Ladies and Gentlemen, The Lamest Campaign Idea of 2007

I know I should take this in the spirit of Halloween, and chuckle with mirth upon hearing the wacky fun proposed by those crazy kids on the Dodd campaign, but... I just can't. And instead, I'm looking for some way to un-read the epic-level lameness they have offered (hat tip, Influence Peddler).

Chris Dodd did lay out step-by-step instructions today for kids to dress up like him in hopes of bagging lots of candy:

• Use coloring to turn your white (representing the Democratic presidential candidate's 26 years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee).
• Carry a copy of the Constitution (demonstrating Dodd's vow to restore what he calls the Bush administrations assaults on civil liberties).
• Wield a folder of Dodd's campaign proposals (showing his "bold ideas" for a corporate carbon tax, free community college, and a comprehensive national service plan)

"Every year, parents and their children struggle to find that perfect Halloween costume," Dodd spokesman Bryan DeAngelis said in a statement. "We wanted to do our part to help by providing them with the option of going as the one candidate who has the proven leadership, record of results, and bold ideas that we need in our next president — Chris Dodd."

Somehow I suspect trick-or-treating in this costume would go something like this:

Suburban Resident Answering Door: Who are you supposed to be?

Child: I'm Senator Chris Dodd!

(long pause)

Suburban Eesident Answering Door: Who?

Child: Look, this is my white hair, representing my 26 years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee! And this is my copy of the Constitution, demonstrating my vow to restore what I call the Bush administrations assaults on civil liberties! And this is my folder of my campaign proposals, showing my "bold ideas" for a corporate carbon tax, free community college, and a comprehensive national service plan!

(long pause)

Suburban Resident Answering Door: I'm calling Child Protective Services.

I wonder if Giuliani will start quoting this, instead of constantly just saying that George Will said something about his conservative governance:

Giuliani has echoed the language of economic libertarianism with more
frankness, and less pretense of compassion, than any recent Republican
presidential candidate

it is intended as an insult, but hey.

Rebbe Reichman

I remember watching the 2001 World Series (against the Diamondbacks) in Morg Lounge. Amongst all the students sat Rabbi Heshy Reichman on the edge of his seat. When Tino Martinez hit his home run with 2 outs in the ninth to tie up game 4, Rabbi Reichman got everyone there to start dancing around in a circle, singing "ki va moed". When the exact thing happened the next night (game 5-Scott Brosius tying the game in the ninth), there was more dancing. Only the incredible-ness of the event made the dancing that much more leibadik.

interesting machloket at tnr:

"I don't quite understand Ross Douthat's take on Hillary Clinton and the Democratic field. He writes:

As I've probably said before, Hillary may not be the best choice for the Democrats, but she's definitely the safest; I think nominating her more or less guarantees the party 48 percent of the vote, since she's sufficiently tested and savvy and all the rest of it to make a Dukakis or Dole-style wipeout almost completely unimaginable. And in a year when things will (probably) be going the Democrats' way anyway, there's a lot to be said for nominating a known quantity and assuming that, in spite of what Jonah rightly calls the "irreducible core" of anti-Hillary sentiment, the political landscape alone will ensure that her guaranteed 48 percent rises to 51-53 percent by November '08. Whereas Obama and to a lesser extent Edwards both have a higher ceiling, but also a much lower floor, since neither has been through the fire already the way Hillary has (indeed, Obama has never run against significant GOP opposition of any kind), and either one could flame out disastrously in the heat of a general-election campaign.

Remember, John Kerry received 48% of the vote; it's extremely unlikely any Democrat is going to do worse than that next year. Moreover, it seems to me like you could just as easily make the opposite case: Hillary's "ceiling" is just what is so worrying about her. Because the senator is so polarizing, it's likely that some of the numerous advantages the Dems have in 2008 will be subsumed by personal animosity. Why not choose someone like Obama or Edwards, who both have greater upside potential, and are assured of being competitive because of the climate?

