CaroLINES

Paul Ryan is upset the economy is improving

2012-02-02T15:50:00.004-05:00

How could he?!? Such a trivial thing, too! I mean, it's so easy to concentrate on only one thing and resist the temptation of helping others. I'm talking about Rep. Paul Ryan's admonishment of Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke. It was delivered this morning.

Representative Ryan wants the Fed to concentrate on keeping inflation down. A single-minded pursuit of that, too. Not help the economy or the employment numbers.

I don't know... I think I've heard this one before. Where? Oh, where? Oh yeah. The Great Depression was made worse because Herbert Hoover concentrated on using laissez-faire economic policy! The great fight against inflation was more important than the resulting deflation and global depression.

Besides, improving employment numbers means the economy is improving. And that bodes well for one Barack Obama.

Carolyn Ann

Civil rights depends on... Dana did what?!?

2012-02-02T11:48:00.000-05:00

I had to read these two blog posts twice. Three times for Dana's.

I can recommend Valerie Keefe's blogpost, but Dana's? I'm quite stunned. I knew she wasn't so good at reading, but ... Really?!?

Okay, the nutshell version. Valerie Keefe, writing in The Huffington Post, argues that civil rights shouldn't depend on what's between your legs, nor how whatever is there got there. She further says that what you wear shouldn't matter. Civil rights depend on you being a person, basically. Cool. :-)

I share that opinion and have sometimes (!) voiced it quite vociferously. :-)

In the middle of her Huffington Post piece, Ms Keefe introduces us to one of Dana Lane Taylor's more judgmental posts: the Transgender Borg Collective. ... ... ... ... WTF?!?

Now that's interesting. The text of Dana's post has changed!!! I wonder why?

Here's the version Google has cached: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cwR-YvqIytQJ:www.ts-is-liberation.org/blog/2011/06/28/the-transgender-borg-collective/+%22The+transgender+borg+collective%22+%22People+always+assume+I+have+various+stances+on+things+without+actually+ever+seeing+the+proof%22+dana+lane+taylor&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari

Screenshot taken at 11:31:47AM
Cached version is from "Jan 9, 2012 19:23:18 GMT"

Here's the version as it looked when I clicked on the appropriate link:

Screenshot taken at 11:31:22AM

Wow.

The relevant quote:

People always assume I have various stances on things without actually ever seeing the proof. I don’t consider myself “HBS/Classic Transsexual” nor do I push that on people. My philosophy is basically that if you claim to be a women who was born in a male body and you don’t want to repair this birth defect, you might not be a woman. Why would someone not want to fix this? I do have issue with those who claim a non-op status due to financial reasons. There are a lot of us who are fighting to get rights for medical treatments that are mandatory and to have insurance companies cover this treatment as they would for any other medical condition. Claiming that surgery is optional destroys this effort. This is a serious issue! Those with transsexual histories, who are supporting the transgender community’s non-op is an option argument are helping to tear down any possibility of reforming insurance policies. You have been assimilated into the Transgender Borg Collective and they are happy to have you there. And yes, I have been lobbying my employer to remove the exclusion of mandatory triadic treatment from their health insurance policies so I take it personal. Do I not have a right to be angry at those who are damaging these efforts? I damned sure do! Yes, I am very angry about it.

Just to make sure - here's a screen capture of the bit where Dana extolls on being "discovered":

I'm... I'm quite taken aback!

The topic of this post was how could Dana be so silly? She acclaims the mention of her blog in The Huffington Post - and apparently missed where Ms Keefe said:

She's wrong. She's wrong with the heat of 10,000 suns, just as wrong as a cancer patient assuming that the existence of radiation therapy is making it impossible to get chemotherapy. She's wrong for advocating for a second that surgery be a precondition for basic human rights. She's wrong for assuming that genitalia are gender, and just as wrong as a French Court that assumed that a trans woman had to have a certain cup size to be a woman, and I shouldn't even need to draw attention to this any more than any other Internet crank who isn't writing laws or cheques to those who write laws, [...]

(It's immediately under the quote from Dana.)

Holy smokes. I'm quite at a loss. Dana just destroyed *any* credibility she had.

Talk about ... Well, whatever.

Word to the wise: Dana, change the post back. You own that site, I'm sure you can. Admit to being a bit angry and careless and doing something foolish. Apologize. And get back to your usual blether. You can recover some of your reputation; don't try to bullshit your way through, either.

If you don't, your credibility will stay shredded. As it is, very few will take you at all seriously after such a dumb move.

I love debate and the bazaar the internet gives us. But sometimes you have to wonder about folk. :-)

Carolyn Ann

Added: I decided to ask Ms Keefe when she retrieved the quote from Dana:

Hi, Valeria. I thought you made some telling points in this post.

I'm curious: can you tell me when you retrieved the quote from Dana Lane Taylor? Because the blog post you refer to ("Transgender Borg Collective") has changed. It's now about "pimp slapping"! (Which is a copy of another of her blog posts, which was, specifically, about pimp slapping.)

Google has, as of January 9th, the same text as you. And I remember reading the words you quoted shortly after she wrote them. But this morning, the post, as I said, has changed.

I don't know if she'll tell me, or if HuffPo will "approve" the comment (apparently comment moderation is on for that post). I'll let you know. :-)

What goes around will come around... :-)

2012-02-01T15:03:00.001-05:00

Mittens, apparently, doesn't care about the poor.

The allegation is taken from an interview he did this morning. It's totally out of context, and is some of the most unfortunate wording he could have come up with. But that doesn't matter. You see, he took Candidate Obama's words out of context - shortening a quote to make it seem as if he said something he didn't. It's a common ploy, especially with pundits like Sean Hannity of Fox News. It leaves the quoted person fumbling and on the defensive, and you get to escape the repercussions (well, most of them).

But you have to be careful... Because you've just opened the field to your opponents. :-)

The Dems are already planning to out-Mitten ("to run an incredibly negative campaign against your opponent") Mittens. Each time the man says something like "$10,000 bet", "I like to fire people" and "I don't care about the poor", he can be assured it'll pop up in a number of ads. Faux pas' are always awkward; when you're in a Presidential Campaign? They can be lethal.

Here's hoping they're that and more to Mittens. :-D

Carolyn Ann

Added: I'm not the only who's noticed Mittens' dichotomy... :-)
And it's a habit of his...

From the Captain on down...

2012-01-31T22:44:00.001-05:00

A mechanic left a plug in a fuel cell on a $244M airplane. Because of that, the airplane had a tough time in mid-air refueling and two holes were blown into its wing. A General had to tell Congress that someone didn't do a basic function of aircraft maintenance - check you've got everything you need.

The airplane was safely landed, but I would think some careers are up in the air. From the Captain on down, there will be sore asses galore on that maintenance crew!

Carolyn Ann

Unfriending a friend

2012-01-31T22:19:00.001-05:00

The process of unfriending someone is pretty simple - go to a webpage and click "Unfriend". Facebook asks for a confirmation and you're done. The bits that lead to such a decision, and the sense of remorse and even anger afterwards? They're not so simple.

What led me to unfriending a friend this afternoon was a combination of factors. Not least being a sense of physical unease. I've been skirting around this particular friendship for a few weeks; the political aspect was a sort of catalyst, but not the actual reason. The dynamic of the friendship changed, I felt. It went from a friendly basis to one of guarded wariness. And once the friends of my friend got involved - that was it. Instead of political debate, it was personal insult and ridicule. I don't need that sort of crap. I don't want it. And the undercurrent of victimhood, of conspiracies. It's just not me; I don't have time for conspiracy theories or proof your candidate is the victim of some evil plot.

And then my friend said [sic] something that really ticked me off. I thought it indicated how she really felt about me, and I didn't like what I perceived. So I wrote a note and unfriended her. I will miss her wit and general compassion. Beyond that, I can't stand the man she bombards her friends with; I really consider him to be a cranky old anti-Semitic racist. He reminds me of the guy at the end of the street, who was imprisoned in WW2 as one of Mosley's "boys". But overall, I felt the friendship was gone. It's not a friendship if you're wary of each other.

Carolyn Ann

(I changed some of this to better [?] reflect my feelings.)

===
Added:
One way of thinking about this sort of thing is to suppose you have a friend whom you'd like to see. But the only way you can see her is by going to a certain pub. (Come to think of it, most folk in Britain will know this one!) So you pop to that pub. And you notice that she doesn't so much engage in conversation as put forth a proposition and all her other friends in that pub defend whatever her snowflake says. But you're not so sure and mention that. After a while, her friends don't bother defending her snowflakes; they merely bully you. You'd very quickly stop going to that pub, friend or not.

In fact, you'd conclude she wasn't much of a friend at all!

On Facebook, you have no option about the pub. If you know someone on there - the pub comes to you. The snowflake is issued, and you have two options: silence or putting up with bullies. I don't know about you, but silence isn't an option and I put up with bullies in a few miserable years at High School. Thirty-plus years later, I'm not at all willing to put up with bullies again. I'm also not inclined to fight them if I don't have to. I don't need that negativity in my life. I have better, more positive, things to do. I prefer the constructive to the negative. I like Obama's hope, not Ron Paul's supporters endless complaining about how badly the "MSM" (mainstream media; it's one of those phrases that if you feel a need to use it, you're not complaining - you're whining) is treating their messiah. I don't mind, enjoy, robust debate; not silly whining and I left those playground taunts behind me long ago. Why should I agree to continue to read things that remind me of those days? Why should I try to converse with a friend if she doesn't actually do much beyond issue a damn snowflake; at times, so many it's a sodding blizzard!

I freely admit to not being the easiest critter on the planet to get along with. And I've learned a lot about folk over the years; and myself. And one thing I do know about myself is that I'm cheerful and optimistic. Doomsday apocalypses and petty bigots (even, especially, if they're presidential candidates, or wish to be) aren't my cup of tea. Nor, it seems, are bullies and attending pubs where the conversation is a miserable experience.

C'est la vie.

HuffPoUK

2012-01-31T00:44:00.000-05:00

So... I just took a look at The Huffington Post UK edition. It reminds me of the News of the World in the late 70's. Tabloid crap, mostly. With the occasional article aiming straight at the bottom edge of the page of The Guardian. (That's the serious stuff.) Or The Sun, when I was a paper lad, thumbing through that day's edition to find Page 3. (It was usually on page 3...) Mind you, that was back when dinosaurs ruled the land. Ted Heath, James Callaghan, etc.

In other words: tripe.

Not so far from the US edition, then.

Carolyn Ann

My kind of "wine", my lass and my kind of song

2012-01-31T00:22:00.002-05:00

Okay... Here we go. Well, me. Here I go. I don't know about you. :-)

Just had a decent amount of the fourth food group (1: cheeseburger; 2: fries/fried onion rings; 3: ketchup & other condiments (but only if you insist); 4: beer. :-) ). And this afternoon a friend of a Facebook friend told me I was wrong to say money isn't property. I don't recall saying that, but whatever. I decided to justify that position. It's not something I've ever given much thought to, but hey, what do I know? I've never considered money to be property. I've considered it to be wealth (or, in my case, a lack thereof), but never property. I've never heard of it being discussed as property, or read it being such. In fact, the only way you can get money=property is by saying that money represents some tangible commodity or real estate. Which it might, but not really.

Here's my argument:

I own some land. A small sliver of New Jersey. it's real. I can walk on it. I can trade it if I need to - for money. I have a motorcycle or three; I can trade those for money. They require upkeep, which costs money. I go about earning the dollars to pay taxes, registration fees, gas, food, motorcycle gear, insurance and the like. The money is, at best, temporarily in my possession. Then it moves to someone else's possession. If I can keep some of it, I put it in the bank. The money, while it is in my possession, can be considered my property. But it isn't *property* per se. It's not a concrete item, it's a facilitator, a common denominator for commercial transactions.

Any other definition is, almost by definition, naive or primitive. If you conflate "gold" with "money", then you can arrive at "money=property". If you're a landed aristocrat from 18th century England, you can count money as property (because it was often listed that way). But these days, money is not rooted in a tangible, fungible, commodity; it is rooted in a common understanding of value. *It is abstract.*

Let me repeat, because it's important:

Currency is a concrete expression of an abstract idea.

Property is a tangible item. Commodities are tangible items. Currency is a tangible item. The value it represents isn't tangible. (It is real only insofar as it implies something about your ability to enter certain transactions.)

I now invite you to point out any flaws in my argument. Or better, prove me wrong. Ranting and inane dismissal won't work. :-)

Courtesy of Jacques Derrida. Of course. :-) (Where would I be without deconstructionism?)

It's a popular myth within Ron Paul circles that money, wealth, is real property. Despite its intangibility. The equating of wealth with property is rather odd. The English did that a long time ago - 18th century, etc. It was a standard that didn't stand the test of time. Mostly because wealth is independent of property.

You can say "those coins are mine". There, you're talking about some specific currency items. They're tangible, real. Bank notes are getting onto dodgy ground... Now we're dealing with a representation of value. And from there, you have checks, which are basically promissory notes, with intermediaries doing the actual fulfillment of the promise. The banks transfer money between themselves to fulfill the various obligations. They do not transfer gold bullion, etc. What they communicate are electronically transmitted symbols. Although the actual communication mechanism is unimportant; the most important part is the agreement that if I tell you "you are now holding $17.67 from me", you believe me and alter your books to show that. I do the same in my books and the world is happy.

The biggest problem with saying that wealth is property is that it is a naive expression. You can't use your sofa to pay your electric bill, for instance. You have to use something less tangible - the electric company has no need of your sofa, and will disagree about its value, anyway.

And you know the worst of it? By tying wealth to any tangible commodity, you're basically arguing that the volatile value of that commodity is how you're going to measure your wealth. So if trading in that commodity goes south - your wealth went with it. If, however, you decouple your wealth and simply say a dollar or a pound represents an abstract quantity of wealth - you're doing well. Gold prices can do whatever they want. All you have to do, if you're intent on proving that wealth is commodity-based, and hence is property, is trade some number of currency units for the appropriate amount of gold. If the price of gold goes up, you can trade some of your gold. In other words, you can transform the value of the gold into an abstract currency figure. You no longer own a tangible commodity, but your bank manager is happier. (Your broker is happier still.)

Oh: ergo, money is wealth. Currency is property that reflects an abstract value that constitutes an abstract notion of wealth. In other words: you can't make your own money, and gold is a commodity that you can own. But wealth is not property.

I'm having a slight problem typing. The words are there, but the letters tend to be in the wrong order. I think I'm going to have a decent hangover in the AM. G'night. :-)

Carolyn Ann

PS/Added: I should note that you can own wealth. You can also tally your real property as part of your wealth. For instance, a magnate (or your local Silicon Valley entrepreneur) could say that he owns ten properties, houses, and a large bank account. But to measure the value of those ten properties, you have to translate the properties into a currency equivalent. Which, if you think about it, should never be translated into a commodity! (Unless Goldman Sachs or the Royal Bank of Scotland is your broker, in which case they'll be more than happy to sell you some toxic assets that you'd be well wise to transform into a solid commodity such as gold.) <- That was Satire, corporate lawyer types. (And it's protected by the 1st. Nah Nah Naaaah! :-D I know, I pride myself on my ~~facsimile to an adult~~ maturity. :-) ) I'm going back to bed, now.

That's almost interesting

2012-01-30T21:36:00.003-05:00

Someone was poking around the ol' blog this afternoon. They also did some peering into my Flickr account. The reason this is interesting is because at least one person came from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and they arrived here from http://www.ts-is-liberation.org/blog/category/carolyn-ann/

Now... I wonder who could that be..? :-P

Carolyn Ann

A chicken or the eggs...

2012-01-29T11:27:00.000-05:00

As we discussed (Mrs: what do you want to do, today?, Me: Huh?) our plans for the day ‎The Mrs mentioned we need to go to the supermarket.

Mrs: We need eggs and I want to get a chicken for dinner
Me: Which are you going to get first..?
Mrs: Groan...

