A Sad Anniversary

This has been hard for me to write. It’s part of the reason I haven’t wanted to write anything for a while. I didn’t think I’d be here at this point.

I started my blog because I was devastated that the US was torturing people. Worse, the powers-that-be were making excuses for it. The US has been guilty of crimes before. But in the bad old days that was just it: they were guilty. The thing was to pretend it wasn’t happening. Now they were doing something much worse. They were saying it was okay.

I come from a family that fled Communists, Nazis, and Fascists. (Yes, that was a lot of fleeing and it took three decades.) Maybe that’s made me hypersensitive to the ultimate personal price of dictatorships. They are horrible, awful, terrifying places and nobody really survives. You can try to escape with the clothes on your back, or become subhuman, or die. That’s all. There are no other choices. So it’s a matter of life or death to avoid that road at all costs. Never put so much as one toe on the path that ends in that hell.

There are two hallmarks shared by dictatorships: detention without trial and torture.

We’re doing both. We’re saying that committing crimes is legal. Is there any way to make the rule of law more meaningless?

At first, I never thought that people would stand for it. I knew there’d be a convulsion and the whole country would reject the lethal disease we had. But instead the shock became dulled. Too many people in the US patted themselves on the back for not being as bad as those other real dictatorships. We’d only put both feet on the beginning of the path. That was totally not the same as reaching the end.

You know what? Once you’re on that path, in terms of what happens next it doesn’t matter who started it. It doesn’t matter if you do nothing. All you have to do to reach the end is not get off. It’s downhill all the way.

I had to do something. The whole Government needed to be changed from top to bottom. The people who made excuses for it had to be changed. Corporations, media, education, it all had to be changed.

I didn’t know how to do any of that. What I did was start a blog in feeble protest, five years ago last May. I’d never understood how the Good Germans could stand by while their government went to the devil between the two World Wars. Now I know. I never thought I’d become the sort of person who could understand that.

I never thought I’d see liberals making excuses for bigotry and war, just because it was their own side doing it. I never thought it would hurt to remember how much hope I felt that the long nightmare of criminal government was coming to an end. I never thought I’d find out that it can get worse than having an unpopular dictator. You can have a popular one.

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How Brilliant is Obama?

How brilliant is Obama? (H/T to dakinikat, for sharing this with me) Is he a genius or is he a beneficiary of affirmative action placement? Frankly, apart from hyperbole, there is not much information to go on. Furthermore, the ways he’s chosen to govern his life, outside of his academic endeavors, do not lend to easy associations with intelligence. For example, his sensible choice to be physically active says little about intellectual acuity. Accordingly, it is hard to judge what his high end might be. Notwithstanding, I think his low end is relatively easy to discern. It is a good place to start. (NOTE: This topic is necessarily subjective.  This post is nowhere close to being definitive. It is an attempt to come to a reasonable judgment.)  [IQ is not under consideration because its’ standards for the high end are too low.]

We do not need access to Obama’s grades at Harvard to know he has intellectual chops. It is true that he was not in the top tier of Harvard Law students as he did not graduate summa cum laude, but magna cum laude is the next highest standing, and it appears this places him in at least the top 30% of the class, if not the top 10%.

It is true that an affirmative action push, due to a heated political climate at the time, played a role in his selection as president of the Harvard Law Review, but the fact that he was not in the top tier does not alter the counterfact that many of his editorial peers also graduated magna cum laude.

Unfortunately, if Obama did write for the law review, his work was unsigned. His choice to avoid publication is odd because the purpose of the position is to “peacock” one’s chops. It is unfortunate, for the purpose of this exercise, that he left this void. If he had written, his peers would be able to tell us where he ranks. It is best to infer nothing about his intellect from this void.  Notwithstanding, academic selection committees would take the lack of publications to indicate some type of academic weakness.

What does his Harvard performance say about his base level intelligence? My sense is that a law degree is similar to a Masters Degree in one of the more rigorous social science disciplines. It certainly does not touch a Ph.D. It stands slightly lower than an M.A. in Philosophy, but it likely ranks higher than sociology, and it destroys an M.B.A., which is essentially a compilation of undergraduate courses.