--Isaac Chotiner

(immanent eschaton is inclined towards the first approach, וצ"ע)

suggest your own caption

in case you were wondering what has become of the Rush Limbaugh scandal, click here.
UPDATE to previous post: it seems ann coulter's comments were taken out of context too. link

the reason ann coulter's comments were ever noteworthy

"What we seem to have forgotten is how unique the circumstances were that made possible the establishment of the American compact on religion and politics. Perhaps now is the time to restore the much needed concept of American exceptionalism and remind ourselves of some basic facts. The most important one that set our experience apart from that of Europe was the absence of a strong Roman Catholic Church as a redoubt of intellectual and political opposition to the liberal-democratic ideas hatched by the Enlightenment – and thus also, the absence of a radical, atheist Enlightenment convinced that l’infâme must be écrasé. For over two centuries France, Italy, and Spain were rent by what can only be called existential struggles over the legitimacy of Catholic political theology and the revolutionary heritage of 1789. (Though the term “liberalism” is of Spanish coinage, as a political force it was weak in the whole of Catholic Europe until after the Second World War.) Neither side in this epic struggle was remotely interested in “toleration”; they wanted victory.
"Looking beyond Europe, we note other things missing from the American landscape, quite literally. For example, there were no religious shrines to fight over, no holy cities, no temples, no sacred burial grounds (except those of the Native Americans, which were shamefully ignored). There also was a complete absence of what we would today call diversity: America was racially and culturally homogeneous in the early years of the republic, even if there were differences – in retrospect, incredibly minor – in Protestant affiliation. Yes, there were a few Catholics and Jews among the early immigrants, but the tone was set by Protestants of dissenting tendencies from the British Isles. The theological differences among them were swamped by the fact that everyone spoke the same language, cooked the same food, and looked to a shared history of persecution and emigration. It was a homogeneous country, and what comes with homogeneity, along with some troubling things, is trust...

"Except for Joseph Smith in his last days and a few other colorful exceptions, no serious American religious thinker ever developed a full-blown theology of government throwing the basic legitimacy of American democracy into question. It is something of a miracle. But whatever its source, it is exceptional and we need to recognize its consequences. Though the long tradition of Christian political theology eventually died in twentieth-century Europe, memory of it is still strong and laced with fear. But the American founding took place as a self-conscious break with Europe’s traditional political theologies and so memory of the world we left behind is somewhat vague. We were born, so to speak, on the other shore.
So successful has our passage been to this other shore that it is sometimes difficult to remind Americans that political theology is the primordial form of political thought. Virtually every civilization known to us began with an image of itself as set within a divine nexus of God, man, and world, and based its understanding of legitimate authority on that theological picture. This is true of all the civilizations of the ancient Near East, and of many in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Political theology seems to be the default condition of civilizations as they try to articulate how their political order relates to the natural order, and how both stand under a divine order. It is a rational construct with its own concepts and terms, and a long history of intellectual debates that are still alive for those who believe. In it, arguments about authority and legitimacy, or rights and duties, travel up and down a ladder connecting human reasons to divine ones. Making those connections and developing a comprehensive account of God, man, and world simply is what it is to think politically for political theologians.

Freakin' Maniac Breaking News

the Freakin' Maniac, or something like that, is announcing that due to the high annoyingness of his blog, or something like that, he will no longer be posting. (we have an understanding that a majority of the "annoying" votes were actually cast by immanent eschaton staff, which just shows again the immense influence immanent eschaton wields.)
in a related note, the aforementioned maniac also reveals that one of the leaders of the dark forces (with out giving too much away, his last name rhymes with shmize l. man) will be publishing a book on why he really should be leader of the moetzes gedolei hatorah after all, especially because the rest of them are only there because they were once married to the unnamed rosh yeshiva's second cousins; that is he is writing a book Torah vs. Science: A Polemic.

methinks he protesteth too much

remarkably creative and extremely erudite important and delightful delightful because of the intellectual excitement which her conceptual breakthrough generates. exciting, new historical framework extremely erudite, highly stimulating monograph. excitingly original and remarkably erudite monograph unquestionably exciting, valid and important.

*(if you do not understand this try googling the above paragraph. notice that all of the other results are word lists which are the only other place you will find so many permutations of exciting.) or else maybe it is really really exciting.

Outhing (no typo) Maimonidean

ever wonder who the blogger "maimonidean" (or something like that) is? immanent eschaton investegative reporters may have found the answer...
in the revealingly bizarrely named blog "hirhurim" one "yissachar" left a comment reading:

Nachum *Eliezer Rabinovitch
Yissachar Homepage 08.24.07 - 1:57 am #

This comment is entirely cryptic. It seems to contain an encoded message, which perhaps can help reveal the true identity of "yissachar" or "the maimonidean." In fact this comment was reminiscent of similarly indecipherable comments/posts which were left on a variety of pruzhaner blogs during the spring of 2007 e.g. :