:-D

It's now a two way race in Florida

2012-01-29T11:14:00.003-05:00

I think Florida is down to a two-man race. With Rick Santorum having to fly back to Philadelphia to visit his sick daughter, he's conceded the race. It was an admirable and needed response to his daughter being very sick, but, in the cold-hearted terms of presidential electioneering - he bowed out at the wrong time. The voters will admire him for putting family first and punish him for it. (Not that he much of a chance, anyway.)

Ron Paul never had a snow ball's chance, anyway.

So that leaves Newt and Mitt: the scrapper and the scraper.

Carolyn Ann

What I really mean is...

2012-01-29T00:22:00.003-05:00

I really want to say "fuckin' prick". But I think that's inadequate.

Added: I should note that Lionel Shriver is, I think, one of those pompous, self-appointed guardians of public whatever. What was it? Oh, yeah: Decency, rectally-grasped decency.

Carolyn Ann

Sunny side of the street..?

2012-01-29T00:06:00.002-05:00

Otherwise, all is well, with sunny skies and pleasant beaches. :-)

Carolyn Ann

Context matters

2012-01-28T10:06:00.000-05:00

If you need a lesson in "context is all" when it comes to criticizing others, this piece by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, should provide you with the necessary clue. :-)

In a nutshell, she explains why Governor Jan Brewer's "finger pointing" at The Prez wasn't cool or kosher. And she quite neatly demolishes that old "it's not offensive if I don't think it is" silliness. So the next time a "transsexual separatist" [sic] says there's nothing to be offended by, because they don't perceive the offensiveness of their statements, point them at Ms Jeffers' piece and hope for they have a brain between their ears. (And, I will note, the referenced individuals could do worse than point those they complain of at the same article.)

In other words: just because you don't find it offensive, doesn't mean it isn't! Or, simplistically: You don't get to define what offends me. :-)

Carolyn Ann

A template for political argument

2012-01-28T09:41:00.003-05:00

To save time, I've put together a template for political debates:

On the judiciary
1. If the judge issues a ruling you like, he's wise
2. If the judge issues a ruling you don't like, he's an activist judge

On "the media"
1. If the coverage is favorable, it's good
2. If the coverage is "fair", it's wishy-washy and probably liberal
3. If the coverage is adversarial, it's clearly biased
(If the coverage is "Fair and Balanced", it isn't)
Bonus points for calling it "the lamestream" media.

On political argument:
1. If I like the argument, it's wise, as are all who like it
2. If I don't [like] your stance, you're a buffoon of the highest order and it's amazing you can walk and breath at the same time
3. If you don't like what I'm saying, you must support the direct opposite view and, therefore, you are any or all of this list: neanderthal, fascist, communist, uncaring capitalist, or socialist. And it's amazing you can put one foot in front of the other with any consistency.

No need to thank me. :-)

Carolyn Ann

Succinct, right?

2012-01-28T09:24:00.000-05:00

From Ina Pinkney, on Facebook:

Someone asked Bob Dole why people took such an instant dislike to Gingrich. "Because it saves time," he said.

(via Being Liberal, also on Facebook)

===
Carolyn Ann

Clinical phobias do not a social detestation make...

2012-01-28T00:47:00.001-05:00

Just a quick note.

All of the phobias SA-ET lists in her recent post? They're clinical phobias. She neglects to mention that transphobia is a social detestation. As in: it can't possibly have a clinical, i.e. medical, basis.

Just thought I'd mention it. Because I know she won't or didn't. (I wonder why? Surely she didn't intend to be deceptive?)

(And she'll delete my contribution to her other post. Because she's ~~overly sensitive~~ silly like that. And is fond of a bit of good old fashioned censorship.)

Carolyn Ann

Added: a bit I should have added last night. :-)

Name this Trans Mafia

2012-01-27T23:33:00.002-05:00

Really?

Please,
name this Trans Mafia!
indict them
condemn and hang
this vile fantasy
of a concert
a congress,
this devil's bracket!

Put a face to thy accusation
or be accursed a harpy
and worse!

Blight the day a tranny
was proud
and lived in a moment
unknown
unknowable

Desperate pleading
for a world gone by
that has exited
tumbling
head first
from a vicious stage

She
Looks
At herself
...
Askance
Delighted
Gleeful
Happy
Bold
Intrepid
Nervous

Met with
your
arrogance
as you
gainsay
others'
pleasure
and
delight
at
finding
their
own
life

Do you
decry their life
because it's not yours?
Despise their limits
while you deplore
yours?

keep merry your counsel
and destroy
the path you laid?

Harp thee

to a

willow

it will listen

and learn

and grow

and forget

within a year

at most

===

Carolyn Ann

Stephan Sokolow's "Gender Bending Fiction Index"

2012-01-26T21:42:00.001-05:00

It's astonishing what you can come across on the web. I was looking for information about micro-frameworks (very small systems that allow, encourage, you to build very large systems on top of them. Resulting in, well, very large systems...), and came across this blog post by Stephan Sokolow. In the first sentence, Stephan mentions a "Gender Bending Fiction Index". So I figured I'd link to it.

I haven't really gone through it (and, to be honest, I'm not likely to do so, anyway!), but it looks "okay". Certainly better than that stupid "Fiction Mania" site. (Is that still going?) I don't know who Stephan is, there's almost nothing on the website, except a resumé and a bit of "I'm a geek!" stuff. :-)

So, if you're into that sort of thing: enjoy! :-)

Carolyn Ann

A preview of this evening's Republican debate

2012-01-26T17:36:00.002-05:00

To save you the trouble of watching this evening's debate, I have ~~purloined~~ written it out. No need to thank me (you probably won't, anyway... ;-) ). Speaker is in bold, stage directions are in italics.

Enjoy. :-D

Carolyn Ann

Four ... Three ... Two ... And ... Roll!

Wolf Blitzer:
Now, fair audience, our congress hour
Draws on apace; three happy days bring in
Another primary: but, O, methinks, how slow
The old one wanes! I linger in my desires,
Like to a moderator or a news anchor
Long withering out a bare Romney’s revenue.

Wolf (Looks at Ron Paul):
Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call'd Ron Paul: are not you he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Ron Puck,
They do your work, and you shall have the good luck:
Are not you he?

Ron Paul:
Thou speak'st aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Rick and make him smile
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And the whole quire hold their hips and laugh
And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear
(Takes breath)

(Ron Paul supporter)
O, speak again, bright angel! for thou art
As glorious to this night, being o'er my head
As is a winged messenger of heaven
Unto the white-upturned wondering eyes
Of use mortals that fall back to gaze upon you
When you bestride the lazy-pacing clouds
And sail upon the bosom of the air!

Ron Paul:
O voter, Voter! wherefore art thou Voter?
Deny myself and refuse my name?
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I'll no longer be a candidate!

Wolf (looking at Gingrich):
Mr Speaker, Shall you hear more, or shall thy speak at this?

Newt Gingrich:
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of Florida;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our merry meetings changed to stern alarums,
Our delightful measures to dreadful marches.
Grim-visaged war hath creas'd this wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
I caper nimbly to a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To wantonly strut before ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this unfair election,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
I have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my image in the mirror
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these foul-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my self and the Mitt Romney
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if Obama be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should closely be mew'd up,
...

Wolf (looking at Romney):
Shall you confess that you deceive?
Here, as I point my sword, er pen, the sun arises,
Which is a great way growing on the south,
Weighing the youthful season of the year.
Some two months hence up higher toward the north
He first presents his fire; and the high east
Stands, as the Capitol, directly here.
Give me your hand, and swear your resolution!

Mitt Romney:
Well, I appreciate the opportunity you're giving me, Wolf, as the richest man in this lineup, to speak. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we're not here to indulge in fantasy, but in political and economic reality. America, America has become a second-rate power. Its trade deficit and its fiscal deficit are at nightmare proportions. Now, in the days of the free market, when our country was a top industrial power, there was accountability to the stockholder. The Carnegies, the Mellons, the men that built this great industrial empire, made sure of it because it was their money at stake. Today, management has no stake in the nation! The President has no stake in the nation! We need a nation that management has a stake in!

All together, the man sitting up here, President Obama, owns none of the nation. And where does Mr. Gingrich put his million-dollar salary? Not into taxes; he pays less than me!

(Faces audience) You own the nation. That's right -- you, the stockholder, er, the, er citizen. And you are all being royally screwed over by these, these bureaucrats, (points to Gingrich) with their steak lunches, their hunting and fishing trips, their corporate jets and golden parachutes.

America has 100 different Senators, each earning over 200 thousand dollars a year and 435 House members. Now, I have spent the last two months analyzing what all these guys do, and I still can't figure it out. I’ll bet you can’t either! One thing I do know is that our nation lost over trillion dollars last year, and I'll bet that half of that was spent on the poor!

The new law of evolution in corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest. Well, in my book you either do it right or you get eliminated. And I intend to eliminate as many jobs as I can! In the last twenty deals that I've been involved with, there were 2.5 million stockholders who have made a pretax profit of 12 billion dollars. Thank you.

I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them!

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good.

Greed is right.

Greed works.

Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.

And greed -- you mark my words -- will not only save my campaign, but also that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.

Thank you very much.

Wolf (to Rick Santorum):
Your honour's players, heating your amendment,
Are come to play a pleasant comedy;
For so your doctors hold it very meet,
Seeing too much sadness hath congeal'd your blood,
And melancholy is the nurse of frenzy:
Therefore they thought it good you hear a play
And frame your mind to mirth and merriment,
Which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.

Rick (starts):
Why came I hither but to my intent?
Think you a little din can daunt mine ears?
Have I not in my time heard lions roar?
Have I not heard the sea puff'd up with winds
Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?
Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,
And heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?
Have I not in a pitched battle heard
Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets' clang?
And do you tell me of a woman's tongue,
That gives not half so great a blow to hear
As will a chestnut in a farmer's fire?
Tush, tush! I fear only gay boys with bugs.

Wolf, muttering: You have not!
(Looks at Gingrich) Shall I entreat a word?

Gingrich:
Even as a flattering dream or worthless fancy.
Then take me up and manage well the jest:
Carry me gently to your fairest chamber
And hang it round with all my wanton pictures:
Balm my foul head in warm distilled waters
And burn sweet wood to make the lodging sweet:
Procure me music ready when I awake,
To make a dulcet and a heavenly sound;
And if I chance to speak, be ready straight
And with a low submissive reverence
Say 'What is it your Honour will command?'
Let one attend me with a silver basin
Full of rose-water and bestrew'd with flowers,
Another bear the ewer, the third a diaper,
And say 'Will't please your Lordship cool your hands?'
Some one be ready with a costly suit
And ask me what apparel I will wear;
Another tell me of my campaign and voters,
whom I will persuade that I hath not been lunatic;
And when you says I am, say that my dreams,
For I am nothing but a mighty Lord!
This do and do it kindly, gentle sir:
It will be pastime passing excellent,
If it be husbanded with modesty, as I am.

Ron Paul:
A pretty peat! it is best
Put finger in the eye, an we knew why!

Wolf:
Dr Paul, can you comment on your low polling in this state?

Ron Paul:
I think the intellectual revolution that’s going on now to restore liberty in this country is well on its way and there’s no way they’re going to stop the momentum that we have started and that is the victory that you have brought about because my supporters have been the ones that have done all the work there’s a lot of people here but the ones across the country the donors and the excitement on the campuses it’s just unbelievable we don’t always get the coverage or the interest shown or even know what what is going on because if we did and we don’t we wouldn’t be ignoring so much of what we’re doing but you know I find it sort of fascinating when they finally get around and this is different people it could be in the media could be our opponents or whatever but I sort of have to chuckle when they describe you and me as being dangerous that’s one thing they are telling the truth about because we are dangerous to this country.

Rick Santorum:
Foul devil, for God's sake, hence, and trouble us not;
For thou hast made the happy earth my hell,
Fill'd it with cursing cries and deep exclaims.
If thou delight to view thy heinous deeds,
Behold this pattern of thy butcheries.
(Looks at Wolf)
O, gentleman, see, see! my dead Campaign’s wounds
Open their congeal'd mouths and bleed afresh!
Blush, Blush, that lump of foul deformity;
For 'tis his presence that exhales this blood
From cold and empty veins, where no blood dwells;
His deed, inhuman and unnatural,
Provokes this deluge most unnatural.
O God, with this blood maddest, revenge this death!
O earth, with this blood I drink'st, I avenge my campaign’s death!
Either heaven with lightning strike the murderer dead,
Or earth, gape open wide and eat him quick,
As thou dost swallow up this good king's blood
Which that hell-govern'd arm hath butchered!
(Turns to all three opponents)
Thy wast provoked by thy bloody mind.
Which never dreamt on aught but butcheries:
Didst thou not kill this campaign of mine?

Wolf Blizter, John King, Anderson Cooper, Gloria Borger
(all lift skirts and...)

The voters today in society
Go for classical butchery,
So to win their hearts one must quote with ease
Brutus and Cassi-us!

Brush up your Shakespeare,
Start mangling him now.
Brush up your Shakespeare
And the voters you will wow!

Brush up your Shakespeare
And voters’ll all kowtow,
And they'll all kowtow,
And they'll all kowtow.

Brush up your Shakespeare,
Start quoting him now.
Brush up your Shakespeare
And the women you will wow.

Brush up your Shakespeare
And they'll all kowtow-ow!

Chris Christie punts on gay marriage

2012-01-26T10:48:00.000-05:00

Chris Christie says gay marriage is “too serious to be treated like a political football.” So he proposes to make it the ball, instead. It's the only way to describe his punting on this issue.

Why is it that conservatives always seem to seek to curtail rights? They idolize the words of that parchment, without any intention of actually understanding or abiding by them. "Pursuit of happiness"? For me, but not for you!

Since when have basic human rights been subject to the whims of the majority? Oh I know - since forever. That still doesn't make it right. This democracy is supposed to be about protecting minorities from the whims of the majorities and/or powerful; and protecting all from the powerful. Instead, people like Chris Christie exploit phobias and work hard to ensure that rights are subject to whims and fashions.

Shame on this "blunt talking" ballerina.

Carolyn Ann

A private Narnia. Without the good bits.

2012-01-26T10:24:00.000-05:00

I looked around. The warehouse had seen better days. With broken clerestory windows and a rusty, leaking steel roof the rain was worse inside than out. The concrete floor was uneven and wet, with the right side cleared of debris and the left still to be done. A few small trees were growing where they could. A grey day in a grey shed.

Mitt Romney was putting some pressure-treated 2-by-4's down, firmly against the faded paint of the wall. He was wearing an open-necked blue check shirt. "No, Mitt! That's not how you do it! We have to wait for all this to dry. And you're not supposed to be 'doing' the work, you're supposed to be managing it!" I showed him where the wood had to go - about a foot away from the wall. "We have to allow for air movement, and you need a lot of that with this sort place." He looked chastened and annoyed.

I walked to the other side and pulled a small ailanthus out. A pile of cheap desks looked interesting. I peered into it. Plastic veneer, printed to look like wood, was peeling from particleboard bases. Steel legs were patched with rust. I could hear a small fan, rattling slightly on its bearings. I moved some of the pile, and there was a small electric heater, plugged in. "Far too small for the space", I thought to myself. It didn't have a fan. I tugged on the cord, unplugging it. The noise stopped. I looked around. Mitt was busy trying to do something. I had to go to the library.

The guard was arguing with a woman. Stepping through a large metal detector, I asked about the Scientific American I'd reserved; the woman behind the oak counter gave it to me and scanned it. She might have smiled, I wasn't sure. I went into the Grand Room. It had faded oak panelling and tall, narrow windows with small leaded panes of old glass. Clusters of chairs faced away from a fire cheerfully burning in a majestic stone fireplace. I wondered if that was why it was merry. I sat in a green leather wing chair near the fire. A couple was arguing. Clearly an item, the two guys were getting louder until one of them said "Wouldn't it be cute if we were in the same room when we were born! We could have been!" He squealed in delight. The other patrons looked annoyed or cheered. I waved. I had no idea who they were. It seemed appropriate.

