The Insult Trap

The Politico points out something today that people need to read. Barack Obama is actually getting boosts in his popularity with every insult he shrugs off and accepts apologies for.

AUSTIN —They are so sorry.

In the course of the primary campaign, and perhaps in a preview of the fall election drama, Senator Barack Obama has accepted the apologies of three United States senators, a former senator, CNN and various lower-level supporters of Senator Hillary Clinton.

Most of them have apologized for saying something insensitive about Obama’s race, his name, or his heritage. And the dynamic of outrage and offense this campaign has proved race to be a much touchier subject than gender. At times, Obama’s campaign has sought to downplay burgeoning outrage. At others, he’s stoked it for political advantage.

But most of the flaps ended the same way: With Obama forgiving the alleged offender. Sometimes he’s accepted the apologies graciously, sometimes sternly, but always in line with his message. And that message of reconciliation – often explicitly racial reconciliation – is a central part of his campaign’s appeal. With a general election that appears likely to open him to more Republican attacks, and more line-crossing, the campaign ritual of offense and forgiveness appears likely to be repeated often this year.

This is exactly why I wrote that earlier post about Obama's middle name. This is the trap people are falling into. The only way to win a rigged game is to refuse to play. The media is going to blow up everything they can possibly construe (or even misconstrue) as an insult into a major issue, bet on it. 

Refuse to play, folks.

Incidentally, comments are still turned on but are under full moderation, meaning every comment must be approved individually by the massive staff here at the Crabitat. Hence, it might be a while before your comment gets vetted.

Political Games

Even the Los Angeles Times can't stomach the Democratic candidates glaring hypocrisy on NAFTA and free trade. They are throwing the flag on this one.

The 14-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement has become a hot issue in this year's Democratic presidential campaign — in Ohio, at least. When Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama hit the hustings in the Buckeye State, they compete to be NAFTA’s biggest critic. But when they jet to Texas, which is also holding its primary Tuesday, the candidates have little or nothing to say about the pact.

The disparity illustrates two truths about major trade deals: They're a magnet for pandering, and they produce both winners and losers. Ohio, like other states in the Rust Belt, is stinging from the loss of manufacturing jobs in the years since NAFTA took effect. In Texas, however, communities near the border have blossomed with an influx of investment, jobs and workers.

And the differences haven't just been regional. The trade deals signed since 1980 have helped spur job growth for some types of workers while decreasing jobs for others. Men at the high and low ends of the career ladder have benefited, but those in the middle have suffered, while the opposite holds true for women, according to a recent study by economist Stephen Rose at the Progressive Policy Institute.

The president's job is to take the long view of what's best for the country as a whole. Although it's hard to pinpoint jobs lost or created because of NAFTA, U.S. employment has grown far beyond even pessimistic estimates of the trade deal's costs. You wouldn't know that listening to Obama, who declared in a recent speech that "trade deals like NAFTA ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wage." His stance is echoed by Clinton, who scolded Obama's campaign for distributing a flier that said she had called NAFTA a "boon" to the economy.

They have a bunch of links backing up their statements. They point out that fighting for truly open markets in other countries is more productive. Yes, some jobs are going to be lost with free trade - but better, higher paying jobs also are gained. Rising standards in other countries mean more opportunities to sell the products of those better jobs here at home.

Cleaning Up

Bobby Jindal, the new Republican governor of Louisiana, is proving that cleaning up government is possible. He has rammed sweeping ethics rules changes through a reluctant legislature and has even managed to extract praise from the New York Times in doing so.

BATON ROUGE, La. — Downstairs, legislators gnashed their teeth, while upstairs at the Capitol here this week, the new governor claimed victory against the old customs down below.

Six weeks into the term of Gov. Bobby Jindal, an extensive package of ethics bills was approved here this week, signaling a shift in the political culture of a state proud of its brazen style. Mr. Jindal, the earnest son of Indian immigrants, quickly declared open season on the cozy fusion of interests and social habits that have prevailed among lobbyists, state legislators and state agencies here for decades. Mostly, he got what he wanted.

Mr. Jindal, an outsider to that rollicking if sometimes unsavory banquet, a Republican with a missionary’s zeal to smite Louisiana’s wickedness at one of its presumed sources, called on the Legislature to reform itself and its high-living ways.

Grudgingly, pushed by public opinion and business pressure, it went along. When the legislative session ended Tuesday, lawmakers had passed bills aimed at making their finances less opaque, barring their lucrative contracts with the state — some have been known to do good business with them — and cutting down on perks like free tickets to sporting events. The bills, which advocates say will put Louisiana in the top tier of states with tough ethics rules, now await Mr. Jindal’s signature, which should come early next week.

