The Human Conspiracy Blog-space

Senator Obama’s post convention bounce so far is only 3-4% according to Scott Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll released today (46/43) measured from an earlier tie, or a 4% bounce when the self-described “leaners” are included. [See the update above.]

Rasmussen: “Obama’s four-point lead reported on Friday morning is based on polling data collected Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights. Virtually all of the interviews were completed before Obama’s acceptance speech and it is impossible to tell what will happen next. Normally, the bounce would continue for a few days. But, this year, with McCain’s VP announcement and the Republican convention happening so quickly, we are in uncharted territory.”

Link to Rassmussen: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/  . 

I prefer the Rasmussen numbers because they tend not to exaggerate swings in opinion and have, in recent history, been better at predicting actual electoral behavior.  But I note that Gallop has Obama ahead 49/41, an 8 point bounce from the pre-convention 45/45 tie. Link to Gallup. http://www.gallup.com/home.aspx

Recall that John Kerry’s post convention bounce in 2002 was reportedly only 4% (50/44) from an earlier small lead.  Senator Kerry’s bounce was described as “anemic” at the time.

The Obama’s acceptance speech was watched by 12-14 million more than the 26 million viewers who watched Hillary’s speech, which was several million more than those who watched Kerry’s speech in 2002. Note that the convention audience at its peak still represented a fraction of total viewership.  Gone are the days when a single event can rivet the entire nation’s attention. On the other hand, televised events have a vital afterlife on YouTube which is a second and interesting battleground where both candidates are presently represented by clips, adds and hit pieces.

It is too early to assess the impact of McCain’s Friday choice of Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin, a mother of five with strong anti-corruption credentials whose relevant experience level is at least comparable to Obama’s (because hers is executive), while her name recognition is low at the moment. 

Key democrats were nervous and unsettled about Obama’s candidacy going into the convention.  Coming out, they are still nervous and at least “concerned”.  It may be dawning on the movers and shakers of the democratic party that their candidate is not running against George Bush. This is something that candidate McCain can be expected to make increasingly evident.

The GOP convention is Monday through Thursday, September 1-4, unless the incoming, New Orleans aimed hurricane causes a delay…. 

The election is November 4.

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Thirty hours after my post here, a Washington Times analyst has picked up my "Biden is Obama's Cheney" theme.  Link: http://www.washtimes.com/news/2008/aug/25/analysis-obama-picks-biden/ .

JBG

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Senator Biden is about Dick Cheney’s age and enjoys some of the former Defense Secretary’s foreign policy / national security gravitas.  “Blue Dog” democrats would have much preferred Biden at the top of the ticket. Indeed, Victor Davis Hanson’s hilarious essay of 8-21 (http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson082108.html ) implies that Barack himself might agree. [Hanson is a Hoover scholar and a conservative democrat.]

Cheney brought only Wyoming to the electoral mix and Biden brings only Delaware; in each case no electoral value was or is added, since both were in the tank for the nominee anyway.  But each VP nominee brought what the presidential candidate (and –outcome pending – the president elect) was clearly understood to need: adult supervision. 

But Governor Bush was required to listen to Mr. Cheney because of a family legacy and was likely to heed the VP because of his sheer force of personality.  There is no particular reason to believe that a President-elect Obama will listen to the loquacious Mr. Biden more than to Nancy Pelosi. 

JBG

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Gayness, Ecclesial and Secular

THE ENTIRE ARTICLE, IN EXPANDED FORM IS NOW POSTED IN PDF FORMAT AT THE FOLLOWING LINK: http://jaygaskill.com/AboutGaynessEcclesialAndSecular.pdf 

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Our “hobbit” friends are the ‘nice people” who live in benign bubbles, enjoying their gardens and teatime (or their local equivalents). They expect bad news is best handled by audacious hope and persistent denial. They tend to think that if we don’t make trouble, none will come our way.  They are children in adult clothing, homes and jobs who are protected from adult thinking by a set of “hobbit managers”. These are the opinion leaders who have persuaded their charges that the ideology of peace is the best way to achieve peace in fact.  “Don’t worry, be happy: vote as we tell you and you will have ‘peace’.”

Hobbits tend to raise narcissistic children who develop “anger issues” and “self esteem” problems because facing the Real World without having been equipped with a robust moral code always creates a sense of resentment and betrayal.  This is very confusing for the hobbit parents.

