Welcome to Blogsville, Population Penis Transplants

In the most important news ever, there has been the first-ever penis transplant. I am not kidding. The only problem is that “the patient and his wife apparently would rather not have a dead stranger’s penis in their lives. There was no physical rejection of the organ, but the patient and his wife had a “severe psychological problem” with it, and the surgeons had to remove it.”

This is the Thai revolution. Taking pictures in front of tanks, looking like a bunch of yellow mow-rons. And this is the media in America. These are the six things you shouldn’t believe (in case you do, and don’t forget your generic religion or -isms). And don’t forget, the Iraq war made the War On Terror (trademark pending) worse.

In more blog related punditry and fun-ditry:

AFP titled their piece, ‘Bush and Ahmadinejad to make rival cases in nuclear dispute at UN.’ In the interest of honesty, it should’ve been titled, ‘Two Lunatics Address UN General Assembly.’ The leader of an oil rich nation will argue that his country needs to develop nuclear energy. The leader of a nuclear weapon rich nation will argue that ‘nukes is bad.’

“I know it may seem a little weird, and I promise you that I’ll shred them after you’re done renting, but you know, since 9/11 you can’t be too careful. I have to say, we have had some STRANGE requests from foreigners. And sometimes, someone will call to rent the house, and they’ll sound all American, and then I’ll call them back, and they’ll pick up the phone in some foreign language that sounds like Al Qaeda!”

That’s my Senator!

George Allen, one of my senators:

Shelton said Allen frequently used the “N-word” to describe blacks and nicknamed him “Wizard” because of the similarity of his name to that of Robert Shelton, a former imperial wizard of the Alabama Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. He also recounted an event from 1973 or 1974 in which he, Allen and a third friend were hunting deer. After the deer was killed, Shelton said, Allen cut off the doe’s head, asked for directions to the home of the nearest black person and shoved the head into that person’s mailbox.

Taylor said that during a visit to Allen’s Charlottesville house in 1982, Allen pointed to turtles in a pond on his property and said only “the [epithets] eat them.”

Minimal Presidency

Written Assignment # 2

In January 2003, President Bush met with a group of people including three Iraqi Americans to discuss the likely political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein (Avard). In the course of this meeting it became apparent that Bush had no understanding of the differences between the three major demographic divisions within Iraq: the Sunni, the Shiite, and the Kurds (Galbraith). Two months later America was in a war with Iraq. The shoddy conduct in which Bush led the country into, and waged the war with Iraq (post-invasion Iraqi unemployment of 60% (Wright, Knickmeyer), disbanding of the Iraqi National Army (Slocombe), etc.) is just one illustration of why it is preferable to have a president who is analytical and deliberative but less politically accomplished than one like Bush, who acts, however effectively, on gut reactions.

Ron Suskind, in his October 17, 2004 article Without a Doubt, presents a very compelling image of Bush’s leadership style. Suskind lays out numerous instances where Bush has demonstrated a pronounced lack of intellectual curiosity, and ignorance of issues pertinent to the office of the presidency. But Suskind argues that, despite Bush’s intellectual shortcomings, he is a leader the American people find very easy to follow and that it is because he does not present himself as equivocal on issues that the American people have found him to be so palatable.

How is it that the leader of the free world can flirt so frequently with the idiocy line, but still have major political achievements under his belt? It has a lot to do with the minimal competence presidential structure. In this structure, the president delegates authority to a trusted bunch of advisors who share his political vision. This requires the president to have only a minimal understanding of the specifics of issues (Nelson). So, the president in this political structure functions largely as a figurehead to a management team.

There are a couple important problems with Bush’s embodiment of the minimal competence type of president. The first and most obvious problem is that, when it is crunch time and the president does have to act swiftly, a minimal competence president’s instincts will be based on a less than thorough understanding of the facts and responsibilities. So, in late August 2005, when water was flooding into New Orleans it was crunch time for the president and his reaction was, to say the least, sub-par (Leader).

Secondly, there are very real concerns when the executive power that the country has assigned to the elected president gets delegated to unelected and perhaps less savory, often sycophantic political characters. In President Bush’s case you have your Karl Rove types. These are people who might leak the name of a classified CIA agent to reporters for political gain (Isikoff), or conduct push polls in South Carolina that falsely indicate that your opponent has an illegitimate interracial child (Franken). Of course, there is something to be said for the fact that this aspect goes a long way in keeping the President from suffering the ills of “It’s lonely at the top” syndrome, just because he has so many friends working at pretty much the same level.