The library didn't allow clothes. The changing room was old; the same dark oak panels and a warm oak floor. Generous cubbies were placed too high across a forbidding deep counter made of the same oak. The room was a bit intimidating. I folded my t-shirt and shorts and carefully tossed them into a cubby. A young Robin Williams stood nearby. He cracked a joke. I couldn't hear the words. My phone rang. I took it from my pocket. I put on a large t-shirt dress. It had a a watercolor of large red daisy with a yellow stamen printed on it. I decided it was cute. Robin pulled a blue bra from his pocket and said something. he looked older. He was doing a news report from Vietnam. I answered the phone. It was my wife. She was telling me she was at work.

Carolyn Ann

Stop! Wearing those heels! They're...

2012-01-25T16:26:00.003-05:00

It seems that high heels do some damage to your legs. (Who knew? :-P )

I guess I'll have to stop wearing them, then... Yeah, you can put that in the "Tooth Fairy exists" column. :-D

Carolyn Ann

Brass Balls. Big Brass Balls.

2012-01-25T11:24:00.002-05:00

Rambo, in his (inevitable) next movie, will play the part of one President Obama.

It seems this Obama Chappie authorized another high-profile "I'm betting my job if this goes wrong" SEAL raid. Navy SEALs went into Somalia and rescued an American lass and a Danish chap, killing 9 pirates and taking a few prisoners for added, extra-spicey, "Hoo-ya" points. The timing of the raid was about the same moment he was delivering the State of the Union speech.

And just like last time, when he was busy lampooning The Donald at the Press Association dinner and Navy SEALs were busy killing Osama bin Laden, he gave no hint of it.

The international intelligentsia can be seen wondering what drives Obama's foreign policy strategy. I don't think they have to wonder any more. It can be summed up as "the man has big brass balls". Don't fuck with him.

Carolyn Ann

Och, devolve already!

2012-01-25T11:15:00.000-05:00

Alex Salmond, the Scottish First Minister, wants to hold a referendum on devolution. David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, isn't so keen on the idea. And 60% of Scots aren't, either. So Mr Salmond has come up with two ideas and a strategy. The ideas are lame and the strategy is jingoist. :-)

The first idea is to put two questions on the ballot: devolution or divorce. Mr Cameron favors only one question: divorce or not. Mr Salmond's other idea is to lower the voting age to 16. Because, well, 16 to 18 year olds are such rational actors. And they might plump for what Mr Salmond actually wants: autonomy, but remaining part of the UK. The strategy? He produced his white paper on the event on Robert Burns' birthday and he wants to hold the referendum in the same week as the Battle of Bannockburn. (In case you're not up on your Scottish history: the Scots won that one.)

There's a lot of good reasons for staying within the UK; mostly they're related to things like "getting lots of money from Westminster". And jobs - the Royal Navy might [have to] pull out of its Scottish harbors if Scotland is a totally separate nation. (Dang! There's that whole "reality" thing standing in the way of idealistic mumbo-jumbo!) Of course, there's the very simple idea of a British passport.

A divorce would be messy; there's the whole EU thing to figure out. Taxes would have to be set and collected; oil revenues would have to be apportioned, diplomatic stuff would need figuring out and on and on and on. The most important would be that "lots of money from Westminster" thing. Which is (really) why Mr Salmond wants "devolution max", and not a full split - it would be very difficult to persuade the English voter that they should continue funding a lot, any, of programs north of the border. Mr Salmond is probably trying to be pragmatic, without appearing to be just that.

Personally, I have no opinion on the matter. (There's a first!) What I think is: the timing of all this is stupid, the showboating ridiculous and the timelines being offered unrealistic and probably insulting. If you want to devolve the union, go ahead. If you don't - don't. I agree with david Cameron - it should be a straight up question. Any other option is silly; you can always negotiate more power, but going for "separation lite"? That's trying to have your cake and eat it too.

Which is what the scrappy Mr Salmond really wants. After all - Scotland's first First Minister probably doesn't want to go down in history as the man who bankrupted the nation because he needed to win a pissing contest.

Carolyn Ann

Republicans & Common Sense; a bit like oil and water

2012-01-25T10:51:00.002-05:00

Some folk, Republicans generally, argue that the states should hold the balance of power. The argument has some merit; people in states, and each region has different needs and requires different responses. Sometimes, at least. Others, such as Ron Paul, argue that the states are the basic entity and should have final say over all matters. Something like Europe when it was continually waging war against itself.

To be fair, Ron Paul also argues that the Federal government has a role; in providing for the common defense, for instance. Coupled with his other ideas, America would end up with one man for an army, who probably took Tuesdays off. But in general, the Republicans favor a state-oriented approach to the 10th Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

And then you read about the Republicans in various states...

Three of them in New Hampshire wanted to base their laws on the Magna Carta. Without having actually read the thing. Alabama passes laws that Jim Crowe would have been delighted to see. Republicans in almost every state seek to curtail voting rights, in an effort to fight an almost non-existent problem. And then there's this. An Oklahoma Republican, State Senator Ralph Shortey, wants to ban the use of human fetuses in the production of food.

Yes. You read that correctly.

It's a big problem, apparently. Well, it might be. He's not actually sure. He heard that Pepsi had hired a company that did stem cell research.

Normally, I'm a bit of a Federalist. I like Europe, I like the Federal government. And so on. But after reading this? Yeah, there's a definite argument to devolve and cede [...] power to the states...
:-P

Carolyn Ann

There's a reason I like Obama!

2012-01-24T23:31:00.001-05:00

What a speech! And oh! That ending! Inspiring, blunt, challenging. And delivered with a panache none of the Republican line up could ever hope to achieve.

Carolyn Ann

Kindergarten for the internet

2012-01-24T12:33:00.002-05:00

I can't help but wonder if the blog, per se, is dead. Or at least dying! :-)

With the advent of Tumblr, and its quick-post, "recycle all" business model, along with Twitter and Facebook, not to mention Google+, it seems to me that the traditional [sic] blog is on its way out. Oh, it'll hang around for awhile longer, but the long form communication isn't well suited to many folk. I, for instance, find myself copying stuff from one to the other; the conversational style of Facebook sometimes spurring a blog post, but more often, these days, I lean toward expressing my thoughts on Facebook. (You can officially feel bad for my friends. :-) )

One thing I like about Facebook is that there's no "censorship"; if you don't like what someone says - you can say so. On blogs, you're subject to the whim of the blog owner. If they don't want their ideas and statements challenged, they can actively impose that upon themselves. The only compensation is that it (generally) has to be active censorship! :-) That they lose credibility is neither here nor there; in blogging the mantra is "no censorship". (It strikes me as silly that some, who object to SOPA, will censor their own blogs!)

Blogging, the short essay, will continue to exist; people do want a format that allows for the longer expression. But there's no particular need for it to exist as a distinct entity - unless that's what you want, of course.

The principle difference between blogging and Facebook, for instance, is the audience. A Facebook post has a limited audience, and a blog post usually has, to all intents and purposes, an unlimited potential audience. Honestly, a Facebook post is likely to be more widely read, however. The Big Blogs, the ones like Erik Erickson's Red State or Markos Moulitsas' Daily Kos, adopt a slightly different format. They're more like newsletters, with individual articles and varying writers; they may have their roots in personal blogging, but they are between newspapers and personal blogs. Those things don't lend themselves to a conversation style!

But things like Wordpress, Blogger, and the many other versions of those, are more than likely going to change; they'll have to stay relevant in the "conversation". On the internet, islands tend to get ignored! And the "comment here" format just doesn't work; if I make a pithy observation (it does happen. Occasionally...) I want to share it with my friends and in a wider forum - and right now, I can't. I could do the copy/paste thing, explaining the context of the remark and so on. That's too much effort, quite frankly. I want to hit a button that says "Share this with my friends!" They can see the conversation and my remark in its place. Right now - I can't. The long form of that is: I can't share it easily, and if I can't easily share it, I can't share it! Trite? Possibly. True? Certainly. As internet users, I think it's important to note that sometimes we want a discussion to remain within a certain audience; other times, we want to broadcast far and wide. And all stages in between.

So far I'm not seeing Google, never mind Wordpress - which, honestly, seems to be bent on recreating that "it doesn't work" feeling from the 1990's (and the design "sense" that afflicted the web back then) - making much effort to understand this shift. Google relies on data when it should be looking at Tumblr; Facebook makes no effort to understand the need for a longer-form entry. No one (except an obscure blog engine based on Symfony v1) does in-place editing. Facebook has their walled garden, Google has theirs, Tumblr has a fence and Twitter is trying to be a sparrow. At some point in the next few years, we'll start to see some of those barriers fall. Not least because people perceive their words as their words! Not Facebook's, not Google's, not Tumblr's. (Yes, I deliberately left Twitter out of that list.) No matter how I phrase the issue, I keep coming back to the central point: on the internet, islands either cease to exist or are consumed.

You think the internet is advanced now? It's barely out of kindergarten.

Carolyn Ann

Emolument and "Mr Speaker"

2012-01-24T11:01:00.004-05:00

One thing that has struck me about the current GOP lineup - the titles. "Mr Speaker" (even though he was Speaker of the House for a few years, over a decade ago); "Mr Governor", even though he's not been governor for a long time. (Heck, even Sarah Palin gets "Governor" And she didn't even bother to finish her term!) I've seen some hesitation over "Senator" with Rick Santorum, but I think that's because people aren't really sure if you're granted that title for life or not.

Why do they carry these titles for life? It seems to go against the "Emolument Clause" (Wikipedia is my friend...). It seems to me that it's creating a new nobility; a class of titled persons, separate from everyone else. I suspect that's not what the Founding Fathers were aiming for! Even the "Mr President" thing; in office, fine. Out of office? You're not president, you're an individual.

It seems to me that politicians grab, and retain, the titles for the age old reason: power and prestige. An anachronism, like the Electoral College, that probably should be done away with.

Newt also collects a $76,000 government pension. Just thought I'd mention that. :-)

Carolyn Ann

Decisions, decisions...

2012-01-23T21:29:00.001-05:00

Oy. Do I create work for myself or what?

I'm in the middle of figuring out a Significant Project; it's something for myself, but it needs a web host. And I've yet to decide the language; it was originally going to be in PHP, but then I thought "Why not Ruby?" I like Ruby; it's object-oriented (<- technical term for "it deals in things", as opposed to PHP, which deals in whatever happens to be at hand and then some...), it's got a vibrant community, some cool add ons (gems, as they're called) and it's easy. PHP is a tad faster; it has object oriented stuff, especially in the latest version (5.3) and has lots and lots of information about it out there. Which is a really good thing, a good thing, a bad thing and a really bad thing. Not necessarily in that order. Here's the problem: there's so much "stuff" out there, you find yourself wondering which is accurate. After a few hours you sort of get a feel for whom to trust, and while that's no different to the Ruby world, for some reason the PHP world seems to have more than its fair share of people who say "it has to look like a kludge! [because it's always been done that way!] and [because you don't need that fancy new feature!]" They are, quite frankly, high-tech Luddites. Of course you need that fancy new feature! That's why it was dragged, kicking and screaming, into existence.

Of the things I like about PHP are its namespacing (technical term for imaginary boxes you put code that does stuff in), it's extensive documentation, how easy it is to get started and how ubiquitous it is out there in "venal web host land". (It is venal...) On of the things I don't like about it are it's roots; they show through all the time. PHP was originally designed as a basic scripting language; it was stuck that way for years - if you wanted a quick website, you mixed HTML and PHP together and got what you wanted. As it developed, it was enhanced with this feature or that feature; the whole process was a tad arcane and definitely messy, to be honest. Its syntax (its grammar) is all over the place as a result. It's worse than English, to be honest! But it is easy to get started. Finishing is harder.

Ruby, on the other hand, is pretty much the vision of one man (Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto). He developed it around about the same time as PHP was started - the mid-90's. (Indeed, I remember reading books, at the old McGraw-Hill bookstore at 6th and 50th, and playing around with both languages back then. [Regrettably?] I didn't spend enough time with either to "learn" the language.) He took what he saw as the best of other languages and combined them. The result is very elegant, quite easy and fairly powerful. If I had to come up with an analogy, I'd say it's a bit like an old British sports car, or an oldish motorcycle, versus one from a few years ago. The analogy: it helps to know what's going on under the hood (Ruby), but it's essential with the old British sports car or the oldish motorciccle (PHP). I know what's going on under the hood; I'm not so sure I should care as much as I have to with PHP!

Delving deeper into the pluses, PHP has some incredible frameworks out there. Comprehensive, easy and quick. (Which still doesn't explain Drupal, but then again, I'm not sure anything can...) Ruby has... Ruby on Rails. It's as if Ruby on Rails was developed and everyone said "oh, okay!" and forgot that competition is a Good Thing Indeed. Not that RoR isn't good - it is. I'm just not sure why it's pretty much the only option out there. There is a list of Ruby frameworks on Wikipedia; there's 8 of them altogether. Contrasted with PHP, which has about 23 zillion of the things, it's a rather limited showing. (Makes picking one a bit easier, however.)

Anyway, I decided to see what people thought of the hosting options. There's a lot of spam out there... I've heard Ruby can be difficult to get working; so I decided to start there. Typing "PHP hosting" into Google is a bit like trying to read Twitter's entire output for a minute. Ruby was simply easier. This post about Linode, by a blogger I've come across before, Sacha Chua, was interesting. As was this one from Dennis Clayton.

So... I now have a decision to make. Do I stick with PHP and the framework I've chosen, along with its attendant issues (which caused me to re-evaluate my options in the first place), or do I toss it all out (something I have no problem doing) and switch to Ruby? The hosting question is the most important; I don't want to go with GoDaddy - I'm still cross they supported SOPA - but I don't want to end up paying a trillion dollars a month for web hosting. And I certainly don't want to spend a lot of time writing this particular code - I've got other projects lined up that need some TLC and Attention.

Decisions, decisions... (Thoughts, as always, are welcome.) :-)

Update: I know you're dying to know... What's that? You're not? You don't even know what you're supposed to be dying to know? Oh. Just so you know: I'm sticking to PHP. The reason? I've started, and Ruby doesn't have the dynamic qualities of PHP. :-D

Carolyn Ann

The WP debunks some myths about Mr Obama

2012-01-23T20:47:00.001-05:00

Apparently there are a few myths out there re President Obama. Who knew? :-)

While I should have been working, I was perusing the ol' internet, instead. And came across this story in the Washington Post. It's a sort of Snopes about Mr Obama.

It won't help, of course. In politics, the truth isn't so much provided a bodyguard of lies as it is bludgeoned and sent to the morgue instead of the hospital. But still, it's nice to have a reputable source debunk some of the Obama Myths. :-)

Carolyn Ann

Speaking of Mr Obama, I wonder what happened with that idiotic judge in Georgia? I'll let you know...

cross dressing, transexual, God hating political deceiver

2012-01-23T17:00:00.004-05:00

I can hardly stand the adoration! A Facebook friend of a friend had this to say about me:

I read it and heard mostly what I expected to hear. You tried to type republicans and tea party activists to it by saying they did not initially step up and condemn it. You didn't speak out against obamas part in it until the last 2 sentences(not even mentioning how obama signed it at midnight new years eve while no 1 was paying attention). But since you can see the lunacy in this bill, my question is this. Do you know just dismiss it, or are you going to demand an answer? This is an atrocious attack on our rights, and should not be swept under the rug. It's just amazing to me that someones allegiance to their party would override their allegiance to their country and their own freedom! But I now fully understand why you are a hard core democratic partisan. I did not know you were a cross dressing, transexual, God hating political deceiver. I will forego talking about all but the deceiver part. On your "info" page, you describe your political affiliation as "independent". You post on your wall about hating fox news and failed to condemn any other mainstream media, ( you use cnn as a news source religiously) as well as site the huffington post( most liberal newspaper in the world), criticize nothing but republicans with endless stories of corrupt and deceit, and prop up democratic stories of self proclaimed successes. And you think you look at stuff from an independent point of view???? Who in the heck do you think you are kidding? LMFAO!!!!!!!!!!

