The thing many seem to be forgetting is that above all else, politics is local.

While many are expecting a flood of Democrats to wash away the Republicans in congress, many people seem to be counting chickens that are far from hatched.  Things may be "trending" the Democrats way, but again, when the elections actually happen they'll happen in places where the incumbents typically have been given an incredibly strong chance at holding onto their seats.  Even though the national surveys may say that the public trusts one party more than another, that doesn't typically take into account what will really happen when the vote is really cast.

I'll believe the results when the votes have all been counted, and things have officially been decided.  Until that point, well, there's a lot of political ground that could be covered.

yeh what terp said so well. Add this, that the standard is around 90% of incumbents hold their seats.

The sad thing is that the republicans are really no different than the democrats.  Both have enough scandals in and out of power.  Today we have Rangel and Reid on the democrat side, with Pelosi bringing up the rear.  And of course foley and Ney on the Republican side.  Truth is, there are no more scandals on one side or the other, just on how they are reported.  In the past, the MSM was the master of that.  Today, they are just a player, as is the blogdom.

The stink gets out, just through different means.  But the biggest stench is not from the democrats or republicans.  it is from the MSM.

What everyone in the political arena seems to miss out on most of the time is that many many things move in cycles.  These cycles take place almost regardless of whatever is going on in the world at the moment.  We have 20 year recessions that happen *gasp* every 20 years and it's hard to pin those on any specific policy or party since they happen so regularly.  We also get the same sort of cycles in who's in power.  Back in the 90s, the Democrats had things almost locked up, then they got swept out in a huge push by the Republicans, and look... it looks like the pendulum is going to swing the other way.

These cycles and swings can't really be prevented, all you can do is try to mitigate the impact of them when they do come about.  They aren't some great victory or defeat for any side either, which is what the winning team at the time always wants to sell it as.

The Dems look set to get a good number of seats back this election.  Ok, so they'll have control for a little while, they'll make different (but equally bad) decisions as have been made by the current Congress, and in a few terms, everyone will get sick of them and conveniently forget why they elected the Dems back in, in the first place, and elect the Republicans back.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

Spoken like a true RepubliCON. *yawns*

NOCIRC.org

Faking It
The Sunday Boston Globe, October 18, 1992

From bogus burgers to ersatz Elvises,
simulation is all around us - and that brings
confusion and sometimes manipulation

Over the past two decades, human ingenuity has made it possible to create all kinds of fakes and simulations that are so realistic it is getting hard to distinguish many of them from what they imitate. The process is already so far advanced that, today, a substantial part of our surroundings are made up of objects and images and people that appear to be something other than what they are. There are sugar substitutes and Elvis look alikes; Sy Sperling hairpieces and replicas of great art; soy burgers and false teeth; female impersonators and artificially colored food; lip-sync artists who pretend to be vocalists and television commercials that are disguised to look like talk shows.

In addition to all the things that now simulate the appearance of other things, there are even a few products of human ingenuity that are intended to simulate the appearance of nothing at all, such as contact lenses and Stealth bombers. These stealth-like objects are hidden in their environment, creating the illusion they aren't there.

The sheer number of simulations that now exist and their realism is inevitably changing not only our surroundings, but our psychology and behavior. One of the most important changes can be found in the fact that we now routinely experience simulation confusion, in which we mistake realism for reality and think some of these fakes and simulations really are what they imitate. We experience simulation confusion when we receive an advertisement in the mail that is disguised as an official notice, and, at first, fall for it and assume it is an official notice. And we experience simulation confusion by accident, rather than by other people's design, when we make a telephone call and speak to a voice on the other end of the line, only to realize a moment later that we are talking to a recording on an answering machine that reproduces the qualities of a live voice.

There is no question how so many simulations came to fill our surroundings. They are made possible by technology as well as by human ingenuity, and they are being brought into existence to fill a multitude of needs and desires. In many instances, simulation has become the great substitute: Almost anything we can't get, or can’t get conveniently, from the world as it is, we now seek from fakes and imitations, whether replacing missing talent or missing hair, and the more realistic technology can make the fakes and imitations, the more they satisfy our desires.

Simulations provide the military with new and more effective forms of camouflage. Simulations make it possible for children to collect their own imitation children, in the form of lifelike dolls that imitate an increasing number of human behaviors. And simulations provide all kinds of opportunities for consumers to enjoy the taste of sugar without the calories, to enhance attractiveness through cosmetics, to own replicas of works of art and to experience the fictional characters and situations provided by the imitation realities of television and film. In the kind of economic and personal calculations that go on today, the simulation is often more appealing than the original. For example, homeowners who would like the benefits of a watchdog without the bother now have the option of buying Radar Watchdog, a home-security device that plays barking sounds whenever someone approaches the house. In place of a dog, they get bark masquerading as bite.

