Senator Roy Ashburn, Republican from Prop 8-happy California, and a staunch opponent to gay rights, was arrested on a DUI while leaving a gay bar with an unidentified male companion.
People tend to say such things are ironic, but technically it’s not. It’s being caught in a display of hypocrisy, but there’s not an actual word to cover it. Maybe we should call it “hycronic.”
PAD
• 
.
Well, I guess the upside for the GOP here is that he wasn’t in the hot tub with a boy…
.
Garn resigns: hot tub too hot
http://www.examiner.com/x-37114-Salt-Lake-City-Political-Buzz-Examiner~y2010m3d13-Garn-resigns-hot-tub-too-hot
Bill Mulligan,
“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the bill eventually will be, it will pass.”
.
How comforting. And it’s that realization that has a lot of the country energized.
.
“the democrats have no real choice here.”
.
A lot of them don’t. Some of them do.
.
” People who are against it will not suddenly support them if it dies”
.
Well, they’ll support their own Congressman or Senator if they become a democrat version of Scott Brown and can claim credit for killing this thing. Seriously, I live in an area where there are two ‘swing” Congressmen, 11-term incumbent Paul Kanjorski and relatively new Chris Carney – who voted for this the first time around and are now said to be leaning toward voting no. Why? because this area, though they have not voter for a Republican nominee for president since the elder Bush, are the definition of blue-collar “Reagan Democrats” and they do NOT want the government to interfere with their health care the way this bill has them do. They have been getting a ton of calls, letters, etc. Both men are popular enough on other issues that if they vote “no”, they should easily win re-election. But if they vote for this and against their constituents, they are going to get consistently hammered like they’ve never been in their lives. They really have to weigh whether or not this bill is worth their careers, because I usually hedge my predictions, but I can GUARANTEE you both men will be replaced if this passes.
.
“and people who support it will stay home if that happens.”
.
But see, that’s just it, Bill. I don’t think many Democrats are going to stay home over health care not passing. Compared with issues like education funding, abortion “rights”, diversity, and those who are fervently against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – hëll, for young people, compared to giving them financial aid that they feel they’re entitled to – I don’t feel there is a lot of INTENSITY of feeling FOR the bill – and not nearly as much as the INTENSITY of those who are AGAINST it.
.
As stated, the vast majority of Americans have other priorities besides reforming health care and are quite satisfied with their own health care. Lawmakers ignore these realities at their own peril.
.
“So they have to pass it and hope that when nothing bad happens (and despite having to pass it so quickly that they are already going back on their word that the reconciliation would be posted for 72 hours before the vote, the truth s that much of it does not kick in for a few years) people will calm down and/or the president will get some boost for winning a political victory.”
.
That is SO not going to happen and if that’s what they’re hoping for, both Obama and Congress are in for a huge surprise. The only way people would possibly forgive and forget is if they dropped it and said, “We heard you and we’ll start over down the line”. If they pass it, then it will be viewed as confirmation that the people’e representatives will do what they want and not what the people wanted.
.
The Republicans can then run on the promise they will repeal it if they get a filibuster-proof majority in 2010. Which likely won’t happen. So it will then be used like a club for the 2012 election and play a huge role in the race for president.
.
If it passes, the talk about it has just begun, especially once we see all the fees, taxes, etc. take effect – and I get the feeling Obama’s popularity will soon make that of Nixon’s during Watergate, Bush’s at the nadir of the Iraq war; carter’s during the hostage crisis and Truman’s during Korea look gargantuan by comparison.
.
“At any rate, not passing it seems an impossible option, whether they like it or not.”
.
It’s not impossible, but passing it will have long-term consequences for the Dems, possibly disastrous ones. The question is if enough of them realize that or not.
.
“The fact that so many are not committing to supporting the bill probably has more to do with trying to get some sweet deal in exchange. When push comes to shove they’ll vote for it.”
.
Possibly. But like I said, I genuinely feel many are feeling the heat on this, from both sides. I feel many are genuinely undecided – and they, ironically, are the ones who will decide the bill’s fate.
.
But I don’t think it’s gonna play out that way. I think, good or bad, like it or not, it gets passed.
“Though I do wish Alan would call the North Carolina Democratic party and tell them to stop emailing and robocalling me on account of my being a republicancer and all. Boy, volunteer for one presidential candidate and you will have friends for life, whether you want them or not.”
