Feeding The Fish

If you’re in the mood for some pure sexist bile feel free to check out this Daily Mail piece imagining PM Harriet Harman - In which we learn that men and women are just plain different, a man would never vote for a woman, women will always vote for the girl regardless of their personal convictions (not that they have any real understanding of politics anyway poor lasses), that she is just like all people who claim to want “equality” when what they actually want is to punish men and that all her womanly preoccupations naturally make her hilariously unsuited for the job. You could spend days dissecting the kind of warped mindset that produces this kind of crap, why on earth I ever follow Daily Mail links is beyond me.

I mean, a female Prime Minster? Just the thought is hilarious! Like that would ever- OH WAIT.

Nigeria: Rapists Lack Sound Religious Background - Study

Perpetrators of rape have been discovered not to have sound religious background, a study conducted by the International Centre for the Advancement of Reproductive Health( CIFARH) has shown.

Executive Director of CIFARH, Professor Innocent Ujah, who disclosed this at an orientation workshop by the Student Union Government of the University of Jos, said majority of the people that responded to the research questionnaire distributed by the agency on sexual violence in the country, agreed that most rapists do not have sound religious backgrounds while only 11 percent said otherwise.

Must be true, surveys prove it. Wait, truth isn’t democratic you say? But have a questionnaire here that clearly says most people say it is! Also the article tells us that rape can be prevented avoiding ‘indecent dressing’, so it’s all ok because the victims are almost as much to blame as the atheists.

I’m really not buying any talk that ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ was still a worth-while project (despite the fact that it lied and misrepresented about both graphics and people) because it was bravely challenging consensus. It’s not hard to challenge consensus, it’s hard to so with evidence and integrity and ‘teach the controversy’ is the argument usually used by people who have neither. It’s the exact same argument that intelligent design proponents use: Sure our evidence (when they actually bother to present any) is quickly debunked but those EVILutionists (replace with climate scientists when appropriate)  are so damn sure of themselves it can’t be right that people only hear what they have to say can it?

In fact, now I think about it, this is the same approach the creator of the Panorama about evil wifi took: ““There is an mainstream accepted view on this and I think it’s a role that Panorama can play to question that mainstream cultural norm.” Apparently there’s a class of people out there who really think there is nothing unjustifiable if they’re doing it whilst sticking it to THE MAN. If I claim that global warming is actually caused by a decline in the number of pirates worldwide, then the fact that no one agrees with me means I’m being repressed! If I make a documentary about it, I’m immune from requirements to check my facts or represent my interviewees honestly because I’m fighting the man! I don’t have time to do things the hard way, you know they’d only make up new ‘facts’ to prove me wrong anyway.

If Channel Four really wanted to produce a documentary on the minority view on climate change, the absolutely least they could have done is pick someone to do it who hadn’t previously got them into trouble for lying and misrepresenting in a documentary. This would, to me at least, seem a REALLY REALLY important thing to do. The fact that they didn’t tells us they didn’t give a damn about accurate science coming out, they just wanted to stir the shit a bit - they contribute to the debate in about the same way that pissing in the well raises the water level.

What? You mean that’s not what the Spectator’s Coffee House blog thought was worth saying?

Here are the numbers:

“Would you support or oppose there being areas of Britain in which some element of Sharia Law is introduced?”

All         34 and under         35 and over
Support:     38              44                        30
Oppose:     46              39                        54

These numbers are worrying. As Paul Goodman, the Tory shadow minister for Communities and Local Government, said in a Spectator interview last summer: ‘Moderate Islam has as its core not wishing to see different people living under different law. Not wishing to see sharia incorporated into British law.’

Now, obviously not all these people who would like to see elements of sharia introduced are extremists. Many are probably thinking of sharia-compliant mortgages and the like. But it does show just what trouble the Archbishop of Cantebury and the Lord Chief Justice are stirring up with their ill-thought out remarks on the subject.

Yes! Very worrying! 5% more young Muslims  (and not even a majority!) gave a positive answer to a woolly question! This is important! The fact that we’re talking about such a small difference or that the next column over shows that overall more Muslims OPPOSE it are of course, bad facts as  they question what we know to be true.  Also, note that there’s a link at the beginning and end of the post to Peter Obourne’s dispatches programme which talked about how the media is again and again artificially creating and distorting stories in anti-Muslim directions. My irony detector is smoking on the floor.

