Graphictruth

Google Illustrates Context-insensitivity

2009-11-23T01:16:00.000-08:00

How's that for context-sensitive placement?

Glenn Greenwald brings the Cranky.

2009-11-22T17:36:00.000-08:00

Glenn Greenwald is suffering the effects of a very severe moral wedgie. Like many, and I include myself, he suffers from deep, impotent outrage toward the moral failure of the Obama Administration; it's abandonment of it's clear, legal duty to prosecute war crimes committed under the aegis of the Bushistas.

He waxes sarcastic and wroth, no doubt in part due to the fact that he is being studiously ignored by those who have the manifest duty to act.

"Criminals"? "Prosecutions"? "Obliged to open a case"? "Violations of human rights"? Just because they maintained a few secret prisons in violation of domestic and international law? What kind of crazy, purist, Far Leftist utopians are running that place? They need a heavy dose of pragmatism so they can understand all the reasons why so-called "crimes" like this can be overlooked -- just blissfully forgotten like a bad dream. Even worse, with intemperate and shrill language of the type they're throwing around, it's seems clear that the Lithuanian press is sorely in need of some David Broders, Fred Hiatts, and David Ignatiuses to explain to them that subjecting law-breaking political officials to "investigations" and "prosecutions" is quite disruptive and unpleasant when those crimes involve matters other than consensual sex between adults.
Even more alarming, this "rule of law" and "human rights" fetish seems to be spreading: "In neighboring Poland, prosecutors in the capital of Warsaw have opened a criminal probe into reports that the CIA operated a prison for al-Qaeda suspects near a former military air base." Last month, an Italian court convicted 22 CIA agents of the so-called "crime" of kidnapping someone off their street and sending him to Egypt to be tortured. And the British High Court this week released its written Opinion -- over the objections of British and American officials -- ordering the release of details of Binyam Mohamed's torture at the hands of U.S. agents.

Thankfully, the U.S. remains a bastion of pragmatic sanity in this rising sea of accountability extremism.

Glenn, here's the thing. Things are worse than you suspect. You see, Lithuania is not acting idealistically, or in accordance with law through some triumph of principle over pragmatism. The rule of law is the most stunningly pragmatic concept ever developed by mankind. It precludes all sorts of problems. It's civilization's way of saying "RTFM" to the offensively and dangerously stupid. Those who will not read and abide by the manual are invited to explore the diversions provided by The Impartial Bug-Zapper of the Law.

The rule of law is preferable to the law of man because it insulates leaders from the need to make impossible political calculations between right action and personal survival. But certain sorts of men (it's almost always men) much prefer to be in personal charge and to be able to act with impunity.

People like George Bush, Don Rumsfeld and espectially Dark Lord Cheney are exemplars of this sort of man. They are sociopaths and worse, entirely indifferent to the consequences others suffer for their ambitions. And when they are permitted to flourish, they corrupt everything they touch, to the point that even the most honest and pure will be required to use corrupt and incompetent men to serve at his will.

Now Obama comes from Chicago. He may be a good man, but I doubt that "pure" or "idealistic" are words we should apply to him.

But he has a severe problem. If he prosecutes the Bushistas - as international law and Constitution alike agree is is his duty, to kick the matters raised into a Court in order to determine the outcome as matters of fact and law - there is a significant possibility that he will be faced with some sort of military/institutional revolt.

That is to say, Glenn - you are justly outraged. So am I. But since I wish to live in a society in which the Rule of Law has not been suborned, I returned to Canada. As a dual citizen, I had the right to choose - and strongly felt a substantial duty to make such a choice.

If you wish to live in such a society as a natural-born citizen, realize that it currently does not exist and has NOT existed for a substantial period of time. Not in MY lifetime, Sir. Consider that advancements in civil rights during the last fifty years have often come at the cost of cracked skulls inflicted by the supposed agents of the theoretical rule of law. Law that only protects some, in accordance to their utility to the State, is not law at all.

Glenn, here's the thing. It's a very depressing insight, but as near as I can tell, you can either choose to move to a country where the rule of law exists, or you can choose to fight for it's re-imposition upon at least some of territories of the former United States.

I observe the current situation is increasingly intolerable, both for large numbers of US citizens and the world in general. Either the US behaves as befits a member of the community of civilized nations, or it will be chastised in increasingly firm and embarrassing ways until it reforms itself or collapses under the weight of it's cognitive dissonances.

President Obama may well be cast in the role of overseeing the dissolution of the United States as we have known it. But whether he is to be seen in hindsight as the caretaker of the process of dissolution in as peaceful a way as possible - the Gorbechev role - or as the exemplar of a renewed vision and a newly vital nation is still largely up to him and, of course, the strings he can haul upon and the people he can call on. People... well, people such as YOU, Glen. Do not ask what your country can do for you, Glenn. What the fuck are you gonna do for your country?

For myself, I could not continue to live within the boundaries of a nation that would not apply it's own laws to itself, one that will abandon it's fundamental principles when slightly startled. And in fact, is all 9/11 was, on the scale of events that happen within the US every single year. I came to the conclusion that the US didn't lose it's brains that day - it simply and collectively dropped the pretense of being a civilized nation of laws even unto itself.

So Al-Queda won without need to even try firing one more shot. After all, what need? Your own C-Street Taliban was more than happy to continue the fight on their behalf, seeking every single social outcome BinLadin would.

But Glenn, you are starting to become shrill - and it's a sure sign that you risk your health continuing in this vein. Granted, the path that those in power OUGHT to follow, under the terms of concience and law, is clear.

It's equally clear that there are those in power that will oppose that to the last ditch. That will commit acts of violence to prevent it happening. That will sabotage it in every way possible. And yet, you think law will prevail?

Someone has to enforce the law. That implies the willingness to step up and do it. If those charged with that task refuse, they must not merely be nobly and peacefully protested. They must be replaced by those who will - and they must be made to understand that it is not a negotiable choice. By peaceful means, by political pressure, by force of public outrage if possible - but the continuing abuses of power must end and those who have abused it held to account, that this is not a matter of political will or calculation.

Unless it becomes quite clear that the danger to the administration from the left is just as grave as the danger from the right, and by "danger" I mean a very literal potential danger, there will be no progress. It's not about Left and right, it is about Lawful and Unlawful, a choice between the Rule of Law and the rule of unworthy, corrupt, unaccountable sociopaths. Such people will not simply admit defeat. The only "dirty bomb plot" EVER proven to be greatly advanced past the wishful thinking stage was by a Nazi-identified Maine Millionaire.

And it was apparently aimed at the Obama Inaguaral.

It's not cynical to say that might makes right - for no right has ever been established in the face of superior might. So progressives should start thinking as to whether their convictions carry with them the courage to fight, at need. For that need may well come, and weak Reids will not serve you well.

Look at the numbers. Given courage and determination, Glenn - which side has more Divisions? Assembled into serried and courageous ranks, with rotund tummies sucked in, by the numbers sir, by the logistics, sir, by the accounts of who has the ports, the people and the expertise, who wins, if they have the will?

Obama still seems to think this is a question that has a political resolution - but he is opposed by those who will not abide by the results of an honest political process - should it actually occur despite their best efforts.

Therefore, the left (and by "Left", I mean "not batshit crazy") needs to comprehend that this is not a debate. It is a choice between competing powers and competing visions - and one side is stupid, crazy, dangerous, and a lot smaller. They are quite aware that if they are to gain power over you, it must be through confusion and terror, by threats and by the use of examples of extreme violence.

That is to say, Dick Cheney and his ilk, these people are terrorists, traitors and worse. They must be dealt with as such. Indeed, they will leave you no choice but to deal with them, now, tomorrow, next year. And that is not at all a matter of debate. The only question is, will they prevail over you before being dealt with by the rest of the world?

