Brains, In the final throes...

[elfs]

Joshua Landis' analysis of the attack on Syria

Syria has been eager to restart intelligence sharing which would help to reduce cross border violations, but it demands a price - that the US recognize Syria's assistance by returning an ambassador to Damascus. The White House has refused to do this, preferring to use sticks to force Syrian compliance. One must presume that the most recent killing of Syrians is designed to be just such a stick.

It will, of course, not force compliance, but the Bush administration must assume that an Obama victory on November 4 will force Syria to behave nicely in order to win favor with the new administration. Thus, White House analysts may assume that it can have a "freebee" — taking a bit of personal revenge on Syria without the US paying a price. Damascus may just have to write it off as a good bye salute from its friends in Washington.

The paranoia continues to run high!

Did I mention this man hates me? You and me? Yes he does. Why? Because he can. Yes He Can. Beneath that cool persona is a megalomaniac. Cool? Like Stalin after a purge, emotionally and sexually spent. Like Saddam after a torture session, dozing in his chair with someone's genitals curled in his fist. Like Pol Pot after a petit mal seizure, mumbling a litany of the dead. Cool that way.

(via Andrew Sullivan)

Obama gets direction from... SATAN!

James Pinkerton tells us that Barack Obama is winning in the polls because he learned how to be a "radical" reading the books of Saul Alinsky, who once wrote that though he may have been loathed throughout history, even Lucifer managed to wrest a kingdom away from God.

Nuclear Safety is for Wusses

Y'know, nuclear power is one of those macho, muscular technologies from the '50s that we've gotten far too wimpy about. We need to re-embrace the atom, use it profligately, and learn to live with the little crises it creates, like Chernobyl.

A Detective talks about how he extracted a false confession...

A fascinating, and frightening tale:

I've been a police officer for 25 years, and I never understood why someone would admit to a crime he or she didn't commit. Until I secured a false confession in a murder case. ...

Reviewing the tapes years later, I saw that we had fallen into a classic trap. We ignored evidence that our suspect might not have been guilty, and during the interrogation we inadvertently fed her details of the crime that she repeated back to us in her confession.

(via Radley Balko)

Ross Douthat on how Rush Limbaugh will separate the men from the boys, er, the "real" Republicans from the Rinos, come the bloodbath.

Man, all you need is two braincells to rub together to see how wrong Limbaugh's rant is:

Only John McCain can get moderates and independents and Democrats to join the Republican Party, "and we can't win," these intellectualoids said, "if that didn't happen." Well, the latest moderate Republican to abandon his party is William Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts who today endorsed the Most Merciful Lord Barack Obama. He joins moderate Republican Colin Powell. He joins former Bush press spokesman Scott McClellan.

They're following their own self-interests, so I say fine. They have just admitted that Republican Party "big tent" philosophy didn't work. It was their philosophy; it was their idea. These are the people, once they steered the party to where it is, they are the ones that abandoned it.

This appeal to a "small tent" Republicanism, one cut loose of any intellectual appeal, only shores up Brad DeLong's assertion: "THERE ARE NO ATTRACTIVE MODERN CONSERVATIVES BECAUSE CONSERVATISM SIMPLY IS NOT ATTRACTIVE. DEAL WITH IT." (shouting in the original). I mean, McCain didn't try to make a case for a "conservatism" that wasn't just knee-jerk Christian Nationalism watered down just enough for the press not to call him on it.

McCain could have made a cogent argument for himself as a "maverick," could have argued based on his record. He could have argued that there are good (emphasis on that, boys and girls) traditions and precedents worthy of respect. He could have positioned himself opposite Barack Obama. Instead, he decided to go for the base and threw away any chance at winning the center. He declined to treat us as equal, sovereign. citizens. And that's why he's losing, and no other reason.

Comments

[codeamazon.livejournal.com]

I didn't need those images in my head.

One thing I have come to believe absolutely is that people imagine in others their own weaknesses. It is precisely that which we consider inherent to the human condition based from our own experience of being human which we will fastest see in others.

Rather chilling, but it does explain why I have seen little of McCain as evil, and much of Obama as anti-christ. The reaslity is that the R's have driven off most of the rational people and are left with a base of paranoid fear-driven people who, being the only people left willing to express themselves, are accelerating the process of driving off any rational people remaining.

[scyllacat.livejournal.com]

Well, I read the one about the false confessions, because it seemed to offer some hope. I could not read the second and third ones because they made no sense to me.

I find that noteworthy. I admit that in liking Obama, I'm loath to find out something I don't like about him, because at this point, nothing could make me vote for Palin (I liked McCain until he started talking like he'd been trepaned). But I've tried to be aware of actual issues. When someone writes stuff like that, I can't even parse the sentences.

It makes me wonder if that's why right is right and left is left in this country--well, I've heard other people talk about "shouting past each other." I wonder if other people just can't tell what the other side is saying anymore.

Meanwhile, yeah, Rush? The big tent didn't work when John McCain decided to start blowing dog whistles to get all the Christian right-wing into the tent. None of the rest of us could find a message in all the yipping.

I'm appalled by the paranoia link from Velociworld

[bikerwalla.livejournal.com]

Remember, when people express hope that government can be better, they're actually pushing the drug of hope and they're going to sodomize you with their change, so, uh, protect your buns when there's a Democrat around?

Re: I'm appalled by the paranoia link from Velociworld

[(Anonymous)]

The drug of hope? Thank you for reporting your concern, friend citizen. Please report to the nearest execution chamber for debriefing. Trust no one. Keep your laser handy. The Computer is your friend.

[blaisepascal]

None of Obama, McCain, or the article you link to raises any of the issues related to the Chernobyl reactor. In fact, none of them discuss the design and operation of reactors at all, but rather issues of fuel processing and waste management.

So why did you bring up Chernobyl?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I disagree. McCain's repeated citing of the nuclear safety record of the Navy directly implies an understanding and approval of design and operation issues. I don't know why McCain does it, either, because military reactors are very unlike civilian reactors in both their expected operating environments and what the people running them are expected to do when missiles are headed their way.

McCain's attacks are simple-minded and arrogant. He dismisses "nuclear safety"-- without the qualifications you mention-- as "blah blah blah." That's not the attitude I want in the oval office.

[omahas.livejournal.com]

I believe he was pointing out that McCain was ridiculing Obama for requiring safety regulations before exploring the use of nuclear energy in the US, implying that McCain didn't see a need for such safety measures. And since Chernobyl's accident is, at least in part, due to lack of safety measures in the former Soviet Union, that's where the connection is.