Sadly, No!

Atrios elaborates on a sentiment that he’s frequently, but heretofore somewhat opaquely, expressed:

I don’t have a problem understanding why some people support Obama and some people support Clinton. It really puzzles me why lots of people don’t get that simple fact. The point is not that the candidates are identical and no one should be a supporter or care who wins, it’s that you should recognize that the other person’s supporters aren’t necessarily deluded or stupid. You may disagree with their reasons, but they have them.

Eh. It’s not the support or supporters I object to, it’s the enthusiasm and the fanatics. For any politician. But especially for such mediocre ones. After all, it’s not as if either Clinton or Obama are exactly FDR incarnate; they are both fairly average “liberal” politicians who are thoroughly schooled in the arts of serial triangulation. They ain’t radical; nor are they idealist; they are simply better than any Republican alternative. They’re good enough for a vote (with or without one’s nose tightly held) but that’s it. It just won’t do to mask this homely reality with fawning, drooling praise of either politician.

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Pescovitz: “Whoa, don’t crash my browser, dude.”

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Sigh:

Hack your brain

Your mind: it’s just another piece of hardware. Make sure you download the latest patch and upgrade to the newest operating system.

That, in so many words, is the fate of humankind described by David Pescovitz, co-editor of the BoingBoing.net blog and research director with the Institute for the Future.

We’ve long used caffeine and various other drugs to alter our states of mind. But those are “really blunt instruments” compared with the future technology that advances in neuroscience will bring, Pescovitz said Tuesday as he moderated a panel discussion on the “future of mind hacks” at the O’Reilly ETech conference on emerging technology in San Diego.

“In the near future, these technologies will be available to us to help us take control of our own minds, to alter our own minds – to bring a DIY hacker mentality to your own head,” Pescovitz said.

Am I the only person out there who doesn’t want to spend eternity as an immortal robot?

And yes, I realize that a lot of this technology can be used for good, such as helping people with disabilities live easier lives. What annoys me is the narcissistic glibertarian fantasy of turning yourself into a super-kewl cyborg who gets all the hot robobabes while giving a finger to both the environment and the sad fleshbags that you’ve left behind on planet Earth.

Though come to think of it, if every glibertarian like the Ole Perfesser decided to download their brain into a robot body and blast off into space, I don’t think I’d complain all that much…

Gavin adds: There ought to be a word for people who are stuck in the late ’90s, like eHippies or iHippies, or something else that’s redolent of NetBuzz and CyberSpace but also suggestive of a fortyish Rod McKuen farting in an Esalen hot tub.

Terrific:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called CENTCOM commander Adm. William Fallon “one of the best strategic thinkers in uniform today.” Fallon opposed the “surge” in Iraq and has consistently battled the Bush administration to avoid a confrontation with Iran, calling officials’ war-mongering “not helpful.” Privately, he has vowed that an attack on Iran “will not happen on my watch.”

Unfortunately, this level-headed thinking and willingness to stand up to President Bush may cost him his job. According to a new article by Thomas P.M. Barnett in the April issue of Esquire magazine (on newsstands March 12), Fallon may be prematurely “relieved of his command” as soon as this summer:

[W]ell-placed observers now say that it will come as no surprise if Fallon is relieved of his command before his time is up next spring, maybe as early as this summer, in favor of a commander the White House considers to be more pliable. If that were to happen, it may well mean that the president and vice-president intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this year and don’t want a commander standing in their way.

In the Esquire article, Fallon also said that he was in “hot water” with the White House for meeting with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. Fallon noted that such meetings are his job, and essential to making sure that regional leaders don’t get “too spun up” by the administration’s war rhetoric.

Awesome. By the end of his term, Bush will have lost three major wars.

Ugh. Charlotte Allen’s chat over at the WaPo is bloody painful:

Washington: You write that you doubt women’s representation in such fields as law (the Supreme Court) and medicine (brain surgeons) will rise much in the 21st century. However more women than men currently are graduating from law school and medical school. Could you please comment on this apparent contradiction?

