How Dangerous is Stupid?

Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) in their words, not mine:

“He’s like Bush only without the brains,” cracked one former Republican governor who knows Perry, repeating a joke that has made the rounds.

Interesting that the intelligence question is making the rounds, from Politico to Fox News, the latter of which is happy to leave the question open as not particularly germane to the Presidency. After all, they are dedicated to removing President Obama from office, and everyone know he's smart. Or don't they:

On his program tonight, Sean Hannity tried to turn the tables on those who would question Perry, asking his panel whether the media were missing the point that President Obama was the stupid one.

Jackboot Hannity at it again. Somebody give that fascist a uniform.

The fact is that the last time America leaned towards on quote-unquote common sense over intelligence in electing a President, the winner was George W. Bush and the loser was the United States, with ruinous tax cuts, a collapsed economy and over $1.242 trillion in war costs, let alone potentially hundreds of billions in waste and fraud.

I hate to smear the entire rightwing in this country, but as they say on Fox News when confronted with the truth, "You're confusing our viewers."

Ignorance is death.

No Matrix This Year

Is it wrong to brag about one of our guys, a nuclear physicist and Democratic Congressperson from New Jersey, Rep. Rush Holt, is not only smarter than a fifth grader, not only smarter than Jeopardy champ Ken Jennings, he's smarter than an IBM supercomputer named Watson:

Holt — who was a five-time Jeopardy! winner more than 30 years ago and joked midday that Watson was “just a little Atari” when he made his game-show splash – tweeted almost an hour ago about the experience: “I played a full round against @IBMWatson tonight and was proud to hold my own: the final tally was Holt $8,600, Watson $6,200.”

Rep. Rush Holt: keeping us safe from HAL.



(Interestingly enough, the three letters preceding each of I, B, M.)

Schooled

This was even better than his State of the Union Address this week. This is why I voted to elect Barack Hussein Obama as President of the United States of America:

At a moment when the country is as polarized as ever, Mr. Obama traveled to a House Republican retreat on Friday to try to break through the partisan logjam that has helped stall his legislative agenda. What ensued was a lively, robust debate between a president and the opposition party that rarely happens in the scripted world of American politics.

For an hour and 22 minutes, with the cameras rolling, they thrust and parried, confronting each other’s policies and politics while challenging each other to meet in the middle. Intense and vigorous, sometimes even pointed, the discussion nonetheless proved remarkably civil and substantive for a relentlessly bitter era, an airing of issues that both sides often say they need more of.

Let's just say it right here. Can anyone, anyone imagine "President W" ever doing something like this? Or President Cheney? Oh -- because they NEVER DID.

It's impossible to imagine the previous President believably saying he'd even read a proposal from the senior member of the Finance Committee if he was from the other party, as Obama makes clear that he has in the closing minutes of the exchange. In fact, if Bush had been given the one from his own party, it would have been distilled down into memo form, his preferred means of receiving written info. Which means he would be at the mercy of his handlers. Which means a threat to the Republic that simply does not exist under sentient President Obama.

Obama appears to be serious about bipartisan engagement, even taking some of the ideas, but without the typical Democratic urge to collapse and let the GOP have their gleeful way with them. If there is ever going to be a return to a more serious type of politics from the conservative side, of Republicans who actually want to substantively work together with Democrats to do "The Peoples' Business" instead of trying to placate teabaggers, win news cycles and get re-elected, it started here. And if that does come to pass they should thank this President. Profusely.

Here's the whole Q&A section (the opening speech was fine, but this is the juice):



The Republican reaction after this amazing experience of true interaction, alone, with the other party:

MSNBC's Luke Russert, who was on the scene in Baltimore, relayed that a Republican official and other GOP aides had confided to him that allowing the "cameras to roll like that" was a "mistake."

So effective was the president that Fox News cut away from the broadcast 20 minutes before it ended.

Wimps and wusses. Especially that fearful, bullying, dedicated television network of theirs.

As I read in a tweet somewhere out there, where are the GOP going to find somebody foolish enough to run against him in 2012?

And Hell Froze Over

About the off-the-record dinner Obama had on Wednesday night with Conservative columnists:

BAIER: It was at George Will's house, and I saw our friends at "The Politico" called it a dinner and said "The silence of the lamb chops" because no one is talking about it. But what can you say about it?

