Can I Please Name My Firstborn Eclipse Glasses?

Forgive me. From Mental Floss:

In June 2001, a total solar eclipse was about to cross southern Africa. To prepare, the Zimbabwean and Zambian media began a massive astronomy education campaign focused on warning people not to stare at the Sun. Apparently, the campaign worked. The locals took a real liking to the vocabulary, and today, the birth registries are filled with names like Eclipse Glasses Banda, Totality Zhou, and Annular Mchombo.

So long Vlad, Vytautas, Ivy, Daisy, Polygraph, Mindaugas, Rickey Henderson and Barry Zito: meet new baby Eclipse Glasses!
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The Post-human Fallacy

I'm actually sitting here watching The Incredibles for the second time this weekend, searching for the Main Nerve. What was it that triggered my rat-brain to respond to the so-called philosophers of the post-human with the emotional equivalent of fatwa? I have no problem with superheroes; I saw and dug the last Batman movie; I'm a fan of Thus Spake Zarathustra, and find the refrain "Humanity must be o'erleapt!" to have healing power. The current spurs to my thought are a NYT Mag interview with the maker of Wikiscanner, and a piece in Der Spiegel, but they might as well have been Heroes, Fringe, or Mitt Romney. No shortage.

The idea of superfluous human potential is a soothing fantasy. For a Saturday evening's entertainment, a spectacular fiction. Theorists of the post-human are -- I think; the lines blur between what are, to a post-humanist, the inevitable consequences of the "post-human condition," and what are ideological postures to be advocated -- doing something apart from the modern project of perfectible humanity, sublated into pure Spirit.

Which makes a defense of a -- by contrast, if not authentically -- humanist position a little more slippery. If we were talking about exceeding human potential through cloned organs, genetic modification, artifical neural nets, usw, it would suffice to refute such ambitions with a sardonic, "Cf. Levi, Primo, 'Angelic Butterfly,' in The Sixth Day and Other Tales," which is one of Levi's sci-fi works, describing the reluctant work of a Nazi scientist locked into experiments in human potential. Turns out that believing adult humans are actually larval and dosing them with hormones has ugly consequences.

But post-human theorists can't be caricatured as a new generation of Dr. Mengeles. There is a sense of fatigue in the work that any resolute modernist would shy from, and that frankly, gets its impetus (if you can call it that) from the same place as sparked Levi's pity/scorn for humanity. The problem of justifying human activity (building, writing, producing, spawning) via humanism (if our works are meant to give us fleeting access to our higher nature, where in the pantheon is Auschwitz?) is yes cumbersome. That doesn't mean that we can shunt off the responsibility to account for the ideology beneath our actions elsewhere, like "I dunno. Humanity is a problem. Let's leave it to the cyborgs."

This isn't about the menace inherent in any discussion of our non-human doppelgangers (Although of course it is also about that. I think of a Mitt-Romney-Terminator, what about you? Also: What's the difference between zombies and cyborgs? Braaaiinsss).

I suspect that theorists of the post-human, like acolytes of any new religion, need a coping mechanism to deal with radical inhumanity. Rather than do the hard work of admitting that hideous humans are still human, isn't it easier to change the subject; to enter into endless divagations about what constitutes a human, when life begins, what is the nature of consciousness, und so weiter?

How tired of human problems do you have to be to fantasize about artificial intelligence and artificial corporeality? Isn't the Singularity just one more otaku vision of hyperreal pocket pussy, as the NYT slyly suggests?

MEET SINGLES: Afraid of, or excited by, the prospect of ultraintelligent machines that can think, learn and know that they’re thinking and learning?[...]

More later. Perhaps sometime I'll be able to articulate my love of Nietzsche vis-a-vis my hatred of cyborgs (seriously, Human, All too Human is not a curse, it's a gift). Right now, I'm going to Netflix A Scanner Darkly...peace...
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Piyush-Bobby Tomato-Potato

From ProspectBlogs:

But it looks as if Newt will try to take over the party machine with a bid to become the new chairman of the Republican national committee. Jindal is biding his time. The likeable Cajun newcomer, the nearest thing the Republicans have to an Obama figure, is worth a flutter.

