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Scientists Bust the Top One Percent

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Ever since the Occupy Wall Street movement began last fall, we have been hearing the incessant mantra of:  Don’t blame the rich for wealth inequality.  In fact, Herman Cain’s futile bid for the Presidency was based (in part) on that very theme.  Last January, James Q. Wilson (who passed away on Friday) wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post entitled, “Angry about inequality?  Don’t blame the rich”.  Paul Buchheit of the Common Dreams blog rebutted Wilson’s essay with this posting:  “So say the rich:  ‘Don’t blame us for having all the money!’ ”.  How often have you read and heard arguments from apologists for the Wall Street banksters, upbraiding those who dared speak ill of those sanctified “job creators” within the top one percent of America’s economic strata?

Finally, a group of scientists has intervened by conducting some research about the ethics of those at the top of America’s socioeconomic food chain.  Stéphane Côté, PhD, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, worked with a team of four psychologists from the University of California at Berkeley to conduct seven studies on this subject.  Their paper, “Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior” was published in the February 27 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).  Here is the abstract:

Seven studies using experimental and naturalistic methods reveal that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals.  In studies 1 and 2, upper-class individuals were more likely to break the law while driving, relative to lower-class individuals.  In follow-up laboratory studies, upper-class individuals were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies (study 3), take valued goods from others (study 4), lie in a negotiation (study 5), cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize (study 6), and endorse unethical behavior at work (study 7) than were lower-class individuals.  Mediator and moderator data demonstrated that upper-class individuals’ unethical tendencies are accounted for, in part, by their more favorable attitudes toward greed.

The impact and the timing of this article, with respect to the current debate over income inequality, have resulted in quite a bit of interesting commentary.  I enjoyed the perspective of Peter Dorman at the Econospeak blog:

The tone of the first wave of commentary, as far as I can tell, is that we knew it all along – rich people are nasty.  I would like to put in a word, however, for the other direction of causality, that dishonesty and putting one’s own interests ahead of others are conducive to wealth.

*   *   *

The reason I bring this up is because there is a constant background murmur in our society that says that greater wealth has to be a reward for more talent, more effort or more contribution to society.

Most of the commentary written about the PNAS article has been relatively non-partisan.  Two-day access for reading the article on-line will cost you ten bucks.  For those of us who can’t afford that (as well as for those who can afford it – but are too greedy to pay for anything) I have assembled a number of excerpts from articles written by those who actually read the entire scientific paper.  The following passages will provide you with some interesting details about the research conducted by this group.

Christopher Shea of The Wall Street Journal gave us a brief peek at some of the specific findings of the studies conducted by this team.

It went so far as to show that higher-class people will literally take candy from the mouths of children.

An excerpt quoted by Shea illustrated how the group expanded on an observation made by French sociologist Émile Durkheim:

 “From the top to the bottom of the ladder, greed is aroused,” Durkheim famously wrote.  Although greed may indeed be a motivation all people have felt at points in their lives, we argue that greed motives are not equally prevalent across all social strata.

Brandon Keim of Wired offered us more research data from the article, while focusing on the observations of team member Paul Piff, a Berkeley psychologist:

“This work is important because it suggests that people often act unethically not because they are desperate and in the dumps, but because they feel entitled and want to get ahead,” said evolutionary psychologist and consumer researcher Vladas Griskevicius of the University of Minnesota, who was not involved in the work.  “I am especially impressed that the findings are consistent across seven different studies with varied methodologies.  This work is not just good science, but it is shows deeper insight into the reasons why people lie, cheat, and steal.”

According to Piff, unethical behavior in the study was driven both by greed, which makes people less empathic, and the nature of wealth in a highly stratified society.  It insulates people from the consequences of their actions, reduces their need for social connections and fuels feelings of entitlement, all of which become self-reinforcing cultural norms.

“When pursuit of self-interest is allowed to run unchecked, it can lead to socially pernicious outcomes,” said Piff, who noted that the findings are not politically partisan.  “The same rules apply to liberals and conservatives.  We always control for political persuasion,” he said.

