144 or Less, Vol. IV / 10-23-10

An interesting thing has happened as the 2010 campaign winds down.

With Republicans offering several immoderate candidates (Miller, O'Donnell, Angle, Paladino, Toomey) for Senate, two familiar figures have emerged as leaders of their respective parties.

President Obama for the D's; Sarah Palin for the R's. The former has been crisscrossing the country to help liberals retain the Senate; the latter has encouraged voters to elect Tea Party-approved candidates and give conservatives control of the House.

Both will probably succeed at their tasks -- which is a result I love.

Not because it divides government. But because an emboldened Palin, flush with kingmaking success, then becomes THE face of the right. And 39 percent of Republicans think she'd make a good president. Not 39 percent of Americans -- only counting R's here.

Just 25 percent of Americans view her favorably.

So keep visiting Iowa, Sarah.

(Word count: 143)

Stupidiocy / 10-21-10

Today, 2010 Elections Class, we learned:

That Rand Paul and Jesus Christ are the same dude.

That fearing random Muslims is profitable.

That answering questions is an optional exercise for Senate candidates.

Let's do these in reverse order, because oh my, the Paul one is so juicy, I have to make it this post's dessert.

So the appetizer first: Joe Miller is running for Senate in Alaska. After beating the incumbent in the Republican primary over the summer, why should he have to deal with the press at all? Better to handcuff reporters when they get too frisky. Better to not honor interviews.

Yeah. When 40 fellow Alaska Republicans are asking you, in an open letter, to get your act together, and calling your campaign out for "unacceptable" behavior and "not a winning strategy," you should probably not say things like "We've drawn a line in the sand. You can ask me about background, you can ask me about personal issues -- I'm not going to answer." But what do I know? I'm not trying to lose a practically unlosable election.

Entree time. Juan Williams. Ahem.

Visiting with Bill O'Reilly recently, Williams, an NPR reporter, generously offered this up: "I mean look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

I totally believe Williams. He isn't a bigot. He's just a guy who gets irrationally afraid that because there are Muslims with different-looking outfits on his flight from Atlanta to Chicago, the plane might end up crashing into the Pentagon instead.

That sounds sarcastic. And it is, a little, but it also isn't. It's very, very difficult to begrudge someone for admitting that the Different makes them nervous. Lots of people struggle with that. When I'm walking down a dark alley at night (one of my favorite activities!), I don't want the three guys I cross to all be 6'6", 320 pounds, with prison tattoos across their knuckles. I just don't.

(Hey, did I mention Williams is black? Not that I have a great deal more to say on that count.)

At the same time, it's worth remembering a couple things.

1. The 9/11 hijackers were wearing jeans and T-shirts.

2. Women in burqas have successfully piloted zero planes into tall New York buildings.

So I can safely pencil Williams in for irrational behavior and poor timing when it comes to honesty... but probably not much more. NPR fired him, by the way, after hearing of the remarks. I'm supposing they felt he had seriously harmed his objectivity and/or his credibility.

In any event, all's well that ends well for Williams. His friends came to his rescue.

Mike Huckabee: "It is time for the taxpayers to start making cuts to federal spending, and I encourage the new Congress to start with NPR."

Sarah Palin: "NPR defends 1st Amendment Right, but will fire u if u exercise it. Juan Williams: u got taste of Left's hypocrisy, they screwed up firing u." That might be one of her tweets, or that could also be how we're doing transcripts for her nowadays.

And then, just found out that Fox News has offered him something marginally better than an unemployment check: a 3-year, $2 million contract to join them. Good for him. Now we all know what the reward/punishment is for misunderstanding other religions (and I'm being charitable). Glad to have that out in the open.

Hope you left room for the grand finale.

KY Senate candidate Rand Paul, earlier today: "In my entire life, I've written and said a lot of things. I've never said or written anything un-Christian in my life."

Now after months and months and months talking constantly in the public spotlight, under the constant stress a campaign like Paul's surely brings, people are apt to say things, that upon further reflection, they wish they could take back. Either they misspeak, they take an analogy too far, they forget which group they're speaking to, they make up facts, they stretch the truth, they say too much, or they outright lie. (Politicians do this? Whoa.)

But I pay pretty close attention to politics, and most of those instances are explainable. The candidate thought he could get away with a falsehood. The candidate embellished a story. The candidate was on the spot, and made up some numbers. The candidate said she can't tell Latinos and Asians apart. (Go ahead, click the link. I couldn't make stuff this good up if I tried.)

