Encore

Ever wonder what happens when you drop a mouse into a fish tank full of piranhas? Yeah, me too.

Orthogonian, RIP

Like I told you, it was only a matter of time until The Orthogonian shut down (or went into cryogenic freeze) and another blog sprouted. Now my collaborative effort with Stuart has come to pass. It's called Caffeine and Irony or C&I for short. We don't really have a direction yet, but hopefully soon we will. For right now, it looks like we are in a big rush to post lots of amusing things we have found on the Internet. Also, since the blog is hosted by my company, don't go and leave F-bombs in the comments section or I'll have to break out the deleted on you.

I'm going to take a break from posting here for a time while I redirect my efforts there. And just so those Whittier jokes know - I'm not giving up my name.

Wanted: Tough, Smart Lawyer

Now that John Ashcroft has submitted his resignation, President Bush should set out on a careful search for our next Attorney General. I have three suggestions:

Jim Adler

"Hurt in a car accident? Look at me, I'm Jim Adler, the tough, smart lawyer (or the "Tough Texas Hammer" or simply the "Texas Hammer"). I'm here to get you every penny you have coming..."

I believe Adler would go after the accused terrorists at Guantanamo as hard as he goes after insurance companies for clients in phony neck braces – and friends, that's hard. With Jim Adler on America's side, criminals may as well just give up. France has already asked to settle out of court.

Plusses: A tough, smart lawyer. Willing to fight for every penny America has coming. Will keep hammerin' and hammerin' until, well, until I don't know when. Minuses: National syndication of his commercials. End of the insurance industry. May not be as tough or smart as he claims.

Brian Loncar

Loncar's motto is "Call in the Strong Arm!" You might as well through a couple more exclamation points, because this Texas Tech Law grad looks to be the next Jim Adler!!!

Plusses: A strong arm – could conceivably double as Attorney General and No. 5 starter for the Washington Senators. Texas Tech connection ensures ties with fellow law school grad. Mike Leach. Minuses: Mike Leach connection. Hairline.

R.A. Gabriel

[NO PICTURE AVAILABLE]

R.A. Gabriel could be coaxed out of retirement and change his slogan to, "the Attorney General who sends flowers." Plusses: With a soft touch, he could prod reticent terrorists into giving up with bouquets of babies' breath and tiger lilies. Minuses: Seems more interested in botany than in getting every penny his client has coming. America must not be short-changed.

Bonus: Find any R.A. Gabriel reference on the Internet. A guy like that can't just fade into oblivion, can he?

Why ask why?

A frequent posteur keeps asking why this blog is named what it is. Here's the answer. Over the summer, I read Chris Matthews' (yes, that Chris Matthews) excellent double-barrelled biography of John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon. In it, Matthews explains how Nixon established a fraternity at Whittier College in response to an elite group of sons of rich new dealers who called themselves the Franklins. Orthogonian, which really isn't a word, is a mixture of the latin ortho which means straight and the middle-english suffix -gonian which simply means derivative of. People from Halifax, Nova Scotia are called Haligonians. According to lore Orthogonian meant "straight shooters."

To fully answer ARealOrthogonian's question, in the book Matthews' keeps framing Nixon's public service in terms of an Orthogonian railing against the Franklins, personified by Kennedy. I used that name for this blog because I think I share in some of that resentment that Nixon is said to have had. And while I'm not prepared to act on it, I am willing to appropriate the concept for a blog title.

We weren't wrong, we were robbed!

Just two more items regarding the election – I promise I'm done after this.

Dems who have been treading through 12-step programs following Kerry's defeat may now have an alternative. The folks over at Common Dreams now allege that Bush again stole Florida. Thom Hartmann explains (in 1,969 words) how Bush's 377,000+ vote win in Florida was actually rigged (that's 192 votes per word!). Som Dems might want to pick up on this theory. After all, buying conspiracy theories is my more productive than what this man did.

Back to our regularly scheduled...

Let's talk a bit about Texas football. Call me a reactionary, but I'm prepared to take back all those dirty things I said about Vince Young and his ability to throw the ball. I was wrong. If the Oklahoma State game is any indication, I could well be very wrong. Vince still can't throw the out, or the out and up or really anything from the numbers to the sideline, but man, give that man a seam route and he seems to hit it.

Alas, as astute Texas fans already know, it takes a blue moon crossing a black cat for Greg Davis to break out of his small ball mantra and ring up the seam routes. My question, as it always is, is why will Texas next week go back to a very conservative offense when we just found the Shroud of Turin in the form of Vince Young passing ability?

