The Republican Long Game

The House Republicans may have lost a battle when PelosiCare passed on Saturday night, but they may have positioned themselves to win the war by voting for the Stupak Amendment.

The Stupak Amendment was an amendment to PelosiCare offered by the Blue Dog Democrats to ban federal funds under the PelosiCare bill for being used to pay for abortions. There are currently two schools of thought as to how the Republicans should have voted on the amendment:

1. The Republicans could have voted "present". Thus forcing the Blue Dogs into a losing test of strength against the Liberal Democrats. The Blue Dogs would get crushed, of course, so after the Stupak amendment failed, the Blue Dogs would be forced to join with the Republicans to kill the bill over the abortion funding. The counter-argument is essentially that this might have shattered the Blue Dog/Republican détente and produced a Blue Dog-Liberal coalition that would pass PelosiCare then and on final passage after reconciliation.

2. The Republicans were correct to vote for and help pass the Stupak Amendment. As Bill McGurn and others points out, this keeps the faith with the Conservative base, with the Republican party as the party of life, and with the Blue Dogs. Most importantly, this also puts the burden of betraying the Blue Dogs onto the Liberal Democrats.

Why is the last point so important? It's because a ban on federal funds for abortion in fundamentally incompatible with socialized health care. If all health care dollars have to be federal dollars, and all federal dollars can't be used to pay for abortions, then we would have a de facto abortion ban in place. So the Liberals simply must remove the Stupak Amendment from the bill at some point, but when they do, they'll force the Blue Dogs to join with the Republicans to kill the bill.

D'Souza's embarassingly bad case for life after death.

It basically boils down to "I didn't steal your cookie, therefore, life after death exists":

Here is my presuppositional argument for life after death. Unlike material objects and all other living creatures, we humans inhabit two domains: the way things are, and the way things ought to be. In other words, we are moral animals who recognize that just as there are natural laws that govern every object in the universe, there are also moral laws that govern the behavior of one special set of objects in the universe, namely us. While the universe is externally moved by “facts,” we are internally moved also by “values.” Yet these values defy natural and scientific explanation, because the laws of nature, as discovered by science, concern only the way things are and not the way they ought to be. Moreover, the essence of morality is to curtail and contradict the powerful engine of human self-interest, giving morality an undeniable anti-evolutionary thrust. So how do we explain the existence of moral values that stand athwart our animal nature? The presupposition of cosmic justice, achieved not in this life but in another life beyond the grave, is by far the best and in some respects the only explanation. This presupposition fully explains why humans continue to espouse goodness and justice even when the world is evil and unjust.

The major problem with this type of argument is extremely simple. Once we decide that the origin of human morality is naturally and scientifically intractable, we no longer have any basis for arguing that one presupposition is naturally or scientifically more plausible than any other. Why should I believe in cosmic justice as an explanation when I could believe in, say, an invisible angel sitting on my shoulder whispering things into my ear that only my subconscious mind can hear? Or why not believe superluminal thought-control rays (which program us to ignore all evidence for thought control rays) are being emitted by aliens living on the planet Zebop? The physical consequences of each hypothesis are exactly the same -- people behave morally for some scientifically inexplicable reason -- so how do we decide among the alternative theories?

D'Souza has therefore fallen into a familiar bind for theists. If he admits that a given phenomenon is scientifically tractible, then he undercuts the need for his preferred supernatural explanation. If he admits that a given phenomenon is scientifically intractible, then he makes it impossible to priviledge his preferred supernatural explanation for plausibility over the innumerably many alternative explanations.

Now that America's elections are over...

...President Obama's Bizzaro world foreign policy can claim another victim.

The Taliban are gaining ground in Afghanistan. The morale of NATO troops and their Afghan counterparts is dwindling rapidly. President Obama's hand-picked general says we're 40,000 troops short of what we need to win. The situation in Afghanistan has reached a critical moment. Our entire mission is in jeopardy.