For Thomas B. Edsall of The New York Times, the research performed by this group helped explain the rationale behind a bit of Republican campaign strategy:

Republicans recognize the political usefulness of objectification, capitalizing on “compassion fatigue,” or the exhaustion of empathy, among large swathes of the electorate who are already stressed by the economic collapse of 2008, high levels of unemployment, an epidemic of foreclosures, stagnant wages and a hyper-competitive business arena.

Compassion fatigue was fully evident in Rick Santelli’s 2009 rant on CNBC denouncing a federal plan to prop up “losers’ mortgages” at taxpayer expense, a rant that helped spark the formation of the Tea Party.  Republican debates provided further evidence of compassion fatigue when audiences cheered the record-setting use of the death penalty in Texas and applauded the prospect of a gravely ill pauper who, unable to pay medical fees, was allowed to die.

Jonathan Gitlin of Ars Technica reported on some of the juicy details from a few experiments.  When reading about my favorite experiment, keep in mind that the term “SES” refers to socioeconomic status.

Study number four involved participants rating themselves on the SES scale to heighten their perception of status; they were then answered a number of questions relating to unethical behavior.  At the end of the experiment, they were presented with a jar of individually wrapped candy and told that, although it was for children in a nearby lab, they could take some if they wanted.  At this point you might be able to guess what the results were.  High SES participants took more candy.

Gitlin concluded his review of the paper with this thought:

The researchers argue that “the pursuit of self-interest is a more fundamental motive among society’s elite, and the increased want associated with greater wealth and status can promote wrongdoing.”  However, they point out that their findings aren’t absolute, and that philanthropic efforts such as those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet buck the observed trend, as does research which has shown a relationship between poverty and violent crime.

Meanwhile, the debate over economic inequality continues to rage on through the 2012 election cycle.  It will be interesting to observe whether this scientific report is exploited to bolster the argument that most of the one-percenters suffer from a character flaw, which not only got them where they are today – but which is shared by their kleptocratic comrades, who have facilitated a system of legalized predation.


 

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Hurricane Rick

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Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, there has been plenty of criticism directed at efforts by the media to amp-up the danger threat during the days before the storm made landfall.  Despite the fact that eleven people were killed by the hurricane, a wide assortment of commentators has seen fit to complain about the “hurricane hype”.  Here is a bit of what Howard Kurtz had to say at The Daily Beast:

But the tsunami of hype on this story was relentless, a Category 5 performance that was driven in large measure by ratings.  Every producer knew that to abandon the coverage even briefly – say, to cover the continued fighting in Libya – was to risk driving viewers elsewhere.  Websites, too, were running dramatic headlines even as it became apparent that the storm wasn’t as powerful as advertised.

The fact that New York, home to the nation’s top news outlets, was directly in the storm’s path clearly fed this story-on-steroids. Does anyone seriously believe the hurricane would have drawn the same level of coverage if it had been bearing down on, say, Ft. Lauderdale?

In fact, here in south Florida, we have become accustomed to the scare-mongering, which runs ahead of any tropical depression appearing west of the Cape Verde Islands.  Our local newscasters have an incentive to overstate the threat:  If they can scare the local politicians into ordering a mandatory evacuation – the story goes national and the networks provide some face time for the local correspondents.  At The Weather Channel, the incessant drumbeat warns:  Keep watching us or die!  I would be more than happy to cooperate if only they would feature Stephanie Abrams as often as they have Jim Cantore or Bryan Norcross on camera.

A similar fear-mongering strategy is becoming apparent in the Presidential campaign.  Before Rick Perry jumped into the race, disgruntled former Obama supporters saw the 2012 campaign as a choice between two nearly-indistinguishable corporatists.  With the ever-increasing likelihood that Rick Perry could become the Republican nominee, those ex-Obama fans are being constantly bombarded with reasons to be afraid  … be very afraid.  Are you going to just sit back and watch when President Perry declares war on Switzerland?