Assume that most of us enjoy undamaged brains and normally functioning minds. Yet, confusion remains a common fact of the human condition. Yes, I’m focusing on the current disordered thinking patterns among the loony situational pacifists who tend to see the jihad against us as a problem in the insufficient availability of mental health resources. But, truth be told, confusions are hardly confined to them. 

Everyone seems confused. We are entitled to ask, WHY?  Is the world really that hard to understand?

The two most common forms of confusion are about values and facts. Confusion always stems from conflicts in the former (“How can you say you love peace and then support the troops?”) and seeming disconnections in the latter (“California raised taxes on high earners and tax revenue dropped”). 

Many ordinarily intelligent people tend to be thrown off balance by the drama of seemingly inconsistent values of apparent equal importance; the specter of values clashing in those recurring irreconcilable conflicts that Real Life never fails to provide is … confusing to them. This is because their minds were poorly trained. Anyone who expects to find harmony within a mix of distinct values, all of which are seen as “Good” will be confused by the Real World..  Their minds become confused because they are operating within a non-realistic paradigm: They were taught to see the world as if the overriding principle of all our life interactions were harmony. 

But their minds have not identified the creative function of conflict; they are unable to discern any overriding principle that may be operating throughout the apparent chaos (like conflict engendered development); and they miss the essential fact of Life in the Real World – Evil is real and it is locked in an eternal struggle with the Good.

Almost everyone is confused at one time or other when presented with a situation that contains too many separate facts to integrate within the necessary time frame… or too few facts to come up with a well integrated reality model.

Examples of this variety of the “too much complexity” or “too much simplicity” confusion can be strung along an axis. At one end we experience the problem of navigating the chaotic info-swamp; at the other we get hung up trying to decode one of those impenetrable wisdom nuggets like a Heraclitus’ aphorism (e.g., “you can’t step into the same river twice”).

The key to clarity is always found in the EMT / ambulance model. We need an overriding priority, like “optimize your available time by using triage”, and we need to realize that time sometimes demands a decision NOW and WITHOUT ALL THE POSSIBLE INFORMATION.

Practical people have Common Sense.  When they are sufficiently informed, they always tend to ask the right questions and draw optimal conclusions.  When not, they tend to say “Oh well”, and then move on.  Common Sense never gets hung up on the quest for perfection because a reasonable optimum beats an unreasonable obsession any day, any time.  Common sense swaps a spare tire on the road and repairs it later.  Common sense recognizes that when we are attacked by thugs, a therapeutic response to the attackers can wait until we “take care of business.”

When well informed, common sense fills in the blanks quite well thank you. Here are three aphoristic bumper stickers from the realm of Common Sense. I suspect that Heraclitus would approve…

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As Published On

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As Published On

→The Human Conspiracy Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog3

→The Policy Think Site: http://www.jaygaskill.com

All contents, unless otherwise indicated are

Copyright © 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 by Jay B. Gaskill

LINK to a Print Version of this piece; http://jaygaskill.com/ThePetroLords.htm

THE PETRO-ABUSE SYNDROME

What do these four governments have in common at the moment?

The Chavez regime in Venezuela  

The Putin – Medvedev regime in Russia

The Khamenei and Ahmadinejad clique in Iran,

The former military regimes and the new Yar'adua civilian regime in Nigeria

Look at these current approximate oil production figures in millions of barrels per day:

Russia              12.87

Saudi Arabia    8.91

Iran                  3.87

Iraq                  2.50

U. A. E.           2.66

Kuwait             2.34

Nigeria             1.90

With the exception of Russia, the oil extraction and processing technology was supplied by Euro-American technology and personnel. 

Each country has a history of expropriation of its oil assets, placing them under the direct political control of a ruling clique or regime. 

With two notable regime exceptions (and two almost-exceptions), each country has a history of oil revenue funded mischief in the region. 

The two major exceptions are the United Arab Emirates (an atypically diverse Arab country ruled by a hereditary presidency that has developed a strong manufacturing base) and Kuwait (a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament), neither of which have a history of Islamic fanaticism, although Kuwait improvidently took Iraq’s side in its long war with Iran. 

The two almost-exceptions are:

[1] Iraq - because of the currently benign regime change, reversing a strikingly robust history of oil-fueled mischief; and

[2] Saudi Arabia  which is a nominally friendly non-democratic family oligarchy, the ruling clan of which is thoroughly corrupted by wealth and infiltrated by a simmering subset of angry Islamists who have used the Wahhabi ideology to promote terrorism.