Wanneer de zestiende Nissan, de dag waarop de ‘omer meel geofferd werd in de
Tempel, op een Sjabbat viel, werd de voor het offer vereiste gerst op die
heilige dag afgesneden, omdat de Tora verordend heeft dat het verbod om op
Sjabbat te oogsten, opzij gezet moet worden om dit offer mogelijk te maken. Uit
eerbeid voor de Sjabbat besliste Rabbi Jismaël dat slechts drie se’a gerst
afgesneden mochten worden om het meel te maken, in plaats van de vijf se’a die
op een werkdag afgesneden werden voor het meel.

upon further investigation, immanent eschaton staff revealed that besides for the shared literary style roughly resembling finnegan's wake, there is also the shared fondness for multiple, and stolen, identities.
as anonymous would say "w'dzoq"

Best of The Best of the Web

'It's From the Sun, All Right'
"Scientists Confirm Long-Held Theory About Source of Sunlight"--headline, Princeton University press release, Aug. 20

Chaitred

As Jonathan Chait has been taking a beating lately, I thought it would be a good idea to pile on by attacking his defense of Bush hatred. In this post Chait argues that Bush hatred is perfectly understandable because Bush refused to give out his signature as freely as his predecessor.

Dick Armey, the House Republican majority leader when Bush took office (and no more a shrinking violet than DeLay), told me a story that captures the exquisite pettiness of most members of Congress and the arrogance that made Bush and Rove so inept at handling them. "For all the years he was president," Armey told me, "Bill Clinton and I had a little thing we'd do where every time I went to the White House, I would take the little name tag they give you and pass it to the president, who, without saying a word, would sign and date it. Bill Clinton and I didn't like each other. He said I was his least-favorite member of Congress. But he knew that when I left his office, the first schoolkid I came across would be given that card, and some kid who had come to Washington with his mama would go home with the president's autograph. I think Clinton thought it was a nice thing to do for some kid, and he was happy to do it." Armey said that when he went to his first meeting in the White House with President Bush, he explained the tradition with Clinton and asked the president if he would care to continue it. "Bush refused to sign the card. Rove, who was sitting across the table, said, 'It would probably wind up on eBay,'" Armey continued.

When I wrote an article several years ago defending Bush hatred, numerous conservative critics were incredulous that I could find the man personally distasteful. Everybody knows Bush is a great guy! This just showed what a crazy liberal I was! But Bush isn't a great guy. He's a jerk. -Jonathan Chait

me: A cursory glance at the comments however, do about as good a job of destroying his justification as one could ask for:

Those of us who did our home-work knew that G.W. Bush was a petty, mean-spirited, malicious jerk way back in 2000, and before. Drunken pissing all over people's cars at a fancy party, leading the hazing and tormenting of frat pledges, his condescending habit of giving essentially diminutive nicknames to his underlings, skipping out on his Guard service, all around sense of entitlement, etc., etc. If just a few hundred more Americans had done their home-work, this arrogant cretin wouldn't be in the White House. Think of it! Only the most brain-dead wing-nut would dare to assert we wouldn't be vastly better off today.

me: hmm, that would make a good bumper sticker

National Unity

Although the Weekly Standard and the New Republic agree about very little lately, its nice to see that they can bipartisanly agree that the Simpson's Movie stunk.

Imagine A World Without Global Warming

Arctic August: NYC Sets Record For Coldest Day
High Of 59 Degrees Ties Chilliest August High Set In 1911

"This unusual blast of cold air smashed our previous record for the coldest high temperature on August 21, which is 64 degrees, set back in 1999," CBS 2 meteorologist Jason Cali told wcbstv.com.
In fact, the 59-degree high tied the record for the coldest high temperature ever for the month of August in New York City, when it reached just 59 degrees in 1911.Today's highs are more common in the city for the final days of October, when the average high ranges from 59 degrees to 61 degrees.

immanent eschaton, however takes this as just another sign of the impending ice age.

Its Like 2004 All Over Again

Hurricane Dean devastates before downgrade

Breaking News!

CHAVRUSA TUMULT AT BMG

B"H there have been no casualties, sources say.

Not Too Bright

From the Guardian online:

News agency Reuters has been forced to admit that footage it released last week purportedly showing Russian submersibles on the seabed of the North Pole actually came from the movie Titanic.

The images were reproduced around the world - including by the Guardian and Guardian Unlimited - alongside the story of Russia planting its flag below the North Pole on Thursday last week.

But it has now emerged that the footage actually showed two Finnish-made Mir submersibles that were employed on location filming at the scene of the wreck of the RMS Titanic ship in the north Atlantic some 10 years ago.