The most-frequently quoted observation about Rick Perry came from Bruce Bartlett, who served as deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department, in the administration of President George H.W. Bush.  During a recent appearance on CNN’s American Morning, Bartlett remarked:

“Rick Perry is an idiot, and I don’t think anybody would disagree with that.”

At the Huffington Post, the fixation on Rick Perry’s intellectual limitations resulted in the publication of some information from the candidate’s college transcript:

A source in Texas passed The Huffington Post Perry’s transcripts from his years at Texas A&M University.  The future politician did not distinguish himself much in the classroom.  While he later became a student leader, he had to get out of academic probation to do so.  He rarely earned anything above a C in his courses — earning a C in U.S. History, a D in Shakespeare, and a D in the principles of economics.  Perry got a C in gym.

Perry also did poorly on classes within his animal science major. In fall semester 1970, he received a D in veterinary anatomy, a F in a second course on organic chemistry and a C in animal breeding.  He did get an A in world military systems and “Improv. of Learning” — his only two As while at A&M.

Josh Harkinson wrote an article for Mother Jones, recounting some episodes from Perry’s tenure as Governor of Texas.  In addition to discussing the infamous Trans-Texas Corridor fiasco, the essay provided these factoids:

In 2004, whistleblowers repeatedly informed Perry’s office that the Governor’s Texas Youth Commission hires and protects “known child abusers.”   His office ignored the warnings.  Three years later, the story broke that top officials with the TYC had learned of and done nothing to stop widespread child molestation at a juvenile detention facility in West Texas.

*   *   *

Last year, Perry called the BP oil spill an “act of God.”

*   *   *

Perry has accepted $1.2 million from Texas billionaire Harold Simmons, who is building a nuclear waste dump in West Texas over the objections of some of the state’s own environmental regulators.  In January, Texas’ Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission opened the door to allowing the dump to accept nuclear waste from around the country.  Six of of the commission’s seven members were appointed by Perry.

The passage from Harkinson’s article, striking fear into the hearts of Democrats, concerns a bit of history, which might repeat itself in the event that progressives should decide to support a third-party candidate:

Perry’s political associates, including top adviser Dave Carney, have been repeatedly accused of helping the Green Party qualify for the ballot in order to siphon votes away from Democratic candidates.

Could something similar happen in November of 2012?  Rick Perry is counting on it — and the media will incessantly remind you of that.

You’ve been warned!


 

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Left Out

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Support for President Obama’s re-election bid is in disarray.  His sinking poll numbers have left many Democrats hoping for a miracle (i.e. some degree of economic recovery before November of 2012).  A significant component of the party’s progressive bloc is looking for a challenger to step forward – as can be seen at the StopHoping.org website.  One of the bloggers at Corrente – Hugh – recently had a good laugh at those who were anticipating a possible Primary challenge to Obama from former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold.  Here is some of what Hugh had to say:

The point is that Feingold could have been, and should have been, if he were legit, a focus for progressive organizing.  But he wasn’t.  . . . Feingold could have been the voice of opposition to Bush and his policies, but the silence from the Wisconsin Senator’s office was deafening.  He could have played the same role opposing Obama’s right wing corporatist agenda.  He did not.  Indeed he lost his Senate seat largely because of his failure to distance himself from Obama.

There are other reasons to dislike Feingold and question his progressive credentials.  He voted for John Roberts as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He voted for Obamacare.  And he is a deficit hawk.

Many left-leaning commentators have been offering suggestions to the President as to what actions he should be taking – as well as what message he should be delivering.  Experience has demonstrated that Obama never pays attention to well-intentioned, sensible advice.  How many times has Robert Reich written a roadmap for the President to use toward saving the economy as well as Obama’s own Presidency – only to be ignored?  As the campaign drags on, try to keep count of how many commentaries are written under the theme:  “What Obama Needs to Say and Do Right Now”.  Rest assured that he won’t say or do any of it.

