Bush health care policy

I like Amanda's summary:

Bush expects you to save thousands of dollars if you ever want to see a doctor

Who thinks this is going to die faster than Social Security Privatization did?

So We Lost

Over at Kos I ran into this good, but very long, post by digby on why we shouldn't necessarily feel horrible about how we did with Alito. I think he, purposefully, doesn't dwell on the practical effects that Alito on the Court will create as much as I'm inclined to. Really though, anyone that thought Alito wasn't going to be confirmed was maybe a bit delusional. As digby points out, it's hard enough to kill a nomination when you have a majority, the possibility that the Dems were going to actually pull it off was pretty small. The more important thing to accomplish was getting the big wigs in the party to pay attention to the wishes of the party loyal and make a stand. Looking at the Dems that actually supported filibuster, it's a pretty impressive group considering how they've acted in the past.

"You want a part of me / You want the whole thing / You want to feel something more than I could ever bring"

More Hardball

Bob Shrum absolutely crushes Pat Buchanan in this segment and Chris Mathews actually asks some good questions. Is he impartial? Not as much as I'd like from a moderator, but he did a lot better than when he insinuated that Ted Kennedy molested Mrs. Alito. Despite a few statements that took sides a bit (referring to Kennedy's "amazing performance" was just a bit over the line for me), mostly this is what I expect when I think of what a show named Hardball should be like. Asking whether or not the Bill of Rights would pass today isn't a partisan question, it's just a tough one and I'm sure glad somebody asked it. Also, big ups to Pat Buchanan for being honest.

"I said "You gotta make it for the fams" / "Damn," he said "I didn't make the ghetto, / The ghetto made the man"

Fuck (while you have the chance)

Fucking Democrats:

The Senate voted, 72 to 25, to shut off debate and hold a vote on confirmation Tuesday morning. Sixty votes are needed to shut off debate, and 41 to keep one going, so opponents of the nominee fell far short this afternoon.

You've got to hand it to the senators from Massachusetts -- at least they tried. I'm wondering which nineteen Dems caved. Can someone PLEASE run against them ASAP, using this as a campaign issue?

Edit: Amanda has dug up the record of votes. States with Dems who voted for closure, ie, voted Yea to block the filibuster:

Arkansas: Lincoln (D-AR), Yea Pryor (D-AR), Yea
Colorado: Allard (R-CO), Yea Salazar (D-CO), Yea
Connecticut: Dodd (D-CT), Nay Lieberman (D-CT), Yea
Delaware: Biden (D-DE), Nay Carper (D-DE), Yea
Florida: Martinez (R-FL), Yea Nelson (D-FL), Yea
Hawaii: Akaka (D-HI), Yea Inouye (D-HI), Yea
Louisiana: Landrieu (D-LA), Yea Vitter (R-LA), Yea
Montana: Baucus (D-MT), Yea Burns (R-MT), Yea
New Mexico: Bingaman (D-NM), Yea Domenici (R-NM), Yea
North Dakota: Conrad (D-ND), Yea Dorgan (D-ND), Yea
South Dakota: Johnson (D-SD), Yea Thune (R-SD), Yea
Washington: Cantwell (D-WA), Yea Murray (D-WA), Nay
West Virginia: Byrd (D-WV), Yea Rockefeller (D-WV), Yea
Wisconsin: Feingold (D-WI), Nay Kohl (D-WI), Yea

The Dating Game

I was browsing Shirazi's blogs (thanks for posting in our comments, and stick around!) and found this post about what men and women from around the world look for in mates. Useful information for those of us in the single world. Unfortunately, ability to quote movies doesn't appear to be a major factor in any country, though I'm pretty sure this study is underreporting the importance of familiarity with Strange Brew in the Canadian dating scene.

Does My Dwarf Have A Sexual Identity?

For those that aren't aware, the hottest Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Game (MMORPG) around right now is Blizzard's World of Warcraft. While games of this sort have generally require lots of action and adventure in playing them, the defining characteristic of the genre is the social nature implied by the "massively multiplayer" part of the genre's name. These games have numerous locales where players congregate to form adventuring groups as well as to simply socialize. Most games also include some kind of guilding mechanism whereby players can solidify their groups as a means to pool resources and build their own mini in-game community.

Recently, a player in World of Warcraft decided to form a GLBT friendly guild. Evidently Blizzard has a policy, which is supposedly designed to protect players from sex related discrimination, of not allowing sex-related guilds and the player's guild was not allowed to form. Thinking this had to be some kind of mistake, the player appealed this decision to higher level of customer relations, but the decision was upheld.

So, whaddya think? Read the article and post your thoughts. This situation is obviously still developing, and I'll keep my eyes open for any new news.

A note on metaphysics

I interpret Kant's work in the first Critique as an extremely strong metaphysical agnosticism: not only the objects of sensuous experience, but also the objects of thought, are conditioned by the cognitive constitution of the subject in question. That is, not just the forms of space and time, but also the pure categories, serve as restrictions on our ability to 'do metaphysics'. The smartass way to put this is that all we know is that we cannot know.

