Subprime [chat]

Two cranky old British guys explain the subprime mortgage crisis. It is only slightly less informative than this.

Sean Hannity: Europe and Obama sitting in a tree...

I'll say that the madness started when Karl Rove criticized Obama by complimenting him:

Even if you never met him, you know this guy. He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by.

Obama can get the ladies, drinks martinis, and makes fun of effete fucks? I'm sold! But it didn't stop there. Republicans continued their crusade of turning Obama's qualities into his vices. Obama is a gifted speaker? Those are just words! Obama is not a corrupt member of the establishment? He's inexperienced! Obama is a Christian with an ethnically diverse background? Just call him a Muslim Nigger and move on. But NOW we've reached the point at which that strategy creates some sort of bizarro world in which fish fly and birds swim. Yes, now Obama's problem is that he's too likeable.

If you missed Hannity and Colmes last night don't worry. The good people at newshounds.us threw up a little transcript of the exchange between Hannity, Colmes, and Frank Luntz. So, let's just skip to Sean Hannity's good part:

Could it be that Barack Obama shares Europe’s contempt and criticisms of America? Could it be that they agreed with him on the war? Could it be that they bow at the altar of the United Nations? Could it be that they don’t agree with Gitmo or tough interrogations? Could it be that they are, or they would talk to Ahmadinejad without preconditions? Could it all have to do with that? His ideology is one of (a) European socialist’s

I'm amazed by this. Hannity's entire attack on Obama's likeability is based in a portrayal of Europe as evil and unamerican:

If there’s anything that’s frustrating to me, Frank, these are just words. He seems to agree with the European, anti-American sentiment and the belief in the United Nations. But I look at it this way. America’s 4% of the world’s population but we pay 96% of the cost of keeping the entire planet sane and free. And you know what? That’s what I would have said if I went to Europe.

Here's what gets me. Sean Hannity said, "America is 4% of the world's population" but he acts like the United States is in charge of the entire world. He's embracing ethnocentrism as a sensible world view. He's taken the us vs. them illusion, crafted an entire political viewpoint founded upon that ignorance, and used his ignorance as a platform for attacking Obama.

Certainly this sort of rhetoric will appeal to people who already agree with it. I can appreciate the "boo socialism" malarkey and attempting to craft a picture of Obama as someone who will make the U.S. use Euros and require the use of bidets. But the hubris? The whole "everyone else is wrong I'm so awesome look at me sitting in my chair" bullshit Hannity is spewing at Obama's crowds? That is just insulting and embarrassing. I can understand linking someone to a Nazi and so portraying them as evil. But Europe? When did Europe become our enemy?

And what the fuck was all of that shit about the United Nations? The U.S. started the United Nations! Do we hate it now?

McCain: Obama's Genocide Tautology

In a mailer entitled Obama on Genocide the McCain campaign attempted to take a statement Obama made at a Holocaust museum in Jerusalem and compare it to a comment made previously in an attempt to, I shit you not, portray Obama as soft on Genocide. For your consideration, here is the portion of the mailer designed to convince you that Obama does not think genocide is a bad thing:

Obama on July 20, 2007:
Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

“Well, look, if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now — where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife — which we haven’t done,” Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press.

I can't fucking believe that I have to explain this. So you know what? I'm not going to. If you can't read what Obama said and understand what those words mean then FUCK YOU!

I've been told that I need to be nicer, that attacking people is not the best way to communicate a message. That some folks, god bless 'em, are just a little bit slow up the uptake so we need to hold their hands and coddle them through the big mean world of simple sentences and If / Then statements.

The problem is that when you look at the situation the problem is bigger than a misunderstanding of a particular quote. The problem is that fuckhead are fuckheads. That to some people McCain's argument is compelling and sensible. There are human beings who would read that and say, "Oh, well, I guess Obama does not think genocide is bad! Better vote for whitey!" And they're not skewing their understanding, they're not intentionally deluding theirselves. They actually think those things, in a very loose understanding of what "think" means!

This is not a situation in which one ought to invoke the "attract flies with honey" mentality. Because you know what? These flies would fucking drown in the honey. Seriously. Anyone who read that mailing and actually thinks that quote indicates that Obama likes genocide is stupid; actually stupid. They are a lost cause. And not in some sort of rhetorical or exaggerated sense. They're just plain too fucking stupid to help. We don't need to be nice to them. We don't need to coddle them. We don't need to explain things to them. We need to buy them a fucking helmet and put them in a padded room before they inadvertedly hurt themselves by voting for McCain.

IF we need to prevent genocides THEN we need to prevent genocides.