Mr. Jindal overcame resistance by convincing lawmakers that no job growth would occur in the state until it cleaned up its act and brought its ethics laws into the national mainstream.

“I’ve talked to C.E.O.’s in New York, even the president of the United States,” Mr. Jindal said in an interview, and when “you ask them for more investment, more help on the coast and other areas, their first reaction always is: ‘Well, who do you need to know? Who do I have to hire? Is this money going to end up in somebody’s pocket?’ ”

That had to change, the governor said, and he was using his “narrow window” — his honeymoon at the Capitol — to do it.

The volume of grumbling suggested real change was afoot.

“This is huge,” said D. W. Hunt, a veteran lobbyist at the Capitol. “This is a sea change. This will seriously, dramatically change things. The meta-theme is the transparency.”

Barry Erwin, president of the Council for a Better Louisiana, a good-government watchdog group, described the new bills as “a major change in the culture.”

“It’s a world of difference, particularly on the disclosure side, and the same thing with conflict-of-interest,” he said. 

Louisiana has long had a reputation for utter corruption in politics. Change is long overdue. Too bad he can't take this show on the road - there are other states that could benefit from this kind of change (Illinois comes to mind). Jindal did not get everything he wanted, he was unable to strip convicted politicians of state benefits. But it is a start - a big one - toward draining Louisiana's political swamp. Or bayou, if you prefer.  

Why Clinton Is Losing

Daniel Henninger looks at why Hillary Clinton is losing to a political neophyte who has served only three years in national office - or even less if you consider that Obama has effectively been running for higher office since he took his job in the Senate. He compares it to a Hollywood tragedy: it's all about the casting.

What the netroots has done is bunch up the party ideologically. While the Republican Party slices conservative ideology as thinly as aged prosciutto, the Democrats, in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail, are all swinging a populist anvil — with the left hand.

This pushed Hillary out of the Clinton comfort zone. She established her Senate career as a reasonable person, winning public compliments from GOP colleagues. Came the campaign and she finds herself onstage with wall-to-wall men of the ascendant populist left.

On trade, the Democratic Party is as far left as at any time in its history. Both Al Gore and John Kerry ran as economic populists, but there was nothing on trade like what we have heard in this campaign. In Al Gore's 2000 nomination acceptance speech, trade was the last issue mentioned: "We must welcome and promote truly free trade." His running mate was Joe Lieberman, also a Nafta supporter. Labor "held its nose" and voted for Gore……

….Barack Obama slipped smoothly into the antifree-trade current in his party. Hillary Clinton, one guesses, operates inside a structure of intellectual integrity of her own devising, and her antitrade riffs (the "time out") sound strained.
It's often said that she lacks Bill's political skills, whatever that means. Her retail skills are pretty darned good, though, good enough to defeat John Edwards or virtually any other Democrat one can imagine. So why is she losing to a three-year senator?

Partly because she's running in the wrong century…..

…..The part, however, is challenging. The Democratic platform may be familiar, but it is also infused with the quality of a dream. Actually, the word "dream" gets used a lot in Democratic rhetoric. What are essentially bureaucratic arrangements, such as health insurance or after-school programs, are promised as "universal." Meanwhile, "the middle class" is being offered a version of never-never land — total public protection from the traps and betrayals of the private sector, which has been reduced to a kind of Grimm's Fairy Tale abstraction, the wolves.

If you are selling a dream you need the best possible salesman to make it seem somehow possible. They found him in Barack Obama. 

Hillary can't defeat Obama's star power - he has been cast in the role of Saviour, messiah and the great left hope, all rolled up into a slick package. Because there is so little distance between their policies, the only differentiating quality is that star power. McCain can - and will - be able to crack through that slick facade, Clinton has been unable to do so.

Organ Grind

I first caught wind of this story in the British press. Now it has hit ABC News. A California doctor faces charges of hastening the death of a disabled man in order to take the man's organs for transplant. Medical experts are frantic, worried that this will make even more people reluctant to become organ donors.

A court case in which a doctor has been charged with hastening a disabled patient's death, in order to harvest his kidneys and liver, has sparked concern among ethicists and organ transplant experts alike.

According to a report in the New York Times, preliminary hearings began Wednesday for Dr. Hootan C. Roozrokh. The California doctor faces three felony counts, including the charge that he prescribed excessive and improper doses of drugs to 25-year-old Ruben Navarro in 2006. Navarro suffered from a rare metabolic disorder that had left him disabled and brain damaged.