Obama’s Oedipus complex

Liberal Rapture’s “Yes, Andrew, Obama does want you to go away” inspired me to create this analysis, some of which has been steeping for a while.

Obama’s thralls are a manifestation of a group Oedipal event, in the archaic sense, not the Freudian.  They sought a saviour.  {I describe them as thralls because they were enthralled by Obama.}  Like Oedipus, they were warned by prophecy of the bad actions they would take, but they were not guided adequately by their foreknowledge. The founders warned people about the consequences of having kings, aristocrats, and saviours do their thinking and acting for them.

Like Oedipus, Obama’s thralls based their actions on a form of wilful blindness to the circumstance. They saw Obama as anti-Bush, anti-politics-as-usual, and anti-whatever is keeping them down, regardless of evidence to the contrary. To various extents, Obama’s thralls were more or less wilful than Oedipus in their metaphorical self-blinding. The intelligentsia sit at the end of the continuum that is most wilful.

Furthermore, Obama has stated that people project upon him an image of someone “good” that they want him to be. Obama, his campaign, and the behaviour manipulation scholars identified by Time magazine, designed their presentation of Obama to take full advantage of his amorphous “goodness.”

{Obviously, Obama and his team are not fans of free thought.  If they were they would not be using practises that are intended to override, subvert, or sidestep rationality. Expect someone to say that they were only doing what’s best for the people, which is the standard starting point for totalitarian aspirations. Our world is filled with such anti-humanist practises, whether by business people or ignoble politicians.}

Like Oedipus, the thralls are now at various places before, upon and past the threshold of recognizing that “their eyes lied.” In short, Obama is not providing the “anti-Bush, anti-politics as usual, and anti-whatever is keeping them down” leadership they expected to see.  In fact, to their horror, he is doing the things that he has typically done as an elected official and as a candidate.  {FISA stands as the archetypal example.}

What remains is how they will choose to “blind” themselves to alter the organ that misled their actions.

In my humble opinion, a good place to start is to re-cognize the dangers inherent in wanting others to do our thinking and acting for us in the political sphere.  What do you think?

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Ledbetter Act without the Paycheck Fairness Act = A nice car without wheels

Dearest Conflucians,  our great MadamaB left a comment in DakiniKat’s Madelin Laundries post yesterday:

madamab, on January 29th, 2009 at 5:26 pm Said:

Kat – Amazingly, Senate Democrats gave away the Paycheck Fairness Act in order to get the Lilly Ledbetter Act. Can you believe this sh*t? And no one is talking about it.

Link

Everything he does, you have to ask “what’s the catch?”

Some in Obama-lala-land (I will not link, but you know the cult sites) are claiming that we should just STFU and be happy that Obama is throwing us a bone with the Ledbetter Act – actually, they make it out to be Christmas, Hanukkah and New Year’s all rolled up into one.

But there’s a problem.  Here an excerpt pointing out the differences between the two:

Rather, the Court held that when an employer issues paychecks pursuant to a pay system that is facially nondiscriminatory and neutrally applied, the mere fact that such paychecks may give present effect to past discrimination occurring outside the charging period is insufficient to restart the statute of limitations.  The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act expressly overturns this decision and provides that every paycheck continues a distinct discriminatory practice. Such a rule virtually eliminates the statute of limitations on some pay discrimination claims. Indeed, current employees – and even retirees who still receive pay or benefits – could conceivably file lawsuits based on discriminatory practices that occurred decades earlier, provided such plaintiffs could link their claims to compensation received within the statute of limitations. The Ledbetter Fair Pay Act would apply to pay discrimination claims brought under Title VII, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act.

The Paycheck Fairness Act, which amends the Equal Pay Act, also targets unequal pay practices through a number of provisions.