Charlotte Allen: That’s absolutely true, but the proportion of women at the highest level of these fields is going to remain relatively small, I predict.

In other words: sure, more women are graduating from law school and medical school, but they’ll only comprise the stupid doctors and lawyers.

In other news, I hear that light-skinned black people are smarter than dark-skinned black people.

This is great stuff, WaPo. Let’s keep it going:

Silver Spring, Md.: Yes, women’s reasoning is sometimes clouded by emotion, but so is men’s. Why is “swooning” so much worse than murderous rage? How are “Eat, Love, Pray” and “Grey’s Anatomy” any more self-indulgent and fantastical than “On the Road” and James Bond movies? Are romance novels a less realistic picture of male-female relations than “Big Butt Sluts #23”? In short, why do you consider men’s irrational distortions forgiveable, while women’s are a sign of lower intelligence?

Charlotte Allen: I agree that men do many dumb things, and many men have dumb tastes.

*Blink*

*Blink*

Then… like… why did you write an entire article dedicated to the notion that women are stupid? If you think both sexes do dumb stuff then what was the point?

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Above: Crappiness is a serious problem

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Hey, everybody! Dennis Prager is back! Remember Dennis? His son has a black friend.

Like most conservatives, Dennis only knows eight things, and one of them is that our colleges are hotbeds of politically-correct Marxism. It’s funny how none of these rich white dudes ever just keeps his kids out of our filthy Soviet-ruled universities, or fights to send them to Bob Jones or Montana State; in fact, they seem to want to send them to the worst of the worst, those bullshit Commie Ivys where you have to learn about how the American Indians weren’t just useless swine standing in the way of our strip malls, and you can’t touch a girl’s brassiere without filling out a form in triplicate. Why, it’s almost as if they were a bunch of hypocrites!

Anyway, the point is, our universities are daily exposing innocent children to dirty Red filth, and this will not stand. Den-den has prepared a handy list of questions you should ask of hapless admissions clerks before forking over your tuition money.

1. Can one obtain a Bachelor of Arts degree at your college without having read a single Shakespeare play, one Federalist Paper or one book of the Bible?

I think it should depend on the book of the Bible. Like, if they only make you read Philemon? Fuck that college.

2. Does the college allow military recruiters on its campus?

You definitely don’t want to let your kid attend some two-bit school that bans military recruitment. Like that shitty fleabag cow college Harvard Law School. Or Columbia University (Dennis Prager, ’70-’72).

3. In the political science, English, sociology, anthropology and history departments — or any other liberal arts department — what is the ratio of Democrats to Republicans among the professors?

If it’s more than 3:1, the school is a hotbed of Stalinism, and it’s all the fault of the campus administrators and not at all the fact that conservatives, as a rule, do not pursue careers in the liberal arts.

4. What are the names of the speakers invited and paid with college funds to speak last year at the college?

Did they invite some vile dictator like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Hugo Chavez? Or some awesome dictator like Pervez Musharraf or Islom Karimov?

5. Can my child live in a same-sex dorm and are the bathrooms co-ed?

Because the last thing you want is for your son to get girl cooties.

6. Is Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” the most widely assigned American history book?

You know, like it is nowhere.

7. Would a typical graduate of your university be able to say anything intelligent about Josef Stalin, Louis Armstrong, Pope John XXIII or Pope John Paul II, differences between Protestantism and Catholicism, Cain and Abel, the Gulag Archipelago, Franz Josef Haydn, Pol Pot, Martin Luther, Darfur, how interest rates affect the dollar, dark matter, and “Crime and Punishment”; explain what the Korean War was about and when it was fought; identify India on a map; and know the difference between the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council? If not, why not? How could someone be considered in any way educated and not be able to intelligently answer all or nearly all of those questions? If they don’t know about such essential and basic things, what do they know? Movies? The supposed dangers of global warming? The importance of race, gender and class? The meaning of menage a trois (or “threesomes”)? Great gay writers?

