Mickey Kaus, on Barbara Boxer’s pop gun:
“Fine,” he said today. “If I’m out of the mainstream, then Boxer has nothing to fear from debating. Let’s both present our views and see who is in what stream. Let the voters decide. That’s what democracy is supposed to be about.”
Kaus noted a debate would also give Boxer a valuable chance to respond to the L.A. Times editorial board’s observation that “she displays less intellectual firepower or leadership than she could.”
“If the Times is right, this is a chance for her to unleash the intellectual firepower she’s been holding in reserve,” Kaus said.
I may run out of popcorn.
I’m guessing there’s at least a forty-point difference in IQs. I’d pay quite a bit to see that debate.
Why should “Call Me Senator” Babs deign to engage the common rabble? It’s “her” seat in perpetuity, and she will not give credence to any foolish notion that it could be surrendered to the *shudder* hoi polloi under any circumstances.
There is no upside whatsoever for Boxer to debate Kaus. I can’t see her ever agreeing to such an encounter.
40 point difference in IQ? Isn’t that a bit of an insult to Mickey?
Hey, I said “at least.”
So, he demolishes her in the debate then still loses the election. Because it is not about logic or what is right, it is how they feel about it.
Years ago I heard an all-too-plausible apocryphal story. I’d love to know whether it’s true. (OK, I admit it … I’d love to confirm that it’s true.)
A friend claimed that Barbara Boxer, back when she was still a Congresscritter, had visited JPL as part of a delegation. On the tour she was shown a demo of mission planning software for one of the outer planet missions — you know, the neat computer graphics sequences that James Blinn pioneered, in which you see a realistically rendered image of the spacecraft, planet, and moons from a disembodied viewpoint. As the encounter progresses the geometries change, and the spacecraft turns and twists as it concentrates its attention on the various objects it’s passing.
The space scientists were having fun showing this off, partly because it was such an effective way of presenting what they were doing. And Boxer seemed impressed. “Oh, this is wonderful!” she exclaimed. And then to their dismay she added, “SInce you can do all this with computers now, it means we don’t have to shoot those rockets out there any more!”
Can anyone confirm or correct?