Where everybody knows your name

After reflecting on some hotly political bar talk from the past few days, I feel it's safe to say the following:

1. We all want the same thing. Both parties of this dispute really do want to conform America to their own image. Neither of the two sides are happy with how things stand right now and both want to push in opposite directions. If you accept this, it should be no surprise there's friction (or fraction) between the two. At the macro level, we both want a better America, we simply have different opinions on what "better" is. This is important because...

2. Nobody has ulterior motives. I can't speak for Falwell and his crew, but I'm not particularly interested in a theocracy. Ascribing democracy-toppling motives to evangelicals just isn't right. In the same way, ascribing unpatriotic motives to those on the left is equally wrong. I think understanding this might heal a lot of damage.

3. Willful ignorance is not bliss. It's becoming more and more apparent to me that we're losing the ability to relate to people who are different than us. We're not citizens, we're consumers. Consumers make choices. And each of us tailor our consumption (food, news, friendships, vegetables) to our desires. But sadly in news consumption, we head for the candy isle of news that affirms what we believe. This would be Fox, WSJ, Rush and Powerline Blog for Repubs and CNN, NYT, NPR and Daily Kos for Dems. By avoiding conflicting points of view, we're really avoiding our vegetables - things that challenge us, but make us better. So now most of us Red Staters are woefully, and willfully, ignorant of our Blue State brothers. Do they have back yard barbecues? I don't know. But I bet they couldn't explain to me the difference between an Armenian and a Pentecostal.

4. We need to stop up-thinking ourselves. Depending on your perspective, we're all made in the image of God or all derivative of the same monkey. Either way, talking down your neighbor is about like telling yo mama jokes to your brother. The perspectives gained from life in the Northeast or Southwest may be unique and valuable in different ways, but still valuable.

5. I'm about ready to drop politics for a while and go back to finding funny links - my life passion.

Why, part II

Slate has run a series in the wake of Tuesday's re-election of George W. Bush headlined "Why Americans Hate Democrats - A Dialogue." Below are excerpts, links and reactions. But first, I have to deal with the title. I think liberals can rest easy – while it's true some conservatives do hate Democrats, I don't think that's true and I don't think that's what the election indicated. Just because liberal America hates Republicans (or more specifically the iron triangle of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and John Ashcroft) doesn't mean we hate you back. Rather, I think a better title for the piece would be "Exodus: How to avoid 40 years in the desert."

Our first contribution comes from Chris Suellentrop:

Vision without details beats details without vision. President Bush put forward a powerful and compelling philosophy of what the government should do at home and abroad: Expand liberty. You can disagree with Bush's implementation of that vision, but objecting to it as a matter of principle isn't a political winner. ...

...The question for Democrats is whether Rove's formula will turn out to be a one-time trick tied to Bush's personal popularity and the emotional bond the nation formed with him after the trauma of 9/11, or whether the Democratic Party has been relegated to permanent, if competitive, minority status. Are the Democrats once again a regional party, the new Eisenhower Republicans of the Northeast? For seven consecutive presidential elections, the Democratic candidate has failed to garner 50 percent of the vote. Not since Jimmy Carter in 1976 has a Democrat won a majority, and even Watergate could get Carter only 50.1 percent.

Astute point from Suellentrop. Bush framed the arguement in a way that no one could plausibly disagree with him. Republicans were driven up a tree when we allowed Clinton to say things like "I'm for education" and not force any specificity from him. Specificity kills - Travis, Clinton and Bush all know this. Suellenwhatever is also right to point to 2008 to see how the evangelicals turnout. Their reaction could be the single biggest factor for the continued effectivness of the Democratic party.

Next we hear from William Saletan.

Nearly 60 million people came out to vote for George W. Bush yesterday because they think that he represents their values and that you don't. Prove them wrong and you'll be the majority party again. How? Start by changing the way you talk about pocketbook issues. Remember Bill Clinton's commitment to help people who "work hard and play by the rules"? Your positions on taxes and labor would be assets instead of liabilities if you explained them in moral terms. ...

...A party that believes in right and wrong at home must be assertive about right and wrong abroad. You need a serious antiterrorist agenda. Otherwise, when you object to a war like Iraq, you sound like the peace party. I'm not asking you to act like you care about this stuff. I'm asking you to care about it for real, and not just at election time.

Saletan's plan would involve locking up the peacenik wing of the party into the closet right beside Cynthia McKinney and Jim McDermitt. Could work. But it would mean that liberal hawks like Joe Lieberman would again run free in the party. Are Democrats ready for that?

Next, Timothy Noah poo-poos the typical three solutions for Democrats:

Move right: "In theory, there ought to be a point where the GOP has moved so far to the right that nobody will vote for its candidates. But in practice, I'm not confident that such a point exists."

Move left: "...while a more leftist agenda might be advisable policy, as politics it doesn't work. Merely to identify oneself as "liberal" is suicide for most politicians, and these days you even see private citizens edging away from the label."

