Political Platypus

A Visit from Saint Paul

120
6 months ago
by Logarchism.com in

‘Twas the day ’fore Elec­tion, when all through the House
Not a crea­ture was stir­ring, not even a louse;
The ads had been run, the voices were still,
And the cam­paigns weren’t think­ing of pay­ing the bill.

The vot­ers were lined up in neat lit­tle rows
With IDs in pock­ets and ready to show.
Obama was still Chief, and Biden VP,
Pelosi demoted, Boehner #3.

When over at Log­a­rchism arose such a clat­ter,
I flew to the key­board to add to the nat­ter.
I opened the home­page and saw ’twas Dis­qus
That damnable pro­gram that read­ers all cuss.

(more…)

Who We Are

307
7 months ago
by Logarchism.com in

It seems Mitt Rom­ney has no short­age of ways or days in which he puts his (webbed?) foot in his mouth. In today’s edi­tion, Mother Jones reports that he stated dur­ing a fundraiser that

There are 47 per­cent of the peo­ple who will vote for the pres­i­dent no mat­ter what. All right, there are 47 per­cent who are with him, who are depen­dent upon gov­ern­ment, who believe that they are vic­tims, who believe the gov­ern­ment has a respon­si­bil­ity to care for them, who believe that they are enti­tled to health care, to food, to hous­ing, to you-​​name-​​it. That that’s an enti­tle­ment. And the gov­ern­ment should give it to them. And they will vote for this pres­i­dent no mat­ter what…These are peo­ple who pay no income tax…[M]y job is not to worry about those peo­ple. I’ll never con­vince them they should take per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity and care for their lives.

Appar­ently, a platy­pus such as myself — who pays a sig­nif­i­cant amount in fed­eral income taxes every year and receives no direct pay­ments from the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, yet will vote for Pres­i­dent Obama — does not exist. I have to hand it to our local con­ser­v­a­tive anthro­pol­o­gist, fil­istro, who recently pointed out this meme in the comments.

The sad­dest part of this is how that state­ment wasn’t from Eric Erick­son, or Grover Norquist, or Michele Bach­mann. Those peo­ple are noto­ri­ous for mak­ing out­ra­geous state­ments. But none of them are on the bal­lot in Novem­ber, in no small part because of mak­ing those sorts of state­ments. Rom­neyis on the bal­lot. What does this say about him?

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The Freedom to Be Intolerant

14
1 year ago
by Logarchism.com in

Pauly sees fre­quent com­plaints from con­ser­v­a­tive com­menters on this site: he’s accused of pre­sid­ing over a “left-​​wing echo cham­ber” that airs only a liberal/​progressive/​Socialist world­view. So it is that Pauly won­ders if any of the lib­eral com­menters find this analy­sis offensive:

Rural res­i­dents are forced to become con­ser­v­a­tives and Fas­cists if they’re not that way from the out­set. That state­ment includes small farmhold­ers who typ­i­cally would oth­er­wise embrace a sense of belong­ing and com­mon pur­pose in other set­tings. Put the rural Kansas farmer in charge of pros­per­ity and growth and they’ll turn a sense of com­mu­nity into the Wild West fron­tier faster than you can say Dodge City — not because they’re intol­er­ant, but because their iso­lated rural world becomes the cen­ter of their uni­verse. Things like “free­dom” become so impor­tant to these farm­ers, and then that “free­dom” has to be defended at all costs (we need our guns!) and once defended, indi­vid­u­al­ism has to be aligned with the “vision” of the farm­ing community.

Now that Pauly has thor­oughly offended you, go read this com­men­tary and see how you feel about it.

Strange Day, Indeed

3
1 year ago
by Logarchism.com in

Pauly is often baf­fled by the behav­ior of Homo sapi­ens. Take Colum­bus Day, for exam­ple. Here we have peo­ple in the United States, cel­e­brat­ing an Ital­ian who was paid by the Spaniards for “dis­cov­er­ing” the Caribbean islands. He never set foot on any of the land that would encom­pass the fifty United States. What on earth, then, does this day have to do with the United States?

Nonethe­less, in 1892, Pres­i­dent Ben­jamin Har­ri­son declared Octo­ber 12, 1892 to be Colum­bus Day, in honor of the 400th anniver­sary of Christo­pher Colum­bus land­ing on a small island north­east of Cuba. Four­teen years later, it became an offi­cial state hol­i­day in Col­orado. It finally became a fed­eral hol­i­day in 1937.

That few peo­ple get the day off is per­haps appro­pri­ate, given how tan­gen­tial the day’s impor­tance is with respect to the his­tory of the United States. That any­one in the US gets the day off at all, though, is a mys­tery to Pauly.

Are You Smarter than a College Professor?

18
1 year ago
by Logarchism.com in

For all you polit­i­cal and cit­i­zen­ship wonks out there (and if you’re not one of those, why are you read­ing this?), our pet polit­i­cal platy­pus has dis­cov­ered a quiz for you to take, enjoy, and discuss.

Pauly did rather well — but then, Pauly is a polit­i­cal ani­mal. Some of the ques­tions are easy, some are hard. Many are mat­ters of fact, and a few are mat­ters of his­tory. Per­haps some could be argued as opin­ions rather than objec­tive real­ity. We could argue about them end­lessly (and you’re invited to!)

Here is the quiz. Go on. You know you want to!

From the web­site, spon­sored by the Inter­col­le­giate Stud­ies Insti­tute:

The aver­age score for all 2,508 Amer­i­cans tak­ing the fol­low­ing test was 49%; col­lege edu­ca­tors scored 55%. Can you do better?

Here’s your chance to find out if you know more than they do!

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Science, Cockroaches and Bad Romance

0
1 year ago
by Logarchism.com in

Pauly has quite an eye for the ladies. As you know, he adores Sarah Palin…but he’s also a huge fan of Lady Gaga. After all, what platy­pus wouldn’t love a girl who wears a meat dress to an offi­cial func­tion? Though Pauly loy­ally main­tains that Sarah Palin, that famous hunter, car­ni­vore, and pur­veyor of red meat, would also have not hes­i­tated to wear a meat dress in pub­lic if she’d thought of it first and real­ized how much pub­lic­ity it would generate.

So Pauly was delighted to read that Lady Gaga is help­ing sci­ence by assist­ing in a study of move­ment that con­cen­trates on the move­ment pat­terns of cock­roaches. This story appeals to Pauly on a num­ber of lev­els. First of all, he actu­ally con­sid­ers cock­roaches quite a tasty treat if he’s able to catch them. Sec­ondly, the idea of roaches rock­ing tire­lessly to “Bad Romance” is just so cute. And finally, he really likes that linked image of Lady Gaga in fish­net tights.

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