I told you all we had big plans, so here we go: Hanlon’s Razor now has its own domain! Again. Please move yer bookmarks and whatnot to…

http://hanlonsrazor.org

All right, let’s get rolling!

Hot on the heels of the big-ass article on McCain’s possible VP choice, it looks like we’ve got a hell of a hint about Obama’s: Indiana senator Evan Bayh.

You can peruse Bayh’s record at OnTheIssues just like with all the other candidates and I suggest that you do so. One thing you might notice is that I was right, he’s pretty centrist by a lot of their metrics. 50% by NARAL, 60% by the ACLU, 43% by the US COC, 33% by the Christian Coalition, etc. I’m pretty jazzed about his big church-state separation push, though. While a touch moderate, he’s good where it counts.

The kicker, and the reason I’m writing this, is that http://obamabayh08.com directs to… the DNC’s homepage. If that doesn’t seal the deal in most peoples’ eyes, I’m not sure what will.

Let the speculation begin!!

UPDATE: Will just said this, and it’s so bad but yet so funny that I have to relay it: If you’re going to sell a candidate, what better way than E. Bayh? Well played, Will. Well played.

UPDATE 2: Commenter Pete points out that there’s nothing to say that the DNC owns the domain, it merely redirects to it. However, I’m more than a little suspicious of that as a WHOIS returns nothing substantial other than it was registered in May of 2007. It does, however, say that it was updated in February of 2008. There’s nothing for it in the Internet Archive to say what was before that, but perhaps that’s when it started to redirect?

UPDATE 3: Other sites are picking up on the fact that Bayh is on a very, very short list of potential Obama VP’s, so we’ll see how this plays out.

I’m not sure why the VP hunt has been brushed by the wayside in the past month or so, frankly. If there’s one thing Dick Cheney has taught us, it’s that the running mate can prove just as influential on policy as, if not more than, the president himself.

This is why we should all be a little concerned that Eric Cantor (R-VA) is being floated around as a potential veep for McCain. I’m not just talking about his voting record, although that’s pretty terrifying as well. As I so often do, I suggest we pop over to OnTheIssues.org and see what his overall rating is.

• Rated 0% by NARAL, indicating a pro-life voting record
• Rated 100% by the NRLC, indicating a pro-life stance (190 members)
• Rated 19% by the NAACP, indicating an anti-affirmative-action stance
• Rated 0% by the HRC, indicating an anti-gay-rights stance
• Rated 92% by the Christian Coalition: a pro-family voting record
• Rated 0% by the AU, indicating opposition to church-state separation
• Rated 0% by the LCV, indicating anti-environment votes
• Rated 0% by the CAF, indicating opposition to energy independence
• Rated 0% by SANE, indicating a pro-military voting record

So right off the bat, I want it noted that for the most part he’s either 100% for or against something. He’s as doctrinaire conservative as it gets. No gay anything, screw the environment, stay in Iraq forever, abortion is murder even if it happens before sex, etc. He’s placed himself pretty far to the right of McCain himself, disagreeing on quite a number of key issues, amongst them immigration, finance reform, torture, expanding stem-cell research, and the gay marriage amendment.

Now, a comment here might be “well so what? McCain’s running mate doesn’t need to be lockstep with him.” ABC puts it like this:

Cantor has strong support among the party’s conservatives, perhaps comforting a segment of the GOP base that has been reluctant to embrace McCain, who has often been at odds with members of his own party on several issues, including a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, federal funds for embryonic stem cell research and campaign finance reform.

That’s where I have a problem. I’m sure not many people have an issue with McCain picking an extra-conservative running mate (a Jewish one, no less), because that’s what he needs to do to hold onto an ambivalent Republican base that nearly threw him over a cliff while on fire because of his obstinacy until recent flip-flops.

It’s not out of line to suggest that while Democrats and Independents are annoyed at McCain’s reversals, saying he’s selling his soul to be more appealing to the base, the base itself probably doesn’t have too much confidence in McCain’s recent far-right proclamations, possibly seeing them as a transparent attempt to get votes. Actually putting a guy like Cantor on the ticket would say to them “see? I’ve got a capital-C Conservative, I mean what I’m saying.”

Which, sadly, would prove that he has sold his soul. Even if McCain doesn’t take Cantor himself, any severely neocon running mate will sully his own “maverick” brand. John McCain is where he is because he refused to back down and pander to even his own party when he truly believed in something, and that earned lots of respect from independents and even some Democrats.

