Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Days Since JD Vance Insulted Women Across America: Zero

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

Let me file that under fuck it.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

T R E 4 5 O N

I am pretty sure Katy Tur wasn’t always such a bootlicking sycophant.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Second rate reporter says what?

This really is a full service blog.

It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

People are weird.

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2012 / Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Who’s the Most Christ-y of them All

Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Who’s the Most Christ-y of them All

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I knew he was cuckoo for secession, but I hadn’t realized that Rick Perry is a superfreak for Jesus:

One Sunday in 2005, Mr. Perry signed legislation requiring that women under the age of 18 get parental consent before having an abortion. The signing took place during a ceremony at a Fort Worth school run by an evangelical Christian church.

Five weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Perry bowed his head and said “amen” as a Baptist pastor led a prayer in the name of Jesus Christ. The prayer was noteworthy not for what it said, but for where it was said: at a student assembly in a public middle school in East Texas. Afterward, Mr. Perry said he had no problem ignoring the Supreme Court’s landmark 1962 ruling that barred organized prayer in public schools.

On Saturday in Houston, thousands of people are expected to gather at Reliant Stadium for a Christian-themed prayer service that Mr. Perry created and promoted.[…]

I’m sure it’s just my coastal elitism talking, but I don’t see how this kind of hyper-Christianity works in a candidacy outside the bible belt.

Reader Interactions

153Comments

  3. 3.

    Suffern ACE

    It will play well with Caucus voters in Iowa. They tend to go for Pat Robertson, Mike Huckabee leader as priest types.

  6. 6.

    MikeJ

    I don’t think he counts on the god bothering helping him outside of the bible belt, but I do think he counts on being able to go on about how mean people are about his god bothering.

  7. 7.

    jwb

    I’m sure it’s just my coastal elitism talking, but I don’t see how this kind of hyper-Christianity works in a candidacy outside the bible belt.

    I think you’ll find the school prayer generally polls very well. I still suspect that the secessionist comments will be a bigger problem than the godbothering.

  8. 8.

    beltane

    The worst thing is that teh Jeebus doesn’t particularly care for Rick Perry. I mean, his prayers for rain were answered with temperatures in the triple digits and more drought. Perhaps the Talibangicals have to come to terms with the fact that God is just not into them.

  9. 9.

    PurpleGirl

    It is possible that the extreme weather conditions are indeed caused by the creator… because humans like Perry and his followers are no longer truly obeying the ideas expressed by the prophet Jesus of Nazareth.

    ETA: I also agree with Beltane @ #8.

  12. 12.

    vtr

    I haven’t been able to find the organizations that are sponsoring this event. Anyway, Perry intends to cater it himself with two fish and five loaves.

  14. 14.

    Samara Morgan

    /yawn

    it works well for the GOP. Half the country is white (NHC) conservative christian nativists. One of the two main political parties in America is 99% white conservative christian, and has the religious doctrine of medieval ensoulment as part of the official party platform.
    so while mistermix and Cole try very harrd to pretend both sides are the same, the conservative elite lather up the christo-fascists to win elections.

    that is why Distributed Jesusland won the midterms.

  15. 15.

    beltane

    @PurpleGirl: If you think about it, every time one of these teabaggers prays, they are committing blasphemy which is being punished by unrelenting heat and drought. You’d think they’s get the message.

  19. 19.

    jwb

    @beltane: Actually, they read the fact that their prayers have not been answered as a further sign that the country has strayed from the one true path.

  20. 20.

    patrick II

    @gnomedad:

    As gnomedad alludes to, Rich Perry decreed three days of prayer to end the drought in Texas. While simultaneously fighting cap and trade.

    Much like eating a twinkie and praying to be thin, Gov. Perry’s solution to difficult problems is to try to pray them away. He is not a political leader, he is a cargo cult leader and hopes favors drop out of the sky if he performs the correct ceremony.

  22. 22.

    beltane

    @jwb: We have strayed from the one true path thanks to the efforts of these evil people. Their false piety is just one other mortal sin they can add to their collection along with gluttony, avarice, lust, wrath, etc. On a personal level, the most depraved, degenerate people I know happen to be evangelical Christians. To them, “salvation” means a permanent release from all feelings of shame and guilt.

  23. 23.

    Suffern ACE

    @jwb: Yep. You are not allowed to blame God. His will is His will. The two lesbians who moved into the condo next door?..well that’s another story.

  26. 26.

    Davis X. Machina

    but I don’t see how this kind of hyper-Christianity works in a candidacy outside the bible belt.

    In a country where how you are likely to vote correlates more closely with how many times a week you go to church, and your race, than your income or education, it can’t hurt.