As a result of these ingredients - technology, human ingenuity and our own needs and desires - we have created a society in which much of the culture and politics, as well as the economy, is geared toward mass producing, and consuming, simulations. It is a society in which many simulations are intended to be mistaken for the real thing. But it is also a society in which simulations that were never meant to be misleading often end up being mistaken for what they resemble, by accident, thus making simulation confusion, like pollution and traffic jams, another unintended, and toxic, byproduct of technology.

Fortunately, as simulations extend their reach, we are developing new survival skills that help us to unmask illusions. Perhaps the most important of these is the growing body of laws requiring that simulations be labeled or clearly marked to avoid confusion. Imitation and toy guns, for example, were becoming so realistic that they caused a number of problems, including some of their owners being shot by police officers who mistook the imitations for real firearms. In response. there is now a federal law which many officers say still doesn't go far enough - requiring that imitation and toy guns have orange plugs in. the barrels or other visible markings to warn others that they are simulations.

We are also adapting to simulations in other ways. Techniques have been developed to unmask fake photographs, and most of us are learning from experience how to spot telltale flaws in otherwise convincing illusions. One might say that humanity is involved in a game of catch-up: Every year simulations are becoming more convincing, and every year we are getting better at not being fooled.

Our attempts to avoid confusion are also generating a new problem: We increasingly suspect the real and the authentic of being fake. We are thus witnessing one of the many ironies of the age of simulation: Fakes are being mistaken for the real thing and the real thing is in danger of being mistaken for a fake.

But all the issues that surround simulation take on their true significance only when one realizes that advances in transportation and communications make it possible to send simulations around the world. As a result, we are developing a global civilization in which it is now possible to confuse people en masse.

Perhaps the most disturbing example of the use of simulations to confuse millions of people can be found in contemporary political campaigns. As the news media have long recognized, the consultants who manage contemporary campaigns use all the illusions of theater, television and advertising to influence voters. They stage campaign events for the benefit of television news, allowing candidates to play carefully scripted roles, surrounded by props and sets. And they use all the image manipulation and editing techniques of television, to create campaign commercials that portray the candidates and the nation in ways that bear little relation to reality.

One of the more brilliant metaphors for the way simulations are being used to manipulate the public was devised by Stanislaw Lem, a Polish science fiction writer, in his novel The Futurological Congress. Lem portrays a future civilization in which humanity sees an illusory world not through a television screen but directly through its own manipulated experiences. A pharmacological dictatorship is secretly spraying drugs into the air that cause everyone to hallucinate a world of luxury, personal health and modern convenience when, in fact, society, the environment and people's actual physical integrity are in a state of collapse.

In effect, Lem portrays the greatest act of simulation fraud in history, in which humanity has been trapped in a kind of psychological stage set in order to cover up the end of the world. Unable to perceive their true situation, people are helpless to change events. At the end of the novel, the main character, who believes he is marooned in this world of collective madness, comes to his senses and the reader discovers that this future society is, itself, nothing more than the character’s hallucination. (Of course, by the end, the reader has no way to be sure that the character’s discovery that he has been hallucinating isn’t itself a hallucination.) Thus Lem allows the reader to learn firsthand what it is like to be deceived by appearances.

Lem’s novel points to one of the central principles of contemporary life: The ability to manipulate simulations is a form of power and the inability to see through simulations is a form of powerlessness. Those who manipulate appearances, today, exercise power over those who are taken in by appearances.

Fortunately, it is also possible for millions of people to be in on the unmasking of simulations, which is what happens every time television news programs expose the way candidates stage events. The same technology and human ingenuity that are causing simulation confusion are also providing us with ways not to be fooled - for those willing to search for the truth behind appearances.

-------------------------------

HON. RON PAUL OF TEXAS Before the U.S. House of Representatives
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2075686410728803039

Spoken like a true RepubliCON. *yawns*

I wish you'd tell my opponent in the upcoming election that I'm allegedly a "Republican". Maybe he'd vote for me.

Gosh, what would we do without you trolls for our amusement?

The real question here is what do democrats offer? I have asked what the democrats plan is for North Korea, and they can't answer. Democrats are the party of complainers and they think they can win just by "hating Bush". The only advantage the democrats have is the media, and that is slowly losing it's grip.

I think they all should be subject to removal!