Stand pat (allowing the populace to come around): "And who knows whether this demographic messiah will ever arrive, anyway?"

Finally, my favorite commentary (for its ridiculousness) comes from Jane Smiley, who among other things is an author with an apparent burr under her saddle. She entitles her manifesto "The unteachable ignorance of the red states," and doesn't cool down until her rant is done. Read the following and marvel:

I say forget introspection. It's time to be honest about our antagonists. My predecessors in this conversation are thoughtful men, and I honor their ideas, but let's try something else. I grew up in Missouri and most of my family voted for Bush, so I am going to be the one to say it: The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry. I suppose the good news is that 55 million Americans have evaded the ignorance-inducing machine. But 58 million have not. (Well, almost 58 million—my relatives are not ignorant, they are just greedy and full of classic Republican feelings of superiority.)

Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states. There used to be a kind of hand-to-hand fight on the frontier called a "knock-down-drag-out," where any kind of gouging, biting, or maiming was considered fair. The ancestors of today's red-state voters used to stand around cheering and betting on these fights. When the forces of red and blue encountered one another head-on for the first time in Kansas Territory in 1856, the red forces from Missouri, who had been coveting Indian land across the Missouri River since 1820, entered Kansas and stole the territorial election. The red news media of the day made a practice of inflammatory lying—declaring that the blue folks had shot and killed red folks whom everyone knew were walking around. The worst civilian massacre in American history took place in Lawrence, Kan., in 1862—Quantrill's raid. The red forces, known then as the slave-power, pulled 265 unarmed men from their beds on a Sunday morning and slaughtered them in front of their wives and children. The error that progressives have consistently committed over the years is to underestimate the vitality of ignorance in America. Listen to what the red state citizens say about themselves, the songs they write, and the sermons they flock to. They know who they are—they are full of original sin and they have a taste for violence. The blue state citizens make the Rousseauvian mistake of thinking humans are essentially good, and so they never realize when they are about to be slugged from behind.

Here is how ignorance works: First, they put the fear of God into you—if you don't believe in the literal word of the Bible, you will burn in hell. Of course, the literal word of the Bible is tremendously contradictory, and so you must abdicate all critical thinking, and accept a simple but logical system of belief that is dangerous to question. A corollary to this point is that they make sure you understand that Satan resides in the toils and snares of complex thought and so it is best not try it. ...

She goes on (and on, and on...), but this post won't, other than to ask how she equates modern Red Staters to a butchering mob. Is this really how she sees me? Perhaps it's me who should be despondent. Now who exactly is prejudiced here? Frankly, I hope she is done trying to learn me a lesson.

Left face, forward march

Some of us have discussed already where we think the Democratic Party will next turn. Here's a likely answer from Michael Moore dot com:

17. Finally and most importantly, over 55 million Americans voted for the candidate dubbed "The #1 Liberal in the Senate." That's more than the total number of voters who voted for either Reagan, Bush I, Clinton or Gore. Again, more people voted for Kerry than Reagan. If the media are looking for a trend it should be this -- that so many Americans were, for the first time since Kennedy, willing to vote for an out-and-out liberal. The country has always been filled with evangelicals -- that is not news. What IS news is that so many people have shifted toward a Massachusetts liberal. In fact, that's BIG news. Which means, don't expect the mainstream media, the ones who brought you the Iraq War, to ever report the real truth about November 2, 2004. In fact, it's better that they don't. We'll need the element of surprise in 2008.

Hello Howard Dean!

History's first draft

In the week after a presidential election, magazines like to give the rough draft of history with their insider looks. Here's Newsweek's story from inside the Kerry campaign. I'm halfway through and it's a pretty good read so far. I'm still searching for the Bush one, and when I do, I'll post it here too.

Think about why you lost

This is dedicated to Democrats who are wringing their hands right now.

It's now time for liberals who invested so much emotional capital in this campaign to stop bemoaning their luck or lot in life. Democrats lost. They lost the White House with a majority for the first time since 1988. Instead of taking back the Senate, they lost four seats. Instead of making gains in the House, they lost four seats. What's more, Bush made gains in the margins of 34 states. Republicans are from Mars and Democrats are from Venus. The problem for liberals is that right now, Republicans are more numerous and hold higher political ground.

This election revealed some big problems for the DNC. Here they are:

Strong South: Republicans have a base of support in the south that is nearly impenetrable. Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky and Virginia will vote Republican from now until Armageddon or the Democrats drop their fanatical support of abortion and secularism. The path to an electoral victory for a Democrat without being competitive in the South is so difficult, it allows Republicans to focus on the few states they need. Of course Clinton got around this, but now that Republicans have consolidated the statehouses and delegations of almost every southern state, there's no real DNC farm system in the South anymore.