    The GOP way, for thirty years, has been an enraged, engaged, committed 50%, +1, of a small turnout. Good enough for a nomination, good enough for a general election.

  28. 28.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    This is new. Perry has never been this overtly religious, and I’m convinced it’s an act to gather support among the 27 percenters. Remember the HPV debacle, and how much shit he got from the religious right for it.

    What pisses me off about the whole “pray for rain” nonsense is that it allows him to act like he’s doing something when in fact he’s just avoiding the whole problem. This is a wonderful opportunity to talk about water resource management, conservation, etc., but we’re not doing any of that. The LCRA estimates it can meet demand through 2080, but after that there are going to be problems unless we start doing something now.

    Having said all that, Perry is an honest-to-God threat; I have money on him winning the nomination (on merit, God help us all), and there’s a better than even chance he could beat Obama, especially if people like y’all don’t take him seriously. The secessionist comments are not going to sway people who blame Obama for the fact that they don’t have a job. This is Texas, remember; secessionism is part of our regular political discourse.

    Nobody took George W. Bush seriously, either. How’d that work out for everyone?

  29. 29.

    PurpleGirl

    Fasting for 7 hours… gee, it’s a summer Ramadan and the Muslims have to fast from sun-up to sun-down. Quite a bit longer than 7 hours. Such wussies these Christianists be.

  32. 32.

    jwb

    @beltane: I agree with you; I’m just noting how the vast majority will think about it and why it is extremely difficult to get believers to see beyond the worldview that’s been laid out for them.

  33. 33.

    Samara Morgan

    @beltane: that is the whole “salvation by faith alone” calumny. xianity was, however, the most successful EGT strat on the planet for a while.
    Consider this– for a thousand years anglosaxon/normans ruled the world as benevolent tyrants– we are going to rape you black/brown/yellow people, enslave you, kill you, and steal your stuff, but its all good, because we are saving your souls for Jeebus.

    then came Iraq and Afghanistan.
    Islam is the reef that wrecked the spread of freemarket-missionary-democracy.
    Because its an uninvadable EGT strategy.

  34. 34.

    shortstop

    @Grumpy Code Monkey: Agree that Perry is a greater threat than many of our brethren and sisthren seem to believe, even though he’s certainly not equal to Dubya (who had the strong support of establishment/business Republicans in addition to turning the thumpers on — he was the perfect storm in that respect, and Perry is not his equivalent in that regard). I watched Perry’s totally smarmy, smirky “America needs god” routine yesterday and reminded myself that the extent to which I want to slap someone senseless when he’s speaking has proven to be an ineffective gauge of other people’s perceptions.

  35. 35.

    vtr

    @PurpleGirl – The LA Times article points out that the $500G event is paid for by His Holiness Donald Wildmon’s American Family Assonciation. I have two questions: How many starving Somalis could be fed with that cash, and how many hundred thousand will Fox say filled the 71,000 seat stadium?

  36. 36.

    Woody

    Are you kidding? Up here in the Upper Northwest, the Confederate/Christianist 27% are completely identical to their brethren in the Deep South.

    I have family who function quite well in secular society, but their bookshelves teem with Hagee and other kooks. They get their education the same places that the Confederates do – Fox, ultra-right radio, and thinly-disguised political churches.

    This is why I’ve largely given up using historical evidence, scientific method, etc. with these people – their politics are a matter of faith, rather than reason. They are good people on an individual level, but quite lethal en masse.

  38. 38.

    jwb

    @Grumpy Code Monkey: Perry already has the godbotherers on his side. How do you think he has managed to win all these races for governor? It’s not because the GOP elite in the state favor him, I can tell you that.

  39. 39.

    MattF

    The Republican Establishment is pushing Perry forward on the theory that he’s better than any of the current candidates– and maybe he is– but that’s only because the current candidates are so weak. In the real world, Perry is a successful provincial politician. It’s possible that he’ll figure out how to appeal to voters outside of Texas, but that hasn’t happened yet, and may not.

  41. 41.

    MazeDancer

    Lawrence O’Donnell intends to put his enthusiastic style and Irish heritage to good work. Hate Foamer grifter “Pastor” Hagee, a Perry pal, late of the McCain campaign, has called Catholicism a “God-less cult”, among other less supportive things.

    O’Donnell intends to link Perry and Hagee every night if Perry runs. Last night, O’Donnell pointed out that 27% of VOTERS are Catholic. (25% of population is). And those are the practicing ones, not the lapsed who still go home for Christmas.

    No Catholic vote = no winning ever.

    ETA: The American Family Association, paying for the event, are a primo homophobic org. Toms Shoes founder recently got in trouble for speaking at one of their events.

  42. 42.

