Blog Archives

political scientism | is our children learning good?

September 8, 2010
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political scientism | is our children learning good?

This week’s theme — “new beginnings” — brought a smile to my face. First, I prefer new beginnings to its ugly cousin, old beginnings, and so I’m glad to see whenever the former is celebrated and the latter is taken down a peg or two. It’s also the start of the school season which, now that I’m no longer a student, is my very favorite new beginning of them all. No more weekday lines at Six Flags! The start of the school year also offers another reason for cheer. I have a set of strongly-held political beliefs with which no one with half a brain and a basic education could possibly quarrel. So, each school year brings us another year closer to a fully informed electorate and eventual nationwide ideological homogeneity. To speed along the process, I have compiled these true-to-life study tips and offer my own startlingly inaccurate commentary. Because any student who carries out these simple acts is sure to do at least the bare minimum necessary to graduate, I like to call them the “Joshua Shore No Child Left Behind Acts.” (Since I did not have the benefit of the “Joshua Shore No Child Left Behind Acts,” I [...]

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political scientism | forgetting-me-not

September 1, 2010
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political scientism | forgetting-me-not

In recognition of this week’s theme — “forgetting” — it would have been convenient had I resorted to contriving a post in list form because I had forgotten about this week’s deadline. But, the truth of the matter is that (1) I read kwilk’s post this week; (2) I liked it; (3) I’m impressionable; and (4) I ultimately decided to steal the idea. Here are two items of interest that we could hardly help but forget,  thanks to our rapacious, small-minded, muckracking, bickering, tit-for-tat, two-party media culture that would give our country’s founders a start. (On account of revulsion or delight, depending on whom you ask.) 1. Yesterday Is So Far Away: In my lifetime, there has been nearly constant changeover between the parties that control the Presidency, the House and the Senate.  In the year I was born, 1981, there was a Republican in the White House, a Republican-controlled Senate and a Democratic House.  But, that changed by the time I was 6, when, in 1987, Democrats took over the Senate.  It changed again 6 years later, in 1993, when we put a Democrat in the White House.  By 1995, Republicans controlled the House and Senate.  But, in 2001, [...]

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political scientism | we all scream for flat screen

August 26, 2010
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political scientism | we all scream for flat screen

If I wrote a political column worth its salt, I’d use this week’s theme — nightmares — to talk about the upcoming electoral season. After all, the word night-mares could be tweaked to mean “dark horses,” and I’d use that play on words as a jumping off point for a post about the candidates who might do surprisingly well at the polls. If that interests you, may I suggest fivethirtyeight.com? But on to the column that I wrote … Someone who I presume is much smarter than I am wrote that “the purpose of government from an economic perspective is to provide a legal framework that allows individuals to transact through markets.” Being the narcissist that I am, I interpret that to mean that “the purpose of government is to encourage me to buy a flat-screen high-definition television set.” And, in that sense, my recent foray into consumer culture was a– shit, what do you call it? It’s the opposite of a double-rainbow … That’s right, a double-nightmare. Let’s make short work of the first part of the nightmare, shall we? That is, having a television in the first place, which is upsetting in its own right. I hate having to [...]

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political scientism | there goes the neighborhoodie

August 11, 2010
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political scientism | there goes the neighborhoodie

I hate controversy. Really, really hate it. I don’t want to think about how many illegitimate children I’ve brought into this world simply to avoid an uncomfortable conversation about taking a relationship to the “next step.” I say this only so that you will understand the dread with which I am approaching this week’s theme at theavantguardian.org: hats. Hats, as in headscarves, veils and burqas. So if you’re anything like me, hold your nose, we’re about to go in … and this is bound to get controversial. Let’s start with the headlines, like this one, from England: “Jewellers robbed by thief in burka.” (Query whether the Brits’ inability to spell is charming, like their accents, or off-putting, like their teeth?) Or this one, from Australia, which is like England, except it started as a penal colony — and has only gotten worse since: “Armed robbery in burqa leads to call for ban.” To the unenlightened reader of such headlines, it might seem like the burqa is little more than a glorified ski mask. When considered in this light, I’d no more oppose a ban on burqas than I would oppose a ban on live rattlesnakes in mattresses. Problem is, there [...]

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political scientism | codes? we don’t need no stinking codes

August 5, 2010
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political scientism | codes? we don’t need no stinking codes

Are you ready? Well, are you? Are you ready to get boring? If you stick with me, I promise a paradox at the end. (Check out David Cohen’s post at SCOTUSblog to drink the genius water straight from the fire hose.) To get truly boring, we need to go back in time to the 18th century. To get a sense of how long ago that was, consider top hats.  Back then, wearing a top hat didn’t just say, as it does now, that, “I am partial to smoking opiates.” Rather, public hygiene being what it was at the time, wearing a top hat conveyed the impression that, “I never know when I will be walking on a sidewalk when someone might decide to empty a bucket of feces from a second floor window.” So, if you think South Carolina is bad now, you should have seen it back then. The genius of the Constitution was that it promised a bunch of unruly, rag-tag colonies a way to band together for limited purposes like establishing an army, regulating trade between the states and, of course, requiring frivolous abortions at taxpayer expense. The Constitution is the rulebook for the federal government, not [...]

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political scientism | bridge me up, buttercup

July 28, 2010
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political scientism | bridge me up, buttercup

Tip O’Neill, former Chairman of the US House of Representatives’ Grammar Committee, once declared that “all politics is local.” Very true, Tip. Here in Miami, it’s also the case that “toda la política es loca.” And I mean crazy in a bad way. As in, “Did you see that crazy drag queen stab that hobo?” and not “Did you see that drag queen’s crazy dance moves?” (I should also note: since the South Beach Diet® craze caught on, all politics in Miami have been relegated to the “let’s get crazy hot.” And that’s a matter for a future blog post). The area where the effects of this phenomenon are perhaps most pronounced is on the issue of bridges. Though I’m not talking about the traditional “bridge over water,” don’t think that’s not a problem here; it is. We’ve got a drawbridge that cuts straight through downtown. So every time Jose Canseco decides to move his yacht from his mansion to his manor during rush hour, it shuts down an entire metropolitan area of nearly 2 million people. Brilliant. Our real bridge problem, though, is Miami’s shortage of “urban land bridges.” Don’t distress if you’ve never heard of an urban land [...]

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in my secret court

July 21, 2010
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in my secret court

A vital part of any exclusive club – from Opus Dei to the Harvard Lampoon — is a robust fetish for secrecy. The United States Supreme Court isn’t any different. You can watch your local school board deliberate on cable access; you can watch British Parliament go at each other’s throats on C-SPAN; and if you live in Florida, among other states, you can even watch your State Supreme Court deliberate (read: bicker) on the Internet. Nonetheless, if you want to watch an oral argument before the United States Supreme Court but don’t live in Washington, D.C. — and for your sake, I hope you don’t — the best you can do is wait for the audio recording to be released, then listen to it while looking at photographs of the Justices. Which is not to say that the idea of videotaping Supreme Court proceedings hasn’t ever been considered. And in response to that suggestion, Justice David Souter famously declared that he’d welcome cameras in the courtroom … on the condition that they roll them in over his dead body. This stance in favor of opacity and against cameras shouldn’t surprise us. The culture of secrecy emanates from a group of [...]

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