Princess Bride as National Politics

Some stuff I wrote back on one a heady day in Sept 2006, where The Princess Bride and US Politics collided with terrifying results. Reposted here just so I have it handy somewhere.

Bush: Cheney, you know how much I love watching you work... But, I've got my country's fifth 9/11 anniversary to plan, my Iran war to arrange, my detainees to torture, and Democrats to frame for it. I'm quagmired.

---

Congress: A war?
Bush: That's right. When most of you were my age, diplomacy was called war. And this is a special war. It was the war my father used to fight when I was little, and he used to play up to his legislature... And today I'm gonna pitch it to you.
Congress: Has it got any danger in it?
Bush: Are you kidding? Terrorists, dictators, deserts, ethnic tensions, oil, WMDs, skirmishes, urban warfare, reconstruction, nation-building...
Congress: Doesn't sound too bad. I'll try to stay awake.
Bush:[Sarcastically] Oh, well, thank you very much, very nice of you. Your vote for the AUMF is overwhelming.

---

Democrats: We haven't killed or caught Osama.
Bush: What?
Democrats: We still haven't gotten the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. I'm explaining to you because you look nonchalant.
Bush: I wasn't nonchalant. Maybe I was a little bit "too busy in Iraq" but that's not the same thing.

---

Congress: You never said anything about torturing prisoners.
Bush: I've hired you to help me start a war. It's a prestigious line of work, with a long and glorious tradition.
Congress: I just don't think it's right, torturing suspects who may or may not be innocent.
Bush: Am I going MAD, or did the word "think" escape your lips? You were not brought on to infringe on my executive authority, you hippopotamic land masses!
Some Democrats: I agree with them.
Bush: Oh, the appeasers have spoken. What happens to them is not truly your concern. I will order their interrogations. And remember this, never forget this! Since I have been in office, you were such a minority, you couldn't get a federal minimum wage hike!
Bush: [To congress] And you! Bickering, slow, hapless, hopeless! Do you want me to send you back to what you were? LEGISLATING... UNDER A DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT?!

---

Bush: They didn't surrender? ISLAMOFASCIST-able!
Democrat: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

---

Saddam: Oh, what I wouldn't give for a holocaust to destroy some kurds.
Short-lived crony: There, we cannot help you.
Rumsfeld: [Showing chem/bio data and imports] Will this do?
Saddam: Where did you get that?
Rumsfeld: From President Reagan. It works so well on Iranians, he said I could bring them.

The pocket veto, and Congress being "in session"

Recently President Bush has said that he will "pocket veto" a recent bill. This involves using a clause in the US Constitution where if the President doesn't sign a bill and Congress is not in session it is automatically voided.

The problem is that the Senate is currently in "pro forma" sessions, where they do just enough to be technically operating. This was done for another reason (blocking recess appointments) but has a bearing here.

Some have argued that the pocket veto can be used in this case. I disagree. To quote the US constitution:

Article 1, Section 7:
If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.

That's the pocket veto in bold. So the key phrase is "Congress must be Adjourned". What does it take to do that?

Aticle 1, Section 5:
Neither [House of Representatives or Senate], during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two [sections] shall be sitting.

Did the Senate consent to the House of Representatives being out of session? I doubt it. Therefore the House of Representatives and the people in it are, in a phrase, AWOL, and Congress is not Adjourned, and the pocket veto cannot be used. QED.

Lying Statistics: When people bring up Congressional approval

One of the things that really bothers me is when people throw around the phrase "Democrat-controlled Congress" and "Approval rating".

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

    —Benjamin Disraeli

Usually, it's because they make the implicit assumption that "People rate Congress poorly" and "Democrats have a slight majority in Congress" add up to "People rate Democrats poorly". Given the statistics available, this is false.

So, after pointing people to the right statistics over and over, I'll just put it in this blog post because I'm sick and tired of ersatz wit from smarmy conservative partisans saying "Hah, the Democrats suck [even worse than Republicans], look at Congress' approval rating!"





My prime exhibit is a set of polls conducted by the Washington-Post and ABC-News. In these polls, they actually asked questions about why voters are giving Congress a low approval rating.

Why separate ratings? Whole-Congress Polls don't mean much.

Congress has traditionally polled badly, and is not uncommon for them to poll worse than the President. This is generally because when people rate Congress unfavorably, it doesn't reflect on the people in it they like—it's always the other side that is the problem. Even people who are in Congress can say nasty things about the institution, because then they look like "reformers" and "mavericks".

At any rate, the claims people make out of the statistics rely on a fundamental logical flaw: People won't rate Congress the same way they rate Democrats-in-Congress, and they are not interchangeable statistics and Congress' rating cannot be used to support the idea that people like Bush because of it.

Myth #1: "People disapprove of Democrats, who control Congress"

Fact: While the Democrats currently control congress, it is by a very slim margin. In fact, Republicans are still a near-equal force and are using the filibuster to maintain influence.

Fact: People disapprove of Republicans in Congress more than Democrats in Congress. In the most recent December poll, the group "Democrats in Congress" had an approval ratings of 40%, versus 32% for Republicans and 32% for Congress overall.

Congress' ratings, lower than the usual low, appear to be sinking more due to public dissatisfaction the Republican half.

Partial-Myth #2: "People are angry at the Democrat-controlled-congress for not getting anything done"

This is only a partial myth, because the reason why people are angry is important, and often ignored by Conservatives. The September poll shows 55% of respondents find Democrats are "not going far enough" to oppose the current war policy, and this likely explains their eroding popularity.

However, the other part is general Congressional activity. In the same September poll 82% said that Congress has accomplished "not much" or "nothing" this year, but in a followup question 51% blame "Bush and Republicans in Congress" while 25% blame "Democrats in Congress". This supports the theory that people are mainly dissatisfied that Democrats are still "not doing enough" when it comes to the war. While Democrats may be seen as ineffective, people see Republicans as the real obstacle.