The greed and power lures that inhabit the darker side of the human psyche always seek to exploit openings in our economic and political arrangements. Money buys power, military technology, amoral atomic scientists, missiles, and more.  Easy money almost guarantees this will happen given enough time.

Greed is usually mitigated by economic failure.  But power lures are only contained via internal checks and balances, by starvation or by outright defeat. When the internal checks are ineffective, starvation works better than defeat in the long run, although sometimes it happens too slowly and hurts too many innocent people.

The American political design (the genius of which is the product of a perfect storm of 18^th century character, courage and worldly wisdom) seeks to divide power against itself. But ideologies and religious fanaticisms tend to work in the opposite direction.  The psychological dynamics of bruised resurgent nationalism (think post Versailles Germany and post-soviet Russia) can operate in exactly the same dangerous way. 

When an expropriated money-well falls into the exclusive, plenary control of any governing clique, the effect is like tossing firearms into a drunken mob.  Sober reflection and ethical debate is a rare exception. The lust for hegemony is nearly irresistible.  

Without internal checks and balances we are left to the external ones.  While no single nation can afford (and we shouldn’t attempt) to take up arms at every difficulty, injustice and evil in the world, the naiveté of the policy pacifist is the path to ultimate enslavement.  [Note I identified policy pacifism, not individual pacifism. We need not all be warriors, but we all need warriors as well as healers.]

This is because human nature is not perfect.  There will always be thugs who seek to lord it over the weak and innocent.  They will not police themselves.  They are not frightened of the UN.  They do not quail before diplomats. 

As Thomas Jefferson put it—“Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every Free State”. I would update Jefferson’s advice to accommodate the realities of the 21^st century’s high-tech military as follows:

If we are to remain free, we need to be in an increasingly free world. Therefore every citizen of a Free State must be a soldier or the soldier’s friend:  The active support of robust, effective armed forces capable, ready and willing to do what is necessary to keep freedom alive and well is the obligation of every citizen. Both tyranny and liberty are contagious, but only liberty, protected by wise internal political arrangements, can inoculate against tyranny.  If liberty does not spread, then tyranny will.  We can’t remain free ourselves if we are not its champion.

JBG

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David brooks was at the top of his game today in his New York Times Piece, “Lord of the Memes”, a wonderful riff on the intellectual affectations of those insufferably better people we meet at the better parties. 

“You must remember that there have been three epochs of intellectual affectation. The first, lasting from approximately 1400 to 1965, was the great age of snobbery.”

“This code … was replaced by the code of the Higher Eclectica. The old hierarchy of the arts was dismissed as hopelessly reactionary. Instead, any cultural artifact produced by a member of a colonially oppressed out-group was deemed artistically and intellectually superior.”

 “But on or about June 29, 2007, human character changed. That, of course, was the release date of the first iPhone. On that date, media displaced culture.”… “Inventors, artists and writers come and go, but buzz is forever.”

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This is all about ancient wisdom, and those insufferable “one-uppers” among us.

Pop quiz:

Q:  What was the Tenth Commandment?

Ah… envy, one of the top three candidates for the original sin.  The tendency towards envy is so ingrained in the human psyche that it has supplied the driving force for most of the murderous mass movements of the last 88 years. 

Here’s the dirty little secret. The subset of the proto-intelligentsia to which David Brooks refers do not like to see themselves as “insensitive” or “uncaring”, and many of them have at least a passing acquaintance with the Decalogue. Some of them are even willing to acknowledge that most of the “Commandments” (especially when seen as strong recommendations) have “considerable merit”. 

This is why I suspect that the one-uppers have been playing an “envy trick” game by exploiting a “loophole” in the Decalogue.

The game goes like this:

“What can I do to promote your envy without actually succumbing to it myself?  [Note the obvious self deception here.]  “I’ll be conspicuously more sophisticated and hip than you are so that you will be as envy driven as (secretly) am I.

And that loophole, you ask?  We can always avoid feeling envy by being on top. 

I loved David Brooks’ article and recommend you read it before you or the link expire. Here’s the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/opinion/08brooks.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin

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The Dark Knight and Heath Ledger's death.

Do read the excellent article by Professor Maria Chang posted at the following link.  Go to http://fundamentaloption.blogspot.com/ .

 JBG

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As Published On

→The Human Conspiracy Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog3

→The Policy Think Site: http://www.jaygaskill.com

All contents, unless otherwise indicated are

Copyright © 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 by Jay B. Gaskill

MONDAY, AUGUST 4, 2008

OBAMA’S POLITICAL WEAKNESS

McCain has a slight lead over Obama in the polls.  For details, go to the Rasmussen Report at http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/daily_presidential_tracking_poll  .