.
Well, as Obama says, “Elections have consequences”:) I am. of course, saying that tongue-in-cheek. Now, about becoming immortal….
Jerry,
“But I don’t think it’s gonna play out that way. I think, good or bad, like it or not, it gets passed.”
.
And there is likely a 50/50 chance you are right. However, I do feel the Democrats will screw themselves more if that happens. Which you think would make me happy. But it doesn’t. Because I don’t want to see the health care system and 300 million people get screwed also, while people attempt to repeal it, if they ever do.
.
“It’s true that knowledge and experience are not the same but couldn’t a computer take knowledge and run a simulation as “real” to it as reality is to us, and thus gain insight about that knowledge?”
. There are programs doing something close to that now, just minus using the data for its own purposes afterwards. Hëll, there’s a video game out there that’s working off of borderline AI to a small degree.
And someone wrote a scientific article that postulated that there was a X% chance that this “reality” of ours is just a super sophisticated simulation anyway. How they got that percentage I’m not sure, probably something involving pulling it right out of their ášš. Still, a cool idea.
.
If I were the guy running a simulation like that there is really nothing that could stop me from introducing some elements to liven things up. Giant fire breathing monsters, perfect example.
—>”+We don’t really understand how the brain works but (assuming there is no spiritual aspect to our minds) it is reasonable to assume that one day we will have a computer with enough memory to store as much as a human brain. Is that the moment where it begins to think?”
.
The question that bothers philosophers is more fundamental — the mind-body problem — but it’s also very technical to the point of who cares. It’s interesting to think about, and can inspire sci-fi and fantasy, but not much beyond that. The problem is that there is a gap between the way we experience our own consciousness and the way we experience the material world beyond ourselves. So we don’t really understand the relation between the two, we just accept that there is one, unless you’re a philosopher.
.
But things are even trickier if you’re dealing with a supposedly conscious machine or an alien. I accept that humans are conscious because I am conscious (barely), and I take it for granted that everybody else is. [This is partially because the human mind is inclined to attribute human qualities to things whether rightly or wrongly. Luckily this includes other humans, as well as pets, cartoon characters, PC computers, volcanos, etc.] But what do you do with something that isn’t human, like a machine (Cylon) or alien. When and how do we attribute consciousness to it? Which leads to the next question, how would the aliens know that we are conscious?
.
as I understand it, some AI researchers are trying to have their programs go through a learning process so that the way they develop is more like humans, by experiencing things. I suppose knowledge is a form of experience. But here are two questions: (1) The difference between having a knowledge of Europe, and backpacking through Europe; (2) The difference between backpacking through Europe and simulating backpacking through a simulation of Europe. I think the 2nd matters less as far as getting your AI to learn through experience.
.
—->”You have a kid and a computer sitting on a field looking up at the clouds (ok, it has a long extension cord, work with me folks). The little kid sees a cloud and says “that looks like a duck, quack quack, once upon a time a little duck named ping ping…” while the compute looks up and says “Hey look, a cloud.””
.
Actually making a computer that looks at clouds and matches patterns is not that difficult. Hypothetically you should be able to create a program that will write a story about the pattern. But it’s not the same. That’s the mystery that baffles philosophers and AI researchers, but from different directions.
.
.
—->”Like I said, I’m using the Arnold Rimmer template or the SG-1 episode where they were replaced by androids that didn’t even know that they were androids.”
.
Even so, at the point of duplication the real and the Duplicate are identical, but the minute they separate they start having different experiences which might slowly alter their personalities.
There is one technical philosophical term/thought experiment that you might find amuzing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie#cite_note-0
“A philosophical zombie, p-zombie or p-zed is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience. When a zombie is poked with a sharp object, for example, it does not feel any pain. While it behaves exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say “ouch” and recoil from the stimulus, or tell us that it is in intense pain), it does not actually have the experience of pain as a putative ‘normal’ person does. “
For some reason this all reminds me of the single most insane thing an insane ex-girlfriend once said to me–“You aren’t really happy, you just THINK you’re happy.” and to this day I’ve pondered just what the difference could be.
.
Also, and this is good advice to the young people out there, should your paramour ever say anything remotely like that, run. Fast. Do not pause to get your albums back.
.
