Month: October 2008

Matt Yglesias had a smart post about Palin as the metacandidate, always talking about how she’s going to say things or who she’s saying them to instead of you know, saying them.

I noticed this last night with McCain also.

And, again, I know those situations. I’ve been in them all my life.

And I’ve been supporting those and I know how to fix this economy, and eliminate our dependence on foreign oil, and stop sending $700 billion a year overseas.

But the point is that I know how to handle these crises. And Senator Obama, by saying that he would attack Pakistan, look at the context of his words. I’ll get Osama bin Laden, my friends. I’ll get him. I know how to get him.

I’ll get him no matter what and I know how to do it.

I’m sure I could find more examples from the transcript if I spent more time.

While Obama is laying out plans and ideas, McCain is telling us how he has plans and ideas. He’s telling us that knows how to make a plan and execute a plan and that’s all fine and well but what is the plan? If I ever tried to fake my way through a presentation at work by talking about what a good presenter I am and reminding people of all the other presentations I’ve done and how my next presentation will be amazing but I can’t tell you know because it’s a secret — let’s just say it would not be pretty.

I think that’s part of why voters don’t respond to many of McCain’s answers. Even when he’s right (ferinstance he does have a history of reaching across the aisle) it sounds like petulant whining to simply say how much you know about issues without ever sharing that knowledge.

Update: As always, Matt says it better.

If McCain knows how to get Osama, I can understand his reluctance to describe the details of the plan to a globally televised audience. But couldn’t he have taken the opportunity sometime over the past seven years to tell George W. Bush?

Points against McCain:

BROKAW: Health care, energy, and entitlement reform: Social Security and Medicare. In what order would you put them in terms of priorities?

MCCAIN: I think you can work on all three at once, Tom.

Way to duck the question John! This is an interesting response from the man who is unable to deal with voting on the bailout bill without suspending his campaign. At that time Obama said, the next president needs to “deal with more than one thing at once.” I guess McCain came around. (Obama did obliquely say his priorities were in the order of Energy, health care, entitlements.)

Points against both of them:Entitlements is clearly third on the list. Entitlements is composed of two parts, Social Security and Medicare. I won’t rant about Social Security here, but search this blog for links on it, it is not in trouble. The much larger problem is Medicare. And this is a problem that is solved to a large degree by reforming health care.

Why do we want universal health care anyhow? There are two very different reasons. One is the medical/societal/fairness plank – government should ensure that all of it’s citizens lead long fulfilling lives wherever it can. This is the liberal normative critique, that we should do this because that’s the kind of world we aspire to live in. The other is economic. The current health-care system is a drain on our resources. Currently, we spend more money for less value. Universal health care solves both problems to a large degree. It obviously makes the country a more better, more fair, more secure place to live. But a good universal health care system also saves huge amounts of money. The GOP scuttled attempts to allow the government to negotiate drug prices, this is an area where we could save huge amounts, but it’s the tip of the iceberg. Universal health care will dramatically decrease the needed funding for Medicare/Medicaid, reducing the entitlement problem. I wish either candidate had spoken to this.

Points against Obama: Only one part really bugged me, a tactical error. After the answers on McCain, Obama said he wanted to break the format to rebut McCain. He said:

OBAMA:…Look, I — I want to be very clear about what I said. Nobody called for the invasion of Pakistan. Senator McCain continues to repeat this.

What I said was the same thing that the audience here today heard me say, which is, if Pakistan is unable or unwilling to hunt down bin Laden and take him out, then we should.

Now, that I think has to be our policy, because they are threatening to kill more Americans.

This was a fantastic answer. It calls McCain a liar, gives the accurate facts about his beliefs quickly and concisely. But then he kept gong with the Bomb, Bomb, Iran quote and rambled on about some other stuff and distracted from the core message. He should have stopped after those twenty seconds. His continuation allowed McCain a couple minutes to rebut instead of only having twenty seconds against an extremely powerful message. Obama turned a home run into a single.

Points against Castellanos: (This only make sense if you watched on CNN) Calm down Alex! We don’t need a final analyst score of 172-86-32-6721. It’s simply not necessary to award that many points. Why don’t you take a five minute break?

Some time ago, Mrs. Muttrox and I splurged on a high-end hotel for a night. We went to a $500/night hotel, and it was interesting to compare it to our usual hotel experiences. (By the way, Hotwire is amazing. We’ve consistently gotten incredible deals.)

