Muttroxia

If you read Thomas Friedman’s the World is flat, you must read this scathing review. Although I liked the book overall, there are a lot of great points landed here.

I don’t get college sports fans. This is a follow-up from the Almighty Sports Guy about people who are fanatics about the sports programs of colleges they didn’t even go to.

Q: I read your article about rooting for a soccer team in England and can understand your point about the lack of passion in pro sports. While I will grant you that might be fun, the obvious question is why not throw yourself into a college team?
–Michael Spurlin, Austin, Texas

SG: You root for a school for four reasons: Either you grew up near them, you followed them since you were kid, you went there or your kid is going there. And that’s it. For instance, let’s say that I decided tomorrow, “UCLA is a half-hour from my house and I like their uniforms … screw it, I’m becoming a Bruins fan!” And I started going to football and basketball games and sitting with alumni and fans whose families had been following them for four generations. I mean, wouldn’t that be a little weird? That’s like showing up at some stranger’s house for Thanksgiving and being like, “Hey, I’m in the family now! Pass the turkey!” I just couldn’t do that and feel good about it.

I usually like Matt Bai’s work. And there is a lot to like in this story. But a large part of it is that Bush’s extremism finally caught up with him, and that voters are pretty bright after all.

Hogwash. This kind of thinking perpetuates some of the worst memes out there in political thinking.

(edited for length)
Daschle seemed to have lost patience with George W. Bush and his entire administration. He talked with very little prompting about the way the president refused to compromise on legislation, bullied their own party’s senators and ignored leaders of the opposition. Daschle said he hardly ever spoke to anyone at the White House. I asked him whether he thought this kind of arrogance would eventually come back to hurt Bush’s presidency.

I put the question to him another way: in all his years in politics, I asked, had he ever seen anyone act so imperiously and not eventually lose power as a result? Daschle shook his head. “No,” he said. “I never have.”
That exchange was on my mind as I stood in the offices of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on election night, watching young aides with markers erase and replace the latest election numbers on a white board, effectively wiping away what remained of Bush’s influence in Washington.

Presidents serve for a maximum of eight years. Bush got all eight. That’s not losing power. For six of those eight years, he has had a Congress that has done everything he has asked and never put up any serious barriers to his goals. That’s not losing power. And now, for his last two years, he will have more trouble getting things done that require congressional assent. That’s not losing power.

Articles like this miss the big picture. Bush was rewarded, not penalized, for his extremism. For staking out a policy, for doing whatever it took to make it reality, he achieved his policies. Even if you hate everything he did, you must admit it worked. In nearly every case, being more extreme has helped him, not hurt him. The fact that 25% of his regime will be a bit tougher for him does not mean the last six years never happened.

If this election was about the cost of arrogance, though, then it should also be viewed as a vindication of the much-maligned American voter. Since Bush’s disputed victory in 2000, many liberals have been increasingly brazen about their disdain for the rural and religious voters; one popular e-mail message, which landed in thousands of Democratic in-boxes in the days after the 2004 election, separated North America into The United States of Canada and Jesusland. The populist author Thomas Frank won widespread praise for his thesis that unsophisticated rural types had been manipulated into voting against their economic self-interest, while the celebrated linguist George Lakoff posited that conservatives had rewired the brain synapses in these unsuspecting voters. Two eminent liberal political scientists, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, wrote a more scholarly book, arguing that Bush could govern as an extremist without paying a price, because Republicans had gamed the electoral system and deceived voters.

But this election, in which conservative incumbents in states like Kentucky and Indiana went down to defeat, should discredit such alarmist (and elitist) theories. As it happened, despite all these neurological and structural impediments, ordinary voters proved perfectly capable of recognizing failed governance when they saw it, and seemed plenty capable of defending their own interests.

The voters, particularly the rural/religious/conservative ones, have been wrong in the last three elections. They were wrong to vote Bush over Gore in 2000. They were wrong not to hand Congress to the Dems in 2002. They were deranged to vote for Bush over Kerry in 2004. They were wrong. After being hit with a sledgehammer for six years, they decided that all things considered, they didn’t like that ol’ sledgehammer. Heck of a learning curve.

As the GOP likes to say, elections have consequences. And they have. Six years of Bush rule has done so much damage to this country, and indeed the world, that I can hardly stand to think about it. It’s nice that the grownups finally got one branch of government back, but it’s a little late. This election is not a vindication of the ordinary voter. It is a condemnation of their appalling track record until now.

Drew Bledsoe’s blog. This is drop-dead hilarious for NFL fans.

Don’t Vote.org – See if you are educated enough to vote. (I got 96%, missed the new UN President)

This Cognitive Science graduate student used his mad brain knowledge to win on Who Wants to be a Milliionaire

A funny look back at Donald Rumsfeld’s press conference antics.

Worst burglar ever

Worst video game ever (read the review)

John Kerry tries to tell other jokes

It’s fashionable these days to rag on Studio 60. It’s still on our TiVo list, we still watch it every week. But every week, more and more about this show annoys me. Many others have ripped it apart better than me (take a stroll over here). They missed one big thing.

