Are John McCain and Sarah Palin inciting a riot?

The answer, of course, is no. The case law here is Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969), which concerned a KKK leader inciting hatred against blacks and those who would give equal rights to blacks. The so-called Brandenburg test would require that McCain or Palin urge that their audience perform a specific and imminent illegal action. Thus far they have stayed well away from urging their audiences to perform a specific and imminent illegal action (or any illegal act at all), and thus while their conduct in inciting hatred is reprehensible, as with the KKK leader above, their conduct is not illegal.

Brandenburg v. Ohio is what allowed McCain buddy G. Gordon Liddy to discuss the best way of killing BATF agents on his radio show (he suggests a head shot in order to bypass the body armor), allows Ann Coulter to discuss exterminating liberals except for a few to be kept in zoos, and other such reprehensible speech. But it also protects those who talk about demonstrating against the government or taking political action against the government too. I.e. you and me. So I guess this is one of those things we have to live with and can expect to be self-correcting over time. As, apparently, it already is -- the rowdy nature of the Palin/McCain speeches has become a national disgrace to the point where John McCain is getting alarmed and trying to put a stop to the worst of it, getting booed in the process. I guess his polling has told him that running a scorched earth Two Minute Hate at every campaign rally is scaring away voters he wants. Or maybe he simply dredged up what little honor he has left after what has been, this past month and a half, an unhonorable campaign, and has decided that if he is going to lose he might as well lose with more grace than a squalling toddler throwing a temper tantrum in the middle of a grocery store. We shall see...

-- Badtux the Free Speech Penguin

A joke

Q: What's the difference between Sarah Palin and a pit bull?
A: A pit bull doesn't think the universe is six thousand years old.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

The crown princess of the Ignorati

Ah yes, the ignorati. The great unwashed of American politics. Dim-witted, proudly ignorant, suspicious of anything they view as being dismissive or disdainful of their dim selves, eager to accept any politician who, in their view, is just as stupid as they are. Commonly associated with the term "I want a President that I can have a beer with."

In recent years the ignorati have been quite influential, having elected the President for six of the last seven elections. And I will say this: Ignore the polls saying that Obama is ahead. Because 50% of Americans are below average. And "average" ain't so smart, given the dumbing down of education over the past thirty years. Any rational, reasoning man could see that Barack Obama is a clearly the superior candidate compared to Cranky McDepends and his sidekick Caribou "Dinosaurs walked the earth with Man 6,000 years ago" Barbie. But if we had a rational, reasoning electorate... (shrug).

The fact that the world is billions of years old and that the dinosaurs died roughly 60 million years before the first human being walked the world are matters of science, verifiable via experiments and observation. Palin may have faith that the world is only 6,000 years old and that dinosaurs co-existed with man. But the only way she can maintain that faith is by rejecting science and all of its benefits, such as this computer that you and I are communicating with. Frankly, that is a scary thought to me, because we have already experimented with having a President who believes in faith rather than observable objective reality as the mechanism for organizing government, and it hasn't worked out very well...

So now we have the clear chance of having a President within the next four years who rejects modern science, who rejects objective reality in favor of superstition. Forty years ago, scientists and engineers and people who dealt with observable reality were respected here in the United States. Today, they are reviled as "atheistic" and "elitist", made fun of as "nerds" and "geeks", and our young people flock to become mortgage bankers and real estate salesmen rather than scientists and engineers. This also corresponds with the decline of the United States as the leader of the free world and an economic superpower, to the point where the US can't even build ocean liners and cargo vessels any more. Coincidence? Nope. That's what happens to a nation that rejects observable objective reality and decides to base itself on faith instead. When our nation was led by practical pragmatic reality-oriented people, it thrived. Now, dominated by the ignorati who view those practical pragmatic reality-oriented people as heretics and "elitists", it declines. Coincidence? Nope.

Personally, I am not too eager to meet my new Chinese overlords, but meet them I shall. Did you know that China's president is an engineer? Maybe that explains why China is growing and thriving while the United States is declining. The U.S. elects people who reject science and objective reality. China selects people who do not. I don't think I'll like living under Chinese rule, it is a harsh and unforgiving rule, but that's what is going to happen if the U.S. keeps electing people who reject science and objective reality. I'll laugh and laugh and laugh, but it'll be more of a gallows laugh because it will be the end of a once-promising dream, the dream of a nation built upon freedom and liberty... but what can I say. Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. This situation is, apparently, what the common people want. Getting it good and hard yet?

-- Badtux the Reality-based Penguin

Sarah Palin is "Change"?!

Yeah, that's the latest Reich Wing talkin' point. "Vote for Sarah Palin because she's change!" Palin? "Change"? She's Bush with a bush, for cryin' out loud. She has the same basic philosophy as Bush. The same smirk as Bush. The same incoherent way of stringing together talking points as Bush. She advocates the same policies as Bush, whether we're talking drilling, the economy, whatever. She could not outline a SINGLE INSTANCE in her VP debate where her policies would differ from Bush's policies. Where is "change" in electing Bush 2.0 to office?!

-- Badtux the Flabbergasted Penguin

A comment on last night's VP debate

Ho hum. Not much interesting said by either candidate. Palin strung a bunch of sentences together into paragraphs that didn't make any sense but sounded good, Biden sounded like a stuffed shirt. Two things did come out though. Palin could not name a single issue on where McCain differed from George W. Bush, and the real reason we're losing in Afghanistan finally came out.

Seems that General McClellan is in charge in Afghanistan. Ayup, they dug up General George McClellan and sent him over there. Now, first of all, General McClellan may have been an excellent logician, but he was a lousy general. He was completely unprepared for the new world of maneuver warfare that was introduced by General Robert E. Lee and perfected by General William Tecumseh Sherman. His execution of the Peninsula Campaign was a mess, and his failure to pursue Lee at Antietam arguably extended the war by another two years at least.

But that's not the main reason why it's amazing to find out from Mrs. Palin that General McClellan is in charge in Afghanistan. No. The real reason it is amazing is because General George B. McClellan has been dead for 128 years. Uhm, the general in Afghanistan? He's named McKiernan. Which you would expect someone who claims that Afghanistan is a "central front" in the war on terror to know, hmm?

Alrighty, then!

- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Oooh, other snark: General McClellan responds!