This footage was used in sequences in James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster about the 1912 disaster.

The mistake was only revealed after a 13-year-old Finnish schoolboy contacted a local newspaper to tell them the images looked identical to those used in the movie.

Reuters has admitted that it took the images from Russian state television channel RTR and wrongly captioned them as file footage originating from the Arctic.

Oddly enough, this story did not appear in Reuters Oddly Enough!

gil incites violence

i think gil student needs to be strongly condemned by the MO community for his incitement to violence recently. while it is true that he does claim he is not being literal, we cannot be sure someone won't act before reading his parenthetical addendum.

is bush pulling a clinton?

as a president's tenure approaches its close, what better time to look for a more positive place in the history books than by selling out israel? perhaps by funding the moderate wing of al queida. or arranging for a peace conference between moderate so-called militants and their western "victims".

OpinionJournal.com

I wound up chatting at a reception a couple years ago with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia about his love of opera and his taste in popular culture. It turned out he was a huge fan of Fox's anti-terrorist drama "24," and he convinced me to watch it for the first time.Well, little did I know just how much of a fan Justice Scalia is of the fast-paced show. The Globe and Mail newspaper in Canada reports he positively gushed about the Fox series recently at a conference on homeland security in the Canadian capital of Ottawa that was attended by an international panel of judges. Mr. Scalia couldn't refrain from commenting after Canadian federal Judge Richard Mosley opined: "Thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra, 'What would Jack Bauer do?'"As viewers know, Jack Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, is a federal agent known for roughing up suspected terrorists who are holding out on important information."Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles!" Mr. Scalia interjected. "He saved hundreds of thousands of lives!" Indeed, Mr. Scalia was just warming up. "Are you going to convict Jack Bauer? Say that criminal law is against him?" he asked rhetorically. "Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so!"Other panelists promptly challenged the American jurist, arguing that some prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay on terrorism charges could be innocent. "I don't care about holding people. I really don't," Judge Scalia replied. After the panel broke up, he continued to wax enthusiastically about his favorite show.If I were the producers of "24" I would immediately invite Mr. Scalia to make a guest appearance on the series. Judicial decorum would probably prevent him from doing so, but who wouldn't want to see the highly expressive Mr. Scalia in the role of a judge presiding over the trial of an accused terrorist? -- John Fund

Roger Kimball On The Dangerous Book for Boys; also John Podhoretz On The Yiddish Policemen's Union (yulis links)

Minhagei Kalbisov

Rabbi Daniel Z. Feldman:

Some sefarim relate a story involving a meeting between the Nefesh Chayah, R. Yehoshua of Kutno, and the Avnei Nezer, in which the [Avnei Nezer] quoted a ruling in the name of the Ba’al Shem Tov. This ruling, based on a comment of Tosafot, was that if one began to pray before the latest time for davening, the prayer is acceptable, even if the prayer continues after the time has passed. R. Yehoshua of Kutno responded that he had heard this as well, but did not know where the Tosafot was. The Avnei Nezer thought for a moment, and then replied that he knew where it was: Berakhot 7a.

That Tosafot (s.v. Sh’ilmalei) comments on the gemara’s statement that Bilaam was able to discern G-d’s very brief moment of anger and use that opportunity to curse the Jews. If , however, the moment was so brief, how much could he have said in that time? The Tosafot offer two answers, the second being that if he started his curse at that moment, it would not have mattered had the remaining words taken beyond that time to complete. Thus, explained the Avnei Nezer, since Chazal tell us that the “measurement of good is greater than the measurement of disaster”, if a curse is effective under such circumstance, prayer certainly is. [The Kogaglover Rav (Resp. Eretz Zvi, I, 121, and II, p. 171), who was a student of the Avnei Nezer, quotes this idea as well, but attributes it not to him but to the Yid haKodesh of Psischa, and uses it to consider the question of Purim meals that start on Purim but continue into the next day. Resp. Dovev Meisharim, III, 11, also alludes to this point in the Purim Seudah context.]

