Whitman Ads

I did not start watching the Brown-Whitman debate until just as the first question was asked, thanks to a phone call from Will. The debate was covered only by channels 2 (KTVU) and 3 (KCRA). Will watched the debate on KTVU and tells me that in the half-hour before the debate there were at least six Meg Whitman ads compared to only one (or maybe two) for Brown. This is what we’ve come to expect, of course. In fact, Robert Creamer discusses this as one of Four More Reasons Why Democrats Will Retain Control of House and Senate. He points out that this advertising advantage will decrease as we get closer to the election because campaigns with limited financial resources save their money for use at the end of a campaign. Certainly this has been Brown’s strategy from the beginning.

Compassion on Campus

From the New York Times: “It started with a Twitter message on Sept. 19: ‘Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.'” And then he and “Molly” streamed this personal moment on the Internet. Three days later the roommate, Tyler Clementi killed himself—doing exactly what he said on his last Facebook entry, “Jumping off the gw bridge sorry.” Tyler’s roommate has been charged with four counts of invasion of privacy; Molly two. In Molly’s defense, she claims she did not know they were streaming it on the Internet—still bad, but not as bad as the Tyler’s roommate who definitely did (and tried to do it a second time).

Leave it to Paul

Tony Curtis dies and I have to hear about it from Paul Krugman!

Sorry for the few days off. I was going completely frigging crazy. Now that I’m back to just ordinary frigging crazy, the madness continues.

Brown and Whitman

Last night, Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman, candidates for California Governor, had their first ever debate. Strangely, there has been almost no coverage on it. Even DailyKOS seems to have completely ignored it. I found it quite interesting. I had very low expectations for Whitman, but even given that, I was disappointed. She wasn’t even at the debate. She sleepwalked through it, saying nothing we haven’t already heard in her three main TV ads that have run over and over and over and over again. She seemed extremely ill at ease and made Brown’s portrait of her as an amateur who would be useless if elected easy to accept.

Here is the whole video: Brown-Whitman Debate

For his part, Brown seemed like an old college professor: a man who was very comfortable and knew it all, but had the problem of getting across all of his wisdom to an ignorant and arrogant class. Whitman hammered away on campaign donations that Brown had received from unions (you know, working people). Brown hit back repeatedly on different fronts. First, he pointed out that Whitman had received $25 million in contributions from wealthy people who stand to gain greatly from her tax cut plans. Then, he twice made reference to Arnold Schwarzenegger and his statement that since he was self-funded, he would not be beholden to special interests. “Look how well that worked out!”

In the end, I thought Brown devastated Whitman. Whitman had nothing to say beyond her commercials, and even when questioned on her deceptive (and worse) attacks on Brown, she side-stepped the issue. If Whitman becomes governor, she is going to find herself way over her head. Brown, on the other hand, has a lot of fire left in him. What’s more, he is way funnier than Whitman. She had only a single joke in the whole debate; it was canned; and it got almost no laugh. Brown got huge laughs from lines that I’m pretty sure were ad libbed.

Jerry is an old codger. It’s the first time I’ve said it, but I’m proud to say it now: you go old codger!

The Cost of War

I just found this:

Stephen Colbert at Congress

Stephen Colbert testified before the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship and Border Security. Here is his opening statement:

During the questions, he was asked why he cared about this issue. It was the only time he really fell out of character. He spoke of the Bible and taking care of the least of our brothers. It was very moving. As of yet, I haven’t been able to find a clip of it or of the whole hearing—but I saw it, so it must be around somewhere.

They stamped it, didn’t they? Those damn Gideons.

I picked up a copy of the New Testament on the bus yesterday—one distributed by The Gideons International. And I open it and on the first page is a big picture of an American flag! Under it is quoted Proverbs 14:34, “Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.” Damn it! I am so tired of Christians never quoting the fucking Gospels! And why do they never do so? Because the Gospels contain what Jesus actually said and he never said anything about being patriotic. Other than saying you should pay your taxes, he didn’t give a shit! He transcended national boundaries. That’s his whole gig: we are all one in the Lord. It doesn’t matter where you’re from.

So what’s with the fucking flag?! And this from The Gideons International. But do you know where they’re located? Where else? Nashville, Tennessee. Why? To be close to The King, of course!

Hot burnin’ love—as in napalm.

So here I am reading “Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and Real” in Philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, translated by Belfort Bax and Bailey Saunders. And it is well translated: very clear English with not a hint of German syntax. Then: bam! Schopenhauer starts to discuss the ideality of time in Plotinus’ Ennead 3.7: “On Eternity and Time.” And he quotes part of it. In Greek! But not to worry, for those illiterates like me, he provides a translation: in Latin!

You see the problem for translators! They are translating a German text into English—and doing a beautiful job of it. What are they to do when Schopenhauer left text in Greek and Latin? Obviously, Schopenhauer thought his readers would know ancient Greek or at least Latin—in 1851 when Parerga and Paralipomena (where the essay first appeared) was published. Why should they translate these passages into English now?

I will tell you why! No one who needs German translated into English knows ancient Greek! This wasn’t even true in 1936 when it was translated. Anyway, isn’t it obvious that Schopenhauer only provided the ancient Greek and Latin quotations because they were readily available? A German translation would have had to have been done by him. This would have opened him to attacks that his translation was all wrong in terms of detail and meaning. And then no one would have even considered the arguments he was making.

What were Bax and Saunders thinking? They couldn’t provide endnotes with the English? This was written before Google Translate, you know!

Update: Google translate does not include Latin or ancient Greek. There seems to be no really good free auto-translators for Latin. I don’t know about Greek. But it hardly matters: I wouldn’t even know how to enter the characters!