Dennis has a great point here. It’s way, way more important to be able to know about two imaginary brothers from six thousand years ago than it is to know frivolous nonsense like how the environment works, or how class and race affect society.

Because granting a Bachelor of Arts degree on someone who never heard of Cain and Abel and never heard a Haydn symphony is a fraud.

In an increasingly competitive workplace, where people with B.A. degrees compete with each other for minimum-wage temp jobs, it’s more important than ever that you be able to honestly state on your résumé that you know that the Almighty frowned upon Cain’s inability to appease him by slaughtering animals, and be able to hum a convincing rendition of the 2nd movement from Sonata 62 (Hoboken). Otherwise your entire educational experience has been nothing more than an utter sham.

The man who invented Dungeons & Dragons has died at 69. He pwn3d pen-and-paper gaming.

Above: Missed saving throw

Above: Real Housewives of Wingnuttia debuts tonight on Bravo

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Awesome:

Pamela on feminism.

I don’t need equal rights….I’m already equal. I don’t need somebody telling me something that’s already a fact. All these women like Gloria Steinem, “Oh, we made it happen for you!” You didn’t make it happen for me. That whole movement…is rooted in Marxist-Leninist propaganda….I’m not a feminist, I’m an anti-feminist. I think it has hurt women enormously.

Nope, I can’t even begin to parse this one. It reads like something an infinite number of monkeys would produce if you gave them a magnetic poetry kit comprised of the 200 most frequently used words in Liberal Fascism.

UPDATE: Wow. I should also include this stunning snippet from Right Wing News’ Michelle Malkin interview:

Above: “Oleander, coriander, sis-boom-BLAARGH!”

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Is Michelle bothered that there are undoubtedly a lot of guys going to take a look at her vlogs because of her looks?

Well again, it’s a double edged sword and I think a lot of women who are successful at blogging and vlogging realize that, so you use it to your advantage. There’s nothing wrong with using what God gave you to spread your message, to get people to pay attention to your content. …On YouTube, the key to producing a viral video is to be very visual and that includes looking good.

Shorter Michelle: Yeah, I make winger pr0n, but if it gets some horny goober to hate on just one immigrant, it’s all been worthwhile.

“Bill is risen! Bill is risen!!”

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The passion, death and resurrection of St. Billibus Buckleyitimus have, it would appear, finally sent K-Lo completely over the edge. I say this because, over at America’s Shittiest Website™, she is espousing a conspiracy theory that puts “Stephen King killed John Lennon” and the “Years 641 to 911 AD never happened” theorists to shame. K-Lo has decided that Hillary Clinton knows that she’s going to lose and is secretly supporting John McCain so that she can be a Senate star and run again in 2012:

My conspiracy-theory analysis: The Clinton campaign did not release that [“It’s 3 am”] ad for the sake of Clinton 2008. It is to defeat Obama, for sure. But not now.

Hillary knows she’s going down. They issued that ad because they want McCain to win. She thinks she can be a star in the Senate, leader of the Democratic party when he loses. So the commercial is her gift to John McCain. She’s got her eye on 2012.

This wasn’t a joke. She’s still humping this theory in a second post.

Further evidence for my 3 A.M. theory: Here’s Hillary:

But before leaving, to insert herself into the day’s news coverage, she held a quick media availability at the Hilton and provided this unusually concise capsule comment for reporters, including The Times’ Louise Roug:

“I think that I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. Sen. John McCain has a lifetime of experience that he’d bring to the White House. And Sen. Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.”

Save for, say, a blood promise that the first SCOTUS seat in an Obama administration is hers, Hillary Clinton’s second choice is McCain.

Further evidence for this theory are the radio transmissions that Chelsea Clinton is beaming at K-Lo and which K-Lo can hear through radio transmitters secretly implanted by Vince Foster in the fillings in her teeth. Also Hillary Rodham Clinton is a secretly-coded anagram for “Mcain Lady Thrill Honor” and “Mcain Load Thrill Horny” which pretty much proves K-Lo’s point beyond all doubt.

