Here’s McCain on “Meet the Press” on Palin quitting:

MCCAIN: I don’t think she quit. I think she changed her priorities…

QUESTION: She made a promise to the voters to serve out her term, didn’t she?

MCCAIN: I don’t know if there was a quote, promise, but I do know that she will be an effective player on the national stage.

Two things, John: First, if you make a commitment and then quit, then you quit and you’re a quitter. If I sign a four-year contract and resign after two years, then I quit. I may have “changed my priorities,” but I still quit.

As for the “quote, promise,” actually, there was one: she ran for office. When you run for office, there is an implicit promise that you will serve out your term. This is usually excused when you leave for a solid reason, like you are moving up to a higher office or you are resigning due to scandal; people understand both cases and are usually quick to wish you on your way. But to just up and quit because you don’t feel like it any more? That’s not part of the implied covenant. If Palin had run under the slogan, “Maybe I’ll serve my term if I feel like it,” I doubt she would have been elected. Alaskans were OK with her becoming VP because that meant something. But Palin’s excuses? Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out, Sarah.

McCain, you’re not running for president anymore. I don’t expect you to simply give up the cheerleader/apologist persona you adopted in order to run as the Republican nominee, but at least you could give up brazenly transparent lies and stupid, easily-proven-false distinctions-without-a-difference for a while. For that matter, the entire GOP should admit to what everyone knows is true: Palin quit, and the GOP is going to be far better off without her.

So please, instead, keep up the support for Palin. What with the Democrats unwilling to take you on and defeat you, we would appreciate it if you could keep doing the job yourselves. You’ve been so effective at it the past many years, I guess the Democrats either forgot how to fight and not acquiesce to you all the time, or else figure that if they let you be asses and act all dominant still, then maybe you’ll finish destroying yourselves and the Dems won’t have to look like they attacked you.

But you have to stop saying that Palin didn’t quit. It’s embarrassing. Really.

Here’s the latest headline in the Sotomayor nomination:

GOP: Sotomayor must assure she can be neutral

Here’s the latest reflection considering the GOP’s stance on Bush nominations:

The GOP can go * * * * itself

Seriously. After eight years of Bush nominating and getting approved very young, white male hardcore right-wing strict constructionists, after the GOP insisting that the president gets to choose anyone he wants and the Democrats better not even THINK of screwing with that, the GOP does not get to now say that Obama’s nominee had better be nothing more than an inch left of center or else they’ll nuke her.

Here’s the deal: Obama just nominated someone so centrist that it makes the mildest Bush nominee look like he came from farther right than frickin’ Neptune. The GOP should be singing hosannahs that the Dems do not have either the vast extremism nor the innate sense of complete unfairness that Republicans use for their Sunday Best and have given them this gift of a non-liberal judge. But no, they still act all indignant, as if Sotomayor is Jane Fonda on Liberal Steroids and they can barely stand to allow this to go unscathed but MAYBE they’ll allow it if she behaves. And if the Democrats in the Senate weren’t such weak-kneed pushovers, the GOP threat would be entirely laughable, instead of just mildly humorous. Humorous in terms of, “ha ha, I didn’t know hypocrites could be so funny!”

How can flaming hypocrites make their past hypocrisies look mild? Stay tuned. In the meantime, Sotomayor will go to SCOTUS, no doubt. But seriously, Obama: next time, grow a pair, will ya?

Mike Huckabee on how Bush never blamed the recession on anyone else:

HUCKABEE: There’s one thing though that Biden and President Obama have got to get under control. And that is quit blaming George Bush. George Bush inherited an economy when he became president back in 2001 that was already beginning to show real signs of the stress from the breaking of the technology bubble. George Bush didn’t go out whining and complaining every day, he stood up like the president of the United States and he worked on trying to get it fixed.

Then 2001, 9/11 came, things really went tough, but he worked on the economy and it was in much better shape for most of his presidency. Then the recession started, wasn’t totally his fault for sure and all you hear from Joe Biden and President Obama is how, how terrible it was, what they inherited, how it wasn’t their fault. No, look, you own it now. You got elected, you wanted the job. Stand up and take it and get this thing rolling. But quit spending money.

Not only did Bush whine and complain, he did it every chance he got. When he mentioned the economy, he constantly threw in some mention of how it was already in motion when he took office, making sure people knew that he was not to blame. Not only this, but he did it throughout his entire eight years in office, right up to his last press conference.

In fact, Bush used the economic slowdown in the exact same way Obama is using the current one–which is to say, using it as a reason to push his financial package. Every time the slowdown or recession was mentioned, Bush used it to push his massive tax cut agenda. And as you can see from the quotes below, it was accompanied by repeated comments about when it started, pinning it on the last guy.

So I went and got most of these from Bush’s White House archives site, a few from other places–and by the time I got to 2004, I just got tired and jumped to 2008. Trust me, there’s lots more. You can go check yourself. Below I list only Bush’s direct quotes, though I found endless quotes by Cheney (a few: “To begin with some recent history, President Bush and I came to office facing a recession that had already begun.”, “We inherited a recession. The recession began the first quarter of ’01, when we first arrived.”, “We inherited a recession, a recession that began either shortly before or about the same time that we got into office.”) as well as several Bush administration Press Secretaries and cabinet officials. But Huckabee said “Bush,” so here is a small sample of Bush’s modesty and non-whining:

“Our economy is sputtering. Economic growth has stalled. Consumer confidence is falling. We can’t just stand by and hope for the best. We must act, and act now, to get ahead of this problem, and blunt or reverse this slowdown.”

–George W. Bush, March 10, 2001

“For several months, economic indicators have pointed toward a slowdown, and now many Americans are beginning to feel its impact in your lives.”

–George W. Bush, March 17, 2001

“And one of the problems we inherited was an economy that was sputtering along and slowing down.”

–George W. Bush, August 16, 2001

“I tell you what the numbers are showing. They’re showing that we’ve inherited an economic slowdown and the country is in an economic slowdown.”

–George W. Bush, August 23, 2001

“Many economists warned me when I took office that a recession was beginning.”

–George W. Bush, December 1, 2001

“You know, when I came into office, we were beginning a recession. I remember the Vice President saying that clearly.”

–George W. Bush, August 7, 2002

“You see, you’ve got to remember something about our economy. When we came in there, the economy was just beginning to get into a recession.”

–George W. Bush, August 29, 2002

“When we got up to Washington, D.C., the country was headed into a recession. Markets started correcting in March of 2000, that’s when it peaked. And then the summer the economic growth started to slow. And so by the time the Vice President and I showed up in Washington, D.C., we were in three-quarters of recession.”

–George W. Bush, September 23, 2002

“So with the combination of the loss of revenue as a result of the recession — which was official in January of 2001…”

–George W. Bush, May 2, 2003

“Let me tell you something, the deficit was caused by a recession which we inherited…”

–George W. Bush, August 13, 2003

“First, the stock market began a steady decline in March, 2000, as investors realized that the economy was not healthy. Businesses faced over-capacity during that period of time and cut their budgets for new investment in technology or equipment. And by early 2001, this economy was in recession.”