Meanwhile, Republican voters are currently flocking to the standard-bearer du jour, Texas Governor Rick Perry.  Alexander Cockburn of CounterPunch wrote a great essay about Perry’s unmatched political instincts and the challenges ahead for both parties in the upcoming Presidential race:

The obvious question is whether Perry, having won the right, can clamber back along the kook branch towards something vaguely resembling the solid timber of sanity, to capture the necessary independents and disillusioned folk who bet on Obama in 2008.  Hard to say.  Perry is pretty far out on the limb.  Reagan, with the strenuous help of the press, managed the crawl back in 1980, amid widespread disappointment and disgust with Jimmy Carter.  Disappointment and disgust with Barack Obama?  The president has slithered down in the most recent polls, and now is just above the 50 per cent disapproval rating.  There are still around 30 million Americans without work, or enough work. There’s the endlessly cited observation that no president presiding over more than a 7 per cent jobless rate can hope for a second term.

The progressive sector is already rallying the Obama vote by pounding out the unsurprising message that Perry is a shil and errand boy for corporate America, Amazing! Imagine that a conservative Texas Republican would end up in that corner, arm in arm with Barack Obama, messenger of hope and change, also shil and errand boy for corporate America, starting with the nuclear industry, the arms sector, the ag/pesticide complex and moving on through Wall Street and the Fed, and equipped with truly noxious beliefs about fiscal discipline, the merits of compromise.  He’s a far more dangerous man to have in the Oval Office than Perry.  We need a polarizer to awaken the left from its unending, unbreakable infatuation with our current president, despite all the horrors he has perpetrated and presided over, most significantly the impending onslaught on Social Security and Medicare.

Any Republican who wants to maintain a viable candidacy will be forced to start taking some hard swings at Rick Perry.  Jon Huntsman has already started to do so.  Michele Bachmann might not, if she wants a shot at becoming Perry’s running mate.  It won’t matter what Ron Paul says … because the mainstream media are pretending as though he doesn’t exist.  If you haven’t seen it yet, Jon Stewart ran a superb piece, exhibiting how all of the major news outlets – including Fox – were apparently reading from the same script after Congressman Paul came within 100 votes of beating Michele Bachmann in the Iowa Straw Poll.  Watching those reports could have led one to believe that Ron Paul had dropped out of the race.  On August 17, Tara Sartor of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism provided this analysis of how the television news organizations squelched Ron Paul’s near-victory in Iowa:

In a further attempt to gauge the post-straw poll attention to Paul’s campaign, PEJ also used the Snapstream server’s closed captioning capability to assess the candidates’ television coverage in the first few days after that balloting.

The sample included the three network Sunday morning panel shows on August 14, the morning and evening network news programs on August 15 and four hours of prime-time cable and one hour of daytime from each of the three major cable news networks on August 15.

According to that analysis, Paul was mentioned just 29 times. By comparison, Perry was mentioned 371 times, Bachmann was mentioned 274 times, and Romney was mentioned 183 times.

I hope that the anti-Paul conspiracy helps to energize those voters who had been ambivalent about supporting the “other Texan” in the race.

At some point, the progressive Democrats are going to be faced with the ugly reality that they don’t have a candidate in the 2012 Presidential campaign.  As has been the case with Ron Paul and his supporters – the Left will be left out.


 

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GOP Unable To Wash Away Santorum

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After his disappointing loss to Michele Bachmann in the Iowa Straw Poll, Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty officially withdrew from the 2012 Presidential campaign.  Pawlenty finished third with 14% of the votes.  Bachmann picked up 28% and Congressman Ron Paul was right behind her with 27%.  Despite the fact that Rick Santorum finished fourth with a paltry 9.8%, the Pennsylvanian has not discussed abandoning his own Presidential bid.

Santorum has not held public office since his humiliating defeat in the 2006 election, at which point he lost his Senate seat to Democrat Bob Casey, Jr. by a 59%-41% margin – the worst defeat for an incumbent Senator since 1980.  One might assume that such a bidetory washout would forever purge Santorum from that zone within the Beltway.  Nevertheless, Santorum apparently believes he will have greater success with a national campaign in post-Tea Party America.

