The Oldest Story in American Politics

This editorial is from the local Tucscon, AZ paper about the two young men battling to take Gabby Giffords' district in the House.  It's a hoot, a tad partisan perhaps (but not in an unfair way), and it's a wonderful caricature on the state of American Politics at this point of the 21st Century:

High school graduate Jesse Kelly defeated a Harvard educated Air Force pilot, a nice American named Dave Sitton and Frank “Spank me, I’m bad” Antenori. Now that the fat lady has sung and the primary is over it’s time for Act II of “The Barber of Civility”: A contest between the guy who looks like the Jurassic Park professor without the pith helmet and a carpet bagging gun-toting Bible thumping gosh and shucks Gomer Pyle who can channel Sean Hannity.
Jesse will do great among the unwashed, the rural, the illiterate, the scared goobers willing to cheerfully vote against their own interests, whipping up the groundlings and the believers with rhetorical red meat so rotten with the stench of untruths that honorable flies will choose to lay their eggs elsewhere. And he’ll smile like a man surprised he said something resembling a coherent thought. And the crowds who hate elitists and grammar and syntax and critical thinking will slap their knees and hoot. Scan the online comment section for repugnant speech and unfiltered anonymous hatred of all who differ with the strict conservative view and and you have found your archetypal "here come the black helicopters from Kenya" Kelly supporters.

And he will be petted and stroked and groomed and cooed to by right-wing think tanks and he’ll be showered, nay, flooded with bags of cash from big oil and all the right PACs looking for a manly mannequin with a pull string. And he’s a pretty one. He’s tall and he’s handsome and he’s tall and he’s handsome. Elderly church ladies who can't tell you who the Vice-President is gaze adoringly up at Kelly, yearning to vote for him and to adopt him and to feed him apple pie. Goodbye Mo Udall, hello empty plastic Ken doll.

And he will be angry at those who question his ascendency and his indignant finger will raise up to poke the sky and he’ll thunder incoherent talk radio babble about freedom and liberty and liberty from freedom and FOX news and the right-wing machine will give him their cameras and their spotlights every chance they can.

He won’t represent you. He will represent the Tea Party fanatics, talk radio freaks, the hand-wringing evangelicals, the gun fondlers and the paranoid. The rest of you are just not Americans, you Marxists and Communists and baby killers and you can go to Hell for all he cares. He’ll terrify crowds with his tales of the liberal straw man, the wretched progressive sasquatch, the abominable secularists and he’ll shake the scarecrow and he’ll offer himself up as the great peasant’s torch just waiting to be pressed into battle against the fictitious kindling. Swaddled in the flag and clutching his sacred Constitution he’ll weep for America and prophesy a plague of socialism sweeping across the land that will rival the fire-in-the-sky visions of St. John. Evolution is a head-shaker and abortion is for harlots and those who are not with him are devils. The Word is Limbaugh and he is the word made flesh. Hearken to Jesse all ye Limbaugh Christians, the end times are upon us and the Messiah has a high school diploma. Reject him not, oh ye dittoheads. The Republicans have their man, their folksy Baron of bromides, their King of jingos, raised in the womb of the right-wing echo chamber. And their darling will have an army of fanatical feverish shock jocks who’ll trumpet at the Walls of Jericho for He who is Him everyday until Medicare, Social Security, Big Government, Taxes, the department of Education, our rotting public education system, and those diabolical regulators and the United Nations all come tumbling down.

At the final debate with Giffords in 2010 he was figuratively hoisted on the shoulders of believers with pitchforks and torches who cheered their Messiah with yahoos and slogans in lieu of palm fronds. How can one be civil when you’re debating an opponent who lies and smirks and makes George Bush sound look Stephen Hawking? His adherents cannot be moved by facts, they have found faith.

Sinclair Lewis had his Main Street Babbitt, we have Kelly. This Barber v. Kelly election will truly be an American spectacle rivaling the Scopes Monkey trial because its outcome will define us for years. Are we an easily frightened America aching for the shallow comfort of the primitive and the superstitious or are we the fearless America that questions, that embraces the future, that is modern and smart? Mark Twain and H.L.Mencken savaged their respective times as the gilded ages of carnival hawkers and tent evangelists and smiling shoeshine salesmen and gullible rubes willing to say yes to any smiling carpet-bagger. They are gazing up from Hell longing to see this show unfold. This summer the oldest American story shall repeat itself.

PS:DT--My guess is that the exact characters might change, but the essential elements of the story will be repeated dozens if not scores of times in this election.  The New Gilded Age indeed!

