Your Final Chance to Understand These Men (and me)

I was late tuning into the debate tonight because (a) I was busy reading Clifford and the Grouchy Neighbors to my kid for his pretend-to-go-to-bedtime story, and (b) I forgot all about it. I’ve got a lot on my plate these days, and unless one of these presidential hopefuls stands up and says he’s ready to sign seal and deliver my wife’s green card before the weekend they have nothing I care to hear.

The digital clock on my laptop from Japan read 10:20, which meant it was 8:20 here when CNN’s live feed finally came stuttering onto my screen. Romney was talking – no surprise - and in the first 45 seconds covered balancing the budget, cutting taxes, English immersion schools, life begins at conception, an embryo farming veto, balancing the Salt Lake City Olympic budget and, as a successful businessman, understanding the crucial importance of fiscal conservatism. Nothing, nada, zilch about speeding up the green card process for pregnant wives of US citizens. Strike One Mitt. You are out of touch with my needs.

Moderator John King, who I mistook at first for Anderson Cooper after an extended Valentine’s Day chocolate binge, asked Newt Gingrich a question with more modified phrases than Arizona’s border has snipers. Newt looked as bored as I feel when Sam Harris is trying to make another one of his non-points, but he took advantage of the probability that no one else in America knew what the question was either and proceeded with what would become the theme for the night: support what the last guy said, but then add a caveat of booger-flicking.

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In Case You Decided to Watch Football Instead

Two minutes ago I was staring at the all-important Lions-Saints matchup down on the Bayou, an evening of passive adrenalin infusion ahead of me when I remembered the other game being televised tonight. Thanks to someone in my neighborhood providing unsecured Wi-Fi I am now at the dining room table, ready to hunker down with the last six of our highly-funded and eminently-talented GOP nomination pool. It is 8:58pm; I’ve got an oversized cup o’ joe in my belly and my blood is suddenly supercharged thanks to the sparks flying at me from the socket where I was hastily plugging in the old Hewlett-Packard. Add to this my uncanny political judgment, unclouded by any trace of actual knowledge, and I am ready for two uninterrupted hours of Yahoo-powered policy and bickering.

All right so I just missed the opening question because I had to go let out my coffee. Mitt Romney is talking about…ah yes, it’s nice that our economy has been creating lots of new jobs but of course Obama is not to be credited. He hasn’t yada yada, his policies yada yada… Great start Mitt, you’re debating someone who is not even in the room.

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Hack Yglesias on Dr. No

Matt Yglesias sums up his views on Ron Paul:

After looking at his positions and statements, the most remarkable thing is that if it weren’t for his loud fanbase of self-proclaimed libertarians you wouldn’t really think this is the platform of a libertarian. He’s loudly trumpeting his plan to impose criminal penalties on women who terminate their pregnancies and he makes it clear that his interest in freedom doesn’t extend to the freedom of anyone unfortunate enough to have been born in a foreign country. His campaign slogan of “RESTORE AMERICA NOW” is strongly suggestive of conservative impulses and nostalgia for the much-less-free America John Boehner grew up in. The mainstay of his economic thinking is the ridiculous proposition that “[t]here is no greater threat to the security and prosperity of the United States today than the out-of-control, secretive Federal Reserve.” Not only is Paul’s goldbuggery nutty on the merits, like his affection for forced pregnancy and severe restrictions on human freedom of movement it’s difficult to see what it has to do with freedom. The freedom of the government to set a fixed dollar price of gold? America’s current monetary policy—a fiat currency that’s freely exchangeable for other currencies and commodities—is the free market position.

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, I'd consider this rare hackery from Yglesias. Ron Paul’s opinions on the Fed and the gold standard may be unorthodox, but they are not “ridiculous” or “nutty” simply because Matt Yglesias asserts that they are.

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Our Friend, Inflation

HyperInflation - By Paolo CameraWith the economy still sputtering, politicians of every stripe are wondering how to jumpstart growth.  One promising method will make it cheaper to hire the unemployed, create advantages for American exports and reduce the burden of accumulated debts: inflation.  Curiously, some politicians have confused the medicine with poison.  In particular, Conservatives have abandoned their Milton Friedman heritage; once advocates for flexible money, now Republicans long for the gold standard.  It is a bizarre spectacle to see Ron Paul, the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Monetary Policy, advocating the abolition of the Federal Reserve.  How have extreme positions gained credence at precisely the moment when the economy needs expansive monetary policy?

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A Victory for Heterodoxy in Kentucky

Image courtesy of dailypaul.comRand Paul, son of Texas Congressman, Ron Paul, is the very probable winner of the Kentucky Republican Primary Senate election, and liberals should be thrilled.  Of course, the Media has latched onto this thing and milked it for all the ratings its worth.  The imposed narrative structure is that Paul has been elevated by the "Tea Partiers" (or "Tea Baggers", depending on which party the reader hacks for.), and of course Paul has run with it:

I have a message, a message from the Tea Party, a message that is loud and clear and does not mince words: we've come to take our government back.  We've come to take the government back from the special interests who think that our government is their own personal ATM..

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Fantasia and the Narrative Fallacy

As a new parent, I introspect constantly about the impact various media will have on my ten-month-old daughter's neural and moral development.  I seem to find major problems with nearly everything we try watching together, whether it's a disappointment with the Euclidean oversimplifications and anthropomorphism of everything in Inai Inai Baa, or a skeptical wariness of preachy Sesame Street.  While I certainly don't think it's healthy to be obsessed with a particular, fictitious, red monster, I usually convince myself that my criticisms are slightly overbearing, and that, as important as the first year of neurodevelopment is, thirty seconds a week of three triangles and a rectangle suddenly becoming a penguin is not going to force my daughter into a compartmentalized world-view or stymie an appreciation of the profound, true complexity of the cosmos.

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