Reality Show

Oh who cares whether Ryan or Biden "won" this TV spectacle? Vice presidents don't count, unless you think about Cheney, and although Romney is a sock puppet with the strong arm of  the radical authoritarians making his lips move, I don't see him being led around by Ryan as another Darth Cheney.  Who cares anyway? It's not as though the public has become smarter or has learned from experience.  These things are only a game and never, ever does a President resemble in office what he tried to resemble on camera and the platform they sell at the convention is rarely more than a facade.  There's a difference between dealing with the world as it is and dealing with the tableaux, the passion plays, the street theater, the Potemkin Village we take for reality.

So CNN says his supporters think Ryan expressed himself better.  I don't know. I have better things to do with my time, but assuming he did, does anyone think that getting the angry rabble to cheer is the indicator of suitability to administrate a Democracy -- even a pretend Democracy like ours?  Obama's haters were quick to syllogize at us in 2008 that he gave good speeches and Hitler gave good speeches, and therefore Obama is another Hitler. Who cares what such people think?

So the Romney/Ryan thing gives rousing speeches, albeit captious and dishonest ones. So the real truth is not quite as rousing, easily summed up to the satisfaction of one's enemies, or blamed on 'Libtards.'  Who gives a shit?

I had a conversation with someone last night.  An engineer, a very nice guy, a very devout Baptist and fellow Radio Amateur about the peculiar state of the ionosphere.  We're supposed to be near a sunspot peak and yet HF propagation is generally poor, without the Summer openings on 10 and 6 meters we've waited years for. I joked about writing my congressman. He quipped about killing all the lawyers because, as he said, "they'll only blame it on Global Warming and George Bush." He wasn't smiling.

So easily is scientific consensus and massive data dismissed and so easily the destruction of the US economy according to the 30 year experiment with trickle down, debt-doesn't-matter and wars-pay-for-themselves-when-we-cut-taxes agenda as given us by the Republicans. Truth doesn't matter, so how can these 'debates' mean anything?

Really -- why should I listen to these things?  I already know who has built a three ring circus around  the argumentum ad captandum argument, learned to enrage the public with lies and profit from the rage they ignited. No, I'm not going to tell you that Romney will exterminate minorities or that Ryan is a Nazi who wants to put Grandma in a camp, but the people who pull their strings have perfected the same rhetoric, the technique and the ability to harness tribal enmity, bigotry, superstition and self-pity.  They know how to make you passionately believe things that are self-contradictory, follow policies that always and dramatically fail and they know how to get their way. So sure, Romney won and Ryan won and whether or not they're elected, George W. Bush and Global Warming have sealed our fate, or at least made it unlikely that anything will ever be the same. 

Veep Debate

Watched the v.p. debate Thursday while I was in Seattle for a conference. You betcha, gosh darn it! In response to Capt. Fogg, yes, I found Sarah's exaggerations annoying, along with her repetition of the word Maverick. But most of all, I disliked that smug, prim smile that seemed to be painted onto her face throughout the debate. Here we have a straight-up chucklehead mouthing inanities for 90 minutes, and she acts as if what her much older and more learned opponent has to say couldn't possibly be worth her attention. As for the inanities, the platitudes Palin served up are the same ones I recall hearing in every Republican campaign back to Reagan in 1980. You would have to have been in a coma for the last quarter of a century to find this stuff refreshing or relevant, especially given the near-apocalyptic economic events we have been going through. Anyhow, I should at least give Palin credit for being more or less coherent in her delivery and confident in her bearing. It isn't easy to stand in front of millions of people the way these candidates are doing, whether they're prepared intellectually or not.

I found it amusing that a woman of mature years whom I met on an airport shuttle thought Katie C's interview of Palin was "unfair" and that somehow it really is important that you can see Russia from Alaska. Why it is important, she found it hard to explain. But we're watching them Rooskies, just in case they rear their slavic "gullivers."

I thought Senator Biden did a fine job -- he came across as serious, respectful of his opponent, likeable, and as always, knowledgeable about an impressive array of issues.

Finally, I hear that McCain is going to go back to the tried-and-certifiable strategy of attacking Obama's character and his associations. They've figured out that they're going to lose on the merits, so character assassination is all they have left. I don't think it will work very well -- many people have heard this garbage. The main thing that undermines it is Obama's presence: he comes off as calm, genuinely thoughtful, and highly professional. The man just doesn't look or sound like a bomb-throwing commie radical or a secret-handshake Islamic Jihadist. He exudes competence and got-it-togethness. People who attack him as McCain plans to do end up looking like morons.