Kevin Bacon Theory of Politics

The game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon", which I thought was Six Degrees of Separation, is the game where you try to trace your path to Kevin Bacon in the fewest possible steps.  In Six Degrees of Separation, the theory is that every one is connected within six degrees of separation.  This article states that the election has reached a point where they are starting to play this game more often.  Whether it be Mitt Romney and his "ties" to Ted Nugent who recently said that if President Obama wins the election this year that he will be dead or in jail by this time next year.  Or the most recent controversy of Democratic consultant Hilary Rosen, who has almost zero ties to the President, when she stated that Ann Romney has never worked a day in her life.  This happens during every election, but the truth is if someone tried hard enough they could probably find a connection between the President or Mitt Romney to anyone.  So we better all watch what we say because who knows...it might be overheard by someone who thinks I am connected to the President.  And if I am connected to the President and I said it, it might as well have come straight from his mouth. Give me a break.

http://nbcpolitics.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/17/11250791-analysis-kevin-bacon-theory-of-politics-overtakes-2012-campaign?lite

Racism in Iowa

http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/16/ruling-expected-soon-in-iowa-employment-discrimination-lawsuit/?hpt=us_t2

I was reading an article today on CNN about racism and dicrimination in Iowa. A lawsuit has been filed for over 6,000 African- American applicates who felt that racism had a role to play in them being looked over for a job. The beginning of the article tells a stroy about a clear racist bias that lead to a women not being considered for a job. The lawsuit was filed against Iowa. The following is a block of a paragraph that I have trouble with.

"The plaintiffs' attorneys say the discrimination is not necessarily a result of racism. They say the discriminatory hiring was often the result of implicit bias – an unconscious preference of the mostly white hiring officials for white applicants over black applicants."

This was the plaintiffs' attorney and it makes it sound as if they don't want this to been seen as racism because that will have a negative affect on Iowa. Everyone would like to believe that racism was a thing of the past that has already been delt with but I don't think that is near to true. I was watching a national baseball game the other day and it was Jackie Robinson day, a day were every player wears Jackie's number 42 and everyone is suppose to honor how Jackie was able to perserver through racism and break the color barrier in baseball. Some would say Jackie Robinson was one of the most important figures in African- American history and they wouldn't be lieing. What shocked me most was an announcers comments on the day. He spoke about how, even today, we are still fighting for people's basic rights to be equal. And he made a broad and suprising statement that he cautioned American's to start treating one-another with equality because we like to move on too soon on issues of inequality.

We have been talking about whether people would like to take the easy and wrong path compared to the hard and right path and this is how I feel people view equality and racism. They feel like the issue is over and we have moved on but this is just the easy and wrong path. The issue of equality will always be there and we can't ignore it.

Do you feel racism is still an issue today? I have trouble believing it isn't with the actions and comments I've heard people have about Obama.

Is the "War on Women" Hoakem?

For those inclined to disregard recent allegations of the "fake" nature of the alleged war on women conducted by one of our nation's major political parties, it's worth noting that the whole story is not solely about contraception or about whether women choosing to be fulltime moms are "working" or not.  The story is about the same party's current effort to preclude a reauthorization of The Violence Against Women Act, passed initially in 1994 as part of an Omnibus Crime Bill that Republicans opposed because they "owned" the crime issue and couldn't conceivably concede this ownership to Bill Clinton.  And the story entails state efforts, successful in the case of Wisconsin, to repeal the Lilly Ledbetter Act, the first piece of legislation to be signed by Barack Obama.  That act made it legal for women not being paid as much as men for the same work to use the courts to sue their employers.  And if such policy issues are too abstract to have much persuasive impact, I'd advise the skeptics to read the following story and pass it along to those who consider allegations of gender-based political discrimination a bunch of malarky.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/8168-murder-of-a-nobody

To mainstream media, the death of this lady at the hands of her husband, was back-page/two-sentence news.  And as only one of a thousand such stories a year in this country, perhaps the journalistic neglect is understandable.  Or perhaps, for exactly the same reason, the journalistic neglect is indefensible.

Gen Y Revisited: Sam Spade at Starbucks?

Today's column by David Brooks in the New York Times goes by the subtitle of this post, which refers to the noir hero from "The Maltese Falcon."  Brooks argues that Generation Y -- or a part of it, which he deems as anti-political to the core -- would do well to become reacquainted with the "moral realism" exhibited by such characters.  His point is that much of the idealism of GenY -- seen, for example, in much of the service-oriented, social-entrepeneurial activity of today's twenty-somethings -- is lacking in moral-political fundamentals.  His point is that the Sam Spade character was a man with a bit of a shady past, and as someone who'd been around the block, he was not caught up in his own virtue and innocence.  This sense of selfless virtue, says Brooks, is ultimately self-defeating: humans, we all eventually learn one way or another are mixed creatures, neither inherently evil nor unambiguously heroic.  Politics, to Brooks, is a undeniable part of our natures, and the pursuit of high ideals, no matter how praiseworthy, cannot relieve us of its burdens.  Being human is being a part of a community in which choice, individually and collectively, is inescapable. 