Strangely enough, Santorum’s fourth-place finish in the Ames Straw Poll is being spun as a victory.  Dan Hirschhorn reported for Politico that Santorum’s fourth-place showing helped grease the candidate’s fundraising efforts:

Still underfunded, the campaign enjoyed its strongest overnight online money haul in the hours after the straw poll, and is planning to step up its fundraising efforts in Pennsylvania, his financial home base after two Senate terms.

Nevertheless, as Daniel Larison discussed in The American Conservative, Santorum’s fourth-place finish was solely a result of the candidate’s persistent, lingering presence in Iowa:

The reality is that Santorum has been living and campaigning full-time in Iowa for weeks, he ought to be rallying social conservatives to him in much larger numbers than he does, and his fourth-place finish out of a field of six direct competitors is confirmation that his campaign is going nowhere.  Beating out Herman Cain and Thad McCotter on the ground does not mean much at all.  His presidential bid has always seemed to be a vain effort to re-fight the battles of his failed 2006 re-election campaign.

Michael Falcone of ABC News observed that Santorum “has been languishing near the bottom of national polls”.  The question remains as to whether a candidate, whose agenda is so tightly focused on conservative “values voters” could gain momentum in a campaign dominated by financial issues.  As George Will pointed out, Santorum has repeatedly emphasized that “… America’s debt crisis is, at bottom, symptomatic of a failure of self-control  …”

Dan Hirschhorn noted at the conclusion of his Politico report, that Santorum’s “end game” remains a mystery.  I suspect that Santorum’s true objective could be to secure the number two place on the Republican ticket as the GOP’s Vice-Presidential candidate.

It’s reasonable to assume that the presence of Santorum on the back end of the Republican ticket could provide their campaign with a frothy mixture of enthusiasm, including support from social conservatives who would not otherwise vote for a less-polarizing Presidential nominee.

Meanwhile, Santorum continues to swim upstream, while jumping down the throat of the hard right’s newest rising star, Texas Governor Rick Perry, who refused to advocate a relativistic interpretation of the Tenth Amendment.  Governor Perry provided this response to Santorum’s blast:

“You either have to believe in the 10th Amendment or you don’t,” Perry told reporters after a bill signing in Houston Wednesday.  “You can’t believe in the 10th Amendment for a few issues and then [for] something that doesn’t suit you say, ‘We’d rather not have states decide that.’”

You can probably see the problem exposed by this dust-up.  If the Republican Party can’t wash out Santorum, the remaining GOP Presidential hopefuls will begin to appear liberal.


 

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A Bad Week For Rupert Murdoch

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We all know how this awful week began.  For Rupert Murdoch, one of his prized investments — Sarah Palin — had become the subject of heated debate.  Murdoch’s News Corp publishes her ghost-written books and Palin works for News Corp’s Fox News as a contributor.  While a team of doctors in Tucson heroically scrambled to save the life of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, a team of spin doctors at Fox News scrambled to save the political life of Sarah Palin.  At this point, I defer to an excellent piece written by Glynnis MacNicol of The Business Insider:

It is clear that Palin spent the last few days testing the waters and leaving the heavy lifting of the defending her to the folks at Fox News, most notably Glenn Beck.

As Ms. MacNicol explained, Palin returned to her Facebook page on January 12:

In equally typical fashion, Palin offered little introspection into her role in the political dialogue of the past year and laid the blame directly at the feet of the media, whom she accused of “blood libel.”

As MacNicol and many other commentators pointed out, this choice of words exemplified yet another classic Palin mistake.  Palin’s gaffe drew criticism from the Anti-Defamation League and it gave her critics yet another opportunity to emphasize that Palin has been in over her head with her attempts to establish a national leadership identity.  The Hill quoted what Representative James Clyburn had to say about Palin’s latest misstep:

“You know, Sarah Palin just can’t seem to get it, on any front. I think she’s an attractive person, she is articulate,” Clyburn said on the Bill Press radio show. “But I think intellectually, she seems not to be able to understand what’s going on here.”