Debates occur between peers. Persons deserving of equal respect. People of sound moral and mental character. People willing to admit fact, reason and a decent consideration of the feelings and ambitions of all parties in the public square. This is not the case, nor has it been the case for at least a decade. Nor has the situation been particularly changed by an apparent change in power. Power, sir, must be used and used well in order to have meaning.

Take compromise off the table. One does not compromise with those who's most fundamental belief is that you deserve death, or worse.

Stop pretending that they don't really mean that, or that they have a higher nature to appeal to. Their choice is as stark as that they would impose. They may submit to a reconstituted, civilized national culture, and live, or they may choose to dash themselves against the reality they reject. The process may be unpleasant - exactly how unpleasant depends in part on how long those who know what must happen resist an unpleasant chore. But the outcome is not even slightly in doubt.

The rest of the world would be perfectly happy to see the United States disintigrate into a collection of smaller, competing states. It would simplify matters enormously, since the US is certainly no longer seen as a stablizing power, much less a force for good or even an economic engine. Nobody is interested particularly in helping the US save face - and certainly not at the expense of their vital trade relations or their own ideals.

Glenn, what are you going to do about it? I think we both know how much reasonable speech has achieved. It's now time to apply pressure. Start thinking of yourself as the leader of a First Amendment Militia - for if the first is not applied hard, true and well, the exercise of the Second may well be required.

First Amendment Militia by webcarve
Canada Above the Fray Rondel by EhCanada

Oh, Texas. Now What Have You Done?

2009-11-19T23:47:00.000-08:00

I'm on my usual winter hiatus, but I still watch Stewart and Colbert. Colbert pointed this out last night and The Daily Beast gave me the specifics.

Did Texas Outlaw Marriage?
Texas may have become the largest singles meet in the nation—without anyone realizing it. Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Democratic candidate for attorney general, says that a clause in the 2005 constitutional amendment banning gay marriage may have, in fact, banned all marriage. Subsection of B of the amendment reads, "this state or political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage," the wording of which, Radnofsky argues, "eliminates marriage in Texas." Current Attorney General Greg Abbott's spokesman said that the amendment is "entirely constitutional," and Radnofsky admits that it's unlikely that marriages will be disassembled based on the clause. But she still believes the wording is a "huge mistake." "Whoever vetted the language in B must have been asleep at the wheel," she said.
Read it at McClatchy

Steven Colbert failed to addressed this because he was too busy pointing and laughing (as well we should) to note the cognitive problem that lead to such a ridiculous, if "entirely constitutional" outcome.

Whoever vetted and/or wrote the language in Subsection B has a problem. The problem is that they believe that Marriage is a state of union defined by God, and the State has no business intruding into it. Now, I would concur; I don't happen to believe that Marriage - or any contract or agreement between free citizens is the business of government to let or hinder. The Courts exist to determine whether such contracts are fair and uncoerced, to determine the facts of disputes under the terms of the contract, but not to judge whether free persons have a right to negotiate whatever contractual relationship they choose. That is the heart and soul of contract law, as I understand it, and one of the very most basic reasons for the development of government and law.

What is assumed and unsaid here is that there is A Higher Law that Transcends The Laws Of Man, which properly binds everyone regardless of man's law or individual will. Now, while that assumption has obvious problems with the Establishment Clause and the concept of the separation of Church and State, it's not the truly fundamental problem. It's not even that this amendment is intended to achieve the effect of establishing a moral diktat regarding marriage, which is no doubt the way most people think of it, regardless of their position on the matter.

The real problem is that the people who did this simply took that assumption as a fact, as a law of nature, something that does not need to be thought about, considered or even acknowledged by the human law they were fiddling about with. This was not the result of religiously mandated thought. This was the result of a religious presupposition preventing thought in a way that produced a result that is quite predictable to anyone who didn't have that particular mental block. That is the problem - and a very widespread problem - illustrated by this particular example in an amusingly clear and obvious way.

This is what happens when theocratic authoritarians are allowed into public office and are permitted domination over those who do not bow the knee and drop five dollars in the collection plate.

The thought processes and assumptions of those who think of themselves as blessed with greater vision by a higher power don't well apply to the practical details of our messy consensus reality, which must be governed upon the basis of what real people wish and need to do; how they will behave in their great masses, regardless of any particular view of how they ought to behave. Indeed, there is no singular vision about the various oughts and shouds. Human law has always had to settle for defining the sorts of behavior that will not be tolerated, regardless of cause or justification. Higher Law - let us presume such a thing for the moment for the sake of honoring the sincerity of those who champion it - must be seen as a higher standard than the common run, a thing that society does well to encourage, to applaud, even to celebrate in it's diversity when it is positively manifested in the exeptional examples that inspire us all.

Maintaining the clear distinction beteween "ought" and "is" is to the benefit and advantage of both church and state, for when one becomes the agent of the other, the purpose of neither is advanced. Examine history for examples, should you care to. For myself, I suggest that Marxism, Calvinism, various Islamic Fundamentalisms and the entire, checquered history of Catholocism, which has been variously Church and/or State at various times and various places to be remarkably instructive of the wisdom of keeping the realms separate.

A mindset that dictates to a person with their hands upon the levers of power how people ought to behave in the service of a cause or a faith there is no right nor reason to believe to be universally shared cannot even fathom nor anticipate the damage they do in the name of their cause.

I say this without judgment of the supposed cause or the need to judge it's merits, for the results are clear, and should be an illustration to all of the price paid when people of faith think it to be a good thing to impose their faith on others. The result is never that which the teachings of those faith would point out as a good result, to the benefit of faith or humankind, and really tells us very little about the merits of that faith or system.

But it tells us a good deal about human nature and the danger of attempting to serve two masters.

This time, the outcome is merely absurd. This time, nobody died. This time, no families have been ripped apart. This time, no-one was imprisoned for the gratification of moralists, in the name of some form of social hygene.

But all these things have been done, and many such efforts are championed by the same sorts of people - people who are literally blind to the damage they do.

Those who seek the comforts of a church, the sure answers to a complex world surely deserve the companionship and council of the like minded, for their mutual improvement. Nor should those who do not feel that need take their own somewhat stridently moralistic urges further than a firm, imperative "no."

In a civil and civilized society, we should all be free to say "yes" or "no," according to our own needs as best we understand them, with the greatest possible range of advice and viewpoint that a civil society is naturally equipped to provide, without the need to feel any obligation to explain why, so long is there is no breach of the peace.

Meanwhile, a public official must be accountable to all their constituents; not merely those who claim the same faith. Indeed, a public official is just as accountable to the coke-addled whore as to the pillar of the community, for in this world, in these Constitutional Republics, there is no Morals Clause. Nor - as Conservatives of all sorts are prone to say when the point serves them - are there any real "democracies" where "the will of the people" in it's transient passions are allowed to hold sway.

That is because the mob is easily led by demagogues and fools and civilizations that persist do a great deal to discourage their formation. And that is why, in this season of my somewhat sour discontent, I hold out little hope that the current rampaging mob will leave much in it's wake, save, perhaps, a salient lesson to the rest of humanity regarding the triumph of politics over common sense and common decency - and why both of those values need to become far more common.

Once the rubble - metaphorical or literal - stops bouncing, perhaps it will.
---
I delayed posting this while I read this paper. It's dense, but thought provoking and while it did not provide me any convenient sound-bites, it's probably going to fuel a lot of thought in the future.

Fort Hood: Glenn Grenwald suggests you await developments.

2009-11-07T17:53:00.000-08:00

Perhaps I'm strange. I'd claim to be an old-fashioned proponent of the high ideals of the journalistic and editorial trade, save that there have always been more Winchells than there have been Lipmanns, to the extent that claim to a noble tradition is a little horse-laugh-worthy.