Prosecutors allege that Roozrokh prescribed additional doses of sedative drugs in order to hasten Navarro's death and harvest his organs sooner. However, when Navarro died on Feb. 4 at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center, about 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles, his organs had already deteriorated to the point that they could not be used.

Roozrokh has pleaded not guilty to the charges. If he is convicted on all counts, he could face up to eight years in prison. 

Here's a report from the Telegraph that describes the doctor's alleged actions:

Roozrokh arrived at the hospital as part of a transplant team. He stayed in the room while Mr Navarro's respirator was removed and ordered the drugs, according to a nurse who was present.

The nurse also told police that Roozrokh asked another nurse to find and administer more "candy" - drugs - when Navarro did not die immediately. According to protocol, transplant teams are not allowed into a prospective donor's room before they are declared dead.

The case comes amid debate in Britain over allowing a system of presumed consent, where patients would be required to opt out of organ donation. Civil liberty groups have expressed concerns that presumed consent might rob individuals of the right to decide the fate of their body.

The case will make some people more reluctant to be donors, of course. The experts are worried for good reason. There should have been better controls in place - obviously, Roozrokh should never have been in that room, much less issuing orders to nurses.

On Middle Names

The Republican National Committee has warned off the Tennessee Republican Party from using Barack Obama's middle name in a press release.

The Republican National Committee this afternoon scolded the Tennessee Republican Party over their use of "Barack Hussein Obama" in an official press release and warned the state party that they will be denounced by the national committee if they use the Democrat's middle name again, said a GOP official close to the RNC.

"The RNC has notified the Tennessee GOP that they do not support or agree with their approach," said this source, requesting anonymity to discuss the private conversation between a staffer in the national committee's political department and a top aide at the state party.  "If they don't refrain from doing so again, they will be publicly repudiated by the Republican National Committee."

This source said the national committee did not ask the Tennessee party to retract their statement, but effectively put them on notice for the future.

Monday, Tennessee GOP spokesman Bill Hobbs penned a press release attacking Obama on Israel, using his Muslim-sounding middle name in the process. 

And yes, the Bill Hobbs in question is that Bill Hobbs. The Tennessee party has since backed down on this issue.

Look, I am well aware of what Barack Obama's middle name is. But using the name like this is a bad move on many levels. It is playing directly into the hands of those who routinely use identity politics as a weapon. They will use it to call racism and intolerance and every other victim card they can get their hands on. And the media will dutifully repeat whatever the victimologists charge, That game is completely rigged in favor of the people playing the victim cards.

The only way to win a rigged game is to refuse to play. That is what is required here. There are real, profound issues at stake in this election. And there are real, profound issues that Barack Obama can be attacked on without allowing him to shelter under a cloak of victimhood.

Some people are not going to like this advice. But I think it is the only way to win here. Barack Obama's middle name is a sideshow - it is counterproductive to use it, it is not necessary and it allows the opposition a smokescreen. We have enough real issues that should scare hell out of voters. Like this one, or this one and believe me, there will be plenty more. All real issues, all substantive, all worth attacking. Without providing a smokescreen for Obama to disappear behind.

Refuse to play the game. They want you to play it; don't fall into that trap.

The “Lay America’s Throat Open” Strategy

It speaks for itself:

Obama is willing to essentially disarm the United States or so cripple its defenses that I am left without adequate words to describe how this makes me feel. All I can say at this point is that Obama may have just laid his throat open for Hillary Clinton. Maybe, just maybe, she just got her miracle. But she has to pounce - now.  

(Video via Ace.) 

Two Year-Old Euro Coin

The European Union has a new design for their two-Euro coin that could have been designed by a two-year old. No, really. The coin will feature a stick-figure or matchstick man as it's called in Britain. No, really.

Brussels is to issue a matchstick-man two-Euro coin to commemorate ten years of economic and monetary union.

The "deliberately primitive design," which could have been drawn by a four-year-old, was chosen from a shortlist of five and will been issued in all Euro-area countries from next year.

I maintain that the design of the coin could have been drawn by a two-year old, but pop over and have a look. Of course, this changes the meaning of this old song completely. 

The Paper Of Record Disrepute

The New York Times is now regarded favorably by only 24% of people while 44% have an unfavorable opinion, according to a new Rasmussen poll. These are pretty bad numbers for a paper already in a tailspin.

