This just in

Mikkel changes his mind about Obama:

"OK, I change my mind. I'm all for Obama. But the little fucker better not let me down."

Welcome to the club, Mikkel. Here's your Kool-Aid.

How small a world is it?

This small: Barack Obama and Dick Cheney are eighth cousins. That is to say, you go back eight generations, you find they share the same ancestor.

Seriously. He references it in this speech.

His campaign's response is great: "every family has a black sheep".

Ex-blogger (oh, and professor or something) Michael Bérubé has written a 9-page essay on the event of Richard Rorty's death which I'm looking forward to reading. It's called "Richard Rorty and the Politics of Modesty" (pdf).

Re: the first paragraph:
Have you ever noticed that when people are writing about the recently deceased, they always begin by using the full name even though the person in question didn't Richard Rorty becomes Richard McKay Rorty, and Ronald Reagan (no similarity implied) becomes Ronald Wilson Reagan. There's something ritualistic in the public declaration of death. The use of the fuhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifll name accentuates the individuality of the deceased as well as the formality of the event. I wonder if that isn't one of the oldest functions of the public sphere: the public declaration of birth and death, habeas corpus, non habeas corpus, bring out yer dead.

Oh, and Bérubé is also going for Obama. Yup. Me, Bérubé, Stevie Wonder, Josh Lyman and Oprah.

Pick a winner

Speaking of American politics: big day tomorrow. Super duper tuesday. All the primaries are off to the races, so to speak.

I don't really know why, but somehow, I feel compelled to pick a candidate. Maybe it's because I follow US politics the way other people might follow sports (although to be fair, professional sports don't invade Iraq). But even though it's the night of the game, and I have this feeling of having to pick sides, I still can't choose. I've gone back and forth. Obama's health care plan has been the big thing that keeps cropping up in my reading. It's not as good as Clinton's, and there have been some persuasive arguments made (notably by Paul Krugman in his book, The Conscience of a Liberal) that if you get universal healthcare, it would open the door for a new New Deal. Some relevant discussion of that issue (Obama's plan lacks mandates and there are disputes as to how relevant that is) can be found here, here, and here.

With McCain as the presumptive nominee for the GOP, it does actually look like this election could be closer than we would like. If so, an Obama/Clinton ticket would probably be the sure win, mobilizing black and female voters - two groups that break overwhelmingly for Democrats (blacks hugely - around 90 % in 2004, I think, women around 10 %).

So on the one hand, Obama has a worse health plan, while on the other hand Clinton made a huge error in judgement in voting for attacking Iraq, which does reflect very poorly on her leadership ability. Right now, I'm inclined to let the last one be the weightiest argument. This time, I'm hoping for a presidency without wars. Oh, and Obama is a good speaker. I think a president who speaks (and who knows - maybe even reads and writes!) English would be a pleasant change.

So I guess that with flip-flopping and total ambivence, I'm coming down on the side of Obama after all, but only if he picks a progressive vice-president candidate (maybe Edwards) or Clinton. An Obama/Clinton or Obama/Edwards could both win and make good presidencies. Even though Obama's stupid about, say, Israel (to be fair: Clinton is even dumber on Israel), has an imperfect health care plan (and even argues that the flaw is the big selling point) and even though I think his campaign has waffled and gotten bogged down in rhetoric, and even though I think he started playing safe when he could smell the power, I have hope that he'll overcome the kinks in his personality and turn out to be a good president. Anything is better than John McCain and any human being with a heartbeat would be better than the lame duck quacking on Pennsylviana Avenue right now.

Iowa Caucus

Hilary Clinton: "after all the town meetings, after all the pie and coffee, it comes down to this: who's ready to be president and start solving the big challenges that we face..."

What? You can solve a challenge? I thought you could rise to meet it, or face it, or whatever. You solve problems.

Anyway, I remain solidly undecided on which of the three democratic candidates to root for. I think Kos actually expresses my feelings pretty well in this post. I'd be happy with any three of these, against the freak show that the GOP has. All of the contestants for the conservatives are empty haircuts, fat wallets and Bible-thumpers. Some of them, like Huckabee and Romney, actually have the potential to be worse than Bush jr.

"so in other words, do we torture them, or just subject them to excruciatingly painful physical interrogation stress techniques?"

This is the funniest take I've seen on torture hypotheticals. Torture hypotheticals are crazy, unrealistic hypothetical scenarios meant to justify torture in "just these extreme cases". They usually go something like "we know that an atomic bomb is somewhere in New York City and for some odd reason, we can't scan for radiation, and we happen to know for sure that this one guy (named Mohammed) knows -for sure- where that bomb is, and how to disarm it, and we know that he'll only say it under torture, and besides we don't have time for anything else, because we know for sure that it will go off within the hour, and anyway..."

These things seem to be everywhere in American politics these days, so I wasn't really surprised when I saw bloggers quoting the following scenario from a question in the last presidential debate:

Here is the premise: Three shopping centers near major U.S. cities have been hit by suicide bombers. Hundreds are dead, thousands injured. A fourth attack has been averted when the attackers were captured off the Florida coast and taken to Guantanamo Bay, where they are being questioned. U.S. intelligence believes that another larger attack is planned and could come at any time. First question to you, Senator McCain. How aggressively would you interrogate those being held at Guantanamo Bay for information about where the next attack might be?

The Slate piece I linked to above responds with some hypothetical scenarios they should use at the next debate:

Gentlemen, here's the scenario: As you are flying home from Moscow—having told the world you will never deal with terrorists—hijackers, posing as reporters, seize Air Force One. They vow to kill a hostage every half-hour, including your wife and daughter, until you release a murderous Russian general. I'll start with Senator Obama. Do you negotiate with the hijackers in the hope of saving lives, or do you flee into the bowels of the craft, then pick them off, one by one, with makeshift shanks and your bare hands?