–George W. Bush, September 4, 2003

“We’ve been through a recession — and, by the way, the stock market started to decline six months before I became President. And then we had a recession.”

–George W. Bush, October 9, 2004

“When I took office, we inherited a recession…”

–George W. Bush, February 8, 2008

“We inherited a recession.”

–George W. Bush, March 14, 2008

“In terms of the economy, look, I inherited a recession, I am ending on a recession.”

–George W. Bush, January 12, 2009

Yep, Good ol’ George. Never willing to pass the buck.

The right wing has been its usual nasty self with Al Franken, from the Wall Street Journal claiming he stole the election to gasbags like Limbaugh calling Franken a “genuine lunatic.” But the typical thing for those on the right to do is dismiss Franken as a comedian, as in “nothing but a.” The media picks up on this–like David Broder, for example, calling Franken a “loud-mouthed former comedian”–and there is the general sense that there is something inherently wrong in sending a jokester to the Senate.

But as the lefty blogs are now quoting Paul Krugman on, there is much more to Franken than meets the eye. Krugman points out something that many have overlooked: that Franken has real substance. In fact, he has more substance than almost anyone else in the Senate.

First off, his credentials aren’t bad: he graduated summa cum laude from Harvard, his major being Political Science. As much as the right falsely whines about how lefties hate Sarah Palin for not having such credentials, and as much as they put down people like Sotomayor for having made accomplishments of that nature, the fact is, you don’t graduate summa cum laude from Harvard without being pretty damned sharp. Not to mention that he aced the Math section of his SATs with a perfect 800. Right off the bat, one should understand that Al Franken is no intellectual lightweight. Sure, most intellectual heavyweights don’t go around publishing books calling Rush Limbaugh a “big fat idiot”–but they probably wish they could. Calling people names like that is usually not tolerated in such circles and adds to the idea that he’s not serious, but let’s face it: the title, though impolitic, was, if anything, an understatement. Franken was being subtle and nobody seemed to notice.

Second, the man is an unabashed, undeniable patriot–the actual kind, not the self-serving flag-waving opportunistic kind, or the blind, easily-fooled kind–with a special respect for those who have served. Franken just recently received the USO Merit Award for ten years of service to the organization, going on seven tours and frequently visiting military hospitals. This is not a campaign stunt in his political bid–he started doing this in 1999, visiting troops in Kosovo, three years before he got the idea of entering into politics when Paul Wellstone died and Norm Coleman grabbed his seat in a particularly dishonorable manner. But you don’t just need to go by Franken’s USO service to understand that he honors those who serve; if you listened to his radio show for any amount of time, it was pretty obvious. Nothing got Franken emotional more than his dealings with the troops, and when he saw them being mistreated or dishonored, he would start to lose it. You could hear him holding back his rage, tearing up, as he described some of the crap that they were put through, how they were getting killed because they were not sufficiently equipped or taken care of.

But most of all, Franken is, as Krugman pointed out, “a big policy wonk.” Again, you’d know this if you listened to Franken’s radio show. The man was well-prepared, knew his topics, and had his facts in order–and when he didn’t have the facts at his fingertips, he would not make them up, not assume. But when others did, he would call them out on it. Catch the segment below, with Franken showing a group of young people why they should question what they hear, work out the math, and think for themselves:

Nobody’s perfect. Franken has been wrong on stuff from time to time, as everyone will be. But if he is, it’s not from lack of trying. The man is serious, he is dedicated, and gosh darn it, he’s smart. Far from bringing down the level of discourse in the Senate, as Krugman points out, he’ll raise it. Underestimating Franken is a dangerous business; being a comedian doesn’t mean he’s not serious, it means that he can skewer you all the more skillfully. A comedian who is smart and knows his facts is not someone to be trifled with.

Nate Silver has a very good read on this one:

Palin is the most Bushlike of all the Republicans who have emerged as contenders for the national ticket: the smirkiness, the smugness, the regional accent (although Palin’s, I assume, is not feigned), the malapropisms, the contempt for media (both the people who cover it and their mediums), the express deference to religious faith, the occasionally undeniably likable moments of joviality and regular guy/gal-ness, the tendency toward self-dealing, the bulldog/barracuda mentality, the comfort in one’s own skin (Palin was crippled when she lost hers late in the campaign), the (apparent) preference for isolation in [Wasilla, Crawford], and last but not least, the no-holds-barred, no-apologies conservatism.

However, Nate missed perhaps one of the biggest similarities between the two: the lack of competence. When we first heard of Palin, the first reaction was, what are her qualifications? The answer turned out to be, almost none. That started the uneasiness–that a cancer-surviving septuagenarian candidate was choosing a running mate with little more than mayoral experience to be a heartbeat away from world leadership. And the more we saw of Palin, the more this initial impression was reinforced. She said she had good credentials in foreign policy because you can see a part of Russia from a part of Alaska? Because Putin flies over her state sometimes? She said that? It didn’t take long to realize that this person was not only unqualified for the presidency, she was dangerously unqualified. Silver’s likening Palin to Bush is most relevant in this regard; after eight years of a moron running the country, we recoiled at the thought of another moron taking his place. That she shared so many of the other qualities Bush had only cemented that feeling.

Silver’s analysis was sparked by a quote from Hot Air’s Allahpundit (the key sentence emphasized by Silver), who held that we despise her because of the

sheer contempt they have for her intellect. To the left, I think, she embodies a sort of comfort with ignorance that they think characterizes most/all conservatives. Why they’ve come to see her that way is complicated (part of it’s probably educational pedigree, part of it’s her affinity for rural pastimes like hunting, part of it’s the Katie Couric interview and the canned answers she gave at the debate with Biden), but I think it’s a mistake to assume that their antipathy is rooted in nothing but fear and defensiveness.

The part Silver highlighted is a good quote, to be sure, but it’s worth noting the reason Allahpundit ascribes to the liberal discomfort with her intellect. He seems to think we see her as ignorant because (a) she’s not a graduate of some elitist ivy-league university, (b) she’s from rural America, and (c) because she gave bad answers in an interview and at a debate.

The first idea, that her education was not good enough, is laughable. I don’t think that anyone paid much attention to that. Does anyone remember what school she went to? I don’t, and frankly I don’t care. I don’t recall anyone on the left criticizing her education, save for possible references to which major she had–but even that was rarely mentioned. The second idea, that we think she’s ignorant because she’s from the sticks, is a knee-jerk conservative response: those elitist coastal liberals hate the “real” America. All one has to do is remember Bill Clinton to realize that this is patently false. And the third idea is flawed only because it is far too limited in scope. Sure, canned answers were not a good thing–they revealed that she could not answer substantive questions on her own–but to say that liberals got the idea that she’s ignorant just from that is like saying that the entirety of conservatives’ dislike for Obama stems from the flag lapel-pin issue.

Allahpundit seems to actually believe that Palin is not ignorant, which we can ascribe to bias; but what is more interesting is the blindness as to why liberals see Palin as ignorant. Either he is not aware of the real reason, or he is uncomfortable mentioning it–perhaps because the reason is so salient. We see Palin as ignorant because she has amply demonstrated that she is. She is clearly an intellectual lightweight–not because she’s a woman, not because she’s from a rural area, but because she has demonstrated it, again and again.