There’s an article at The Times neatly demonstrating the idea that Obama’s rightward wing is genius politics and the left will just have to get over it, he knows what he’s doing,the Unity Ponies are a comin’, etc.

Since securing the Democratic nomination a few weeks ago, the only change coming from the Illinois senator has been in what he seems to stand for. Last month he dropped his opposition to a Bill before Congress that would give telecoms companies immunity from prosecution for carrying out illegal wiretaps on potential terrorist suspects.

…

This is another example of how smart the Obama campaign is. They understand that the biggest impediment to an Obama presidency is lingering doubt about whether their man is a straight-down-the-middle American. Despite having a couple of bestsellers to his name, he is still something of a blank page to most voters, one on which his opponents are trying to doodle all kinds of unflattering portraits of an extremist.

…

What is more, by abandoning so many left-wing totems, Mr Obama is emphasising that his promise of change is more than just a swing to the left of the old political pendulum; that his promise of post-partisan politics is a genuine one.

The trouble with this theory is that Obama was a solid centrist at the start; he’s already where most Americans are.  Being “post-partisan” is nothing new, Clinton called it “triangulation” and the short of it is selling your soul to the right on issues of your choice in the hope of getting elected.  Most of these changes aren’t just running to the centre, it’s running to the far right. The idea that the President has the power to break the law as he sees fit is something that should have been thrown out with Nixon, now what Bush did illegally is being approved by the Democratic nominee. This is not a token issue, Obama gives himself an enormous increase in presidential power by going down that road.

I’m also not sure as to the genius of convincing the voters he’s not a blank page by reminding people his principles are so unimportant he will jettison as many as needed to get elected, people keep rejecting Democrats for doing exactly that. The Democratic nominee running right is nothing new, but they keep losing!

Funnily enough, Republicans never seem to have to “run left” to win elections, McCain is the second most conservative voting senator yet gets described constantly as a moderate. The Republican genius is to keep talking so much about ultra-conservative ideas that the center moves in their direction. Democrats never fight this, they’re told that the “smart” thing is to move to the new center (no matter how artificial) and become kinder versions of those nice, electable Republicans.

People keep insisting that this is the “smart” thing to do, despite much of a record of success, despite the obvious danger if it’s allowed to progress any further. Obama just wants to win the election; Republicans are more concerned with changing the nature of the debate so it’s consistently more favourable to them. In the long run they still win, the democratic nominee in 2012 is likely to accept even more of Bush’s ultraconservative ideas as a given to try to distance themselves from what doubtless will be described as the most liberal government ever (despite its likely actual centrism) and we’ll be told again that this is genius!

Sitting wherever I was sitting in a far away land looking up the home news, I was a tad disappointed to see the 42 days legislation had managed to slip through, it’s hopelessly unnecessary destruction of certain civil liberties proved once and for alll that Gordon Brown is a strong capable leader and doing a good job. It was a little more of a shock and then seeing the Home Secretary had resigned because of it was downright shocking, I’d never seen anything suggesting Jacqui Smith opposed it or was principled enough to resign over the matter…wait Shadow Home Secretary ? How does that make any sense?

Looking into it a bit more, it seems that yes, David Davis had resigned to fight a by election on the issue. On the surface it’d seem the only way it really works is if Labour stands in opposition which it never seemed likely they would (ignoring the fact the candidate for the area was opposed to 42 days) for several reasons:

1) They didn’t do that well in 2005 and even if they didn’t they’re still amazingly unpopular at the moment.

2) They’ve already won the vote, any attempt to refight it would just give them another chance to lose.

4) The party finances are in such an awful state it’s suggested they flat out couldn’t afford it.

Labour is not going to spend money they don’t have to redo a fight that they’ve already won when the battleground is so inherently hostile to them, that should really have been obvious from the start. I almost wonder if the Lib Dems should have stood a candidate to lure Labour in, but still there’s no guarantee and that’s almost a worse situation. A by election seems a really ineffectual way to go, but on the other hand I can’t think of many other big moves that were available and it has giving oxygen to the issue and kept it in the news, so maybe it’s doing all it needs to.

The next government will be a Conserative government, if Labour is not interested in being champions of civil liberties we are best served if there is a significant faction in the Conservative Party that is.  I don’t for the life of me think Cameron would try (or be able) to rein in elements of his party that made it clear they wouldn’t vote for a reduction from 42 days, so standing with David Davis and ensuring the Conservatives see there is a strong groundwell of support if it gets sent back down from the Lords (also shaming a few more Labour MPs into changing their votes) is still the best chance we’ve got.