    The Sheriff's A Ni-

    Having said all that, Perry is an honest-to-God threat

    The problem is there’s all these MSM articles breaking out the kneepads for Perry, and yet I haven’t see any that include the magic words ‘Davenport’, ‘Sioux City’, and ‘Des Moines’. Though maybe I haven’t been reading the right articles. Still, its less than a month to Labor Day and he’s holding a huge event in… Houston?

    I’m still unconvinced he’s seen what Washington did to Dubya, and is simply borrowing from Sarah Palin’s Free Media Attention For Dummies playbook.

  45. 45.

    Samara Morgan

    wallah….Perry just called for tearing down the wall of separation between church and state.

  46. 46.

    Montysano

    According to Bill Maher last night, ticket sales for Perry’s JesusPalooza are anemic. As Maher noted, who wouldn’t want to go to an outdoor rally in Houston in August?

    One of Maher’s guests was Stephen Bannon, producer of “Undefeated”. In one statement he said “Tea Partiers see soshulism at the top and at the bottom, with a brutal economic reality in the middle.” He followed this with the standard “Don’t tax job creators” rhetoric. This is the kind of dumbassery we’re dealing with.

  49. 49.

    beltane

    @Samara Morgan: Which church? Christians have a long tradition of slaughtering each other over minor theological disputes. Perhaps this gives us cause for hope.

  50. 50.

    Samara Morgan

    whine all you like juicers, but its all about the demographics.
    Perry has a shot because the electorate is still 72% non-hispanic cauc and 2/3 of them are conservative republican xians. that is 65% of white people.
    Escape from Distributed Jesusland™ via the demographic timer wont happen until ~2021 when the kids from the 2008 event start to vote.

  52. 52.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Samara Morgan: I doubt anyone was trying to get you to read Hayek. If I were you, I wouldn’t bother reading Keynes; you’ll just pull some half-assed conclusion off page 32 and base your life around it for a while.

  53. 53.

    Samara Morgan

    @beltane: the nativism glues white American conservative xians together into a single “church” at this point.
    he talking about an anglosaxon xian theocracy.
    Death to the Secularists!

  55. 55.

    moonbat

    What pisses me off about this is that the lame stream media are touting him as a governor who has presided over a Texas economic boom. Really, Texas has more people working minimum wage jobs that any place in the country and the highest percentage of people with NO health care. This is the model we want to follow?
    I was convinced he wouldn’t pull this prayer/fasting stunt until some stray cloud had passed over Houston and dropped an inch of rain thereby ending the drought and proving the power of prayer. But I guess he couldn’t afford to wait any longer to announce himself the candidate chosen by God.
    I look at not only the low attendance numbers being reported for this but the fact that all the conservative governors from other states he invited to join him have taken a pass. So this is not going to be the evangelical/political theater he had planned.

  56. 56.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @beltane:

    The Founders, who were much closer to the Reformation and Counter-Reformation (not to mention the 17th Century English Civil War in which religion played a central role) in historical time than we are, understood the need to keep the government out of religion and vice-versa.

    Because once the government favors one particular idiotic belief system over another, blood starts flowing freely in the streets.

  60. 60.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Samara Morgan:

    You know how Shia and Sunni go after each other hammer and tongs when they get the chance?

    America’s Christianists will not be able to resist the temptation to do the same once they’ve vanquished all those liberals, scientists, gays, and secular humanists.

    Bank on it.

  61. 61.

    ppcli

    @Jewish Steel: Amateurs. Don’t anybody tell them that they’re participating in the Ramadan fast. Though the Muslims are fasting circles around them all month.

    Edit:
    @PurpleGirl: beat me to it. The posts come in fast around here. Gotta bring the A game.

  63. 63.

    Amir Khalid

    @PurpleGirl:

    the prophet Jesus of Nazareth.

    That’s a very Muslim way to describe him.

    @shortstop:

    By “fasting,” they mean “no snacks between breakfast and lunch and no dessert after dinner.”

    That’s what us Muslims call fasting for little kids.

  67. 67.

    MazeDancer

    @shortstop:

    @MazeDancer: 25 percent of Americans are practicing Catholics, not including the lapsed ones? That number seems mighty high.

    Seemed surprisingly high to me, too. But the director of Catholic Democrats came on and confirmed it. And they discussed how 25% of population being 27% of electorate was because Catholics vote in higher numbers.

    It’s also possible my hearing/brain political processes got accidently downgraded due to a math error.

  70. 70.

    beltane

    @Samara Morgan: Protestants also like to kill each other, not just Catholics. Some of the most vicious religious persecution in history was Protestant on Protestant, not surprising in a religion where each believer is a god unto his or herself.

  71. 71.