So what does President Obama do? He issues an ultimatum... TO OUR OWN ALLIES! Do what we want, Karzai, or you'll be the first one facing the wall when the revolution comes:

President Karzai has six months to sideline his brother and reduce corruption or risk losing American support, Afghan officials have told The Times of London.

Senior palace insiders said that President Obama delivered the ultimatum when he congratulated Karzai on his re-election on Monday. Top of his demands was action against corruption, the appointment of "reform-minded ministers" and several high-profile scalps to prove Karzai's commitment to cleaning up his government.

"If he doesn't meet the conditions within six months, Obama has told him America will pull out," said an official with access to Karzai's inner circle. "Obama said they don't want their soldiers' lives wasted for nothing. They want changes in Cabinet, and changes in his personal staff."

This is stupid and insane and proves that the Obama administration is already a failure. The only question remaining is how much more damage he can do.

"Dollhouse"-blogging

I was pretty happy about kicking my "LOST" addiction. Now I've hit a new low with "Dollhouse" addiction. For reference, the premise of the show is nicely summed up by wikipedia here.

The most important fact about the show is that it is almost certainly going to be cancelled after the end of its current season. Ultimately, the problem arises from a structural blunder that is fundamental to the show's premise.

"Dollhouse" is essentially a postmodern mix of "masculine" science fiction and "feminine" identity fiction. One aspect of the drama is the trendy notion of science fiction as a mirror for exploring real-life social problems. Here the Actives are specialists in adopting new personalities that allow them to be infiltrated into social situations that involve sex, money, power, and control. A second aspect of the drama is the postmodern mash-up of familiar elements into new configurations. "Dollhouse" makes a point of showing us the same Actives -- codenamed Victor, Sierra, and Echo -- with personality imprints that put them in different relations to each other in every epsiode. The science fiction aspect is the enabling technology which serves to change the personalities of the Actives. This acts as a catalyst that enables new enhancements of technology to take the show into new avenues of social exploration.

The key functional problem of the show is the decision to make the Actives passive recipients of whatever personality imprints their masters selfishly decide to stick them with. The show does this by assuming that all Actives are kept in a mindwiped "tabula rasa" state between missions. This guarenteed that every episode is going to end with an anticlimax, since no matter how interesting and dramatic each episode becomes, ultimately it signifies nothing since the Actives involved will be mindwiped sooner or later.

Aside from low ratings, this problem produced some side effects. First, it turned the identity fictional aspect of the show into a series of one-time stunt personalities: dominatrix-Echo, lactating-Echo, Echo-gets-married-Echo, etc. Secondly, it practically forced the show to start making the imprinting technology malfunction, since this was the only way to give the Actives a dramatically satisfying "memory" that persists between episodes. Of course, since the whole point of an Active is that he spends most of his time in a highly simplified mental state, the range of "memory" that the Actives typically display is extremely limited.

On the other hand, the memories of the non-Actives is not extremely limited, which made them the reservoir of drama that was needed to save the show from its season one calamity. However, the effect of this decision is that "Dollhouse" has efficiently negated its own initial premise. "Dollhouse" was initially a show about the personalities of its Actives. By episode four of season 2, "Dollhouse" is now a show about the criminal minds of the handlers who run the dollhouse. The dramatic effect is now schadenfreude. Watch Adelle serve tea in an increasingly desperate bid to cover up her drinking problem! Watch Topher become increasingly paranoid as the show's technology goes increasingly wacky on him! Watch Dr. Saunders have a mental breakdown on the air! Who is Echo this week? Who cares?