Oh yeah, what Paul said. Let's get back to that. It's hard to even give him credit for what he could have and should have said, which, naturally, is "I am a Christian and always have been. I've made lots of statements, oral and written, and I've always wanted to be Christlike in everything I say and write. For my opponent to imply otherwise is tasteless and vile." He missed that perfect response by a light-year or two.

Instead of crafting a sensible retort, he claimed perfection. Not recent perfection. No no. A lifetime achievement award. Not a single word against Christian principles. In his life. In other words, godlike flawlessness.

(I guess the lie he told by making that statement, that lie must have been his first. Bummer to ruin a good streak like that, on a technicality no less.)

To be fair, Paul was baited. His opponent, Democrat Jack Conway, just put out an ad exposing a college escapade Paul took part in during his days as a member of an anti-Christian club. (The story came out in a recent issue of GQ. Take that for what it's worth.) In the ad, Paul and a buddy stand accused of tying up a woman and forcing her to worship something called the Aquabuddha.

The ad's in terribly poor taste. It's inconsquential to the issues at hand, and irrelevant at best. It's nasty and full of innuendo. It misleads. But Paul's response tells so much more than Conway's sleazy move. It tells us that when the full-court pressure is on, in the heat of the closing weeks of a contentious campaign, the Republitarian political newbie folds.

Man, election season makes people do stupidiotic things.

144 Or Less, Vol. III / 10-18-10

This conversation took place last week. See if you can spot which speaker is aged 36, and which one is 7.

"Those are graves. But they don't look like graves."

"Yeah, there weren't any headstones."Pause.

"It's hard to know what happens after you die."

"Probably because nobody ever comes back to tell us what it's like."

"Hm."

Death: the great conversational equalizer. Turns out pretty much everyone can talk about it with pretty much the same level of expertise.

(Words used: 83)

144 Or Less, Vol. II / 10-14-10

A federal judge just declared DADT unconstitutional. Naturally, the Democrats running the Justice Department will appeal.

Huh?

Saying they want to proceed with already-laid plans to phase out DADT, administration officials will fight the ruling.

Yeah. See. There exists no bad time to end discrimination, no bad way to restore dignity to soldiers who volunteered their very life to their country. Take the gift, Barack. Run with it.

Appealing makes zero sense, politically. Obama's choice to deliver the death-blow to DADT himself dampens left-wing enthusiasm and costs the D's precious midterm votes. Not a single rabid anti-gummint whiner will read today's headlines and find his mind changed or his passion to defeat the Black Socialist Secret Muslim abated.

So -- pardon my French -- BHO had better make damn well sure DADT is toast very, very soon, or he can start perusing want ads.

(Word count: 144)

144 Or Less / 10-8-10

(This category of post has a 144-word limit. Political snark exclusively here. And prefacorial parenthetical statements don't count against the count. So don't count them. Also, don't ask about the 144 thing.)

In my Congressional district, Washington's 1st, Democrat Jay Inslee is the incumbent.

Alongside his ubiquitous green-on-blue campaign placards, other signs have surfaced among the weeds -- ones not planted by his people. (The weeds OR the new signs, hopefully. Although he IS the incumbent, therefore by nature evil, and thus inclined to have a soft spot for weeds.)

The signs read:

"Jay Inslee

Bankrupting America Since 1992"

He's been in office 18 years. True story.

But funny thing, he's only been bankrupting America since 2000. Before that, he was helping Bill Clinton craft roughly balanced budgets, as the country's public debt FELL in nominal dollars (wikistats here) during Inslee's first eight years in D.C.

I wonder what in 2000 prompted Inslee to begin writing federal budgets that sent us closer to bankruptcy? What a turd. Throw him out indeed!

(Words used: 142.)

Yet More Proof the Brits are the Funniest Species of Human / 10-6-10

Amidst my relentless visits to the International House of Internets, I dug up this little gem.

Rather than simply link to it and make you travel microseconds away, I'm going to reprint it below, with full credit and attribution and everything.

Plus, it's effing hilarious. And if you perchance follow the link, the comments section is superb.

Plus, I'm eventually going to copy this parody, only as a political "story" late in a campaign, because why should this dude have all the fun?

Plus, that's all.

From the guardian.co.uk and author Martin Robbins:

This is a news website article about a scientific paper

In the standfirst I will make a fairly obvious pun about the subject matter before posing an inane question I have no intention of really answering: is this an important scientific finding?