    Samara Morgan

    @Amir Khalid: you said you weren’t when i pointed out that Malaysia has both secular and shariah law. you said that shariah didnt apply to you because you weren’t a muslim.
    im just confused by that statement.
    are you a muslim or not?

  72. 72.

    Samara Morgan

    @beltane: baptists vs lutherans? would there be alliances? WECs, mormons and jehovahs vs high church protestants and anglicans?
    how would the battle lines be drawn?

  73. 73.

    MazeDancer

    If you haven’t heard Perry talk, do so now. 10 seconds will be enough. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beznkPzdV20&feature=related Also, you won’t be able to bear more than that.

    Unless he’s working hard on speech lessons, Perry sounds so much like W that he’s doomed. He also makes the same weasely grimaces as W. And gives off that same mean, nasty vibe as W that a few men mistake as strength and many women recognize as mean, nasty, self-absorbed jerk.

    Despite, Perry’s homage to Ronald “Yes this is my natural hair color” Reagan – Perry is 61, not a gray hair on that head – he makes everyone not on their knees worshipping have an involuntary “NO, NOT ANOTHER ONE” reaction.

    Now, just like W’s good ole boy was an act, Perry can learn to speak differently. But unless he does, the average American’s “would you want to have a beer with this guy” meter is going to register “No W clone for me”.

  74. 74.

    Amir Khalid

    @Samara Morgan:
    Oh, now I get it. Your problem is poor reading comprehension: you don’t understand plain English.

    What I said in that comment was that non-Muslims in Malaysia are not subject to Shariah law for the obvious reason. The obvious reason, which I had thought I could leave unstated, is that they (not I) are non-Muslims.

  75. 75.

    PurpleGirl

    Amir Khalid: I know that Islam considers Jesus to be a prophet and the Bible to be a good book, incorporated as is were into Islamic thought. Since I also do not consider Christianity to have been founded by Jesus but that others who came after him actually did that, Jesus of Nazareth is a sort of neutral way to refer to him.

    Me: I am an Equal Opportunity Deity Worshiper. If the holy day resonates with me in some way, I may just observe it. (I love Diwali — candles for light, feasts, presents. How great is that.)

  78. 78.

    Stranger

    @PurpleGirl:

    Fasting for 7 hours… gee, it’s a summer Ramadan and the Muslims have to fast from sun-up to sun-down. Quite a bit longer than 7 hours. Such wussies these Christianists be.

    The concession stand people at Reliant must be beside themselves with joy.

  79. 79.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Stranger: One of my grandmothers never ate a full piece of cake or pie for dessert. She would always have just a “taste” or a quarter piece and then a little more and then just another taste and then there wouldn’t be enough of the piece left to keep so she would finish it. I imagine that these guys will fast in a similar sort of way.

  80. 80.

    Amir Khalid

    @Samara Morgan:
    And another thing: The Taliban are religious fundamentalists. They are as bad, in much the same ways, as the worst Christians who identify as such; they defile scripture by using it to justify their tribalism, their intolerance, their love of violence, and their cruelty toward women. They differ from militant fundamentalist Christians only in their religious affiliation. They are anything but noble. Don’t call them that.

  81. 81.

    Dollared

    Perry’s religiosity will be considered a major asset, that will assist him in his thoughtful, ethical, compassionate conservatism.

    David Brooks will be impressed by his education and his sensitivity to the core issues of identity, belonging and responsbility that shape the modern human.

  82. 82.

    Joseph Nobles

    Just listened to a thimblehead from the hate group Family Research Council on Fox News reassure us all that this has nothing to do with promoting Perry’s political career, oh, no. The dexerity with which the talking head shifted from this reassurance to promoting the Iowa Values Bus to keep faith in the political discussions was remarkable to behold. To be honest, I wasn’t aware Iowa had become so godless, but I’m sure the hatemonger wouldn’t lie to the faithful on Fox.

    Why was I watching Fox News? I’m taking a friend to the airport. She married a hardcore Republican and went there. So Fox is a’blaring in the hotel room while she packs. I will survive — the husband is in Iraq right now.

  83. 83.

    Samara Morgan

    @Amir Khalid: well, that is not what i meant. i was joking that the christofascists are worse than Talibs, that they are actually reavers.

    but you are still wrong.

    justify their tribalism, their intolerance, their love of violence, and their cruelty toward women.

    because that is none of America’s bidness. The Taliban see themselves as defending their homeland and their culture and religion against an undeclared war of Proselytizers and Colonizers. Did you know the ideological forebears of the Talibs, the Deobandi, built madrassas’s with the express purpose of training students to fight against the british raj?

    that is why i say you are a maftoon. you are charmed by western culture.

