One of Andrew Sullivan’s readers cuts through all the garbage and finds a truth.
I thought Palin’s performance at the debate was downright embarrassing and on top of that I have to read this clown’s blog, stating more or less that Palin gave him an erection? Little starbursts my ass. Here’s what I thought when Palin “dropped” that first wink at us: “Did she just wink at us like she was America’s cocktail waitress?” Rich Lowry is on the verge of slapping Sarah Palin on the ass and asking her for another of those fantastic whiskey sours.
Well kiss my grits!
Watching her, I can only think of the Kevin Kline movie Dave, the one where the president has a stroke mid-coitus and is replaced by a look-alike who becomes a puppet of the real president’s chief-of-staff. The right believes that every word that falls from her lips is inspired by Saint Ronnie and therefore she herself is guided by his spirit. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. From the first moment after she was selected, she’s been surrounded by the very insiders she spent 90-minutes railing against Thursday night. This is change? Please.
But the right choose to believe the lie. At least for now.
Andrew Sullivan has gone dark now for two days. He says all is well, but longtime readers are having a tough time believing him. He was getting some blistering heat for his coverage of Palin, leading some to believe he may actually have been fired by The Atlantic. He surfaced twice today. Once to say he was OK, and the second time with a cryptic quote.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.
According to Wikipedia, this translates to “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
So Sullivan is staying down and, I suspect, taking his medicine. Personally I don’t think he said anything out of line. He was simply pointing out the empress had no clothes and the right is having a tough time handling the criticism. Both the blogosphere and the mainstream media are doing a much better job this time around dispensing information and calling shenanigans. It would seem as though McCain and Palin have decided to damn the torpedoes and see how far they can get between now and November. As Sullivan himself said last week, the GOP is like Wile-E-Coyote a half mile off the cliff and suspended in mid-air. It’s fascinating to watch. Here’s hoping Andrew makes a quick return and picks up where he left off.
When he gets off the plane in Walla Walla tonight, no doubt beagle owner Andrew Sullivan will shed a tear when he reads the news. Score one for Snoopy.
By all accounts my guy Barrack Obama hit it out of the park this weekend at the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson dinner. Andrew Sullivan has a good rundown here. Hillary has begun to hunker down and try to run out the clock on this thing. A political prevent defense. And as anyone remotely familiar with football will tell you, the only thing the prevent defense prevents is victory. Her reaction to the tip story is particularly telling. Why send someone back to give $20? Especially when you meant to leave $100? And this Fact Hub thing is just grating.
We’re truly watching a battle right now between the old school Democrats and a new generation. By failing to filibuster the nomination, the old school folded the tents on Mukasey. And they’re about to again on Iraq. The Right is licking their chops at the prospect of a second Clinton presidency. Nothing will fills their coffers and get their people back in power quicker than a president Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Like me, Andrew Sullivan says she’s turning clockwise. But according to the website, most people see her turning counter-clockwise. I don’t get it.
Andrew Sullivan’s piece in the Sunday Times sums up the reasoning behind a Hillary campaign to a T.
In a polarized climate, where Rudy Giuliani is already lambasting Hillary and itching for a fight, Obama is sticking to a disciplined message of reconciliation, unity, responsibility.
Is this a mistake? Whoever won a Democratic primary by insisting on being open to Republicans? That is the risk Obama is taking. But when you observe and listen closely, you see this is what he actually means.
He detects an enormous weariness among Americans about their internal divisions in a time of war, overlaid by the anger and divisions that have deepened and widened under the Bush presidency. He suspects that if he can get past Clinton’s aura of inevitability, Democrats will realise he has a much better chance of winning a real national majority in the general election than Clinton does. Clinton polarises the way Bush polarises. She can hope for a Karl Rove-style 51% majority in a deeply divided country. He’s aiming for 55%.
Clinton, in other words, represents payback for the Democrats and liberals after the Bush era, just as Giuliani is emerging as the inheritor of the Bush legacy of divide and rule. Right now, Obama remains to the side, offering Americans something else: not payback, but a new page.
No matter who wins, I hope they can do it with more than 51% of the vote. It would be a nice change.
I’ve always wanted to travel to Australia, but the 20-hour plane ride has always turned me off. Now there’s another way. By bus! 12-weeks each way? Oh God, yes. Where do I sign up?
HT: Andrew Sullivan
Using Econ 101 to explain the surge.
Economics professors have a standard game they use to demonstrate how apparently rational decisions can create a disastrous result. They call it a “dollar auction.” The rules are simple. The professor offers a dollar for sale to the highest bidder, with only one wrinkle: the second-highest bidder has to pay up on their losing bid as well. Several students almost always get sucked in. The first bids a penny, looking to make 99 cents. The second bids 2 cents, the third 3 cents, and so on, each feeling they have a chance at something good on the cheap. The early stages are fun, and the bidders wonder what possessed the professor to be willing to lose some money.
The problem surfaces when the bidders get up close to a dollar.
After 99 cents the last vestige of profitability disappears, but the bidding continues between the two highest players. They now realize that they stand to lose no matter what, but that they can still buffer their losses by winning the dollar. They just have to outlast the other player. Following this strategy, the two hapless students usually run the bid up several dollars, turning the apparent shot at easy money into a ghastly battle of spiraling disaster.
Theoretically, there is no stable outcome once the dynamic gets going. The only clear limit is the exhaustion of one of the player’s total funds. In the classroom, the auction generally ends with the grudging decision of one player to “irrationally” accept the larger loss and get out of the terrible spiral. Economists call the dollar auction pattern an irrational escalation of commitment. We might also call it the war in Iraq.
At some point we have to consider the dollar lost, don’t we?
HT: Andrew Sullivan