So to the litany of attributions laid on this generation by the Bucholz "Go-nowhere" meme is the claim that Gen Y's defining element may be its desire to flee from politics in its mundane, often-mind-numbing toxicity.  At a point in time when polls tell us that the percentage of Americans with "some" or "much trust in the government in Washington to do what is right for the American people" is at an all-time low of 17%, this desire to flee from the political is understandable.  What apparently is more difficult to understand is that, in the end, this effort to rise above the pettiness and ugliness that often accompanies political disputes only deepens the darker nature of our struggle to govern ourselves democratically.

As politically interested members of this generation, does Brooks's indictment of some of your cohorts hold water or not?

RICE DAY

Dear Capstoners,
I hope that the Queen is not mad with me for adding this new word to her language. But, I would like to say a big thank you to all of us that came to support our fellow classmates that did their presentations. It was a wonderful turn-out...That is the spirit. And to our fearless leader, Dr. Dani Thomas, a big thank you. We would not have done without you. Thank you for the extra time outside of class and for letting us in on the unique study and use of Q-methodology.....we are filled with gratitude...

This 'christian girl' from Uganda.

Op-Ed The PS 460 Capstone: The International student view

The PS 460 Capstone: The International student view

Growing up in Uganda, I have always been taught to respect my elders and not reply back at them when they say something to me. And here I am in America, the free world where I am taught the direct opposite of my cultural norms, to question every single statement. Yes, at times it feels like I am at crossroads, to endure with what I have been taught as a child or to embrace my new found liberties and make good use of them. And of course the answer lies in taking the bull by the horns and from a saying that goes, ‘when in Rome, do as the Romans do.’ And here I am in America, and definitely, I am going to do as the Americans do. I am going to make good use of my Western acquired education; I am going to ask questions, defend my view points and at the same time remain respectful while putting my view point across. Suddenly, I am shocked by my courage to speak out, to voice my opinions and asset myself, and because where I come from, in Uganda, women do not even speak unless spoken to. The nature of the ability to express myself freely is overwhelming and at the same time empowering. I now understand what the framers of the women emancipation felt when that came through. It is that untold, unseen gratitude and self empowerment that comes from being able to speak openly, precisely, articulately and yet respectful putting your point across to whoever is listening. It is that sort of communication that dons and majestically clothes the disciplines of Political Science and not forgetting International Relations. It is what I believe that makes for the closed door politics, when the leaders of the free world assemble to decide the fate of the rest of us, they sure put to use the ability to flawlessly make allies, and pull strings. It is not because they are always right or they know better, but because they have the ability to ‘sweet talk’ and of course make ‘political threats.’ It is the salt missing in the sauce of the African Politics. It is what our leaders in the ‘Other World,’ as the developing nations are dubbed in a more politically correct way lack. They love to fight, argue and spend time profiting from the national cake that they selfishly want to keep on eating with their close friends and family. And then we ask when the nepotism will ever end; simple, the day we learn to speak out, and train our people to stand for the truth, to be open minded yet engaged in the affairs of their nation. It is what the PS 460 capstone is has opened my eyes to. To the fact that scholars like Andrew Bacevich are dubbed realists of the canning world is not a fairytale. It is reality that some of us come to embrace and ensure that we make up our minds about our stand point on political issues and be ready to speak up and defend the core of our political beliefs without bias and threats from others on the opposite side. Bacevich in his book, Washington Rules: America’s path to permanent war refuses to view causes for the war in Iraq or the Global War on terror as a “Democrat-OR-Republican binary issue.” Instead states that any view of current American Policy needs to be viewed through a historical lens that stretches through many past presidential administrations. And of course many people may not agree with Mr. Bacevich, but he still speaks out and makes his point stand. It is therefore, such charisma that is needed to be passed on to all of us that are seeking political careers and even those just wanting to retire into the exotic resorts south in Mexico.