Nice guy, huh? Ron Paul supporter.
(I was referring him to my recent habeas corpus post. Although why the time of the signing matters isn't clear; surely the fact that Mr Obama signed it is more important than any silly efforts to avoid scrutiny? Ah well. What do I know? Apparently not much, being a "cross dressing, transexual [sic], God hating political deceiver")

I especially liked that bit, by the way:

I did not know you were a cross dressing, transexual, God hating political deceiver. I will forego talking about all but the deceiver part.

(I think that's going on my accolade wall.)

How could he get it so wrong?!? I ask you! :-) It's easy, actually. He's not attuned to, or even aware of, the nuances of definition re transsexual/transgender. I don't think he cares about such things, either. (I don't know, I didn't ask him.) It's only slightly more annoying that he trots out the usual Christian trope that an atheist hates "God". How the hell [sic] can I hate something that doesn't exist? It's like asking me if I hate that cross between a cornstalk and a lion. (That might be called a giraffe, but I'd have to look it up to be certain.)

It's also interesting in that he seems to think I should have said upfront "This is the opinion of a transgender liberal". Well, perhaps he thinks I should preface my comments with "This is the opinion of a cross dressing, transexual, God hating political deceiver". :-) Oh well. As the man said, "You can't please everyone, so you'd better please yourself!"

Carolyn Ann

Fight of the century!!!

2012-01-23T14:31:00.001-05:00

SMACKDOWN IN THE SUNSHINE STATE!

Tuesday, January 31st.

Watch as two politicians
go toe-to-toe in the
Most Thrilling
Fight of the Century...yyyyy!

SlumberWeight Mitt "Mittens" Romney
will take on
ErraticWeight Champion Newt "~~NewtronBum~~"
Bomb, I meant Bomb:
NewtronBomb, Gingrich
in a

Fight To The Finish!

By the time this EPIC BATTLE is over,
You'll Be Wishing It Was ALL FINISHED!!!

(already! Oy!)

Extra! Extra!

Watch as WorryWeight Rick "Don't Google Him" Santorum
FIGHTS for his Political Career
and Relevance!

See CrankyWeight Ron "Dr No" Paul
Battle EVIL!
And try to Stay On Topic!

It's going to be the

Fight Of The Century!

(Until the next round.)

Nothing Will Be Left Standing!

Not Even An Electorate!

And Romney's checkbook.

Standing Room Only Folks!

Get Your Tickets to The FIGHT of the CENTURY!

The Small print:
Rain date possible if Florida gets wiped out by a hurricane. Fighters are required to pay and pander; if they don't do either enough, they'll automatically forfeit the round and will be declared defeated by Wolf Blitzer. Counting the results could go into Wednesday, January 32nd, and may end up being decided by the Supreme Court.

Bye, bye Canadian Pie?

2012-01-23T13:41:00.003-05:00

(My apologies for the headline. I thought of it and figured I could, should, apologize for it. On the other hand, it almost fits the topic of this post. As long as you define "almost" in the most liberal way you can..." :-D )

The fruitily named "smart" phone seems to have a not-so-smart management team. Research in Motion's two CEO's stepped down. How the hell do you run a company with two CEO's? (I like the new guy already; one of his hobbies is motorcycling. :-D ) Oh, that's right - you can't. They were rapidly losing marketshare and becoming irrelevant in the new smartphone market. Their "me too" tablet, what the heck was it called?, was a disaster, but without the saving graces of HP's inane foray into that market.

For a while there, I figured RIM was going the way of Palm - cool product, timed perfectly and then the founders became so enamored of both their success and their idea they developed myopia. You could never accuse Steve Jobs of that! Nokia almost lost it when they did the same thing as RIM - they went their own way, investing a millions in an operating system that no one noticed, or cared for when they did.

The smartphone market has two players: Apple and Google. It's strange how no one [in these companies] actually noticed.

Well, it turns out that RIM's shareholders did notice, and provided notice to the two CEO's. (Sorry. I had to fit that one in, somewhere... :-) ) How the heck did they operate so long with two CEO's? It's a recipe for stagnation and decline, in either order. RIM tried both at once.

The story isn't over for Blackberry and its legion of fans. Not yet, anyway. But they'll have to do something drastic, like jettisoning their operating system and fitting Android into their phones and services, if they're to make any headway and stay relevant, and profitable, in the marketplace.

Carolyn Ann

Habeas Corpus isn't odious. It's necessary.

2012-01-23T12:31:00.002-05:00

So I was thinking a little about this "indefinite incarceration" thing. An odious anathema, the ability to do this was tacked onto a Defense spending bill - pretty much assuring it wouldn't be challenged too heartily. As was, indeed, the case. (I couldn't help notice that even the Tea Party pipsqueaks didn't put up much an argument; so much for their idolization of The Constitution!) Initially it seemed that this was inserted at the request of the Republicans, but it turned out The White House wanted it; they mumbled a protest or two, it was revealed the Administration requested it, Congress didn't protest it and it became the law. The President (meaning "anyone who works for him") can lock you up indefinitely if they deem you a threat or a terrorist or something. What's striking is how I've not heard anyone say "but we'll be very careful!"

This isn't quite like Abe Lincoln's suspension of Habeas Corpus - that was done by decree and was, quite frankly, a coldly calculated political move. Its intention was to stop Baltimore, and hence Maryland, from going to the Confederates. It succeeded in that goal. The current painful effort isn't like that at all!

One of the main complaints of the Colonists was the much-exercised ability of the Crown to lock you up and forget where they put the key. So the Constitutional Convention inserted language that stopped that from happening:

The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.

Old Abe relied on the second part of that sentence. This new legislation doesn't seem to rely on any part of that sentence; it simply ignores the entire Suspension Clause altogether! Which isn't necessarily a good idea - the Supremes struck Abe's efforts down, and this effort will, likely as not, also be found unconstitutional. As well as abhorrent.

What I don't get is how it ended up being a law!

Here's how it's supposed to work: some busybody proposes a law. If it's accepted, it gets debated and language of the proposed law is massaged and tweaked (usually to benefit the 1% better). In all of this, Congressional lawyers, and in this case, White House counsel, all peer at the proposed language. One would hope that the Justice Dept was involved in this as well; one would hope, but it's not clear they were, so they probably weren't. If the language is found to be blatantly unconstitutional, the law is quietly dropped and everyone pretends it was never proposed or even existed. As you can probably tell - there's a lot of room for things to go wrong. And here, they most certainly did.

So the question becomes "How did this get approved?" It's the sort of thing you expect a rookie administration to do; it's the kind of thing I'd expect any of that motley crew of Republicans to do if they became President. But we're into the late stages of what is hopefully Obama's first term - this sort of nonsense shouldn't even be proposed in brain-storming sessions. It's so unconstitutional you could successfully argue that it's anti-Constitutional! (I can imagine where the suggestion came from: the national security apparatus dearly loves its draconian measures. How the hell they managed to persuade this sort of idiocy through to being a law is beyond imagination; "Wag the Dog" becomes a goddamned fairy tale in comparison.)

Despite Mr Obama's signing statement saying he wouldn't exercise such authority (why ask for it, then?), no other president will be constrained by that. The only way they'll be constrained is by the Supreme Court again upholding the right to habeas corpus. Which means some sap or two will have to be arrested and incarcerated; eventually they'll get a lawyer who will be able to challenge the law in court. The hearing of which will be contested on national security grounds. And it'll be a loooong time before anyone gets their day in court; simply getting that day will take years!

How in the world did such an odious amendment make it into law? That's something Darrell Issa, in his enthusiasm to denigrate the Obama Administration, could do some good looking into. Solyndra is a kindergarten spat compared to this. Shame on the Obama Administration for coming up with something like this, and shame on Congress for allowing, eagerly allowing, it to happen!

Carolyn Ann

Happy Dance time?

2012-01-23T10:51:00.001-05:00

Ah... The fresh clean smell of a New Week. :-)

State of the Onion speech is tomorrow; it'll be where the Republicans will sit on their hands and do their best to look like Mitch McConnell and the Dems will likely do lots of, sometimes reluctant, happy dancing.

The Times has an interesting post by Thomas Edsall; last week he asked "What the Right gets right" and this week he asks "What the Left gets right". Some interesting points in there; I'm not sure I'd agree with the characterizations - which seem to say nothing that could be construed as admiring those Obama Nazi Communist supporters in any way whatsoever - but one point did perturb me: science. The Right, as you know, has a dodgy relationship with science. They hate the Dismal Science (economics, if you're wondering), but real science? The stuff that seeks to explain whatever is being examined? They definitely have a troubled relationship with such things. As I've often said, "facts don't matter to the Right". Never mind Patrick Moynihan's "you can have your own opinion, but you can't choose your own facts!" ("Wikiquotes"... What a great idea!) I can't help but wonder what is so frightening about plausible suppositions and explanations that causes such angst? Aside of the obvious "if there's no creator who the hell am I going to appeal to when I want to get elected", that is...

I thought the timing was interesting, considering SA-ET's recent piece about transsexual separatism. Two disparate themes, all in the same timeframe! Neat! :-) I should, when I get a chance and am inclined, write about why some individuals' views about transgender folk are so odious and offensive. In many ways, the discussion is the same as the left/right thing: neither "side" actually talks about the same topic. Even the language, the meanings and connotations of words and phrases, is different. I know I've written about the topic, but I should try to do a dispassionate piece about it all.

Right, I need something to eat. A late night, last night, ensured I got up later than I wanted to this morning. So, munch time it is! :-)

Carolyn Ann

Georgia judge orders Obama to appear in court...

2012-01-22T10:14:00.000-05:00

I thought this was a joke. And then I Googled the judge, and the same story appears in The Washington Post!

Deputy Chief Judge Michael Malihi of Georgia's Office of State Administrative Hearings, has ordered President Obama to appear in court on Thursday to argue that he's an American citizen and can stay on the Georgia ballot.

Apparently it's not the only lawsuit of its kind. Unsurprisingly, the Birthers are behind these idiocies. What's somewhat bemusing about this is the judge: it seems he wants the world to know he's an idiot as well.

There are idiots and then there are folk like that.

Carolyn Ann

Family Values

2012-01-22T09:59:00.001-05:00

Pinched from "Republican Family Values" on Facebook. :-)

Carolyn Ann

Absurdity caused by piety

2012-01-22T09:57:00.001-05:00

In Saudi Arabia, a woman has to buy her lingerie from a man she doesn't know.

Think about that for a moment.

Fortunately for Saudi women, that is now changing. And the "religious" police have been told to cooperate. Emancipation can take some odd forms, but as long as it happens, who cares?

Carolyn Ann

Mike Huckabee extols upon Mitt Romney

2012-01-21T23:47:00.001-05:00

Mike Huckabee says that Mitt Romney has to address the issue of his faith. In an interview on Fox Business news, he said "...I would no more not vote for someone because they were Mormon than I would vote for somebody like Al Gore because he's a Baptist, for heaven's sake. I might have misgivings and some doubts if I had to vote for a Catholic, and I think those doubts and concerns are reasonable if you have to vote for a Mormon! Otherwise, I think that's a ridiculous reason to vote or not vote for someone, unless they've done something that's so wacky -- like mix the blood of little children together in a public ceremony, which is part of every Mormon ceremony, as you might have heard!"

He continued: "I don't think he needs to necessarily have a big speech and focus entirely on it, but he should repent and put his christening, he can do it on my show if he wants!" said Huckabee. "I do think he ought to address [his Mormonism]. He ought to address it in a very calm and thoughtful way in which he just says, 'Look, all of us have different points of views in terms of faith. I'm not going to tell you how to believe or worship, that's what we have missionaries for. I'm running for president, not mayor of Salt Lake City. I wanted to turn around the country. How you turn around your spiritual life -- that is called repentance, and take that up with your preacher, your priest or your rabbi. I want to turn this country around."

Carolyn Ann

Secret Service names...

2012-01-21T22:07:00.001-05:00

Grinch ("Grinch is on the move")
(Bad headline: "The Grinch!")

Newtered ("Newtered in 5...")
(Bad poll headline: "Newtered!" And that's probably the HuffPo's headline if he loses the nomination)

Skewered? ("Skewered has left the building...")
(Bad poll headline: Skewered skewered...)

Newtron Bomb ("Newtron Bomb launching on Air Forc... NOOOO!!! I didn't say that!")

It could be worse.

"Mittens is on the move".
No one would know if the cat is doing the Presidential visit or the man.

Let's no go there with Rickey...

:-)
Carolyn Ann

The inevitable headline

2012-01-21T21:50:00.003-05:00

My oh my, doesn't he look like (he won) the Prettiest Girl competition. Or the cat that ate the canary. :-)

The headline can only be described as "inevitable".

(Perhaps Mittens is regretting that "On Saturday..." thing? Apparently it links to a video that's no longer "in the public spaces"; in other words - you need the URL. Which is secret. Ish... I filched it from HuffPo :-) )

From the Huffington Post.

Carolyn Ann

The tally so far

2012-01-21T20:52:00.001-05:00

So far (if you're keeping track...):
Santorum: 1 (Iowa)
Romney: 1 (New Hampshire)
Gingrich: 1 (South Carolina)

Florida next. ... And you were hoping it would be all done and dusted, as you muttered "how many of these things are there?!?" and "More debates?!? How many do they need?!?"

On the other hand, it could be Alex Salmond's moment of silliness: "We want a vote on devolution!" David Cameron: "Okay. 2014?" Mr Salmond: "Er, um, let's not be, er, hasty..."

Carolyn Ann

He caught a tiger by its tail...

2012-01-21T10:10:00.002-05:00

On Facebook, The Daily Beast asks "It's primary day in South Carolina! Do you think Newt Gingrich's 'nontraditional' campaign can stay on the rails?"

I felt compelled* to reply...
Stay on the rails? I don't think it was on any rails to begin with! The best that can be said is "he tried jumping the shark and landed on its back. And now he's riding it for all he's worth!"

Carolyn Ann

*Being the reticent sort an' all... :-D

It's easy to annoy Ron Paul supporters.

2012-01-20T15:40:00.001-05:00

I seem to have annoyed a lot of Ron Paul supporters, today. I can't imagine how... :-D

Oh, wait - it's because I pointed a few of the many flaws in his ideas and character. That'll do it. :-)

...

What is it about so many Ron Paul supporters? They go beyond "support" into worshiping the man! He becomes their Messiah. As you might expect, when that happens, those who deny his Messiah-hood/ness are unbelievers, to be vilified, trampled and cast out (after a good stoning, of course).

When your Messiah is a racist anti-Semite who has a disconnected relationship with "the truth", indeed has an entirely different "truth" (and not merely a radically different and disconnected definition of the concept, never mind the word!) there's something wrong.

I'd rather Newt Gingrich (or, in a pinch, Rick Santorum) than Ron Paul. I'd rather Mitt Romney to Newt Gingrich. And I'd rather none of them to Barack Obama. But goodness gracious me, I don't worship the ground the man walks upon, nor do I exalt the man himself. I simply, because I'm a simple chap, figure Mr Obama is the best man for the job.

Carolyn Ann

Oprah and... Who?!?

2012-01-20T14:43:00.003-05:00

I think Google might want to tweak their advertising algorithm a tad:

Oprah and Black Sabbath? Hmmm.... (Especially as the song was "Disturbing the priest", from "Born Again".)

Carolyn Ann

Life is good(...ish)

2012-01-20T14:23:00.003-05:00

Ah, life doesn't get much better than this*. :-)

Cats sleeping, Black Sabbath playing in the background, hot mug of Lapsang Souchong tea, The Economist arrived early.
====

*Well, it could. We could be this mysterious thing called "solvent". With all its benefits and privileges and so on.