The one aspect of the show that gives me some faith in the process of television production is that every actor and actress with even a second of screen time has been carefully avoiding being typecast since day one (except for Eliza Dushku, that is). Harry Lennix is going to be acting until the day he dies, Olivia Williams' character Adelle DeWitt has no personality traits at all that didn't come with the British accent, and Tahmoh Penikett has been coasting by on his Clint Eastwood impression. The two discoveries of the show are Enver Gjokaj (Victor) and Dichen Lachmann (Sierra), who have been carrying the show on their shoulders. Enver and Dichen are amazingly popular with the fanbase, so look for them to be given better shows as a reward for being second-bananas to Eliza Dushku for two years.

President Obama, male model

Andrew Sullivan makes his latest case for the Obama Administration:

There is a strange quality to Barack Obama’s pragmatism. It can look like dilly-dallying, weakness, indecisiveness. But although he may seem weak at times, one of the words most applicable to him is something else entirely: ruthless. Beneath the crisp suit and easy smile there is a core of strategic steel. In this respect, Obama’s domestic strategy is rather like his foreign one — not so much weakness but the occasional appearance of weakness as a kind of strategy.

The pattern is now almost trademarked. He carefully lays out the structural message he is trying to convey. At home, it is: we all have to fix the mess left by Bush-Cheney. Abroad, it is: we all have to fix the mess left by Bush-Cheney. And then ... not much.

Essentially, Sullivan is making the case for Barack Obama as President Zoolander. When anybody tries to take advantage of his perceived wimpiness, President Zoolander will use his trademarked "Blue Steel" pose to awe them into submission. The problem with this analysis is that the only people in the world who seem to be fooled by the Obama mystique are Obama's domestic supporters.

Obama's Peace prize is a badge of shame.

President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today. Normally, such a prize could be considered an honor to the recipient. However, for a world leader engaged in a war against terror (even if he won't acknowledge it as such) to accept a peace prize is an insult to his country. For a world leader engaged in a war against the perpetrators of the most notorious mass murders of Americans in the modern era and losing the war, accepting the peace prize is a total humiliation.

Why exactly are we fighting the war in Afghanistan now? It can't be to defeat Al Qaeda since, according to President Obama, we're not at "war" with "terror" anymore. It can't be to defeat the Taliban since, according to President Obama, we willing to neogtiate with the "moderate Taliban".

It turns out that the latest thinking from the White House is that we're fighting to keep Osama bin Ladin from taking a cabinet position in Afghanistan's government:

Those talks have sharpened the mission's focus to fighting Al Qaeda above all other goals and downgraded the emphasis on defeating the Taliban, a senior administration official who participated in the discussions said Thursday. This second official was authorized to talk to The Associated Press but not to be identified, because the discussions were private.

Under the evolving strategy, the official said, the U.S. would fight only to keep the Taliban from retaking control of Afghanistan's central government -- something it is now far from being capable of -- and from turning the country back into the sanctuary for Al Qaeda that it was before the 2001 invasion ousted the regime.

The official said Obama will determine how many more U.S. troops to deploy to Afghanistan based only on keeping Al Qaeda at bay.

Obama's peace prize is the sugar intended to make this bitter pill go down.

Moronic counter-memes from Obama supporters

President Obama's failed Olympic lobbing effort has definitely damaged his political capital. One way that you can tell is that the usual suspects are desperately trying to give Obama political cover. Here's a relatively pathetic defense from the Daily Dish: President Obama isn't a narcissist because, hey, Presidents Bush and Clinton were narcissists too. "Language Log" makes the case in a critique of George Will's latest column:

I took the transcript of Obama's first press conference (from 2/9/2009), and found that he used 'I' 163 times in 7,775 total words, for a rate of 2.10%. He also used 'me' 8 times and 'my' 35 times, for a total first-person singular pronoun count of 206 in 7,775 words, or a rate of 2.65%.

For comparison, I took George W. Bush's first two solo press conferences as president (from 2/22/2001 and 3/29/2001), and found that W used 'I' 239 times in 6,681 total words, for a rate of 3.58% — a rate 72% higher than Obama's rate. President Bush also used 'me' 26 times, 'my' 31 times, and 'myself' 4 times, for a total first-person singular pronoun count of 300 in 6,681 words, or a rate of 4.49% (59% higher than Obama).