Business people vs. Personal Rich: The Muttrox family is doing just fine, but we are not in the “rich” category. (Yet!) Our people-watching found two obvious clusters of people. There are people who are rich, have been rich for a while, and damn well know it. They are, to put it bluntly, jerks. They are rude to everyone in sight and expect the things they want to materialize out of nowhere instantly. Their teenage daughters are fun to look at, but are clearly Paris Hilton worshiping bitches. The other group was the business people. They are fun. Some feller in town for the state industrial paper products meeting is having a great time. Everything is new, he’s enjoying living the good life and has more in common with the staff than the other guests. I like these people.

Included Price vs a la carte: At most hotels the amenities are included. You get your continental breakfast, access the gym, etc. At upscale hotels, it is just the opposite. Every little thing costs extra. Parking? Extra. Internet? Extra. Food? Extra. When the base price is so high, you would think these things are included. It’s the exact opposite of what I would expect. I would think a discount hotel would lure people in with low prices, then hit them for every cheap thing. High class hotels want to deliver an “experience”, and when you are being nickel and dimed for every little thing it’s hard to believe in the experience.

Scale on the light side: There was a bathroom scale. I firmly believe that they calibrated it a few pounds under the truth. I was in a good mood during our stay, I thought my exercise regimen was going well. It was not. But I was in a good mood while I was at the hotel!

Judgment and Experience

I am not surprised these folks are McCain supporters

Biden training for the debate: How not to make girls cry

One gutsy air conditioner installer

Sometimes the headlines write themselves.

Heart attack in a can

Just too funny. Beware the orbs!

Presidents before & after: The physical toll of being president

The Chinese Gymnasts are cleared. I don’t believe it.

Real-life Superman catches bullet in teeth, spits it back at shooter

A very entertaining video on good luck, the opposite of Murphy’s Law

Five great science books to expand your mind

Don’t die on me, stay with me!

The best robber ever. This will probably end up in Die Hard 5, he gulled a bunch of Craigslisters into unwittingly serving as decoys after his bank robbery.

Fantasy Football

SF Authors and their blogs

Steven Colbert to work with Spiderman.

They did it! Private company makes it into space.

Gilligan’s Island: This interpretation is ridiculous, but funny.

Video of drunk Mythbuster on treadmill.

Random thought on rhetorical styles

Palin has no facts. She spews out rhetoric that meanders around a point but is never centered on anything, because she doesn’t know anything. When there is a nugget of information buried in there it’s often confusing or irrelevant. Example: She claimed Obama votes with his party 96% of the time. I had to think about that one, what does it mean? Does that mean he votes the same as Harry Reid? As a majority of Democratic Senators? Against the GOP position? Against Bush? What does that mean?* This was 90 seconds into her two minutes. The rest of her answer was empty phrases bumping up against each other in the hopes of randomly forming a sentence.

The other extreme is exemplified in the persona of Michael Dukakis. He knew his facts and could pull them out, but couldn’t weave them into a larger picture. Too technocratic.

Biden tends towards Dukakis. He knows a lot and always has a fact ready. When he is on his game it adds up to a bigger picture, when he is not he sounds like a blowhard professor. In the VP debate the first part was not so good, but the second half brought it together.

The master is Bill Clinton. No matter what the topic, whether speechifying or responding to questions, he always had relevant facts at hand. And he could easily show you why his facts where the most relevant ones, how they destroyed any other vision, and wrap it all up in a larger theme. He’ll quote you the minimum wage factsheet, but also convince you that it speaks to the fundamental unfairness of the his opponent and is a disgrace the founding fathers vision of a better world where all citizens rich and poor etc… That’s rhetoric. If you give Bill Clinton and Joe Biden the same facts, they’ll both be convincing, but Clinton will have you drinking the water waiting for more.

* It seems to mean “how often [he voted] with [the Democrats] on bills where the parties split.”

Obviously Biden won it. Everyone knew he would. The excitement was wondering whether Palin would be so awful as to make it good entertainment. After all, The Office was pre-empted for this. If Palin turned out to be half-decent then it would just be a normal VP debate and those are hardly worth watching.