Republican Ground Game: How many times did I hear network anchors and Terry McAuliffe talk up the vast network of Democratic GOTV efforts? For all the talk about America Coming Together and the labor unions and how good the Democrats ground game was, it's now clear that the GOP's GOTV, which flew way under the radar, proved the equal or better of the Democrats' GOTV. This has been an area where Democrats have traditionally beaten Republicans handily. If Rove has found the formula for GOTV on the Republican side, they party may not make appeals to independent voters until repudiated.

Self image: For some reason, Democrats still see themselves as the party of moral authority. This often translates into Democrats acting as if they're in power even if they're not. Look at the convention. The Democrats acted snub as the party in power, instead of the minority railing against the corruption of the majority. Why did the Democrats give Bush such easy treatment during the DNConvention? A true minority party would have latched on like an attack dog. Contrast that to the Republicans, who still act as if they're the party out of power. Ever vengeful, ever opportunistic, ever aggresive. Didn't anyone see Zell Miller? It's Republicans, not Democrats, with a chip on their shoulder.

Culture War: If you trust exit polls (which I don't necessarily), the Culture War was more on voters’ minds than even the War in Iraq. Democrats may feel that they are on the right side of the abortion battle or the gay rights battle, but the majority of Americans now disagree. Democrats need to see the brilliance of how Republicans have turned abortion into a winning issue. It's not the Republicans who are, in practice, extreme on abortion. The GOP has very astutely embraced the general consensus in America that abortion ought to be legal, but restricted. That's why the GOP will win over voters again and again every time Democrats or Democratic judges shoot down a PBA ban. On gay marriage, it is practically insane for Democrats to allow some fringe members of their party to make it seem like the whole party is in favor of gay marriage. It is a losing issue right now.

Blindness: Democrats reaction to this will show how quickly they come back from this loss. If they think they can win without competing in the South, they will continue to lose. If Democrats think they can base their party in the Northeast instead of the Midwest, they are wrong. (An aside: winning in the Midwest means the Democrats will have to become more socially conservative). My guess is that Democrats will soon move left as Republicans moved right after 1960. In 1964 after Goldwater got thumped, the GOP sat around and figured out a winning strategy that endures today. Republicans in '64 saw that, despite supposed intellectual superiority, folks in the nation just didn't like them very much. Democrats will be heading for more losses if they take from 2004 that they have a winning formula because they earned 48 percent.

Audacity: On so many important to social issues, Eastern elites have no idea why conservatives or traditionalists believe what they believe. It is counter productive to chalk up the differences to stupidity or ignorance as some liberals do. If Democrats continue to portray people who believe in God as simpletons from the boondoggles, they will even start losing states like Minnesota and Wisconsin and further alienate the South. This God Gap could not be better represented than by the fact that Kerry, a Catholic, lost the Catholic vote. The fact that Kerry thought he could sway religious people with weird and awkward references to scripture is frankly offensive. The fact that Howard Dean thought he could win over votes in Southern primaries by talking about the Confederate Flag and pickup trucks just shows Dean's ignorance. The blue-blooded Kerry's appeal to sports fans and gun owners was even more patronizing. Who did Kerry think he was fooling by staging ridiculous photo-ops playing football, wearing camo and shooting geese? How Condescending. Like children (as a former camp counselor, I can't tell you how true this is), the American people pick up on phoniness and condescension. The Democrats either/or game on gay marriage (either you support it or you're a homophobe), abortion (either you're for abortion rights in all instances or you're opposed in all instances), guns (either you want to ban assault weapons or you're for free reign of weaponry), science (either you believe we've evolved from monkeys or you're dumber than an ape) and environment (either you fall in line with the Sierra Club or you're for making the earth one giant parking lot) – these false dichotomies are losing propositions for Democrats.

Here's a key indicator of how Democrats will respond to their 2004 thumping. Will Democrats who insist on bipartisanship demand that Republicans come around or admit that they, as the party out of power, are the ones out of step with the people of America? Here's some free advice to Democrats in Red States: Help your party by trying to find out what makes Republican voters tick. You'll never convince any of them unless you understand and respect how they think.

UPDATE: How clueless is CNN when considering the God Gap? Their guests next segment will be Jesse Jackson (groan) and Jerry Fallwell (double groan). What CNN may not understand is how insignificant Falwell is in the religious community. Of course, you wouldn't know that from TV interviews...

UPDATE 2: Nader was just on Anderson Cooper saying Republicans fooled a lot of people into voting for them. The idea that Republican voters are either stupid or ignorant is not a winning strategy and not a way to win them back. ...

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