In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of "scare quotes" to ensure that it's clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever.

In this paragraph I will briefly (because no paragraph should be more than one line) state which existing scientific ideas this new research "challenges".

If the research is about a potential cure, or a solution to a problem, this paragraph will describe how it will raise hopes for a group of sufferers or victims.

This paragraph elaborates on the claim, adding weasel-words like "the scientists say" to shift responsibility for establishing the likely truth or accuracy of the research findings on to absolutely anybody else but me, the journalist.

In this paragraph I will state in which journal the research will be published. I won't provide a link because either a) the concept of adding links to web pages is alien to the editors, b) I can't be bothered, or c) the journal inexplicably set the embargo on the press release to expire before the paper was actually published.

"Basically, this is a brief soundbite," the scientist will say, from a department and university that I will give brief credit to. "The existing science is a bit dodgy, whereas my conclusion seems bang on," she or he will continue.

I will then briefly state how many years the scientist spent leading the study, to reinforce the fact that this is a serious study and worthy of being published by the BBC the website.

This is a sub-heading that gives the impression I am about to add useful context.

Here I will state that whatever was being researched was first discovered in some year, presenting a vague timeline in a token gesture toward establishing context for the reader.

To pad out this section I will include a variety of inane facts about the subject of the research that I gathered by Googling the topic and reading the Wikipedia article that appeared as the first link.

I will preface them with "it is believed" or "scientists think" to avoid giving the impression of passing any sort of personal judgement on even the most inane facts.

This fragment will be put on its own line for no obvious reason.

In this paragraph I will reference or quote some minor celebrity, historical figure, eccentric, or a group of sufferers; because my editors are ideologically committed to the idea that all news stories need a "human interest", and I'm not convinced that the scientists are interesting enough.

At this point I will include a picture, because our search engine optimisation experts have determined that humans are incapable of reading more than 400 words without one.

[This picture has been optimised by SEO experts to appeal to our key target demographics]

This subheading hints at controversy with a curt phrase and a question mark?

This paragraph will explain that while some scientists believe one thing to be true, other people believe another, different thing to be true.

In this paragraph I will provide balance with a quote from another scientist in the field. Since I picked their name at random from a Google search, and since the research probably hasn't even been published yet for them to see it, their response to my e-mail will be bland and non-committal.

"The research is useful", they will say, "and gives us new information. However, we need more research before we can say if the conclusions are correct, so I would advise caution for now."

If the subject is politically sensitive this paragraph will contain quotes from some fringe special interest group of people who, though having no apparent understanding of the subject, help to give the impression that genuine public "controversy" exists.

This paragraph will provide more comments from the author restating their beliefs about the research by basically repeating the same stuff they said in the earlier quotes but with slightly different words. They won't address any of the criticisms above because I only had time to send out one round of e-mails.

This paragraph contained useful information or context, but was removed by the sub-editor to keep the article within an arbitrary word limit in case the internet runs out of space.

The final paragraph will state that some part of the result is still ambiguous, and that research will continue.

Related Links:

The Journal (not the actual paper, we don't link to papers).

The University Home Page (finding the researcher's page would be too much effort).

Unrelated story from 2007 matched by keyword analysis.

Special interest group linked to for balance.

We Killed Him / 9-29-10

On Wednesday, September 22, 2010, we killed Tyler Clementi.

Clementi, a Rutgers freshman, jumped off the George Washington bridge last week. His body was recovered today, on the 29th.

He told us he was going to do it; he posted his plans on his facebook page earlier that evening.

Technically, Clementi did take his own life. We didn't push him off the bridge. Technically, we were sleeping, or working, or laughing with our significant other, or watching Jersey Shore, or chomping down McNuggets, or doing a million other things that didn't directly murder the fragile young man.

And you can be certain he was a tortured guy on the inside, because it takes that type of person to jump.

But we still killed him.

43 percent of us believe gay sex is morally wrong. (Poll results here.)

58 percent of us don't want to allow gays to marry. (Poll results here.)

Upwards of 90 percent of us watch videos online, including everything from Euro soccer highlights to dancing babies to classical music to Anime porn. Susan Boyle's audition for "Britain's Got Talent" garnered 100 million hits in its first nine days. It's not just because she's got talent and is British.

So when Clementi's roommate secretly filmed him having sex with another man, then posted it online, the twig he was... it just snapped.

At the intersection of omnipresent technology, voyeurism, homophobia, curiosity and immaturity, we find Clementi.

