THIS MODERN WORLD

At the end of the day, I don’t care much about where someone falls on the arbitrary liberal/conservative spectrum as long as they speak their heart, but Joe Lieberman is that rare breed of politician that’s so inept at governing that he sides with his supposed political opposition at the exact wrong times. It’s quite an accomplishment that in a party as insecure and lost in the woods as the Democrats, Lieberman stands out as the most politically tone-deaf person in Washington D.C. The latest evidence for Joe’s incompetence is this description he gave NPR’s Day to Day of the “lobbying reform” bill he co-sponsored with John McCain :

“This is a full disclosure bill. It requires the kind of disclosure that if Abramoff had been forced to do he might well have been indicted in the court of public opinion before he was indicted in a court of law and pled guilty.”

That’s right. Joementum is so damned stupid that his idea of tough reform is a law that would embarrass Jack Abramoff. Hey Joe, tell me exactly how the “court of public opinion” is supposed to matter to a guy who doesn’t answer to the general public?

Now, the two or three of you left who want to play devil’s advocate might point out that this public shame might have electoral consequences for anyone associated with someone found guilty in the “court of public opinion”, but that overlooks the fact that voters are incapable of connecting dots and have a hard time remembering anything that happened over a month ago. When Dick Cheney is giving exclusive interviews to racist talk show hosts and the President is getting pre-war counseling from the faux-Reverend who blamed 9/11 on gay people, it’s pretty obvious that this court of public opinion has a real problem with repeat offenders.

More importantly, however, is if you want to follow Joementum’s thinking to its logical conclusion, it just emphasizes the fact that this scandal isn’t the fault of lobbyists, but the criminal public servants who are selling their services to the highest bidder. I’m sure John McCain and Joe Lieberman like to pat themselves on the back for being mavericks who are willing to reach across the aisle to do the right thing, but if they can’t see a problem this obvious and have the guts to point the finger at their crooked colleagues, then they’re just as cowardly as the bribe-takers whose crimes they’re helping cover up.

…suggested by a reader: report every single UCLA professor in every department, for the most absurd and imaginary offenses possible. Innundate the junior McCarthyites with really stupid reports. And be sure to demand your hundred bucks, every time.

Somebody out there really needs to organize this.

From the LA Times:

A fledgling alumni group headed by a former campus Republican leader is offering students payments of up to $100 per class to provide information on instructors who are “abusive, one-sided or off-topic” in advocating political ideologies.

The year-old Bruin Alumni Assn. says its “Exposing UCLA’s Radical Professors” initiative takes aim at faculty “actively proselytizing their extreme views in the classroom, whether or not the commentary is relevant to the class topic.” Although the group says it is concerned about radical professors of any political stripe, it has named an initial “Dirty 30” of teachers it identifies with left-wing or liberal causes.

Some of the instructors mentioned accuse the association of conducting a witch hunt that threatens to harm the teaching atmosphere, and at least one of the group’s advisory board members has resigned because he considers the bounty offers inappropriate. The university said it will warn the association that selling copies of professors’ lectures would violate campus rules and raise copyright issues.

The Bruin Alumni Assn. is headed by Andrew Jones, a 24-year-old who graduated in June 2003 and was chairman of UCLA’s Bruin Republicans student group. He said his organization, which is registered with the state as a nonprofit, does not charge dues and has no official members, but has raised a total of $22,000 from 100 donors. Jones said the biggest contribution to the group, $5,000, came from a foundation endowed by Arthur N. Rupe, 88, a Santa Barbara resident and former Los Angeles record producer.

Jones’ group is following in the footsteps of various conservative groups that have taken steps, including monitoring professors, to counter what they regard as an overwhelming leftist tilt at elite colleges and universities around the country. He said many of these efforts, however, have done a poor job of documenting their claims. As a result, Jones said, the Bruin Alumni Assn. is offering to pay students for tapes and notes from classes.

24-year-old Republican Andrew Jones is clearly looking for a war to fight. As luck would have it, there’s a big one going on in Iraq right now. Somebody should point him toward the local enlistment office.

On a related note, Hannity — always looking for somebody new to hassle — has been encouraging his listeners to tape their professors lately as well. It’s a disturbing trend, but I think that it can be easily dealt with — if you’re a student and you see one of your peers trying to covertly tape your professor, just make sure the professor knows about it.

… a reader points out that many students tape their classes instead of taking notes. I guess the key word here is ‘covertly’. But hell, I’m just riffing here. It just seems like there ought to be an easy way to push back on this crap.

It has the look of something that could easily turn out to be a hoax, and a Google search on “Manfred Schedlovski” returns nothing but references back to this one article –but I choose to believe this anyway:

New research suggests hot sex can cure the common cold.

Swiss scientist Manfred Schedlovski claims his experiments show that regular love-making increases the amount of phagocyte cells, which boost the body’s immune system and fight the microbes that cause colds.

He claims the number of phagocytes – which attack alien antibodies, causing them to self-destruct – significantly increases during sexual intercourse.

And according to Schedlovski’s research, the number of phagocyte cells can even double after an orgasm, allowing alien microbes to be detected and destroyed more quickly.

Immunologist Peter Schleicher is among scientists to support Schedlovski’s theory.

He told Bild am Sonntag newspaper: “Not only does sex heal our body, it also sustains its immune system.”

I’m all about the healthy living.

Having dealt with a relentless stream of feedback from deranged right wingers since back before most people had ever heard of this thing called the internet, I’ve always been ambivalent at best about opening this site up to comments. Still, a lot of you non-deranged-right-wing types keep bringing the possibility up. I remain of two minds — my suspicion is that it could easily be way more trouble than it’s worth, that riding herd on trolls and spam and the rest of it might just end up being one more tedious chore in my life, serving only to increase the psychic weight of this website, which already feels like an anchor around my neck a lot of the time.

Nonetheless, I guess it’s time for a little experiment. So I’m going to open up a comments thread for this post only, to see what you all think. Convince me I’m wrong. Or right. Or whatever. Go to town.

… wow, that’s quite the outpouring of responses, and I thank you. I’ll need to take some time to digest it all. Not this morning, unfortunately — I’ve got a somewhat tight deadline today. But I want to leave this thread open a bit longer here and throw out a specific question. At least one commenter suggests that allowing comments increases traffic, which brings us to the eternal mystery of site stats. According to Site Meter, which seems to be pretty much the general standard to which we all synchronize, this site seems to hold steady at about 12,000-15,000 visits a day (with a sharp dropoff on the weekends, which leads me to suspect that many of you naughty boys and girls are reading this site during the workweek when you’re supposed to be doing something else entirely.) So — do comments really increase traffic, and if so why? I mean, do you really get more new readers, or do you just get the same readers checking in more times throughout the day? If Blog X, with comments, has 50,000 readers a day, does it really have 50,000 unique readers a day, or 25,000 readers checking in twice a day? Or 5,000 readers checking in ten times a day to see what’s being said in the comments section? (Or one really obsessive reader checking in 50,000 times a day?) A blogger with much higher traffic than mine once admitted to me, somewhat furtively, that any visitor who waits at least an hour between visits counts as a new unique visitor. Any tech-savvy types out there who can confirm or deny or elaborate?

Update — closing comments now. I think there’s plenty of food for thought for now. Thanks all.