"I'm struck by how Clinton went straight for the hawkish view of ISIS (they're just a bunch of nihilistic, backward people who crave power)..."

"...and passed up the opportunity to urge us to have a greater understanding of the "root causes" of terrorism," writes my son John, after last night's debate. Clinton was asked whether we need to "understand" ISIS:

This is a politically tricky question, but she gives a clever response: she first says it's "very difficult to put ourselves in their shoes," but then proceeds to do just that by describing ISIS's worldview as one of "nihilism," "a lust for power," and "rejection of modernity and human rights....

Clinton sounded much like the conservative Charles Krauthammer, writing in the month after the September 11 attacks:

It turns out that the enemy does have recognizable analogues in the Western experience. He is, as President Bush averred in his address to the nation, heir to the malignant ideologies of the 20th century. In its nihilism [the same word used by Clinton], its will to power [similar to the "lust for power" mentioned by Clinton], its celebration of blood and death, its craving for the cleansing purity that comes only from eradicating life and culture, radical Islam is heir, above all, to Nazism. The destruction of the World Trade Center was meant not only to wreak terror. Like the smashing of the Bamiyan Buddhas [in Afghanistan earlier in 2001], it was meant to obliterate greatness and beauty, elegance and grace. These artifacts represented civilization embodied in stone or steel. They had to be destroyed [that would be an example of the "rejection of modernity," as Clinton put it].

A Paris prayer.

(Photo taken, 10 years ago, by my son John, at the Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.)

This country "was made possible by philosophy."

An apt observation that came up in Jaltcoh's live-blog of last night's debate:

9:11 — Marco Rubio raises the specter of robots replacing workers: "If you raise the minimum wage, you're going to make people more expensive than a machine." He adds: "Welders make more money than philosophers. We need more welders and less philosophers!" [VIDEO.] Alex Knepper responds:

The sentiment he's expressing here is precisely what's wrong with our nation's attitude toward education. Our politicians think the meaning and purpose of education is to make money. If something doesn't have an immediate economic purpose, it's treated as useless, even offensive. The irony that Rubio will never grasp is that this exceptional country — the country that made his life possible, and made it possible for the son of a maid and a bartender to run for president — was made possible by philosophy.

That's rather true. My mind went elsewhere. I heard "We need more welders and less philosophers!" and said: "fewer philosophers." And, after a good night's sleep, my morning thought was: Why is it either/or? Welding is a great job for a philosopher.

ADDED: Jaltcoh corrected the Rubio quote and I've corrected my quote of Jaltcoh.

"I'm torn on how this video affects my view of Jeb Bush. On the one hand, he didn't remember the name of the Back to the Future trilogy..."

"... but on the other hand, at least he's apparently seen it (and has taken Doc's warnings seriously)."

Writes my son John, linking to the video where Jeb Bush picks out an email of his to answer, one where he's asked whether, if he could go back in time, would he kill baby Hitler, and Jeb says, "Hell, yeah, I would" and — "Even if he was cute?" — "Ya gotta step up."

"Good. You just can't run for president based on a fantasy that there's only one issue that matters."

"In the real world, there's no way around the fact that the president has to deal with multiple issues every day, and the people won't accept a president who doesn't take the whole job seriously."

Says my son John, commenting on the news that Lawrence Lessig has dropped out of the presidential race. The reason Lessig gives is not, however, that people won't accept a candidate with a single-issue campaign, but that he never became well-known enough, and he blames the Democratic Party for excluding him from the debates.

But I wouldn't criticize the Party for failing to open up the debates for the purpose of helping advocates of single issues. And my reason is precisely what John is talking about: I don't take this person seriously as a real candidate.

"Are you a comic-book version of a moderator?"

From my son John's live-blog of last night's debate:

8:26 — Moderator John Harwood lists what he apparently considers to be some of Trump's more ridiculous proposals, including that he'd "make Americans better off because your greatness would replace the stupidity and incompetence of others." Trump agrees with that last point: "Right!" Then Harwood asks if this is "a comic-book version of a presidential campaign." Trump says: "It's not a comic book, and it's not a very nicely asked question." [VIDEO.]...

