The "major" parties have switched places again

I'm talking about in their outward image, not in actual principle (of which they have none). Consider their general assumed identities, and compare w/ their self-image now.

-GOPers lamented the ruling of sodomy laws as unconstitutional as arbitrarily stepping on the democratic process, w/ the less zealous among them stating that while the laws themselves were obviously wrong they felt that the states should've amended them out gradually on their own. On the current flaps over the ten commandments displays they're speaking of it as mere expression of the public will -- in short, "they have up a christian monument because they are christians, where is the problem?" -- and accuse the opposition of overruling a majority (more like a plurality really), as if majorities were utterly inviolable. What has come to stick out vaguely from their rhetoric claims that they are simply defending what the masses are already doing themselves.

-Meanwhile, Democrats criticized, in California, a measure that couldn't be more textbook-definition democratic if you tried. This has mushroomed out into an open view that the reason they aren't in power is because the public is ignorant; in this view, theoretically, if the majority knew their interests properly we would have a Democrat majority in congress and a Democrat in the whitehouse.

Not discouraging this development either is the financing of their campaigns. Despite the bi-partisan nature of campaign finance reform, Democrats have been in the past more reliant on soft-money donations than the Republicans, and are now still depending mostly on large donations. Note that in the 2004 campaign so far, of all of the Democrats the only contender obtaining a substantially larger share of funds from sub-$200 donations than from contributions over $2000 is Dean (Clark's ratio is virtually even). Bush's command of donations over $2000 is not much larger than that of John Edwards.

So in their own eyes, the Republicans apparently favor majoritarian democracy, whereas the Democrats, more scrutinizing of majority rule, want a republic, if not an aristocracy. To the naked eye of the average voter, this would suggest (since most believe that the US is a majoritarian democracy) a lean towards the republicans, which is what has occured. However, this is not the end of debate, but the beginning of another one...

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to
trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule--and both
commonly succeed, and are right...
-HL Mencken

If this is how the discussion has broken down, then the proper question goes beyond the parties themselves even. Both are inadaquete in that their tactics take for granted a condition of mass confusion. What we, ideally, need to figure out is which interpretation of popular government we seriously want, before any of these other issues are resolved. Quick fixes may adhere for the short term, but in the long run we're all dead -- dead wrong, that is.

Curmudgeon describes an example of "mission creep" in the weirdest of places...

If you watch televised sports, you'll see innumerable beer commercials....They've gotten to be very, very funny.

It's well known that humor assists the memory, and therefore helps to cement the name of the product in the viewer's mind. But the degree of comedic ingenuity that goes into beer commercials seems to exceed all marketing requirements, and happily so. There is no conceivable way Budweiser's "Real Men of Genius" commercials, or Miller's mock cinema verite "High Life" commercials, could be justified entirely on the basis of an increase in sales. They're too outrageous, too entertaining, and too original. The people who compose them shame the writers of television's torrents of mind-deadeningly banal "situation comedies." They must get paid a well-deserved fortune.

"Does it sell corn?" Who cares?

I've come to notice that beer commercials have become the last refuge of actual entertainment value outside of the games themselves. Also, I've noted the exact type of disconnect between the commercials and the bottom line in the behavior of myself and others. For example: I love Miller Lite commercials, yet I have never had Miller Lite. Seriously, not even once, I'm not a bit curious as to its taste (I prefer the "ghetto" brews like Colt 45 an' whatnot), I just like their commercials.

Actually, this may have been an unintended side effect to the restriction on showing people actually drinking in liquor ads. Since the people in the ads don't visibly drink the product, their claims of it's quality are ever so slightly less convincing, so what do they do? Instead, they associate the product with a feeling or an event, as if as a subtle metaphor. And with the tendency towards the men-as-childlike-lunks portrayal, there could be a whole other layer of expression at work here. Some shrink could have a field day with some of these commercials.

Or it could just be that the writers cracked open a case and then wrote down the first thing they laughed at after getting properly pickled. In which case, we're in for a treat once marijuana is legalized...

And now, in the "WTF were they thinking?" file: move over Barbie, here comes the talking Ann Coulter doll!

Everyone, please donate to the "get B an AK-47 and some bullets fund". This is too retarded for words...

Good news & bad news for Dubya:

First the good:
3rd Quarter economic stats are in:

The U.S. economy rocketed ahead at its fastest pace in more than 19 years in the third quarter of 2003 as consumers, their wallets fattened by tax cuts, went on a buying spree, an unexpectedly strong government report showed on Thursday. U.S. gross domestic product surged at a 7.2 percent annual rate in the July-September period, the Commerce Department said. It was the steepest climb since the first quarter of 1984 and more than double the second quarter's 3.3 percent rate.

Great. I think I hear Democrats eating crow...

Now the bad news: As if it wasn't clear enough before that a huge chunk of the rebuilding in Iraq has conveiniently fattened the pockets of his major campaign donors, here it is laid out completely nekked.

An explanation would be nice. Preferably one that acknowledges how boneheaded it was to give away all those no-bid contracts, regardless of the intentions.

And he wonders why people are getting restless about the war...

Holy sh*t...

Suicide bombers drove carloads of explosives into five buildings around the capital today, killing at least 34 people in a coordinated assault that spread mayhem across the city and appeared to open a new phase in the guerrilla war against the American occupation.

And if that ain't nutty enough...

The bombers struck on the first day of Ramadan, the monthlong Muslim holiday.

Damn hypocrites.

A quick note: I've added another personal views bit on my other site, this time concerning the War on Drugs...

Also, I've started a new feature where I occasionally put up longer articles that I felt were of specific importance. First one is up here: this is a joint analysis done by the Brookings Institution (a center-left think tank) and the American Enterprise Institute (a think tank of the fiscal Right) on "libertarian paternalism". You'd have to read it to get the point, I couldn't possibly do it justice here.