Piyush might've been better served had his name not been bandied about so much as longshot veep-fodder. The lefties know about him now and have a healthy base from which to keep digging. But I wonder if he won't keep his powder dry until 2016. Palin will come out guns blazing in 2012, one supposes. And the base is hungry for her return, feeling she's the way the party should've gone anyway. Sac-Lamb decreed, does Catho-convert Piyush go along with?

Turkey will help cure the mindblocks.

Jim DeMint is My Hero

Who said I was an ideologue? Let them fall silent, for today, unlike those 13 namby-pamby Dimmycrats who wouldn't publicize their votes against Lieberman, Senator Jim DeMint of the Palmetto State put his name to a resolution to expel Ted Stevens from the Senate, thereby earning praise from these quarters. Not only that, while Mitch McConnell was speaking, DeMint said he had the ten-and-a-half:

"After talking with many of my colleagues, it's clear there are sufficient votes to pass the resolution regarding Senator Stevens."

Making DeMint's assault on Stevens even more brazen, the whole process of retribution may be moot, because Begich is up by some thousand of votes.

Clearly, this is a choice based on principle, not expediency. A reformed conservative movement will stand on principle, and that means kicking the bums out. Even when the voters have already done so. Nothing better than a surreptitious kick to the balls...

As for the Democrats' vote on Lieberman, IHT offers some tidbits:

Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Pat Leahy, D-Vt., spoke against allowing Lieberman keep the Homeland Security and Government Affairs post. Reid, Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and John Kerry, D-Mass., were among those speaking in his favor, according to a Democratic aide, who spoke anonymously to discuss a private meeting.

Some, like Iowan Tom Harkin, still harbor hard feelings for statements Lieberman made during the campaign. Harkin took particular offense when Lieberman said a vote against funding the war in Iraq without a deadline for a troop withdrawal meant Obama had voted to cut off funding for troops in harm's way.

As near as I can tell, from hints in this one and the articles above, those agin' Leebs: Sanders, Leahy, Harkin?, Casey? More speculatively: Byrd?, Webb?, Feingold?, Feinstein?, Kennedy?

For Leebs: Reid, Durbin, Kerry, Salazar, Dodd, Klobuchar, Nelson (NE), Nelson (FL), Carper (DE), Cardin, Landrieu.
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Show Me the Oversight...

Poor Nouri Kemal al-Maliki. All the problems he contends with on a basis daily. Iran, Turkey, the PKK, Muqtada al-Sadr, now two American administrations with separate demands and expectations, and those pesky Iraqi accountants...at least the accountants he can fire.

I'm particularly fond of the Times' surreptitious kick to the Iraqi balls, noting again and again the Iraqi "endemic corruption," -- how that's just how things are in "that part of the world." And the USG should know. We ourselves keep misplacing our collective wallet over in that part of the world.

In China, the penalty for bribery is death. This accords with my latent puritanical character. (There will be Virtue, or the Terror!) For the land that birthed Hammurabi to go soft on oversight is just a damn shame.

If fraud were not pie for Maliki, he wouldn't be firing his fraud monitors. Reckon it's time we got those poor Iraqi number-crunchers each a scimitar...
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Future Sacrificial Lamb, Sarah Palin...

Quick hits.

Check the step-in by TXGov in that press conference. The repub governors from the Contiguous States of Real America, along with a nice amount of the party machinery, hate this woman. She's PeggyHillClueless, I think. Coming off a personal jet, shopping spree, adoring crowds whirlwind. Just biding her time until 2012 to run again.

Check the comedy of Pat "White People Need to Breed More" Buchanan and random black (ugh) republican. Black dude's like "party needs to change," Old Man Buchanan, how fucking apropos? can't even conceive of what he's talking about.

So the repubs aren't going to get it together any time soon. They just can't present a viable alternative to the coming Democratic left-pragmatism. They'll have no organizing principle by 2012. These things don't just happen over the course of a presidential term. They have no organizing hero. No vanquished one to long for and get behind. Post 2008 election, they're left with the McCain the Antedilluvian, Romney the Creepy, Huckabee the Homely, RonPaul! the Crazy, and... oh yeah... Palin the PeggyHillClueless.