For a third data point, I took William J. Clinton's first two solo press conferences as president (from 1/29/1993 and 3/23/1993), and found that he used 'I' 218 times, 'me' 34 times, 'my' 22 times, and 'myself' once, in 6,935 total words. That's a total of 275 first-person singular pronouns, and a rate of 3.14% for 'I' (51% higher than Obama), and 3.87% for first-person singular pronouns overall (50% higher than Obama).

Gee, could it be that presidents often use first-person singular pronouns in press conferences because that's when they tell people what they've been doing? The point of Obama's narcissism isn't that he talks about himself when he's talking about his job. Every world leader since the beginning of time has done that. As the deliberations of the IOC have made clear, the point of Obama's narcissism is that he can't stop talking about himself even when he especially needs to stop talking about himself.

Of course, "Language Log" knows that its argument is not particularly convincing, so it makes a secondary attack on Will's "metric":

There are two interesting questions here, it seems to me. The first one is why George F. Will is so struck by rates of first-person usage, on the part of Barack and Michelle Obama, that are significantly lower than has been typical of recent presidents and first ladies on similar occasions.

The obvious answer is that George F. Will is not obsessed with usage rates of first-person pronouns. When George F. Will writes something like this --

In the 41 sentences of her remarks, Michelle Obama used some form of the personal pronouns "I" or "me" 44 times. Her husband was, comparatively, a shrinking violet, using those pronouns only 26 times in 48 sentences. Still, 70 times in 89 sentences conveyed the message that somehow their fascinating selves were what made, or should have made, Chicago's case compelling.

-- he is engaging in a literary technique that is called rhetoric. The meaning of these statistics is to communicate to the reader that President Obama's narcissism is shockingly well-developed; so much so that you might find yourself counting first-person pronouns out of sheer disbelief.

Of course, "Language Log" knows this as well, so it is finally forced to admit defeat and go ad hominem:

Now that I think of it, there's another significant question here as well. How in the world did our culture award major-pundit status to someone whose writings are as empirically and spiritually empty as those of George F. Will?

President Barrack Obama bungles it again.

The big news at the end of this week was Rio de Janeiro being awarded the 2016 Olympics despite the fact that President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and the Oprah had personally lobbied the International Olympic Committee to choose Chicago instead. Jules Crittenden has an enormous list of reactions to this failed Olympic bid.

Personally, I think that President Obama's unsuccessful lobbying efforts were a totally bungled disaster for the United States. Tragically, Obama's defeat here was partially self-inflicted. Why? Because everyone knows that the President da Silva of Brazil has been flirting with Hugo Chávez-style socialism ever since he was elected. A 2016 Olympics in Rio gives the Chávez-aligned nations a chance, if they so wish, to showcase socialism as a South American counterweight to the United States. An IOC the views the Olympics as a world-funded débutante party for up and coming nations would be naturally sympathetic to the argument.

So to win the Olympics for Chicago, President Obama needed to change the basic narrative of the case for Rio, namely that the 2016 Olympics would mark a United States was in decline relative to South America. So how did Obama counter that impression in his lobbying effort? Actually, he spent his term in office reinforcing that impression. President Obama has spent the last eight months apologizing for America's misdeeds, flirting with Chávez and Chávez cronies such as Manuel Zelaya of Honduras, and presiding over a seemingly intractably economic downturn. Obama's industrial policy is deindustrialization to conserve resources; his economic policy is government-subsidized stasis to keep the depression at bay; his health care policy is to conserve resources for the young and productive; his foreign policy is retreat on all fronts to cut costs.

In short, everything about Obama's government says "American decline". The sheer fact that Obama has to lobby some guy on an international committee to save Chicago by throwing money at it, as if Obama was the president of some third-world, basket-case nation, says "American decline".