• The bill increases the potential damages for EPA claims by allowing the recovery of unlimited compensatory and punitive damages.
• It eliminates a key affirmative defense. Employers currently can defend EPA claims by proving they based their compensation decisions on “any factor other than sex.” The Paycheck Fairness Act replaces this defense with the “bona fide factor other than sex” defense, which only applies if the employer demonstrates the decision-making factor: (a) is not based upon or derived from a sex-based differential in compensation; (b) is job-related with respect to the position in question; and (c) is consistent with business necessity. But, this defense would not apply if the employee establishes the employer refused to adopt an alternative employment practice serving the same business purpose that would not create a pay differential.

• The bill prohibits employers from retaliating against employees who discuss their compensation with co-workers.
• It expressly permits class actions wherein similarly situated employees who do not wish to participate in the action would have to “opt out” of the action. This is an expansion because employees must presently “opt in” to collective actions under the EPA.

I’m no labor attorney, nor a politician, nor a law scholar (paging Heidi Li Feldman!), just a laid-off Juanita Lunchbucket who wants equal pay for equal work so I can earn my arroz and habichuelas just like the guy/gal in my same position and experience.

Help me understand this if I’m wrong:  the Paycheck Fairness Act enforces and strengthens unequal pay claims while the Ledbetter Act just buys the claimant more time.  Is that right? If that’s the case, it’s a another bamboozle by the Bamboozler -in-Chief.

Here’s what the NYT says (again, h/t MadamaB):

After signing the corrective measure, Mr. Obama ought to press Congress to continue the fight for equal pay for equal work by passing a second bill — the Paycheck Fairness Act — that would further strengthen current laws against gender-based wage discrimination. Among other things, this bill, which Mr. Obama co-sponsored while in the Senate, would make stronger remedies available under the existing Equal Pay Act; ensure that courts require employers to show that wage disparities are job-related, not sex-based, and consistent with business needs; and protect employees who discuss salary information from retaliation.

These changes may not please some business interests. But women still make, on average, only 78 cents for every dollar earned by men for performing substantially the same work. To narrow that yawning wage gap, tighter rules are plainly in order.

The House, to its credit, passed both bills. But Democratic leaders in the Senate peeled off the Paycheck Fairness Act after determining that pairing the two measures could jeopardize the chamber’s approval of the more familiar Ledbetter bill.

The new president can play a useful role in helping to rally Senate Democrats not to rest on their Ledbetter laurels and to persuade Republicans to come on board. In the House, only three Republicans voted in favor of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. In the Senate, five did. By now, Republican opposition to civil rights and pay equity is not surprising. That makes it all the sadder.

(ACK!!!!!!!  Here they go again with the damn blame shifting?  Obama doesn’t NEED Republican support, he has Congress & House!)

And without the Paycheck Fairness Act, Ledbetter Act is just garnish, IMHO. It’s like being sold a car without wheels.   Ledbetter allows 180 day extension on every paycheck that was allegedly discriminated due to pay, but without the Paycheck Fairness Act, women have no increased protection against wage discrimination – and it will make it harder for women to sue an employer who is discriminating.

UPDATE for the PUMA paparazzi stalkers: If Obama co-endorsed the Paycheck Fairness act as a senator, what’s stopping him from signing it into law – from forcing the Senate to vote on behalf of the Paycheck Fairness Act like Obama did to House Democrats when he ordered them to drop the Family Planning Provision?:

Democratic Leaders Likely To Remove Family Planning Provision From Economic Stimulus Proposal

President Obama has asked House Democrats to cut a provision of their economic stimulus proposal that would give states more flexibility to expand Medicaid coverage of family planning services, the AP/Austin American-Statesman reports. According to the AP/American-Statesman, several Democratic officials said that House leaders likely would abandon the provision at Obama’s request, which was made “at a time when the administration is courting Republican critics of the legislation.” A final decision is expected on Tuesday, when Obama is scheduled to meet separately with House and Senate Republicans.

Why sell us a car without the wheels?  What good is it?