Op-Ed Kony 2012: My Ugandan view point

And it goes viral. Yes, the Kony 2012 video went viral making approximately 80 million hits in the few hours it was posted. As the whole world went on viewing this video, little did most people know that a single click and view was making Kony famous. And every corner of the world and even on the small Iowan campus of Wartburg College resounded the messages of the viral video. It took me a day or so to finally realize how much ignorant some people were, and of course to pay tribute to the power of the media. Name it, Facebook, twitter, you tube and all other media centers were reaping big from the stories about this ‘human rights defense’ video. I recall some friends in New Jersey and Minnesota calling me and asking me why my country was trending on yahoo and twitter.  I simply replied, it is all about Kony. Carol, one of my friends asked a rather ignorant question, what about Kony? I expected her to have at least made use of the search engines, the likes of Google and Bing to find out who this ‘made famous’ man was. And again, Carol is just one of the many ‘couch potatoes’ we have in the world. One of the most annoying remarks came in the Trumpet, a weekly student led newspaper for Wartburg College, one student noted, ‘When I heard about the things Kony was doing, I knew I had to do something.’ Seriously, what was this student going to do about it, and even more disturbing is the fact that this video made it seem like the war is still raging on in Northern Uganda. No, there is no more war up there, people in the affected districts of Gulu and Lira are healing, and the least they needed was a 17 minute video going viral world wide with falsified information. And, this is where my problem with the media and the West comes in. First off, the media is too focused on selling, than informing. This has created a need to verify the phrase that says, ‘if it bleeds, it sells.’ Given the content of the video, it is obvious that it was bleeding news and thus, it was bound to sale, but at whose expense? Of course, at the expense of the Ugandans that suffered through the war for close to 20 years. And this is where I ask a question which if most definitely; I do not expect an honest or straight forward answer to. Where were the media and the West all those 20 so years when Kony was actually abusing and terrorizing those innocent children and women in Gulu. Every single time an American soldier is killed or wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan, we hear the entire buzz about it. It in fact makes national news, on huge news channel s like CNN. I do not understand why such fair media treatment is not accorded incidences like the Northern Uganda war, 20 years ago when it was actually taking place. These are not rhetorical questions; in fact they are food for thought to all of us with political ambitions  to act as a soul searching avenue to check our hearts, minds and souls and ask our selves, why all the bias and greed to want to become famous at the expense of others’ agony like Jason Russell and his mates.

Jason Russell and his co-founders of Invisible children may of course have some humane explanation for the making of the video, but to me, a Ugandan, I did not funny this video tasteful but rather a mockery and ingenuity of their greedy selves. Sometimes, it is just ok to hit the nail right on the head and call a spoon a spoon and not a shade. I do not at any one point condemn the video. It was short, yes but not exclusive of the subject matter. The content of the video begs questions that need to be addressed, and if I were the government of the Republic of Uganda, I would have asked for the taking down of video immediately. But of course, this is where the West and all its ‘freedom of expression and media’ nonsense come in. I would have thought that this video would have included more testimonies from several people portraying their lives during the war and after the war. In fact, the video leaves out an important part, the rehabilitation of the former child soldiers. So, maybe next time Mr. Russell and friends decide to pull off one of those videos again, they should remember to include and give credit to several organizations and of course the government of Uganda for the timeless efforts to end the war, and the tremendous rehabilitation being given to the former child soldiers and those countless raped girls. What these people need now is not another reminder of the treacherous and horrific moments they lived through for 20 years, but rather peace, calm and rehabilitation and not cameras hovering around them for selfish media and Western world interest. It is time the world woke up and embraced the reality that a 17 minute video with not so accurate information is not going to do anything constructive for the people of Northern Uganda and it is not going to capture Kony. Sadly, it made him famous and I have all reasons to think that the percentage of the profits named for Northern Uganda will never make it there.

And as if we have heard it all comes the infamous wikileaks....http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1383276/-/aw5a0jz/-/index.html

Is comfort a less repulsive alternative to laziness?

I wanted to try and get some more opinions on the discussion we had two Tuesdays ago. We discussed whether or not we believed it was in people's nature to be lazy. The question is 'will most people take the easy option when they are given a choice between something easy and something hard?' My opinion in class and on here is the same. I believe most people would rather go down the easy path without question. You might even be able to say that most people are naturally lazy, but this might be taking it a step too far. I believe people have just disguised their accepted norm of laziness and just called it a pursuit for comfort. Is that not what most Americans are trying to achieve in their lives, happiness and comfort?

We live our lives day after day striving for something. Most people get up and go to work to make money so they can buy themselves nice things and make their standard of living higher. People want things, things that can make their lives easier, more comfortable. But why? I believe people want nice things because society puts a high value on nice things. I think another problem with society is the given belief that most people want this dream of being rich and not having to work hard ever again. With the craze that hit Americans over the $640 million Mega Millions lotto I support my argument. The American Dream is to be stinking rich without any effort and never have to lift a finger for the rest of their lives.