That's our address. We killed him.

And he didn't have to die. We could be a better society already, one that allows gay men and women to love each other openly in the same way straight men and women do. But we aren't. We could be a different society, one that places certain loose restrictions on online content. But again, we aren't. We could even be living in an age without the Internet. But we have it.

Indisputably, we could nurture troubled teenagers better.

Instead, when the planet dumps a Clementi in our lap, we kill him.

Still in Sea-Shock / 9-29-10

The Seattle Seahawks, your favorite sports team of all time, just won a game in which they:

A) Allowed 379 yards of total offense. In the second half. That's basically impossible to do whether you're winning or losing, or playing any sort of defense or offense at all. The top three performances for most yards gained in a game by one team were all set in the 40's and 50's, and they're all in the 680-750 yard range.

(In essence, last Sunday, the Seahawks were the worst team, defensively, in the history of the sport, as measured by yards allowed, for a half. Their only competition is teams from 60 years ago. Those teams' dead players would have done a better job last Sunday at Qwest.)

B) Gained 10 yards of offense through the air in the second half and 26 yards total after halftime. Yes, the Chargers outgained the Hawks 379-26 in half number 2. Yeah. 379-26. That's correct. A factor of 14.6 to 1, you were about to say.

C) Fumbled away a sure touchdown less than one yard from the goal line, resulting in a touchback. Those are worth no points. They sound like a touchdown, except they are a million billionty times worse.

D) Scored zero points after a second and goal from the 2 with 20 seconds left in the half.

E) Allowed a safety and a two-point conversion and threw an interception at the goal line.

(None of those events in C), D) or E) overlapped, by the way. They were all separate events.)

They shouldn't have won the game, except that they should have. Because they also:

A) Returned two kickoffs for touchdowns. Again, in the second half. Leon Washington scored twice and finished with 253 return yards. He's still sucking on oxygen as we speak.

B) Sacked Philip Rivers four times, hit him nine more, and tipped or intercepted eight of his attempts.

C) Were the beneficiary of five San Diego turnovers, including three fumbles. (They scored a measly 10 points off those giveaways, but still, this is the positive part of the post, so shut up already, me.)

D) Picked off the potential game-tying or game-winning TD pass with 10 seconds left.

E) Had 67,000 screaming fans behind them who forced two false starts and two delay of game penalties on the Chargers' last possession.

That was the most entertaining-infuriating-frustrating-exhilirating-undeserved-deserved-heart-stopping win I've seen. Ever. In any sport.

I don't think this team is very good. It imploded in the second half, and it absolutely could not defend once its top corner, linebacker and defensive lineman left with injuries. Pete Carroll donated three or seven points to San Diego with an epic mismanagement of the closing seconds of the first half. It lucked out by winning two out of three instant replay reviews. And it won't always get Leon to generate 14 points all by himself every week. (Duh.)

Here's the box. Here's the best recap I read so far. Here's to a boring win next Sunday in St. Louis.

Mediawful / 9-27-10

(Preventative Strike: Here's the link to the full article in question. It is less than four hours old as of this precise moment. Here's the link to an analysis of the survey results being discussed.)

Stop The Presses. Never got a chance to say that in my newspaper days. Nowadays, of course, it'd be Stop The Upload, or Sever The Connection, but those have a decidedly less dramatic ring to them.

What are we press-stopping about? Why, beloved readers, it just so happens that American atheists and agnostics (informally known as the AAA) have outperformed Christians on a test of religious knowledge.

Boom-shakalaka!

By now, the three of you who are still reading despite my incomparable nerdiness, you guys will have skillfully predicted where I'm going with this. Coming up in fifteen seconds: violent rant on how Christians don't even know as much about their own faith as non-Christians! What a sorry spiritual state we occupy, even as we strive to be God's chosen people, blessed in every way and entrusted with the holy mission of showing the heathen the error of their ways. What a failure we are as a, nay, THE Christian nation.

That would be some serious ironic, sarcastic fun. But I'm not going there.

Instead, I'm compelled to rant about how this article sums up the sorry state of journalism in 2010.

The writer's opening paragraph (the "lede" for all you non-reporters):

"If you want to know about God, you might want to talk to an atheist. Heresy? Perhaps."

I know lame when I see it, and that's lame lame megalame lame. With a false equivalency thrown in for good measure. Come on. The survey we're getting to measured respondents' knowledge about religious facts. Not about the nature of God. There's a difference, pinhead.