There’s no way to get a VP that’s exactly your own views. To a great extent, a running mate you butt heads with is a good thing, because out of disagreement can come greater understanding and thus compromise. I don’t expect Obama to have a VP that’s right with him. However, when McCain’s most media-beloved trait is that he refused to march in lockstep with his party, and then he picks up a guy who did just that, it sends a message that his former refusal to back down has been replaced by a desire to win. Either he’ll stand up to the party or he won’t, and a guy like Cantor hints at the latter.

By the way, isn’t it curious that McCain needs a neocon like Cantor to appeal to the base, but Obama needs someone centrist to appeal to moderates. Why the hell doesn’t the liberal base count for anything? We changed the majority in Congress, dammit!

Listen, I’m no Obama ass-kisser. When he does something stupid, I call him on it. Just recently I found myself a little perplexed at his changing opinion on the Florida and Michigan delegates. But I’m tired of hearing about his “offshore drilling flip-flop”. It ain’t one, and not only that but he brings up a good point.

“My interest is in making sure we’ve got the kind of comprehensive energy policy that can bring down gas prices,” Obama told The Palm Beach Post in Florida on Friday.

“If, in order to get that passed, we have to compromise in terms of a careful, well thought-out drilling strategy that was carefully circumscribed to avoid significant environmental damage — I don’t want to be so rigid that we can’t get something done.”

Listen. There are two reasons offshore drilling is bad, both of which I’ve gone into myself. One is that it’s bad for the environment, the other is that it’s like giving extra booze to an alcoholic when he gets a hangover.

Sometimes it’s the messenger that gives meaning to the message. If a priest says “give me your money”, you’ll likely react differently than if a bum does.

That’s my point here. One thing we know about Barack Obama is that he does not think we can just keep going with oil as long as we want to. He’s not beholden to Big Oil, and this is not the kind of stance he would take because it’ll satisfy our oil greed and give us some instant gratification.

One thing that offshore drilling could certainly do, if environmentally safe, would be to remove our reliance on foreign oil. If we can lower our reliance on oil in general and open up drilling in the United States, it can eliminate foreign oil and make our transition a little smoother by getting our balls out of OPEC’s hand.

Before I’m accused of hypocrisy myself, consider the perceived difference between handing a scalpel to a doctor and handing one to a pissed off child. The instrument hasn’t changed, but don’t you trust one more with it?

Be on the lookout for some changes on the site. They’re on the horizon, hopefully within the next day or so.

I caught a really depressing post on Digby today talking about perceived racism in the Obama and McCain campaigns. The gist of it is that the majority of Americans see John McCain’s various attacks as not at all racist, but Obama’s little comment of how he’ll be attacked because he doesn’t look like the other faces on the dollar bill, is.

Okay, that’s not entirely accurate. There’s no one saying Obama’s comment was “racist” per se, he’s not going after McCain for being a white guy or saying he should be president because white guys are bad and he’s black. Rather, Obama is now “playing the race card.” That’s a phrase that immediately makes me want to punch people along with “Adam and Steve” and “latte-drinking liberal.”

To get an idea of what “playing the race card” means to most people, hop over to Ye Old Google. I wanted a good image to go with this article, so I searched for “race card” in the Google Image index. The result? A whole lot of snarky images involving blacks, usually Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

When most refer to the race card, what they’re saying is that someone has claimed that they are the victim of racism when in fact they aren’t in an attempt to soil the image of their opponent. It’s been cited all over the place from the OJ trial to Cynthia McKinney; any time racism enters the debate by the “victim” completely without merit. It’s a valid criticism.

Unfortunately we’ve gotten to the point where it’s impossible to even discuss the possibility of racially-motivated actions without “the race card” accusation flying out like a knee-jerk reflex.

Obama’s comment was entirely apt. FOX famously went racial twice with the huge “controversy” over the “terrorist fist bump,” and let’s not forget the famous “baby mama” chyron when showing Michelle. He’s consistently been demonized for his “difference” from Americans, be it his color or his upbringing (remember the madrassa bullshit?).

He’s been race-baited for months now, with pundits claiming at times that he’s not REALLY black, Democrats only like him because he’s got the color but not, I guess, the attitude. It’s been said for a long time now that the only reason Obama got the support he did was due to his race, that if he was a white dude he’d never have gotten noticed. Then, suddenly, when Obama rightfully points out, incredibly tactfully, that they’re going after him for (among other things) not looking like other Presidents, suddenly he’s “playing the race card”.

