Your phallocratic remains will be pickled, then lost

For centuries in China, the only men from outside the imperial family who were allowed into the Forbidden City's private quarters were castrated ones. They effectively swapped their reproductive organs for a hope of exclusive access to the emperor that made some into rich and influential politicians. link

Lessig clarifies his concerns

This is no time to play nice.

Future to the back

NPR:

So if Howard Dean with his millions of small donors was Orville Wright, and Obama with his wired grass-roots army was Neil Armstrong, what will be next?

That's easy: Fredericka the Australopithecine Televisionator:

Sara Taylor, the former political director of the Bush White House, has one idea.

"We're at a place in the country where almost everybody has a cell phone, but not many people have a smartphone, meaning a video-enabled phone. But that will change over the next three to four or five years," Taylor says.

She envisions a campaign in which "they'll be able to serve you advertising via a text message that links right to video with your candidate speaking in a beautiful video" about certain issues.

Mara Liasson gave this a pass, saying "it's just technology." Let's review what we've learned: the entire Net is merely a grunt at the service of ideological power.

Grammar aside, there's something of a common theme here

Wot (the F) makes people vote Republican? - Edge (thanks Chris Locke)

Don't think of a mavrik! (spelling reconditioned for Pal(ad)ins) - Lakeoff

Its Not Just Palin — Its The Message - Joe Trippi (who's having issues with apostrophes.

Plus this talk - via Listics

Allied, passim.

This just in

See also.

Palin can have her moose and eat it too and that's ok with me

I like to think I'm a pretty tolerant guy. If it should turn out, for example, that Ms. Sarah Palin not only enjoys blowing moose to smithereens, but in fact also enjoys blowing moose tout court, I would not find anything necessarily disqualifying therein to her right to hold the most powerful political office on earth.

So long, that is, as she kept her moose proclivities from obtruding upon high level meetings with the army chiefs of staff etc.

What seems like it ought to be disqualifying, though, is when the leader of an ostensibly secular state fails to respect the distinction between her private beliefs regarding the divine and its place in human affairs on the one hand, and the duty to fulfill the obligations of her public office as inscribed in the Constitution on the other.

It would seem part and parcel of deep religious faith -- of the very nature of an "act of faith" -- that such a profound commitment is accompanied by an awareness that the "grounds" of the belief posture derive substantially and inelastically from modalities that fall outside the realm of science, of empirical evidence, of logic, and of shareable proof.

To "have faith" then is to have something that you fully understand might not be available to others, indeed to many others, who, if you happen to be a politician, may participate in all sorts of ways in the deliberations, decisions and effects flowing from those decisions that you make in your public capacity.

To speak to citizens of a state with the grandiose presupposition that they either already share your beliefs or ought to share them -- because your beliefs stem from an authoritative source that they ought to know, even though nowhere in the foundational language of the state does it require citizens to have that ethical obligation relationship with a/the divinity (in Palin's case, a divinity that probably would have frightened the founding fathers into pledging their most fervid allegiances back to King George) -- is to speak as an imbecile. That the USian media allow political leaders the latitude to speechifyingly link their Godly inspirations to earthly business is a pretty clear sign of a social and political discourse at the level of the diapered inane.

I'd welcome hearing of other ways of looking at the relationship of sacred belief to secular authority. Because right now, it seems to me the once in-vogue tradition -- the background radiation that has long alleged that Reason is what provides secular rulers with the proper relationship to those whom they rule -- is fading fast. It's paler than a medieval French tapestry left out to dry for eight or nine centuries. It's paler than McCain's arse in the moonlight. It's bloody unencarnadined. 

 

Fear breeds scum, scum breeds fear

Raymond kept rising in the Republican ranks. In 1998, Sen. Mitch McConnell hired him ...

McConnell this a.m. was quoted on NPR as saying, in effect, USians "should be afraid."

Indeed.