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Reasons to vote McCain
Meddling abroad
The fact that we haven’t been attacked since 9/11 is not proof that our Iraq/Afghanistan strategy is working, but it’s hard to see how the wars haven’t helped, by keeping the fight overseas. We’ve made significant headway now, and it would be a bad move to go home. Going home: acknowledges defeat, which has a pernicious affect on the national ethos; tells the terrorists that we’re too weak or afraid of casualties to stick it out in a fight, which will embolden them; forces us to write off our significant investment in the region; eliminates the gains we’d made in establishing bases in the region; reduces or eliminates our ability to exploit Iraq’s enormous oil reserves. McCain will continue the fight, showing our resolve. (Josh note: Al Queda supports the McCain Presidency. Having us over there meddling in several of their nations helps with their recruitment.)
Cheap stuff
McCain believes in keeping trade open among nations. This plays to his corporate sponsors, but is also a very good idea. That cheap Chinese labor thing keeps inflation from spiraling out of control in the U.S. Restricting trade just invites retaliation in kind. (Josh: of course, allowing corporate swine to ship jobs overseas and then bring those goods back here to sell to citizens who weren’t fit to be employed by the same companies does seem kind of ratty. Maybe sensible trade is better than “free” trade, especially when “free” trade is so expensive in the end.)
Being told how to live
Teenage pregnancy is a bad idea and we need to force teenagers to masturbate more and avoid acting on their sexual urges. To do that, we’re going to eliminate legal abortion, which will make them scared shitless to “just see how it feels if we just try it a little.” Combined with shotgun marriages, America can return to its redneck roots. Sometimes it’s even necessary to marry your rapist or at least have his child. Yes, this is a very sensible Republican policy. (Josh: procreation is apparently a very bad thing that only becomes good when the church tells you so. The shame is that more secular-minded people are less neurotic about sex, practice safe sex, and therefore have fewer children, so it’s the stupid anti-sex-for-pleasure crowd who reproduce more frequently).
The national money thing
The economy is strong because American workers are strong. (Josh: the body is healthy because, despite being a corpse, nails and hair continue to grow.)
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It was carbs all the time
Say, don’t you remember, they called me Al; it was Al all the time.
Say, don’t you remember, I’m your pal? Buddy, can you spare a dime?
- Brother Can You Spare a Dime. Yip Harburg. 1931.
Back in 1931, people knew that carbs, eaten to excess, would make you fat. It’s common sense. Who thinks they can eat sweets and potatoes and the kind of meal used to fatten up farm animals and that, somehow, this food would make a person lose fat?
The problem came in the 1970s when Harvard researchers, chief among them Jean Mayer (funded by General Mills), ignored all scientific evidence and went with the theory, never fully explored, that dietary fat somehow turned into adipose tissue on the body. This is actually impossible, as I’ve learned reading the exceptional Good Calories, Bad Calories, a book so rigorously researched by science writer Gary Taubes that it kills a number of myths about diet and fat.
I think everyone should read this book and realize that the food pyramid is bunk; that people are sedentary because they are obese, not the other way around, and that overeating can only make you fat when it is overeating of a particular type, because the body seeks to maintain statis and is a complex mechanism and not a “food bank” in which excess calories are simply deposited into fat cells. Fat accumulation is regulated by insulin which is, in turn, affected dramatically by refined carbohydrates. This book is not meant as a diet book, and reaches no conclusions, except to debunk the notion that “fat in, fat out” is a settled scientific hypothesis, when it has never been accurately tested. The book calls for tests on carbohydrate intake to further establish the more logical conclusion: that some people’s insulin response to carbohydrates is more severe than for others.
If you don’t want to read the book, here’s an excellent presentation by Taubes debunking the myths. Unfortunately, I fear it will be many years before an improperly-trained medical establishment accepts these truths as, if not self evident, than at least correct. The willingness of otherwise intelligent people to believe illogical pap is startling.
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Death of a Master: Prof. Charles Chu (1918-2008)
I have periodically considered starting a web site which I would call GreatAmericanDead and devote to one post a day on some of the absolutely remarkable people who often become anonymous in the years leading up to their deaths when, instead, they should be followed, studied, respected. At least the occasion of their death, especially when theirs was a full and happy life, gives us an opportunity to learn about someone we wish we could have known of sooner.
This is the way I feel today about Charles Chu, a professor of Chinese at Connecticut College, who passed away yesterday. I am proud that my alma mater has done such a fine job of memorializing this exceptional artist, a man who apparently had tremendous energy, spirit and incredible talent (even if only judging from the work he left behind).
Chu, who was 90, was active until three weeks ago. He was probably very active! Watch in this video how much energy he has only six years ago. I’m sad I never really knew of him before this. He retired before I attended CC. I think it would have been something to have been taught by him.
Some of Chu’s work, much of which is visible at his web site, Little Frog, his childhood name:
