House of Eratosthenes

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has said he thinks Sarah Palin could defeat President Obama in next year’s presidential election, but he’s far from certain that she will actually jump into the race.

The GOP’s standard-bearer in 2008 also shrugged off his former running mate’s poor standing in many polls, saying she would have the opportunity to turn that around if she did make a bid for the White House.

“That’s what campaigns are all about,” McCain said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“I’ve never seen anyone as mercilessly and relentlessly attacked as I have seen Sarah Palin in the last couple of years,” the Arizona senator added. “But she also inspires great passion, particularly among the Republican faithful.”

I find this to be the most agreeable statement coming out of John McCain’s mouth in quite some time.

Can Palin beat Obama? That’s an easy question; the much harder one is will she. It’s up to her to jump in, and then it’s up to Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida to figure out whether they like her better than His Wonderfulness. If it comes down to that, and that’s a big “if,” her odds are much better than average.

Like all other big decisions, the Presidential Election of 2012 can be decided the way Architects decide things or it can be decided the way Medicators decide things. If the voters in the Penn/Ohio/Fla triumvirate think like Architects, she will win, and if they think like Medicators then He will win. And in any free society, that’s going to be a tough call. There are forces at work that naturally position the “front” in such a battle close to the fifty-yard line; that is to say, when either side dominates it labors under a heavy burden of disadvantage.

It’s very similar to the way an old metal alarm bell works. The clapper comes in contact with the bell, a circuit is closed which trips a relay, activating a magnet that pulls the clapper away from the bell. The circuit is then broken, the relay shuts off the magnet and the return spring moves the clapper in contact with the bell again. Think I got that right…some of the details might be flipped around. But the point is, the machinery operates in a perpetual cycle. That’s exactly the way Architect/Medicator conflicts work.

The Architects — those who think their way through life’s problems rather than feeling their way around them, the ones who couldn’t care less what popular consensus is because it has no bearing on what the correct answer is, the Henry Reardens of the world if you will — become dominant when the outlook is bleak. People see their own livelihoods attenuate, and figure out they just can’t afford any more cockeyed decisions. So they delegate the decisions to someone who thinks things through sensibly, who offers solutions based on if-this, then-that. Once the Architects dominate for awhile, things get better because the decision-making process has a natural tendency to evolve intelligently. Whatever is tried, and fails, is pitched overboard because that is what thinking people do. Thinking people also put more stock in decisions that have been shown to be successful.

And so things improve…problems get solved…and, after awhile, the clapper moves away from the bell. People get it in their heads that there are no problems that need to be solved, therefore the point to life, if there is one at all, is to be entertained and happy. And so they start to turn on the Architects and put more faith in the Medicators. Interestingly, they manage to do this without ever acknowledging any problems ever got solved, that anything ever got better. That’s exactly where we were two years ago; we needed Barack Obama to solve “all these problems” that George W. Bush created for us. But the unemployment rate was just beginning to snake upward from the 5.5 percent where it had been for awhile, nosing up through the sevens. That would be a pretty sweet deal now, wouldn’t it? How about gas at a buck sixty-one, any takers?

But we have “all these problems”; nobody can describe them in any great detail, but they’re not too bothered by that because they’re thinking like Medicators. Not too keen on details at the present time. And so you get this happy talky laughey jokey fun-to-watch guy who speaks in vague bromides and looks good in a suit. Makes people feel so good. He must have the answer to “all these problems”! It really doesn’t make much sense when you think about it. But it isn’t being thought about, it’s being felt about.

So we put the laughy-talky-Guy-Smiley in charge of things…and…the relay is tripped. We get a bunch of silly decisions made. But deep down, people feel — feel — like that must be okay. They won’t admit it out loud, but their feeling is that they can afford some foolish decisions now & then. But then, of course, you get to a point where it’s been a very long time since anyone can remember a decision made by the looks-good-in-suit guy, that wasn’t foolish. And that’s where we are now.

What’s the last thing Obama handled sensibly? Alright, let’s go ahead and count the shoot-bin-Laden thing…that decision made lots of sense. Anything else? Anybody? Bueller? Bueller?

Aw that’s okay. Obama looks good in a suit. And THERE’SJUSTSOMETHINGABOUTHIMICAN’TEXPLAINIT!!!

But you know what? The “details will work themselves out because Obama’s awesome” thing is on a steep decline. It’s gotta be that way. People are suffering, they’re having trouble buying enough gas to get to work to earn the paychecks that buy the gas.