"Infotainment" has been with us always, and has been part and parcel of many of the moral misadventures of the English-speaking peoples. In all probability, one could expand it to Russian, French, Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Farsi and Finnish speaking peoples, but I speak none of those languages, or do I need to step out of my narrow linguistic comfort zone to find more than enough examples. Reading of Hearst and the Spanish-American War was my personal baptism into skepticism regarding my professional calling.

Glenn Grenwald, as always, is worth reading. Here he's speaking of the current media frenzy regarding the Fort Hood shootings, an incident he observes, is likely to pass into the stores of "common knowledge" regarding "what really happened" long before any factual information about the crime, the people involved, their motivations and their mental health becomes known well enough to say anything rational.

Here's what Glenn concludes.

The problem, though, is that huge numbers of people aren't ignoring it. They're paying close attention -- and they're paying the closest attention, and forming their long-term views, in the initial stages of the reporting. Many people will lose their interest once the drama dissolves -- i.e., once the actual facts emerge. Put another way, a large segment of conventional wisdom solidifies based on misleading and patently false claims coming from major media outlets. I don't know exactly how to define what the balance should be, but particularly for politically explosive stories like this one, it seems clear that media outlets ought to exercise far more restraint and fact-checking rigor than they do. As it is, it's an orgy of rumor-mongering, speculation and falsehoods that play a very significant role in shaping public perceptions and enabling all sorts of ill-intentioned exploitation.

I've rather lost patience with people who need this sort of thing spelled out for them. Granted, there's a lot of money to be made by pandering to the fears and presumptions of moral and mental superiority of those who are neither, in exactly the same way that there is a good deal of money to be made peddling lap-dances and back-alley blow-jobs.

In neither case is the transaction edifying to either participant, nor is there any significance to the act beyond the obvious. Someone is getting their rocks off, and someone is getting paid for facilitating it in a way that fits with the NSFW cartoon projected in the place where the frontal lobes normally reside.

People who religiously tune into pandering pundits, well in advance of information that could help them make an intelligent judgement are really indulging in a form of ideological maturbation. They WANT to hear that "Muslims" are inherently dangerous fanatics who should be locked up in FEMA camps until they can be "properly disposed." Or alternately, they want to hear how this is manafest proof that prolonged war leads to rampaging PTSD that could cause any Iraq vet to suddenly go off his nut with the sort of firepower that vets can get and tuck away for "future use."

Some are pandering to the fear of the Other, some are pandering to the fear of Teh Evil Gun, some are pandering to reflexive pacifism, others take the same lack of fact in evidence to call for even more "clearly necessary war."

Let us remember that much of this speculation had occurred prior to us knowing any of the Who, Where, When, Why or How, and even at the moment of writing, the entire body of public knowledge can be contained in two terse paragraphs, with room to spare.

So, set aside the Muslim thing. Refrain from hammering the PTSD thing. I resist the temptation to observe that psychiatry and sanity do not seem to go hand in hand. It is both cheap and has a high probablity of being irrelevant to the story.

But you will never see a telepundit admit that they have no basis for speculation. Fine, well, so long as we keep watching such nonsense, they will keep spewing it. For myself, I find that I'm far better informed by using the time I once spent watching cable news on Voyager and CSI re-runs. When Walter Cronkite had but an hour for the national news, he didn't waste it on things he could not nail down. Although, when I see all the interesting stories there are on various websites, it truly baffles me how anyone could spend an entire day upon one story, in advance of any facts at all, when there are always stories to tell with facts that can be found.

Do you realize, I managed to almost entirely avoid Balloon Boy? And I only looked at a point when I knew there would be some facts in evidence. The facts - as you may well remember - proved beyond a doubt that the entire event was intended to waste your time and attention.

Well, FOX, CNN, and MSNBC weren't doing anything important anyway.

You might take that into consideration next time you look at your cable bill.

An Over the Counter approach to Seasonal Affective Disorder

2009-10-31T16:10:00.000-07:00

Light your way out of the winter blues!

"Seasonal Affective Disorder" is a syndrome that can trigger depression in people - such as myself - prone to that condition. It used to be that in order to combat it, your doctor would increase your medications for the season, and perhaps suggest that you purchase a "light box."

I suggest you skip upping your meds (for the moment) and save yourself some (large) amount of money by avoiding any "Medical Device."

Rather, skip on down to your local hydroponics store - you know, that vaguely hippyish place where they help you grow tomatoes and "kitchen herbs" indoors, year round. Walk past the spirit-catchers and crystals to the lighting area. Now, ask about full-spectrum lighting - specifically, Full-spectrum florescent lights. (You may also be able to find full-spectrum lighting at aquarium supply houses.)

I just bought two "Sun Blaster Lighting" 6400K 26W "Curly" bulbs and installed them in my living room's overhead fixture. With tax, just over $20, Canadian. Currently they are literally blasting full spectrum light that is almost too intense - and I will probably move one bulb to another fixture. But just for now, I'm literally bathing in the light, and I'm feeling the seasonal depression being forced away from me. The sensation is almost palpable, and while testimonials are notorious for their subjectivity, it's a pretty darn good light-source, aside from any arguable subjective effects.

One huge surprise is that I'm finding that the cool light is making it a lot easier to read my computer screen - and that makes no intuitive sense to me at all. Oh well.

The link to Sun Blaster Lighting is unpaid and unsolicited. (It's a Canadian company, but their bulbs are made in China, along with the majority of all CFL lighting, so my flag-waving is a bit muted.) I just happen to know that these worked and are locally available at Merlin's.

Any full-spectrum, high-intensity light that is intended for indoor growing should work just fine, and you won't be paying hundreds of dollars out of pocket for an ugly medical appliance. It's a light source. Use it as such and gain the health benefits as you do the things you do when you have the lights switched on.

Hitchens v Wilson: Collision Failure

2009-10-21T18:09:00.000-07:00

After reading the below-mentioned link, I found myself less informed about Atheism, Reason, Religion and Faith than I had been before. Therefore, I'm responding, in order to purge the bad taste. Frankly, it was like biting into a much-anticipated chocolate to find a center composed of treacle and old pencil erasers.

Nobody seems to understand that in order to actually have enough of a "meeting of minds" in order to arrange the mere possibility of a "collision," first we must agree on a "definition of terms."

Despite the citation, there was no collision.

Christopher Hitchens: Collision: Is Religion Absurd or Good for the World?

The problem here is that religion is an attempt to assert that a totally subjective, individual experience has a definable, uniform, objective Reality to it.

And Atheism (or at least Hitchins) persists in confusing Religion with Faith.

Perhaps this is true and I happen to have faith that ultimately we will be able to determine the right questions to ask, but the wide divergence of doctrines and belief structures would argue that there is currently no single answer to the question. And religion's answer seems to be to simply assert some simple moralistic solution to any complex question loudly and insistently.

I happen to believe what I do as a result of direct, non-ordinary, non-reproducible experiences that I have had. The difference between me and Saul of Tarsis is that I don't feel that such revelations give me a position of authority to argue from.

But far more importantly, I see religion, in general, to be a substitute for any authentic, personal spiritual quest.

And as such, I see it as being indistinguishable from any other form of Identity Politics.

Hitch has many convincing arguments - but you could simply swap "GOP" for "GOD" and the argument could, in most cases, be just as telling.

Hitchins disbelieves in a particular sort of God image - and I happen to think that it's exactly the same sort of God Moses disbelieved in when he had his well-recorded tantrum.

Hitchens fails to distinguish - or apparently even discern the need to distinguish - between the validity and ethical deficits of what religious people say and do and whether or not there might be "something or someone out there." But they are quite separate issues - and anyone who has either read Dune or the history of the Jesuit order knows that Religion and experiential, personal faith have at best a coincidental relationship.

Wilson, on the other hand...

What an exercise in smugness, presumption and head-patting! If this is the best the intellectual religious community can provide to justify it's existence - mark me down for atheism.

At least they don't send me begging letters.

However, in all honesty, Wilson is not the best example. However, MOST religious intellectuals and certainly mystical types such as myself already know it's a compete waste of time. Either you "gno" or you don't. Eheh.