This is a painfully common tactic on the right. Bait the opponent over a trait for a while without ever coming out and saying it, and then immediately accuse him of bringing that issue into play for political purposes. The way they claim it, it’s the liberals that are racists for bringing it up, they’re not doing it. They’re actually more enlightened than we are, not thinking race at all. That was the premise behind Limbaugh’s whole ‘Barack the Magic Negro’ tirade. Liberals are racists, Limbaugh and his dittoheads are actually the colorblind people, far more racially progressive than the rest of us. Then when someone calls them on it, they’re “playing the race card.”

It’s important to remember that racism is frequently claimed when it wasn’t really used. When a cop arrests someone, even if the guy’s black it doesn’t mean racism was involved. You see it now and again even when the guy’s guilty. Same with media coverage of sports scandals. No, Kobe, it wasn’t because you’re black. It’s because it’s a scandal. Same to you, Michael Vick.

Here, though, no race card was played. Racism was involved. We’re going to see a lot of this the closer we get to the election. It’s dishonest and frankly it’s disgusting, but it’s not going to end soon. The important thing to remember is that, no matter how much Republicans bleat otherwise, they have indeed brought race into the race. Obama has every right to call ‘em on it, and it’s actually a great testament to his character that he’s only mentioned it offhandedly instead of turning it into the focal point of an ad campaign.

This is what happens when you have a politician that is beholden to the religious right. If you can find any other justification for this archaic definition of “abortion” that Bush is hocking, I’d like to know.

The confidential draft [of the document from the Department of Health and Human Services], obtained by CNN, defines “abortion” as any prescription of drugs and any procedures that terminates a human life between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.

Okay? You got that? Before implantation. That means anything beyond a condom. If you thought the furor over the morning after pill was something, just wait until this shit hits the fan.

Okay this is more than a little peculiar. The “what do we do with the Michigan and Florida delegates” question has been causing headaches for the Democrats, and the famed “give ‘em half” compromise seemed like a halfway decent solution. Now, though, Obama’s decided that they deserve full votes.

Obama sent a letter Sunday to the party’s credentials committee, asking members to reinstate the delegates’ voting rights when the committee meets at the start of the convention in Denver.

…

“I believe party unity calls for the delegates from Florida and Michigan to be able to participate fully alongside the delegates from the other states and territories,” Obama said in the letter.

As a political stunt, it’s pretty transparent. The last bastion of Hillary supporters are screaming that without all delegates having the full vote, Obama isn’t he real nominee. If he gives ‘em the vote, then they can’t claim he’s illegitimate or anything.

Still, it seems peculiar that he’d wait until he’s got the nomination pretty much locked to take that step. You can bet it’s going to cause some friction, and I’m almost positive McCain is going to pounce on it, saying Obama only wanted them to have a full vote after he already had it won. Wait for words like “opportunist” and “flip flop” to come around.

In many ways, American foreign policy, particularly as it relates to the “War on Terror,” can be characterized by its refusal to attempt to understand our enemies.

There’s a good reason for this, actually. The driving narrative of the last eight years has been that the United States is the beacon of hope, the representative of all that is good and pure in the world, and our enemies are ham-fisted evildoers who simply like to watch free societies collapse. Many people have bought heart and soul into this line, and if we were to actually take a look at the effect our actions in the past may have had in shaping our present, that story has a great chance of falling apart.

Iran is shaping up to be President Bush’s last hurrah in trying to be the next FDR or Churchill and prove to the world that he’s a tireless crusader of the torch of democracy. North Korea as a node on our Axis of Evil has really faded away since we’ve decided to do deals with them, and we’re already in Iraq, so now it’s Iran’s turn. The way we’ve been fed it, the nation is either a bunch of nice people led by a maniac who wants to nuke Israel and the US or they all want to. Either way, the idea is that they’re evil and hate America and we’d better do something about it.

I’m not sure if the lack of historical perspective is intentional or if no one involved in the fist-pumping is aware of events that happened before Bush was elected. I’d call it revising history, but “erasing” might be a more accurate way of phrasing it.

Let’s go back a ways and remind ourselves that the very first injection of the United States into the affairs of Persia was the 1953 CIA-backed coup that placed the Shah into power. This was not a minor event. The United States felt that it needed more control in the petroleum exportation of a Middle Eastern nation and, quite literally, stuck their own guy in control to make it happen.

One of the remarkable things about us is that we’ve not had a single revolution or overthrow of any kind since the nation was formed. But try and think what it would be like if the Chinese embassy orchestrated a revolt that stormed the White House and put a pro-China dictator in place. No matter how much you might dislike Bush, or how great the new guy would be, the fact that another country stuck their nose into our business probably wouldn’t sit well.