Myth #3: "Bush has a higher approval rating than Congress! HAHAHAHAH!"

Closely tied to Myth #1, we see that it's more accurate to say that Bush has a higher rating than his own party in Congress.

---

Poll links:

1. Oct 2007 poll: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postpoll_100307.html
   


2. Nov 2007 poll: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postpoll_110407.html
   


3. Dec 2007 poll: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postpoll_121107.html
   
4. July 2007 poll: http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/ssi/polls/postpoll_072307.html
   

Habeas Corpus: Cases of invasion or rebellion?

One of my favorite examples of the Bush Administration's nefarious activities has been the case of Jose Padilla. Basically, the President had a US citizen from US soil imprisoned without charges, lawyer, or a conviction, etc., completely bypassing the normal US court system. It's the kind of arguably criminal offense which is surely just cause for impeachment.

Anyway, one of the common responses that Bush apologists have is that Bush is allowed to do that because it's an emergency of some sort. However, that's not what the constitution says. Let's review two relevant pieces of law:

US Constitution, 5th amendment
No person shall [... or] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law

US Constitution, Article 1 Section 9
The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.

So we see here two very specific requirements by US Constitutional law: The government can't jail anyone without it being part of a law, and usually everyone has the right to habeas corpus, or the right to challenge their imprisonment or punishment as unlawful, or--specifically--in violation of the Fifth Amendment.

Here's the argument I'm rebutting: Some people claim that Bush is allowed to suspend Habeas Corpus, either because "We're at war!", or because "They're a terrorist, that's rebellion!"

The first argument does not stand up, because whatever kind of war we are in, it is not the kind which would "require" our court system to abandon habeas corpus. Maybe if we were beseiged by an army of the living dead (or telemarketers) and the normal court system could not function... but thankfully that's not the case.

The second argument does not stand up because the "cases of rebellion or invasion" clearly do not refer to what the suspect is accused of. If you need more proof, consider this: The law would be totally toothless if it were true.

Why would anyone bother to write it? It would offer zero protection against a corrupt Executive branch. All the dictator would have to do is change the trumped-up charge from "unpatriotic speech" to "rebellion", substituting one false or unlawful charge for another.

Senate Vote Tabulator

The previously mentioned Senate vote tabulator is done, although I still haven't gotten around to scraping multiple pages at once.

You can download it from here.

Experts-exchange deobfuscator

Here's a little something I ended up with. Someone on Digg mentioned a de-obfuscator for experts-exchange.com postings, and looking at it I realized it used ROT13 but did an AJAX call to someone's free rot13 service, which seemed a little inefficient. (And impolite)

So here's a version that does it locally and also does it better by only converting actual text in the posting.

(Kudos Code2HTML)...

// ==UserScript==
// @name Experts Exchange Deobfuscator
// @author Terr 
// @namespace http://deltanin.blogspot.com/ 
// @version 1.0.0
// @description  Makes content in experts-exchange visible.
// @include http://www.experts-exchange.com/*
// @include http://experts-exchange.com/*
// ==/UserScript==

/*
 Merged from two scripts
 http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/10747
 http://personal.inet.fi/cool/jjlammi/rot13.html
 
 Improved with better text conversion by using the DOM to find text nodes
 instead of changing innerHTML.
*/

 document.addEventListener('load',function (e) {  
  function rot13init(){
   var map = new Array();
   var s   = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";
   
   for (var i=0; i<s.length; i++)
   map[s.charAt(i)]   = s.charAt((i+13)%26);
   for (var i=0; i<s.length; i++)
   map[s.charAt(i).toUpperCase()] = s.charAt((i+13)%26).toUpperCase();
   return map;
  }
  function rot13(rot13map,a){   
   var s = "";
   for (var i=0; i<a.length; i++)
   {
    var b = a.charAt(i);   
    s+= (b>='A' && b<='Z' || b>='a' && b<='z' ? rot13map[b] : b);
   }
   return s;
  } 
    
  var elems = document.getElementsByTagName("div");
  var todo = [];
  for(var i =0; i< elems.length; i++){
   var elem = elems[i];
   if( elem.className == "answerBody quoted"){
    if( elem.getAttribute("id") == "intelliTxt"){
     todo.push(elem);     
    }
   }else if( elem.className == "blur"){
    elem.className = "seethru";
   }else if(elem.className == "hasMouseOver"){
    elem.onmouseover = function(){};
    elem.onmouseout = function(){};
   }
  }  
  var rot13map = rot13init();  
  for(var i =0; i < todo.length; i++){
   /* We're inside a comment, but they can have BR tags as well as text. Only work on text.*/
   
   var elem = todo[i];
   for(var j =0; j < elem.childNodes.length; j++){
    var subnode = elem.childNodes[j];    
    if(subnode.nodeType == 3){
     var newnode = document.createTextNode(rot13(rot13map,subnode.nodeValue));
     elem.replaceChild(newnode,subnode);
    }    
   }      
  }
  
 },false); 

Senate Votes and UserJS

Well, I've accomplished a dubious achievement, melding the areas of politics and programming.

I've just finished a UserJS script—a type of Javascript module which several popular browsers support—that will automatically calculate a 3x3 table when you visit a senate roll call vote page, showing how groups voted.

Of course, I don't really want to visit each and every one of the 478 cloture votes since 1989 personally, but it does get me a step closer to automatically scraping that data.

And yes, I first tried Python and XML libraries, but unfortunately the Senate webmaster doesn't seem to think that XHTML is important.

I'll be posting the script up on UserJS.org when I get a chance.