The third problem I see is that the minimal competence presidency opens the door for soft demagoguery. Because this presidential structure has the president as more of an executive figurehead than executive officer, the potential for that president to tout an identity that appeases the masses rather than be a principled leader is very great. In Without a Doubt, Suskind points out just how much Bush does this especially in regards to religion—how Bush’s strongly religious rhetoric, in addition to other factors the masses relate to, has a lot to do with why people have been inclined to support him.

Bush’s political accomplishments are largely based on his demagogic tendencies with the citizens of America. No doubt the fact that his political party is the majority in both houses of Congress has a good deal to do with his accomplishments. But the Republican Party’s unity, which has allowed for him to achieve his goals, could not have been sustained without Bush’s good relationship with the American people.

Indeed, as Bush’s popularity among the American people deteriorates, so does the unity of the Republican Party. Now, with Bush polling in the mid 30’s, the frictions in the Republican Party are palpable. Republicans on the Hill and across the country are reluctant to vote with him and even more reluctant to campaign with him (Hammer).

This seems to indicate that putting things in absolute terms has a shelf life that depends on how soon the people realize something is wrong. The longer the consensus is kept in a president’s favor, the longer decisiveness is effective. But haste makes waste and when a president’s political leadership is based on instinctual reactions the American people will eventually awake to the waste.

There is a Winston Churchill quote that goes, “…democracy is the worst form of government except all the others…” I think the choice in presidential style follows similar lines. A thoroughly analytical president who gets little done is the worst style of president except all the others. It may take longer and be as imperfect as humanity dictates, but better worlds will be shaped by presidents who have actually analyzed issues than by those who act rashly or inconsiderately.

Kalmykia

I didn’t even know Europe had a Buddhist country:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalmykia

Although I guess it’s actually part of the Russian Federation. Check out this gem about its president: “Ilyumzhinov’s election platform for the presidency of Kalmykia included a promise of a mobile phone for every shepherd and the affirmation of his belief that he had previously been abducted by aliens.“

More reasons to love the NYTimes

From today’s NYTimes, “In Tiny Courts of New York, Abuses of Law and Power”:

But serious things happen in these little rooms all over New York State. People have been sent to jail without a guilty plea or a trial, or tossed from their homes without a proper proceeding. In violation of the law, defendants have been refused lawyers, or sentenced to weeks in jail because they cannot pay a fine. Frightened women have been denied protection from abuse.

So it starts off kind of serious. Another typical NYTimes hit job on the forces that be holding US back (US being the proleteriat of course). But then it gets a little more interesting with only the help of examples:

A woman in Malone, N.Y., was not amused. A mother of four, she went to court in that North Country village seeking an order of protection against her husband, who the police said had choked her, kicked her in the stomach and threatened to kill her. The justice, Donald R. Roberts, a former state trooper with a high school diploma, not only refused, according to state officials, but later told the court clerk, “Every woman needs a good pounding every now and then.”

A black soldier charged in a bar fight near Fort Drum became alarmed when his accuser described him in court as “that colored man.” But the village justice, Charles A. Pennington, a boat hauler and a high school graduate, denied his objections and later convicted him. “You know,” the justice said, “I could understand if he would have called you a Negro, or he had called you a nigger.”

And it keeps going:

The commission twice disciplined the town justice, Paul F. Bender of Marion, for deriding women in abuse cases. Arraigning one man on assault charges, he asked the police investigator whether the case was “just a Saturday night brawl where he smacks her and she wants him back in the morning.”

And going:

Eeric D. Bailey, a 21-year-old black soldier from nearby Fort Drum, was facing a disorderly conduct charge after a tussle with a white bar bouncer. Sitting three feet from Mr. Bailey, the bouncer identified him as “that colored man.” Mr. Bailey’s jaw dropped.

The soldier, who did not have a lawyer, told the judge that the term was offensive. But Justice Pennington said that while certain other words were racist, “colored” was not. “For years we had no colored people here,” he said.

The commission had heard worse. After arraigning three black defendants arrested in a college disturbance in 1994, a justice in the Finger Lakes region said in court, “Oh, it’s been a rough day — all those blacks in here.” A few years before that, a Catskill justice reminisced in court that it was safe for young women to walk around “before the blacks and Puerto Ricans moved here.”

In an interview, Justice Pennington said the commission had treated him unfairly. But he may not have helped his case when he told the commission that “colored” was an acceptable description.

“I mean, to me,” he testified, “colored doesn’t preferably mean black. It could be an Indian, who’s red. It could be Chinese, who’s considered yellow.”

And going:

Arraigning a man in 1997 on charges that he had hit his wife in the face with a telephone, he laughed and asked, “What was wrong with this?” Arraigning a woman on charges that she had sexually abused a 12-year-old boy, the justice asked his courtroom, “Where were girls like this when I was 12?”

USA? A-OK.