I’m glad to see that Palin leaped over the minimal bar. She was mostly composed, many of her answer made sense, she was able to argue well on the few things she knows about. So she beat expectations. On the other hand the expectations were so low that doesn’t mean much. If you step back and ask yourself which one of these two would be a better vice-president the answer is obvious. On many questions she had no idea what to say and would revert back to an irrelevant rant. Twice she was asked about McCain’s regulation record. The first time she ducked it and talked about taxes. The second time she was called out and she explicitly said she wouldn’t answer it, she would talk about whatever she wanted, she was taking her case straight to the American people. Hey Palin, taking your case directly to the American people is called a commercial. This is a debate, you have to answer the question. Her tactics flowchart went something like this:

1) Is the question I actually know something about (this happened a couple times)? Get comfortable, I can answer this one.
2) Do I have a scripted answer (most of the questions)? Recite the script. Repeat as necessary, do not engage any rebuttal points.
3) Do I have no idea at all (far too many questions)? Ignore the question, pull out a script that hasn’t been used yet and revert to #2.

How about Biden? Fundamentally, the difference between and Biden and Palin is fundamentally about change. Obama and McCain fundamentally differ on this issue. If there is one difference that fundamentally separates us, it is this fundamental point which is different than my last answer which fundamentally established the fundamental differences. Now I will give that weird politician smile every time that Palin refers to me.

That’s about it for negatives. He knew answers to everything. He was surprisingly honest about what they would have to give up due to the bailout and about his change in evaluating judicial nominees. He had facts at his command, and they were relevant ones. Mostly, he has an aura of competence. Not only is he confident, but he is so confident that he demeanor suggests you are an idiot if you think otherwise. The last person to give off that feel was Dick Cheney. Love or hate him, he is impossible to debate or question because his whole attitude enforces a feeling that anyone who feels different is ignorant. It’s a powerful tool.

I thought the moderation by Ifil was good. They were good questions that covered a lot of ground. She had questions that were attacking either side, it felt balanced. However, she failed to follow up. When Palin overtly says she won’t answer the point about regulation you shouldn’t just move on to the next question. It’s moral hazard! But in general the debate had a nice tone to it. McCain can’t even look at Obama, but these two seemed genuinely happy to be there. I’m sure Biden was.

Update: Here’s a better flowchart.

Yes, it’s Palin Bingo!

And follow along as the economy melts down with September Madness!

The other day a small plane crashed in the front yard of someone’s house about a quarter-mile away from us. The pilot was killed. Yeesh. How terrifying would that be — as either the pilot plummeting to Earth, or the resident of the house who suddenly has a plane coming down on top of her?

Video report (featuring our neighbor friend telling the world what it sounded like):

I was thinking about throwing the game tonight. I’ve been killing these guys. They’ve noticed. It’s a neighborhood game, it’s bad form to be winning as much as this. I am a competitive person though. I didn’t think I could. So I told myself to play much more aggressive than usual and if I get busted so be it.

On the first hand I blew 300 on pocket 8s that I had to fold. The next hand I blew another 200. Two hands in and I’ve lost 20% of my stack. Then things went horribly wrong. By which I mean, everything went right.

Usually I bluff to steal blinds. If someone raises the blinds I don’t go over the top with a bluff. I figure if they raised they are likely to call my bluff and catch me with my pants down. Tonight I went over the top a bunch of times. Worked like a charm.

The best thing was having good cards. I had plenty of playable hands, plenty of them developed, and I got plenty of action when I wanted it.

With A-10, flop is A-x-x. I check and call his bet. Turn is another A. I check, he bets, I put him all in. He had pocket 10s, I double up.

With 5 people left the blinds are at 150-300. Player A puts in 1000. Player B calls. I look down at A-A. I raise to 2500, both of the call. The flop is 8-6-3 unsuited. I go all in. One folds and the other is knocked out.

With 4 people left I have K-K. I limp in, I’m raised and I call. Flop is K-9-5. I check, he bets big, I call. Turn is nothing. I check, he raises, I push all in. He had Q-Q and he is pissed when I knock him out.

By headsup play I had a 3-1 chip advantage. Out of 15-odd hands I had A-K twice, 4-4 once, and took him out with Q-Q.

I will say I played very well in getting people to give me action, I really do believe that no one at this level can read whether I am bluffing or not. Somewhere between that, good cards, and aggression it turned out to be a fairly easy win. Let’s face it, I am incapable of throwing a game. I just can’t.

Tonight: $110
Running Total: $538