Philosoraptor

2012-01-30T14:21:00.000-05:00

Ditching the A-10 How Is This Not A Mistake? This has been bugging me for years, and I'm pretty surprised that it hasn't gotten more attention. I do realize that I'm no expert on this, but I really just cannot see how ditching the A-10--especially in favor of the unproven and seemingly ill-suited-for-ground-attack F-35--could possibly make sense. I mean, can you stick a couple of JDAMs on an F-

2012-01-30T13:02:00.000-05:00

Is The GOP Not Even Trying To Make Sense Anymore? Bad Analogies Edition: Captain Schettino and Obama??? Link. It remains difficult to focus on the substance of policy debates when the GOP continues to act like a not-terribly-bright-even-by-the-standards-of-five-year-olds five-year-old. And an unusually petulant five-year-old, to boot... Priebus is either an idiot or a partisan hack of (as it

2012-01-29T14:37:00.000-05:00

Mitt and the White Horse Prophecy Mormonism and Theocracy Worth a read. When I was a teenager I had Mormon friends, so I got to know a thing or two about Mormonism and Mormons. I found much to admire about them, including their dedication to hard work and learning, their generosity, and their tight-knit, supportive community. In the end, however, I concluded that they were more than a little

2012-01-28T09:48:00.002-05:00

Is Sexuality A Choice? And: Two Arguments About Same-Sex Sex Link I actually think the answer is fairly clear, and it's: kinda. Desires can be modified, tamped down, and cultivated. Anyone who has ever cultivated a taste for anything (e.g. beer, coffee, exercise, discordant music, hard work) can attest to this. There is no reason to think that sexual desire is sui generis. One could

2012-01-27T17:07:00.000-05:00

Grover Norquist is Insane Seriously. As we know, it is permissible for Republicans to impeach Democratic Presidents for any reason whatsoever, including consensual sex acts; it is, however, impermissible for Democrats to impeach Republicans for any reason, including war crimes. So Grover now thinks that allowing tax cuts to expire when they are scheduled to expire is an impeachable offense.

2012-01-27T07:41:00.000-05:00

Shorter David Frum: Lying Is OK, As Long As There's Something In It For You Jebus. See, Frum doesn't like to say that Romney is a liar. He prefers to say that he has an "emotional distance from the facts." Ohhh....I get it now! I mean, Frum wishes Mittens would stick to the facts...but, hey, as Frum notes, Frum isn't the only GOP voter out there. So, Frum asks, waddayagonnado? Frum is a

2012-01-26T22:33:00.000-05:00

Romulator Here Calculates how long it takes Mitt Romney to make your annual salary, how much money you'd save if you were taxed at his rate, and the amount you should offer to bet Rick Perry in a debate. [via, like, I dunno...Metafilter or something...]

2012-01-26T21:10:00.000-05:00

Carolina 74, State 55 Man, I feel sorry for State. They certainly have fallen on hard times. They're actually pretty good this year, though, and have a killer recruiting class coming in next year. This game wasn't even as close as the score suggest. Roy is now 22-1 vs. State. Ouch. Congrats to the Heels...and especially to Zeller for an awesome game, and to Stilman White for the 3!

2012-01-26T13:45:00.000-05:00

Oklahoma Legislator Proposes Ban On Aborted Fetuses In Food Not making this up. (via TPM) But...but...isn't this illegitimate government interference in the free market? Won't the Invisible Hand take care of this??? If people don't want aborted fetuses in their food, won't they buy less fetus-fortified food? It's just so damned hard to find true conservatives anymore...

2012-01-26T11:16:00.000-05:00

Is Politifact Wooing Wingnuts? The sad tale of Politifact's convoluted analysis of Obama's claim that American businesses have created 3 million jobs in the last 22 months. Though it's true and clearly so--and 100% so--Politifact gave it a "half-true" rating. Now they're backing off of that, fortunately. My guess is that they are afflicted by something I find in myself. When faced with a

2012-01-26T08:29:00.000-05:00

Republicans Disrespecting Obama Jan Brewer Edition This stuff is getting ridiculous. The GOP has now decided that they don't even have to accord Obama the respect to which his office entitles him. You do not talk over the president, and, having been far enough out of line that he walks away, for chrissake you do not continue to squeak at him as he leaves. (Note that Brewer herself pointedly says

2012-01-26T00:45:00.000-05:00

Newt Gingrich is an Idiot 3-Hour Debate Edition What a moron. Debates are for people who don't understand the issues anyway, and who think they can do so by watching a 90-minute-or-so, staged rhetorical contest. (Not that I don't watch them, because I do.) No one with two neurons to rub together and who gives the matter any thought can possibly think that a 3-hour debate is a good idea. It would

2012-01-26T00:25:00.000-05:00

Anti-Obama Crap from David Frum Jebus. How does crap like this get published? First, why focus on Obama's dumbest critics? Well, (a) the dumbest critics are the ones who are dominating the discussion, so their criticisms are, in a very important sense, the most important ones; and (b) if this crap from Frum is supposed to represent more sophisticated criticisms, then there's little difference

2012-01-25T18:33:00.002-05:00

Right-Wing Working of the Refs Affecting Politifact? WTF???