And if we don’t fight for the whole enchilada,  healthcare, equal pay, equal rights, voter rights, civil rights, etc.,  we’ll be fed kibbles and bits worth sold to us  as Equality filet mignon.

Equality is not something you can fragment into pieces.  Either we have equal rights, or we don’t.  And guess what?  WE DON’T.

If women want any rights more than they’s got, why don’t they just take them, and not be talking about it.

Sojourner Truth

No Republican Left Behind

Suckas!

Well, I don’t know about you, but I am simply THRILLED with the liberal slant of Barack Obama’s economic policy. As you know, I’ve been a tad…put off, shall we say, by some of his nods in the conservative direction. You know, what with anti-choice CDS sufferer Tom Daschle being put in charge of things like HHS and health care reform, and that Rick Warren invocation brouhaha, and the whole Sanjay Gupta “I Lie About Our Health Care System On The Teevee” Surgeon General thing,  and elevating anti-choice/anti-gay marriage Tim Kaine to the head of the DNC, and staying the course with Robert Gates…and that’s just in the past few weeks! I’ve hardly had time to freak out about the Middle East, Russia, Caroline Kennedy or the coming Depression, what with all this tsuris!

So, our President-Elect is on the socially conservative side, and well, he might not “end the war in Iraq” after all. But who cares? As we know, those issues are quite unimportant when you consider that Obama really knows how to fix the economy. I am sure he will seize this unique opportunity to shore up the ravaged institutions of FDR’s New Deal and begin to rebuild a strong middle class and fill in the Reaganite holes in the social safety net. After all, that’s what Democrats do!

Ahhhh, who the fuck am I kidding?

Did you read what he said today? Did you? I swear to the Giant Green Lizard, my liberal eyeballs were bleeding by the time I was finished. Misery loves company, so let’s take a closer look. We’ll skip all the Orwellian nonsense at the beginning about changing and believing, yada yada yada (wonder if the Groper, Jon Favreau, wrote it?).

Here’s what he says about health care reform:

To improve the quality of our health care while lowering its cost, we will make the immediate investments necessary to ensure that within five years all of America’s medical records are computerized. This will cut waste, eliminate red tape, and reduce the need to repeat expensive medical tests. But it just won’t save billions of dollars and thousands of jobs, it will save lives by reducing the deadly but preventable medical errors that pervade our health care system.

Um, huh? Is that it? Modernizing computer records? I’m sorry, but could he think ANY SMALLER? Do we really need to discuss the massive problems our health care system faces? And how will this cover the 47 million without health care now? Besides…is it me, or is this idea kind of, um, unoriginal?

In 2003, President Bush said he wanted most Americans’ medical records to be computerized within 10 years. The savings from moving away from paper could rise into the hundreds of millions a year, the president said. And electronic records can reduce medical errors, proponents said.

Could it get any worse? Oh, Yes, it can! The words of our Glorious Leader on education:

To give our children the chance to live out their dreams in a world that’s never been more competitive, we will equip tens of thousands of schools, community colleges and public universities with 21st-century classrooms, labs and libraries. We’ll provide new computers, new technology, and new training for teachers so that students in Chicago and Boston can compete with kids in Beijing for the high-tech, high-wage jobs of the future.

Chicago and Boston, huh? Gosh, wonder why he picked those areas out as examples. I’ll tell you something, the inner city schools in many other ares of the country need help too…but then again, Obama needs to keep his patrons in his home city and Uncle Teddy’s home city fat and happy!

Anywho, that stuff about new technology and the jobs of the future sounds kinda familiar. Where have I heard it before?

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
January 21, 2004

Fact Sheet: Jobs for the 21st Century

Presidential Action:

In his State of the Union Address, President Bush announced Jobs for the 21st Century — a comprehensive plan to better prepare workers for jobs in the new millennium by strengthening post-secondary education and job training and improving high school education. This plan includes over $500 million in new funding for education and job training programs.

(snip)

Improving High School Education: The President’s plan will also improve the quality of education at our Nation’s high schools and better prepare students for success in higher education and the job market — including $100 million to help striving readers and $120 million to improve math education.