So I'm betting the left-pragmatic job creation scheme works pretty well in a few years. Things won't be great, but they'll be picking up. The country will be a few years older, more used to Obama. The muslim rumors will vanish. The skittishness about his readiness dissipates. And Americans get comfortable with BarryHussein. No reason to change horses midstream. Meanwhile, the repubs have no organizing principle, still. And they need a sacrificial lamb. Up steps Sarah...

Seriously, Who's Got the 10 1/2? Pawlenty's got the 10 1/2...

The gift and the curse of Sarah Palin is in full effect as Republican governors retreat to Nixon's turf for their winter meetings. The gift is the unprecendented media attention given, by spillover, to dudes like Tim Pawlenty.

The curse is she had to speak. Beginning with "God Bless George W. Bush and I thank you Mr. President," is, I'm guessing, not what Americans want to hear. The GOP seems to recognize this. Politico's blind quote is indicative: She Is Our Britney Spears.

Pawlenty's remarks, on the other hand, are awesome. Listen to the whole thing on Minnesota Public Radio.

To start, he disses Palin before she even gets to town, saying it is not "fair and not complete" to just say "we didn't do that bad." He litanizes the ass-whupping, and I'm paraphrasing here: We cannot compete in the northeast, the great lakes, the west coast, the mid-atlantic [...] those are not factors that make up success going forward. For his money, the GOP can harmonize the Hensarling Quasar and the nameless "modernizing" forces within the Party (evidently those that recognize that non-white people can actually vote). I don't know if he's right, but Pawlenty is funny and thoughtful, and once again, I'm pretty sure that McCain called him up looking for a VP, and Tim said "No thanks, Air Pirate."

Big Government and Big Business coalescing to defend their interests! Tim! You sound like John Edwards! "Drill baby drill, by itself, is not an energy policy." To applause! There aren't enough Republicans around to be throwing people overboard! The party with a big-ass Welcome Mat! Why isn't this man a Democrat?

His closing anecdote about MJ's 56-point night was brilliant. He's buddies with Tim Kaine, which, you know, to my mind is a demerit, but to plenty of Virginians is a good thing. This is all gravy for the GOP. The question is, Can a voice of Reason, Probity and Temperance prevail against its own Hard-Ass Brethren? Can that voice then compete with an already-established Cool Hand?

Thinking a little bit longer on this, the brilliance of that Jordan story is that it makes up for the knocks against Palin scattered throughout Tim's speech. Pawlenty doesn't want to banish Palin to the Senate, he wants her front and center, making sure the voters of the family values fringe line up and vote hard. It's funny, self-deprecating (if we assume that by analogy, Pawlenty is the rookie who scores one point, and Palin Jordan with 56) and practical.

For the moment, I'm putting money on Hensarling leading a redneck-small-gubmint series of night raids. Pawlenty's Big Think is being done already, just by Democrats, and it will take longer than a couple of election cycles. So while Jeb and company focus on one half of Nathan Bedford Forrest's famous dictum, i.e., getting there firstest, Tim graciously takes the second half: getting there with the mostest.
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Always Trust Dark Steer, Readers, Always...

More evidence, Dear Reader, that you profit by the speculations of the Dark Steer: Caribou Barbie wants a piece of the action.

DS called this, including the passage about non-acceptance of Senators' credentials, here. DS also speculated on the analogous relationship between Palin and MacBeth here. Read how closely the AP hits DS talking points:

Even if he is re-elected, Stevens could be ousted by the Senate for his conviction on seven felony counts of failing to report more than $250,000 in gifts, mostly renovations on his home. If Stevens loses his seat, Palin could run for it in a special election. She also could challenge incumbent GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski in 2010.

Right on. Article 1, section 5 is Palin's best friend. Because she ain't going to beat Lisa Murkowski. End DS gloating.

Also, for the record, the press needs to quit burying the Republican Party. I feel like Cowboy in Full Metal Jacket, urging the platoon to keep moving because 8-Ball is wasted: "I've seen this before, man." The consensus that the GOP is dead is like snipers shooting into a corpse to lure unsuspecting/enraged soldiers in closer. Don't touch the corpse. Let's keep our distance, and see if we can spot where the revanchist fringe will retreat to. Signs point to here: a swath of counties running from the Ozarks to southern Appalachia wherein the population became 10-15% more Republican between 2004 and 2008.