Gavin adds: Say, remember that too-clever-by-half wingnut plot, a few weeks ago, to punish McCain by supporting Hillary — the one where nobody could figure out what manipulative trick, specifically, they were trying to pull on their readers and listeners? Welp, it looks like K-Lo has fallen down a wee little hole partly of her own contrivance.

Ho-hum:

“Two former high-ranking Shiite government officials charged with kidnapping and killing scores of Sunnis were ordered released Monday after prosecutors dropped the case. The abrupt move renewed concerns about the willingness of Iraq’s leaders to act against sectarianism and cast doubts on U.S. efforts to build an independent judiciary.

The collapse of the trial stunned American and Iraqi officials who had spent more than a year assembling the case, which they said included a wide array of evidence.

Uh, dudes? Why should you be stunned? The super-awesome purple-finger elections held in Iraq produced a government elected largely along sectarian lines. This government has since done a lot of things to isolate Iraq’s Sunni minority. Why were you expecting something different?

“This shows that the judicial system in Iraq is horribly broken,” said a U.S. legal adviser who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly. “And it sends a terrible signal: If you are Shia, then no worries; you can do whatever you want and nothing is going to happen to you.”

Does anyone know how to say “Scooter Libby” in Arabic?

[Via Hilzoy.]

Update: Oy:

“I appreciate the fact that you really snatched defeat out of the jaws of those who were trying to defeat us in Iraq.”– George W. Bush to Lt. General Ray Odierno today, as quoted by the Associated Press.

[Via.]

“We need to take a closer look at liberal Barack Hussein Obama”

• Our race war with the Muslims would likely be called off if this man is elected.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. Also, apologies to Mencken for picking on your bird.

Gavin adds: Each Marie Jon’ column unfolds like an origami crane. Here’s how this one begins:

We need to take a closer look at liberal Barack Hussein Obama

Judicial Watch, a nonpartisan¹ public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption,² has given Senator Barack Hussein Obama a dishonorable mention.³ Obama was placed on their ten most wanted list in 2007.⁴

Obama was involved in a suspicious real estate deal with a political fundraiser by the name of Tony Rezko.⁵ “There is so much more to learn about Obama in the coming months.”⁶ — Judicial Watch

¹ Judicial Watch is a Scaife-funded conservative advocacy group founded in 1994 to harass Bill Clinton.

² Judicial Watch’s ‘nonpartisan’ lists and investigations tend to achieve balance by including Republicans who have already been caught red-handed doing something unethical or illegal, and Democrats who have been accused (by Republicans) of possible misdeeds. Most (but not all) of their litigation serves a range of conservative causes célèbres. A canny person might think that their suits against the Bush Administration had something to do with founder Larry Klayman‘s apparently huffy departure, in 2003.

³ This was in 2006, at the beginning of the Rezko allegations.

⁴ Appearing above Obama on this alphabetical list (Hillary Clinton is coincidentally ranked at #1) are Sen. Larry Craig, Rudy Giuliani, the dutifully-maligned Mike Huckabee (Marie is an evangelical Christian), and Scooter Libby.

⁵ Rezko, a bipartisan opportunist and slimeball, also co-chaired a $3.6 million Bush fundraiser in 2003.

⁶ Learning continues regarding the lacuna of knowledge surrounding Obama’s denials of an ongoing close relationship to Chicago donor Tony Rezko, and regarding the fat, pulsating question-mark which hangs wetly over all the potential unrevealed details of Obama’s open and flagrant purchase of a strip of land — land adjoining his own personal home — from a man who would be later be indicted on unrelated charges. This possible scandal may indeed be a damaging one if any concrete allegations are made, and if they turn out to be true, as cannot be ruled out.

That said, Obama might well have partially been doing Rezko a favor by buying the land, or vice versa. The very stones cry out for justice, etc.