While Rupert Murdoch’s investment in Sarah Palin was obviously deteriorating and becoming an embarrassment for his Fox News organization, things were headed in a more catastrophic direction in his Australian homeland.  The intense flooding that had been ongoing for the past several weeks was being attributed to climate change.  A report from Reuters began with this statement:

Climate change has likely intensified the monsoon rains that have triggered record floods in Australia’s Queensland state, scientists said on Wednesday, with several months of heavy rain and storms still to come.

Although Murdoch now personally admits that climate change poses a serious environmental threat, his News Corp subsidiaries have an established track record of denying that any such threat exists.

An article from the Treehugger website provided details about how badly conditions had deteriorated in Queensland:

When 75% of Queensland is disaster declared due to flooding, that is a huge area, roughly equivalent to two Texas’s or the entirety of South Africa.  On the 31st of December Reuters was saying flood water was “covering an area bigger than France and Germany combined, inundating 22 towns and stranding 200,000 people.”  This is a continually unfolding natural disaster, of which the financial bill alone was projected to reach $5 billion AUD, and that was before the flash flooding of the past day or so.

*   *   *

Australia is a rich, industrialised ‘First World’ country.  But it’s third most populous state, Queensland, is currently coping with floods which have already decimated food crops, livestock, road and rail infrastructure, mining and so on.  The impacts of which will flow on (pardon the pun) to effect most every Australian. Already some particular fruits have all but disappeared from commercial markets.

If all that weren’t bad enough, what must have been the most chilling news for Rupert Murdoch came from Julian Assange of Wikileaks.  Ian Burrell of The Independent provided this report:

A year that has begun badly for Rupert Murdoch grew a little worse yesterday after the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, claimed to be in possession of secret documents damaging to the media mogul and his News Corp empire.

Mr Assange told John Pilger in the New Statesman he had withheld a cache of confidential US government cables and files relating to Mr Murdoch’s business as “insurance”.  He has claimed that his life is in danger if he is extradited to Sweden to face allegations of sexual assault.

*   *   *

Mr Assange indicated that he had paperwork which could be hurtful to News Corp.  “There are 504 US embassy cables on one broadcasting organisation and there are cables on Murdoch and News Corp.”

Assange does lots of talking about documents he is holding as “insurance”.  Nevertheless, many commentators have mentioned the possibility all this boasting could amount to nothing more than a bluffing strategy.

In addition to discussing the Wikileaks threat, the Independent article provided us with the perspective of a former Murdoch associate on the possibility that Rupert might not be too happy with the way things are going at Fox News:

In a further broadside yesterday, one of Mr Murdoch’s former henchmen, Andrew Neil, publicly questioned whether the world’s most powerful media figure retained his grip over his organisation.

*   *   *

“My own view is [Fox] is out of control,” Neil told Richard Bacon yesterday on BBC Radio 5 Live.  “I think Rupert Murdoch has lost control of it. I know from sources he’s not happy with a lot that appears on it and I think he’s lost over the Glenn Becks and the O’Reillys,” said Mr Neil.

“[Murdoch] is uncomfortable with Glenn Beck and various other positions they take and some of the things they say.”  Neil, who fell out with Mr Murdoch in the early Nineties, claimed he had “very good sources at the heart of News Corp”.

If there is any truth to Andrew Neil’s revelations, it will be very interesting to see if Mr. Murdoch makes any changes at Fox News, due to his reported concerns.  Either way, 2011 could turn out to be a very important year for Rupert Murdoch.


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I Have A PETA For You Right Here

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June 22, 2009

It was a tension-filled week, when it appeared as though the Islamic Republic of Iran was ready to self-destruct at any moment.  (It did.  Iran is now a police state.)  It was a week when the summer humidity caused the duct tape, holding up the equities markets, to start losing its grip.  It was a week when “Turbo” Tim Geithner and Larry Summers brought their Beavis and Butthead act to The Washington Post. It was also a week when the creators of the JibJab animations released a new cartoon, depicting Barack Obama as a superhero.  The stars were aligned.  It was during this week when The Obama Moment happened.  He killed that fly during the interview with John Harwood.  It was a moment made for Maureen Dowd, but God didn’t just leave it to her.   Stephen Colbert saw fit to do a piece with The Fly himself, Jeff Goldblum, entitled:  “Murder in The White House”.