The practical philosophy -- the Groundwork, second Critique, and Metaphysics of Morals -- and, a century later, Brouwer's Intuitionism, improve things a little. In ethics and mathematics, the object of knowledge is not given, but rather the spontaneous creation of an autonomous subject, so knowledge is possible here, unlike (pre-Critical) metaphysics.

This post was apropos nothing.

Men on marriage

There's a great interview over at Salon with an author who interviewed a number of men on the state of marriage today:

Were you at all worried that there's a danger in saying, Wait a minute, why are we devaluing this male style? -- that you might be cutting into the gains that feminism has made?

I came of age in the late '60s and early '70s, which is right at the time that things were changing radically, and I never felt feminism to be a threat. Now, I know there were some angry people, angry women in particular, who I thought were sometimes wielding a broad brush by saying that you can't trust any man, that all men want is sex, or that they are uniformly dangerous and abusive, but I never really felt angered by that because I believed that, in the bigger picture, both men and women stood to gain from the larger feminist goals of equality and removing biology as destiny.

I've seen that in my own life. I married somebody who has her own career, who's very good at what she does. She also supports me at times as I'm chasing my dream of writing books. So my philosophy is that we can be pro-female and pro-male and pro-relationship if we are reasonable with each other. And I sense that women, even very strongly feminist-oriented women, are open to hearing what men have to say.

Academic freedom

Michael Berube provides the text of a great essay he delivered the other day, on the attacks on academic freedom by movement conservatives. It shouldn't be too surprising that this bit stood out for me:

What animates the radical right, in other words, is not so much a specific liberal belief about stem-cell research here or gay civil unions there; on an abstract level, it’s not about any specific liberal issues at all. Rather, it’s about the very existence of areas of political and intellectual independence that do not answer directly and favorably to the state.

Yet again, more support for my theory that conservatives have a deeply Hobbesian view of the role of the state.

Something To Entertain You While I'm Out

Before I'm out for the evening, here's a game that reader Dan sent my way. Also, here's Young Chuck Norris again, because I can't stop singing it.

"Remember yesterday - walking hand in hand / Love letters in the sand"

That's My Dawgs!

Washington State has passed a gay rights bill. I've tried to track down some commentary on it to see how it's being received, but nobody's really talking about it. Atrios linked to the PI article with no real commentary, but that's all I could find. Still, good for Washington. Sen. Bill Finkbeiner of Kirkland was the deciding vote, having voted against this measure when it failed by a single vote. His statement really struck me as the key issue in this type of legislation,

"What we are really talking about here is...whether or not it's OK to be gay or homosexual in this state. On whether or not it's appropriate to be discriminating against or to discriminate against someone because of that."

Forget gay marriage. Forget adoption rights. Forget rights in medical emergencies. Every person that brings those "this takes us down a slippery slope" arguments to the table is either being dishonest or hasn't thought it out. If there is such a slope, with no rights being the top and unlimited entitlement at the bottom then every right you give people is a step towards the "bottom".

It's issues like this where Republicans really lose their economic conservatism cred. They're trying to tell us, though we all need and benefit from a healthy economy, we should tolerate employers firing perfectly good workers on the basis of some prejudice. I want the most qualified and efficient workers to get the jobs they are qualified to have and I don't need the economy I rely on to be slowed down by some manager that hates gays.

I really wish we had a contingent of conservatives on the site because I've got plenty more to say but don't want it to become any more of a rant than it already is.

"Fiona's got him on the phone / And she's trying not to moan / It's a three-way call and he knows nothing / nothing"

Germans Love David Hasselhoff

Thanks to Ezra, we have what may be the music video of the year.

"Just like every cowboy sings a sad sad song"

What's It Worth?

So it's looking almost certain that Judge Alito will be confirmed to the Supreme Court without having a filibuster raised against him by Democratic opponents. Three Democrats have crossed party lines to vote for his confirmation, including Robert Byrd of West Virginia who made quite the caustic speech about Alito during the debate and is usually quite a firebrand. Evidently he has been contacted by constituents that believe the questioning of Alito was too harsh and think he should be confirmed. I don't know if that's a cop out, but it sure smells like one. Additionally, Democratic big names like Harry Reid and Joe Biden have essentially said they are opposed to a filibuster. So, with confirmation all but, uh, confirmed, and filibuster almost certainly off the table, John Kerry is calling Democrats calling for the filibuster.

There's actually more below the flip!


The Times makes a pretty cynical aside that this is posturing for the '08 nomination, but we here at the Blog Of Record think that's a question best left to the readers. What kind of credit does Kerry get for this move? It's almost certainly going to be popular with his MA-lectorate, so it could be an attempt to solidify himself in his seat, though I doubt he was in any real danger of getting ousted from the Senate. It is true that this could be a move to position himself for another run for President. It's also true that the guy just really thinks there should be a filibuster and is going to be publically whipping people until the vote happens.