2012-01-25T09:47:00.000-05:00

'Calculation', Not 'Calculus' Ever since the relatively generic use of the term 'calculus' (that is, to mean, roughly, a method or tool for calculating, as in "the propositional calculus") became more widely-known, people seem to be unable to resist it, probably because it sounds, ya know, technical. Let me just point out that, when you write things roughly like "in response to new facts, the

2012-01-25T09:23:00.000-05:00

Lizza: The Making Of a Post-Partisan President I say this is really good, according to me. It's not that it's that surprising, not that it tells us much we don't already know...but it connects the known dots in a clear, evocative way. Obama, post-partisan President, arrives in the White House to find himself thwarted at every turn by a viciously obstructionist opposition.

2012-01-25T00:59:00.002-05:00

Our Rhetorical Disadvantage

2012-01-24T13:20:00.000-05:00

Arkansas Democratic Campaign Manager's Cat Killed 'Liberal' Written Across Its Body Disturbing pic of the cat's body prominent at the other end of this link. There will always be isolated kooks. However, this sort of thing is not what you'd call unpredictable. Given the rhetoric that's come from the right over the past 20 years, such things are not only predictable, but, well, frankly I'm a

2012-01-23T18:25:00.000-05:00

It's Now Liberalism's Job To Articulate Conservatism's Vision O.k., so I've been thinking about this a long time, and mentioned it here and there, but can't get it right, so I'll just blurt out the idea: Now that the American right has gone insane, it is the job of liberalism to try to articulate and defend their position(s) for them. Liberalism and liberals are, in general, just plain better

2012-01-23T14:21:00.000-05:00

David Frum Thinks Gingrich Is Too Loony To Be President David Frum. Damn, you gotta be one crazy-ass conservative to be too vile for David Frum. If you're losing true believers like that guy, you are way t.f. out in left field. Right field, actually, I guess.

2012-01-22T09:25:00.000-05:00

Newt Wins South Carolina Or I Was Wrong Whoa! Was I ever wrong. As mac was quick to note first thing this morning! Thanks, mac! Ha ha! Well, as Peirce says, there's nothing like a good, clear, unequivocal error to move inquiry along... So I prefer to think of myself as having advanced the discussion... S. rex suggests that it might be because conservatives hate the MSM more than they hate

2012-01-21T18:20:00.000-05:00

Archer Season 3, Episode 1 Edition Wow. Well, that (season 3, episode 1 (the Burt Reynolds episode)) really sucked, didn't it? We freaking love Archer--possibly the most hilarious tv show ever, IMHO. But the kick-off episode for season 3 was just awful. JQ said that it was as if someone who'd watched a bunch of episodes of the show, but didn't really get them, had written the episode. I wonder

2012-01-20T20:04:00.000-05:00

Strickland Out For Season Heels Probably Out of the Running Well, that's some enormously bad news for Dex, and for Carolina. Torn ACL. Get well man--we're all pulling for ya. Dex, as I'm sure you all realize, is Carolina's best perimeter defender by far, starting 2-guard, only serious back-up PG, and only threat to penetrate. Now we are seriously up the freaking creek. Leslie MacDonald won't

2012-01-20T08:03:00.000-05:00

Mitt Romney is Successful Or: If You Question Mitt Romney, You Question America LOL Wow. At first I was so relieved that the likely GOP candidate did not come from the lunatic wing of the party that I really didn't notice how genuinely terrible that guy is. So, in this clip, Romney repeatedly tells us how "successful" he's been. (He also claims to have done it on his own because he (allegedly)

2012-01-19T18:51:00.000-05:00

Prediction: Gingrich is Toast More precise prediction: Gingrich is toast not because he is an unqualified, possibly sociopathic nutjob who has done his harmed the country significantly and would like to do some more of that...nor because he left two wives as soon as they got sick, nor because he can't keep it in his pants, nor because he's a blowhard moron, nor because he's a hypocrite, nor

2012-01-18T15:09:00.002-05:00

Marcia Angell: The Illusions of Psychiatry Also at the NYRB, also very much worth reading.