KRAUTHAMMER: What is interesting is the fact that he would want to do this. And you see that since his election he has kind of reached out to people that may not be ideological allies, to Rick Warren, the pastor who will be at his inaugural, to John McCain, whom he has treated with a lot of dignity and respect, and to a bunch of right wing columnists last night, in part, because I think he is a guy who is intellectually curious and wants to exchange ideas, but also in part he wants to co-opt the vast right wing conspiracy.

And I'm here to tell you that, speaking for myself, he has succeeded. I am brainwashed entirely. I'm in the tank, and I am a believer of hope and change and, above all, audacity.

I'm sorry, but Obama is smarter than we are. If he can get arch-rightwing headcase Charles Krauthammer to say something like this, even if maybe this was in jest?...well, I guess he deserves to be President.

Chill

I'm starting to chafe at the concern trolling I'm hearing from friends who don't like Hillary (I didn't during the Primaries) for Secretary of State (I do). It reminds me of the panic on the left when Obama aced the first debate with John McCain -- some libs thought Obama had blown it by agreeing with his opponent a little much.

It turns out Obama won 365 Electoral Votes. That makes him right about his career more often than any of us.

So whatever this gifted, deceptively powerful leader we're lucky to have poised to lead the country, something he's been doing unofficially since, like, Iowa, i.e. building from the beginning of this year, whatever he wants to do in putting together his staff and his Cabinet, I now assume he's made the right choice -- for his Administration. If something doesn't work, fine, Obama's proven he can shift from flawed tactics back to good, but the reason he can have these strong personalities as his lieutenants is because...he can handle them.

For one thing, for a collection of Harvard and Yale grads who all think they're pretty darned smart, they'll all know who's the smartest person in the room.

After all, you don't get to be the first African-American President, in the year 2009, without being as smart as President-Elect Barack Obama.

Unfolded

Big treat in the Sunday New York Times yesterday, a profile on longstanding Mad magazine hero, Al Jaffee, creator of both "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions" and, the subject of the article, the Mad Fold-In.

At 87 years-old, Jaffee's work still looks and feels fresh. And he does it without computers -- or actual folding:

And Sam Viviano, the art director, seems in awe of Mr. Jaffee’s old-school technique. “I think part of the brilliance of the fold-in is lost on younger generations who are so used to Photoshop and being able to do stuff like that on the computer,” he said. “It’s matching the colors and keeping the sense of what exists at two levels, the original image and the folded-in image. We’ve never actually known anyone else who could do that.”

Mr. Jaffee does have a computer, but its main benefit, he said, has been to make the typographic tricks in the fold-in easier to create. He doesn’t draw with it, which leads to another surprise: the master of the fold-in never actually folds.

“I’m working on a hard, flat board,” he said. “I cannot fold it. That’s why my planning has to be so correct.”

I guess this is where human intelligence, which arguably reached its greatest development (thanks to new technology and tools) in the 20th Century, has since been replaced by digital intelligence. It's the same question as who will handle all those things for which we now depend on computers should an electro-magnetic wave sweep the earth and wipe out all RAM -- who would know how to manually typeset a newspaper, keep accounts in a ledger, operate a telegraph, paste up a comp?

Ah, well, time moves on, and sometime over next ten or fifteen years, we won't have Al Jaffee to fold around anymore. Per the magazine's Art Director:

“I can’t imagine a fold-in done by anyone else but Al,” Mr. Viviano said. “But the fold-in is such a part of Mad that it’s hard to imagine Mad without it.”

It's such a part of Mad that it should go on, even if interpreted by a new regular artist able to settle into the job, a younger talent already skilled on digital image creation and manipulation, hopefully someone with their own point-of-view, suited to our times, but in keeping with the original spirit. Only a crank begrudges the young for their own way of doing things, as long as the ideas are there, and maybe some new ones thanks to the new tools.

At the same time it's important to enjoy something when you have it, enjoy it for what it is, even its temporal nature. Imagine a world without Jack Nicholson (10-15 years?), a world without Mick Jagger (20-40?), a world without any remaining members of The Usual Gang of Idiots? (Maybe Sergio Aragones breaks all the records and goes another 30?)

Good times, good times.

Extra-treaty: the Times presents a wonderfully interactive Fold-In gallery including some greatest hits: anti-Vietnam War protests, Charles Schultz love, and even Jamie-Lynn Spears.

Yep, Al Jaffee is still relevant. Still clever to the point of brilliance.

Not folding yet.