The “I can see Alaska from my house” issue is emblematic: here is a person who seems to actually believe she has strong foreign policy credentials because the farthest reaches of the state she comes from is in viewing distance from the outermost reaches of another country which is controlled from a city 3,700 miles from that border. And she wasn’t joking. She repeated it. She genuinely seemed to believe it.

Did this not worry anyone on the right? Did they not see the problem with someone who could look you square in the eye and make this claim? There are only two possibilities with a statement like that: either she is an unbelievable moron, or she thinks that you are.

Next to her lack of intelligence, the next greatest concern liberals have with Palin–also similar to Bush–is her mendacity. The fact that she could lie–not only lie, but lie so constantly, and lie so transparently–was immensely troubling. The reason so many liberals liked McCain back in 2000 was that we felt he was being truthful. His policies were out of whack with ours, but at least we felt that he was giving us a straight deal, that he respected us and was willing to put it all down on the table and be straight. McCain eventually reversed himself and became a politician’s politician, but even then he tried to capitalize on this image with his whole “straight talk” campaign.

Palin epitomized the antithesis to that image. It seemed that every other word out of her mouth was not only a lie, but a really bad lie. As I mentioned above, it smacked of smug contempt: “I think that you’re so stupid that you’ll believe this incredibly idiotic line I’m feeding you.” And that’s the generous reading–the not-so-generous reading was that she wasn’t lying, but actually believed the lies she was telling.

So yes, we think Palin is ignorant, or worse. And yes, we are uncomfortable because she reminds us in many ways of Bush. But Nate Silver doesn’t reach far back enough in his comparisons. For as much as Palin resembles Bush, Palin and Bush resemble Reagan. And that gets to a more root cause of our discomfort with all of them: smug, amiable dunces who take the rugged-outdoorsmen pose, claim piety, lie indiscriminately, and are unapologetically hard-line right-wingers who allow extremist neocons to run the show behind the scenes. It’s as if the right-wing has found its perfect genotype, and keeps pushing it into leadership roles. And that’s what scares the crap out of us liberals–because we can see all too clearly the incredible damage such people have done to our country.

So, why did Palin resign? There are several different theories:

1. She was telling the truth. Just from her record alone, we can pretty easily dismiss this one outright. Palin is, for the most part, congenitally incapable of telling the truth where her record and policies are concerned.

But truthfully: the media hounding her and political enemies calling for investigations? Please. Even if we accept Palin’s worldview and ignore the fact that she has personally invited every single jab in the media and every single investigation into her wrongdoings, either by making a huge deal of herself or by literally welcoming scrutiny, then what this says about her is that she can’t take the heat. If she is so weak a politician that she can’t stand up to the media, how can we believe that she’ll be capable of standing up to a serious opponent? How would she deal with North Korea? Resign from office because they’re being so mean?

2. She wants freedom to run for president in 2012. If this is true, then Palin is even more of a schizophrenic moron than I thought she was. Nothing says “presidential material” more than quitting in mid-term because you just can’t take all that negativity from the media and the ethics investigators.

She may just as well tattooed the word “QUITTER” on her forehead, because that’s what every opponent–especially her fellow Republicans–will label her as if she tries to run against anybody from now on.

But she might actually believe that this is the right move: that by doing this, she will be a victim (which played very well for her in the Letterman affair), a martyr who sacrificed herself for the people, the party, and her cause. She may actually believe that her speech defused the whole “quitter” stigma just because she tried to call “quitting” “winning.”

If this scenario is true, then she’s in for a bit of a disappointment.

3. Something Big is coming. There is a huge scandal that we haven’t heard about yet, and Palin resigned so as to avoid the worst of its consequences.

This seems to be the best theory because nothing else makes sense; the other two theories are so lacking in credibility that it is commonly assumed that this must be the real reason. We just haven’t seen the other shoe drop yet.

This makes sense on many fronts. First of all, Palin not only lies, steals, and breaks the law, but she has done it so transparently that it defies belief. As we just found out in Vanity Fair:

After one meeting between the governor and legislators in 2007, Lyda Green, then the president of the state senate, returned to her office to catch up on some paperwork. She caught Palin on the news. “And she comes on TV and says, ‘I want to once again confirm that neither I nor my staff ever holds closed-door meetings.’ Well, we had just been in a closed-door meeting for an hour and a half!”

That Palin does this suggests that she may simply have no “ethical filter,” that she simply cannot tell right from wrong, or truth from lie–or else is so blindingly arrogant that she just believes she can get away with anything without even trying to hide it. Either way, it makes it much easier to find her guilty of something. And that may be what happened: that she did something so illegal or unethical that it’s coming to bite her in the ass.

Second, the way she resigned seems tailor-made for pre-emption. She set the stage by making multiple claims that her political enemies were out to get her with false accusations, wasting all that taxpayer money. She’s a victim, she’s trying to tell us–so that when charges come out, she can say, “See! Just what I was talking about, what a coincidence!” and pretend like it’s just another false charge that her enemies have trumped up.

Third, if she quits before charges are made, she removes the scrutiny of being an office-holder. If a huge scandal erupts while you’re governor, then being in office is a liability. If you’re an ex-governor, then it’s old news. She can claim that all of that is behind her, hope that people forget it, and then run for office after it’s all gone away. And let’s face it, you can get away with murder while in office–all you have to do is resign and suddenly investigations collapse. [Edit: in retrospect, this claim is a bit much–criminal investigations can certainly follow you out of office. But it is also true that prosecutors will often stop following a case after the office-holder has left office, that being commonly considered ‘punishment enough.’ A sitting governor who took a bribe is far more of a threat to society than an ex-governor who can no longer cause any harm.]

Sure, quitting and then having a damaging scandal revealed aren’t exactly career-builders, but it may be that she simply has no choice–that staying on as governor would be far worse. If there’s a big scandal coming, then this could be Palin’s best chance to salvage her career.

Of course, there are two more theories:

4. Palin is a total wimp. This is an alternate reading of theory #1, above. Maybe she just can’t take it any more. In which case she doesn’t belong in politics. Or:

5. Palin is batshit insane. This could simply be the act of a completely stupid and crazy person doing things for reasons that only make sense to her. We certainly cannot rule out that possibility. Crazy people don’t need good reasons.

Any other theories?

Late thought: I forgot to mention something that had been rolling through my mind: the timing. Palin announced this on “Take Out the Trash Day,” Friday before a holiday weekend. If this was a push where she really wanted to ride the wave of publicity, she would not have made the statement on a day perfect for burying news stories, a day famous for killing the momentum of news stories.

Another reason not to buy into the idea that she is “gearing up” and “reloading both chambers” for a new political offensive–unless, of course we return to the “crazy” or “stupid” scenarios, in which Palin is showing extremely bad judgment.