I don't know where I come down on what to make of Kerry, but I do know one thing, Democrats made a really really shitty deal that put some really really shitty people in several Federal Appellate Courts on lifetime appointments in exchange for keeping the option of filibustering Supreme Court candidates open. Anyone remember that? That whole "nuclear option" thing? That time the Democrats actually almost took a stand on judicial nominations but then made a deal so that they could make their stand on the eventual nominations to the Supreme Court that everyone knew was coming? Do people expect there to be more nominations soon? Bush does have two years and change left, so it's possible, I guess. Maybe that's what the Democrats are waiting for because otherwise it sure looks like they traded the cow for some beans. Regular beans, like to make a soup with.

"I feel it in my fingers / I feel it in my toes / Christmas is all around me / So let the feeling grow"

Internet explorer problems and link dump

Apparently, IE has problems parsing many of my posts, and this problem is tied into the only way we know of to keep the 'But Wait, There's More!' line from showing up when there is not, in fact, more to read. Now, my inclination is to say that no-one should be using IE in the first place -- Firefox is far superior and far safer, and has no problems with the site -- and we should just attach a disclaimer saying the site doesn't work with IE. Two other possibilities involve changing the way 'There's More!' works -- something neither MosBen nor I know how to do right now -- and me going back and fixing however many of my posts by hand. I thought I would ask you, our readers, for your thoughts.

While you're mulling that over, here's some reading.
A powerful NYT editorial. They're about as fond of Alito as I am, and, like me, think the Democrats have a duty to filibuster Alito.
Excerpts from an essay on the connection between lack of opportunity and conservatism among the lower middle class and working poor.
Amanda highlights a story that illustrates just how big a sense of entitlement certain upper middle class white guys develop.

Wage gap

Echidne's wage gap series, now up in its entirety. Enjoy!

Weekend Post

That's right kids, my classes got cancelled today so I'm officially on the weekend already!

First up we've got a study that claims that more than half of Britons don't believe in evolution and 40% believe ID or some alternative should be taught in schools. Now, it's possible this study isn't accurate, but those are some pretty surprising numbers, at least to me.

Next, Nintendo will be releasing a redesigned version of their Nintendo DS. I dunno, the new design doesn't really grab me.

Finally, we've got a /. post about a development company that's thinking about trying to resurect Firefly. Of course, the first reaction of fans is to go crazy with euphoria, but it does seem likely that this is just a fancy internet petition, which almost never go anywhere. Still, though it seems unlikely that we'll ever see the show get new TV episodes, and based on the box office take of the feature film sequels seem unlikely, it is entirely possible that we could get some kind of straight to DVD or OnDemand type release. According to these numbers, it looks like the Serenity DVD and Firefly Boxset are still selling pretty damn well. Finally, here's a Firefly fan in a rediculous Jayne hat. Oh fandom......

"Warm skin / Wolf grin / And where were you?"

You Tube Blog Dump

You all know You Tube, right? That's the site everyone went to for the clip of "Lazy Sunday" from SNL. Well they've made it really easy for me to have a new feature here that's easy to do. See, I'll just comb through some of their stuff and post links to the funniest things I come across.

This time was pretty damned productive. First off we have an SNL clip about Young Chuck Norris. Then we have a remake of "Lazy Sunday" by some little kids. Then I started to notice quite a few Andy Samberg clips and realized that, according to this Letterman interview, he and his friends got hired by SNL after they filmed a bunch of their own stuff and made a website called The Lonely Island. On there you can find various clips and pilots that they made when they were trying to get noticed. The pilot for Awesome Town was pretty good, particularly the first episode of their version of Laguna Beach, "The 'Bu", which features Scrubs' Sarah Chalke.

Something (Truly) Awful

Drew alerted me to a controversy I had no idea was going on, so I thought I'd pass that on to you guys. Evidently the popular site Ebaum's World has made a practice of stealing content from other sites (the Numa Numa video comes to mind) and then branding it with and Ebaum's World logo in the bottom corner. Now, it's not like I haven't posted a picture on the site without giving credit from time to time, but Ebaum's World has evidently generated quite a bit of money in advertising revenue for Eric Bauman, the site's owner and most of the content he takes is evidently from other sites which are being operated for profit so he's taking money right out of the pockets of the original sites. If that wasn't bad enough, evidently when he was asked to remove the stolen content from his site by Something Awful's Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka he not only refused, but also added code to his site which stole bandwidth from Something Awful every time someone loaded Ebaum's World.

The Wikipedia entries for Something Awful and YTMND both have more complete stories. There's also a site dedicated to the controversy which has a funny flash animation too. Something Awful also has a good news post about it.

1st Period: Numa Numa

The state of West Virginia has entered into a three year agreement with Konomi to bring Dance Dance Revolution to over seven hundred schools as part of their phys-ed programs. I mean, it can't be any less effective at keeping kids fit than badminten and floor hockey and if it actually helps kids get a little more active then it seems like a decent enough idea to me. On the other hand, it just means there will be that many more kids out there that can make me look really really stupid at the arcade.

Feminism and academia

This is a discussion thread, a new host for the off-topic discussion here.