Echidne discusses the basic differences in worldview between male and female - every unlit area is a potential assault, commonplace household items become potential defense weapons when playing "what if", sudden bursts of unprovoked abuse and obscenity are commonplace.

http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/2008_10_01_archive.html#4019843672375903459

Perhaps one day it'll rise to the level of a serious political topic.

A few weeks there was a flare-up when Fiorina said that Palin wasn't capable of running a corporation. She then expanded a bit saying Obama, McCain and Biden weren't capable either.

Well, she's right. Actually I suspect Obama could run a corporation just fine, but that's not the point. Government is not a corporation. It requires very different skills, and one thing we learn in life is that people are specialists and skilled in certain things and not others. And that can be highly refined - not just a corporate personality, but good in one kind of corporation, not in another. Good in one part of a corporation, not in another.

The bailout deal giving government pieces of companies to run is simply absurdly stupid. Corporate leaders who focus their whole lives on this sphere have hit-and-miss results. Having folks who focus on policy turn around and try to hit the right note in finance and bank operation is just begging for failure.

We've already shown how arrogant we are in presuming to waltz into a country with a very different lifestyle and environment and assume we can just run the place. It's just as arrogant to assume the same with banking, especially having shown how off we were in just regulating mortgages and banks. It might not be obvious from headlines, but banks are also evolving all the time - taking advantage of new computer & network technology, new types of financial instruments, new ways of organizing their branches, new ways of marketing, while dealing with new rules of reporting and diligence. It's a highly competitive environment, that's now shifted to international competition over local. All of that complexity means it's not a cakewalk, not a "slam dunk".

Or perhaps we're looking for a new motto. America: We ♥ Quagmires.

Contrary to Coolidge, the business of government is not business. It is partially supporting business, partially supporting people.

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I usually don't do this, but this one rather well sums up the
situation. Just click, I won't do you no harm.

Kind of makes me want to go back to my evil chimp avatar.

Scientists have long observed that bonobo chimps - "humankind's closest genetic relatives" - are rather fanatical about using sex as part of much of their daily routine. (Pick nits, have sex. Swing through trees? Have sex. Clean toes? Have sex. Okay, perhaps there are some subtle differences from humans.)

What they hadn't noticed was the bonobos (or is that bonoboes? Dan Quayle, help me...) also go in for cannibalism and what might politely be termed "finger food" (going the Jakuza one better).

Tipped off by increasingly hostile behavior during this year's campaigns, scientists decided to observe primates in Africa for similar anti-social tendencies, and discovered mutilations, cannibalism, and inappropriate signs at political gatherings.

Palintologists were rather pleased with their discovery - "it's one thing to say just toss out a hunch on a talk show, but it's another thing to actually prove it in the field". Equipped with modified snowmobiles, the group had plowed through African bush for months searching for supporting evidence, but when they came across certain clear-cut tracts of land, they realized they might just be close to the intolerance zone they'd hypothesized.

Met by marauding chimps typically following a single boisterous leader, it was difficult for scientists to get a word in edgewise, but once they convinced the chimps of their sincere interest and party affiliation, the details poured out - sacks of hush money, separate sets of books, and finally, the locations where the bodies were stored.

Intrigued, the scientists followed the behavior for several more months, noting it followed a particular pattern of "shunning", increasingly making the offending group different and isolated, assigning malicious intent to the group, coming up with degrading signs and expressions, waving of genetalia, spreading lies and innuendos, and finally a complex communication system involving coconuts, tree calls, chest thumping and fax. Eventually the behavior would step over the line, with 1 or 2 assigned "defenders" sent out to provoke a group response. The results, the researchers took care to note, weren't pretty - all night barbecues, chimp-kebab, ribs and "wings", and shoutings of "toga, toga, toga". Surprisingly, the diet was relatively fat-free and low in carbohydrates, allowing the chimps to run amok for days while keeping a slim physique.

Scientists are still collating the evidence in preparation for publication, but they look close to assigning the species a closer standing to humans than has evern been ascribed before. The Academy of Science is considering the new term, "Chimpus Politicus", for its next scheduled meeting in January.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/10/081013-bonobos-attack-missions.html

Bob Somerby at Daily Howler reminds again today about the basics of revisionism - in this case that it was "unthinkable that a black man could have been elected president" - and in fact that continual presence of revisionist history every day.

Somerby notes (you might have to go to the previous day's archive) that people like Frank Rich were all for Obama running 2 years ago, quoting Dick Durbin to say that a few more years of voting in the Senate wouldn't improve his chances. That was in 2006. By february 2007, pundits were proclaiming that Obama would quickly catch Hillary. Of course Obama's not the only black man high up in politics, and Somerby reminds us how back in 1995 the punditocracy was all agoggle at the idea that Colin Powell could be president. Of course this is much about Frank Rich's revisionism - a major part of the NY Times elite.

But we live in a land of revisionism. The late spring was dominated by the revisionism that Democratic contests are always decided early and peacefully. McCain is an icon of revisionism, pretending to be a man of new ideas when he possesses that certain "je ne give-a-fuck pas" lack of decorum and finesse normally needed for politics - regularly emboided in the über-revisionist impetuous baby, Bush-fils (alias The Son King). Of course McCain is permanently assisted by the press, who delightfull forget how many times he's adopted Senatorial kneepads to cater to the powers-that-be on the way up.

Of course Obama's recent rise was launched by his revisionist book, which he had to quickly re-brand as something of a mash-up, a "composite", not a real biography (which stood to hold the dogs at bay until everyone forget again that it wasn't quite historical). The lesson was learned - later revisions revised the details, while leaving the overal impressions the same. Obama remains the hope and change candidate despite the loss in altitude provided by the spat with his preacher, his post-nomination tack to the right, his recent adoption of the Clinton economic team.

What all of this should warn us about is that Revisionism sells. Sarah Palin is a completely shrink-wrapped revisionist media product. While a bit overdone with a too short shelf-life (actually not short enough), the real warning is how well it worked. Had there been just a wee bit more substance to the woman, she likely would have transformed her party (which is more of a continual exercise in shared revisionism and mutual hallucination than an actual party of ideals).

And why does Revisionism sell? Because we buy it. Often for the wrong or unobvious reasons. Researchers have discovered that smarter people are even better than dumb people at discarding facts that don't fit our desired point-of-view. Perhaps America is really really smart, so we're able to distort reality beyond belief, where every encounter, political or sports or foreign military, ends up with our allies becoming saints and our enemies becoming antichrists. Which I guess is understandable in wartime, since someone has to work themselves up enough to die for it. But in an election? Bringing it all down to earth, a bit of gloss of the petals would help. Come November, we will likely have Obama and a typically corrupt, pandering and ineffective Congress to work with. And we'll need to keep banging them on the heads and writing them nasty-grams to keep them on track. Unless we want to be writing another revisionist history of the next administration, just to cover up our inadequacies as citizens.