Nobody really knows what Obama’s going to decide to do next. His decisions aren’t all completely bad, but it may as well be a random decision-making process. It’s racist if I compare Him to a monkey throwing darts at a dartboard, and it’s racist if I compare Him to a Magic-8 ball. The point is, it’s like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get…uh oh, maybe that’s racist of me too…

But when you’re having trouble getting gas so you can go to work, this “that’s racist” stuff isn’t gonna cut it. The situation becomes one adroitly summed up by my Facebook friend Mike Simone,

If you voted for Obama in ‘08 to prove you’re not a racist, you’ll need to vote for someone else in ‘12 to prove you’re not an idiot.

Clang! We’re having trouble buying gas and food. We can’t do anymore experimenting with these randomly-deciding, feel-good Medicators. It becomes a natural event in the course of the human experiment, that the Medicators are told to take their beer summits and stick ’em. Just can’t afford the silliness anymore.

Now the people who might be compelled, every now & then, to vote for an Obama will never admit this: But the clapper will meet the bell, it is quite unavoidable. Feeling your way around life’s challenges, as opposed to thinking them through, falls out of fashion. It has to. At a certain point, when things continue to go wrong because there’s too much feeling & not enough thinking, eventually it doesn’t feel good anymore to make these feel-good decisions. And when feel-good decisions don’t feel good, then what’s the point?

Palin-haters sound very silly when they try to deny this. They sound like this guy:

That woman is not going to run for President. She’s just doing her bus tour and movie to raise money to pay for her house in Arizona. I’ll say it again: she’s not running for President. If she was, Faux News would’ve fired her just like the did the other Faux News contributors who were thinking of running for President. She’s an idiot. I can’t say it enough.

“She’s an idiot I can’t say it enough”…reworded only just slightly, and I suspect this re-wording is much closer to the truth…becomes an abject exercise in the purest cognitive dissonance: “Everybody needs to stop mentioning her name I can’t say it enough.” Now, whether you have your biases toward the Architect way of managing things or whether you like the Medicator way of managing things, it’s a cinch that if you’re starting to worry about the refrigerator being bare and the gas tank being empty, you’re probably not going to be all that pleased with the biggest decisions in your economy made by the representative of lunatics like this guy, who thinks with all the clarity of a dog chasing its own tail. Does he even know that “Faux” rhymes with “Dough” and not with “Fox”?

As I’ve said many times before, this is going to be an interesting election, whether Palin jumps in or not. We’re voting on common sense itself. Can life’s most vexing and challenging problems be solved with yet another bacchanal, festooned with phony Greek columns? Or as the situation continues to deteriorate and the price of gas soars past five, six, seven dollars a gallon, does the time come where you have to start thinking like a grown-up?

McCain’s right. She absolutely does have a chance. I’m not pleased at all that it is improved when our country’s buying power and start of living continue to diminish; that is a real tragedy. But it is what it is.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News and Washington Rebel.

. Does he even know that “Faux” rhymes with “Dough” and not with “Fox”?

I often wonder that one myself, when I hear these progressive types ranting and raving about how “biased” and “skewed to the Right” Fox News’ reporting is supposed to be. It’s like they’ve all put their heads together over at DailyKos and this was the best thing they could come up with when they wanted to deride the network.

Course, I just shake my head and smile…then say, “When you go through life tilted to the left, that which is *actually straight up and down*…looks to you like it’s tipped to the right.”
- cylarz | 05/29/2011 @ 23:43
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- LIVE AT FIVE – 05.30.11 : The Other McCain | 05/30/2011 @ 02:03
But why all the anger?

Are they so unaccustomed to a news source that doesn’t reflect their own biases? Is it that tough for them? Or are they just faking it, doing whatever they did last time to get the results they wanted, like Pavlov’s pups?
- mkfreeberg | 05/30/2011 @ 08:13
But why all the anger?

You know, it’s funny: of all the millions of things about liberalism I don’t understand, the anger is the one thing I do understand. Liberalism, like its baby-daddy Marxism, is a religion. And not one of those nuance-y live-and-let-live creeds like Unitarianism, either — it’s old school, fire-and-brimstone, like Puritanism.

This is hardly an original point, I know. But it does explain the anger like nothing else. If they are Good, then we are Evil, and like the Puritans, they maintain that anything less than constant, white-hot anger against Evil is a compromise with Evil… which is the same thing as complicity with Evil…. which makes them Evil.

