night the night before

Football Oregon’s quarterback got hurt; basically he was running, made a cut and his ankle (actually knee) gave way without anyone touching him. Then things came apart: a nice drive, an interception return and a punt return and Arizona leads 31-11. We’ll see what the Ducks are made up of.

Later: The Wildcats won 34-24. Dang. No, I am not a fan of the Ducks but for some reason I’ve grown to like them.

(from Yahoo’s football gallery)

Notre Dame I wondered why things have gone so wrong this season. This Sports Illustrated article is the only analysis that makes sense to me; basically it argues that a colder, NFL type approach just doesn’t work with the younger college kids. The hope here is that Weis might well be able to make the adjustment.

Debate I wasn’t able to watch the first few minutes of the debate; evidently I missed some fireworks. I did see the last 80 minutes or so. Everyone on TV is saying how well Hillary Clinton did; the audience did cheer her. Yes, she wasn’t as bad as she was last time.

But this is the moment that struck me:

NEXT questioner, casino cashier/grandmother. Baby boomers will be retiring with country at record deficit. Many won’t have pensions. She’s nervous, but bottom line is Social Security and Medicare.

OBAMA: Shout out to her union. Have to end Bush-raiding of SS trust fund. Fiscal discipline will do some but not all. No privatizing, must protect benefits. Adjust the cap on the payroll tax. $97,000 or less pay on all income, Warren Buffett pays on fraction of a percent. Medicare is a tougher problem and must get rising costs under control. Prevention. (Wolf making gestures at interrupting, but not assertively.)

Wolf to CLINTON: Would you raise cap?

CLINTON does not start by answering. Fiscal responsibility. Bush trashed it and now we have challenges we didn’t at the beginning of his presidency. Lifting cap is tax increase and therefore bad. (Yeah, terrible that Warren Buffett should pay the same percentage that most people do.)

OBAMA: Only 6% make above cap, that’s not the middle class, that’s the wealthy. It’s not a trillion dollar tax increase on the middle class. This sounds like Romney.

CLINTON: It’s absolutely the case that there are people who would find that burdensome. I represent firefighters, school supervisors. Obama wants bipartisan commission, that’s what I want. Worked in 1983 to fix a real crisis. (Clinton’s makeup looks fabulous, by the way.)

My note: this is a paraphrase from the Daily Kos. Obama misspoke and said “tax cut” when he meant “tax increase” and Clinton made a point of noticing it. Clinton also used “balance on the backs of the middle class” and Obama did point out that the upper 6% was hardly the “middle class”. Of course, 90,000 dollars in New York City is less (in buying power) than the same amount in Peoria, Il. But Obama is from Chicago and knows that.

Actual video:

More on Obama and Clinton:
Health care: The Corporate Democrat takes a lame swing at Obama:

Obama contrasts his position with the Corporate Democrat’s position:

Obama on Iraq:

Obama: straight answers to tough questions

Clinton: strikes out at Edwards:

Edwards:

Nevertheless, despite what the CNN pundits said, Obama did fine; look at the poll on the Daily Kos:

So, who won?
Joe Biden
11% 230 votes
Hillary Clinton
24% 501 votes
Chris Dodd
3% 62 votes
John Edwards
18% 374 votes
Dennis Kucinich
9% 187 votes
Barack Obama
29% 598 votes
Bill Richardson
4% 83 votes

| 2035 votes
Update poll at about 30 minutes later:

So, who won?
Joe Biden
10% 347 votes
Hillary Clinton
24% 811 votes
Chris Dodd
3% 103 votes
John Edwards
18% 621 votes
Dennis Kucinich
9% 326 votes
Barack Obama
30% 1016 votes
Bill Richardson
3% 125

3349 votes

Note that Edwards is VERY popular here (on the Kos) and so this is a strong showing for Obama. But note that normally Clinton is relatively unpopular here, so her doing this well on the Kos means that she cleaned up with the public.

I guess that I’ll have to admit (AGAIN) that I LIKE Obama’s professorial answers; and actually, I like Biden’s too. Hillary Clinton: she is really starting to turn me off; she is sounding more and more like “Republican lite”. Nevertheless, the way for her (or anyone else who wants to win) to get more popular with the public as a whole is to turn people like me off.