It didn’t help that the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi immediately dismantled what freedoms Iranians enjoyed and turned himself into a dictator. He held his post until the 1979 revolution, giving you an idea of how willing he was to let the people decide.

That was the United States’ very first foray into Iranian affairs. A CIA-backed coup that took out an elected official (granted, not elected by the citizens at large) and replaced him with a rather ruthless dictator that stripped away as much of the country’s liberties as he could. But hey, at least he was friendly with the United States.

We look now at the state of Iran, with its clerics and Ayatollahs, as a kind of cruel theocracy that would never have the support of the citizens, but that’s still more ignorance of Iran’s history. The infamous Ass-a-Hole-a Ayatollah, Ruhollah Khomeini, came into power not because he, like the United States’ pet Shah, snuck in and overthrew the current government against the nation’s wishes. Instead, it was a true revolution a la the French, whereby the people wanted the government changed. Granted they put in a theocratic dictator of sorts, giving them only a nominal republic, but the point remains.

Think about that for a moment. The man the United States placed at the head of Iran was so despised that eventually the people revolted. Bush is supremely unpopular in the United States and he’s got a guy championing his causes that could win the election. Imagine just how much we’d have to hate Bush to actually march to Washington and overthrow the government.

One hostage crisis later and now suddenly the United States is mad at Iran. This was pretty convenient since Iran was also dealing with a war with Iraq. We tend to think of our current kerfuffle as the 2nd Gulf War, but it’s more like the fifth depending on how you count. And yes, the United States got involved.

Specifically, we backed Iraq. It’s probably not hard to figure out why. Iran’s sitting on huge reserves of oil and they had the audacity to go and overthrow the dictator we foisted upon them. So the US gave Iraq arms, intelligence, money, the works. Basically threw our all behind it, to the point that Reagan proclaimed that the United States could not “afford” for Iraq to lose to Iran.

That’s US involvement with Iran #2.

So zap forward an administration and in 1995 the United States had some growing trade relations with Iran. That all came to a rather sudden end when President Clinton decided to implement a complete trade embargo against Iran to punish them for supporting terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah. Actually, the more bizarre part is something that should sound familiar: “American intelligence agencies are convinced that Iran, which sits on more energy resources than its civilian economy will ever need, is pursuing reactor and other nuclear technologies from Russia and China to develop atomic weapons.” Sounds a bit familiar to me.

Years went by without any real new developments, until the towers fell and President Bush decided it was high time to go on a crusade and/or jihad against every Middle Eastern country we weren’t strong allies with (meaning although 15 of the 19 hijackers came from there and got their funding from ‘em, Saudi Arabia was off-limits). Iran became an easy target since the United States had a rather noticeable lack of friendly relations with them, so that got us our famous “Axis of Evil” speech, listing off Iran along with North Korea and the now-invaded Iraq.

Which brings us to the present day. If you add up what has happened between the United States and Iran, you’ll have the following:

• Led a coup to overthrow an elected leader and put in a dictator.
• Funded and armed their enemy during a war.
• Imposed a complete trade ban due to ties with terrorists and nuclear aspirations.
• Called them a part of the “Axis of Evil” at a time when we were invading their neighbors on the east and west.

Is it any wonder why Iran is a little less than embracing of the US? Imagine if you will that China had overthrown Bush, then after we tossed out their guy and put another in, they funded and armed Iraq during the Persian Gulf and then invaded Mexico and Canada while calling us a bunch of terrorists. Do you really think Washington would try and play ball with Beijing?

Let me save you time: hell no. Even if Bush had a 1% approval rating (with that 1% being his family and friends) and we vehemently disagreed with everything he stands for, there is no way we wouldn’t be flooding the streets calling for Hu Jintao’s head on a pike.

This isn’t an attempt to make Iran look like the cute and innocent victims here, but it’s a reminder that, much as Sean Hannity would argue it, America’s conduct can have repercussions. Toss out words like “fault” and “deserve” for these situations, that’s the child’s way of looking at foreign policy. A child who refuses to listen when his dad says not to tug on the dog’s tail doesn’t deserve to have his face chomped on, but it’s a reality that had he listened, it wouldn’t have happened.

