To Keep NagMaster2000 Happy

My MBTI:

Introverted (I) 61.76% Extroverted (E) 38.24%

Sensing (S) 51.52% Intuitive (N) 48.48%

Thinking (T) 83.33% Feeling (F) 16.67%

Judging (J) 56.25% Perceiving (P) 43.75%

ISTJ - "Trustee". Decisiveness in practical affairs. Guardian of time- honored institutions. Dependable. 11.6% of total population.

Take Free Jung Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

My Enneagram:

Enneagram Test Results Type 1 Perfectionism 46% Type 2 Helpfulness 30% Type 3 Image Awareness 66% Type 4 Sensitivity 40% Type 5 Detachment 56% Type 6 Anxiety 40% Type 7 Adventurousness 43% Type 8 Aggressiveness 86% Type 9 Calmness 50% Your main type is 8 Your variant is sexual

Take Free Enneagram Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Main type	Variant

Take Free Enneagram Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Pow, POW, P.O.W.!!!

I was thinking recently about all the times that some dippy thing John McCain has said was defended with "Yes, John McCain insert gaffe here, but John McCain didn't have subject of gaffe for five and a half years....in prison!"

McCain is allegedly "reticent" about discussing his P.O.W. past. I'd hate to see what it would look like if he fucking felt like talking about it!!

Expertise vs. Judgement

Since EnviroMom was chapping my ass about posting, here's the second post in a week. Now I have to think of something new to call her. "NagMaster2000" maybe?

So... for what it's worth...I was watching the convention last night and Joe Biden finally got to what I had been groping towards all this time regarding Obama. Bill Clinton may have said Obama was ready for the job, but what Joe Biden actually said in his speech was that Obama had always been ready for the job. By virtue of the fact that he makes good decisions and periodically revisits them to evaluate their appropriateness.

McCain has a greater history in the Senate, though his recent round of flip flops are hardly his first (his post-Keating re-invention as St. John The Maverick was the first) and they're worth noting. I think they will be. Joe Biden started the "more in sorrow than in anger" trope, and I expect that at some point the argument will develop into, "I can't believe what my old friend has begun saying because he's trying to please a corrupt and intellectually bankrupt Republican Party. Does he really believe that???"

So let's look at what "Bomb, Bomb Iran" John's legislative accomplishments have been recently. He opposes Lily Ledbetter (by supporting a Republican filibuster), because apparently pay discrimination is just fine as long as your victim can't figure out they're getting fucked within 180 days of getting their first paycheck. He was against Webb's GI Bill before he just didn't care enough to show up to vote one way or another before he decided to take credit for it in the Rose Garden. He was against torture before he was for letting Bush get away with a signing statement saying, "But torture is defined by the President at his sole discretion acting as Commander in Chief," so that St. John could get a photo-op with the Deciderator in the Rose Garden.

Basically, John McCain is very good at getting REALLY STUPID SHIT done. Frankly, I prefer incompetence in the service of idiocy, thank you very much.

In turn let us consider Obama. Negotiate with Iran with no preconditions? I work in marketing, so I've been part of more than a few negotiations. Let me tell you...if your precondition for even starting a negotiation is total capitulation from the other guy you're NOT NEGOTIATING. You're issuing an ultimatum. Phrased in the form of a negotiation offer so that people who are dumber than a bag of hammers can't figure out you're actually REJECTING any possibility of negotiation. "Fooling some of the people all of the time," leaps to mind here.

"I'm not opposed to all wars, I'm opposed to dumb wars"? Preach it, brother. I was an Army Officer, so pretty clearly I'm not opposed to all wars. But watching a bunch of kids who trust you to do the right thing by them get killed because some dumb fuck of a politician can't keep a hold of his fucking temper for 24 hours at a stretch? Not exactly what any of us signed up for.

Pragmatic free market philosophy in support of an egalitarian redistribution aimed at creating equal opportunity? Pretty much describes my philosophy: The economic purpose of the state is to keep capitalism and free markets from fucking it all up for themselves. Because the Good Lord knows that a 24 year old bond trader wondering where his next Ferrari is coming from is NOT who you want ensuring that capitalism doesn't shit where it lives.

I infinitely prefer judgement to expertise. Expertise can be acquired (or hired). Judgement you're born with. And John McCain doesn't have judgement. He has a seething mass of free floating anger waiting...just waiting...for someplace to light so he can engage in the next round of spastic shitheadedness.

McCain Seriously Loses His Shit

I've been following St. John the Maverick's latest meltdown with some degree of genuine sorrow. After reading an article by an Arizona reporter who knew John McCain like Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose (of Shrub fame) knew Bush, I've come to the conclusion that St. John was never that saintly to begin with.

I knew, for example, that he had a temper. A bad one. What I didn't know was how thoroughly his personality has infused his campaign. Until this week.