It should be a crime to just act the way that the politicians act in all arenas! We all need to vote INDEPENDENT and do away with the big dollar political parties. These parties do not represent anybody in the middle class, and lets face it, they haven't for some time. They are all about special interests and keeping their seats in the house. It is a shame to see the money that is thrown at these parties to run for office. And unfortunately, he who has the most money has the better chance of winning. Why don't we implement a "cap" if you will, and then see how much campaigning is done. I think this would eliminate those that are in it for the money and reveal those that really want to make better for the country. Money is the root of all evil in the political arena!
I believe that we as a country have walked away from the absolute quest of finding the right person for office in favor of finding the one that has the largest portfolio. I can't stand to think that the American public has actually made these decisions based on the fact that they think that they are the right ones...These people are in office because we had no other choices! At least none to speak of!

Lets face it people, until we make a stand against this sort of selection, we will never be given the true oppurtunity to elect the right man or woman for the job! I find it hard to believe that in all the people in this country that we can't do better than we have!~!~!

stu@smitepodcast.com

where democrats seem to be confident that they will take at least one house of congress, i have heard no one proclaiming the death of the republican party. most people seem to be looking forward to the return of some "balance of power." i am.

personally, i'm not yet convinced the dems won't implode on themselves, we'll see...

as far as pup's accusation that no democrat has any plan for north korea...i know joe biden has put forth plans and ideas...as have others...and i just watched 6 years of an administration without any plan embolden the crap out of north korea. don't take that as saying everything clinton did in korea was perfect,,,but at least they had some strategy that was more than "call em evil, make em feel threatened, then refuse to talk to em."

Still with the puppy thigs, eh? Ok, Conn-man. I didn't ask what Bidens plan was, I asked what is the policy of the democrats as a whole. That is the problem with the democrats as they have no strategy as a party. They can't be anti-war because it shows their defeatist side, and they can't be pro-war because it will alienate them from their loon base. The democrats didn't have a plan when clinton was president, they just gave North Korea more time and resources to develop nukes. Bush didn't do much better either, he should have taken out their factories and put sanctions on them years ago.

Nature, Representation, and Misrepresentation

Contrary to what one might think, simulation isn't confined to human beings, nor is it necessarily something that is consciously created. Plants and animals manifest deceptive appearances in great profusion, which are essential tools in the struggle for survival.

In many instances, these deceptive appearances consist only in an animal's ability to walk with stealth or hide or remain completely still, to create the impression it isn't there. As we discover in all those television nature documentaries, predators and prey are constantly slinking around in the underbrush, peering from behind obstructions and standing motionless, as they wait for the right moment to strike or flee from danger.

Also common are disguises that are built into the appearance of plants and animals. These deceptions exist in nature in a remarkable profusion, easily matching anything produced by that other world of illusion, Hollywood. Nature is unambiguously a world of things that appear to be other things or, in some cases, of things that appear to be nothing at all. There are insects that look like sticks and leaves; mammals with white coats that blend in with snow-covered landscapes: fish that seem to be rocks; a sea horse with leafy protuberances that bears a striking resemblance to a clump of weeds; and crabs that cover their shells with seaweed, providing us with the spectacle of animals that masquerade as other animals, as plants and minerals, and as fallen snow. In an act of evolutionary hubris, a fly in the Amazon even has the shape and markings of a miniature alligator, including a false snout and teeth, which is apparently convincing enough to frighten off potential predators, despite the difference in size.

Not infrequently, these deceptions blend together costume and behavior. After all, a caterpillar that looks like a branch must also play the role, by placing itself on the correct stage and enacting its part, if it is to be convincing enough to survive.

These deceptions provide living things with at least three kinds of advantage in the struggle to survive: they are used as bait (for example, to lure in prey or pollinators); they make plants and animals appear threatening or noxious (or nonthreatening) and, perhaps, most frequently, they provide camouflage that can be used to hide from predators or take potential prey by surprise. Mostly, they come down to a few basic "strategies": semi-invisibility; hiding or cover-up; distraction; disguise (including camouflage), and behavioral pretenses, which either hide something or announce the presence of something that isn't what it appears to be..

Each of these cons also involves a three-way relationship. First, there is the deceiver. Second, there has to be a dupe or victim that is susceptible to being taken in. Otherwise, the charade collapses and the imitation ceases to be of value. Third, although it isn't usually present, there is typically a model -- one or more kinds of plants or animals (or other things) that are being impersonated.