Studio 60 takes place at a comedy show. Of the seven major characters, four are comedians (Harriet, Simon, the other supposedly important cast member [John?], and Matt the writer). Have you ever been around comedians? Ever seen them in their natural habitat? Rent Comedian, and watch Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, and Colin Quinn hang out together. If you don’t know any comedians, think about the funniest people you know. Maybe that weird guy at the office who’s always cracking people up (what’s his name again?). The one thing they all have in common is that they don’t stop being a comedian for very long. Funny people are not only funny, they are always looking at the world in a funny way, and always looking for new funny things. That’s why they’re funny. It doesn’t mean they’re always on, but they are frequently on. They are at least sometimes on, even if the camera isn’t.

No one at Studio 60 laughs. All these supposed-comedians are depressing. They never crack jokes. They never rip on each other, play pranks, have contests with each other, laugh at something at dinner or on TV, or anything. They may write a promising script, which Matt will declare “Funny” or “Not Funny”, but no one ever actually laughs. These people are comedians? No way.

We got the House and probably the Senate. Ah, the world looks different. And for the kicker, Rumsfeld resigned. Yippee!

Random election thoughts:

* I shook the ’04 curse. Although to be fair, I was mildly buzzed at most. Maintain baby, maintain.

* Anyone who voted for the independent candidate in Virginia is clearly retarded. You knew going in how tight it would be and that you are one of the few battleground states. To simply piss your vote away is unforgiveable. Your punishment is a 3-day lecture from Ralph Nader.

* Rick Santorum ended with a classy concession speech. And he has done a lot of good for Pennsylvania. But sorry, you are the very stereotype of a conservative moralizing idealogue. Out you go! Your punishment is having your family picture roundly mocked.

* Allen may not challenge the recount. All kinds of funny tricks with voter turnout and suppression went on. If there’s a recount, all that gets investigated. Hmm… losing control of the Senate, but retiring with some dignity and freedom, or barely possibly tying the Senate at a deadlock and going to jail… tough one. My vote is for gallant concession.

* You read it here first. There will be turncoat Rebublicans who suddenly become Democrats. Both at the local and national level. There were already hints Chaffee was going to do this, now he is saying it publicly.

To sum up: I’m looking forward to the next two years.

Yes Jabley, I intend to get drunk before checking results.

I’m gonna shake that ’04 curse!

Dennis Leary and Lenny Clarke’s hilarious guest-broadcasting at the Red Sox game. Lots of great ethnic humor, and see how far Mel Gibson’s stock has fallen.

Watch a woman being animated from the inside out (I reccomend the 4x button)

How not to read a book

An enormous map of Springfield (from The Simpsons). Someone spent way way too much time on this. That’s a good thing.

Forget whether what you believe is right — test how self-consistent they are (I was pleased by my 20% score)

Scott Adams cures himself of Spasmodic Dysphonia, the first ever cure. (This is a serious piece, not Dilbert comedy).

This essay was written by his brother. Very angry and touching at the same time.

Charles Murray (the man who helped to bring you The Bell Curve and similar discredited attempts at science) brings you some more foolishness today in The New York Times editorial page. His column regards the recent law that tries to make online gambling much harder. It contains this pip:

In the short term, this law all by itself could add a few more Democratic Congressional seats in the fall elections. We are talking about a lot of people (an estimated 23 million Americans gamble online) who are angry enough to vote on the basis of this one issue, and they blame Republicans.

Please. He might as well have said, “We’re talking about a lot of people (Over 200 million people have heard of the game of poker), and they all hate Republicans enough to declare war and bring down the Republic.” 23 million people represents almost 8% of the US population, and almost 20% of voters. Reading this you might think that 20% of the voters have actually swung into the Democrat column. You’d think we’d hear about such a huge landslide change in the electorate like this. No? Hm, maybe 23 million isn’t the right number, let’s dig a little deeper.

How many of those 23 million are not active gamblers (one bet last year shouldn’t count)?
How many of them aren’t eligible voters?
How many of them even know about the new law?
How many of them aren’t particularly mad because they know how to get around the new law?
How many of them aren’t particularly mad because they believe it’s a good law?*

What’s left is people who are genuinely annoyed by this. Of those…

How many are so mad, it overwhelms any other political ideas they have? (I sincerely hope the answer is very low.)
How many of them ever vote? (If the answer is yes, doesn’t that imply they do have some pre-existing political ideas?)
How many of them actually blame the Republicans (the vote passed overwhelmingly by both parties, and was part of a big security bill)?
How many of them already vote Republican (so their vote doesn’t change)?
How many of them are in districts that are heavily tilted to either side (so their vote doesn’t matter)?

I don’t know what number comes out of the other end, but my guess is that it’s insignificant. Charles Murray is an idiot.

*I myself play the lottery once in a while, even though I think they’re immoral.

Today is October 15th. Tonight, while having dinner at a restaurant, they played Christmas music. On October 15th.

To make it worse, we were eating at a Chinese buffet! Somehow I don’t think the owners religious beliefs were influencing the programming decisions.

If I had a business, I would have a big banner outside that said, “No Christmas music until December 15th. Shop in peace!”

Whenever there is a holiday, there is no garbage pickup. But we never actually miss a day.

One of our pickup days is Tuesday (yes, one of our pickup days. I like DeKalb county).
If the holiday is Monday, pickup is normal. If it’s Tuesday, they pick it up Wednesday. And of course, if it’s Wednesday, pickup is normal.

On Wednesday, the garbagemen have to pick up garbage for twice as many people, all the Tuesday and Wednesday pickups. They have to work twice as much.

So how is that a day off? Imagine if you got July 4th off, but then had to work a 16-hour shift on July 5th. I think they’re getting robbed.