The Responsa Minchat Yitzchak (IV, 48) questioned the veracity of this story, noting that its conclusion is contradicted by the poskim (See Shulchan Arukh O.C. 124:2, Magen Avraham, 4; and 232:2, Magen Avraham, 2, and 89:4 ). However, after considering some possible support for this idea in other contexts, he concludes that the logic is effective in allowing a prayer to be considered with the community, as long as it began with the community

Perhaps this can explain the longstanding Kalbisover minhag of missing z'man tefilah by approximately two minutes, which has become a point of mockery for the scoffers who do not understand why they cannot just start two minutes earlier, or else much later. In truth, this minhag is based wish to simultaneously demonstrate support for the Ba'al Shem Tov's position and for the hasidic tradition of missing the z'man. Were they to start just before the z'man, that would indicate either: that they disagree with the Ba'al Shem Tov and consider finishing after the z'man to be like missing the z'man; or, that they agree with the Ba'al Shem Tov but disregard hasidic tradition. However, by missing the z'man by two minutes they show that they indeed careful to follow tradition, and that they are in agreement with the Ba'al Shem Tov's position.

It's like Making of a Godol Online! BTW, rumor has it YU fired Perl, by all accounts their most popular teacher, probably because he was popular. But then maybe they didn't like the attacks on the Soloveichiks.

The Pressing Issues We Face

Pardon the pun. But seriously, I think it's about time somebody has brought attention to this issue.
Judge Who Seeks Millions for Lost Pants Has His (Emotional) Day in Court

The "willful and malicious conduct" Pearson described consisted of this: In 2005, Pearson was starting his new job as a judge and therefore needed to start wearing suits again after a couple of years of unemployment. He brought five suits in for alterations because he'd put on 20 pounds and needed to have the pants let out. Four suits came back fine. One came back without the pants. Pearson says the Chung family -- Korean immigrants who came here from the charcoal factories of Seoul in 1992 and now own three cleaners, including the one a short walk from Pearson's place in the Fort Lincoln section of Northeast -- had no intention of living up to the sign in their shop that said "Satisfaction Guaranteed." Therefore, Pearson said, he had no choice but to take on "the awesome responsibility" of suing the Chungs on behalf of every resident of the District of Columbia...

Pearson presented a series of witnesses who told of unhappy experiences at Custom. Their satisfaction, they said, was hardly guaranteed. But every one of Pearson's witnesses told the defense that in fact, they would have been entirely satisfied if they had been given credit for free cleaning or compensation in the amount of the value of their damaged or lost garment. Most of the witnesses said they'd generally had good experiences at Custom, and not one of Pearson's witnesses said anything about deserving millions of dollars. Witnesses depicted Soo Chung, the mom in the Mom and Pop operation, as someone who was pleasant and professional -- until a dispute arose, at which point she told several of the customers that it was they who had brought in damaged goods, not the shop that had caused any problem with an article of clothing. Grace Hewell, a retired congressional staffer, said Jin Chung, Soo's husband, "chased me out of the store" when she complained that her suit pants "looked like they had been washed" and no longer fit properly. "At 89, I'm not ready to be chased," she said. "But I was in World War II as a WAC, so I think I can take care of myself. Having lived in Germany and knowing the people who were victims of the Nazis, I thought he was going to beat me up. I thought of what Hitler had done to thousands of Jews." After questioning eight witnesses, Pearson spent two hours telling his own story, but as he came to the part about when Soo Chung finally told him she had found the missing pants, the tale of the $10.50 alteration that went awry proved to be too much. "These are not my pants," Pearson recalled telling Chung when she handed him a pair of gray pants with cuffs. "I have in my adult life, with one exception, never worn pants with cuffs." "And she said, 'These are your pants.' " Pearson paused. He struggled to breathe deeply. He could not continue. Pearson blurted a request for a break, stood up, turned around and walked out of the courtroom, tears dripping from his full and reddened eyes. When he returned, he called that moment when Chung offered him the wrong pants "a Twilight Zone experience," and again, he welled up and had to halt the proceedings.

The Democratic Party: Hezb No Allah?

Good article at the Spectator about religion in politics:

The dirty little secret of Democrat party politics is that secularists fill a role very similar to the one occupied by evangelicals on the Republican side. They are becoming a reliable voting bloc. There is a far larger religion gap than there is a gender gap, but only the latter has been extensively covered. Christian fundamentalism is frequently emphasized, but secularism is completely missed. It has only been in the most recent election cycle (2006) that the "God gap" has received significant attention and then it was to emphasize that religious voters were coming back to the Democratic party. Coverage has typically been short on attention to secularists, focusing instead on the movement of religious voters.Political scientists Gerald De Maio and Louis Bolce have pointed out that one never hears about how the Democrats "have shorn up their base among the unchurched, atheists, and agnostics." Nevertheless, when you see evolution suddenly become a persistent issue in presidential debates, something very much like that shoring up is happening. Markers are being set out. "Stay away from this wicked person, my son. He has inadequate respect for the marriage of molecules and random chance."