In effect, these deceptions are a primitive version of what are often referred to in philosophy and literary criticism as representations and narratives. More specifically, they are forms of theater that use costumes, props and acting to tell a story -- "I'm just a leaf hanging from a branch," or "I'm a dangerous alligator" -- directed at a specific audience. They are based on the ability not merely to represent something that isn't there, but to create the illusion that the representation is what it represents.*

Perhaps what is most remarkable about these characteristics is that they are said to be a result of the workings of chance. According to evolutionary theory, effective disguises are the product of random mutations, which are passed on because the living things that possess them have a better chance of surviving and reproducing. When an insect that looks like a leaf, sits on a branch and is completely still, it presumably has no idea it is pretending to be part of the tree. It is merely doing what it is programmed to do, while other insects that did other, less effective, things got eaten and failed to reproduce or did so less.

Assuming that science's version of events is correct, what we see is a system in which the blind workings of nature have ended up grinding out not only representation, but misrepresentation, offering rewards to the most effective deceivers. The ability to manipulate appearances has turned out to be a form of power, and the inability to see through appearances has turned out to be a form of powerlessness.

But it isn't only the ability to use lifelike representations or simulations to deceive that we see in nature. We also discover that nature uses lifelike representations to create fictions that can be used for entertainment, learning, and communication. In the play of young mammals, for example, the animals play act at stalking, chasing, and fighting. They pre-enact adult roles through behavioral simulations. Everyone involved (at least other animals of the same type) know it is play. They know it is a form of misrepresentation, not intended to be taken for what it imitates.

Once again, all of these possibilities are programmed into the animals, although the actual behaviors involve complex perceptions and reactions, in which the animal's behavior is an act of coordination between responses to urges and to perceptions. Presumably, these forms of play exist because they provide learning experiences for the animals. (They are also entertaining to the animals and, presumably, that encourages them to play and has survival value, and isn't merely a side effect.)

Animals similarly communicate through "iconic" behavior - they do something that looks or seems like something else, in order to communicate. I once had an experience, for example, in which an animal that didn't want me to be doing something, very lightly bit down on my hand without breaking the skin. It was representing a bite to me to communicate an idea -- "There's a bite in your future if you don't stop that." (Needless to say, I stopped.)

All of this existed by the time the ancestors of modern human beings came on the scene. It seems reasonable to suggest that our ancestors inherited the ability to walk with stealth, to be completely still and hide, to act threatening and communicate through iconic behavior, and to play.

But, as culture evolved, we can safely surmise that humanity began to create a new set of physical simulations and forms of acting, with conscious intention, to trick both animals and other people. Hunters and soldiers created sophisticated forms of camouflage, so they would blend in with their surroundings. Farmers put up scarecrows which, while not very convincing to human eyes, were effective enough to fool less discerning animal audiences. Shamans and magicians developed sleight of hand tricks to simulate magical powers, as a way of advancing their positions in their own societies, thus creating early forms of fakery modeled after fictions of the mind, rather than after actual objects or events in the world.

Most of the evidence for these creations has been lost with the passage of time, but enough survives to give us glimpses into the world of early simulations. There are duck decoys made of reeds, for example, found in Lovelock Cave, Nevada, that were assembled sometime after 1500 B.C. The creators had already mastered many of the elements of verisimilitude, imitating the shape, size and posture of the animal they were trying to portray. One decoy has feathers tucked under the reeds, to enhance the effect.

At some point in the evolution of culture, these simulations were also created for purposes other than deception. Cosmetics were used not only to create a deceptive appearance, but to provide aesthetic pleasure. And humanity began to create forms of representational art and stories, perhaps originally tied to rituals, (such as those described in the next essay), involving animal paintings, carved statues, and costumes. With the evolution of drama, humanity began to simulate not merely discrete things or actions, but situations, people and chains of events, creating the imitation "realities" of the theater, a trend that found its first flowering, so far as we know, in ancient Greece. In effect, humanity evolved its own, symbolically rich, forms of play, creating representations based on both the world and imagination, and creating misrepresentations that appeared to be what they imitated, but only to heighten the aesthetic experience.

Looking back across history, we can trace humanity's growing ability to simulate appearances, in the discovery of perspective, for example, that allowed painters and drawers to create the illusion of three-dimensional space; or the creations of wigs and make-up. We can also surmise that the creation of simulations and of the invented scenes and situations found in fiction is inborn. We do it spontaneously, in day and night dreams, and in the play of conversation and interaction, as well as in the arts.

But, until relatively recently, our ability to create these simulations was limited by shortcomings in both technique and technology, despite the magnificent creations of art and culture. Somewhere along the way, however, we began to emerge from this period of more limited simulations. Perhaps, we should mark the beginnings of this phase around the turn of the century, when clever inventors and entrepreneurs began to discover that it was possible to use electronic images to simulate the physical environment, creating a dynamic, two-dimensional, rendering of the three-dimensional space in movies.