The mainstream media obviously thought this story had “legs” (fly legs, unfortunately, but not wings).  The Obama sycophants saw this moment as proof that the man who sank the three-pointer on camera in Kuwait was indeed a Master,  …  a Jedi Knight, …  a Sensei.  Comparisons were made to The Karate Kid (probably because it was also the week of the disclosure that the star of television’s Kung Fu show from the seventies, David Caradine, died from auto-erotic asphyxiation, making The Karate Kid the de facto understudy for such circumstances).  In order to properly “work” the fly-swatting story from all angles, the media inevitably turned to the animal rights group, PETA, for their response to The Obama Moment.  To be fair, PETA did not seize upon The Obama Moment to promote the ethos of animal rights.  It was only when contacted for their reaction to the event by “multiple media outlets” when PETA responded to the “executive insect execution”.  Subsequently, Alisa Mullins of PETA explained:

When the media began contacting us in droves for a statement, we obliged, simply by saying that the president isn’t the Buddha and shouldn’t be expected to do everything right—if not for that, we would not have brought it up. It’s the media who are making a big deal about the fly swat—not PETA.

Once PETA bit on the bait by taking a stand on this issue, it put itself in the crosshairs for ridicule.  Ms. Mullins of PETA saw fit to use the opportunity for promotion of the “humane insect catcher” by actually sending one of these devices to The White House, as a suggested alternative to fly-swatting.  Ms. Mullins reported that she once used one of these devices to “capture and release” a palmetto bug.  I believe that these $8 devices are absurdly stupid and inefficient.  Look at their ad for the thing.  Do you really believe that it’s possible to catch a fly with one of these?  On more than one occasion, I was able to catch a palmetto bug by merely sliding a piece of paper under it.  I walked it to my porch and released it back into the wild, where it was likely eaten by a cat.  Palmetto bugs are slow, pathetic, helpless things.  The trap sold by PETA holds the palmetto bug in an oppressive Plexiglas prison until you bother to release it.  By using a single sheet of paper (costing $7.999 less) you can talk to the palmetto bug and nurture it as you return it to its natural habitat.

On the other hand, I don’t necessarily agree with all the people who are dumping on PETA.  Although it is true that Alisa Mullins of PETA referred to this event as “Flygate”, she is probably too young to remember that Bill Clinton already had such a scandal.  I agree with protecting animals to a reasonable extent.  I was a vegetarian for two years.  I also believe that PETA has had some nice advertising campaigns that they lacked the guts to stand behind.  Take for example their Super Bowl ad that was banned.  It showed some steamy-hot women getting erotic with vegetables, using the sloagan: “Studies show:  Vegetarians have better sex”.  Better yet, was their campaign for vegetarianism wherein two sexy women, dressed in lingerie, got cozy with each other on an air mattress, to demonstrate how vegetarians can be sexy people.  Do you really believe that I’m going to just tell you about this and not provide a link?  Guess again.  The link is here.  The mistake PETA made involved locating this event in El Paso, Texas.  Some citizens claimed that this demonstration was not “family friendly”.  PETA should have located this event on South Beach, where it belonged.  (If I may be so bold as to recommend a particular address for such a redo …)

As you can see, PETA has used some mighty-fine ideas in promoting its cause.  The only problem was that they caved in to intimidation.  As for The Obama Moment in fly-swatting, they may want to go back to the well if they want to capitalize on it.  Why not shoot a commercial in an apartment where two hot women live, with lots of Georgia O’Keeffe prints all over the walls?  They would have the place loaded with plants, some of which are called:  Venus Fly Traps.  Flies come in … and they get eaten by those plants.  Although some proponents of “flies’ rights” might complain that plants are being used to kill insects …  That is simply unfair.  Those plants have a right to defend themselves from unwanted invaders.  If the flies are so obnoxious as to get themselves killed in the process, that’s their problem.  Case (and Venus Fly Trap) closed.