Countdown dedicated half of their show today on the real definition of “small business” as the Republicans are using it to make the case for extending the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. The “small” in “small business” refers to the number of owners. So companies like the Chicago Tribune are considered “small businesses.” The biggest “small business”? Bechtel with over $30 billion in revenue each year. Yep: ol’ mom and pop Bechtel! I’m worried about them making ends meet.

From the beginning, I’ve thought that Helen Thomas got a raw deal over her comment that the Jews should get out of Palestine. She wasn’t referring to refugees after WWII. She was talking about the current practice of Israel allowing Jews from all over the world to immigrate directly into illegal and quasi-legal settlements in Palestine. But this was never discussed, because unlike in Israel, in American we cannot say anything bad about Israel. Matthew Duss doesn’t discuss it either, but he does show that there is a double standard about the way people can talk about Israelis versus Palestinians. Calling Israel on their bullshit is not antisemitic. As I’ve noted before, liberal Israelis are very upset about this situation. This can’t be an issue that we are not allowed to discuss.

Howard Fineman is leaving Newsweek to head the Huffington Post. Fineman isn’t horrible in my experience of him, but Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting brings to light much that is troubling about his long career. As they say, “In his 30 years as a reporter and pundit at Newsweek, Fineman could be counted on to represent the conventional take on politics. For example, Fineman is forever either urging Democratic politicians to move to the right or praising them for doing so.” That does pretty much sum up the supposed liberal media.

It is so good to be done with Bush:

Yeah, it’s sentimental and staged. But it’s still truthful.

Ars technica has reported on a study about how skeptics discount scientific consensus by casting doubts on the scientific experts. Basically it says that if an expert says what they want to hear, they go along with it; if not, not. I don’t think there is any doubt of this, but I question the study itself. For one thing, they describe conservatives as “individualistic” and liberals as “hierarchical.” This is a real problem. Unfortunately, I don’t have a link, but it has been pretty well established that conservatives actually value hierarchical structures and acceptance of authority far more than liberals. In fact, what most seems to define liberals is that they do not acceptable authority—instead they mostly value individuality and empathy. In modern American politics, does anyone question that the teabaggers are not for individual freedom, despite what they claim? The group is overwhelmingly socially conservative, which is to say that they believe that proper behavior is comes from some law from on high. I know I have my blind spots, but that does not make my intellectually expansive world view at all equivalent to the anti-intellectual claptrap of American conservatism.

I still believe that video games could be far less pathetic than they now are. In fact, I think that there are many old game ideas that have been abandoned in the name of the current 3-D shot-em-ups. But I’ve seen this commercial for Civilization V with the tag, “What will your civilization stand for?” Fuck! What does any civilization stand for? Self-perpetuation. Or maybe I’ve just lived in America for too long.

Mr. Johnston has a confusing middle name. It is pronounced “kay” as in “Mary Kay.” So I thought I heard people refer to him as “David C. Johnston” and “David K. Johnston”! I figured some people weren’t doing their homework, but I did mine and found out so had they.

I read David Cay Johnston‘s Free Lunch today, and it made me really angry. The subtitle of the book is, “How the wealthiest Americans enrich themselves at government expense (and stick you with the bill).” That about sums it up. It tells stories of large companies that get huge government subsidies for opening up stores. As Johnston points out, if a large sporting goods store opens in a town, there are going to be no tax revenue increases, because without such a store, people would just buy their sporting goods elsewhere. In fact, if the large sporting goods store charges less, the government will get less tax revenue. Usually the argument is made that the store will be a destination and that people will come from hundreds of miles to shop at these stores. In reality, this is never the case. What’s more, in virtually all cases, the government subsidies are much greater than any increased revenues.

He also spends time on professional sports. It turns out that none of the major sports leagues in America (baseball, football, basketball) would be profitable without government subsidies. Yes, some particular teams are profitable, but not any league taken together. This is mostly because the teams get local governments to pay for their expensive playing arenas. What’s more, since the leagues have a monopoly, ticket prices are on average $15 more than they would be in a free market. (Why are there 30 MLB teams? Because MLB says so. Why do they get to say so? Because Congress granted them the monopoly.)

The most shocking thing I learned was that many large retailers work out deals with the state and local authorities to not pay sales tax. So when you go to WalMart and buy a shirt, you are actually paying 9.25% more (in California) than you are if you bought it at a smaller place like Ross. In other words, WalMart gets to mark their prices 9.25% lower than what they are really charging you.

What really made me made about this book, however, was thinking about what my father would think of it. I told him about the sales tax scam and he was outraged. And I know if I could get him to read the whole book, he would agree with it. But he has been so poisoned by Faux News and Hate Radio that it would have a different meaning to him. He wouldn’t see that all these giveaways to the rich are the result of all these people he listens to who claim to be for free markets. He would blame exactly the politicians who are fighting this kind of theft. It would most likely make him think just what the teabaggers think: the problem with Republicans is that they aren’t conservative enough!

There is something to this. As Johnston points out, the two people in Congress who most consistently fight against this kind of thing are socialist Bernie Sanders and libertarian Ron Paul. But I’ve never known my father to really embrace libertarianism, and as much as the teabaggers claim to be libertarians, they are anything but. People of this ilk (including libertarians, but at least you can have an intelligent conversation with them) don’t understand how much their way of life depends upon the government and other people. Understanding why progressive taxation is the only morally acceptable form of taxation is a prerequisite for any real understanding of what is wrong in American politics. I am working on an essay about it, but it is harder to explain than a “flat tax,” which is simple and sounds good, but is evil incarnate.