Wow! Inarticulate, but passionate

2012-01-20T13:01:00.003-05:00

I'm trying to wrap my head around this:

(Screenshot from T-Central)

(I might as well get this said upfront: no, I did not watch the video Suzan embedded in her blogpost)

Okay, Suzan doesn't like (some?) young, non-gender conforming white folk who live in a city. But it was her other comment that is the real head scratcher:

Ever find yourself being confronted by an angry bi-gendered, non-binary gender-queer angry with you because you refuse to refer to them using gender neutral pronouns?

This is more shit overly privileged rich white kids in gender studies programs say. Along with, “Will that be a Grande or a Venti?”

Wow! That's some anger! Inarticulate, but passionate. [Added:] You've got to admire such passion!
(After a bit, you start to wonder if there's anyone Suzan Cooke does like!)

Carolyn Ann

I'm sorry, I didn't notice you'd stopped speaking to me...

2012-01-20T11:29:00.002-05:00

It occurred to me that a certain person hadn't been commenting on Facebook, after being somewhat prolific; a glance back showed it had been some time since anything from them had appeared on that feed thingie FB has. I peered at the obvious: my list of friends. They weren't on it!

I could be upset at them, but it wouldn't mean anything. Instead, I'm bemused. Does it mean anything when someone defriends [sic*...] you, and you don't notice? :-)

Carolyn Ann

*A new word! No, I didn't invent it

Ron Paul really is a racist! (And anti-Semite)

2012-01-19T13:16:00.003-05:00

It's getting really difficult to argue that Ron Paul isn't a racist or anti-Semite. Or, if he isn't (?!?), he's a supporter of those views... Which is the same thing, isn't it?

The really disturbing one? #4:
"Though Paul has denied his involvement with these statements and theories, a thank-you letter to ... an anti-Semitic magazine owned by ... Holocaust denier Willis Carto—was written by the representative himself, on congressional stationery. TNR points out that the issue of the magazine Paul praises in the letter includes articles such as “You Can’t Escape the Kosher Food Tax,” “Are You Ready for the White Man’s Doomsday,” and “Racism—Black African Style.”"
(My emphasis)

And the final paragraph causes a bit of concern:
Perhaps the most outrageous revelation from TNR’s newest batch of incendiary newsletters is evidence suggesting that Paul did indeed write some of the letters himself. The Political Report’s 1992 “Special Issue on Racial Terrorism” was later published under the headline “Racial Terrorism in America” and with Paul’s byline. Paul has said he doesn't know who authored the newsletters, though other journalists have speculated that it was his chief of staff, Lew Rockwell. ... It still could, of course, be true that those producing the newsletter invoked Paul’s name and wrote from his perspective without his knowledge or permission.
(My emphasis)

If he didn't write those letters - isn't it a bit incompetent of him to allow his name to be used for them?!?

If you needed a reason not to support Ron Paul, besides his half-baked ideas and inability to construct a meaningful argument, I think there's plenty in the Daily Beast article.

Carolyn Ann

Romney's pain...

2012-01-19T09:26:00.003-05:00

Interesting article about Gov. Romney's wealth in this morning's Times. It has two very interesting points in it. :-)

The first is that he tithes 10% of his income to the church - that's going to cause a lot of heartache to many Evangelicals. They wouldn't care if it was his local Baptist mega-church or something, but to Salt Lake City? It won't take long for people to connect the dots: the (would-be) President would directly support the LDS... The fuss will make the anti-Catholic stuff of JFK's campaign look benign and supportive. (And it won't be as overt. Which makes it difficult for his campaign to fight.)

The other thing is the last few sentences:

When billed for $134,909 in property taxes on their beachside home in San Diego in 2009, the Romneys appealed the assessment, according to an official at the city property assessor’s office.

Mr. and Mrs. Romney won the appeal. The bill was reduced by $9,617, for a total of $125,292.

A lot of folk won't get to $125,292. I think the rumor will be "he got his property taxes reduced from $125,000 to $9,000."

The biggest problem for Mittens is that he led the way with misleading, even lying, ads. He should have thought about that a little more... (Of course, I'm not discounting that simply having the nickname "Mittens" in a presidential race is not a positive! I'm not the only one who applied the obvious moniker to him.) :-)

Carolyn Ann

Smile please, a black hole will be on candid camera

2012-01-18T20:20:00.001-05:00

Astronomers are, apparently, going to try and photograph a Black Hole. A specific black hole - the one at the center of the galaxy. (I wonder if it'll get its own Facebook photo album? Would it exist if it doesn't..? :-) )

But one bit of the article didn't make sense:

[...] General relativity predicts that the swirl of dust and gases around a black hole—which is all the telescope will be able to see, since the hole itself is, of course, black—should form a perfect circle. If it looks even slightly distorted, we may have to rethink parts of Einstein's important theory.

Black holes [have] spin. That means, just like the Earth and every other spinning planet and star, there's likely to be a bulge along its equator. I don't think a totally even distribution of energy and/or matter in the black hole is even possible; which is what it would need if it was to form a perfect sphere?

Oh well. What do I know? :-)

Added: Michelle, on FB, pointed out that they're talking about the Event Horizon. Which is the (theoretical) outer limit of what you can see about a black hole. Thanks, Michelle!

Carolyn Ann

New Hampshire Republicans hate their women

2012-01-18T20:08:00.002-05:00

New Hampshire lawmakers want to ensure that women have no health services and also provide better protections for perpetrators of domestic violence. In a press conference today, House Speaker Bill O'Brien (R-Mont Vernon) said "We have to make sure that women, especially poor women, cannot gain access to any health services whatsoever. As an added bonus, we've decided to make it almost impossible to arrest anyone accused of domestic violence." He continued, "Working with the Susan B. Anthony List, we'll pass this anti-woman bill in the dark of night, with no hearings and no consultation. The first you'll hear of it being law is when someone tries to get their husband arrested for beating the living daylights of his wife!" The law stipulates that the police can't arrest anyone for domestic violence unless they witness the wife or girlfriend, or child, being beaten.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, said in a statement. "This is a great victory in what has become a nationwide battle to stop taxpayer funding of abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood. We're also delighted the Speaker has decided to remove whatever protection women had from violent husbands and boyfriends; it's about time we got back to the time when women were the property of their men and second class citizens!"

Carolyn Ann

Ulterior motives versus simple idiocy

2012-01-18T13:46:00.000-05:00

As I made a cup of tea (darjeeling), I thought "never ascribe to ulterior motives what simple idiocy can ably explain". Indeed, you'll often find that simple idiocy encompasses the ulterior motivation.

:-)

Carolyn Ann

So that's why you're a transsexual "separatist", is it?

2012-01-18T12:58:00.001-05:00

SA-ET has an interesting post up on her blog, "Enough Nonsense". She details her animosity toward "the transgender". Her well-argued post, despite one quite stunning flaw, should be read by anyone who wants to understand that unfairly common enmity. In short, it's because a few folk, within the last 10 years, made a presumptive leap. One they shouldn't have made; but did. And in the grand tradition [sic] of the Internet Discussion, were arbitrarily nasty about any disagreement.

The leap of logic, that transsexual women and transgendered women shared a common community can be only so far; the things they have in common are quite few (no, I'm not about to list them; such a list would be superfluous, and is the topic of another conversation or ten). However, if you consider the almost total lack of understanding that exists re gender, and the need more than a few folk seem to have to fit what they don't understand into what they do, or think they do, comprehend - then the leap of logic that was made isn't so hard to figure out. And like I say, the Internet Discussion has never been noted for its consideration of anything but extremes. (Heck, I'm absolutely willing to use the same tactic when it suits me! :-) I just hope that these days I'm a little wiser on when such foolishness is useful or detrimental. Probably not... :-) )

I see it often; some folk think atheists are merely errant or uncomprehending Christians. It's not because they don't acknowledge the existence of atheists, it because they can't frame their understanding of it in anything but their own cognition. They can't conceive how anyone couldn't "know" their deity exists, so they frame the refusal of atheists in terms they do understand. (If it's not "fallen Christian", it's automatically "spawn of the Devil himself". At least it's a simple leap; I'd be confused if it were anything else! :-) ) Likewise, some transgendered folk insist on their interpretation of whom a transsexual lady is. It's probably, more than likely, an incorrect impression - but when has that stopped anyone? (Heck, misunderstanding entire populations is a common theme in the GOP presidential lineup!) This urge to "project" onto others is a constant. Indeed, it's the most disturbing, and annoying, thing in SA-ET's short essay.

SA-ET has explained a lot; I knew of the Yahoo groups of which she complains; there were plenty of them. They came and went, some lasting a short time, others a bit longer. I have no idea if they're still around; they probably are, in one form or another. The vitriol is probably the same; for some, it's the only excitement they get. I've long considered them disposable; such groups don't deal with ideas - they often trade in vicious gossip dressed up as ideas. As it is for the [more] mordant members of those groups, it's far too easy to paint an entire multitude with prejudice based upon your interactions with a few.

In a long-winded exhortation, I'll repeat:

Not every member of a group, especially a group that you've determined the membership of, adheres (or agrees) to your ideas of what their ideas and opinions are. :-)

It's fair, and much more accurate, to say "some people in this or that group" believe this nonsense or that idiocy. In some (most?) cases, it's okay to poke fun at those beliefs. What is slightly annoying, and, SA-ET, robs your argument of much potency, is complaining about being painted with a brush while you employ a bigger brush for your complaint!

I know I'll have to come up with a new moniker for the "transsexual separatist"; the roots of the term are, quite frankly, silly. (I've thought that for awhile, but have been too lazy and lackadaisical to do anything like think about it. Indeed, the silliness of the term is one of the basics of my opinion that the transgender and transsexual communities have little in common. Sorry. )

Knowing that she has me on auto-delete, but being an optimist, I wrote a comment on her blog. I've repeated much of it, so... Here it is:

This will probably get auto-deleted, but what the hey. I'm an optimist; I hope for a decent conversation. :-)

An interesting post, and quite educational. Thank you for writing it.
Your argument is marred by one problem: you lump *all* transgender folk into one barrel. So you're complaining about being lumped in while doing exactly that to others. For instance, I'm transgendered, but I think you'd have a hard time arguing I advanced the arguments you assert I must, because of your assumption of my membership to some group or other! I don't lump you in as "all transsexual women"; I consider you a person, an individual. With some opinions in common with some other folk. Nothing more and nothing less.

As far as those opinions go, I argue that "transsexual separatists" - a term I use as a convenience; perhaps I should coin another term? - seek to deny safety and rights to others for no apparently good reason. The driving force for all this is an overt hatred of "men in frocks". And a mistaken impression that some speak for all. Granted, a lot of vocal activists like to give the impression they represent an entire community, but it's impossible to argue that any one transsexual woman represents the entire community, and (therefore) it's also impossible to consider that any one (or ten) transgendered individuals represent "their" entire community. Painting an entire segment of the population with a broad brush because of a few, no matter how numerous those few seem, is a bit "off", a trifle unfair, wouldn't you agree? It's not acceptable to do that with other segments of the population; so why is it reasonable for these one or two segments? You complain of broad brushes in your post, and then proceed to paint with one! Like I said, it mars your basic argument, which is sound and definitely worth airing.

Personally, I see nothing wrong and much right with acknowledging that the two "basic" communities are different. Indeed, I wish it were considered the case more often. Not for prejudicial reasons, but because the actually are different. There's some overlap, but that's to be expected. But when the denial of basic freedoms (to be treated equally, for instance) is sought, or the use of prejudicial rationalizations that have the solidity of a paper colander to justify the desperate dogmatism, I start to get a tad offended. ;-)

In a half-hearted defense of some of the arguments you resent, I can offer that "transvestites" and crossdressers haven't gone away; the language simply changed. As it does. :-) (Goodness knows, it often takes me a year or more to stop arguing against some shift in the language!) It should also be noted that gender, as an overall concept, has only recently started to solidify in both language, basic concepts, precepts and a common(-ish?) understanding. We, collectively, know more about gender now than we did 10 years ago; what is also immediately apparent is that we know very, very little about it. In other words, there was a lot of nonsense spouted awhile back; folk being folk, it's going to continue. I remember some of those Yahoo groups as well; like most (all?) Internet groups, only the choir is welcome. The Web has never fostered understanding and mutual comprehension; it has enabled concise groups and lethargic opinion, however. Other than that, the Internet is the Internet; it's been a haven for vitriol and understanding alike since before the Web was invented. Just as a "word to the wise", it's generally safe to assume that when someone speaks for an entire community, they neglected to ask that community for permission. I speak for me, you speak for you.

Like I said - thanks for writing your post. I found it quite informative. :-)

Carolyn Ann

Added: I have extended an invitation to SA-ET to have a discussion about all of this one here. I'm reluctant to engage in any discussion where my words are subject to censorship, simply because someone takes umbrage at them. Hopefully she'll pop over and we can have a chat. Tea, anyone? :-)

Update: SA-ET declined. I don't know why.

On the up side, Dana reminded me of her existence. So that's something. :-D

...

2012-01-18T10:02:00.000-05:00

To protest SOPA, Ron Paul's website had a white-out. He opted against a black out because that would upset his White Supremacist supporters.

Fox News protests..?

2012-01-18T10:00:00.002-05:00

Fox News today apologized for "going dark". A spokesman said "We didn't intend to go dark, our Lord and Master loves SOPA and PIPA, but our Apocalypse Machine (aka Fox and Friends) got a bit too enthusiastic when told that Wikipedia had gone dark to protest SOPA and PIPA. So today's demonstration of the forthcoming Apocalypse was darker than normal."

It's probably not worth applying for this...

2012-01-17T20:31:00.001-05:00

For some reason, I don't think I could get a job with PC Air in Thailand...

:-(

:-D

Carolyn Ann

Baffling attire?

2012-01-17T15:57:00.003-05:00

Christina H, on Cracked, writing about some of the more baffling and mysterious aspects of women's clothing. :-D

Carolyn Ann

I'm not that, nope...

2012-01-16T11:58:00.005-05:00

My sparing partner (on FB): [...] Look, I'm sure your [sic] a nice woman. But the only bubbles I believe you understand are the soapy ones in the bath tub.

Me: I'm not a woman. And don't be such a misogynist.

Carolyn Ann

Huntsman goes hunting

2012-01-16T11:31:00.003-05:00

Jon Huntsman, the man who figured that campaigning in New Hampshire, and only in New Hampshire, would get him the Oval Office has realized it won't. To be fair, he caught an airplane down to South Carolina, which celebrates its freshly diminished Republican line up this Saturday.

Mr Huntsman has decided to back his fellow Mormon, Willard Mittens Romney. Unfortunately, the Romney Campaign, all the way up there on its pedestal, didn't notice. I don't think they've ever noticed the Huntsman campaign.

As the last of the "reasonable" Republicans, the field is now open to a much-disliked BendyMan toy (aka "the Windy Wind Vane"), two Evangelical Christians both trying to out-bigot the other, a cranky old WindBag and the man who inspired, is the Newtron Bomb.

You know what's so depressing about all that? It's not certain Barack Obama could beat that lineup.

Oy.

Carolyn Ann

Explaining Ron Paul

2012-01-16T11:22:00.001-05:00

If your ideas are borrowed, and have no foundation, and you have no real understanding of them, your only recourse is to resort to cheap insult, accusations and spittle. Plenty of spittle.

Carolyn Ann

Every journey...

2012-01-15T17:25:00.000-05:00

Confucius: Every journey begins with a single step.
Romney: I've been on this journey before
Gingrich: I've been on the service road
Paul: Every journey has unconstitutional roadworks!
Santorum: No gay journeys!
Huntsman: Where's the road?
Perry wandered off into the wilderness. He's not expected back...

:-)

Carolyn Ann

Ru Paul sounds off

2012-01-15T15:03:00.001-05:00

Ru Paul, fresh from "helping" Ron Paul ("I'm not Ron Paul!") in New Hampshire, sounds off about a few subjects. Including that "Work It" TV sitcom and the word "tranny"; the general advice? Relax, it's not worth getting all worked up about.

