The Harder They Fall, One and All

It seems like all my time spent talking about the elections these days are with young Dems who don't want to 'jinx' it by showing optimism.
I thought this article in the New York Times explained that this sentiment is widespread among Obama supporters. This cute article had me at the title and won me over with the great pictures of hesitant Democrats:


If nothing else, Obama supporters should win for being adorable... and not wanting to shoot moose.

Anyway, this article especially struck a chord because I was recently subjected to the self-indulgent and infinitely depressing Micheal Moore documentary, Slacker Uprising.
This is a movie about the Bush-Kerry race- with Micheal Moore traveling across the country with celebrities and propaganda- trying to get young people/"slackers" to vote. His efforts were challeneged by the Bush campaign (they said that bribing people to vote with free underwear and ramen noodles was illegal)- but Moore prevails with his free speech.
This movie was pretty much a downer - I watched it because it was free on iTunes and a girl wanted me to watch it with her... she was a really really really cute girl. Because of this, I was able to make it through the whole movie without crying.

Kerry lost. The slackers didn't make a difference. Today is different, though.

Obama is actually more charismatic than an Ent and change is in the air. I can smell it.
*knock on wood*
This isn't up to the jinx laws, people- it's up to us and voting... and we finally have a candidate who doesn't need Micheal Moore to get people's attention...
(though if Obama wants to send Scarlett Johansson to our school again, it wouldn't hurt.)

-RS

Capitalism: A Fictional Island of Dinosaurs

Upon recent surfing of Facebook, I read a very brave 'note.' This friend of mine, a young, black man explained why he was considering voting for John McCain. Most of it had to do with experience, perhaps a desire to sustain the old ways of foreign policy failure... however, what really got me was the following sentence:
"[Plus,] Socialism scares me."
Whoa, and I guy running the country that doesn't understand a thing about the economy doesn't?!
*deep breath*
If socialism scares you, you're kind of a wuss. Socialism is the Little Red Riding Hood to Capitalism's Big Bad Wolf. And, do you really think we live in a free-market economy?
No. We don't. The government always plays a role, hopefully in the form of social protections.

American Capitalism is like Jurassic Park (stay with me here...). Allen Greenspan was that Hammond guy- I'm pretty sure he meant well, trying to cultivate dinosaurs without enough security, but it's coming back now to bite him in the ass. It's like the dinosaurs were in their respective areas, knowing that the fences would electrocute them if they left. Once the fences are off, it's only a matter of time before the T-Rex gets loose- the T-Rex is corporate America, and it's greedy and it's mean and it is all about destruction (and will eat your f-ing car!)
And who are they trying to eat? Well, everyone. However the kids running scared, they're the workers- without social protection the worker gets to churn away the rest of his days in the "Satanic Mill" inside the T Rex's belly.

And then you have the velociraptors and thats the... the..
Wow, this analogy has gotten completely out of control.
Basically what I'm saying is that McCain and Palin can't go charming the 'working man' with their faux-mavricky swagger just to abandon them for big oil. Greenspan already admitted he was wrong to allow so much unchecked greed in the free-market. And things have to change, they're going to. There will be reforms to the existing system, the world won't end, capitalism in America won't end. The richest percent of the population won't lose their yachts; our freedoms won't be lost and we'll all be better off for it.
Hey, maybe we'll even have affordable health care!
-RS

Generation Mr. Rogers! : Prop 8

Special guests Jacob and Shilpa contribute their views in form of a Political video Blog. They are from 'Generation Mr. Rogers' and come from the point of view of progressive student-types.
This is their first episode and they're talking about Proposition 8 and it's implications.

Snow in Minnesota and a Raid into Syria

Yesterday was a really lazy day for me. It was snowing outside (gross, I know!) and I didn't really want to do much of anything... except maybe sit around and watch movies... brain mush. Anyway, I'm sitting and being lazy and my Chemistry major roommate turns to me and says- "you know, we invaded Syria?"

And, I'm thinking "what?!" as well as grumbling to myself that the one day I don't glance over the Times headlines, we invade another country completely unexpectedly. AND on top of all that my smug Chem-major roommate knows about it before me (it's kind of my job to know about these things- I'm majoring in International Relations and Poli Sci!)

She rubs it in: "Oh, I just thought you would know about it..."

Grumbling, I abandon the episode of "West Wing" I was so pleasantly watching and race for my laptop.
I open up the New York Times. The top headline was about baseball. Now, I'm thinking- hey! I did read the news earlier today! The top headline was about football before!
I come back in tell my roommate that she's full o' crap. Turns out she read it on the BBC. There, the article is titled "'US Helicopter Raid' Inside of Syria".

I had to scroll down half the page to the small printed links to find it in the Times: "Syrians Blame US for Deadly Blast on Iraq Boarder"

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but those are two different stories reporting entirely different things. I've searched the Times and there is no actual article just about the blast- I suppose it's only 'newsworthy' if the US gets 'blamed.' (This story got to the top of the website this morning- hmm, it finally beat out the 'Four Homers by the Phillies'?)

Enough about journalism, though. The idea that we can chase down 'terrorists' into other countries is absurd. That is the nature of guerrilla warfare, they can break the rules- they can attack us and retreat... but we can't break those rules (like the rules set by the boarders of Syria or, in another war, Pakistan!). Breaking the rules makes a statement, antagonizes the leaders and people... we're fighting a protracted 'War of the Flea', which we can't win by antagonizing the citizen base!