Later Update: The Brad Blog is following the stories that the “iceberg scandal” is the reason why Palin resigned, and that it has to do with upcoming federal indictments for embezzlement. Short version: Palin is in trouble for her relationship with the building contractor, Spenard Building Supplies, which has been under investigation by federal authorities. The Wasilla Sports Center and the Palins’ home are both part of the focus. These reports have been circulating for a while, but nothing solid has come out about it yet. Keep in mind, this could just be baseless speculation–people searching for a ‘scandal,’ latching on to an investigation that may or may not be going anywhere, that may or may not even involve Palin herself.

If it is what pushed Palin out, then I have another prediction: seconds after the official announcement is made, the Right Wing will explode in conspiracy theories about how Obama directed the FBI to sabotage the career of his most likely rival in 2012.

I could be wrong; any takers on that bet?

For the time being, the right-wing blogs are speculating on much friendlier theories, like ‘she wants to spend more time with her family,’ or ‘there is a grave illness, and won’t those nasty liberals feel like crap when it comes out.’ Other are still on the ‘brilliant political play’ theory that she’s getting ready for 2012.

This is what I get for reading the news last. I get up every morning and check out batches of web sites–the computer batch, the entertainment batch, the blogs batch, and the news & commentary batch. Sometimes I check the non-news sites first, but when there’s a big story, it gets referenced elsewhere and I find out about it second-hand, as if it’s already old news. I found out about Jackson’s death on Gizmodo, and today read about Palin’s resignation on Pharyngula. PZ Myers did a nice Monty Python “Brave Sir Robin” sendoff, and for a minute I thought he was making the “Palin resigned” story up.

But no, Palin did resign, as I’m sure you know by now. What’s very interesting is to read her official statement, as originally posted, with all the quirky formatting bits.

Right from the beginning, she sets the tone, using the story of Alaska’s purchase by the United States. In essay writing, this is known as an introduction technique, an anecdote that is supposed to be interesting and which (in this case revealingly) supports the thesis statement:

But [then Secretary of State Seward] endured such ridicule and mocking for his vision for Alaska, remember the adversaries scoffed, calling this “Seward’s Folly”. Seward withstood such disdain as he chose the uncomfortable, unconventional, but RIGHT path to secure Alaska, so Alaska could help secure the United States.

Palin, from the start, sets out to define herself as an Alaskan and American hero unjustly maligned by fools. It’s worthy of note that Palin identified Seward as “a member of President Abe Lincoln’s cabinet,” despite the fact that he arranged the purchase two years after Lincoln’s assassination. No good conservative could fail to throw in a Lincoln reference somehow to add oomph to their Republican creds. Palin continues:

People who know me know that besides faith and family, nothing’s more important to me than our beloved Alaska.

So, I’m quitting.

So to serve the state is a humbling responsibility…

So humbling that I’m quitting.

My administration’s accomplishments speak for themselves. We work tirelessly for Alaskans.

Right up until we quit!

Palin then drones on about her masterful achievements, including some of her classic whoppers:

And we made common sense conservative choices to eliminate personal luxuries like the jet, the chef, the junkets… the entourage.

The jet that she (didn’t) sell on eBay (for a $600,000 loss)? Oh, and the chef who was “eliminated” first to a make-work job, and then to cook for the legislative lounge (because Palin moved to Wasilla and didn’t need a full-time chef anymore), saving Alaska nothing. And the “junkets”? They must have been ginormous under her predecessor for Palin’s to claim that she “eliminated” them; As of 2008, Palin had made 72 trips including cross-country travel to places like Texas and New York (and let’s not forget Kosovo), and even had the state pay for her children traveling with her on ten of those trips. Alaska paid $43,490 for Palin’s husband and children to travel, and Palin herself claimed $16,951 in “per diem” payments she was not entitled to for “travel” which was actually her just staying at home in Wasilla. As for frugality, shall we even get in to the $150,000 wardrobe? The RNC paid for that, but it kind of made a joke of the whole “we’re frugal” business.

And the Lt. Governor and I said “no” to our pay raises.

Like the 46% pay raise she got her first day in office? She said “no” to that? Funny, there’s no record of her turning that down, and indeed that was her salary.

Actually, Palin is talking about another pay raise that was suggested by a panel whose members she hand-picked. A cheap stunt–get a panel to recommend a big pay raise right after you got a huge pay raise so you can turn down the smaller one and act like you’re being “frugal.” Not to mention that Palin tried to get that money by other means, like the per diems.

Palin then proceeded to her central thesis:

But you don’t hear much of the good stuff in the press anymore, do you?

That awful “Liberal Media™” taking a fantastic governor down just because of a few dozen scandals, several violations of law, multiple abuses of power, and dozens and dozens of brazen, bald-faced lies. How dare they!

She then blabs on about how she’s been victimized by evildoers; here’s the distilled version:

Political operatives descended digging for dirt, their weapon of choice, frivolous ethics violations dismissed. We’ve won! State has wasted THOUSANDS of hours of YOUR time and shelled out some two million of YOUR dollars to respond to “opposition research” – political absurdity, the “politics of personal destruction” … these silly accusations? Spending other peoples’ money in their game, pretty insane – I promised no more “politics as usual.”

Palin then edges toward her surprise:

If I have learned one thing: LIFE is about choices!

Like quitting!

Here’s the money quote, the one everyone has been talking about–where Palin goes up-is-down and white-is-black:

Life is too short to compromise time and resources… it may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: “Sit down and shut up”, but that’s the worthless, easy path; that’s a quitter’s way out. And a problem in our country today is apathy. It would be apathetic to just hunker down and “go with the flow.”

Nah, only dead fish “go with the flow”.

Or, as Josh Marshall quipped, “Quitters stick to it. Winners quit.”

The most sympathetic reading of that statement I can come up with is, “I have been taking a horrible, undeserved beating from my political enemies who want me to just sit there and take it; I won’t quit the fight by staying on as governor and letting them keep using me as a piñata, so instead I am resigning so I can fight those bastards without having my hands tied by public office.” Which is pretty absurd, when you think about it–why can’t she fight back as governor?

But no, she has to leave, which, for another few paragraphs, she explains as being what is RIGHT to HELP people in a PROUD and INSPIRED manner (using LOTS of CAPITALIZED words JUST like in the BIBLE when referring to the LORD!).

She also takes some time explaining, in a rather meandering way, how she decided to leave office at the end of her term, but didn’t want to be a lame duck, so she decided instead to leave right away. Um, yeah.

But the essence of what she’s saying is this:

My choice is to take a stand and effect change – not hit our heads against the wall and watch valuable state time and money, millions of your dollars, go down the drain in this new environment.

She’s going to fight, but not from the governor’s office, where she can’t do anything. That makes sense. Governors are pretty powerless and ineffective.

Of course, she’s claiming that she can’t do anything because of the environment, that being the damned Liberal Media™ dogging her every move and making it impossible for her to get anything done.

So… what’s the real reason? Analysis in my next post.

As I have mentioned before on this blog, I have noticed a repeating patten in the Mac OS’s acquisition of market share. Every first half of the year, usually from January to July, Mac OS market share stays steady, with occasional small ups and downs–but then, starting in August, it rockets upwards and keeps going until December. (Note in the chart below: light blue denotes the late-year growth season, darker blue denotes the early-year doldrums.) And so far, this pattern, which I noticed a few years ago, has held true.