Oh, that one is perfectly understandable. I have to explain this one to new people I meet all the time. See, all of you people here, just as an example, only think you’re happy right now. The reason you think that you’re happy is that you’re living a life that you have mistakenly taken for a full and rich life since that’s what the propaganda out there has told you that your life is. However, none of you can be truly happy because you’ve yet to have ME as a regular part of your daily lives.
.
Only then, thanks to my daily presence in your lives, will you come to know, understand and experience true happiness.
.
🙂
For some reason this all reminds me of the single most insane thing an insane ex-girlfriend once said to me–”You aren’t really happy, you just THINK you’re happy.” and to this day I’ve pondered just what the difference could be.
.
Taking a guess, what she meant is that you could not possibly be happy without her, and therefore being happy that she was your ex was self-delusion.
.
PAD
Jerry Chandler,
“You also have to factor in one significant difference between the two. Bush started the war in Iraq and partly campaigned as a war president. Obama didn’t.”
.
Missed this before, Jerry. Just have to disagree a bit. Obama repeatedly talked about upping the ante in Afghanistan, because – he kept hammering home – that was a “war of necessity” and Iraq was a “war of choice”. I felt the comparison was dubious then and I still do now, but he definitely presented himself as someone who was going to embrace ONE of our two wars, at least.
.
Which brings up another interesting point. Iraq, the more strategic and winnable conflict of the two, had an important election last week. very important. Obama actually SHOULD take some credit for that – not like Biden and take all the credit – but since a true evaluation woulod give credit to Bush and McCain as well, he keeps his moth shut.
.
So instead of taking credit for not cutting and running (yet) and holding up the Iraqi progress as a sign and symbol of democracy and hope for freedom throughout the Mideast, he basically says nothing.
.
If you have anything to contradict this, I would love to read it. I truly feel if he embraced his role as Commander-In-Chief and talked about this issue more instead of worrying about his anti-war base, it would help reclaim the moderates he has lost.
That makes total sense, which is why it could not possibly apply to this girl (And this was some time ago; “girl” is the correct term). No, this was early on in our toxic tango, when I was far too starstruck to even consider the wisdom of adding an “ex” to our relationship.
.
And all kidding aside, I think I really know what was up. She was an unhappy person, though her public persona was anything but. And me, the big boyscout, I figurd that could be fixed. recipe for relationship failure 101. I don’t think she was willfully miserable, it was just her nature and I think she genuinely believed that she was just more aware than the rest of us of how bad things were. Looking back on it now it’s clear she was either bipolar or borderline personality–I’ve blocked out too much to make a diagnosis with even an amateur’s level of accuracy.
.
But I still ponder the question…if you THINK you are happy aren’t you, sort of by definition, actually happy? Would it make sense to go up to someone who was crying and miserable and tell them they were actually zippity doo dah happy but just didn’t know it? So how could the opposite be true?
.
“Missed this before, Jerry. Just have to disagree a bit. Obama repeatedly talked about upping the ante in Afghanistan, because – he kept hammering home – that was a “war of necessity” and Iraq was a “war of choice”. I felt the comparison was dubious then and I still do now, but he definitely presented himself as someone who was going to embrace ONE of our two wars, at least.”
.
The first part of my description of Bush still factors in here though. Bush started the Iraq war. Bush started the war that was seen by everyone but his most ardent defenders as an unnecessary venture and a distraction from the war we needed to be focused on. Afghanistan was a war of necessity. Iraq was a war of pointless stupidity.
.
Bush was the president who started a needless war in Iraq and then made that his front and center campaign tool. Obama was the president who inherited two wars from his predecessor and repeatedly stated that we would stop being distracted by the foolish war as fast as possible and start focusing more on the war we shouldn’t have neglected for so long.
.
It makes a difference in how the public and the pundits see your image and how your actions are seen as well. It’s also worth noting that Bush was golfing during the start of some of the major casualty periods while we have less casualties per month these days. The context of both the actions of the men and the times are different. The different reactions would seem understandable.
But I still ponder the question…if you THINK you are happy aren’t you, sort of by definition, actually happy?
.
I dunno. If I think I’m a heart surgeon, would you want me doing your bypass?
.
PAD
.