9:39 — Rubio is asked about an analysis by the (conservative) Tax Foundation, which said his tax plan saves twice as much for people at the high end than the low end. Rubio denies it and says the opposite. [Added later:] On Twitter, Harwood had said he was "CORRECTING" his "earlier tweet" about the Tax Foundation's analysis of Rubio's tax plan. Harwood's correction said: "Tax Foundation says Rubio benefits lowest 10% proportionally more (55.9) than top 1% (27.9%)." Then Harwood asked Rubio a question that said the opposite of that correction, and when Rubio correctly pointed out that Harwood's incorrect post had to be corrected, Harwood flatly denied it! I asked Harwood on Twitter:

Are you a comic-book version of a moderator?

I took a screen shot:



ADDED: Here's the relevant material from the debate transcript:
Click for more »

Comedian wins the presidential election by a landslide...

... in Guatemala.

Cue the ready-made jokes about American elections won by comedians. 

ADDED: My son's take:

A celebrity who's a "household name" in Guatemala and used to have a TV show, but has never held office, and was initially considered a long-shot contender who didn't offer enough policy specifics to back up his conservative platform, went on to shock many people by winning the presidential election in the face of "widespread discontent with Guatemala's political class." Fortunately, that could never happen here . . .

"In the Benghazi hearing yesterday, Rep. Tammy Duckworth suggested that 'a 35-year-old law' which was 'passed in 1990' should be reconsidered."

"This came as a surprise to me, a 34-year-old born in 1981."

Writes my son John, at Facebook.

Best comment: "Flux capacitors."

"I just saw the whole Back to the Future trilogy in the theater."

My son John blogs:

Well, that was fun. The Back to the Future movies are probably better enjoyed one at a time than back to back....

The first and the second each end with a to-be-continued cliffhanger which is supposed to be fun because you have to wait.

I never once felt like leaving and finishing the rest some other time by watching the DVDs I have at home. It was the most enthusiastic movie audience I've ever been part of — people applauded and hooted not only during various climactic moments, but also when the time machine and Doc first appeared, the first time one of the characters said the words "back to the future," and of course, when Doc said "October 21, 2015."

There are some live-theater experiences that cannot be had at home.

At one point, Back to the Future Part III stopped in the middle... Audience members called out things like: "You've disrupted the space-time continuum!" "Not enough jigowatts!"

I love stuff like that... much as I hate the malfunctions. I was once in some little theater in Greenwich Village that was showing the Marlon Brando movie "The Fugitive Kind" — "Val Xavier, a drifter of obscure origins arrives at a small town and... is pursued by Carol Cutere..." Marlon and Carol/Joanne Woodward are tooling along in a sportscar and she's saying: "I'm just a lewd vagrant, and I'm gonna show 'em, and show 'em all, just how lewd a lewd vagrant can be, when she puts her whole heart into it, the way I do mine," and then she suddenly points off screen and says: "Hey, turn off here." Immediately, the film malfunctions and shuts down, as if the projectionist had taken "Hey, turn off here" as an order. I've never been simultaneously so amazed and annoyed.

"For those who are going to celebrate Back to the Future day tomorrow (I'm planning to watch the whole trilogy in the theater)..."

"... here's an exhaustive list of parallels between the three movies," says my son John (with whom I watched all 3 "Back to the Future" movies many times).

"As far as I can tell, the new 'affirmative consent' paradigm allows for a very realistic possibility of two adults raping each other at the same time..."

"... which makes a mockery of the whole concept of rape. And can't people have consensual sex even if they aren't fluent in the same language? And didn't people have consensual sex before the advent of language itself? And don't nonhuman animals have consensual sex without using language? Tying consent to 'explicit permission' seems like the kind of simplistic mistake that might be made by a first-year law student, who should realize upon further reflection that the law needs to be more accommodating of the diversity of real-world situations."

Writes John.

This is the Democratic candidates debate post.