Currently, the Mac OS is hovering less than 10%; if the past trend holds true, we’ll be seeing the Mac market share rise to 11.5% or 12% by December 2009.

I made a similar prediction almost exactly a year ago, guessing that the Mac market share could jump to anywhere from 9% to as high as 10%. Seeing the graph above, you can confirm that I was pretty much right on target: the Mac’s share stopped just shy of 10%. My prediction the previous year that the Mac OS would have an 8% share by the start of 2008 was a bit high, but close–it topped out at about 7.6%. So I am fairly confident that by January 2010, we could be seeing a 12% share, and a year later, maybe 14%. This also would track with my prediction in 2007 that we’d see the Mac market share rise to between 12% and 15% by 2010. As I mentioned before, if that trend continues, Apple could have 30% of market share by 2015–ten times what it had in 2005.

Also, at this rate, the iPhone is set to overtake Linux as an OS by the end of 2010.

Glenn Beck (again, yes, he’s a tool) agrees that America “needs” another al Qaeda attack to save us from the evil that is Obama. But watch to find, at the end, the (certainly) unintended pro-Obama statement:

See? According to Glenn Beck, as long as Obama is president, we’re safe from attack. Take that, Dick Cheney!

This does not, however, provide enough comic relief to make it less than tremendously scary that Fox and their fellow travelers are using such extreme, over-the-top, inflammatory language so as to send out the message: “Obama must be stopped!” It seems that they have learned the Tiller lesson all too well: attract and then inflame the extremists, describe all kinds of hellish crimes that are being committed, tell them the world is going to end unless something radical is done by somebody, and then sit back and wait for the bullets to fly, claiming innocence when people of sense tell you that you went too far. Seriously, Fox should simply rename itself the “Get Obama!” channel and be done with it.

I love how so many of these “Liberal Media” headlines read, “Coleman Concedes Seat to Franken,” as if Coleman was the one ending this with grace or something. The Minnesota Supreme Court, a week overdue in giving its decision, voted unanimously that Norm Coleman was an ass.

Well, they didn’t quite go that far. In fact, amazingly, they bent over backwards to give Coleman the chance to drag this out even further, and did not direct Governor Pawlenty to certify the results. But Coleman and Pawlenty get no points for passing on that chance; they have already gone to asinine lengths to keep Franken away from his Senate seat, at the cost of the people of the state.

Coleman is quoted as saying, “Further litigation damages the unity of our state.” Oh, yeah, right; and Coleman’s wholly capricious and petty campaign to deny Minnesota half it’s voice in the Senate for six full months, long after it was a foregone conclusion that Coleman had lost–that didn’t even dent the “unity of the state.” It has been clear for months that Coleman had no chance, that Franken was the winner.

Lest we forget, waaay back in November, when Coleman loudly declared victory after the initial count put him a few hundred votes ahead, he–Coleman–said: “If you ask me what I would do, I would step back. I just think the need for the healing process is so important. The possibility of any change of this magnitude in the voting system we have is so remote, but that would be my judgment.” Coleman intimated that Franken should “waive his right to a recount,” in part because it would cost the people of Minnesota a whopping $86,000. All of this despite the fact that it was not Franken’s “right,” but Minnesota law said that a recount at that margin was mandatory.

When the mandatory recount gave the election to Franken, and when the process was so honest and above-board that even Republicans were expressing surprise as how honest and well-run the recount was, when it became clear that any further challenges were useless and all the votes had been counted as fairly as possible and there was really no chance for things to be reversed–Coleman suddenly turned hypocrite and, in a path that was not at all mandatory and which cost the people of Minnesota far more than $86,000, started a series of legal challenges which, from the start, were a transparent attempt to tie up the election results and deny Franken his seat in the Senate for as long as possible.

Again, Coleman gets no points for not taking this to the ridiculous extreme of appealing to the federal courts; had he done so, any hope that might be left of his ever again running for office would have been severely damaged. Coleman conceded for his own sake, not for Franken, and certainly not for the people of Minnesota.

The fundamentalist Christian “Liberty” University sparked some controversy when they banned the College Democrats club based on the fact that the political party the club stated affiliation to supports freedom of choice in reproductive rights and other such unacceptable heresies. The Republicans were allowed to continue with their club. Well, now an agreement has been reached: the club can start up again, but none of the political clubs will be allowed to use college funds.

The irony here is that a major complaint of fundamentalist Christians is that they are not allowed nationwide to engage in religious activities which use public (often school) funds. Faced with a similar problem where they are the administration–using their own funds provided by a body which may disagree with how they are spent–they came up with exactly the solution they decry as discriminatory and unfair when applied against themselves.

How about that.

A high school assistant principle had a 13-year-old girl strip-searched for painkillers after a fellow student accused her of handing them out, and a search of her backpack and outer clothing produced nothing. The other student had been caught with one over-the-counter pill and four prescription-strength Ibuprofen pills, and accused her classmate of providing them to her. The accused girl was made to strip to her underwear in front of a female administrative assistant and a nurse, then pull out her bra and underpants, shaking them, to show there were no pills there.

In what most would call a “no-brainer,” the Supreme Court ruled (PDF) that this constituted an unreasonable search. In loco parentis or not, you don’t strip-search 13-year-old girls for pain medication on the strength of an accusation by another teen, especially when that teen may be trying to shift blame to escape harsher punishment. Since the search went so far as to expose the student’s breasts and pelvic area, the court ruled that it violated the Fourth Amendment protection of privacy. Although the pills found were prescription-strength, they were also common pain relievers and not a serious health threat–we’re talking Ibuprofen–not heroin, not even Oxycontin.

I might better understand this because I have served as a school administrator, albeit for a college, not a high school. But to order one of the female staff members to take a student to a private room and make the student strip solely on the strength of a few other students claiming that she had provided aspirin to them, against school rules or not, is so ludicrous as to defy belief. That it was “prescription strength” drugs, in this case, is not mitigating; Ibuprofen at 400 mg per tablet may be prescription strength, but you can get it over the counter at 200 mg and take two of them for the exact same effect. As I said, we’re talking about nothing more dangerous than aspirin here. You don’t make a 13-year-old girl strip to the point of even brief nudity on the claims of classmates who were facing punishment based on their testimony. If you want to control an incipient drug problem, there are other ways of doing it. If a strip search is truly necessary, then call in the police.

So the ruling was obvious–but not unanimous. It was 8 to 1. Guess who dissented? Yep. Clarence Thomas. He wrote:

The majority imposes a vague and amorphous standard on school administrators. It also grants judges sweeping authority to second-guess the measures that these officials take to maintain discipline in their schools and ensure the health and safety of the students in their charge.

It’s “vague and amorphous” to say that you shouldn’t strip search 13-year-old girls for aspirin? Really? I think that this is sufficiently over the line of “reasonable” as to be comfortably beyond “vague.” Don’t strip-search teenage girls if all that’s at stake is aspirin. How much more specific should it be? Souter was pretty clear:

The very fact of Savana’s pulling her underwear away from her body in the presence of the two officials who were able to see her necessarily exposed her breasts and pelvic area to some degree, and both subjective and reasonable societal expectations of personal privacy support the treatment of such a search as categorically distinct, requiring distinct elements of justification on the part of school authorities for going beyond a search of outer clothing and belongings.