So if she wins, I’ll just shut up, perhaps work on Durbin’s reelection campaign in Illinois, stay out of the Presidential race altogether and just vote.

I’m sorry, but if I enjoyed drinking cool-aid, then I’d be a Republican.

To more pleasant topics:

Freedom of Speech vs. Discipline for private media people. In other words, why firing people like Imus for saying jackass things about people is NOT a restriction of freedom of speech (jailing him would be such a restriction). This blog post is short but very well done.

Science, Intelligent Design and Eugenics. It is well known that many oppose evolution because of people tying it to social Darwinism and eugenics. For example, William Jennings Bryan opposed evolution on moral grounds and because of the fear that embracing it would lead to racism and social Darwinism:

[...]But there was a public-spirited motive for the 1920s shift to fear of evolutionary thought. Many members of the clergy had grown terrified of the then-fashionable “Social Darwinism,” which held that that “survival of the fittest” should be applied to human society. Social Darwinism maintained that the poor, the disabled, and the troubled–religion’s historical first concern–should be weeded out for genetic reasons, and this idea was being openly praised by respectable figures. Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton had published a book arguing for the selective breeding of human beings, dubbing his idea “eugenics.” Norman Thomas, the most important American socialist of the early century, and himself a former minister, had announced that childbearing should be restricted among “inferior stock.” And of course at the time in Germany, the incipient Nazi Party was beginning to speak of Social Darwinism as a philosophy of government. Owing in no small part to religious fears of Social Darwinism, a move to ban the teaching of evolution began.

In his 1990 book “Under God: Religion and American Politics,” the historian Garry Wills wrote that prior to the Scopes trial, Bryan had been on a revival tour of Germany and had been horrified by the signs of incipient Nazism. Before this point, Bryan had been a moderate in the evolution debate; for instance, he had lobbied the Florida legislature not to ban the teaching of Darwin, only to specify that evolution must be taught as a theory rather than a fact. But after hearing the National Socialists talk about the elimination of genetic inferiority, Wills wrote, Bryan came to feel that evolutionary ideas had become dangerous; he began both to oppose and to lampoon them. Banning the teaching of evolution is plainly the wrong approach, but once the subtext of the period is taken into account–fears of Nazism and eugenics–the Scopes trial takes on a dramatically different flavor. [...]

In fact, the book that Scopes was using was Hunter’s Civic Biology, which in fact was a racist book full of pseudoscience; check out page 196.

Nevertheless, the ties between Darwinism and eugenics are false ones; Science Avenger skillfully argues that Intelligent Design (which, by definition, is intentional) is far more eugenic-like than evolution, which is, by definition, blind and dictated only by the laws of nature.

Humor: Liberals Must Die points out that a the editors of a certain magazine ought to be executed in order to save lives.

This video starts off slow, but check out the middle of it when Jackie’s mom talks about Hillary Clinton.

One other take on Clinton:

Update: this is too good to pass up! John Edwards launches a Plants for Hillary website!

Stuff from the website:

Note: the website might be down; you can read about it here.

New web site, PlantsforHillary.com, bears fruit—showcases “Politics of Planting” video, testimonials from Hillary plants, “Top 10 Questions Plants Should Never Ask Hillary,” and “Plants for Hillary” merchandise

Chapel Hill, North Carolina – Today, the Edwards campaign unveiled a new grassroots web site—PlantsforHillary.com. The new site will offer a one-stop shop for all Americans interested in growing the Hillary plant movement.

As part of the PlantsforHillary.com web site, potential plants can listen to testimonials from past plants, read the “Top 10 Questions Plants Should Never Ask Hillary,” learn how to recognize other plants at Senator Clinton’s events, submit suggestions for planted questions, and purchase the soon to be released “Questions are hard…so plant them” t-shirt.

The site also features a new YouTube video—”Politics of Planting”—which highlights Senator Clinton’s evolution from parsing answers to answering planted questions.

But if you prefer H. C. brand kool-aid, go here instead.

Note: for those who don’t understand the kool-aid reference, it goes to the Jonestown incident, where the followers of James Jones committed suicide by drinking poisoned kool-aid. So a “kool-aid” drinker is someone who just follows what their leader says, regardless of the facts.

Stubborn Curmudgeon: came up with a new word: Goddidit! Expect to see it used at the Discovery Institute before too long.