However, somewhere along the line the word and idea of laziness gained a negative connotation. Even though it is the thing most Americans strive for everyday people still want to hide behind the idea of happiness and comfort.

Your thoughts or angry rebuttal to my potentially bone-head argument?

Op-ed: Democracy and the impermanence of its bearers

            Robert Kagan assures his readers that America is here to stay as the world's leading power in The World America Made. However, more interesting than his arguments for America's dominance is the reason why he is making them in the first place. He seems to be soothing an unspoken, panicky fear that exists about the perhaps inevitable downfall of America. Kagan automatically associates the fall of America with the extinction of democracy. This is because he says the policies of the United States made "the explosion of democracy possible" (p. 26). He views unfavorably the idea of a multipolar world, which is quite likely to be seen in the future. He reminds us that the last time European powers dominated the world, their world order "collapsed in two world wars" (p. 70). He is suggesting that world civilization would fall to pieces without America as the leader. First of all, what would our "downfall" look like? When one hears of a fall of a civilization, it conjures post-apocalyptic images of a chaotic society.

            We are often reminded how the great democracies of Greece and Rome fell. However, did they really fall or just change? Many of the city states of Greece were direct democracies, which was functional because of the small amount of people permitted to participate. On the other hand, according to history professor Paul Cartledge, "cities that were not democracies were either oligarchies- where power was in the hands of the few richest citizens- or monarchies" (2011). Democracy did not necessarily flourish in all of ancient Greece. Democracy existed where it was promoted by those in power. Democracy survived long after Alexander the Great's empire was divided. Democracy also remained after the Romans ruled parts of the old empire. It is important to note that even though Greek civilization fell, Greek ideas and culture had already conquered the Romans and was perpetuated by them. As for the fall of Rome, writer N.S. Gill questions if Rome really fell and notes "some prefer to say that Rome adapted rather than fell" (2012). The split of the empire in two, with the eastern half becoming the Byzantine empire, can be viewed positively, because irreconcilable differences in the leadership of the Christian faith made it impossible for the two empires to live peacefully as one. Rome still exists today, it is just not a massive world power anymore. However, the ideas of ancient Greece and Rome never fell and are still a part of western education.

            Democracy is an idea and does not belong to any one nation. Governments come and go, but ideas are immortal. Even if the United States declines as a world power that won't take away from its achievements as a nation. The idealism of thinkers like Thomas Jefferson will always be remembered. Democracy will continue to be practiced by nations that find it beneficial to them, just as it is now. Change is an evitable part of our existence, but it is not the end of the world. In my opinion, Kagan just needs to relax and perhaps write a more realistic sounding book instead of attempting to soothe his own paranoia.

Cartledge, P. (2011). BBC History Ancient History in depth: The Democratic Experiment. BBC . Retrieved April 9, 2012, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/greeks/greekdemocracy_01.shtml

Gill, N.S. (2012). Fall of Rome. Ancient /Classical History. Retrieved April 9, 2012, from http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/romefallarticles/a/fallofrome.htm

Kagan, R. (2012). The world America made. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Good News for PQMethod Users with Windows7

Good news for those who've been slogging away on Q-studies with the freeware from Munich not operating without DOSBox for PC's with a Windows7 OS.  Peter Schmolck now has PQMethod2.30 that can be downloaded for free and run on Windows7, including the PQROT subprogram, that provides a full picture of factor loadings and graphical display of rotation, whether it be by Varimax or Judgmental options.  BUT -- and it always seems like there's a but -- he's waiting for feedback from experienced users before he puts up the automatic installation package on his website.

Here is his comment taken from a post to the Q-Method listserv last week:\\

The new PQMethod version 2.30 for Windows does not require DOSBox any
more because it contains the windows compatible new version (1.5) of
PQROT. Mac users could replace their PQMethod.exe with the new one from
the 2.30 Windows package.

I do not want to actually release the new version before I get some
feedback from experienced users who are able to get along without
detailed install directives. Therefore it's just a "Preview" version at
the moment.

And Now, A Little Change of Pace

http://www.godvine.com/Shy-Boy-and-his-Friend-Shock-the-Audience-with-The-Prayer-Unbelievable-1318.html

A much-needed  time out from Trayvon, Mitt and  Rick, Scalia and Brocolli,  Paul Ryan and Budgets...

Enjoy . . . 

A Quantum Theory of Mitt Romney

Good stuff:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/opinion/sunday/a-quantum-theory-of-mitt-romney.html?_r=1