Got it? When you require a teenage girl to strip to that extent, you need far more pressing circumstances. The line to be crossed is “no nudity.” It is perhaps nebulous only in that it doesn’t specify how serious a situation has to be to allow for a strip search, but a good indicator would be that you have to call in the police. In my opinion, Souter doesn’t go far enough in restricting the degree of strip searches, but I suppose that he was simply being cautious.

As for “second-guessing school authorities,” that’s a specious claim. Second-guessing is, by definition, what the Supreme Court does. Thomas is effectively saying that school administrators should be allowed to act without review or oversight, a wholly unreasonable and intolerable alternative.

Thomas justifies the search first by establishing that a general search was warranted–something the majority did not dispute–but then uses fallacious contributory evidence to make the circumstances appear more dire, speaking of unrelated matters such as a razor blade on another student’s person and illnesses of students from taking drugs that were not as innocuous as the aspirin the student who was strip-searched was accused of providing. He then works up to his argument as to why the strip-search was justified:

Because the school officials searched in a location where the pills could have been hidden, the search was reasonable in scope under T. L. O.

If you define as “reasonable” simply by the standards of any location where the pills “could have been hidden,” then the absurd but logical conclusion would bring you to vaginal exams and stomach purging to see if the student used those locations to hide drugs in small baggies. Drugs can be hidden there, Q.E.D. Thomas is trying to eliminate a line which can be crossed, the line which the majority clearly saw.

Thomas claims that the majority overstepped their bounds; that when they claimed that a “greater level of particularized suspicion” would be necessary to allow for such an invasive search, they went too far. “There is no support for this contortion of the Fourth Amendment,” he wrote. Actually, there is: the word “reasonable.” It clearly allows for collective judgment to be used to decide what is and what is not allowable, based upon standards decided by common sense.

In short, Thomas did what he and his colleagues often do: ignore both the word and the spirit of the law to allow their own personal ideas of what should and shouldn’t be to supplant the actual law.

This is, in fact, the classic “legislating from the bench” that people like Thomas claim to hate so much. But people like Thomas don’t really hate legislating from the bench–they simply hate civil rights that offend their own conservative worldview. To be frank, I am not as much surprised that Thomas ruled this way as I am surprised that his conservative colleagues, especially Scalia, did not.

Microsoft has announced pricing:

On Thursday, the software giant said it would offer through several retailers an upgrade from Windows Vista or XP to Windows 7 Home Premium at $49.99 or to Windows 7 Professional for $99.99. The discounted OS is already a best-seller in Amazon’s software category.

The company said the normal price for the Home Premium upgrade will be $119.99, compared to $129.99 charged for Vista. The Windows 7 Professional Upgrade will be priced at $199.99, and the Windows 7 Ultimate Upgrade at $219.99.

A lot of Windows advocates will compare the $50 upgrade price to Apple’s $30 for Snow Leopard. What the $50-to-$30 comparison fails to note is that Apple’s OS doesn’t come in “versions”; when you buy OS X, it’s not partially crippled. Which means that a more fair comparison is Snow Leopard’s $30 to 7’s $220. Not to mention that the $50 price for Windows is for pre-order only; miss that deadline and you’ll pay $120 for an upgrade to Home Premium.

The “Top Tech News” article says this, however:

Baker pointed out that Apple’s Snow Leopard upgrade will be $29 for one user license and $49 for five users. Some observers have suggested, however, that Snow Leopard is more of an upgrade, while Windows 7 is a new OS.

You know, I wasn’t going to go in to this–honestly, I wrote that I wasn’t going to, before I looked back at the article and saw the above paragraph. But now I have to.

Windows 7 has many of the same boasting points as Snow Leopard–improved performance on multi-core processors, improved boot performance, kernel improvements and the like. But Snow Leopard goes a lot further. The entire OS has essentially been rewritten, dramatically reducing it’s footprint and installation time, and notably improving performance–in addition to the improvements listed for 7. Windows 7’s improvements are incremental in comparison, and has not unfairly been called a “service pack release” of Vista.

Both upgrades also boast of improved bundled apps. Windows 7 speaks of Windows Media Center, a refined calculator, new gadgets; Snow Leopard speaks of Safari 4, QuickTime X, improved iChat, better Time Machine.

Both upgrades talk about new features making the OS easier to use. Windows 7 has Jump Lists, Snap, Aero Shake and Peek; Snow Leopard has improved Exposé and Stacks, a more efficient Finder, better Disk Eject, and faster wake-up and shut down.

Both improve accessibility; Windows offers Home Group sharing, Apple has more efficient file sharing and faster joining of Wireless networks.

In fact, when you go down the lists of improvements, the two OS’s have a surprisingly similar set of improvements. To call 7 a “New OS” as opposed to Snow Leopard a mere “upgrade” is patently false. Neither is a “New OS” in the traditional sense; Windows 7 only pretends to be, while Apple is more honest in both its labeling and the change in pricing.

But if one offers more than the other, it is unquestionably Snow Leopard. In addition to significant performance upgrades, Snow Leopard is a remodeling in preparation for significant future improvements; Windows 7 is an attempt to salvage the previous disaster of an OS release while pinning some new features on top. One is a streamlining, the other is a repair job. If Windows 7 is a better improvement over its predecessor, then that is only because its predecessor was such a failure to begin with. You don’t get extra points for not sucking nearly as badly as you did before.

The article (strangely, considering its title) goes a long way to pump up Windows 7 and make the Mac OS look more expensive. Why mention the $49 family pack for Leopard, for example, without noting that getting 5 upgrade licenses for Windows 7 Home Premium after the pre-order would cost $600? Or the “Ultimate” upgrade for a whopping $1100? Because you want to make the Mac OS sound more expensive, that’s why. But let’s not go into that, or the fact that the Mac OS is without serial numbers or copy protection, while Windows demands that you “Activate” your product every time you upgrade your RAM.

Patrick Ruffini, a Republican, argues that Mark Sanford should not resign, and complains that Republicans are unfairly put upon:

At the core of the Sanford and Ensign episodes is the cloud of “hypocrisy” that hangs over any Republican who strays from the bonds of their marriage. (Quickly forgetting that all who commit adultery are hypocrites, having taken a solemn vow of marriage.) Because Democrats are perceived as more socially libertine, they get off easier.

This is a structural disadvantage that, on the margins, hurts Republican officeholders, forcing them into resignation or disgrace more easily than their equally adulterous Democratic counterparts.

Simply put, it is a strategic error to sanctify the idea that it’s worse when Republicans cheat. The hypocrisy charge exacts a double penalty on Republicans where none exists for Democrats — first, in the accusation of hypocrisy itself, and second, in the media whipping social conservatives into a frenzy in a bid to belatedly “enforce” their moral code — exactly the thing the secular media believes you shouldn’t do 364 days out of the year — to hound a Republican out of office.