Let's get on that nova thing. Peace
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Who has the bolshy yarbles? Female suicide bombers, that's who.

The head of Putin is heavy. As Dark Steer's analysis showed, the last thing Putin really wanted this August when he invaded Georgia / accepted Georgian provocation to invade was to add yet another Russian region to the long list of "restives."

Today we saw proof. Russia can't expand a sphere of influence while continuing to wage war just to maintain its territorial integrity. What succor can Putin offer the "oppressed peoples" of northern Georgia when he can't protect his own from Chechen suicide bombers?

So, questions for the Premier: Was Putin's motivation in the Georgian incursion to deny safe haven in South Ossetia for Chechen militants? If so, can't we expect him to back down on the announced Polish-border missiles?

Don't the Chechens want what Putin does, i.e. land and thus oil royalties? So isn't the real beef a federalist beef, i.e., between the regions en masse and the central government? Thus, isn't it absurd to target the capital of North Ossetia rather than a Big Russian target? What kind of dumbass Chechen would do this?

Do Ossetians (of N and S) really want Chechens to have beef with them rather than with Mother Russia? If not, does this push them towards Moscow and anschluss, or away and toward more "restiveness"? Might Moscow have a reason to start beef between regions therefore?

(This is not nearly as paranoid as it sounds. Putin covered up Beslan, assassinated Anna Politkovskaya, etc. He likes Dark Ops. Why he can't just say, "I'm waging war on Chechnya, don't mess with me, this is an insurrection," I still don't know. Presumably he still wants to be invited to the G8, but that's a high price for a tea party...)

hasta
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Notes on Barry Hussein, Fat Hitler, Other Divagations

This is how it feels to win an election. Forgive ds, but this is an entriely new feeling. The first real election I was aware of, to the extent that I felt real heartbreak, was 1994. Failure ever since; we can argue the merits of 1996 or James Jeffords' defection, but the fact remains that I have never seen a tidal wave / tsunami / landslide / metaphor-worthy election.

McCain's concession was the only eloquent thing he's said since he fired Mike Murphy. I'm betting Murphy, or one of the heads from 2000 wrote it. Even the phrases encapsulating the seed of a future "Racism Is Over" tactic were glorious. A cynic would say necessarily so. Still:

But we both recognize that, though we have come a long way from the old injustices that once stained our nation's reputation and denied some Americans the full blessings of American citizenship, the memory of them still had the power to wound.

...is not half bad for the guy who voted against Martin Luther King Day. Had sentiments like these come out six months ago, McCain would be president. Surely, the fact that this dude can only be gracious in defeat, and is petulant the whole rest of the time, this is the hallmark of political failure, Cf. Gore, Albert Arnold Jr..

Another note: Keep David Axelrod off the television. He looks like a communist Mike Ditka. He looks like Fat Hitler. A head out of The Jungle. Face fit for radio. Like he never missed a meal. Like he could fish Lake Michigan with his head. All Chicagoans are like this. How do they make it in the World?

Nuhs like to think Palin is done, but I disagree. I think she's just got a taste. Does she run for Ted Stevens' seat? (Again, this is assuming Begich doesn't pull a couple thousand votes out of his hat. Also assuming that Stevens a) dies, b) resigns, c) is refused a seat in the Senate, as a convicted felon. Article I, section 5: "Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members[...]." I remember this from the noise about possibly not seating Ollie North in 1996...) I think she wants all the perks of office, with none of the scrutiny, and given Stevens' example, the Senate is the place to be. Keep the oil flowing, not really do shit.

But the real questions are all about the mid-term election. Largely, this is because we can't think about 2012, though we try, until 2010 is sorted. And really, what are the Democratic prospects in 2010? The speculative economy is broken. We would be able to speculate on New Energy, if the Obama energy plan were operative. So find me 100 billion dollars in the federal budget.

Iraq? Trick is that incremental drawdowns of troops don't proportionately draw down costs, Cf. Congressional Budget Office, 10/24/2007. Veterans cost money too, for starters, and the infrastructure already in country has a flat cost that ain't going nowhere. Let's be charitable and assume that the drawdown gets us to 6 billion a month down from 10. The president-elect has committed to a troop surge in Afghanistan. There go your savings.

