politics

Ezra has a post up that asks a question I've been thinking about for a while, and I'm kinda surprised he initially dismissed it as "economic thinking run amok" because this is the sort of stuff he's usually all over. He phrases the question as, "Should we pay members of Congress for performance? Can we?" but I think it's a subset of a broader question, namely, "Why are incentives for elected officials so fucked up?" The comments run the gamut from the knee-jerk partisan to the hopelessly cynical to the (almost) admirably idealistic.

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The news today gives me an opportunity to respond to ditriech's comment from a few weeks ago. Where he wondered why I didn't show more respect to the arguments for a cause of Autism, and what this did to families of Autistics. Well here's why: families of Autistics are one of the most manipulated groups of our time. And a minority of them have taken the bait of their manipulators and become the most threatening anti-science crusaders this side of the Creationists. And the dumbest celebrity fad not involving L. Ron Hubbard.

It's all fun and games until I give your kids Polio.

The thing about Autism is, we don't know what causes it. It's unsolved and incurable right now. That makes it a Gap where you can put a God. A big, deep gap, since it destroys lives and motivates families to try almost any promised cure. Using illness as a con is ... human. Born blind or eyeless? You can turn it to your advantage and become a "seer." Or get fucked become a scapegoat or a curse. Epileptic? Better accuse someone of giving you a demon, before they accuse you of being one. Inbreeding make your rulers dumb, parinoid, and OCD? Declare their ravings to be messages from god.

When there's no cure, we turn medicine into business or politics. So we shouldn't be surprised when every group of quacks in this country decides the Autism market is bullish. And whatever they want to destroy, should develop a "link" to Autism. Fast.

Hate vaccinations for hippie, or tinfoil-hat reasons? Link them relentlessly to Autism, no matter what they contain.

Want to ban all animal products? There's your cause of Autism, right there.
 

Ice Cream Mandrake? Children's ice cream?

Vaguely Christian activist? Hate fertility treatments and contraception? Late birth and IVF cause Autism.

Want to make a fortune off untested, piss-bottle medicine? You can cure Autism!

Want to forget Causation-Correlation, and get your grant work in the news cycle? Bad parenting and TV = Autism!

This is quackery with consequences.

SOUP?!!?

Say what you will about poisoning kids with iron enemas - or wasting research money that could find real treatments -, but attacking vaccination is not a game. If you leave some kids open to infection, you create mutation factories. You expose other kids at different stages of vaccination. It's like lighting one bush on fire in the middle of a forest. Only the fire is immune to water and the trees are made of infants.

So Autism claims drive me nuts, because they're a byword for bad faith. It's a cause so complicit with evil, that it can bring California hippies together with the Taliban, in a joint crusade to thwart doctors, because doctors are uppity and pretend like they know things. Here's hoping science can keep the word out, and further immunize us to dipshits.

After Obama and his team ran a campaign that made Swiss Clockwork look like a '78 Pinto and made the U.S. Marine Corps. look like a bunch of undisciplined hooligans, everybody expected pretty much the same from the transition. And then came Richardson and his pay to play. HRC and Bubba's international influence-peddling. Holder's involvement with the ridiculous pardons of Marc Rich and FALN. And the icing on the cake: Treasury Secretary-designee Tim Geithner's missing back-taxes, which is about as perfect a metaphor for Wall Street as I can imagine. My coworker commented that his vetting process must be seriously FUBAR, and I agreed.

But then I thought this morning as I was dodging the conspicuously armed cops and bomb-sniffing dogs on the metro (the next five days are going to be amazing here in the nation's capitol) that there's no way they could consistently screw up like this; that they could hit every note during the campaign and then fumble the political ball so badly once they won the election. With all the talk of Obama creating a pragmatic, competent, effective administration, maybe they didn't mess up - maybe they just don't care about the political game. Who cares about the Marc Rich pardon - maybe Holder is the best person for Attorney General, politics be damned.

At least that's what I'm praying: that his selections are pragmatic and post- (or maybe supra-) partisan, more about governing well than scoring political points. Because if they aren't, and his fuck-ups really are fuck-ups, then I'm afraid we're stuck with another president whose brilliant campaigning won't lead to brilliant governing.

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I'm going to annoy people tonight, and it's all CNN's fault. This week, they joined the elite dialogue among people who don't know what Africa is. Who don't. Know. What Africa is.  

This would have gotten me killed at age 16. My World History teacher was a former marine, a hardass, and kind of eccentric. He cultivated a number of weird habits. Including introducing new topics with a big yell and fistpump. He'd wind down his last sentence, snap the projector screen shut and yell "... SERFDOM!" or "MING DYNASTY!" or "THE ALPS!" followed by a weird and out of place "heh heh heh heh ..." Like the Apls were fucked now that he was on their case.

But the most famous of these was "AFRICA!" The yelling of which became a shorthand for this guy. It became a Maddenism with him.

Did I mention he was a geography nut? And would get into high-low bets with students over whether they could remember random minutia he brought out in his lectures? And that he once put me in a full nelson at the blackboard?   My point is, not knowing about "AFRICA!"

Is unthinkable.

So when I go hang out with people tonight, and get about 2 beers deep, I'll probably be doing this.   A lot.  

On you, CNN.

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In Norton, in college, I was the right wing apologist. It was easy in college because the Liberals were idiots. Washed up old Textual Signifiers sucking tenure and Chomskyianism from wrinkly nipples. 19 year old performance artists who thought fair trade was something that happened to coffee, but cheap gas was a civil right. Who wouldn't want to talk long about why that was stupid. Who wore Correct Opinions as a fashion statement.

And the questions Krauthhammer and Will asked during the Iraq war debate were really never answered. If not invasion, and if not sanctions ... then what? If not Saddam and not Annan and not us ... then what? The only answers I heard were warmed-over Vietnam ditties and Audio Art.

The Brits helped too.  My favorite reactionaries are all anglos. There's Tony Daniels and John Derbyshire and Andrew Sullivan. There's Chris Hitchens, serving his separate (Chomskian!) interests by being a hawk on Islam. When he was kicked out of the Clubhouse for suggesting that daughter murder was not a Revolutionary Impulse*, and maybe Diversity ended where theocracy got started, it made the Left look even more useless.

The lesson was that Conservatives were ice-cold-eyers. Realistic types who could stand to follow chains of evidence where they led, confront the harder parts of human nature head on. That they were unpleasant, unloved, but honest.

... that seems like a LONG time ago.

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I have found it.

PETA leadership probably aren't the absolute craziest people alive, but their ratio of Money/Respectability to Insanity is unmatched.

They also have the highest ratio of lying to self-righteousness of anyone outside the Discovery Institute. Probably comes from having the same mission: convince people of something you do not yourself believe.

I am not a beautiful or unique snowflake. 

I have no words right now. Maybe later.

via Obama Porn

Polls are now closed in: AL, AR, AZ, CT, CO, DC, FL, GA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, NC, ND, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OH, OK,PA, RI, SC, SD, TX, VT, WFV, WY, VA

This is where the fun starts.

Also, because I couldn't vote, I spent some of my time here at work calling potential voters, urging them to vote Rocks.

Seriously.

Note: I might have missed a couple of states. Still at work and such.

Also: Rocks up 175-76 according to MSNBC, 175-46 according to Progress Ohio