2012-01-18T14:35:00.000-05:00

Marcia Angell On The Epidemic Of Mental Illness And Why Anti-Depressants Don't Work At the NYRB. Holy crap. And this is no kook writing. Apparently the effects of anti-depressants on depression are basically indistinguishable from the effects of "extra-strength placebos," i.e. placebos with side-effects. One hypothesis: there is simply no relevant difference in the drugs, but patients in

2012-01-18T13:11:00.000-05:00

Marty Lederman and Steve Vladeck: The NDAA: Not As Bad As You Think Very interesting (Via Balkinization)

2012-01-16T09:43:00.000-05:00

The Perils of Philosophical Ignorance Too Big To Know Edition Well, there's this. Haven't read the book (by David Weinberger)...don't need to. This sort of nonsense happens over and over. This is a new manifestation of an old set of errors. Evgeny Morozov seems to have already hit the high points here. Coupla points: First, if you find yourself saying "the Postmodernists were right," or "

2012-01-15T09:49:00.000-05:00

Conservatives Love Big Government Conservatives Hate Pr0n Edition Link. [via Metafilter] To review: The right-wing (we don't really have many conservatives in the U.S. these days...) does not want small government...and the size of government per se doesn't matter that much. They don't even really want cheap government. The stuff about low taxes is really a stalking horse for what they're

2012-01-14T16:34:00.000-05:00

Carolina Collapses Against FSU Wow. Carolina looked so bad I can't even hypothesize about what happened. I honestly have no idea. They looked like they looked at the beginning of last season when they seemed incapable of doing anything right. It was like a different team out there...Marshall wasn't playing like Marshall, Henson was barely playing like Henson, Dex wasn't playing like Dex, and

2012-01-11T08:12:00.000-05:00

Drezner: Government Are Not Corporations Actually, there's a whole bunch of sh!t that isn't corporations. In fact, all the non-corporations--that is, all the other goddamned types of organizations known to man are not corporations. Oh...link. [Via Sullivan] Reagan fired up business-worship in this country. It seemed to die down for a bit, but it never quite went away, and now its back in full

2012-01-10T18:24:00.000-05:00

Why Aren't There More (")Liberals(") In America? E.g. Not entirely clear what the question is, but it may very well be, at least in part: why don't more people describe themselves as liberals? Hypothesis: because Reagan and the neo-Reaganites made 'liberal' a dirty word. Add to that that lots of liberals fled the fight and decided to start calling themselves "progressives" instead. That'll

2012-01-09T19:38:00.000-05:00

Should Liberals Lie About Romney's "I Like Being Able To Fire People" Comment? Drum asks the question, but thinks the answer is in the negative...er, that's my hypothesis based on reading him all the time...not his words. But I'm what you'd call sure about it... Sullivan, peace be upon him, admits that it's a misrepresentation, which is good. Unfortunately, he then gestures at one of the

2012-01-09T14:10:00.001-05:00

Noahpinion: Why Conservatives Can't Get People To Work Hard Nice post. A quote: One basic idea is that hard work should be rewarded. Obvious, right? I mean, we're supposed to be economists here! People respond to incentives, and they are risk averse. A winner-take-all society is not very conducive to hard work; I'm not going to bust my butt for 30 years for a 1% shot at getting into The 1%.

2012-01-07T16:45:00.000-05:00

Krugman on Romney on Jobs I'm in no way knowledgeable enough about economics to speak on this, but I generally trust Kruman...and he's certainly right, at least, about the first part. His line: Romney's record on jobs really looks like this: he helped to eliminate good ones (e.g. at steel mills) and replace them with bad ones (e.g. at Staples). Interesting if true.

2012-01-07T12:01:00.000-05:00

GO AT 'EM WITH FACTS Goddamn it, enough with the rhetorical strategizing and mincing around. The Dems should simply be gearing up to go at the GOP (that will mean: Romney) with the facts. Short, clear commercials with clear graphs--many are, after all, available--showing whose/which policies are responsible for most of the deficit, exactly what the stimulus did, what the various tax proposals

2012-01-07T11:50:00.000-05:00

Video: The History of U.S.-Iranian Relations Since 1953 And A Thought-Experiment I've written about this history before--many have, of course. But here's a nice, 10-minute video beginning with the history of U.S.-Iranian relations since 1953. As we know--but most Americans don't--if you look at all the relevant information, and not just what happened since 1979, it becomes clear that the fault,

2012-01-05T16:54:00.002-05:00

People Don't Understand What Relativism Is Rick Santorum Edition Quoth Santorum: "It is startling that those in the media and academia appear most disturbed by this aberrant behavior, since they have zealously promoted moral relativism by sanctioning 'private' moral matters such as alternative lifestyles. Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture. When the culture is sick, every

2012-01-05T15:17:00.000-05:00

Kevin Drum: The World's Most Annoying Man* No, not Drum...this guy. I'm calling it now. Dude's not real. Check to see if he's Sacha Baron Cohen. Nobody's really that irritating... Bonus annoyance: dude seems to be in love with the currently most annoying buzzword, viz. "brand." *As noted by the NYT, it's Christopher Fowler who initial speculated about what's-his-name being "the world's most

2012-01-05T14:13:00.000-05:00

The End of the Two-War Strategy Here. Thank God. I've puzzled over the wisdom of the two-war strategy since I was in high school. I've always favored a strong commitment to national defense...and thought that, perhaps, in the days when the USSR and China might plausibly both be (independent) antagonists, such a strategy might make sense. But since the Bush/Cheney economic catastrophe, I've been

2012-01-02T15:54:00.000-05:00