Not sure that’s a workable analogy. If you think you’re a heart surgeon and I let you do a bypass on Bill (hey, I’m not completely stupid) your lack of actual knowledge on the subject will be glaringly evident. If you only think you’re happy and you hang out around Bill you’ll likely only be mistaken for someone who laughs too much at his own bad jokes. Still might seem like a happy person to everyone else.
See, I think that thinking you are happy is the exact same thing as being happy. Is there a quantitative test for happiness? It’s why different things make different people happy to different degrees. Happiness is an emotion but unlike fear, for example, it requires a certain amount of thought. So in effect she was saying “You aren’t thinking you only think your thinking.” To which I could have replied “How can I think I’m thinking without thinking it?” but even at that tender age I knew we had a lost cause on our hands here.
.
Of course, this works both ways too. I’ve seen people practically scream at people that they dámņ well ought to be happy and had no business being unhappy and you have to wonder at the sheer chutzpah of it.
—>”thinking you are happy is the exact same thing as being happy”
Yes, in principle. Happiness is a mental state.
But there are several situations when people will question happiness.
They might question the source: “you think you are happy, but it’s only because you’re drunk.”
Or the quality: “You think that you’re happy, but you will be happier if you…”
Or the logic: “Under the circumstances you have no good reason to be happy.”
Or: “How can you be so happy when…? You’re only think you’re happy because you don’t know about…”
Or: “You think you’re happy, but in the future you’re going to regret it.” Or: “In the future you’ll realize that you weren’t happy.”
And there’s the political: “You only think you’re happy because you are manipulated into thinking so by…”
The political one also works for some girlfriends because it’s all about control. If you’re wrong when you think you’re happy, then that means somebody knows better than you, and he or she should tell you when you should be happy.
Jerry,
“The first part of my description of Bush still factors in here though. Bush started the Iraq war. Bush started the war that was seen by everyone but his most ardent defenders as an unnecessary venture and a distraction from the war we needed to be focused on. Afghanistan was a war of necessity. Iraq was a war of pointless stupidity.”
.
You still feel that way, even after the progress we’ve seen? the elections and possibility that a legitimate democracy looks like it’s taking root doesn’t sway you from that at all?
.
“It makes a difference in how the public and the pundits see your image and how your actions are seen as well.”
.
And yet, isn’t having Iraq being perceived as an example of progress that can be made, of democracy in a place where many said it would never take place, of resolving conflicts and disagreements with ballots and not bullets a positive thing as well?
.
“You still feel that way, even after the progress we’ve seen? the elections and possibility that a legitimate democracy looks like it’s taking root doesn’t sway you from that at all?”
.
Two points-
.
(1) We don’t know what kind of “success” we have over there, Jerome. We won’t know what the new Iraq will truly be for at least another ten years. And given the past ties to… questionable… groups that some in the Iraq government have I’ll hold of on celebrating until I see what they’re like when we’re not sitting right on their shoulders.
.
(2) (And more importantly…) I don’t care. In a conversation about how things were seen then VS now and how that shaped perceptions and attitudes five and six years ago, what’s going on now is only relevant when discussing how things are now. You and I were discussing the different attitudes towards Bush and Obama over matters related to the war. I gave you a reasons why the perceptions and attitudes may be different then VS now with the two men.
.
Iraq also does not exist in a bubble. We practically abandoned what we were doing in Afghanistan and the Bush administrations neglect of that war, the real war on terror, to go and play in Iraq was idiotic.
.
Bush and his supporters can claim all sorts of things while pointing at the still uncertain future of Iraq, but it changes not one thing about how badly Afghanistan was neglected or how the man that was the face of the people that hit us and started this war was relegated to an afterthought by Bush and his people.
.
I also don’t care because… Well, the ends do not justify the means. I’m not going to complement you on how well you reacted to a fire that burned your house down or on what a great new house you built with the insurance money if you started the fire deliberately and without care of the consequences.
.
Saddam was no threat to us. Iraq was an unnecessary folly that wasted lives and bled resources from an more important fight that we’re still trying to properly get back under control. I’ll give Bush all the credit he deserves for it. His dunce cap is ready for pick up.
.
“And yet, isn’t having Iraq being perceived as an example of progress that can be made, of democracy in a place where many said it would never take place, of resolving conflicts and disagreements with ballots and not bullets a positive thing as well?”
.
See above – Both points.