Some will argue that conservatives should enforce a higher standard upon themselves. In cases of corruption or illegality, I have agreed. The stench of systemic corruption can be grist for severe electoral losses, as it was in 2006, and from a party-strategic perspective must be purged immediately. But adultery is different — a human failing that strikes Democrats and Republicans equally, and one in which there is a certain presumption of privacy unless there is illegal behavior (Clinton, Spitzer) or it affects job performance (Sanford). Do Republicans want to purge their ranks based exclusively on a test of personal moral conduct? How exactly does this help solve the (inaccurate, IMO) perception of the Republican Party as intolerant and dominated by the religious right?

There are many things wrong with what this guy is claiming. Let’s go through the list.

The hypocrisy charge exacts a double penalty on Republicans where none exists for Democrats

What Ruffini glosses over is the key point in why Republicans pay a double penalty: they exalt themselves as the party or moral virtue, they claim they are the guardians of family values, and they conspicuously make one of the greatest issues in politics today the idea of the sanctity of the institution of marriage and how gay marriage threatens that sanctity. Mark Sanford himself was a strong opponent of gay marriage, and was even scheduled to be a speaker at the “Values Voters Summit” which would focus, among other things, on the sanctity of marriage. Not to mention that Sanford, like most other Republicans guilty of adultery, is on the record openly criticizing Bill Clinton and others for their adultery. Democrats in general do none of these things–and if one did and was caught in adultery, he or she would be just as–if not more–sharply condemned for the hypocrisy.

In short, the “double penalty” Ruffini complains about is amply justified and richly deserved.

Because Democrats are perceived as more socially libertine, they get off easier.

What, like Bill Clinton? John Edwards “got off” only because he was no longer in any position of responsibility when he was discovered–he was no longer a candidate nor an office-holder. But quite frankly, I don’t see any evidence of Democrats “getting off easier” (no pun intended, I am sure), and Ruffini conveniently provides none.

This is a structural disadvantage that, on the margins, hurts Republican officeholders, forcing them into resignation or disgrace more easily than their equally adulterous Democratic counterparts.

Really? Like Vitter, who didn’t resign? Or Craig, who refused to resign? Ensign doesn’t seem likely to, just as Sanford likely won’t. The only Republican adulterer of note who’s resigned recently for his affair is Eliot Spitzer. (Oops. Spitzer is a Democrat. Seriously, that was not an intentional goof. It only just happens to make my point even sharper.) Fact is, Republicans usually don’t resign when they’re caught in adulterous affairs, even when the hypocrisy in their particular case is as striking as it is in Sanford’s. The claim by right-wingers that Democrats are not hurt or are even helped by adultery is specious and unsupported.

…the media whipping social conservatives into a frenzy in a bid to belatedly “enforce” their moral code — exactly the thing the secular media believes you shouldn’t do 364 days out of the year…

The obligatory attack on the secular liberal media. Again, no evidence or examples of exactly how the media (1) is secular, (2) pushes a moral code, (3) fails to live up to that code, or (4) believes people shouldn’t abide by that code. As you can see, Ruffini’s statement here is convoluted on inspection. It’s what happens when you have a long-standing criticism that is based on an unstructured, unevidenced, and ultimately false set of accusations.

But adultery is different — a human failing that strikes Democrats and Republicans equally…

Here’s the old False Equivalency charge. Initially used most by the media in attempts to be seen as “not liberal,” it has been picked up by conservatives trying to explain off all the Republican malfeasance: if Republicans are found guilty of something, claim that Democrats do it just as much, so it’s a problem with politics or people in general, and not a Republican issue. This was rife during the last election; McCain and Obama went equally negative, right? Or how about the old biased media canard–compare Fox News with Dan Rather and the National Guard story–the two are equal, right? The Bush administration guilty of torture? Hey, Nancy Pelosi is just as guilty, right? On and on and on.

But in this case, does it stand up? After all, people are people, right? Well, if so, then it should be supported by the facts. And in this case–not really. Look at senators who are in office or have recently held office. Who are the ones with a history of adultery? On the Republican side, there is Mark Sanford, John Ensign, David Vitter, John McCain, Larry Craig, Bob Dole, and Elizabeth Dole (they were in an adulterous affair before they got married). All adulterers. On the Democratic side of the aisle? John Edwards is the only one I can find.

Keep in mind also that two of the Republican front-runners in the last election–including the actual candidate–were not only adulterers, but serial adulterers, and Gingrich, who was rumored to want to run and is likely going to in 2012 is also an adulterer. The non-titular head of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh, is an adulterer. The fact is, adultery is conspicuously rife in conservative circles–as is divorce and remarriage. There is the general stereotype and assumption that Democrats are the philanderers, but the evidence says otherwise.

How exactly does this help solve the (inaccurate, IMO) perception of the Republican Party as intolerant and dominated by the religious right?

Inaccurate in your opinion? Your evidence, Mr. Ruffini? None? Gee whiz, really? I wonder why not.

The thing is, Republicans are usually the ones calling for such people to resign because of the marital infidelity. Democrats in general tend to forgive the adultery part altogether. At my office, which tends to be pretty liberal, the attitude was that there was no problem with the guy’s adultery, but leaving his post for five days like that was unforgivable.

If Sanford had not committed the hypocrisy–had he publicly forgiven others who had affairs, had he not made the sanctity of marriage a political issue–then there would be little if any criticism on the left about him specifically, save for those who did not know his views and/or spoke of conservative values in general. Had he not gone AWOL for five days and lied every which way about it in silly and stupid way, there would be no criticism on that, either.

If you have an affair, that’s a personal issue; it doesn’t speak well for your character, to be sure, but it doesn’t speak to your performance in your job. That tends to be the liberal view of the issue, which is why liberals are not tagged as hypocrites as much when caught in adultery. It is decidedly not the conservative view on the issue, which is why conservatives are seen as hypocrites when they have affairs.

Near the end of his article, Ruffini stops dancing around the phrase and gets to his central thesis, calling this a “double standard.” But this is not a double standard; a double standard is when you have two different sets of consequences for the same failing.

If I say that drinking is bad and you say it’s no big deal, and we’re both caught drinking, is it unfair to call me a hypocrite? Nope. If the shoe fits and all that.

According to Rushbo, that is:

This is almost like, ‘I don’t give a damn, the country’s going to Hell in a handbasket, I just want out of here.’ [Sanford] had just tried to fight the stimulus money coming to South Carolina. He didn’t want any part of it; he lost the battle. He said, ‘What the hell. I mean, the federal government’s taking over — what the hell, I want to enjoy life.’ …

The point is, there are a lot of people whose spirit is just — they’re fed up, saying, ‘To hell with it, I don’t even want to fight this anymore, I just want to get away from it.’

Why does Limbaugh think this is true? Because Sanford’s affair “defies logic,” because his actions made no sense. Therefore, logically, Barack Obama caused Mark Sanford to have sex with an Argentinean.

Logical! Mr. Spock would be proud. Never mind that the affair started before Obama took office, and probably before Obama was even elected.

But this is not surprising, as conservatives tend to see cause-and-effect as this incredible thing that links whatever they don’t like to all the bad in the world (the economy under Bush? All Clinton’s fault!), or, contrarily, whatever they do like to all the good in the world (the Soviet Union falling? Reagan’s magnificent oratory!).