The Voting Begins

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October 30, 2008

The long-awaited 2008 Elections are finally underway.  According to the Early Voting Information Center website, 32 States allow in-person early voting.  As the voting proceeds, we are seeing an enormous number of people opting to cast their votes before November 4.  On Tuesday, October 28, Gary Langer (polling director for ABC News) reported that as of that morning, 9 percent of “likely voters” had already voted.  As reported in the October 30 Washington Post, Michael McDonald, an associate professor at George Mason University who compiles early-voting statistics, observed that his running total of early voters now tops 16.5 million.  USA Today reports that approximately 25 percent of Georgia’s registered voters have already cast their ballots.  In Florida, Governor Charlie Crist extended the hours for early voting.  Prior to Crist’s executive order, Florida law allowed for early voting 8 hours per weekday and a total of 8 hours over the weekend.  The polls in Florida will now be open 12 hours per day, through Sunday, the last day for early voting.  The Miami Herald reported that prior to Christ’s signing of the order, the long, winding lines at the polling stations resulted in waits of as long as four hours to get to a voting machine.  The Herald reported that as of Tuesday morning, 10 percent of the state’s registered voters had already voted.  On Wednesday, October 29, Susan Saulny reported in The New York Times that there have been rumors circulating in Jacksonville, Florida’s African-American community that early voting could not be trusted because the votes cast early would be discarded.

By this point, there are already reports of voting machine problems and irregularities.  Martina Stewart reported for CNN that in Jefferson County, Texas, the County Clerk admitted to receiving “about half a dozen calls” that touch-screen voting machines were recording votes inaccurately.  Apparently, the candidates’ names are so close to each other on the screen that there is a possibility of pressing the wrong name when making the selection.  The machines have a “summary screen” where the voter can verify that the correct candidates were selected before finally hitting the button to actually cast the votes.  Similar problems were discussed by a reporter named Bill Murray at WSAZ in West Virginia.  Murray’s report pointed out that long fingernails and contact with the screen by bracelets could result in erroneous votes.

On Monday October 27, The New Mexico Independent reported that in Albuquerque, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against a Republican state lawmaker, alleging violations of the Voting Rights Act and disclosure of confidential information about voters, including Social Security numbers.  The article discussed the efforts of a Republican State Representative, Justine Fox-Young (a defendant in the suit) to support claims of voter fraud in the state’s June election.  The Independent had previously reported that Republican Party attorney Pat Rogers had hired a private investigator named Al Romero to make contact with voters whose registrations were under scrutiny by Republican activists.  The article discussed allegations by two legally-registered Hispanic voters, that they had been intimidated by Romero.  Pat Rogers had been cited in the U.S. Department of Justice report about the firing of U.S. attorneys and was described as one of the New Mexico GOP activists who complained to the Department of Justice about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias.  Iglesias was one of the U.S. Attorneys fired by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for political reasons.  The firing of Iglesias was a result of his failure to pursue a politically-motivated, bogus “voter fraud” investigation.

If Barack Obama defeats John McCain by a narrow margin, we can expect protracted recounts and microscopic inspections of voter registration documents.  My concern about this was reinforced when I read a quote from McCain speechwriter, Mark Salter, in a Washington Post article by Michael Leahy, on Thursday.  Speaking about John McCain, Salter said:

“And he’s not going to go down without a fight.  Some people mistake that for something else.  Some people believe in being gracious losers just so other people will look at them kindly.  He isn’t like that.   …  He’s going to fight hard, and if other people don’t think he’s being gracious, well, that’s the way it will be.  But he’s not alone in that.  And I’ll remind people of that, if I have to.”

So, don’t expect McCain to be a “gracious loser”.  Unless there is a landslide on Tuesday, there could be a long, ugly fight, reminiscent of the election fiasco of 2000.