Saturday: No power on Oahu

The power is out on Oahu after a thunderstorm yesterday:

HONOLULU (AP) — The island of Oahu lost power during heavy rain and lightning, blacking out the population of some 800,000 people and thousands of tourists including vacationing President-elect Barack Obama.

Residents were advised by the power company and civil authorities to stay home after the Friday evening outage and to conserve water. Several radio stations broadcast emergency information.

Maybe my memory is really bad but when I lived there as a kid, one of the things I noticed was that  there *weren’t* any thunderstorms on Oahu.  It could be that I lived there during the two years that they had freak weather patterns but it was something I definitely noticed.  No lightning.

It is the rainy season in the Hawaiian islands but most of us would adjust fairly well.  My older daughter lives on Maui and she told me that Christmas day was unusually hot.  It’s probably just a freak weather occurence.

Then again, Obama is staying at a villa on the east side of Oahu (very swank) and apparently, Linda Lingle, the governor, had to take an emergency generator out to him.  Obama, in turn, said he would just go back to sleep.  Yeah, right, have the secret service freak out during the emergency on your behalf while you catch some Z’s.  Typical.

In other news: Lady Caroline says that 9/11 spurred her to public service. That’s great!  I’m just not sure there’s much left to do on The Pile eight years after.  But it’s swell that 9/11 has finally gotten her attention.  I’m pretty sure I would have noticed if she had decided to walk Ground Zero while it was still smokin’ like Citizen Hillary did.

Hillary senatating post-9/11

Or if she had rounded up her friends and taken some hot dish down to the firefighters who sacrificed their lungs for their buried colleagues.  That would have been nice.  Or if she had lifted one of her perfectly manicured fingers to go public about what she was going to do about the plight of Afghan girls that would have demonstrated global concern in a Peace Corpsy kinda way.  Does she even remember the Peace Corps?

“Ask not what Caroline can do for her country.  Ask what her country can do for Caroline.”

Caroline is so obviously not cut out for this job:

She agreed to sit down for interviews Friday with The Associated Press and NY1 television.

“I was trying to respect the process. It is not a campaign,” she said. “It was misinterpreted. If I were to be selected, I understand public servants have to be accessible.”

Kennedy said she wished her brother, John F. Kennedy Jr., could see the drama that has developed over her quest for the Senate.

“He would be laughing his head off at seeing what’s going on right now,” she said.

Yes, he would be laughing his head off.  He wasn’t the brightest of the Kennedy clan but he had more charisma and better political instincts.  Never explain why you are so obviously avoiding the voters. They’ll never buy it anyway.

But what does Caroline think he’d be laughing about? That she is actually facing some resistance to her nervy queue jumping? Maybe the irony of it all that now, after 51 years of avoiding the spotlight, now that she wants to start at the top like her family always told her she could, she is finding herself the butt of ridicule and hostility? That she can’t trade on her name after all? She might have to put some kind of effort into *campaigning*?

Fancy that.

Obama: Dancing with the Ones That Brung Him

Barack Obama, Committed Christian

So, Obama wants Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration, eh?

This Rick Warren?

“Of course I want to reduce the number of abortions,” Warren told Beliefnet Editor-in-Chief Steven Waldman when asked if he was going to work with the Obama administration to achieve an abortion reduction agenda or if he thinks that the effort is a charade.

“But to me it is kind of a charade in that people say ‘We believe abortions should be safe and rare,’” he added.

“Don’t tell me it should be rare. That’s like saying on the Holocaust, ‘Well, maybe we could save 20 percent of the Jewish people in Poland and Germany and get them out and we should be satisfied with that,’” Warren said. “I’m not satisfied with that. I want the Holocaust ended.”

Rick Warren thinks that women who have abortions can credibly be compared to Hitler. Godwin’s law, apparently, does not apply to people with scary ladyparts.

But don’t fret, female Obamabots. I’m sure the President-Elect doesn’t endorse those views. He’s just trying to have a…say it with me now…discussion.