But they have a special talent for linking liberalism to any and all of the world’s ills. Tom Foley? Liberalism! Virginia Tech shootings? Liberalism! Catholic priests molesting boys? Liberalism! 9/11? Liberalism! I’m not making these up, folks.

As an example of how tenuous a connection can be sure-fire proof for conservatives, remember how this guy tried to blame the recent economic collapse on secularism (which, of course, is in lockstep with liberalism), based upon nothing more than the idea that a few business started using the expression “Happy Holidays” instead of Merry Christmas.

The reasoning is all the same: Liberalism (or its agents) are destroying everything, thus causing people to lose their morals, thus causing everything bad.

What can I say? The calculus is undeniable.

If you have an iPhone 3G in Japan and are interested in upgrading to the 3G, then bad news: SoftBank is not offering you any special deals. If you have the 3G, then that means you still have at least one year left on your contract-with-subsidy, and you can receive subsidy for only one phone at a time. Getting the new iPhone now would mean paying full price, or about 65,000 yen. That would be spread over 24 months, and maybe (maybe, I’m not sure) a discount would apply in the last 12 of those months, reducing the cost some, but it would still be pretty expensive. So I’m waiting for the next model.

Another tip: if you got your 3G in Japan before the price drops a few months ago, you should go to SoftBank and get your contract adjusted. When the subsidized price for the 8GB 3G fell to 0 yen (and the 16GB version’s price was cut in half), they also lowered the cost for the data plan, from ¥5,985 to ¥4,410 ($62 to $46), but don’t be fooled into thinking that the new price applies to you; if you signed up before that price was instituted, then you’re still paying it. You have to go to SoftBank and apply for the new price plan. And while they’re at it, they demand that your contract be extended to two years after the change. If you’re intending to get the next iPhone after your first two years are up anyway, then there’s no problem with that, and it won’t affect your ability to get the next iPhone’s subsidy–the contract extension and the subsidy discount are not linked. Or so they told me, and I was pretty specific in the questioning.

Sheesh…

Not that I expect Fox to be any better than the morons posting to Free Republic who automatically label any and every criminal/terrorist as “registered Democrat,” but still. All I can say is, we better not be hearing lame excuses about “accidents” in the Fox graphics department. Better to simply fess up to what is obviously intentional.

Are there any high-level Republican politicians who are not having an affair? OK, just a few right now–but expand the question to high-level Republicans who are not and have not been in an adulterous affair, and the question becomes less funny. Or more so, depending.

Another one: at which point do Republicans lose all credibility in opposing gay marriage on the strength of their dedication to respect and preserve the institution of marriage?

Third: for how long will “Hiking the Appalachian Trail” be a common metaphor for marital infidelity? My guess is that it’ll be an instant classic–it’s a doozy.

This semester, I am taking Intermediate Algebra. True, I passed it about 20 years ago–I think I got a “B” in the class–but I remembered nothing at all from the class so long ago. Nowadays, I am a teacher at a college myself; I teach a survey course in Computers along with a few Writing courses here at our branch campus in Japan. But I want to extend my computer science credentials, and learn programming.

Now, for a long time, we were kind of cut off from the home campus in some ways, but in the past few years a lot more connections have been made. Recently, they made us part of the program where we can take courses with no tuition–a courtesy extended to full-time faculty. Being in Japan, the commute is a bit tough, but the college has an extensive range of online classes. So this semester, I decided to take Intermediate Algebra. Technically, I probably didn’t have to; my passing grade from years back might have sufficed. But it’s a pre-requisite for the programming courses, and I wanted to actually know the stuff I’ll be needing. So here I am.

This is the first time I have ever taken an online course; it’s not too bad. The main activity at home is to read through the text and try to understand; the main online activity is to take part in the discussion group, like a forum or bulletin board, but limited to class members discussing problems. We have to post at least three messages a week: one question, one answer, and one other post which could be either.

And, we just had our first test. The score just came back–100%. Woo hoo! Since my participation grade is also 100% so far, it’s going swimmingly.

As for the subject matter, I have always had a Math phobia. Strangely, I am not bad at all with numbers–I just get nervous around anything more than basic math. And I honestly cannot say that “it’s all coming back to me”; I don’t remember any of this from when I took it before. But I’m getting it.

It helps to have been a teacher: I know what makes for a good student. One important point is to not just read the text carefully, but to take careful notes on your reading. It’s too easy to read without really understanding, but if you summarize what you’re reading, you are forced to comprehend what you summarize, not to mention that it helps you to memorize things as well.

The same goes for discussion: when others have problems, jump in and try to help. I have found through experience that the best way to learn something is to teach it. I learned this as a college student, when I joined study groups where all the other members were non-native speakers, so I was constantly explaining to others; the lesson was reinforced as a teacher, where I found myself picking up new subjects required by my teaching much faster than I would have as a student. The basic idea is that if you explain something to others, it forces you to organize the facts and simplify things. If you don’t understand it yourself, you can’t teach it, and so you really have no choice but to get it straight and then spell it out.

There is, perhaps, another reason to do well: it would be kind of embarrassing to not do well in a class as a student while I am also teaching students in a class of my own. So I’ve gotta keep things up–midterms coming up….

At his press conference today:

OBAMA: … As one of those options, for us to be able to say, here’s a public option that’s not profit-driven, that can keep down administrative costs, and that provides you good, quality care for a reasonable price as one of the options for you to choose, I think that makes sense.

QUESTION: Wouldn’t that drive private insurance out of business?

OBAMA: Why would it drive private insurance out of business? If — if private — if private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care; if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can’t run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical.

As people have said before, in answer to the criticism that a low-cost government plan will drive the private insurers out of business, one should say, “Good!” In this case, the anti-socialized-medicine crowd can’t win; they’ve painted themselves into a corner. If it’s an option to take the public insurance route, then if people don’t want it, they won’t take it. If government can’t run health care efficiently, then private health insurance should drive the public insurance out of business. And if the government can do health insurance better than private industry, then why shouldn’t it?

The right-wing criticism is that the government can’t run anything efficiently, but we’ve seen that proven false lots of times–until the Republicans get their hands on it and intentionally drive it into the ground, and then declare, “See!?”

Opponents of public health care ask snidely if people want politicians making your medical decisions for you. A stupid question, as politicians would meddle with your coverage far less than the insurance companies currently do; under a public plan, your doctor would have more control than now. And right now, lawyers working for the insurance companies are making your medical decisions based upon how much it profits them; how’s that working out?

The bottom line is this: health care should not be a lucrative, for-profit industry. We’ve seen close-up what happens when it is, when corporations can charge whatever the market can bear to save your life, and lie, cheat, and steal when it comes to living up to their end of the bargain. The whole reason there’s even a debate about this is because the private businesses have done such a horrific job. The insurance companies are running scared because they know that they can’t compete with a public health insurance option, not without cutting their profits to a reasonable margin, covering people the way they’re supposed to, and not denying them coverage at every possible excuse. They don’t want to lose all that.