The only thing about a religion that can be judged objectively, even by the faithful members, is what it does on behalf of individuals and what benefits that brings society as a whole.

As for the particular "believe it or don't" aspects of the faith; if the moral structure dictated by "revealed truth" requires members to do things that people who do not accept that revealed truth would consider to be some combination of immoral, unethical or dangerously stupid, then it's wise to consider if there is some question as to the authentic and genuine nature of the "revelation." Or if you prefer the question as to whether the "truth" may exist primarily for the convenience and profit of the Prophet is an important matter to consider!

(See Also Joseph Smith, L. Ron Hubbard, Sun Myung Moon & Ayn Rand)

Religion is a social institution with certain inherent goals, promoted by people to people in order (usually) to improve people, make society work better (for some value of "better") and therefore it is possible to have a meaningful discussion as to whether or not Religion in general or indeed any particular religion is performing as promised, and whether a good outcome from their perspective is good for anyone else.

These issues can be discussed and determined. Really. By their fruits ye shall know them. It ain't rocket science, people. There IS an objective component.

Now, on the other hand; Hitchens, other atheists and various other atheistic social movements (Marxism, Maoism, for instance) assert that it is quite possible to construct workable ethical systems without any divine authority or fear of hellfire.

And to varying degrees, they have, although one might wryly observe that what they have created looks remarkably like a religion without any of the fun parts.

Again, by their fruits, ye shall know them. It should be possible to evaluate these competitive ethical systems in terms of outcome. And a real argument might commence.

But that will not occur; because a real argument includes the possibility that one might risk being persuaded that the other fellow has a point, and both are clearly as convinced of their own essential infallibility when speaking Ex Cathedra as is the Pope his Pointy-Hatted Self.

As for myself, I dismiss the authority of anyone unwilling to risk the perception of their Infallible Authority by contact with grubby reality, and I see various degrees of this conceit in both. It's all too human, completely understandable, a failing of my own more often than not.

But then, I don't pretend I'm being intellectually honest in public in collusion with another person for money. And if I were to indulge in that form of meaningless entertainment, Coulter v. Mahr is a far better model for meaningless spectacle.

Boobs to right of them, Boobs to left of them, Boobs in front of them. Valey'd and cleave'd; Storm'd at with rise and swell, Boldly they raved and well...

2009-10-17T01:10:00.000-07:00

Meghan McCain got a harsh life-lesson in the last couple of days. It's one of those "if youda ast me, I coulda tolja" moments. She tweeted a twitpic of herself, reading a book about Andy Worhol. Yeah, I KNOW!

She really should have anticipated the outraged reaction against her investigating the life and art of such a notorious leftist intellectual and polluter of the precious mental fluids of... actually, never mind my prescience. If sheda ast me, I'da toldher to never be caught dead publicly enjoying ANYTHING associated with Warhol. I mean, the drugs, the groupies, the alleged orgies, the abstraction!

But I tease, I do. For, while I could easily have seen people on the right going mental about it, and might well have expected to hear some outraged and futile harrumphing to that effect, it was not about that at all.

It was all about Cleavage Control. I Swear to God.

From her Daily Beast response...

Could it be it's because I have breasts? Because for those of you who didn't know, I have two. They're larger than some women's and not as big as others. I don't usually show off my cleavage—as I did in the photos I posted—which I will admit is not the smartest thing I have ever done. But it’s just not worth the drama it caused.

The comments on that posting reveal a drooling mysogyny that is truly appalling. But what's even worse is the presumption that they have the right to say hateful, offensive things.

Such as: (More or less random example of those still undeleted.)

Permalink

8:19 am, Oct 16, 2009
mindlessmissy
Well, like Dave Chappelle will say, I will NOT call you a slut BUT you sure do have on their uniform ...

I mean, come on, you got them tatas poppin' out of your turtleneck and sh!... !

Flag It

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Permalink

2:21 pm, Oct 16, 2009
Dan100
I won't call you a slut, because I don't know how many people you have slept with.. But I will call you a hoe, because you put a trashy tittie shot on Twitter. You act so offended when people in the media comment on your body, yet you splash your boobs all over the internet. Go figure..

These are the classy ones.

That stereotyping was disturbingly bipartisan and gender-diverse, which goes to show that boobs baffle brains - apparently all brains.

But I'm all growd up. I KNEW that. I certainly know that what my male brain does when it sees boobies - regardless of who's boobies they are, or what their "intent" might be. To paraphrase the Japanese dictum about nudity, "Boobies are often seen and never noticed."

Meanwhile, I happen to know pretty well that the only time I happen to think of my own primary sexual characteristic is when it does something to call itself to my attention. These days, that more often means avoiding sitting on them, not "avoiding occasions of sin while wearing tight pants."

Particularly tight pants with patch pockets.

In church.

At 14.

Yeah, guys. You KNOW what I mean.

Stuff tends to do what it does, and you storta get used to putting up with it, while ignoring the hell out of it, so long as it doesn't actually hurt. All that much.

I don't know how well that applies to Megan. She was at home, and taking a picture of herself reading a book. Looks like she was lying down in a recliner, with her boobs doing what boobs do when you do that. And since that's what it looks like, I can easily see her thinking that's what it meant. If she thought of it at all.

To those of you who think "well, she OUGHT to have thought of What People Would think"- I think the reaction is proof that "Mostly, they don't." And what they do think and have cared to share - they clearly should keep to themselves, as it's puerile, pornographic and offensive.

I take Meghan at her word when she says she didn't think about her boobs. I have it on good authority from various owners of moderately large boobs that they are as much a part of your body as elbows and knees. As an artist, I recognize the pose. It's a reflexive clench intended to keep the girls from hiding in the armpits. It's not about lookin' sexxxxy. It's about not feeling ridiculous. Or so I'm told by sources with boobs, who's boobs - obviously - can't speak for McCain. Or McCain's.

Speaking of people who hear unattributed voices in their heads, it's quite apparent that there ARE people who are QUITE sure that McCain's boobs are saying slutslutlsutwhore. And probably "Al Gore is, like, SO hot!" But trust something I will share something with you. It's a bad idea to listen to those voices. They aren't any smarter than you are.

By definition.

To the extent of my understanding, Megan's "Sexy Pose" is as reflexive as the little dance I do before sitting down to ensure that I don't cause everyone in the room a moment of hilarity at my expense, and for exactly the same reason. I doubt she's thought about it for a moment since ...well, that time. When puberty slapped her in her face. The period of time we ALL repress with a shudder.

Except, of course, when we apparently see an opportunity to inflict our repressed insecurities on other, random people.

I embrace many things libertarian and the phrase "your right to make a fist ends at the tip of my nose." I also believe that observation should apply to words that are intended maliciously to cause harm. Emotional abuse is abuse and public figures have feelings too.

Frankly, if your mind takes you to where a little casual cleavage means that she's a "slut" or a "whore" - and you think you have the right to express that out loud in public, well, we all understand what those same "family values" would demand of a citizen. And since we both know that, we both know what sort of person that makes you - the sort of person used in the first fifteen minutes of a Western as a character development exercise.

Hey, I suppose that applies here as well.

Just two technical notes, Meg - work on your backhand, and use your sunblock.

Ok, if I may be serious, for a moment. Meghan is much-touted as an obvious future leader of the Republicans. She's easily twice as credible as Sarah Palin and three times as intelligent. But that's seen as a disqualifer in small-minded America.

Meanwhile, back in the reality-based world, it's assumed that everyone sitting at the "smart kids table" is some kind of tree-huggin' anti-war cawmunist faggot pinko librul. And Megan IS smart...

Meg, you have been set upon by Siberian Peasants. They probably aren't bright enough to co-ordinate their own hysteria. And all the shaming seems so... repetitive. It almost sounds like ... talking points, doesn't it? Almost ... Rovian.