  85. 85.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Samara Morgan:
    For pity’s sake, M-C, your entire use of games theory recently has been to once reference the prisoner’s dilemma, which is the middle school intro example of the discipline. Finding the most obscure jargon terms you can find and spouting them randomly does not make you intelligent and does not mean you understand games theory. How does games theory apply to the economy or this situation? Explain your view in depth, and if it actually has anything to do with games theory maybe we’ll acknowledge that you have anything at all to say.

    Come to think of it, finding impressive sounding words to say does not make you an expert on Japan, Islam, or Christianity either. Especially when you make up half of your jargon.

  86. 86.

    Samara Morgan

    @Amir Khalid:

    They differ from militant fundamentalist Christians only in their religious affiliation.

    And you missed the greatest similiarity between xian fundies and muslim fundies.
    They are both nativists. it isnt tribalism …..tribes accept converts. its religio-racial nativism that binds the current crop of ideological fundies.
    Muslim nativists want to expell western crusaders, missionaries-with-guns, invaders and occupiers….xian nativists want to disenfranchise minorities, women, youth, intellectuals, teh darkskinned, scientists, academics…etc. :)

  87. 87.

    daveNYC

    Honestly I don’t see this hurting him that much. It’s not like he would be counting on winning the votes of any Jews or Muslims anyway.

  88. 88.

    Samara Morgan

    @Frankensteinbeck: all i can say is….
    read the book.
    i belonged for years to a blog where all we did was argue about the Platonia dilemma, and Nash equilibriums are part of evolutionary games theory which i have studied.

    I think Evolutionary Economics is a more accurate model than either Keynes or Hayek.
    Both of those guys are Dead White Guy Phailosophers….Von Neumann is at least a second culture intellectual (a scientist).
    He speaks my language.
    Omnes just doesnt.

  91. 91.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Samara Morgan:

    I think Evolutionary Economics is a more accurate model than either Keynes or Hayek.

    Since you don’t have even a cursory understanding of any of them, your opinion really doesn’t matter.

  92. 92.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Samara Morgan:
    Like I mentioned above, this is the prisoner’s dilemma. This is middle school crap, M-C, and there is no discussion of higher level factors like how analysis of the likelihood of the opposite side’s behavior affects the optimal choice. Also, you’re citing someone else’s work that covers one very specific event. Show me that YOU understand games theory and how it applies to economics. So far, all you’ve done is quote terms of jargon without connecting them to anything.

  94. 94.

    Samara Morgan

    @Omnes Omnibus: i dont really need to understand either. Empirically, both paradigms are failures.
    the only reason to “understan” Keynesian or Hayekian thought is to see the mechanism of failure.
    IMHO, game theory does explain explain economic behavior….so i’ll increase my study of that instead.
    :)

  95. 95.

    The Sheriff's A Ni-

    Its amazing how many people haven’t pied @Omnes Omnibus: Pretty much this. Why anyone actually engages her/him/it is still a wonder to me.

  97. 97.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Samara Morgan:
    So you’ve decided that one theory is correct and now you’re going to follow up by learning about it. That is the exact opposite of science.

    Your predictive models have consistently failed. You have just referenced games theory to suggest you have a better understanding of economics than anyone else, and yet you not only cannot back that up with arguments, you’ve never actually used games theory arguments, and you’ve just admitted you are operating by bias rather than knowledge. Under those circumstances, yes, you need credentialing. Your arguments are nothing but noise until then, and no one can respect you or take them seriously.

  100. 100.

    Amir Khalid

    It is not for America to make the Taliban start behaving like civilized people, I’ll concede that; only the Taliban can do that for themselves.

    Their tribalism, intolerance, love of violence, and cruelty toward women don’t spring from any religious source. In fact these things are denounced in Islam. I didn’t need to be infatuated with the West to deplore these things in the Taliban.

    I’ll also grant that the Deobandis were well justified in setting up military academies, given that they had a righteous military objective i.e. routing the British from India. (Although, as I recall, they didn’t quite succeed; when the British finally left India, it was on their own terms.) But this is a red herring. The Taliban have inflicted a great deal of misery on their own nation. Nothing about the Deobandis’ history, or their kinship with the Taliban, can justify that.

  102. 102.

    Samara Morgan

    @Frankensteinbeck: haha, no… science is the replacement of orthodoxy with heresy, which in turn becomes the new orthdoxy.
    im an economic heretic if you like.
    :)

  105. 105.

    Chad N Freude

    Violating one of my Life Principles here by acknowledging Samara Morgan:

    I love the way he/she/it demonstrates his/her/its erudition by referring to textbooks and science fiction and dropping famous names. I’m really impressed.

  109. 109.

    Samara Morgan

    @Chad N Freude: maybe you can answer a question then….is Godfathers Pizza that Herman Cain worked for named from Snowcrash or the Marlon Brando movie?