Increase marginal tax rates, right? Without 60 in the Senate, without the right bundle of tax cuts to sugarcoat it, without some way to round the corner on all those conservative congresspeople we just elected, it ain't happening. Seriously, is Periello, assuming he makes it into Congress from the VA 5th, going to raise anybody's taxes? A sugarcoated marginal tax increase is good policy any damn way, don't get me wrong, Teddy Roosevelt caught all kinds of shit for the progressive income tax, we know this, but do middle-class tax cuts result in increased federal revenue? Which, remember, is what we need to solidify the economy, get elected again, and really get some socialism on...aw, did I say that out loud?

For real. Show me the money. The first 100 days are economy days. Taxes alone will take 100 days. The "mandate" was historical, in that the election had an historical purpose. But that purpose is acheived, and 2010 is back to ordinary politics. I'm talking to you, Fat Hitler.

Seriously, this could be a Jimmy Carter presidency. It should not be.
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On Some Real Underground Shit...

So I was walking to campus the other night, and I sidestepped a woman in a Starter jacket who was yelling at the ground. She had, among other things, lost her phone. Having found her phone, she started yelling into the air things I can't transcribe because they were too wacky to remember (we come to nature through a schema, after all, and what doesn't fit is cast aside as dream-time). Things like: "Are you in a disguise?" and, "one of those fag spies," and "selling oil, real underground shit!" This is run of the mill in Philadelphia, and is mitigated by the fact that there's always someone else on the street with you and Crazy Jane. Here, sadly, no.

All of which made me think of Our Hero, the Famous Air Pirate, who has finally pulled the prohibition on running Wright ads, albeit on broadcast TV with the juiciest bits fobbed clean. He is essentially, at this point, alone on the street, yelling incoherently into the air.

Incoherence. The ad -- on TV, "God damn" is bleeped out -- presumes that the audience knows about it already. I mean, when you bleep out "God damn America," couldn't it just as easily be "God bless America?" Isn't this supposed to be an election won in the center, and by undecideds?

Once again, this is tacking to the right for 2010. The major corporate contributors to the NRTPac (scroll to the end of the individual disclosures) are rightist media outlets: Newsmax, Endeavor Media, Eagle Publishing. The treasurer, Peter Leitner, runs a talk radio blog that reminds us, "Jihad runs both ways." He appears to be his own announcer, and broadcasting from his mom's basement, btw.

Are a handful of amateur Tim McVeigh sympathizers really going to change the minds of every undecided voter in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, usw? Please.

Although, from the looks of Palin's barn-raising down by Rickenbacker Airport, it is not the Great Silent Majority, but the Mere Redneck Plurality that she's pinned her hopes on, viz.: "Redneck Woman" by Gretchen Wilson, plywood false-front barn, buckeye necklace, Ku Klux fliers.

That's right, the Klan is using 2008 as an opportunity to pare back to a core of true believers. Said one Travis Pierce, national membership director for KKK, LLC.:

This office gets about 100 calls a day, and it's been that way since the start of the election season [...] People are looking for answers to what's going on in this country and they are coming to us.

So how is the McCain-Palin Tanking like Klan recruitment? A: Both campaigns suffer from the delusion that a greater political force will one day emerge from a dedicated 8 percent of the electorate. The trouble (for our purposes, the entertainment) inherent in such a position is that no persuasion exists without mass appeal. No one listens to Ralph Nader, or Dennis Kucinich, or Ron Paul. Build the crowd, then sway the crowd.

Also of note: compare Hitchens' response to the McCain Khalidi attack to the desperate parrying and backtracking on McLaughlin by typical MSMers (transcript)! Everyone hears, "Barack Obama sat in a room with Palestinians," and only Hitch refrains from shitting his pants with fear! Page and Clift are scared shitless of Monica Crowley! Hemming and hawing about "They released the tape! They reported it!" Show some spine. The appropriate response to Crowley is as follows:

It ain't "Jew-bashing" to complain when some right-wing arriviste bulldozes a chunk of your millenia-old town, puts guard towers and access roads on the highest point in the area, and tells you it's okay, because God promised this land to him.

Anyway, I'm prepping the post-game rant, on some real Marxist shit. (World Socialism Now! Mandatory Abortions for Everyone! Up Against the Wall! That sort of thing.) See y'all on the 5th...
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