IT'S A FUCKING TAUTOLOGY!!

Dr Edgar Mitchell: NASA's Alien Cover-up

Dr. Edgar Mitchell, the guy from the Apollo 14 missions, said that Aliens do exist. This seems like the sort of thing people would want to know:

I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we've been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomena is real.
It's been well covered up by all our governments for the last 60 years or so, but slowly it's leaked out and some of us have been privileged to have been briefed on some of it.

Works for me. I welcome our Alien Overlords.

My Proposal for BG

Title, Subject to Revision:
An Examination of James Robinson’s Starman, and its use of the Legacy Hero concept


I hope to examine the mid-90’s Starman series by James Robinson, and it’s core themes of history and nostalgia, by focusing on the protagonist, Jack Knight, and how the author delves into the idea of a Legacy Hero, by bringing Jack into contact and conflict with the various characters who have previously held the Starman name.
Legacy Hero. It’s a term often bandied about in casual comics discussions, especially regarding DC properties, reflecting a new character or property, who takes on the “mantle”, so to speak, of a previous hero, and “live up to” or otherwise honor the original character’s “legacy”.
More successful attempts at legacy characters actually find ways to reveal traits or elements of the previous character within the new one, something Robinson does regularly in his series, by having Jack interact with his disparate antecedents, unrelated characters, created to retain the Starman trademark.
Robinson’s series is fundamentally a celebration of history, and how an awareness of it influences or deepens character. Robinson, through Jack Knight’s personal growth and examination of what it meant to be Starman, what it might have meant to his father, actually joins the heterogeneous properties that were previous Starmen, and shapes them into a legacy for Jack and beyond, with references to future Starmen, in the series, living up to their antecedents’ collected histories.

Zero Punctuation: Age of Conan

Degrees and the Waving thereof

As both a Degree Waving Asshole™ and someone who observes reality I'm often conflicted by a fundamental question: Do degrees mean anything? We all know that people waver back and forth in their interpretations of academic accomplishments. So, is there a foundation for any of this, or is it all entirely subjective? To begin, I think we need to address the mechanism which allows the duality and wavering.

I think we can break down the rigmarole of assessing academic achievement into three categories: Ability, Desire, Means. These are in no way perfect but rather are meant to illustrate a point.
Ability: A person's intellect, smarts, brain-power.
Desire: A person's desire and motivation.
Means: A person's finances, time available, transportation. Basically any non-"smarts" required or utilize to achieve a given end

These are the three categories into which the reasoning behind academic achievements fit. If I get a high score on my paper then I obviously have high Ability, Desire, and Means. If I gets a low score on my paper then obviously my Ability is fine (How dare you say that I am stupid!). The problem must be with Means. The teacher graded unfairly, I was tired, bullshit bullshit, crap. We've all experienced this and understand it. The question of valuing degrees also utilizes these categories. A professor we like obviously had high Ability, Desire, and Means. Or, perhaps, the professor lacked Means so required far greater Ability. A professor we don't like obviously has only marginal Ability and compensated for this with Means.

So where does this end?

While one may modify one's interpretation of a degree what one cannot change is a person's having that degree. An individual with a degree has jumped through the hoops required to receive that degree. It doesn't necessarily indicate how they jumped but rather indicates that they jumped. So having a Ph. D. does not indicate a specific combination of Ability, Desire, and Means but rather indicates a sufficient combination of those requirements to have reached that end; degrees indicate hoop jumping ability.

So does that mean that degrees are meaningless, that those with them are little more than hoop jumpers? Well, consider a story a professor once told me. When his intro to philosophy students asked "What gives you the right to tell us that we're wrong?" his answer was not "Because I have a Ph. D.". His answer was, "Well, I've been thinking and reading about this shit for 30 years."

That's where the meaning is found. The meaning does not come from the degree. The meaning does not come from the hoop jumping. The meaning is found in the individual. We can't simply stop at "Player A has a degree". We have to utilize a scope that goes beyond merely the degree and look at the entire situation. Yes, "hoop jumping" is an important part of the scope. Yes, "hoop jumping" affords an individual access to important points of growth those outside the "hoop jumping" arena lack. But the degree is neither the end nor the ultimate defining factor.

The question of "does a degree mean anything" is where the flaw lies; our desire for degree to be the sole point of qualification is the mistake. The real meaning comes from the entire scope of the person. Plenty of brilliant people have obtained degrees just as plenty of exalted morons have hung around academia long enough to get their degrees. What is meaningful is not the degree; the degree is only part of it. The meaning is found in the scope of the person who has the degree.