[Added] On the other side, Monica Roberts has an opinion about the interview.

Carolyn Ann

I need to do that...

2012-01-15T10:37:00.001-05:00

I noticed, the other day, that I'd not updated my Flickr feed for some time. Our trip to Pittsburgh isn't on there, nor are the Christmas windows. I'll have to make some time and get to that.

Carolyn Ann

What an idiot. Me, that is.

2012-01-15T10:36:00.000-05:00

Not much going on around here. I'm busy with my project; I'm taking it in an entirely new direction (I know, I know - you're heard that one before! A few times before!) I got really fed up with Drupal, so I abandoned that approach and got stuck into writing the code. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of hanging on to Drupal for too long. As I was explaining the The Mrs, it was a case of "nearly there... Nearly..." and so on. Something would go wrong, because Drupal wasn't quite the right tool for the job, and I'd start again, trying different things. By the time I frustratedly quit on the thing, I'd burned through all of last year! What an idiot!

Oh well. Two lessons learned, I guess.

(Someone once told me that they made fewer mistakes as they got older; they attributed it to getting wiser. I think that's because they weren't doing much of anything new or fresh. Speaking strictly for myself, as I reluctantly increase in years, the mistakes I make tend to be more spectacular...)

Now let's see if I've actually learned those lessons or just do what I normally do, which is ignore them so I can relearn them all over again! :-)

Carolyn Ann

Thou shalt not speak ill of our Man...

2012-01-14T13:49:00.001-05:00

It strikes me that the first freedom to be "curtailed" if Ron Paul had the misfortune of becoming President would be the one he allegedly holds most dearly.

If his supporters are anything to go by, the man has become a Messiah of sorts; a cult has evolved around him. And its commandment is "Thou shalt speak no evil of our Messiah". The lesser form is, of course, "you'll not speak ill of our Man", otherwise known as "Positive coverage only! Or we'll get mad at you!"

The man, I swear, has become a Religious Icon. Arguing with his supporters is just like arguing with a Fundamentalist. The process is "attack his ideas and you attack the man; attack the man, and you're attacking his supporters - personally!" It is literally that. It's the same paradigm a Fundamentalist Christian uses. (The words are about the same, too.)

I'm seriously considering refraining from commenting about Ron Paul's inanities to his supporters. Life is too short, and Ron Paul's time in the limelight too fleeting, to be worth the hassle. It's not like you have to think to detect problems with his ideas; they're apparent upon scarce mention! Also, I have things I want to do before his supporters, and others on the Right, nobble the 1st Amendment altogether!

Carolyn Ann

Books, Nesh and God Almighty. (All in one nowhere near economy-sized post.)

2012-01-14T01:31:00.000-05:00

I spent the day at a hot spot. Well, it turned out to be one of the warmer places at the Princeton, NJ, Barnes & Noble. :-) Let me put it this way - everyone seemed (...) to be wearing overcoats and I wasn't. :-D

Perhaps that's because they'd just gone from car to the store, and I'd been there for nigh on so many hours, but still. Either I'm the hardy sort (cough, sneeze, cough), the store was adequately heated or the people in Princeton are a nesh lot. (Look it up. :-) ) God Almighty! I've not used that term in a decade or more! I remember walking down a snowbound (okay, it was a bare schmeer of snow) street and my mate complained of being cold. I told him he was nesh. Even though I was just as cold... Macho, macho maaan... :-) In me nice frock an' all... :-D )

I got a lot of technical reading in; which is just as well as I can only look wistfully at the price of the books. Brought back some memories of the Borders Bookstore in the World Trade Center; but I'll leave that one alone for now. It seems to me that computer book publishers have (finally) figured out that dross doesn't sell. Bumph doesn't, either. I checked the consumer end ("Excel in 21 minutes", "Word(s) for Dummies", etc) and that's still rife with crap, but the higher end, the really technical tomes? They seem to be better than they were even a year ago. "Worth buying". If I had any money to buy 'em wi'. That is.

One of the more interesting books was "Beautiful Data", edited by Toby Segaran and Jeff Hammerbacher. Some fascinating essays in there. I've got a fondness for statistics, but I can't claim much expertise - so I found the article about data at Facebook quite astonishing! I am continually staggered by the things people see in stuff most of never gives a moment's thought to. And this collection of essays continues the tradition of delighting its audience with insights, observations and ways to look at stuff you (well, I) never gave a moment's thought to. Before.

I kind of like spending a day at a bookstore; even it is a Big Box store. Books, no matter their physical (or, in the case of eBooks, their ephemeral) form, will always delight.

Carolyn Ann

New hearings against the Prez...

2012-01-13T08:00:00.001-05:00

Rep. Darrell Issa last night said he was going to subpoena White House and Democratic National Committee records to determine when the President became a politician, and when he realized that Congressfolk like Darrell Issa were just being belligerent because they could be. Apparently the Tea Party is angry at being painted as "incompetent" and "willing to be crybabies". "We want to know who put the paintbrush in our hands!" he told reporters.

Reporting to you from nowhere near the White House or Congress or Washington,
Carolyn Ann

Removing the gatekeepers

2012-01-12T16:29:00.000-05:00

As we become more and more digital, the traditional gatekeepers are falling by the wayside; there's still a need for that role, but it's becoming apparent that it has to take a radically different form. The critic, perhaps (ala Perez Hilton?), becomes the gatekeeper; and that's okay because we can decide which critics we like. :-)

What prompted this line of thought is a heart-warming story about a clearly talented lass, Amanda Hocking, who made it big with some self-published stories. Indeed, it's becoming increasingly clear that the Old Guard are a waning influence; the only bastion they really have left is television (and politics, but I'll not go there - yet!). And as the internet becomes more capable (i.e. faster), even that will fade. It's going to be quite fascinating over the next few years, a decade or so, perhaps, to see the changes the removal of gatekeepers brings.

The new boss may not, after all, look much like the old one...

Carolyn Ann

"Stand up to bigotry - buy girl scout cookies"

2012-01-12T15:33:00.000-05:00

If you're on Facebook, please head over to the "Stand Up To Bigotry - Buy Girl Scout Cookies" page and Like it. :-)

Their blurb says:

Teaching kids that it's ok to be YOU. It's not cool to be a bigot! And it's not okay to discriminate against people who are different from you!

A message I think we can all agree on. Unless you're a transsexual separatist, a Republican in a State Legislature or a Republican candidate for President. Pretty much everyone else can agree it's not cool to discriminate. :-)

Carolyn Ann

Bigotry & bigots in the Tennessee legislature

2012-01-12T14:26:00.000-05:00

Here's one that Dana Lane Taylor will love. Perhaps she'll move to Tennessee and support this bill? If I had to guess, I'd say that radical feminists Elizabeth Hungerford and Cathy Brennan also support Tenessee's Bo Watson and Richard Floyd in their efforts to ensure that "men in dresses" can't go to the loo.

In a nutshell, Senator Watson has introduced a bill to the Tennessee legislature that seeks to ban the transgendered, and presumably the not-so-feminine transsexual, from going to the bathroom. If you do use the loo, and are reported, you get arrested and fined $50.

Carolyn Ann

Why Ron Paul is wrong with his foreign "policy"

2012-01-12T14:14:00.002-05:00

I thought I'd take a few minutes to explain why Ron Paul is wrong with his foreign "policy". :-)

Let's take five countries, which we'll call A, B, C, D and E. Nation A wants the natural products from nations C and D. We'll say it's "oil" from C and "toys" (aka "goods") from D. Nation B abuts nation E, and nation E wants what C sells, but not necessarily what D does. Nation E doesn't, as a matter of national policy, like Nation A is willing to quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, make that known. B has a bit of oil, but not much. What it does have is a great harbor and a lot of empty land. Everyone buys from C, by the way and most buy from D as well.

Got it?

A: Buys stuff from C and D
E: Buys from C and doesn't like A
B: Is neighbors with E
C: Sells to everyone else. Wants the best price its product.
D: Sells to most

...
This is getting complicated. Let's put that to the side, and deal with it in the rhetorical terms Ron Paul supporters use: neighbors. :-)

The usual argument from Ron Paul supporters for isolationism/non-intervention is along the lines of "because I don't do donuts on my neighbor's grass w/ a motorcycle." (No, I wouldn't bother trying to figure that one out, either.) In short, let others do as they will.

Here's why that's a bit silly. :-)

One of my neighbors is a bit of an idiot; he likes to pinch things from driveways. According to Ron Paul's foreign policy as long as I don't pay him any attention, he shouldn't bother me. I don't bother him, he doesn't bother me. Except he did bother me; he pinched something from me. Ron Paul supporters might argue that this is my responsibility, because I left something unlocked. Some RP supporters like, need, to change the subject, so I'll have to bring it back. :-) I shouldn't have to have carry the burden of ensuring I lock everything on my property. That I generally do is because of idiots like my neighbor.

Now, another problem around here consists of youths on ATV's. They slam into mailboxes for fun; the mailbox is ruined and now costs me money to replace. They don't get the bill because they're long gone by the time you see the results of their playtime. I could go and ask, but when a neighbor did that, he got nowhere. What I did was involve a "foreign" power - I called the cops. They asked around and the problem actually went away for a few years. (Until the next batch of bored kids on ATV's got old enough to have their fun.) According to Ron Paul's foreign policy, if I see a kid on an ATV knocking down a mailbox, and it's not mine - it's none of my business. But if I'm to be a decent neighbor, it is my business. So much for that simplistic argument; it wilted on a cursory glance.

Back to nations A through E. :-)

If nation E wants to disrupt the supply of oil to nation A, it can. Nation A then has to invest in a means to stop that disruption. It can choose to do it once, over and over, or it can notice that nation B is also disrupted at the same time. Nation B doesn't have a large military, for whatever reason. A wise leader in A would negotiate with B for access to that harbor and some of that land and put some soldiers on B to deter E from disrupting the supply of oil to everyone. D wants more of the oil, because it's making more things to sell to A (etc) and sets about getting it. Without overtly disrupting trade between A and C, it starts to buy all the oil it can get from B. It also negotiates and starts mining operations, for raw materials, with D and a few other nations. To get those raw materials to its factories, it could build a navy that rivals the one nation A has; or it could contribute a smaller navy and rely on nation A to do most of the heavy lifting. Nations B, C and D need nation A to do most of that, so they're happy with the situation. But the problem is E; it would love to counter A's anti-disruption efforts. So it decides to build a nuclear bomb. And let's pretend that nation D thinks that bit of a neighbor really belongs to D...

See how complicated this getting?

In short, the world is a complicated place. The desirable state of affairs, where everyone happily and peacefully trades together, isn't here. Nations and national leaders perceive their interests in a myriad of strange ways; sometimes religious belief plays a part, sometimes testosterone plays a part. (I think we can take it for granted that testosterone plays a big part for many national leaders...) What is always at play is "competing interest". "My" interests are at odds with "yours", either in whole or in part. Sensible democratic nations negotiate a solution. Others don't, preferring the AK-47 to the canapés and niceties of diplomacy. All in all, to ensure that peace is viable, you need folk with guns to "persuade" others to behave. Gunboat diplomacy? Sure. As Europe found out starting about a decade or so ago, insisting that everyone be nice doesn't work. (Britain is busy forgetting the very lessons it taught the rest of the world. Thanks, David.) Sometimes you just need those guns. Diplomacy is the art of not needing to show the guns, never mind use them!

But more than that - sometimes others need your military might. Now, you can pretend that peace is possible without your economic and military influence (allegedly, Ron Paul fantasizes about that; personally, I think he just ignores the conundrums his ponderous policies provoke). South Korea, for instance, needs the active support of America to keep North Korea from invading it. There's nothing to say North Korea won't invade - common sense is not a notable trait in that nation's leadership - but with US troops and commitments, the likelihood North Korea will do something stupid is lessened. The cost to North Korea's leadership would be too high.

All in all, the world is a complicated place. To ensure that American interests, which include trading links and partners, keeping the peace almost in the same way a cop car deters bad driving and road rage, and basically being able to be the world's leading economy - you need a foreign policy that doesn't depend on wishful thinking and vague, angry, pleas that derive from what can only be a deliberate misreading and very plastic interpretation of The Constitution.

Therefore, Dr Paul is wrong with his foreign policy. :-)

Carolyn Ann

Fetch the Excedrin: States' Rights hits a philosophical wall

2012-01-12T12:11:00.000-05:00

Here's one to give you a headache... :-)

No need to thank me. It's all part of the service. :-)

South Carolina, among other states, has decided to require voters to carry some sort of government issued identity card in order to vote. It has to have a government approved photograph on it. And the Supreme's might just say "That's okay".

Philosophically, it's a mess. If you're anti-government, and choose not to carry any government issued identity card, then you're likely to vote for the people who have now decided that they will bar you from voting. (This isn't a big problem, as far as I know. It is, however, a decent way of poking holes into the political argument. :-D )

So, to recap:
You don't want a government issued photo-carrying identity card, and you particularly don't want to be required to carry a government-issued identity card to exercise your rights under The Constitution. Requiring you to have a government-issued photo identity card strikes you as Fascist or Communist or both or something. So you vote for the minimalist government candidates. Who then pass a law saying you can't vote until you provide a government issued identity card that carries a photograph of you. A card that you had to go out of your way to obtain. And is in all likelihood, funded by the taxpayer. Which means that when you pay your taxes, and don't want a government issued identity card, you're funding the denial of your own rights. :-)

(And if you have to pay for the card, the government is imposing a poll tax upon you. You can't vote until you've paid a fee, in other words.)

You may now go and fetch the headache tablets. Keep thinking about this one and you're going to need 'em.

Carolyn Ann

Feline Frolicking Favors "The Little Darlings... Snarl"

2012-01-12T11:55:00.002-05:00

Ebony woke me up this morning with an absolutely elephantine bellow! At 5AM. Which was a trifle annoying as I got to bed around two-ish. He likes to practice his opera at times; usually really annoying times like last thing at night or first thing in the morning.

Having dozed back off [sic], we were both re-awakened by the sound of a side table toppling over and a glass breaking. "You go investigate" the Mrs told me. I did. Sure enough, a side table had been pushed over and the glass of water that had been on it was now exploring its more fractured side over much of the living room floor. Ebony was coming out of the room as I blearily shuffled and stumbled my way downstairs. Being a bit of a reporter, he told me what happened. Unfortunately I don't speak cat, so had to go find out for myself. The two main suspects, Bongo and Copper, were no where to be seen. That alone is a sign of guilt. (You get to figure these things out after awhile...) Bongo was in the kitchen, so she's not ruled out, but the next we saw of Copper, he was curled up on the bed. So he's not ruled out, either.

After cleaning up, I headed back to bed, the Mrs to get ready for work. She failed to agree, and indeed didn't, take the cats (all of 'em! All of 'em I beg you!) to work. So I was then treated to two or three of them having a blast, running around, chasing each other and generally having a bit of early morning fun while working off some energy.

Cats! Who'd 'ave 'em! I ask yer. (Well, we would, apparently.)

Carolyn Ann

A more docile Dambuster raid...

2012-01-12T00:01:00.001-05:00

I've just watched the Nova program about recreating(-ish) Barnes Wallace's Dambuster bomb and 617 Squadron's raid into the Ruhr Valley. A small damn was built someplace in Canada (I missed the first 15 minutes, so I don't know where, but it was very pretty countryside) and a chap with a big airplane was hired to do the run. A Cambridge chap was in charge, with the required PhD candidate.

And the entire crew built a dam, flew the airplane at it - and blew the thing up! (Well, they placed explosives at the bottom; if the pilot hit the dam, they would blow the thing up. He did. They did. It was all quite spectacular!)

The program was well filmed and edited; you could feel the tension as different things went wrong - as they do - and I found myself cheering when things went right. Just as in 1943, there was a tight deadline and a lot of creative thinking was required. All very impressive, I must say.