Just 24% of American voters have a favorable opinion of the New York Times. Forty-four percent (44%) have an unfavorable opinion and 31% are not sure. The paper’s ratings are much like a candidate’s and divide sharply along partisan and ideological lines.

By a 50% to 18% margin, liberal voters have a favorable opinion of the paper. By a 69% to 9%, conservative voters offer an unfavorable view. The newspaper earns favorable reviews from 44% of Democrats, 9% of Republicans, and 17% of those not affiliated with either major political story.

The Times recently became enmeshed in controversy over an article published concerning John McCain. Sixty-five percent (65%) of the nation’s likely voters say they have followed that story at least somewhat closely.

Of those who followed the story, 66% believe it was an attempt by the paper to hurt the McCain campaign. Just 22% believe the Times was simply reporting the news. Republicans, by an 87% to 9% margin, believe the paper was trying to hurt McCain’s chances of winning the White House. Democrats are evenly divided. 

The Times doesn't even have a majority of their target audience thinking of them favorably. The fact that most people think the Times attempted a political hit job on McCain shatters whatever credibility they had left. If the Times does not make some changes quick, fast and in a hurry, they are going to collapse.  

Steamed Buns?

We can laugh about this one since nobody was hurt. A nursing home employee in Auburn, Washington made an emergency call to the local fire department. It seems the toilets were exploding with steam. 

AUBURN, Wash. - An employee of an Auburn nursing home called firefighters for help on Tuesday because the toilets were exploding with steam. The fire department said there was a boiler malfunction at Regency Auburn Rehabilitation Center that caused a minor explosion.

The blast set off the sprinkler system and flooded the floors of the three-story building.

The Valley Regional Fire Authority said no one was hurt, but water damaged electrical systems and the kitchen. So, 72 occupants had to be temporarily moved to five other rehabilitation facilities using ambulances, buses and vans.

Well, finally a true exploding toilet story! One wonders how the steam managed to get into the sanitary lines. (Possibly a blowdown line?) One thing is for sure, we have no interest in getting one of these for home. Third degree bidets sound really painful.

Underwear Recall

Carmen Kontur-Gronquist , the mayor of Arlington, Oregon who posed in her underwear on a town firetruck has lost a recall election. So she is now the ex-mayor. (First post about this incident is here , including links to pictures which are NSFW.)

ARLINGTON, Ore. - The mayor of an Oregon town who once stripped to her underwear and posed on a fire truck has been stripped of her office.T

Voters in this town of about 500 voted narrowly Monday to recall Carmen Kontur-Gronquist. The tally was 142-139. City officials said the recall is effective Tuesday.

Kontur-Gronquist said the pictures of her in black bra and panties were taken for use in a contest about fitness, but a relative posted them on MySpace in hopes it would improve the social life of the single mother.

As I wrote in that earlier post, had she posed in a bikini, there would probably have been little interest in a recall election. But politicians are held to a different standard of conduct. 

A Tooth For An Eye

This is flat out amazing. An Irishman blinded in an accident in 2005 has had a portion of his sight restored when doctors installed - believe it or not - part of his son's tooth into one damaged eye. No, I am not making this up.

Bob McNichol, 57, from County Mayo in the west of the country, lost his sight in a freak accident when red-hot liquid aluminium exploded at a re-cycling business in November 2005.

"I thought that I was going to be blind for the rest of my life," McNichol told RTE state radio.

After doctors in Ireland said there was nothing more they could do, McNichol heard about a miracle operation called Osteo-Odonto-Keratoprosthesis (OOKP) being performed by Dr Christopher Liu at the Sussex Eye Hospital in Brighton in England.

The technique, pioneered in Italy in the 1960s, involves creating a support for an artificial cornea from the patient's own tooth and the surrounding bone.

The procedure used on McNichol involved his son Robert, 23, donating a tooth, its root and part of the jaw.

McNichol's right eye socket was rebuilt, part of the tooth inserted and a lens inserted in a hole drilled in the tooth.

The treatment has restored enough of McNichol's vision for him to be able to get around and to watch television. There have not been very many of these operations and the treatment is considered experimental. I had never even heard of this before reading this article.

The Scourge Of Liberalism Passes Away

William F. Buckley, Jr., once labeled "the scourge of liberalism" by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. has passed away. He was 82 years old and died at his desk at home, possibly working on a column. The title Schlesinger bestowed on him delighted Buckley.

Mr. Buckley’s winningly capricious personality, replete with ten-dollar words and a darting tongue writers loved to compare with an anteater’s, hosted one of television’s longest-running programs, “Firing Line,” and founded and shepherded the influential conservative magazine, National Review.