• As he’s said again and again, the President-elect is committed to bringing together all sides of the faith discussion in search of common ground. That’s the only way we’ll be able to unite this country with the resolve and common purpose necessary to solve the challenges we face.

Horse. Pucky.

When you give a raving homophobe and misogynist like Rick Warren a national audience of tens of millions, the discussion is over.

Oh, did I not mention the homophobia? My bad. Here, watch Rick Warren say that gay marriage is a sin, and equivalent to incest and pedophilia. And of course, the “moderate” Mr. Warren was a most insistent proponent of Proposition 8 in California.

Let’s talk about “all sides of the faith discussion.” Again, this is a giant steaming load of Unity Pony crap. Where’s the rabbi, Barack? Where’s the imam? Where have they been this whole time, while Obama was on his “faith, family and values” tours and giving Donnie McClurkin and Douglas Kmiec a high profile during his campaign and organizing evangelical Christian programs like “The Joshua Generation” for the young-uns and meeting with the members of the “faith community” in Chicago (which was overwhelmingly evangelical and Christian, coincidentally) and pledging to e expand upon Bush’s faith-based initiatives (98.3% of the funding of which went to evangelical Christian organizations, coincidentally), and papering the country with flyers entitled “Barack Obama, Committed Christian?”

Based on the past and the present and the future plans of President-Elect Obama, it appears that “all sides of the faith discussion” includes Christian, Christian and Christian. Sorry, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists et al. You are under that darn bus too! Hope you didn’t expect him to give a flying fuck what you think or believe.

Monday: No blank check for YOU

President Elect Obama, the Fresh Prince of Bill Ayers, gave an interview to 60 Minutes last night.  The New York Times watched it so we wouldn’t have to.  Senator Abstract Painting finally told us what he really represents.  In short, banks and financial institutions get all the money in the Treasury; little people losing their houses?  Ehhh, not so much:

President-elect Barack Obama said in an interview on the CBS program “60 Minutes” on Sunday that one of his top priorities will be to “restore a sense of balance” to the regulation of financial markets, but rejected the idea of a so-called “new New Deal” for America.

Mr. Obama acknowledged the parallels between the current economic crisis and the problems of the Great Depression, but said that he supported solutions that are “true to our times.”

“For us to simply recreate what existed back in the 30s in the 21st century — I think would be missing the boat,” Mr. Obama said in the interview. “I think the basic principle that government has a role to play in kick-starting an economy that has ground to a halt is sound. I think our basic principle that this is a free market system and that that has worked for us, that it creates innovation and risk taking, I think that’s a principle that we’ve got to hold to as well.”

Didja get that?  Mr. Smartest President EVAH does not believe in doing his research, finding out what worked in the past and updating those solutions for the benefit of average everyday Americans.  No, he believes in the “innovation and risk taking” of the “free market”.  Well, I’m glad we got that settled.  It only took us a year to figure out W.O.R.M. (What Obama Really Meant).

But wait!  There’s more:

In his first post-election interview, the president-elect also reiterated his support for providing additional assistance to Americans facing home foreclosure as well as government involvement in bailing out the troubled automobile industry.

“It can’t be a blank check,” Mr. Obama said of a plan to help automakers. “My hope is that over the course of the next week, between the White House and Congress, the discussions are shaped around providing assistance but making sure that that assistance is conditioned on labor, management, suppliers, lenders, all the stakeholders coming together with a plan — what does a sustainable U.S. auto industry look like?”

No blank check for you, says Lord of Fiscal Responsibility Who Was MORE Than Happy To Vote on the FIRST Paulsen Bailout Bill That Was Nothing But a Blank Check.  When that first bill came around that gave us taxpayers the unique opportunity to buy up all of the banks’ toxic assets but not get anything in return, Obama was totally onboard with that.  Someone in the Senate, we still don’t know who, snuck a provision in the second bill that gave the government the option of actually owning pieces of those banks.  We’re silent partners, pretty much, but at least if the money ever comes back, we’re entitled to a substantial chunk of it- theoretically.  But this was not a requirement for Obama.  He was content to write the banks a blank check.