It reminded me of growing up in the 1960's and into the late 70's, early 80's, when a lot of those old warriors were still around, along with the mythology and inevitable boyhood play. No one ever wanted to be the Germans! (Or Indians, come to think of it) One of my favorite stories was the Dambusters raid; I read a lot about it. Some of it, no doubt was accurate! And I've always loved the Lancaster bomber; it's such a huge airplane; not by today's standards, of course, but it's still impressive up close. And to see, and hear and feel, it in the air - wow!

All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable program, and I got some insight into how difficult that whole thing was. Brave men, those lads. They need to be remembered well.

Carolyn Ann

Silly(-ish) OS X feature, but I like it!

2012-01-11T21:32:00.001-05:00

This might seem silly, but I really like this about OS X. :-)

I can name a document in, say, Pages (Apple's word processor). A wee while later, I might decide to change the name. I pop over to Finder (Apple's File Manager), locate the file, and even when it's open, I click on the name, hit "Enter", type in the new name and hit enter again. Job done. It's updated in Pages and I don't have to go through the filename hell Microsoft Windows* used to put me through when I did something like that!

It's one of those things that makes OS X so polished. :-)

Carolyn Ann

* I used to forget, and have a devil of time with MS Windows. They've probably fixed that little irritation by now, however. I'd start a report or something with a name just to get it savable; then I'd rename it to something for the boss, or whomever, later. Or I'd do version numbers or something (that was a habit of mine in Excel; even when it got versioning!)

PS It's one of those things I do every now and then. Like tonight; I named a file "config.xml" and then I realized that wasn't a good name for a word-processing document. So I did the above and named it "XML Configuration Doc". Easy-peasy. :-D

God help us if... Oh wait...

2012-01-11T16:37:00.001-05:00

I was listening to Randy Kaye, a CNN anchor, interviewing Rick Santorum's campaign manager and Newt Gingrich's. They were understandably a bit cagey in giving out details, but they did reveal more than they intended. The thing that struck me about both was how unprepared they are for South Carolina and Florida. I don't think Newt's campaign, for instance, has a strategy for South Carolina. They have decided on the tactics - Newt is a "Reagan" Republican - but that's useless unless they have a strategy. And I don't think they have one. Rick Santorum's in an even bigger mess; I think his primary goal at this point is "money". He needs a lot. So far he's done reasonably well on a shoestring and prayer. Unfortunately prayers don't pay for gas, rent, hotel rooms, airplane tickets and the like. The shoelace is, I think, somewhat frayed after Iowa and New Hampshire. (Rick Perry, on the other hand, has a shoelace organization and a mysterious line of credit, probably from his Texas cronies.)

South Carolina is in a little over a week (Saturday after next); if either of them doesn't get lots of money and a comprehensive organization in place by then - it'll be Sayonara and Adios, Amigos.

God help us if either gets the nomination. ... Oh wait. God doesn't exist. We're on our own, then.

Carolyn Ann

Nicolas Steno...

2012-01-11T16:23:00.001-05:00

Have you seen Google's logo today?

It's one of their more "Say wha..?" images.

It celebrates the 374th birthday of Nicolas Steno. (He looks fantastic for a chap half his age... :-) Sorry, couldn't resist) St Steno isn't, as far as I know, the Patron Saint of Stenographers. He is (according to the Christian Science Monitor), however, the man who undermined creationism. Over 300 years ago. Rick Perry is a bit behind in his reading.

I'm taking a shine to this chap, already. :-D

Carolyn Ann

Mittens Wins

2012-01-10T22:21:00.001-05:00

So Mittens wins. By a substantial percentage, too. Newt and RickS are neck and neck for 4th. Ron Paul is 2nd, Huntsman is 3rd; he needed to do better than that.

And The Huffington Post sums it up:

Well, there's always at least one way to dampen any parade.

Carolyn Ann

Next is New Hampshire

2012-01-10T16:33:00.002-05:00

It looks like New Hampshire is going to be a race between Mittens, Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman. The Irritatingly Evangelical Rick Santorum is running a fairly distant fourth. The interesting thing about this primary is it's difficult to tell if the race for 3rd is the most interesting bit, or the race for first. :-)

Mitt Romney (see, I do remember his name!) has to get an astounding lead over the second place guy if the rest of it is to be a cakewalk. He might, but it's looking increasingly unlikely - his gaffes and the relentless attacks of the last few days are, apparently, starting to have a toll on his lead. The general reckoning, on CNN at least, seems to be that Mittens needs a "greater than 10%" lead to claim a convincing victory. No one is sure he can manage that. Of course, the Dems are doing their bit... It's getting very difficult to tell who's standing for the man! (I love the Dems approach: they're reminding people he was for Roe v Wade just a few years ago. The implication is that this is a man who will do and say anything to get elected; ergo: you can't trust him. Neat stuff. :-) )

Personally, I'd like to see Ron Paul win. He cold actually pull it off; even if he places within that mysterious 10% of Romney, he'll be the effective winner - because the story will be about that, and not Romney's win. Which would be bad for Mitt, mostly because of the news from Iowa. (There's a lot of doubt that Romney actually won Iowa; apparently a precinct reported the wrong results, and once corrected - Rick Santorum wins that caucus. By about 12 votes!) However, Iowa is ancient history and New Hampshire is the here and now. Unless someone places close to Mittens, in which case Iowa will (probably) be a revived story.

Whatever happens, I'll be watching. Until about Jon Stuart time at least! :-)

Carolyn Ann

PS I'd love to see Newt Gingrich or Ron Paul win the nomination. Both are imperious, cranky old bastards. :-)

Continuing my Drupal whine

2012-01-10T16:14:00.002-05:00

Continuing my Drupal whining. :-|

One of the great things about Drupal is its extensibility. You can add bits of code, modules, to provide cool features and functions to your website. Often, all it takes is clicking a checkbox in a very long list that is a strange mix of the orderly and the arbitrary. After that, you can use this cool new functionality. Assuming you can find it. A lot of this stuff is buried in the appropriate place - developers seem to be very good at that; it's just figuring out where that is that's often the problem.

And then there's the administrative interface. If you're used to one system of administration, it's really difficult to switch to another way of doing things. I've heard it called a "context switch"; what I do know is that the big software companies, like Microsoft and Apple, spend a lot of time ensuring that how you interact with the system is as consistent as possible. That's probably more true for Apple than Microsoft, but you get the idea: "don't surprise me" and "don't make me learn a new way of doing something". Well... Drupal isn't like that.

Referencing OS X and MS Windows, again, one of the reasons they are successful is their consistency. If you use one or the other, you don't have to learn new ways of interacting with (most of) the various subsystems. Linux, like Solaris and other Unix variants, isn't like that. You have to learn how to do one task one way and a related task may or may not be similar; it might be totally different. And now those differences have been "baked" in; they're known and changing them is going to be really, really difficult. The net result is it makes the overall system more difficult to learn than it needs to be. It's not for nothing that Apple has strict user interface/interaction ~~guidelines~~ rules for anything that goes into the Apple Store!

Drupal has three main "add-on" modules: CCK, Views and CTools. CCK allows you to build content structures; Views is a database query system and CTools is a kind of "catch all" for common, but advanced, backend code. It also has some advanced front end tools. So it does a few jobs. And you know what's really irritating? They're all different. You use each one of these systems differently. Complicated systems usually have complicated interfaces (unless they're designed by Steve Jobs); these three modules have four or five (depending how you count) different user interfaces. And you can add modules that change how they work; some of these can be essential. And each of those usually has a special way for you to tell it what to do. Frustrating? It's beyond that!

Consistency can be boring, but it has an invaluable purpose - it allows you to learn the trivial stuff once. When you have a strong designer - the people who code those three modules are very strong designers and coders - who has, shall we say, unique ideas about how you should interact with something, those different ideas are going to appear in your user interface. It all reminds me of corporate systems 15 years ago; each one was radically different, with a specialized way of being used. New hires to a company typically took longer to figure out the systems than they did becoming part of the company; training was continual and expensive. (Mind you, the overall Drupal paradigm reminds me those systems, too!) We've moved on from there; well, a few of us have. (I went into carpentry...)

The overall effect, coupled with Drupal's insane "all in one bucket" system (back end code, front end code, database code, resources, everything is poured into one bucket and you install that) is a system that's uniquely difficult to work with. You can do a lot with Drupal, much more than you can with Wordpress, for instance. (If you ever read a Drupal-vs-Wordpress comparison, and there's a lot of them out there, just remember it's like comparing your first bicycle, complete with training wheels, to am 18-wheeled truck. Can you do it? Sure. Is it wise? Not really.) Drupal doesn't have any competition; sure, there are alternatives - Joomla, Symfony, and a veritable smorgasbord of different frameworks, but they don't compete with Drupal. Drupal exists on its own; and it's likely to for some time, simply because of what it actually does. What Drupal does not do is make it easy to understand the system, which is a pity because at its core, Drupal does a very simple job: it takes a request from the web, fetches the appropriate database entries and sends the results back with formatting instructions. Considering that, it really shouldn't be as difficult as it is to use the durned system!

Carolyn Ann

Moaning about Drupal

2012-01-10T15:37:00.003-05:00

While I'm taking a short break, I'll also moan about some other Drupal stuff. Apparently Drupal 8, which comes with some essential tools for things like HTML5, API cleanups, a cleaner "hook" mechanism (don't ask*... ) a REST interface and a few other bits and pieces, won't be out for another two-and-a-bit years. That's a long time in WebLand.

*If you can imagine a really complicated way of calling new code - it's probably simpler than how Drupal does it.

The due date was figured from when Drupal 7 had achieved some "acceptance" goal; that is, more people were using it than the previous versions. Or something like that. That date is expected to be later this year. From there, we have an expected two year wait. I've been involved with software projects for a long time; if it is delivered two years after that, it'll be the first time I've ever seen a complicated system be delivered "on time".

Oy vey. Small wonder I'm exploring a web framework called Symfony. It's radically different, not as capable, just as big and not quite as ornery.

Carolyn Ann

Gah! What's with the presumption? [sic]

2012-01-10T15:26:00.002-05:00

I don't know, perhaps I'm reading too much into this: "Dries Buytaert, Creator of Drupal, ..."

I got stuck at "Creator of Drupal". Yes, he created it. But does that warrant the presumptuous capitalization? Wouldn't "Dries Buytaert, who[m] created Drupal, ...", or even "Dries Buytaert, Drupal creator" be better? The sentence isn't in the CIO article that's referenced; it's put there by someone at Acquia.

It's stuff like this that drives me nuts about Drupal. Besides it being a really ornery (there's no other word for it!) system to work with.

Carolyn Ann

Poor wee Minnie

2012-01-10T09:07:00.003-05:00

Oy. I've got to bury another cat. Minnie got run over this morning. Poor wee thing.

He and his sibling, kittens, just appeared a few years ago. First there was one, and the next day there were two of them! I don't think they were old enough to have stopped weaning; but something had obviously happened to their Mom. They stayed outside and got bigger; at first they never ventured much further than the deck; for awhile, they never went much beyond the table on the deck! Last year Charlie, the sibling, vanished; they do that around here. I think they get into squabbles with raccoons and the like, out in the woods. Minnie was a bit at-odds when that happened; you could tell he was clearly distressed. They'd looked after each other, and now there was just one of them. She cozied up to Copper, the Big Gallumph as he's known; he's the needy sort so he was happy to have the attention.

I didn't know Minnie went across the road; it's a quiet road, but it's killed a few of the cats we look after. It's inevitable; we're in the middle of a largish woodland and the hunting is good all around.

Oh well. At least he didn't suffer; it looks like he was killed instantly. Probably didn't even know it happened.

Damn it. I hate it when that happens.

===
Well, that's that miserable task done.
Poor wee lad didn't know a thing, I reckon. I hate what death takes from us.
===

Carolyn Ann

The Ascension of Mittens

2012-01-09T10:58:00.001-05:00

Mittens is doing quite well, these days. I don't think it's because the Republicans have taken a shine to him. I think it's more that the other candidates are imploding and he's the only one left. He did quite well in the debates this weekend; the others squabbled like children (with the notable exception of Jon Huntsman) and he stood there like Teacher, taking it all in and indulging "his" rowdy rabble.

In other words - 75% to 80% of Republicans can't stand the man. But enough like him to ensure he's going to be the only one left.

Apparently Mittens is quite well funded by the lobbying industry; it gives you a big clue how a Romney Administration would operate. If you thought the K-Street Project was abusive, and the Bush White House was run by and for corporations, you'd be right to think that nonsense had training wheels.

Looks like we're in a for political campaign that is more based on lies than usual. Mittens has some stalwart "truth-stretchers" and flat out lairs in his Super PAC's and campaign advisors; folk who think the truth is not just malleable, but gets in the way of what they truly desire - Power.

Considering it all, I'm not filled with optimism.

Carolyn Ann

The wonder of the web...

2012-01-09T10:39:00.003-05:00

I love how the web works. I read an article about Stephen Colbert, which mentions he did an op-ed for Maureen Dowd; so I click on the link - and read the op-ed (it's quite good). In it, Colbert mentions Newt's $30M thing; it rings a bell, so I pop over to Google and type "Newt, $30 million" and (instantly) get a list of stories about it, including this one from CNN. (That scary, elephantine memory of Google!)

I know it's conceptually simple, and I've been using the web for years - and the internet for longer than that! - but sometimes I just find it astonishing that something that used to take considerable effort you can now do in the same time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.

Carolyn Ann

Lipstick Sales Convention

2012-01-08T14:47:00.001-05:00

A picture of the lipstick salesmen making their pitches:

"Ladies, my color will wow you and turn your man into jelly!"

Mittens is making his pitch to the Ladies Who Buy Lipstick...

Carolyn Ann

Ron Paul supporters...

2012-01-08T12:39:00.002-05:00

Ever notice how prickly Ron Paul supporters are?

No weapons? Darn.

2012-01-08T00:30:00.000-05:00

My oh my, tonight's debate was quite a lively affair! Someone should have thought to bring weapons. (That would have had the side benefit of narrowing the field down somewhat.) There was a lot of zings; some made a mark. RickS got hot under the collar early on, when Ron Paul jibed him. And Mittens basically did what he was supposed to do, which was stay above the fray. The surprise was Jon Huntsman - I knew the man was intelligent, but jeez, doesn't he know that's well counted against him?

The expected distortions were present; not too many flat-out lies from what I could tell; no doubt the "keep 'em honest" brigade will be doing their thing and we'll get to read about it all tomorrow. Or in a few hours, whichever is the sooner. ;-) What was bemusing was the vehemence everyone put into hating Mr Obama; you'd think he was the antiChrist or something. Oh, he is? Huh. Who knew? And the denigration of "Europe" was popular; what's so bad about Europe? Dysfunctional governments operating on a system that's akin to the conservative interpretation of the 10th Amendment, that's what. :-)

Nate Silver, he of Five-ThirtyEight fame (the world famous political statistics blog in the New York Times) marked the score thusly:

Romney A, Huntsman A-, Paul B, Perry C, Gingrich C, Santorum C

All in all a jolly good time was had by all. I just wish someone had thought to bring weapons.

Carolyn Ann

Christ on a candlestick... It's called "conservation of energy"!

2012-01-08T00:21:00.000-05:00

I've been engaged in what might be loosely termed a "discussion" over on Facebook. It's more a friend of a friend has been trying to goad me, and I return the favor. As I am wont to do. :-D

Anyway, this chap left me a long "mathematical" explanation against atheism. Here is much of it, with snarky commentary thrown in because I'm avoiding taking the trash out:

[Condescending intro deleted] I shall destroy your entire worldview in one fell swoop, using math.