Ok, so I’m back from my saunter around North America. It was thrilling to experience firsthand just how broken the American media is: They really talked for several weeks about Obama and his wife sharing a  fist-bump when he got the nomination. This might signifies him as someone who respects his wife and apparently considers an equal, so an obvious sign he is wrong for America and may in fact be a secret Muslim terrorist (one Fox newsanchor saw this truth and described it as “a terrorist fist jab“, I love that country.)

This aside, there have been more important developments in the Presidential race: Obama won! But then almost immediately pisses off his base by supporting the FISA bill, not only legalizing Bush’s previously illegal wiretaps and giving immunity to the telecoms companies that broke the law to help him but also delivering the next president unprecedented power. That’s style!

Now, there are some crazies out there who see the ability to wiretap without a warrant to step on some of those fourth amendment rights (as Obama is a former constitutional law professor, he should really know better.) This is naturally billed as a compromise, but it’s that delightful form of Democrat compromise which involves giving away in exchange for the warm glow of being “strong on terror” by doing absolutely everything Republicans want.

This leads to the internet equivalent of snowballs in hell: substantial critiques of Obama rising to the front of reddit.  It is of course a complete surprise to me that Obama would move to the right given how much he’s used their talking points to attack Democrats (yes yes, he wasn’t the only one) and progressive ideas. It is also a shock that “post-partisanship” is in fact, exactly the same thing as Clinton’s triangulation. There has been so much change we’re right back to 1992.

This “compromise” plays perfectly into the perception that Democrats have nothing intelligent to add to the debate or they wouldn’t keep going with the Republican line, as do these rumours that he’s planning to keep Gates on as Secretary of Defense. That just seems to send the message “Oh, don’t worry about voting for a Democrat, we’ll have solid Republicans around to do the hard foreign policy stuff.” You can have as bi-partisan cabinet as you like, but for the love of pete, what I keep hearing about Obama is that his foreign policy is like, super awesome - you don’t get there by keeping Bush’s guy on, nothing says ‘Democrats aren’t serious’ more. If we could get the Barack Obama who ran for the nomination (and actually seemed to be have an independent take on foreign policy) back to run for President that’d be a slight improvement.

The best possible path I see to the Presidency for McCain (and despite my growing validation of my dislike for Obama, I still don’t think McCain has a chance) is a national security narrative and Obama is playing right into his hands by saying that the Republicans have it right to focus enormous unchecked power in the hands of the president - but that he’s a far more trustworthy guy to wield that power. Does that really seem a credible argument to anymore? Obama is developing a nasty habit of accepting Republican’s framing on national security (just as he has previous accepted their framing on health care). This is not how you bring about change.

But then we hear from the people who seem utterly incapable of accepting Obama is not, in fact, super-Jesus: Oh, it’s genius, Obama is moving to the center to get votes! He’s just lying to all those independents and republicans to get them to vote for him, and he’ll get back to be a principled leader once he’s elected!  This would be great…if he wasn’t already at the center and this is really moving to the far right.  This does give us a chance to catch all the Obama shrills who are now officially useless as infomation sources (I’m looking at you Keith Olbermann, “boldly standing up” to the ACLU isn’t something that should be applauded in the Democratic nominee, it’s just a way of making him sound bold in a way that  “Obama caved to the far right” doesn’t. )

This line is encouraged by the reemergence of the media narrative that any Democrat running for president is automatically the most liberal person possible (In reality, Obama has a very centrist record) and all Republicans are cuddly moderates (for example, McCain is clearly at the center of the political spectrum with the 2nd most conservative voting record in the Senate). This is the classic game where Democrats will election after election feel a need to move to the center to win, whilst Republicans will calmly respond by talking even more about ultra-conservative ideals and move the public idea of where the center actually is even further to the right. This is a formula that means that the right’s stupid ideas are winning time after time even when they lose elections.

Whilst there were a lot of flat out lies and innuendo around Clinton’s public perception the idea that she was a centrist candidate was basically true - but there seems to be this strange perception that Obama is far more liberal than she is, when in fact their voting records are virtually identical. The concerning thing about the result of the primary is that a lot of people seem to have projected a lot of positions onto Obama he doesn’t actually have and voted for a fictional candidate, and the real thing is likely to disappoint.

Next post: The crazy shananigans that have been going on here whilst I’ve been gone.