He also found time to write more than 45 books, ranging from sailing odysseys to spy novels to celebrations of his own dashing daily life, and edit five more.

The more than 4.5 million words of his 5,600 biweekly newspaper columns, “On the Right,” would fill 45 more medium-sized books.

Mr. Buckley’s greatest achievement was making conservatism — not just electoral Republicanism, but conservatism as a system of ideas — respectable in liberal post-World War II America. He mobilized the young enthusiasts who helped nominate Barry Goldwater in 1964, and saw his dreams fulfilled when Reagan and the Bushes captured the Oval Office.

To Mr. Buckley’s enormous delight, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., the historian, termed him “the scourge of liberalism.”

In remarks at National Review’s 30th anniversary in 1985, President Reagan joked that he picked up his first issue of the magazine in a plain brown wrapper and still anxiously awaited his biweekly edition — “without the wrapper.”

“You didn’t just part the Red Sea — you rolled it back, dried it up and left exposed, for all the world to see, the naked desert that is statism,” Mr. Reagan said.

“And then, as if that weren’t enough,” the president continued, “you gave the world something different, something in its weariness it desperately needed, the sound of laughter and the sight of the rich, green uplands of freedom.”

The folks over at National Review are, understandably, devastated by the news. They will be rolling out many tributes to Buckley in the coming days, one can be sure. Here's the Wikipedia entry on Buckley NRO does not have an obituary posted yet, I'll update with a link when they do.

Rest in peace. 

“Phased-Plasma Rifle In The Forty Watt Range.”

It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. (From The Terminator)

Dire warnings are circulating about the possibility of hunter-killer robots being unleashed, a la The Terminator movies. 

Robot soldiers that can decide who to attack will soon be roaming the world's battlefields if something isn't done about the global 'robot arms race'.

That is the stark warning from a leading robotics expert who spoke today of the dangers of allowing increasingly sophisticated robots to make decisions of life and death.

Professor Noel Sharkey, a robotics and artificial intelligent expert from the University of Sheffield, also warned that armed robots could soon become terrorists' weapon of choice.

"The trouble is that we can't really put the genie back in the bottle,” said Professor Starkey.

“Once the new weapons are out there, they will be fairly easy to copy. How long is it going to be before the terrorists get in on the act?"

Over 4,000 robots are currently deployed on the ground in Iraq and by October 2006 unmanned aircraft had flown 400,000 flight hours.

At the moment, humans can make the decision whether to attack or not but a recent policy shift in the U.S means that 'intelligent' autonomous attack robots will soon be given the power to decide who and when to kill.   

No, the genie will not go back into the bottle. They never do once they are out, no matter how many treaties are enacted. Even if governments signed onto treaties banning these things, terrorists would pay no attention to the laws any more than they do today.  There is also no way to stop a talented amateur or rogue expert from building one of these as a freelance project.

We've just got to get those ED-209's working properly here at the Crabitat.  

Pet Food

Made with real pets. An Australian family is under siege in their home as one or more pythons have been gobbling up the family pets. First the cat became a canapé, then the family guinea pig was turned into an hors d'oeuvre. The final straw was when an 16-foot python went for the main course: hot dog. The family pooch was swallowed whole - as pythons normally do. The family is now terrified for their children, who are 5 and 7 years old. 

Snakes alive! A giant python has eaten Scotty the pet dog. An Australian couple are living in fear for their children after a huge python slithered into their home and started devouring their silky terrier-cross chihuahua.

In the past few weeks, other pythons have entered their garden, near the northern Queensland city of Cairns, and swallowed the family cat and a guinea pig.

But the loss of Scotty has left Daniel Peric's family fearing for the safety of their children Ethan, five, and seven-year-old Talia.

"I'm not leaving them alone in any part of the house," said Mr Peric, whose home is surrounded by bushland.

It was Mr Peric who found the snake in the process of eating the dog in the garden.

"Actually watching it unfold before your eyes was pretty gut- wrenching. We'd had the dog for about five years, so it was part of the family.

"All I could see were the back legs and tail sticking out from the snake's mouth.

"I threw chairs and sticks at the python, but it was already too late - our dear dog was half way down its throat."  

The snake was removed by a reptile expert - partially digested dog and all - and is now comfortably confined in a zoo finishing his meal, so to speak. Once the pet is digested, they plan on releasing the snake back into the wild. Hopefully far from the Peric home.