Hm. I'm sure it's just a question of superficial appearances.

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The Hubris of Conservapedia

2009-10-06T14:34:00.000-07:00

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Who polluted the Bible with liberalism? Masoretes? Council of Trent? King James I? My money's on Jesus. #conservativebible (Malacandra)

I say unto you, when an interlocutor uses bedeviling facts and history to fool you, Call him a pinko and plug thine ears. #conservativebible (hyperlocavore )

This has become a genuine phenom. There's a general, non-partisan agreement this is a stupidity that transcends even that of Glenn Beck. The Schlafly based, Eagle-Forum derived Conservapedia Bible Paraphrase is misrepresented as a "translation," glossing over all the required evidence, fact, scholarship and other stuff that's hard and requires critical thinking skills. That's irrelevant to the entire concept that is Conservapedia.

There's an object lesson in here somewhere. I suppose I could liken it to the arrogance of Pharaoh in the face of the ten plagues - but there's an easier cite. "Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make proud."

And of course, it's also an object lesson regarding the danger of believing your own propaganda. And why would they not believe it? After all, powerful men and women of influence have been quietly, living and working by quite a similar code.

But the "Christians" of C-Street are smart enough to realize that they need to be secretive. Why? Well, they probably have a rational appreciation of what actual Christians might think of statements such as this:

If the Family men who stood over John Ensign as he wrote a baldly insincere breakup letter to his mistress were naive about hearts that want what they want, they don't claim ignorance about the strongmen with whom they build bonds of prayer and foreign aid. They admire them. Counseling Rep. Tiahrt, Doug Coe offered Pol Pot and Osama bin Laden as men whose commitment to their causes is to be emulated. Preaching on the meaning of Christ's words, he says, "You know Jesus said 'You got to put Him before mother-father-brother sister? Hitler, Lenin, Mao, that's what they taught the kids. Mao even had the kids killing their own mother and father. But it wasn't murder. It was for building the new nation. The new kingdom."

I can only guess that the strange folks at Conservative thought that the difficulties in reconciling free-market conservatism with The Words in Red could be reconciled by simply restating the words of Jesus and ... well, everyone else ... in such a way as to make it clear what "He really meant."

Let us know how that works out for you.

@World You can't make this shit up #ConservativeBible #WTF

2009-10-06T01:20:00.000-07:00

The title is a HT to ... well, it seems like everyone on twitter. But it was @shoq who clarified that the fun was all about this. The Conservative Bible Project.

Conservative Bible Project
From Conservapedia
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Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations. There are three sources of errors in conveying biblical meaning:
lack of precision in the original language, such as terms underdeveloped to convey new concepts of Christianity
lack of precision in modern language
translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one.
Of these three sources of errors, the last introduces the largest error, and the biggest component of that error is liberal bias. Large reductions in this error can be attained simply by retranslating the KJV into modern English.^[1]
As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:^[2]
Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias
Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity
Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level^[3]
Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;^[4] defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle".
Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots";^[5] using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census
Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story
Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels
Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God."
Thus, a project has begun among members of Conservapedia to translate the Bible in accordance with these principles. The translated Bible can be found here.

Now, ordinarily I'd have to link to Pandagon or Demcratic Underground to find eloquent snark, but today, I find I can refer to ... wait for it... Little Green Footballs.

They start out with a workmanlike left jab...

The far right fanatics who run “Conservapedia” have a new project: they’re planning to rewrite the Bible to get rid of all of that liberalism and socialism: Conservative Bible Project.

There's a follow through with several solid body blows which you might better enjoy in the surprisingly unlikely context - but I must share the final haymaker.

The interesting thing about this project: it’s a tacit admission that the Bible itself is not the unchangeable, literal word of God, but can be edited as necessary to fit political purposes.

Ok, dudes, when Little Green EFfing Footballs calls you "far right fanatics..." - it's time for a centering excercise. Seriously.

When people who are ordinarly proud of being called "wingnuts" actually pointing, mocking and LOLing just like Godless Liberals, it's time to reconnect to the Reality Base.

You should also look up Poe's Law.

In all fairness, I should point out that Conservapedia does recognize Poe's Law - and has reinterpreted it according to solid Conservative principles.

Like I said, you just can't make this shit up.

Why don't you log into Twitter and give them a hand.

The Plague of Autism Charities

2009-10-05T18:36:00.000-07:00

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I review ads for Graphictruth. I try to avoid things that might offend my readers and I reserve the right to refuse accounts that offend me. I blog about ethics, after all.

I filter out make-money-fast links, anything of any sort that suggests in boldfaced text that you can make thousands working from home with little or no investment or effort, quack cures, patent nostrums, gambling sites, lotteries, sites advocating hate speech, sites that spread dangerous misinformation, promote unreasoning fear, conspiracy theories about black helicopters or vaccines. If I have reason to doubt the ethics of a site, I'll reject it out of hand.

And that is why you do not see charities for autism taking up ad space - because several of the more prominent ones meet one or more of those criteria. There are places (Like Neurodiversity ) that do a better job of due diligence. But I don't specifically blog about Autism. I'm an Autistic who happens to blog about ethics.

Today there was an ad request in my my inbox for http://www.train4autism.org, a group that sponsors charity runs, and allows people to "choose" which autism charity to support. There are disputes within the community as to what approach is best, what ideas are most promising and what money should go toward, so an umbrella group that allows everyone to come together for a run to support ALL approaches would seem like a good idea.

But I looked through the choices presented and found none that I could support. I'm an autistic who favors the "autistic rights" or "neurodiversity" movement. There are groups, such as ASAN that I would support. That would seem to be the entire point to such a thing, and when I suspect that I'm being presented with the illusion of choice, rather than a genuine selection of charities, I become skeptical. Sadly, there are a great many reasons to be suspicious of autistic advocacy in general.

Click the title to read the rest. I do go on, I do.

In the Autism "Advocacy" charity world, there are certain things that make me instantly skeptical.

The use of "Puzzle Piece" graphics
Emotional Manipulation
Questionable Claims (1 in 150 children will be diagnosed as autistic)

The Puzzle Piece: While it's not an absolute indicator, the "Puzzle Piece" logo is considered offensive by many autistics and others on the spectrum, because it defines us as being disabled for "not fitting in."

Many of us see this as being a stance that borders on xenophobia, and even if true, is hardly helpful.

Autism Speaks is the most prominent advocate of this viewpoint has no autistic members on it's board, consistently spreads fear about the risks and tragedy of having an autistic child funds research to eliminate autism by genetic screening, and to say that promotes fear is to understate the matter.

But before before we examine the virtue of any particular group, let's just indulge in a thought experiment.

If you got a mailer from a group claiming to support civil rights, and they used a watermelon superimposed on a confederate flag as a logo, would you be inclined to read further? You would immediately know that whatever the motives of the group, they were completely out of touch with the sensibilities of those they claimed to represent.

While the puzzle-piece is not so obviously offensive, and many argue that autistics should not take offense at it, it's a fact that it is offensive to many autistics who are quite capable of articulating their objection.

I am autistic. Also I am a jewlery artist. First, let me say that many of us autistics don't like "person first" language. In this, we are not alone. Little people prefer to be called Little People rather than "people with dwarfism" and Deaf people prefer to be called Deaf people rather "people with deafness." And of course, women are women, not "people with femaleness" and Black people are Black people, not "people with blackness." I say this in introduction to my next comment.

We don't like to be referred to as puzzles. We are whole people, not broken puzzles with pieces missing. Many of us autistics find the puzzle symbols very offensive.