There’s this perpetual “because we’re America” attitude where people think that the US can do whatever the hell it wants and other countries will somehow let it slide simply by virtue of the US being the US. They think that since we’re the torchbearers of freedom and democracy, the world will just understand that all of our actions are for good so no one will get mad even when our actions are to the detriment of someone’s country. After all, we’re America, we wouldn’t have done it without a good reason.

Our legacy with Iran is not one of friendship and mutual respect spoiled because a handful of despots decided to fund terrorism and force us to reluctantly take action. The United States has, frankly, screwed over Iran far more than they ever did us, and it’s no surprise that their leaders are kinda pissed off and don’t feel like playing nice now. It might be a good idea to learn the lessons of history to figure out both how to solve the current problem and prevent new ones from forming.

And no, that isn’t “sympathizing with our enemies” or “blaming America”. It’s understanding simple cause and effect relations. Without being able to do something that elementary, it’s hard to see how these people plan on “winning” the “War on Terror”.

At the risk of pointing out something completely obvious, you’re reading this on a computer, or some other computerized device (PDA, cell phone, wherever you might find an RSS reader or a web browser). While you’re reading this, hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people across the world are also on their computers, or using their various gadgets to access the Internet. It’s become a staple of our civilization, and a vital part of this country’s economy and culture.

And John McCain has no idea how to use it.

Over half a year after admitting that he doesn’t know how to use a computer, McCain has learned very little about the device that’s become an absolute necessity in America. He says he “understands the importance of the computer,” and that he’s “learning more and more every day.” He reads his email… when his staff shows it to him. He now uses a computer “almost every day,” and goes to “various web sites,” including his own (he didn’t specify his Senate web site or his campaign web site) and “the various media.”

I apologize for the constant use of quotes, but I feel the need to be specific when talking about his claims. It’s like describing my grandfather learning to go online.

That’s a start, and I’ll give him a little credit for it. Unfortunately, he has a long, long way to go. He still doesn’t email, he’s the only individual among his Senate staff and his wife that doesn’t have a Blackberry (which, at this point, has become a vital gadget for any job that requires a lot of management and communication), and he “isn’t a tech freak,” a status that apparantly comes with text messaging people. He says he prefers to use the telephone, and part of me is vaguely sure he uses either a rotary phone or has his own operator with an old-timey switchboard.

His latest anti-tech offense is a slap in the face of bloggers and online journalists of all stripes. When discussing online campaign coverage, McCain’s campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb denigrated the New York Times. He compared the newspaper’s editors to bloggers “sitting at home in his mother’s basement and ranting into the ether between games of Dungeons & Dragons.”

The New York Times, along with every other major print publication currently on the market, has some form of blog, whether it’s a network of freelancers or a scratch pad for editors to post content between print issues. If you don’t have a blog, you’re missing out on a massive audience of readers who spend a great deal of time in front of the computer, and rely on the Internet to get their news.

According to a recent study from Pew Research, 55% of all Americans have broadband Internet access. Of those, 47% regularly read their news online, and 15% regularly read personal blogs. If you’re a media outlet and you don’t have a blog, you’re missing out on an obvious and relatively cheap way to expand your audience.

I didn’t take offense at the Dungeons & Dragons jab, mostly because I play regularly. However, it’s pretty easy to be insulted by the implication of the statement, an implication that’s been obselete for several years. According to another Pew Research study (from 2006, so the numbers have probably gone up since it was written), 12 million Americans keep a blog. Of those, 38% are students, 37% have a college degree, and 38% are “knowledge-based professional workers” (white collar) . They’re no longer a minority of geeks and social misfits, tinkering away on their mysterious computer systems, typing in strange and complex digital languages that only computer science majors understand. Anybody can blog and read blogs.

This anti-tech, blog-hating shit might have flown 20 years ago. It might even have been tolerated a decade ago. But the Internet is now a vital part of American life, and computers are in nearly every home. We work on computers, we play on computers, and we get our information from computers. I really don’t like the whole “elitist” insult that has been thrown around, but what else do you call a man who refuses to learn how to adequately use a tool that nearly everyone in the country works with every day in some way, shape, or form?

I don’t expect John McCain to build his own computer. I don’t expect him to learn Linux, or code his own web page, or even make his own blog. I do, however, expect him to get some understanding of computers and the Internet. Stop treating it like some mysterious force of technology that only the learned can use, and really get wrists-deep into e-mail and web browsing. My grandparents know how to use computers that much, and they’re older than McCain is. It’s not hard anymore, and treating it like a complicated enigma is not something I want to see in someone who aspires to be the leader of the most technologically advanced nation on the planet.

- Will