This may be the beginning of the ‘North Eastern liberal’ problem for the democrats, the jinx that sank Mr. Kerry and every other democratic presidential nominee for whom that label could be applied since JFK.  It should be remembered that President Kennedy’s campaign was thematically closer to McCain’s – he attacked from the right on foreign policy, if we are permitted to adjust for the context.

How could this be?  There is a persistent cultural and ideological disconnect between the Democratic Party’s activist core and the rest of the party.  A snapshot of the democratic majority in the House and Senate’s real composition is very revealing.

The House “Blue Dogs” are not “Obama-crats”. 

Conservative and moderate democrats in the House of Representatives self identify as Blue Dog Democrats. The origin of the Blue Dog term is obscure but my favorite story is that in recent years the conservatives in the party (originally Yellow Dogs) were so frozen out of the mainstream democratic agenda that they turned blue.  Most of the current crop of blues was elected from districts that voted for President Bush.  The democratic majority in the House is 233 to 202, but there are 39 self-acknowledged Blue Dogs.  This produces a House that is more conservative than Senator Obama 241 to 194. 

I believe that the House more nearly reflects the core political attitude of the country than the Obama candidacy.

The “New Democrat Coalition” is the mirror Blue Dog group in the US Senate. It was founded in 2000 by a group of Senators that included Lieberman and Bayh (who have rarely voted with the junior senator from Illinois) and reportedly now includes 20 members.  The nominal Democratic majority in the Senate was 51-49 but when adjusted for its NDC members, the Senate is probably more conservative than Obama by 69 to 31.

This is why Obama is trying to tack sharply to the center.  But his weakening poll numbers suggest that Mr. Obama’s reincarnation as a moderate to conservative democrat is not taking. 

I suspect that Hillary is not disappointed.

JBG

A Roster of Blue Dogs in the House:

Congressman Mike Arcuri

New York, 24th District

Congresswoman Melissa Bean

Illinois, 8th District

Congressman Dan Boren

Oklahoma, 2nd District

Congressman Dennis Cardoza

California, 18th District

Congressman Jim Cooper

Tennessee, 5th District

Congressman Lincoln Davis

Tennessee, 4th District

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords

Arizona, 8th District

Congresswoman Jane Harman

California, 36th District

Congressman Tim Holden

Pennsylvania, 17th District

Congressman Tim Mahoney

Florida, 16th District

Congressman Mike McIntyre

North Carolina, 7th District

Congressman Dennis Moore

Kansas, 3rd District

Congressman Earl Pomeroy

North Dakota, At-Large

Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez

California, 47th District

Congressman Heath Shuler

North Carolina, 11th District

Congressman Gene Taylor

Mississippi, 4th District

Congressman Joe Baca

California, 43rd District

Congressman Marion Berry

Arkansas, 1st District

Congressman Leonard Boswell

Iowa, 3rd District

Congressman Christopher Carney

Pennsylvania, 10th District

Congressman Jim Costa

California, 20th District

Congressman Joe Donnelly

Indiana, 2nd District

Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand

New York, 20th District

Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin

South Dakota, At-Large

Congressman Jim Marshall

Georgia, 3rd District

Congressman Charlie Melancon

Louisiana, 3rd District

Congressman Patrick Murphy

Pennsylvania, 8th District

Congressman Mike Ross

Arkansas, 4th District

Congressman Adam Schiff

California, 29th District

Congressman Zack Space

Ohio, 18th District

Congressman Mike Thompson

California, 1st District

Congressman Charlie Wilson

Ohio, 6th District

Congressman John Barrow

Georgia, 12th District

Congressman Sanford Bishop

Georgia, 2nd District

Congressman Allen Boyd

Florida, 2nd District

Congressman Ben Chandler

Kentucky, 6th District

Congressman Bud Cramer

Alabama, 5th District

Congressman Brad Ellsworth

Indiana, 8th District

Congressman Bart Gordon

Tennessee, 6th District

Congressman Baron Hill

Indiana, 9th District

Congressman Nick Lampson

Texas, 22nd District

Congressman Jim Matheson

Utah, 2nd District

Congressman Mike Michaud

Maine, 2nd District

Congressman Collin Peterson

Minnesota, 7th District

Congressman John Salazar

Colorado, 3rd District

Congressman David Scott

Georgia, 13th District

Congressman John Tanner

Tennessee, 8th District

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