Leftbrain-Rightbrain (A blog that supports the Neurodiverse perspective of Autism that I ascribe to) says:

Autism Speaks uses damaging and offensive fundraising tactics which rely on fear, stereotypes and devaluing the lives of people on the autism spectrum: Autism Speaks’ unethical fundraising tactics are not limited to the new “I am Autism” video. Its television Public Service Announcements compare having a child on the autism spectrum to having a child caught in a fatal car accident or struck by lightning. In fact, the idea of autism as a fate worse than death is a frequent theme in their fundraising and awareness efforts, going back to their “Autism Every Day” film in 2005. Indeed, throughout Autism Speaks’ fundraising is a consistent and unfortunate theme of fear, pity and prejudice, presenting Autistic adults and children not as full human beings but as burdens on society that must be eliminated as soon as possible.

Please read the whole thing; it's detailed and specific.

Emotional Manipulation: Let's go to the horse's mouth, Autism Speaks. Their latest video has unleashed a firestorm of objections from the autistic community, and this is not the first time they have tried this tactic.

This latest video is so blatantly manipulative, with it's imagery that reminds one strongly of 20's and 30's eugenics propaganda - that it has drawn both outrage - and parody.

After you watch the first video - note the second, related video. If Autistics cannot communicate - how can they do parody? Hm. Perhaps it's that certain people just don't listen. Or maybe "Autism Speaks" for us because we are disinclined to say what they want to hear.

The exploitation of fear is one of the most surefire ways for someone to "get rich quick" - but if it works ON you, it certainly won't BE you. Fear of some strange, dangerous other is one of the favorite recruitment tools of every toxic, cult-like movement, from Al-Queda to Defeat Autism Now.

The best investment you can make in your autistic child's future is a commitment to intense scrutinization of treatment options. Does an approach make sense, or do you just really, really want to believe it will help? Are there real risks and only possible benefits? Do data and studies support it? If so, are they from independent sources or biased ones? New autism parents need to work past their fear and confusion, and embrace their critical reasoning skills. (If you need a skeptical thinking refresher, Michael Shermer's "Baloney Detection Kit" lists ten criteria for evaluating questionable claims.)

Parents also need to systematically track their child's therapies, behaviors, and health so they have the data to back up any decisions. Gut feelings are not reliable indicators of progress, despite autism cult members' declarations.

I wish someone had given me this frank advice after our son's diagnosis, and prevented my husband and me from becoming one of those frustrated, susceptible post-autism-diagnosis couples. Generation Rescue wasn't around in 2003, so we fell in with a more moderate autism cult, Defeat Autism Now! or DAN!. DAN! promotes the same approaches as Generation Rescue, but through a network of earnest MDs rather than Generation Rescue's and AoA's "warrior" parents.

I consider DAN! an autism cult because they recommend putting autistic children through their customized, costly, and rarely-insured diet, supplements, and alternative medicine wringer whether the child is a legitimate candidate or not (review tales of children helped by DAN!-type methods, and you'll almost always encounter kids who are physically ill in addition to their autism diagnoses; as their physical symptoms improve, their autism symptoms diminish). Think of it this way: would you send your child to a doctor known to prescribe chemotherapy every single time he or she even suspected cancer? My husband and I wanted to believe that DAN! methods would cure our son, but they didn't. It was irresponsible for our doctor to say they would -- there are no guarantees of anything when it comes to autism -- and unethical for him to continue recommending them when it became obvious that our son wasn't a responder.

That's the response of parents who overcame their panic and who are now advocates for a reasoned and individualistic response to the very real challenges Autism presents them and their child. Sadly, some do not recover and subject their children to torturous and dangerous regimes of treatment, while depleting the resources they could have used ensure their child's future.

Questionable Claims - the "1 in 150" The question here is not so much whether the number is accurate, but but what it means.

The prevalence of autism is determined in a number of ways and the number is something of a horseback guess. But it is based on real numbers. One way the number is derived is to look at the diagnosis of autism in children. This is sometimes mis-used to suggest that there's a skyrocketing rate of autism, that must be caused by some environmental factor, such as mercury. While that seemed like a promising idea, it turned out to be completely wrong. And it turned out that some or all of the increase could be ascribed to changes in diagnostic criteria. Asperger's Syndrome was not even recognized in the US until the early '90's.

But the number itself - be it one in 200 or one in 100 - is a significant number, comparable to a large ethnic minority.

It almost certainly includes people that you know and interact with. People you know in your community. People that you don't think of as being dysfunctional or different. And clearly, it could not possibly mean that all those people are so low-functioning that they cannot communicate or care for themselves. It's far too large. Nobody would have to "raise your awareness" about the issue. You would know.

Therefore, if someone implies to you that your child has a 1 in 150 chance of being a uncommunicative, subhuman vegetable that will destroy your marriage and require round-the clock care for the rest of their life, you should be very, very, suspicious.

A far more accurate way of putting it is that you have a 1 in 150 chance of having a child that is geeky enough and has enough other issues that, taken as a whole, will benefit from accommodation in some form. It's far less likely that your child will be disabled to the degree that Autism Speaks implies. But whatever the risk, if you do get dealt that card, fear, horror, panic and loathing is not going to help you cope.

At this point someone always seems to leap in and accuse me of demonizing parents who "only want the best for their child" or accuse me of having no real experience with autism.

But that's not at all what this is about. I'm not offering advice, good or bad. What I'm trying to illustrate is that there is a great deal of bad advice out there, and you can avoid a great deal of expense and anxiety by avoiding anything that tries to get you to give them money by exploiting your fear.

That's a pretty good rule for life in general.

Meanwhile, if you have question about what might or might not help you in relating to an autistic, or what an autistic might consider to be helpful, feel free to run it by me.

The Junior Senator from the Trick or Treat State.

2009-10-03T20:14:00.000-07:00

John Ensign is apparently only capable of speaking the truth when he thinks he's lying for effect.

John Ensign Scandal: Senate Republicans Decline To Defend Colleague: "'I have a little alert to tell Washington,' Ensign said during the televised hearings. 'The people don't trust us. They don't trust us to make these decisions.'"

It is the usual tranparent appeal to the prejudices of the wingnut social conservative fringe, who can be depended upon to take the assertion as gospel. On the other hand, it's a pretty moronic idea for a Senator be flinging around - because there is no more important thing than having a government that you CAN trust to "make those decisions." That is, after all, the job.

The man often referred to as "the Hairdo" by his critic is not the sort of man that it is wise to allow to take the point on the rather critical issue of the honor, honesty and credibility of the US form of Representative Government. One would think, at any rate, for the sad truth is there is no-one able to make that statement with greater unintended irony than John Ensign of Nevada. Or so I hope.

Nevada is a place where people come to get rich or get lost. It's politicians and business people tend to be of the former sort, but in some particular cases the latter happens - because fast buck artists don't tend to be drawn from the classes of "The Best and the Brightest." It could well be called the "Trick or Treat State;" it gained statehood on Oct. 31, 1864, with the issue of slavery being a trick or a treat, depending on which side you were on. Things pretty much continued in that vein thereafter. The Hairdo Himself tends to underline the importance of a good costume in getting the biggest haul of candy. I think this explains his membership in Promise Keepers®, a conservative Christian movement with the motto, "Men of Integrety."

Central to Promise Keepers® membership is a pledge to keep the Seven Promises, among them:
PROMISE 3: A Promise Keeper is committed to practicing spiritual, moral, ethical, and sexual purity.
PROMISE 4: A Promise Keeper is committed to building strong marriages and families through love, protection and biblical values.

Why go to all that trouble actually doing the right thing, when you can simply join an organization that says you are above reproach for a modest annual fee?

On both sides of my family tree, the sagas and tales of my axe-flinging ancestors whisper to me that there is no greater offense to Odin Skyfather than the unspilled blood of an Oathbreaker. Me, I do try to keep such intemperate reactions in check - particularly since the only thing Ensign did that would be of concern to my forebears was that he broke an oath - a bond precisely as sacred to them as a gambling debt.

Speaking of Nevada politics.