Ugh, read something military dudes!

On that note, also... to rant because I can.... and because this keeps coming up with the McCain campaign:
We did not lose the Vietnam war because of liberal, "Anti-Americans"- we lost because we were going to lose. We lost because we're a Democratic Republic and, as such, we have to answer to our population and thus are checked (ideally) from committing heinous crimes in other countries!
We lost because the other side had the experience and the will to fight a protracted war and we had no idea how to win.
I understand that it is an embarrassing chapter in American history. However, the military did not learn lessons from the war. Great books analyzing the situation were put aside for a game of 'blame the hippies' - and then, the military institution decide that the best way to deal with this kind of 'rules-less' war would be to just never get into one again.
Brilliant plan... and it would have worked too if it wasn't for those pesky NeoCons. Such a pain in the... uh.. face.

Alright, rant done.
I'm going to cut back on 'lazy days' even if it snows in October.

-RetroSweater out.

[UPDATE]: More info from the BBC. Rock on, BBC... even if your most read story is about a man getting stuck in a toilet.

Rachel Maddow Show

I've been meaning to blog about this for a while, however, I figured it was old news. But, the New York Times doesn't seem to think so with it's latest update on the run-away success of the Rachel Maddow Show. What I loved about this article is that they never once mention that Maddow is a completely out of the closet lesbian... because thats not what matters! What matters is that she's a Rhodes Scholar and that she 'doesn't own a TV' (well, maybe that doesn't actually matter...) and that she is kicking some major ass.
So, yeah, I can't really bring much more to the conversation except to add this quote from Maddow's AfterEllen.com interview:

“I think the responsibility that we have as gay Americans,” she says, “is to the extent that we can - and we ought to be really ambitious about the extent to which we can - we have to be out.”

“That’s the thing that we owe the people who came before us who are the pioneers, and that’s the thing we owe the next generation of gay people in terms of clearing the way and making life easier for them. I think that there is a moral imperative to be out, and I think that if you’re not out, you have to come to an ethical understanding with yourself why you are not. And it shouldn’t be something that is excused lightly. I don’t think that people should be forced out of the closet, but I think that every gay person, sort of, ought to push themselves in that regard. Because it’s not just you. It’s for the community and it’s for the country.”

You're thinking, 'Psh, eaiser said than done, Rachel Maddow.' But she is living a life that paves the way for a future in which, if someone is not trying to hide who they are, people just won't care... and if you're enough of a badass, they'll put you on network television and people will like you a lot more than all those blonde bimbo newscasters over on Fox.

Hey wait. That future is today.
Cool.

[Update]: But, wait, there's more!
Yeah, Maddow has graphic novels on her bedside table... if I wasn't majorly crushing before, I am now:

Retrosweater out.

Because "Naked assertions and stale fallacies for a prettied-up version of Calvinism" wasn’t a catchy-enough title

You may be wondering how it went with the rest of that insufferable book "The Reason for God." I have here a summary of the second half of it, which author Timothy Keller calls "The Reasons for Faith." How good are those reasons, you may ask? Well, if you want to judge for yourself, you could go back to the original source, but this is what I got out of it.

The Clues of God
Here are a few variations on the question-begging appeal to ignorance and anthropocentric retro-probabilistic speculations based on a poor understanding of the Anthropic Principle. Let’s see you dodge that, atheists! [Fatherly chuckle].

The Knowledge of God
I can’t understand how atheists get their morals; therefore they actually believe in God but are in denial. Also, despite the fact that this argument is so incredibly brilliant and convincing, I still found it necessary to include 13 other chapters in this book to persuade my readers of what I know they already know.

The Problem of Sin
If you base your life on anything but God, your identity will become unstable, and you will lose your self. Isn’t that scary? So hand over your identity to God, and get an entirely new self. This may sound even scarier than what I just tried to scare you away from, but it is what God expects of us.

Religion and the Gospel
Religious people think they can save themselves through good behavior. These people are actually worse sinners than everyone else, because they are self-righteous. But Christianity is not a Religion. It’s a Gospel. True Christians behave well because they are Saved, they don’t behave well in order to be saved. Therefore, they are not self-righteous.

The (True) Story of the Cross
Think about the last time you forgave someone. It hurt, didn’t it? It hurt Jesus too—and he showed it physically. He also had to suffer to show solidarity with us in our own suffering; he wouldn’t really be showing us love otherwise, because in order to understand what someone is going through, you have to go through it yourself. For example, if someone is bleeding, you cut yourself and bleed with them, you don’t just make meaningless pity-noises.

The Reality of the Resurrection
The Resurrection must have really happened because religious movements never gain any traction if they make false claims that people in the wider culture would find ridiculous.

The Dance of God
The Father loves the Son loves the Holy Spirit loves you! Come on, you know you want to believe it.

Epilogue: Where do we go from here?
It doesn’t matter if it isn’t clear to you how you’re going to be able to swallow the huge pile of garbage I’ve just dealt you. Just repent before God for all the times you’ve ever trusted anyone or anything but Him, join a True Christian church, and pray that it’ll sort itself out.

Like the city in Alaska

I got a kick out of this image, so I had to put it up.

Even though I feel guilty about contributing to the gossip feeding frenzy.