Letters by Boz

The Tina Fey Effect

Andrew Sullivan highlights an interesting aspect of the Sarah Palin phenomenon. While she has managed to excite the Far Right, often to a disturbing degree (see Rich Lowry's tent-pitching ode), she has managed to give some independents the creeps:

The Oct. 1-2 Rasmussen poll found that 43 percent of independents say Mrs. Palin is "hurting" Mr. McCain's chances to win the presidency, compared with 35 percent who see her as "helping" and another 22 percent who saw no impact or were not sure. Overall, the poll respondents split about evenly - 40 percent to 41 percent - on whether Mrs. Palin was an asset to the ticket.

I was still giving McCain the benefit of the doubt up until the point he chose snowbilly Palin as his running-mate. Now I hope the GOP presidential campaign crashes and burns.

Palin... the GOP's "Fatal Cancer"

The Huffington Post has a short piece quoting a recent interview with David Brooks:

[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn't think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.

Wow, that really nails it. The GOP celebration of all that is ignorant, provincial, anti-intellectual, philistine, and yes, hickish is truly dispiriting. Give me a Rockefeller Republican any day over a Redneck Republican.

The Debates

I don't bother watching political debates. Why should I? Really, I think only three types of people waste their time with them:

1. Politicos who are paid to comment on debates, or who are so in to the elections they actually find the whole circus entertaining;

2. The bland masses who believe that watching the candidates drone on at each other is part of their civic duty;

3. The clueless 15 percent or so of voters who are still undecided and are hoping for some sort of debate-inspired epiphany.

None of the above applies to me. That being said, I did catch a bit of the Biden-Palin debate on NPR. Goshdarnit golly-gee... she really does answer questions as if she's in another beauty pageant. She's also either rather dumb or rather deceitful (probably both) as illustrated by this exchange:

 BIDEN: Two Mondays ago John McCain said at 9 o'clock in the morning that the fundamentals of the economy were strong. Two weeks before that, he said George -- we've made great economic progress under George Bush's policies.... Nine o'clock, the economy was strong. Eleven o'clock that same day, two Mondays ago, John McCain said that we have an economic crisis....

PALIN: John McCain, in referring to the fundamentals of our economy being strong, he was talking to and he was talking about the American workforce. And the American workforce is the greatest in this world, with the ingenuity and the work ethic that is just entrenched in our workforce.... That's a positive. That's encouragement. And that's what John McCain meant.

So McCain and Palin just happen to have a totally different definition of economic fundamentals than the one used by analysts, investors, and, yes, economists. Darntootin', they're mavericks even in their use of the English language!

Angry Atheist Harris Vs. Very Theist Palin

Sam Harris can go a bit overboard in his anti-religious crusade, but a recent piece for Newsweek about Sarah Palin hits the bullseye. My fave paragraph:

Ask yourself: how has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth—in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn't seem too intelligent or well educated.

Read the rest here.

Animal Lovers for Obama

The Humane Society Legislative Fund (HSLF), a non-partisan organization dedicated to animal welfare, has for the first time in its history endorsed a presidential ticket: Barack Obama and Joe Biden. They explain the endorsement here.

In a nutshell, John McCain's selection of animal-slaughtering snowbilly Sarah Palin as his VP pick is what pushed the HSLF to endorse Obama-Biden:

While McCain’s positions on animal protection have been lukewarm, his choice of running mate cemented our decision to oppose his ticket. Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R-Alaska) retrograde policies on animal welfare and conservation have led to an all-out war on Alaska’s wolves and other creatures. Her record is so extreme that she has perhaps done more harm to animals than any other current governor in the United States.

Palin engineered a campaign of shooting predators from airplanes and helicopters, in order to artificially boost the populations of moose and caribou for trophy hunters. She offered a $150 bounty for the left foreleg of each dead wolf as an economic incentive for pilots and aerial gunners to kill more of the animals, even though Alaska voters had twice approved a ban on the practice. This year, the issue was up again for a vote of the people, and Palin led the fight against it—in fact, she helped to spend $400,000 of public funds to defeat the initiative.

What’s more, when the Bush Administration announced its decision to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, Palin filed a lawsuit to reverse that decision. She said it’s the “wrong move” to protect polar bears, even though their habitat is shrinking and ice floes are vanishing due to global warming.

The choice for animals is especially clear now that Palin is in the mix. If Palin is put in a position to succeed McCain, it could mean rolling back decades of progress on animal issues.

I wholeheartedly concur. I supported Dole in '96, and Bush in '00 and '04. Largely because of McCain's pandering choice of hick-magnet Palin as his running-mate, I will not be supporting the GOP this time around.

Cat Hating Hicks

This is truly repugnant. Idiots Out Wandering Around (Iowans) in the podunk town of Randolph are now offering a bounty on stray cats. Kill a kitty, get $5. I'm sure all the animal-hating psychos who get off on killing beings weaker then themselves will be thrilled. The mayor, Vance Trively, complains that the cats are overrunning the town. Of course, the humane, moral way to deal with the problem would be to contact Alley Cat Allies and set up a trap-neuter-release program, which would incidentally be more effective anyway. But no...

The mayor said several suggestions have been made, including neutering, trapping and asking for donations.

"You couldn't get a donation to save a cat in this town for the life of them," Trively said.

What does it say about the hickfolks of Randolph that they would prefer to pay to slaughter cats then to get them fixed?