I advocate no violence; I merely find it hilarious that my ancestral collection of reprobates, raiders and remittance men would be offended by the man's offense, for, in a literary sense, it is exactly the sort of arrogance that the Gods, we are told of in the sagas, hero-tales and morality plays find remarkable enough to correct personally. So beware of doing harm to Ensign and his ilk.

It's imprudent to deprive a Ceiling Cat of it's mousie.

The New York Times published an overview of the sorry tale of presumption, adultery, deceit, deception, corruption and malfeasance that in the end led to the scuttling of John Ensign's presidential ambitions.

Mr. Ensign allowed Senator Tom Coburn, a friend and fellow conservative Christian, to serve as an intermediary with the Hamptons in May in discussing a large financial settlement, to help them rebuild their lives. “John got trapped doing something really stupid and then made a lot of other mistakes afterward,” Mr. Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, said in an interview. “Judgment gets impaired by arrogance, and that’s what’s going on here.”

No doubt that we are supposed to presume that Sen. Coburn - fellow conservative Christian and close friend - was as suprised by this behavior, this abuse of his trust as was the husband of his paramour (and campaign treasurer), close friend Douglas Hampton. Goodness, how could anyone have possibly foreseen such a thing?

But, man, he does look fine in public; the looks of a George Clooney, albiet with the eyes of an inbred Cocker Spaniel.

His capacity for looking good in public, coupled with his inability to avoid causing problems that could indebt him to those who make problems go away for a price made him the perfect candidate to place into high office, from a certain cynical perspective.

It's no wonder at all to me that he was seen as being a likely heir to Ronald Regan.

Whatever the motives of those who knew Ensign of old and supported him for office anyway, they certainly got exactly what they paid for. But like many superficially attractive investments, he depreciated rapidly. There is an axiom referred to as Hanlon's Razor which states that one should never presume malice when stupidity alone is sufficient to explain the situation - but to presume such comprehensive stupidity on the part of his backers is so insulting that I prefer to err on the side of charity.

John is a man who's character is made evident by his behavior. My primary impression comes from constituent correspondence. I wish I had copies - but I shredded them with extreme prejudice.

They revealed a breathtaking arrogance coupled with the complete absence of any thought put into the issue I had raised. Since they were form-letter responses to common questions and he has a staff who are actually paid to be smarter and better-informed than he is, there's simply no excuse for headpatting platitudes as a response to a constituent's concerns - most especially when you wish them to be reassured in their complacent presumption of your competence.

It was not difficult to find an example of the Ensign Style of Communication in the public record. Indeed, he communicated it to the Editors of the New York Times.

Published: October 8, 2007
To the Editor:

Your Sept. 27 editorial “Let the Sunshine In” left your readers in the dark on the issue of transparency in the Senate. I support electronic filing of fund-raising reports in the Senate because, as we probably agree, disclosure leads to more transparency in government. I have never had a secret hold on this bill.

In the same spirit of transparency, I requested a vote on my amendment that would require groups filing ethics complaints against senators to reveal who is financing their efforts. Light needs to shine on this increasingly abused process, but Democrats are clearly afraid of voting on my amendment.

Your editorial compared the House and the Senate, but on this issue there is a big difference. In the House, a member of Congress has to file a complaint. In the Senate, there are no requirements — anyone can do it anonymously, without even a signature. The result of the Democrats’ blocking my amendment is that people can continue to hide in the dark to lob partisan attacks against senators.
John Ensign

U.S. Senator from Nevada
Washington, Sept. 28, 2007

See how it gives the dual impression of impervious arrogance while revealing an inability to comprehend that there might actually be a principle at stake?

It's long been a GOP meme that ANY ethical question directed at a Republican is merely a "partisan attack." And they should know. They'd pioneered that style of political action with their attacks on Bill Clinton. So, we should all understand that when ethics complaints are being made, they aren't really ethics complaints. They are just attempts to replace one sumbitch with another, equally corrupt sumbitch who owes his loyalty to different backers and gets his political support by pandering to a different segment of the credulous public.

But - even if that WERE true - it is still a strange position for a Senator who comes from a state where "none of the above" is one of the options on the ballot.

But the objection to autonomous complaints - well, I do understand that completely. Those who casually cause offense, outrage and harm do like to know if those "little people" are banding together to get themselves some even. The idea that a complaint might be based in some legitimate concern for, say, national security or the rule of law can be dismissed as fantastical. Concerns about personal safety, or other forms of retaliation? Absurd! Paranoia!

Anyone making a complaint would OF COURSE be employed by or funded by some political action group. That's how things "really work." That is the assumption made when Republicans attack ACORN and the ACLU. Whatever these groups say, or even actually achieve, their only real agenda is to make make it difficult for Republicans to hold on to political power.

As patently absurd as that statement is, I do think those people best placed to influence the Republican party and the Social Conservative Base actually believe that politics is the primary motivation of critics, that their opponents see ethics, law, justice, civil rights, gun laws, health care, global warming, church and state issues, marriage rights and every other issue as simply sharp rocks to pelt the GOP - and that there could not possibly be any larger motivation - like, say, moral indignation, or a sincere appreciation for the economic, social and environmental impact of heedless social, environmental and foreign policy.

That is not because of a fundamental difference in political philosophy. It is because that sort of blindness is required if you are a corrupt sonofabitch belonging to a club of corrupt bastards, for in order to look in the mirror, you must embrace the faith-based doctrine that all persons of your walk and station are no better than you.

When you offend a large enough number of people over a long enough period of time with the expressed attitude of "whatcha gonna do about it," - well, sooner or later, one of those people will be in a position to do you a grave injury. Meanwhile, even those you helped - well, they probably had to pay a great deal for the help that should have come as a matter of course - so when you lose your ability to deliver the goods there is no bond of loyalty or gratitude, no debt of honor or genuine friendship to presume upon.

Now, I have no idea whether Sen. Ensign's ethics amendment passed, but regardless, it is ironic to note that if we were to trace the source of the funding for the complaint against him - well, it would come from "Ensign, Inc." Literally. But it is reasonable to question the motives and the character of people bringing complaint, as a matter of significant interest that should be independent of the facts of the complaint.

It is a sad fact of human nature that most crimes are solved with the help of other criminals.

To put up with Ensign, and people like Ensign - you have to take him as being the very model of a modern Statesman. You have to be able to dismiss every hint that he's less than intelligent, less than prudent, less than honest and certainly FAR less than what he seems. You have to somehow continue to accept him at face value and at his word. That makes you either very stupid indeed, or very willing to look the other way in return for some personal benefit. For the latter case, we have Douglas Hampton to illustrate the matter. The Ensigns and the Hamptons were said to be very close, over a very long period of time. It's difficult to credit the idea that people who are so close are truly unaware of the essential nature of their bedfellows.

When you choose to be friends with someone like John Ensign - well, it's kinda like inviting a loaded skunk into your home. Sooner or later, the damn thing is going to go off. It's in the nature of skunks and narcissists to do that when every little thing fails to go their way. A narcissist may be charming - may indeed charm your pants off. But if you permit that to happen more than once - it's a consensual relationship with a very predictable story arc leading from "ohgodohgod" to "owfuckOW!"

This story will no doubt be fodder for playwrights and novelists for generations to come. It is a story that in it's improbable degrees of arrogance, theatrical details and breathtaking contempt for the standards of moral behavior may be in all seriousness be compared to great tragedies such as Antigone, Oedipus Rex and Othello.

But I must confess that there is a distinction between the real-life clusterfuck that is Ensign and a classical morality play. Mark Twain famously observed that the difference between truth and fiction was that fiction had to make sense.

It will take a great deal of literary hagiography to transform Ensign into a plausible vehicle for an actor of stature greater Will Ferrell or Pauly Shore. Othello was not merely a jealous prick. Oedipus was not just a fool who stepped on his own dick. The tragedy of Antigone is that all involved were genuinely mistaken in their attempts to honor Family and Gods.