  110. 110.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Samara Morgan: Why, in your opinion, couldn’t it be implemented? What stopped it? Further, isn’t an economic theory an explanation of why things happen in an economy? From that, one can come up with suggested actions to make preferred results more likely. Nevertheless, the explanation of why things happen is either correct or it isn’t. How is Keynesian theory incorrect?

  112. 112.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Samara Morgan:
    Oh, no. That is not an argument. You haven’t MADE an argument. You have linked to an incredibly elementary article about games theory, suggested you have a better model than Keynesian economics, admitted you decided that model was right before trying to understand it, and dropped fancy sounding terms and referred to yourself as an ‘economic heretic’. Do you or do you not have an argument? Can you back up your claim that games theory predicts economics better than Keynesian theory? Can you even make a games theory argument? Are you actually saying anything, or are you stringing together words like Sarah Palin does and justifying them with random ultra-simplified scientific facts like David Brooks does?

  115. 115.

    The Sheriff's A Ni-

    @Omnes Omnibus: Grf. My bad, mate, I scrambled that up good.

    Its amazing how many people haven’t pied @Omnes Omnibus: Pretty much this. Why anyone actually engages her/him/it is still a wonder to me.

    FTFM

  116. 116.

    quannlace

    No. In fact, the more Perry has acted like he’s running for Pres, the worse the drought has become.

    It’s kinda works like ‘praying the gay away.’ And just as effective.

    Perhaps the good people of Texas should get up a petition for Perry to officially announce he is NOT running for Prez. And then see the skies open up!

  117. 117.

    ellie

    How does Perry continue to be re-elected? I know there are plenty of liberals and Democrats, but do they stay home on election day? Are they out numbered by the crazies?

  118. 118.

    Amir Khalid

    @Chad N Freude:
    Matoko_Chan/Hermione Granger-Weasley/Ghanima Atreides/Murbella/Samara Morgan/next nym TBA is, or claims to be, a “gurrl” (her spelling).

  120. 120.

    Samara Morgan

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    You have linked to an incredibly elementary article about games theory

    ?? this is a blog, dude.
    i linked a business week article that applied elementary game theory to the debt ceiling debate….umm…because this is a BLOG on the INTERNET.
    i have tried to discuss EGT and EE here before, but its not productive.
    im not going to strip for you, sorry.
    you are still trying to credential me….i dont care, dude. believe what you like, its a free country.

  123. 123.

    Samara Morgan

    @Omnes Omnibus: oh, i mispoke. HAS NEVER been implemented in representative government because of games theory and the biological basis of behavior.

  127. 127.

    Chad N Freude

    I see that creative spelling is another one of her virtues.

    . . . like “mispoke” @122.

  129. 129.

    Yutsano

    @Samara Morgan: WTF kind of a Muslimah are you? If you knew ANYTHING about your supposed “religion” (which I’m sure is just a kool kidz fad for you) you know you do not have the right to determine who is a Muslim and who is not. That is in between the individual and Allah. For fuck’s sake, is it any wonder why no one takes you seriously when you get the fundamentals wrong? Buddha on a bicycle.

    @Amir Khalid:

    I’ll also grant that the Deobandis were well justified in setting up military academies, given that they had a righteous military objective i.e. routing the British from India.

    The Deobandis were as much religious invaders to Afghanistan as any Christian group. Before fundamentalism took over the country Afghans were majority Sufi. Which explains why up until the Soviet invasion they were more or less a rather cosmopolitan society. Kabul used to be known as the Paris of the East. The fact that the country is a practically ungovernable British construct doesn’t help either. If we were truly rational we would just divide the north from the south and let them go their separate ways. Of course Pakistan would freak out since their western third is much more culturally tied to the southern part of Afghanistan.

  130. 130.

    Todd Dugdale

    @Frankensteinbeck:
    You are arguing with a pseudo-intellectual.
    They never admit that they are wrong, because they have made up their mind that they are smarter than everyone else long before you were exposed to them.

    The bottom line is this: if what SM says is true, then Obama could never have been elected President, and could never be above 30% approval. But SM is less interested in making relevant and cogent statements than in getting everyone to say (in unison), “You are sooo smart! Tell us more!”

    REAL intellectuals never say crap like. “If you haven’t read such-and-such, there’s no point in talking with you”. Instead, they summarise the relevant points in such-and-such, and explain how it supports their position.

    A professor once told me, “If you are unable to explain your position to someone who doesn’t understand it, then you probably don’t really understand your position either”.

    I’ll add my own aphorism: “If the vast majority of the people who you claim support your views can’t understand what the hell you are getting at, you are on shaky ground”.
    Ask the average evangelical droid what the hell NHC and EGT are (or Game Theory, for that matter), and enjoy the blank looks you get from them.