Whenever it happened, today, we have entered a period in history that can truly be referred to as an age of simulation, in which advanced forms of fakery and illusion are now dominant elements of culture and society.

Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that we now have an economy in which millions of people owe their livelihood to designing, manufacturing and selling fakes, imitations, counterfeits, replicas, faux products and cons. Much of our culture is made up of imitations and illusions, used for fantasy and entertainment, and our politics consist mostly of candidates who use the techniques of theater and cinema - of acting, staging, scripting, and image manipulation - to produce false identities for public consumption. We live in a world of Sy Sperling hairpieces that look like hair; lip-syncers who pretend they are vocalists; home security devices that bark like overexcited watchdogs; Elvis impersonators; fake ATM machines, created by con artists; and television infomercials, selling everything from psychic readings to electric juicers, that pretend they are television talk shows. We consume food, re-created with imitation flavors, sugars and fats; we live in homes, stocked with art replicas, fake fireplaces and faux marble bathroom fixtures; and we ourselves are gradually being turned into imitations of a more idealized version of ourselves, as we are reduced, expanded, reshaped and reconditioned with cosmetic surgery.

This new age of simulations has a number of essential characteristics. Among them, the number of simulations is increasing rapidly, giving us surroundings made up of manipulated appearances; the kinds of simulation are increasing, and the simulations are becoming so lifelike that it is getting more difficult to distinguish them from what they imitate, inducing a state of mind that can be referred to as simulation confusion, in which fakes are confused for something authentic. In addition, we are witnessing the emergence of a global culture based on simulation. As rapid forms of transportation and mass communications have carried American culture into the rest of the world, they have carried our world of illusion with it, such that, today, children in China and America may play with the same lifelike dolls, and audiences in Buenos Aires and Amsterdam may be simultaneously fooled by the same lip-sync con artists.

Not surprisingly, one of the most important ways we use these fictions is to playfully act out what matters to us. We create lifelike fictions about sex, love, death, self-esteem, reconciliation, moral principles, overcoming persecution, and so on, because these are on our minds. Its almost as if we are a more evolved version of those young mammals, play-acting to learn how to be adults. But we play-act in an effort to satisfy our desires and to learn how to cope with life and its traumas; we symbolically master life by living it through misrepresentations -- fictions. These fictions let us experience the basic emotions of life, by virtue of the fact that we respond emotionally to lifelike misrepresentations as if they are something authentic. Faced with a play about someone dying, we respond emotionally, to some degree, as if someone is dying, and can thus symbolically live through the trauma of death, and thus partially master the feelings involved.

Presumably, if we were intelligent dogs, we would use the power of representation to create a slightly different set of misrepresentations -- airbrushed Collie centerfolds; scratch and sniff television; and paintings idealizing the leader of the pack.

To conclude -- with evolution and history, a movement, of sorts, has taken place from natural simulations to more limited, humanly-made simulations, to advanced high-technology simulations. Today, we use technology and our ingenuity:


-- to create representations that are hard to distinguish from physical and sensory objects we know from the world;
-- to create representations that imperfectly represent known physical and sensory objects (either deliberately or because we can't get a perfect representation);
-- to create representations that represent nothing that exists outside of the imagination, so far as we know;
-- and to create nonrepresentational forms of art.

Since all of these representations simulate the appearance of something they aren't, all are, in a sense, misrepresentations. We create "misrepresentational" objects, for deception, art, entertainment, exploration, learning, communication, and other purposes.

Representation has freed us from the tyranny of literalness. We also create nonrepresentational art to free ourselves from the tyranny of representation.


------

Notes:

*Facial :expressions and body language that misrepresent an animal's psychological state or intentions or are intended to symbolically convey a message, deserve to be counted as a kind of representation or misrepresentation, or behavioral simulation, as well. The same is true for people, who inherited this ability and expanded on it.

A more complete footnote will be added to:
Bateson, G. (1972) Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine.

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Tim Ryan (D, Ohio) explains on the floor of Congress why so many young people are questioning the Bush Administration's version of the events of 9/11.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VVIEO0eW14

I asked what is the policy of the democrats as a whole. That is the problem with the democrats as they have no strategy as a party.

i really don't see that as necessary. the dems have no means in which to implement any strategy. they can't even get a bill on the floor on anything. i agree with their methods of discussing the issue, debating the issue, and if they get into a position where they can do something about it...only then should they unite under one plan.