And how is that heresy anyway? Maybe irony. Maybe.

And why is the "Perhaps" there? To hedge your bets? To not offend? To seem even-handed? To be extra-super lame?

Later in the same story:

"The Pew survey was not without its bright spots for the devout. Eight in 10 people surveyed knew that Mother Teresa was Catholic. Seven in 10 knew that, according to the Bible, Moses led the exodus from Egypt and that Jesus was born in Bethlehem."

It's a "bright spot" that 20 percent of believers can't remember that Mother Teresa was a Catholic nun?

Oh wait, that just what the writer was implying. That's not an actual correct interpretation of the data. That number was for the public at large, of which 82 percent correctly answered the question. And how is it good news for "the devout" that 71 percent of people know that the Bible claims Jesus was born in Bethlehem? What makes that good news? (Let's leave aside the fun fact that Jesus, according to most biblical scholars, was born in Nazareth. Had to mention that. Sorry.)

The article's stupid conclusion:

"For comparison purposes, the survey also asked some questions about general knowledge, which yielded the scariest finding: 4% of Americans believe that Stephen King, not Herman Melville, wrote "Moby Dick."

So the "scariest finding" of all is the comforting fact that 96 percent of the population correctly knows that Stephen King did not write "Moby Dick."

Oh good. Now I can sleep at night. (Must confess, for a while there, I was worried that maybe 4 percent of Americans were trying to check out Herman Melville's "It" from the public library.)

I feel more knowledgeable, yet dumber, for having read that story. Stop hurting my brain, mass media outlets!

Revolution or Insurrection? / 9-15-10

Electoral Threat flags. I'm passing them out. Get yours now!

1. A yellow one to fellow Democrats everywhere rejoicing that extremists (it's unfair to call them Republicans - these Tea Partiers are something else altogether) are on the ballot anywhere. You/We aren't very popular at this time, so there's no telling who can and can't beat you/us. Just because it looks like the wild-eyed revolutionary on the other side will lose doesn't mean he or she will, in fact, lose. American political history is (WARNING: please select your own cliche) sprinkled/littered/dotted/peppered with events that once seemed improbable.

2. A red one to Republicans everywhere. Your party is in grave danger of being overrun by people who have no business holding office on the local urban planning committee, much less in the United States Senate or the House Judiciary Committee or Appropriations Committee or Armed Forced Committee or anything rhyming with Blummittee.

There are three types of R's these days. Segment One: Those folks who have left the GOP and now call themselves independents, though they'll vote for an R 98 percent of the time. Segment Two: Social Conservatives, i.e. Christian fundamentalists. Segment Three: Tea Partiers and Libertarians, with views that don't fit into the mainstream and cannot win electorally absent a miracle.

This is a losing coalition, if you can call it that. It is fated for doom. Maybe not right away, but it cannot last. It's like a meal of potato chips, french fries and mashed potatoes. They all make really good sides, but where's the beef?

3. A green one to folks who would seize this moment to launch a new populist party. Voter anger is at an all-time high. Few non-Republicans want the GOP back in power after Bush/Cheney/Rove ransacked the nation for eight years. Few non-Democrats want the current crop of liberals to remain in power. Usually, swing voters swing in a swinging way from one side of the political spectrum to the other, helping to keep the parties honest and the blood relatively fresh in D.C.

This time, the swingers are looking for another target of their affection. I'd just as soon have it be a real party with real ideas, as opposed to the TP's fantasy world in which we can eliminate Social Security and balance the budget by cutting off aid to Israel and letting the Middle East blow itself up.

A as-of-now fictitious Liberty Party, built on responsible levels of taxation, spending and involvement overseas while maintaining budgetary prudence and respecting civil liberties... that party would clean house this cycle. If only it existed. Right now. Yesterday now. (We Democrats are supposed to be that party, by the way. We really should let more people know.)

Anyway. The flags mean whatever I want them to mean. Like the terror threat levels, I use them at my convenience to accomplish my own ends.

Oh yeah, and 4. A rastafarian-looking one to me. Equal amounts of red, yellow and green. I am tempted to interpret the Tea Party's ascendancy as bad for the GOP, therefore as good for the country, but if these people get in office, God help us all. Also, I would be one of the folks easily wooed by a new party that promises new solutions to our looming budgetary problems, when in actuality, I just need to continue to support the D's, who are the party which seeks to champion the middle class, after all. Get a grip, John!