Philosoraptor

Monday, November 30, 2009

Obama's Decision On Afghanistan Troop Levels: Wrong

Of course, we don't know what decision he has made yet.

But we already know it's wrong, wrong, wrong.

Winston Smith

¶ 9:51 PM (1) comments

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Obama To Allow Terrorist Supermen To Wreak Havoc On American Criminal Justice System

As we know, our criminal justice system cannot handle al Qaeda's terrorist supermen. Even were our courts able to withstand their mind-control powers and abilities to manipulate legal technicalities, we know that they would be able to break out of even specially-made anti-super-terrorist super-prisons and even super-duper-super-max prisons. [Fig. 1]

What our president is thinking is beyond me. His pre-post-9/11 mentality will certainly be the death of us all.

God help us.

Winston Smith

¶ 4:06 PM (0) comments

Friday, November 13, 2009

Harrison Barnes to Carolina

Totally sweet.

Winston Smith

¶ 4:39 PM (0) comments

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Veterans Day

Thanks to those who have served.

Winston Smith

¶ 8:28 PM (1) comments

Monday, November 09, 2009

Funny Venn Diagrams

Actually funny (though some are actually Euler diagrams, and others are incorrectly drawn).

Winston Smith

¶ 9:35 AM (0) comments

The Weekly Standard, Where It's Always Good News For Republicans

Jonathan Chait at TNR.

Winston Smith

¶ 9:34 AM (1) comments

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Bad Day For the OD
McDonnell, Bolling, Cuccinelli Win

Ugh. The red team wins the races for governor, lt. governor, and attorney general.

Lean times ahead for the beleaguered VA state university system coming up.

Winston Smith

¶ 9:17 PM (0) comments

Monday, November 02, 2009

Deeds for Governor

The case for Deeds over McDonnell is clear and compelling.

Deeds is a reasonable centrist, McDonnell is a far-right conservative. Deeds has been up-front about the fact that the OD has little choice but to raise taxes to help solve its transportation problem. McDonnell wants to take the money out of the education budget...and, let me tell you, we don't have any to spare. (I'm the first to admit that Va universities have to do their part in hard times...but we're operating on virtually nothing as it is.)

Deeds is a moderate who's got a demonstrable record of finding a middle ground between reasonable liberal policies and the conservative positions held by many Virginians. Deeds is obviously a smart bet for governor; one can't really say the same thing about McDonnell.

Winston Smith

¶ 2:24 PM (0) comments

Nations Are Not Brands
Nations Do Not Have Brands

This is the proximate cause of my current irritation on this front. (See also: this.)

This is not a difficult point to understand. Are people so conceptually impoverished that they have to understand everything in terms of buying and selling? The United States is built upon certain ideas and principles, and associated with certain orientations and projects. These things are far more important than the frivolous business of marketing. We are not a cereal, we are not a shiny new car, we are not a pair of jeans. The great American project, flawed though it is, is not analogous to some mere money-making scheme. The Constitution is not the Nike swoosh, nor is it similar to it in any interesting sense. Nor, even, is the flag, though there is at least a minimal similarity there.

Shut up about the brad BS already. "Branding" is not a word, unless its something done to cattle.

There's normally no good reason to harp on words, but the mindless assimilation of everything human to selling lurks in the background of such misuses of 'brand' and its cognates, and that is not only confused but otherwise pernicious as well.

Two seconds of thought is enough to see why it's past time for this irritating piece of lackwit jargon to go.

Winston Smith

¶ 10:18 AM (2) comments

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