And thus leftist self-loathing comes around full circle, and manifests in the silly spectacle of doofus progwads barking at “Faux News” the way dogs bark at vacuum cleaners.
- Severian | 05/30/2011 @ 09:47
The other thing I’ve noticed they like to call it: “Fixed News.”

To which one could ask,”Okay, it’s ‘fixed’ then. As opposed to ABC CBS NBC PBS NPR and the New York Times, which are all still broken? You mean Fox found all the left-wing bias in the other news sources and and ‘fixed’ it so that we finally now have objective reporting? Is that what you mean?”

It consistently escapes their notice how many stories are picked up ONLY by Fox and not any of the others. That in of itself should tell you something.
- cylarz | 05/30/2011 @ 13:18
My favorite is “Faux Noise.” Since noise is “unorganized sound,” then fake noise would be…?
- Jason | 06/01/2011 @ 05:35
I had to sit through a viewing of the Colbert Report today at work, because that is what my co-workers like to watch. “Speaking of second-place…” Colbert began, showing a picture of Palin behind him.

He went on to complain about it’s ridiculous that her website, SarahPAC, solicits donations, especially since nobody apparently knows what this East Coast “bus tour” is all about. He even called Palin a “cock tease” for refusing to either throw her hat in the ring or bow out. The implication was that she is dishonestly attempting to goad her supporters into “paying for her personal vacation.” The guy is tasteful and respectful if nothing else….right??

This, despite an elections official sitting right there at Colbert’s desk on TV, assuring the audience that Palin isn’t breaking election laws by observation that she has not announced her candidacy for federal office. She’s a private citizen riding up and down the East Coast in a bus, raising money for political activism along the way.. Nothing more. He peppered this portion with video clips from MSM sources, showing various news anchors and pundits cluelessly asking what Palin’s intentions were. “America has no idea what the hell you’re doing, Sarah” Colbert sternly intoned.

No, Stephen….YOU have no idea what the hell she’s doing. Those of us who actually respect the woman know exactly what’s going on – she’s keeping herself in the spotlight while she decides whether or not to run for president. And you morons in the MSM are giving her just what she wants. She’s playing you guys like a fiddle while you continue to deride, mock….and underestimate her.

Finally, just to make sure we know Palin really is a dimbulb, Colbert showed us how the SarahPAC website includes a quote from Palin’s daughter, who visited Mt Vernon recently, the home of George Washington. “It’s hard to believe how hard he worked to keep this farm going,” Bristol said. (I think it was Bristol.) The suggestion was that the Palin family is too stupid to know that Washington owned slaves to work the farm. Nice long guffaw from the irritating, unfunny fucktard. (All in good fun, of course.) And of course, my irritating, ignorant, progressive colleagues thought it all oh-so-funny.

I immediately had two reactions, which I didn’t share with the group, because I didn’t feel like arguing with idiots:

1) The Bristol quote isn’t problematic or stupid at all. First off, Washington DID work hard. He may have worked alongside the slaves, he may have simply been doing the hard work of overseeing a farming operation – it’s a lot of work to coordinate the labor, bring the crops to market, etc, etc. I’d dare Colbert to give it a try instead of making wisecracks on TV for a living. Besides…didn’t Washington let his slaves go at the end of his life?

2) It never seems to occur to any members of the leftwing media, Colbert included, that this sort of coverage plays right into Palin’s hands. Sarah’s supposed to be stupid and irrelevant and a right wing extremist and a quitter, right? So why does the media spend so much time talking about someone who supposedly is not and will never be a threat to Mister Wonderful’s job in the Oval Office? Have these people never heard the expression, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity?”

The bus tour is aimed at getting media attention. They’re giving it to her, complete with wild speculation on all the MSM network outlets on whether she’ll run for president. (Presumably so they can once again try to destroy her.) In the meantime, she’s getting plenty of attention from supporters and detractors alike.

Did I mention I can’t stand Stephen Colbert? I can’t tell you how delighted I was to hear he was brought in to entertain Congressional Democrats last year at a cost of hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars…

Cross posting my comment at Philmon’s place…hope nobody minds.
- cylarz | 06/02/2011 @ 00:50

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“McCain: Palin Can Beat Obama”Sunday, May 29th, 2011

“McCain: Palin Can Beat Obama”
Sunday, May 29th, 2011