The odds of a Carbon [sic] Atom [sic], the most basic of atoms [no it isn't, hydrogen is] forming by chance is 10 to the power of 111 to the power of 13. Multiply this by every one of them in existence, multiplied by the odds of another ever forming, ... [you really don't want to know how much multiplication he needs] multiplied by the odds laws will be created in order to continue the existence of everything existing then and thereafter, multiplied by the odds these events will continue, while existing [huh?], thereafter until we have laws of existence [what the hell are they?] as well as them coming together to form stars, planets, the varying means of mass, dimensions, and formulas which make up our reality(all separately), multiplied by the odds of life supporting elements such as atmospheres [wrong way around; atmosphere's support some life as we know it], and [blah blah], multiplied by the odds of life forming, and continuing to exist [...], [lots of "odds" as in: that's quite a stunning series of coincidences, it must be guided], and you have a number so vast that it easily fills a near infinite number of universes similar to this one(or, really, completely absent of anything just to fill it) and the odds of anything ever and forever existing by chance or without a God to guide it.

Math proves that the Atheistic worldview is impossible. Not that this is the only thing in our created existence that does, but this is probably the simplest one.

My response, in its entirety:

Take a breath, [His name] - you're turning blue! I'd say something like "Christ on a candlestick, that's complicated!" at this point. But some of my friends might be offended, so I won't.

What did you hope to prove by that longwinded, anthropomorphizing explanation? How about this as an explanation for *some* natural phenomena: chance. It's simpler, doesn't require a Big Boss and doesn't require your "math" (which is more of an errant exposition than a mathematical solution).

You say you don't know me - and then graciously grant me a chance. At what? Understanding that lot? You sure as hell don't know me; if you did, you wouldn't have wasted your time writing it. (Rest assured, I didn't waste much time reading it; a quick skim was more than enough.)

"Laws of existence" What the hell are they? Please, don't bother. Unless you're compelled to, or have nothing better to do.

And now, if you don't mind, I've got to get back to work. I've got a deadline to live by.

I wonder if he noticed that his "number so vast" is still a number? It's still a discrete quantity. Which basically means there's a chance his Big Kahuna didn't have anything to do with the creation of the universe. In fact, there's a very good chance the Giant Gringo didn't have anything to do with the creation of life, the universe and the number 42. You see, it's very difficult to accomplish anything if you don't exist.

Right. I'd better get that trash to the bins and this project worked on. I'm hoping to log a couple of hours before I head to the horizontal harmony.

Carolyn Ann

Ron Paul: Irrelevant?

2012-01-07T12:56:00.001-05:00

Despite the fact that Ron Paul keeps showing well in the polls, I can't help but think he's losing relevancy with his continual off-topic rants*. It's like people are starting to listen to him (!) and noticing he doesn't actually have anything to say.

Ultimately, the man is irrelevant. Well, some of his ideas will live on, but he's increasingly irrelevant.

Carolyn Ann

*The man couldn't stay on topic if his electoral chances depended on it... Oh, wait - they do!

Revealing all...

2012-01-07T11:30:00.003-05:00

When it comes to putting it all on display, pinup calendars aren't known for their reticence. So it shouldn't surprise anyone when one goes that extra step and ... Well, click on the link and see the result for yourself. :-)

(H/T to Bill.)

Carolyn Ann

That's gossip, that is!

2012-01-07T11:19:00.001-05:00

There's a book out describing the "tension" between Michelle Obama and Rahm Emanuel. It seems a few political pundits & reporters are quite excited about it. Because it shows tension in the White House. And that's gotta be a story, right?

Personally, I think if there wasn't tension or differences, *that* would be the story! Two powerful, intellectual, strong individuals with another strong, intellectual person in the middle (who happens to be the US President)? That tension and differences of opinion exist happen at the top, and within such a group, isn't news. It's gossip.

Carolyn Ann

Base your legislation on... The Magna Carta?!?

2012-01-06T10:48:00.001-05:00

A trio of New Hampshire Republicans have decided that they want all future bills to be based on the Magna Carta. And have introduced a bill to that effect.

Yes, you did read that correctly. :-)

They want all future bills to quote a part of the document that sets interest rates on money borrowed from Jews (to 0% in one circumstance) and that asks that we're not tardy in returning Llewelyn's sons to him. The Three Twits, one of whom, Lucien Vita, admits he hasn't read the Magna Carta, are probably enamored by the while "freeman" bit. A segment of the population that was closer to The 0.1% than The 1%.

I think the Republicans, as a whole, are out to prove they're not so much "out of touch" with reality as they just don't give a fig about it.

Next up: a Presidential candidate proposing that the Bible be the basis for all laws in the United States. ... Oh. Dear.

Carolyn Ann

Back. Again. :-)

2012-01-05T19:12:00.003-05:00

Back online!

Some twit needed specific directions; the sort that says "when the road curves, stay on it!", and not hit a telephone pole. But they forgot to go with the road and hit the telephone pole. Snapping a bunch of wires and knocking the entire internet out. Considering that there was no internet or phone service around here, it might was pretty much the same as the entire internet going down. The electricity blipped at the same time (I know this because the oven clock was blinking; and the light next to me did the same.)

I loved it when Verizon told me it was a problem at the house! To be fair, their troubleshooting computer probably couldn't tell the difference in the return signal from way out here.

Phew. It's amazing how much you depend on the internet! ;-\

Carolyn Ann

A little gloating... :-)

2012-01-05T19:06:00.000-05:00

Didn't I recently predict that some transsexual separatist bigotry would show its ugly mug? I did!

And guess what? It has! :-D

It happened sooner than I thought it would, but it's definitely "before February".

Carolyn Ann

PS Need I remind you that I'm calling the ideas "ugly", not the person advancing them. An honest view would say Dana's argument is "facetious"; a charitable view would be that it is "misguided"; a kindly view might allege it is "asking the wrong question"; a benevolent view would note it must be inspired by Ron Paul; it certainly uses the same format that he does!

PPS Some editorial changes, and I changed the title. :-)
Also, I added "Dana Lane Taylor" to the tag list; I wouldn't want her list of my egregiousnesses to miss anything! :-D

Bachmann out...

2012-01-04T13:32:00.000-05:00

I didn't think she'd stay in the race; on the other hand, I thought she'd last through New Hampshire.

However, she's now out. Pity. She's an intelligent person, who couldn't/can't figure out when to shut up, when to stop and think, and when to accept advice. Apparently, she wasn't quite experienced, or intelligent, enough to figure out that the lawyer with herself as a client is a fool - she thought she had the chops for a big time race. She's not the only one; Rick Perry has to figure out the same thing.

I don't want to say "good riddance", so I won't.

Carolyn Ann

Lightweight...

2012-01-04T11:14:00.001-05:00

Sorry, I was a bit of a lightweight, last night. I stayed up until about midnight and then, with 4% or 6% precincts yet to call in - I went to bed. Mittens and RickS were in a neck-and-neck race, with Ron Paul flailing around in a "strong" 3rd place. The Newtron was a consistent 13%, with Rickety Rick (P) crawling to one tenth, and Michele The Belle trailing in a miserable 27th. Which could be counted as a poor showing considering that there were only 7 [sorry... there were 11, including "none of the above" and "they're all as bad as each other so it doesn't matter who I pick"] names on the ticket. Never mind! She gave a fiery speech that woke up her supporters. (In case you're wondering, and I know you are - Jon Huntsman, a man so boring no one can possibly think up a name for him, and one who will never see a surge came in 7th, just behind Michele. Which is really sad, because she campaigned quite vigorously and he ignored the entire state!)

All in all, a good night for Mittens, and a real nightmare for RickS. He doesn't have any money or organization - so he can't' really carry his very close 2nd place to anyplace meaningful. More obscurity lies in his future, methinks. Mind you, he does come across as a cross between Archie's Dad (Fred Andrews; don't ask why, I have no idea) and George W. Bush - except you'd notice if someone like Fred Andrews walked into the room; with GW, it was said he could stand in the corner and you mistook him for a lamp stand. One that needed a new bulb... Well, RickS is a bit like that. :-)

Going forward, and they must, I think Michele is looking for a career-saving way of bowing out (note to Michele: there isn't one), Ol' Rickety is an Unelectable Man Campaigning, but he doesn't know it yet [he is "re-assessing", which translates to "how can I get out this intact?"] and Jon Huntsman would have been better staying in China. Ron Paul has plateaued; his supporters think there's nowhere but up, not realizing that he needed much more actual support; getting 21½% of the vote is admirable, but he needed more to sustain a viable campaign. Camp Mittens is in a good place; he's quite popular in New Hampshire (they might recall the just-right-of-center governor of Massachusetts); unfortunately, the close call with RickS might force the man to tack to the right of Rick Perry.

Speaking of Mittens, wow - he's ruthless! His PAC's (you don't seriously expect to me to believe there's no coordination between the political action committees and the campaign, do you? As I said on Facebook last night - that's like expecting me to believe politicians represent their constituents! I'm sure it happens, but not so often you'd notice) went after Newt with gusto. That's diverted the man, who's probably going to make this whole battle very personal. So while Newt won't get the nomination, he will do his damnedest to undermine Mittens every which way he can - and he's got plenty of ways, I'd guess. I can't help but think the Romney Campaign made a strategic blunder with their "Kill Newt" battle plan. On the other hand, the social and Christian conservatives seem to have stayed away from Romney; they went for RickS. That does not bode well for the future. Turnout was decent, with 116,115 votes being cast. Nothing to learn there; it wasn't spectacular, it wasn't poor; enthusiasm is about as good as the GOP can hope.

So the whole thing was worth watching. The lightweights of the whole thing were generally swept aside; the one lightweight who did have a good showing now has the problem of exploiting his good fortune. Ron Paul proved that while he can attract some voters, he's basically unelectable and Mitt Romney is thinking his turn is finally arriving. Apparently there's another debate on Saturday; look for it to be vicious.

Wow. I didn't know he was that bad...

2012-01-03T13:03:00.001-05:00

I was just listening to a bit of a Ron Paul speech on CNN. He's a terrible speaker; the only point where he was convincing was when he echoed Bill Clinton! (I mean that literally; he used the same inflection and words that Bill would use.)

His format is thus: touch on a topic; identify an actual problem or issue (oddly, he rarely invents these) and then go off on a tangent, tossing in misinterpretations, twisted or strange logic, fictions and fancies as required. Some of his tangents are pretty wild. It's quite fascinating; I knew he wrote like that, but I didn't know his speeches were like that as well! He links things together in what can only be described as "implausible". (His mentions the Constitution, the Founders, banned central banks - it doesn't mention them and it wasn't discussed it until much later.)

He doesn't gloss over the deficiencies in his arguments - he totally ignores them. His concept of "individual liberty" is striking in its superficiality; and to think, I simply figured he was assuming you knew one of his previous arguments! There's nothing to his "individual liberty". Really, there's nothing in it. He simply ~~ignores~~ [see below] the "commons" as if such a concept *couldn't* exist. In short, he doesn't balance the commons and individual liberty; he totally ignores the philosophical and politics conflicts presented by this thing called "society". If his neighbor put all his cows onto the village green, I suspect Dr Paul would be found asleep, or on vacation.

Lastly, he talks in a rush; his delivery is lecturing and haranguing. He looks *old* and he simply doesn't look like the man you want representing your nation. All frumpled and everything; he's a frumpy fellow. Put him next to Barack Obama and the contrast would be startling, and not positive for Dr Paul. If he got the nomination, I'd be concerned he'd last until November; people thought John McCain was old, at 71, when he ran last. It might be annoying, but appearance matters in American politics. (How could it not?)

All in all, the man is an anachronism, a frumpy anachronism.

Carolyn Ann

[Note: On further consideration, I realized that Dr Paul doesn't so much ignore the common weal as pretend it doesn't exist!]

A Short Summary of the Republican's Economic Policies

2012-01-03T11:40:00.002-05:00

For your edification and education, I have compiled a short summary of the Republican candidate's economic policies and positions. There's no need to thank me. :-)

Without further ado, here it is:

Mitt
Will continue either Bill's (successful) economic policies or George's (successful for him). He's not sure which.

Newt
Will bring back Reagononomics. Which, you might recall, led to a massive failure of much of the financial system (S&L crash), a large recession that took until 1993 to really get out of, deficit spending on an unprecedented scale and at one point the country was almost bankrupt.

Ron
Will make any Ayn Rand fans* weep for joy and the rest of us weep. All those shared costs will be foisted onto you, personally. He'll reintroduce the gold standard, immediately making America the poorest nation on the planet. He'll make laissez-faire economics look like communist activism and introduce a depression that would make the Great Depression look like a rehearsal for kindergarten nap time. Fundamentally, you won't know the value of your dollar and it won't matter, because the 1% will have bought all the gold, anyway.
* Esp. those who haven't read, or thought about, her "economic" policies. Ref: Alan Greenspan and, oh, what was the result of his policies? Oh yeah, "the Great Recession".

Rick Perry
Will give tax breaks to companies that move from other places, but will impose immigration policies sculpted in Alabama and Arizona. So the companies can move here, but the workers and owners will all be arrested at various points as illegal immigrants. Will get rid of minimum wage laws as "uncompetitive", so we'll all look longingly at Walmart and wonder how the wealthy can afford to shop there, as we go about our $0.50/hour jobs.

Michele, Rick S
What's economics, again?

===
Like I said, no need to thank me. :-D

Carolyn Ann

CaroLINES

Paul Ryan is upset the economy is improving

Civil rights depends on... Dana did *what*?!?

What goes around *will* come around... :-)

From the Captain on down...

Unfriending a friend

HuffPoUK

My kind of "wine", my lass and my kind of song

That's almost interesting

A chicken or the eggs...

It's now a two way race in Florida

What I really mean is...

Sunny side of the street..?

Context matters

A template for political argument

Succinct, right?

Clinical phobias do not a social detestation make...

Name this Trans Mafia

Stephan Sokolow's "Gender Bending Fiction Index"

A preview of this evening's Republican debate

Chris Christie punts on gay marriage

A private Narnia. Without the good bits.

Stop! Wearing those heels! They're...

Brass Balls. Big Brass Balls.

Och, devolve already!

Republicans & Common Sense; a bit like oil and water

There's a reason I like Obama!

Kindergarten for the internet

Emolument and "Mr Speaker"

Decisions, decisions...

The WP debunks some myths about Mr Obama

cross dressing, transexual, God hating political deceiver

Fight of the century!!!

Bye, bye Canadian Pie?

Habeas Corpus isn't odious. It's necessary.

Happy Dance time?

Georgia judge orders Obama to appear in court...

Family Values

Absurdity caused by piety

Mike Huckabee extols upon Mitt Romney

Secret Service names...

The inevitable headline

The tally so far

He caught a tiger by its tail...

It's easy to annoy Ron Paul supporters.

Oprah and... Who?!?

Life is good(...ish)

Wow! Inarticulate, but passionate

I'm sorry, I didn't notice you'd stopped speaking to me...

Ron Paul really is a racist! (And anti-Semite)

Romney's pain...

Smile please, a black hole will be on candid camera

New Hampshire Republicans hate their women

Ulterior motives versus simple idiocy

So that's why you're a transsexual "separatist", is it?

...

Fox News protests..?

It's probably not worth applying for this...

Baffling attire?

I'm not that, nope...

Huntsman goes hunting

Explaining Ron Paul

Every journey...

Ru Paul sounds off

I need to do that...

What an idiot. Me, that is.

Thou shalt not speak ill of our Man...

Books, Nesh and God Almighty. (All in one nowhere near economy-sized post.)

New hearings against the Prez...

Removing the gatekeepers

"Stand up to bigotry - buy girl scout cookies"

Bigotry & bigots in the Tennessee legislature

Why Ron Paul is wrong with his foreign "policy"

Fetch the Excedrin: States' Rights hits a philosophical wall

Feline Frolicking Favors "The Little Darlings... Snarl"

A more docile Dambuster raid...

Silly(-ish) OS X feature, but I like it!

God help us if... Oh wait...

Nicolas Steno...

Mittens Wins

Civil rights depends on... Dana did what?!?

What goes around will come around... :-)

Wow. I didn't know he was that bad...