Remembering Buckley

Someone asked me a few weeks ago if I  would ever consider going on one of those annual National Review cruises. Weeks trapped aboard a ship with a bunch of earnest conservatives discussing politics? Not my cup of tea. But I did admit it might be worth it just for the chance to meet William F. Buckley, Jr.
    Alas, that chance will now never come.
    William F. Buckley was my first exposure to conservatism. In my early twenties I found myself becoming increasing disillusioned with the vaguely democratic socialist  political philosophy I had embraced since my teens. One day I stumbled on to a collection of Buckley's essays at a used book store. Despite my left-leaning sensibility, I had always had a sneaking admiration for the conservative gadfly, largely from watching "Firing Line" with my great-grandparents as a child. So I decided to buy the book, The Jeweler's Eye, in hopes of getting a new perspective on politics. It was a revelation to me. At the time, the conservative tone was being largely set by Rush Limbaugh, who was a bit obnoxious for my taste and actually served to keep me away from the Right. Buckley's writing was anything but obnoxious. It was clever, erudite, and witty, and he more than anyone else set me on the road to conservatism.

Sino-Sadism

The current issue of The Economist features a short piece on the inhumanity towards animals that is rampant in China, as well as the very small movement arising to change the situation. First, how badly are animals treated in China?

Animals are treated dreadfully in Chinese farms, laboratories, zoos and elsewhere. There are grim factories where thousands of live bears in tiny cages are tapped for medicinal bile. At safari parks, live sheep and poultry are fed to lions as spectators cheer. At farms and in slaughterhouses, animals are killed with little concern for their suffering.

    Reformers face an uphill battle. Primitive folk medicines often require substances found in rare animals, leading to the wanton slaughter of endangered species such as tigers. Pathetically, a common reason Chinese men seek out these remedies is because they hope to enlarge their penises. Sorry, but to borrow a phrase from an old malt liquor ad, dead tigers ain't goin' make yo jimmy thicker. Still, brave souls are trying to change things.

According to Zhou Ping, of China's legislature, the National People's Congress, few Chinese accept that animals have any rights at all. She thinks it is time they did, and in 2006 put forward China's first national animal-welfare law. Her proposal got nowhere, and there is no sign of progress since. “There is so far”, she says, “only a small voice calling for change.”

Campaigners are not discouraged. Jill Robinson, a Briton, spends most of her time in Sichuan province, caring for bears rescued from bile farmers, who are compensated in return for shutting down their operations. She says support from local young people is rising fast, and attitudes are starting to change. If China can stop binding women's feet, she asks, why should it not abandon cruelty to animals?

    It is very sad that China, a nation which gave the world the beautiful, nature-friendly philosophy of Taoism, now is known for environmental degradation and barbarism towards animals. And of course, a fair amount of barbarism directed at their own people as well. But they get to host the sham spectacle of the Olympics, so I guess they're an OK country after all, right? Maybe the Olympic Committee will honor their host nation by featuring  the disgusting Chinese sport of horse-fighting! From the  Daily Telegraph:

To start the horses fighting, a mare in heat is usually presented to the animals and quickly removed.... Horses that do not immediately engage in battle are whipped, or gunshots are fired to provoke them. The stallion left standing is declared the winner.

    Shockingly, these fights are "even included on some tourist itineraries in parts of the country."

Maybe as China gets richer, things will change for the better. Sadly, I'm not holding my breath (though I would if I were in smog-ridden Shanghai!), Incidentally, as a longtime Hawaii resident, I am proud to report that local actress Maggie Q. is very active in trying to change attitudes about animals in China. Good for her! And more importantly, good for China's animals! (By the way, Maggie was great in the last Die Hard movie.)

USDA: The U is for Useless

In the wake of the scandal of sick, tortured cows being slaughtered for human consumption right under the eyes of the Keystone Kops at the USDA, one lawmaker has concluded we probably need to rethink the federal government's relationship with the food industry. From an MSNBC.com article:

A lawmaker called Tuesday for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to be stripped of its responsibility for food safety in the wake of the nation’s largest-ever meat recall.

The agency’s twin mandates of promoting the nation’s agriculture and monitoring it for safety have become blurred, Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro said.

“Food safety ought to be of a high enough priority in this nation that we have a single agency that deals with it and not an agency that is responsible for promoting a product, selling a product and then as an afterthought dealing with how our food supply is safe,” said DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat who chairs the House subcommittee responsible for the USDA’s funding.

    The USDA is hamstrung by its ties to the very industry it is supposed to be monitoring. It is well-known that there are never really any surprise visits to processing plants and slaughterhouses, and as Michael Pollan described, inspectors biggest concern is often whether or not they have access to private bathroom during their inspections. Toughen up standards in the food industry, and create an agency with real power to enforce the rules, and let the corporations worry about "promoting a product."

Philharmonic in Pyongyang

The New York Philharmonic just played a historic concert in the totalitarian state of North Korea. Under the baton of Lorin Maazel, the NYP played a variety of tunes of a distinctly American flavor, including Dvorak's "New World" symphony, Gershwin's "An American in Paris," and, amazingly, "The Star-Spangled Banner." The crazed dictator Kim Jong Il was not in attendance. Perhaps was busy sentencing someone to a slave labor camp, hosting a party with kidnapped foreign starlets, or was drunk on rare cognac.
    I was initially very much against this trip, fearing it would merely add to the corrupt North Korean regime's legitimacy. However, and article in National Review by Jay Nordlinger made me at least reconsider my opposition, though not actually abandon it. Nordlinger's piece basically summarizes the opinions of some very respectable experts concerning the concert...