    Cain looked great before he entered the race. So did Trump, McCotter, Johnson, Gingrich, Paul, and Pawlenty. Once Perry actually announces, he will sink like a stone in the polling. SM seems to believe that Perry is the sole evangelical Christian option in the field. Pawlenty is an EC, has ‘executive experience’, and HE has been campaigning in Iowa. How has that worked out for him?

  131. 131.

    eemom

    Why anyone actually engages her/him/it is still a wonder to me.

    have you ever been in a roomful of intelligently conversing adults when somebody’s toddler shows up?

    Lawless, reckless, utterly self-absorbed tiny creatures suck in attention like black holes. That’s just how it is.

  133. 133.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Samara Morgan:
    If it helps, let me make a games theory argument to you so that you have some frame of reference. It will be fairly elementary, but if you do understand games theory you can use that as an opportunity to make a more sophisticated counterargument.

    The latest debt crisis demonstrates the most fundamental – and acknowledged in the discipline – weakness of using games theory as a predictive model. According to games theory, the Tea Party acts in their own best interest, and by assigning numerical values and adjusting for probabilities you can figure out why. Assigning those values is the trick. What value do the Tea Partiers, in their mass or in congress, gain from causing a default? It would make many of them poor, and it is hard to substantiate what they might gain at all. Assuming they win, they get the pride of winning a pissing contest, but serious challenges to their own physical wellbeing. Assuming they lose, they get nothing. What numbers can you apply that make this a reasonable decision, even after the fact? And before the fact, how can you do anything but guess?

    You can assume that they do not know they will be shooting themselves in the foot if they win, but that runs counter to the evolutionary behavior application of games theory. All evidence thus far suggests that animals with sophisticated learning abilities also have sophisticated adaptive abilities to anticipate their advantage. They don’t know this, but evolution does not require a direct problem solving chain, only that in the end one trait breeds advantageously over others.

    A lot of questions, and no answers. In particular, no system to devise a numerical analysis of the conflict. Because of this, the debt ceiling conflict exposes some of the most fundamental challenges of games theory.

  134. 134.

    Todd Dugdale

    @Frankensteinbeck:
    You are arguing with a pseudo-intellectual.
    They never admit that they are wrong, because they have made up their mind that they are smarter than everyone else long before you were exposed to them.

    The bottom line is this: if what SM says is true, then Obama could never have been elected President, and could never be above 30% approval. But SM is less interested in making relevant and cogent statements than in getting everyone to say (in unison), “You are sooo smart! Tell us more!”

    REAL intellectuals never say crap like. “If you haven’t read such-and-such, there’s no point in talking with you”. Instead, they summarise the relevant points in such-and-such, and explain how it supports their position.

    A professor once told me, “If you are unable to explain your position to someone who doesn’t understand it, then you probably don’t really understand your position either”.

    I’ll add my own aphorism: “If the vast majority of the people who you claim support your views can’t understand what the hell you are getting at, you are on shaky ground”.
    Ask the average evangelical droid what the hell NHC and EGT are, and enjoy the blank looks you get from them.

    Cain looked great before he entered the race. So did Trump, McCotter, Johnson, Gingrich, Paul, and Pawlenty. Once Perry actually announces, he will sink like a stone in the polling. SM seems to believe that Perry is the sole evangelical Christian option in the field. Pawlenty is an EC, has ‘executive experience’, and HE has been campaigning in Iowa. How has that worked out for him?

  135. 135.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Todd Dugdale:
    You’re right, of course, but it’s the history of parenting. I so desperately want to slap sense into the intellectually lazy, both so that they can begin to grow and so that they’ll stop harassing me with their simple-minded arguments. Once you’ve had to live with someone who keeps deluging you with their latest world-shaking theory for a few years, you develop a strong urge to nip this thinking in the bud. So far I’ve only had success by repeatedly laying down in detail why the person doesn’t know what they’re talking about and how the real world is more complicated. Shame eventually gets through.

    EDIT – Regardless, I must bow out. I have work to do today, and this kind of arguing puts me in exactly the opposite mood to be any good at it. I just hope M-C has learned something, anything.

  136. 136.

    Yutsano

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    I just hope M-C has learned something, anything.

    Still trying for blood from turnips eh? When one is bound in their own certitude, it is very difficult to extract them from that faith.

  137. 137.

    Amir Khalid

    @Yutsano:
    Sorry. I have no education in the history of that region. i was just following what I took to be the meaning of She Who Has All Those Nyms.

