bowls. She went 14 and 6 predicting regular season and playoff games this year, and has a lifetime record of 88-51.Her pick this year: The New York Giants.
The Bactrian camel's prognostication skills flow from her love of graham crackers. Zoo general manager John Bergmann places a cracker and writes the name of the competing teams on each hand. Whichever hand Princess nibbles from is her pick. On Wednesday, she made her pick with no hesitation at all, predicting bad news for Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and the New England Patriots, even though the Las Vegas oddsmakers have New England favored by about 3 points.
Her only miscue in the big game was picking the Indianapolis Colts over the New Orleans Saints two years ago, indicating that even camels know it's generally risky to go against Peyton Manning.
Next up: Stuffed Marmoset Picks GOP Presidential Nominee. Remember, you heard it here first.
Posted by Cassandra at 12:16 PM | Comments (5) |TrackBack (0) |
January 26, 2012
Duuuuuude... (Part Deux)
h/t Texan99, who is a snooty Cultural Elitist :p
Posted by Cassandra at 05:19 PM | Comments (12) |TrackBack (0) |
January 25, 2012
Newt Gingrich's Ethics and Judgment Problems
There's an old saying: in politics, perception is reality. Public perception regarding Newt Gingrich is that the former Speaker has, to put it mildly, ethical issues.
Despite frequent counterarguments that this perception is attributable to media lies and bias, it's not hard to see where it comes from. Mr. Gingrich is now on his third marriage. His serial adultery troubled potential conservative supporters (hard to blame that one on the media elite) enough that they demanded - and received - an utterly meaningless no-more-adultery pledge from the former Speaker. Having previously chosen to ignore not one, but two no-adultery pledges similar promises to his first two wives, how seriously should we take a promise made to total strangers?
Oddly, when money was involved Newt's aggressive "Have you no decency?" shtick was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the candidate meekly offered up another promise, the underlying assumption of which is that he cannot be trusted to obey his current wedding vows. What is such a pledge, if not an admission that his questionable judgment in personal matters is a legitimate concern to voters?
But then we're talking about a candidate who suggested that making millions of dollars buying up troubled companies and restructuring them is a shameful act best atoned for by giving the money back. When his opponent returned the favor by suggesting that money earned lobbying for taxpayer backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be returned, Mr. Gingrich belatedly discovered the weaknessnes in his former line of attack. But no matter - and no need to take responsibility! It turns out that Barack Obama made him say those awful things!
“It’s an impossible theme to talk about with Obama in the background. Obama just makes it impossible to talk rationally in that area because he is so deeply into class warfare that automatically you get an echo effect. … I agree with you entirely.”- A True Conservative, explaining how Barack Obama forced him to say things he doesn't really believe.
Continue reading "Newt Gingrich's Ethics and Judgment Problems"
Posted by Cassandra at 07:52 AM | Comments (12) |TrackBack (0) |
Duuuuuuuuuude....
I've got a full day today, so I won't have anything new until probably later this evening but in the mean time the assembled villainry can weigh in on a creative plan from our Brethren in Christ to raise revenue and create jobs.
Who says the Dems don't know how to get this country back to work?
Posted by Cassandra at 06:41 AM | Comments (14) |TrackBack (0) |
January 24, 2012
Finally, A Solution Everyone Can Agree Upon...
... for the federal deficit, that is. The obvious answer is that Mitt Romney should just pay it off:
In releasing details of his tax burden for the past two years, Mitt Romney offered a small window into a vast wealth. The tax records show that the former Massachusetts governor made $42.6 million over the past two years and because most of it came from capital gains, he paid $6.2 million in taxes.
It would probably be cheaper than running for President. And it would certainly be easier on Stephen Green's liver.
Posted by Cassandra at 06:05 AM | Comments (7) |TrackBack (0) |
January 23, 2012
Good Candidate vs. Good Executive
This is one of the best things I've read this election season:
A would-be president has to be the C.E.O. of his or her campaign, with a flair for fund-raising, an eye for talent, and a keen sense of when to micromanage and when to delegate. This is the arm-twisting, organization-building, endorsement-corralling side of presidential politics, and not surprisingly it tends to favor insiders and deal-makers and old Washington hands.But successful insiders and deal-makers are rarely comfortable with the more public, rhetorical, self-advertising side of politics. The great manager is unlikely to be a great persuader, capable of seducing undecided voters with his empathy, or inspiring them with what George H. W. Bush (who lacked it) called “the vision thing.” He’s also unlikely to be a great demagogue, capable of demonizing his enemies and convincing his supporters that they stand at Armageddon and battle for the Lord. The manager can play these roles, but there will always be a hint of irony, a touch of phoniness, a sense that he’d much rather get back to the inside game.
Nor do the gifts of persuasion necessarily overlap with the gifts of demagoguery. Quite the reverse: The politician who’s good at reaching out to the unconverted is usually mistrusted by his own base, and the politician whose us-versus-them rhetoric inspires devotion among ideologues rarely finds it easy to pivot to a more transcendent, unifying style. If Jon Huntsman had a little more Sarah Palin in him, for instance, or Palin a bit more Huntsman, one of them might have been the 2012 Republican nominee. But their respective gifts are rarely shared in a single personality.
Discuss amongst your ownselves.
Posted by Cassandra at 05:49 PM | Comments (16) |TrackBack (0) |