Please comment here. I'm not going to be live-blogging, but I'll be commenting later. I'm putting up this post in case you're looking for a place to talk about it. Some people say no one's going to want to watch this thing, but I see that Donald Trump is going to live-tweet it, so whatever ratings they get, Trump will be saying that he's the cause. You've got to watch to enjoy his tweets.

Everybody's talking about my doing twitter during the likely very boring debate tonight. @realDonaldTrump #DemDebate

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 13, 2015

UPDATE: Did you enjoy the debate? I haven't yet read any of your comments or watched the debate. It's 10:16 Central Time here in Wisconsin and we just had an hour long drive back from Spring Green where we saw an amazing play, "An Iliad." Meade drove, and once we got back within internet range, I went to my son John's blog and read his live blog of the debate. That was efficient and entertaining. I was most amused by:

10:34 – Cooper says he's glad to see all of the candidates "back" after the commercial break, and says he's particularly glad to see Clinton back. Clinton, seeming out of breath, says: "You know, it does take me a little longer!"

UPDATE 2: I also read Meade some of Trump's tweets. This one struck me:

"@Jtrink97: @Hell0ThereLydia @realDonaldTrump his commentary is making an otherwise shitty night outstanding" Thanks.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 14, 2015

He retweeted "shitty"!

"It's absurd to say [Ben Carson is] 'blaming the victims.'"

"He's either right or wrong about what a victim should do in such a situation. That depends only on whether his strategy would actually be effective, not whether he's 'blaming the victims.'"

The blaming-the-victims concept has grown ridiculously beyond its proper place.

We need to stand up and not be victims of the fear of being accused of blaming the victims. It's one thing to be sympathetic to people who have been victimized and not to confront these individuals with our hindsight-assisted advice about what they could have done to avoid injury. It's quite another to stifle creative thinking about what we can do in emergencies that might arise in the future.

"This multiplication and particularization of criminal behavior creates increasing complexity without commensurate benefit."

Well played, Jerry Brown! (Via Jaltcoh.)

Obama bombed a hospital.

Where is the outrage?

ADDED: At the link, which goes to my son John's Facebook page, I said: "Imagine if Bush had done this." And John said: "We don't have to imagine..." and linked to a NYT article from 2008: "Evidence Points to Civilian Toll in Afghan Raid."

From Amy Davidson at The New Yorker: "Five Questions About the Bombing of a Hospital in Kunduz":

What did the Afghan forces want us to bomb? This is the fundamental issue: Was the hospital the target, or was the target something or someone “in the vicinity”?...

Why didn’t the bombing stop? It went on for an hour, in multiple waves, although [Doctors Without Borders, which runs the hospital] has said that it immediately called contacts in Afghanistan, Washington, D.C., and wherever else it could think of—it is used to operating in war zones, and has the phone numbers for calls like that—to try to get the attack stopped. Who was on the other end of the line? Did those interlocutors make further calls, to Afghans or Americans? General Campbell, asked by reporters if the Pentagon knew about the calls, said that it was a question for investigators. But, in this instance, the matter of communications gets to questions larger than logistics, such as... Do we understand our allies’ motives and priorities in Afghanistan?

ALSO: My phrase "Where is the outrage?" sounds like a stock phrase with a particular reference point, but what? Meade says it's from the 1996 presidential campaign. Bob Dole said it:

Sounding like a crusader, Bob Dole implored his audiences today to ''rise up'' against the nation's news organizations, which he said were protecting the Clinton Administration, and be outraged that President Clinton had, in Mr. Dole's words, violated the public trust....

Listing a string of questionable practices by the Administration, including accepting what he called laundered cash from foreigners and obtaining confidential F.B.I. files, Mr. Dole demanded repeatedly in Houston earlier in the day, ''Where is the outrage?''

Appearing at downtown performing arts center, where he stood before a giant mural depicting the glory days of the Lone Star State, Mr. Dole continued: ''Can you imagine former President Bush doing one of those things? No! And you never imagine Bob Dole doing one of those things either. So where's the outrage? Where's the outrage? When will the voters start to focus?''