Now, he could be singing a different tune in a couple of months.  Maybe someone like Paul Krugman can school him on what The New Deal really was all about.  That way, he won’t end up sounding like clueless laissez-faire free marketeer George Will.  We hope this happens behind closed doors would be far less embarrassing than doing it on national TV:

Stimulating the banks, er, economy with money may not be enough.  A NEW New Deal may indeed be what is called for, complete with restructuring of mortgages with HOLC, government projects that put people to work and affordable healthcare for all Americans so that companies like GM can dig themselves out of the hole they dug for themselves by designing nothing but gas guzzling asphalt boats.  It’s doable.  I mean, he’s only going to have a Democratic Congress to play with.  If things get tough in Appalachia, even the hardest hearted Blue Dog Democrat could be pressured to bend.  Heck, it worked so well with delegates at the convention, I can’t believe Obama’s already lost his touch in 4 months.

You can see where all of this is heading.  We now see Obama for what he is.  The presidency has solidified him out of his air of mystery.  He doesn’t have to play the game anymore.  He could have just said, “Screw it, I’m a Democrat and I cherish the principles of my party.  I’m going to restore the social safety net.  Take *that*, David Broder!”  But he did not.  Personally, I’m angry.  The money is saving the asses of the people who innovated and risk took us into this mess but when it comes to a solution for the rest of us, a New Deal is already off the table.  He must have learned that from Pelosi.  Well, his backers got what they wanted- the ability to to whatever the f^&* they want without consequence and absolutely no obligation to the rest of us.  What’s that you say, Obamaphiles?  That’s not what you wanted??

Tsk, tsk, $600,000,000 in small money donations just doesn’t buy what it used to.

Speaking of money, MABlue pointed me to this chilling article in Portfolio about The End of Wall Street.  Read it and you will want to go sharpen your pitchfork and hunt down the person who dreamt up 401K’s.  There isn’t a prison harsh enough for the people who did this to us.

In the meantime, PUMAs, it’s time to work off those turkey dinners in advance.  We’ve been sedentary for a year now and we need to get up and boogie before the fat hardens.  So, make a commitment to yourselves to put in at least 30 minutes of heart pumping activity into your day this week.  I’m hitting the fitness center at work.  I have stepper today, chisel tomorrow, treading on Wednesday, Spin on Thursday and Zumba on Friday.  That will entitle me to a helping of stuffing with gravy.

Here’s some morning music from Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings to get you started:

Post Debate Thread: Beautiful theories destroyed by Ugly facts

So, who won and why?  I watched the debate with the sound off and the impressions I get from each candidate are:

• McCain- solid, unflappable.  A sure port in a storm.  He shows his thought on his face.  His eyebrows are very expressive.  He is both bemused and impish.  He will stand there an listen to you, taking it all in and have some internal monologue that he will decorate with humor, sarcasm and mischief.  I wish he would look at the camera more to appeal directly to viewers but this may be an artifact of addressing a chamber that is always half empty.
• Obama- youthful, playful, like a young puppy.  He moves constantly.  His opening statement was good.  He looked into the camera and seemed intense and puposeful.  Then in the rest of the debate, he moved around from side to side.  He punctuates his words with head bobs in the style of a preacher, ala MLK or Jesse Jackson.  His style is very reminiscent of African American icons and statesmen, which is not a bad thing, but it is imitative.  He does not have the same solidity of McCain.  One imagines that a slight gust of wind could carry Obama away.

What did I miss?

Debate Live Blog: Thread 2

Join the debate.  What are you seeing and hearing?

To view Conflucian Style, try the following:

1. First, watch it on C-Span where your propaganda filter is minimal.
2. If you have a DVR, set the debate to record and watch it the first time through with the sound off.
3. Then go through the DVR recorded portion, verrrrryyyy sloooowwwlly.  Take as much time as possible to parse every word until you get to its true meaning.

Go!