“resolving conflicts and disagreements with ballots and not bullets a positive thing as well?”
In the middle east you don’t have to choose. You can have both.
Bill Mulligan,
“Of course, this works both ways too. I’ve seen people practically scream at people that they dámņ well ought to be happy and had no business being unhappy and you have to wonder at the sheer chutzpah of it.”
.
Or be disgusted by it. It’s normally people who are unhappy themselves who spout this garbage. Like someone who has a certain amount of money or fame or success or family or – heaven forbid – a combination of most of the above is still not affected by life and the pits that go along with the valleys and should automatically be happy and should be called an ungrateful cretin if they’re not. Incredible, really.
Off topic…but that ship sank a while back…thinking about alien life trying to contact us, I read an interesting bit from a guy who just wrote a book (I think it is called 50 years of Silence) about our failure to detect extraterrestrial life thus far. He proposed that maybe the problem is the assumption that radio is the best way to send messages..
.
So one proposal was that we should be looking to decode genomes because DNA would be a great medium for sending messages. I have some problems with that (How do you send the DNA? Any physical transport would have to be slower than the electromagnetic spectrum) but it opens up some really cool ideas. So you have aliens sending retroviruses that integrate into the DNA of living things and contain all sorts of messages and stuff–“Hey, come to Pinkus East, it’s the off season, rates are good!”–and if the recipients are advanced enough to decode it, well, they get to join the club.
.
Which has interesting implications. We are already chock full of useless DNA. In fact MOST of our DNA does not seem to be of any value. Just taking up space. Or is it? Maybe we have already been contacted and the answer is just waiting for someone to decode it. (one problem is that we may have been contacted so many times that the messages are all jumbled into a huge mess.)
.
Or maybe we should focus on bacteria and viruses since, were I trying to send messages to other worlds via DNA, I would plan on using as a vector the simplest organisms that a planet with life would almost have to have.
.
Or–here’s the comic book stuff–you have to call attention to the fact that individual A has the message so you have to make them suitably novel and an advertisement for further study. So in addition to the message you give them some extra attribute that practically screams out in big neon letter ÐÃMN…WONDER WHAT THE HECK HE HAS IN HIS DNA? LET’S INVESTIGATE!
.
Less kindly but equally effective and probably a whole lot easier–you make it a terrible affliction, a killer virus that risks global doom (possibly involving zombies). We’d get that sunovabitch decoded but quick. It would be the alien biological equivalent of that computer virus I just killed that was trying to get me to buy some stupid program to kill the virus that THEY THEMSELVES had just given me! Bášŧárdš!
Actually, Bill, my best friend and I had a lengthy discussion about that a while back. The homo sapien body is not a very efficient vessel for this planet. Our vertical stance leads to back problems in this planet’s graity, our eyes are ill-equipped for the spectrum of light visible under our sky, and our lack of significant body hair (well, in cases other than our friend Vince) that exposes our too-sensitve skin to the sun’s more harmful rays, and we’re not a terribly strong bunch. So, what if some non-terrestrial bunch wound up here somehow? Not a crash, because there are too many sky spirit stories about them leaving again. Maybe the message they left isn’t in our DNA, but it was placed in a “lower” species. Maybe a lemur or a chimpanzee has the code that we’re looking for.
And now you know another reason my wife leaves the room when Brian and I start talking.
She’s missing out 🙂
.
Sure we aren’t perfect but what is? Sharks, I guess, but they’ve had a lot more time at it. We’re pretty good–the proof is in the pudding, as long as you order proof pudding instead of pistachio. We’re not perfectly adapted any one environment but that’s for pandas—and how well are THEY doing? We can waltz into an environment where creatures have been co-evolving for eons and drink their milkshakes.
.
Sean and Bill,
Sure we are not perfect for this planet, but as PAD had a character say in one of his “Star Trek” novels: (paraphrasing) “But they seem to have an incredible will to survive…that makes up for all of the things that they lack.”
Will it ever end?
Not a politician this time, but a bigwig anti-gay Christian activist, caught in a compromising situation:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/05/05/2010-05-05_top_antigay_christian_activist_and_minister_george_alan_rekers_linked_to_gay_esc.html
So we can add “He was carrying my baggage” to “Hiking the Appalachians” as euphemisms for “fluffing my Garfield”, if you know what I mean.