See, as you may have heard St. John, who's been saying that Obama is elitist and out of touch, has apparently lost track of how many houses he owns. Which set off a storm.

Apparently, the Obama camp had been laying in wait for this one. They had all kinds of stuff ready to go, and the last couple weeks have as near as I can tell, been a big, Rope-A-Dope.




They've let McCain run "Elitist" ad after ad, and now, McCain walks into a punch and there's two ads out in 48 hours. Almost like they were hoping that he'd gaffe regarding wealth. Stringing it together with Phil Gramm's "whiners" comment and you have a one-two punch that hits McCain where he lives.

The McCain campaign response? It turns out, as you may not have known, that John McCain was a POW. So there!

Even the MSM has started to note that whenever McCain gets his ass in a crack he trots out "POW".

I think this may have been the plan all along. McCain, in his undisciplined way, runs amok all summer long, when no one is actually watching, while Obama keeps his powder dry. Knowing that at some point St. John will put his foot in it. And then won't be able to figure out how to handle it.

Which of course leads to the meta-question. If this guy can't keep his campaign on track for more than 3 days running without losing his shit, do you REALLY want his spastic ass in charge of the country for 4 years?

Unfortunately, I Kinda Thought So...

But about the shooting in Tennessee, as it turns out this wasn't the usual incoherent nutjob.

When I heard this morning on the national news that some guy had shot up a church I thought, "Oh crap...here we go. The Christians will talk about how they're oppressed."

Then I heard that it was a Unitarian Universalist church that was the target of a Mr. Jim Adkisson, 53, and not being an ignorant agnostic my tune changed. The Lovely And Talented Mrs. Pedant can attest that I told her that I figured it was at least 60/40 that this guy was motivated by fundamentalist Christian impulses...and it looks as if I was right. At the very least I was mostly right, and I'll be SHOCKED if it doesn't turn out that this guy was into a fundamentalist church.

Jim Adkisson was apparently motivated by an unproductive job search and by rage against liberals, according to MSNBC.com. "It appears that what brought him to this horrible event was his lack of being able to obtain a job, his frustration over that and his stated hatred of the liberal movement," said Knoxville Police Department Chief Sterling Owen.

There've been some aspects in the wake of this that I find telling though. MSNBC.com's headline read, "Police: Killer Targeted Church for Liberal Views." CNN.com's reads, "Church Shooting Suspect Angry Over Job Search, Police Say." Hmmm, bias much?

In the last couple hours the link text but not the article headline has been changed to read, "Police: Shooting suspect mad over job, liberals" which at least indicates that a news organization that employs and coddles Glenn Beck has realized it might not want to appear to be glossing over a major component of the motive, despite having tried to gloss over a major part of the motive.

I also find it interesting that Googling "fundamentalist condemnation church shootings" produces this from Tony Perkins as the very first hit on Google, regarding the pity party Christian Fundies threw for themselves in the wake of the Colorado Springs shootings. Because, of course, everyone knows that after 7 years of Bush Christians have to meet in catacombs to avoid persecution by the government, rather than, say, running most of the government.

As for condemnation of the shootings over the weekend? "Your search - fundamentalist condemnation Tennessee shootings - did not match any documents."

I don't expect it ever will.


UPDATE: Now, not only are there still no Fundie condemnations but CNN and MSNBC, using the same AP wire story, have shaded it slightly differently. MSNBC.com contains this chilling quote: "Adkisson 'stated that he had targeted the church because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country,' investigator Steve Still wrote."

CNN.com omitted that little factoid from their version of the AP wire report.

CNN has seriously misplayed their hand. Long called "Clinton News Network" by the wingers, they apparently are trying to court conservatives, at a time when conservative self identification and affiliation with the Republican Party is falling. In the process, they aren't pleasing conservatives, for whom nothing less than full throated Fox News style Republican propagandism is acceptable, and they're now pissing off liberals in their attempt to get at the conservatives. And in order to do so, they're glossing over a conservative hatred of liberals so profound that shooting up a church full of children is OK, at least at the far margins of conservative thought.

They deserve the ratings crackup they're headed for.

McCain Tries For The Early Checkmate

By revealing Obama's itinerary for travel in Iraq.

Joke's on him though, Obama landed in Afghanistan.

Either a) He's trying to get Obama killed before the white supremacists can get to the Democratic nominee or b) his campaign was complicit in a disinformation campaign.

Given that you get the same effect from not saying a goddamn thing as from planting false information...guess which one *I* think? Not that I think St. John the Divine did this; just one of his Repub Frat Boy Staffer types...the ones the Repub party is so thoroughly larded with these days.

Offered Without Further Comment

George W. Bush Sewage Plant name is on ballot in San Francisco.