    The people within the borders of “Afghanistan” are not the only nation whose borders, ethnic composition and way of life has been messed with by foreigners who were up to no good. For that matter, neither is “Pakistan”. In both cases among others, national boundaries were drawn up without regard to tribal ones, with dire results. Someday they (and the countries around them) will have to sort out how many nations are in there, and who (and what) belongs to which nation. I suspect it’ll be done the old-fashioned way, with decades or centuries of tribal warfare and all its attendant joys.

    Or it could be made a project of the international community. To avoid accusations of, say, US or Western imperialism, some international body like the UN or the OIC would referee the redrawing of boundaries, and the reallocation of territory and resources and warm bodies among the various countries involved. Some old conflicts might get resolved in this process, but, as sure as God made little green apples, some new and bloody ones will arise. It sounds to me like more grief than any such body has the stomach for.

  138. 138.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @eemom: That’s the best explanation I’ve seen yet. Thank you for that; it’s completely correct and easily understood.

    @Amir Khalid: You and Yutsano both make insightful points about the region that will go misunderstood by game theory proponents.

  140. 140.

    Yutsano

    @Amir Khalid:

    Sorry. I have no education in the history of that region.

    I was more or less following on your point about the Deobandi influence, since its origins in India (from Wahhabi roots, amazing the trouble those guys get into!) point naturally to their eventually reaching Afghanistan. But yeah, radical Islam was initially a foreign idea there.

    In both cases among others, national boundaries were drawn up without regard to tribal ones intentionally, with dire results.

    Quick adjustment for you there good sir. The Brits didn’t just throw lines on a map willy-nilly. They intentionally carved up whole tribes and even families just for the express purpose of easier imperial governance. We’re still dealing with the repercussions in many different regions on the planet.

  141. 141.

    Cliff

    I hadn’t realized that Rick Perry is a superfreak for Jesus

    Man, where the hell have you been for the past three months?

  143. 143.

    eemom

    I wonder what toko-loko is gonna be like when she’s an old crone like me.

    I didn’t behave like that when I was a young ‘un. Course we didn’t have blogs back then.

  144. 144.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @eemom:

    I wonder what toko-loko is gonna be like when she’s an old crone like me.

    First off, I will dispute the crone part. Second, Toko will be an utterly conventional soccer mom.

  145. 145.

    eemom

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    thank you, sir. And you are probably right.

    Hell, I was a soccer mom myself until my son quit in favor of lacrosse. Now I am a conscientious objector mom because I don’t like to watch kids clobbering each other with sticks.

  147. 147.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    @ellie:

    How does Perry continue to be re-elected? I know there are plenty of liberals and Democrats, but do they stay home on election day? Are they out numbered by the crazies?

    Austin, parts of Houston, and the Valley trend Democrat, but the majority of the state is overwhelmingly Republican.

    Perry’s never had to face a significant primary opponent. KBH was expected to be a real threat, but she basically phoned it in.

    And finally, his Democratic opponents haven’t exactly been all that inspiring. Neither White in ’10 nor Bell in ’06 could capture any sort of enthusiasm among state Democrats (hell, here in Austin we could barely tell White was even running), and Sanchez in ’02 was a grade-A moron.

    The national Democratic party has pretty much written Texas off. We get no outside support anymore. No Democrat can win state office without help.

  148. 148.

    PurpleGirl

    Amir Khalid and Yutsano: 40 plus years of watching the independence movements in various areas of the world have led me to believe that the European colonizers did more damage than we can imagine in how they first drew territorial lines in Africa, Central Asia, East Asia and the Middle East. They ignored tribal difference and lumped populations together. How many wars and genocides could have been avoided if nation-states could have been drawn up based on tribal boundaries and cohesion?

    Your comments on Afghanistan and Pakistan reinforce my ideas and have added to my knowledge of the world.

  149. 149.

    Kathy in St. Louis

    He’ll go over well with the “churched” of this country. Too bad there are less and less of them every day. He looks like a televangelist version of Ronnie as a younger man, before he started dyeing his hair orange.

    All these smarmy types do is bring out the elitism in those who know a four-flusher when they see one. We’ll be able to see how many Americans qualify as such when the votes are counted November, 2012. I think this could be their boy.

  150. 150.

    DougW

    @Samara Morgan:
    while I don’t discount your post, you seem to forget the 3000 years of documented Chinese history, and 2500 years of Japanese history in your post…

  151. 151.

    Samara Morgan

    @Frankensteinbeck: AMG.

    What value do the Tea Partiers, in their mass or in congress, gain from causing a default?

    In default, they can reign amid the chaos.
    how fucking thick are you?

  152. 152.

    Samara Morgan

    @Frankensteinbeck: AMG.

    What value do the Tea Partiers, in their mass or in congress, gain from causing a default?

    In default, they can reign amid the chaos.
    how fucking thick are you?

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