Ensign - well, if there is a God that would be caught dead in the C-Street church - it's the one that appears every time in the mirror when we brush our teeth. But then, to people like Ensign - no higher power exists.

Bloomburg Dodging Rogue Elephant Shit

2009-09-29T12:30:00.000-07:00

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I don't know if you've noticed this, but within the ungentle confines of political reality within The "Untied" States, the only way to run for office as a well known conservative is to run away from the GOP.

New York City's generally well regarded and quite conservative mayor has "shaken the dust from his feet," in a way that can't have made him any friends within the GOP. But then, his political calculation is pretty much summed up as "And your point would be?" (NBCNewyork.com)

Mayor Michael Bloomberg doesn't know who the GOP candidates for citywide election are, but he says they've got no chance at winning – an interesting comment from the guy who, ahem, is running for mayor on the Republican line.

"They have no chance whatsoever … whoever they are," the mayor said at a press conference today.

Suffice it to say, Bloomie's probably not making any new friends in the GOP. Last week he said he didn't even know the names of the Republicans running for citywide offices, reports the Daily News.

The New York GOP probably won't be happy about Bloomberg's latest comments, considering his name is at the top of their ballot in November. But perhaps the mayor may be deliberately saying things that annoy the GOP in order to court the city's Democratic voters, who outnumber Republicans by four or five to one.

This situation has been brought to you by our good friends, Cause and Effect. Literally years of increasingly delusional and counter-productive stupidity have created a situation whereby genuine conservatives must distance themselves from the movement radicals who have taken the party hostage. The political process requires credibility. It requires the ability to compromise, to negotiate, to contribute to the debate above a standard found on a grade-school playground.

Practical politics requires a willingness to work in concert with people who have differing agendas, different priorities, different needs. That politics is "the art of the possible" and being held hostage by ideologues and simpletons makes politics impossible and conflict inevitable.

By contrast, I give you an example of ideological generated stupidity in action.

Erick Erickson, the managing editor of RedState.com and a city councilor in Macon, Georgia, has called for the abolition of Macon’s police force if it votes to unionize.

The Macon Telegraph reported on Monday that some 130 police officers on the city’s municipal force want to unionize because of “officers bearing the burden of rising insurance costs, a loss of incentive pay and the city not having a pay scale.”

Then there's this:

New Orleans newspaper takes Rep. Steve King to task for his ‘heartless’ contempt of Katrina victims.
In an interview with The Hill this week, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) boasted that “the best vote” he ever cast while in Congress was to deny $52 billion in aid to Hurricane Katrina victims. Yesterday, the Times-Picayune, New Orleans’ award-winning newspaper, calls King’s comments “heartless” and “appalling,” especially because he is from “a state that’s also vulnerable to flooding“

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is one of Think Progress's favorite topics. Every time he opens his mouth, it's a freakin' gift to whoever says something vaguely sensible in opposition.

Let me diagram the political calculation for you.

Stands like this will please only the hardcore fringe of the social-conservative right. They will make more moderate and better informed conservatives uncomfortable, for whether or not they specifically disagree - they are certainly aware enough of the social context to realize there's a price to be paid for standing next to shrill idiots.

Independent voters will see no political or social advantage to being identified with such an obvious tool, even if they have particular issues in common - and the major indicator for those left of center is how badly they want to kick him in the nuts.

But center-progressive political operatives must view this conspicuous lunacy as a gift from God on High. It's not even so much the politics any more, or the absence of any critical thought that might actually contribute to the dialoge. No, it's the obviousness of the complete, smug, impervious armor of utter ignorance and incompetence - and an increasing awareness of how dangerous it is to let such icons of confident incompetence anywhere near the levers of power.

People who do things badly, Dunning has found in studies conducted with a graduate student, Justin Kruger, are usually supremely confident of their abilities -- more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.
"I began to think that there were probably lots of things that I was bad at and I didn't know it," Dunning said.

One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured, the researchers believe, is that the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence.

The incompetent, therefore, suffer doubly, they suggested in a paper appearing in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

"Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it," wrote Kruger, now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, and Dunning.

The deficiency in "self-monitoring skills," the researchers said, helps explain the tendency of the humor-impaired to persist in telling jokes that are not funny, of day traders to repeatedly jump into the market -- and repeatedly lose out -- and the politically clueless to continue holding forth at dinner parties on the fine points of campaign strategy.

Recognize anyone?

"Going Rogue" must be the all time most stupid title for a political memoir. It could only have come from the woman who stumbled through an interview with that hard-boiled journo Katie Couric, stood in front of a turkey slaughter for a photo op, winked at us during debates and said the word "maverick" often enough not only to inspire a drinking game but also to ensure that the entire nation was completely obliterated by the time she was done speaking.
And that brings us to "rogue." It's almost like she just decided she couldn't call the book "Maverick," because that was McCain's word, so she used a thesaurus. Except look more closely at the definition, governor.

According to the New American Heritage dictionary (figure that would appeal to her more than Mirriam Webster) there's this: "a dishonest or unprincipled man."

And this: "an elephant or other large wild animal driven away or living apart from the herd and having savage or destructive tendencies."

This: "a person or thing that behaves in an aberrant, faulty, or unpredictable way."

And finally this: "an inferior or defective specimen among many satisfactory ones, esp. a seedling or plant deviating from the standard variety."

Is it any wonder that Mayor Bloomburg is saying what he's saying? He has the advantage of having demonstrated his competence in a notoriously difficult political job. But the other candidates on that slate have no such advantage - and furthermore, in order to get on the slate, they need the backing of core, committed, doctrinaire republicans who are in charge of the party right now. People like Palin. People like Representative King. People like those who support them with time and money. The people who nominated them. The people who think these folks are appropriate representatives.

Bloomburg and other rational conservatives know that even if these factors fail to screen out competent, qualified candidates, hardly anyone could be expected to believe it.

And that, gentle readers, is why they have no chance, and why Michael Bloomburg is perfectly willing to say so.

On the value of minding one's own business.

2009-09-28T09:34:00.000-07:00

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There's a fundamental principle of fiscal and, yes, even social conservatism, which may be stated as follows:

"Don't sweat the small stuff."

If you would like it in more Biblical terms - and I do, for it proves just how obvious and old the precept is, it can also be summed up as "straining at gnats and swallowing camels."

That is to say - for explaining the obvious is my lot in life - a fixation on a trivial detail can distract you from large and critical matters. Most of life amounts to doing the best you can with what you have for the largest net effect. This applies to everything, from heating your home to keeping a community running to the essential goal of keeping people as healthy as possible - because plague is a bad thing, and almost always plague comes due to the mistaken assertion that "those people" don't deserve "luxuries" like sewers and access to clean drinking water, and certainly "taxpayers" should not be forced to "subsidize" these "useless and unproductive" people.

Well, if you see sewage-treatment, garbage collection, roads and firefighting to be "luxuries" that should be "means-tested," you really need to go and make your own way in some remote mountain valley. In any urban area, it's irresponsible - and prohibitively expensive - for anyone to maintain a sole-use infrastructure for these basic requirements. The principle here applies to all the general needs of any large collection of people who got there however they got there to do whatever it is they do to become part of that community.

I illustrate this with two different issues, two differing ideological viewpoints, both illustrating the beam in the other fellow's eye - while doing nothing about the mote. So to speak. Both are cases of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.

Mich. woman warned to get license for babysitting kids until school bus arrives A Michigan woman who lives in front of a school bus stop says the state is threatening her with fines and possibly jail time for babysitting her neighbors' kids until the bus comes, WZZM reports.

Lisa Snyder of Middleville, Mich., says she takes no money for watching the three children for 15-40 minutes each day so that the neighbors can get to work on time.
The Department of Human Services, acting on a complaint that Snyder was operating an illegal child care home, demanded she either get a license, stop watching the kids or face the consequences, WZZM says.

Snyder calls the whole thing "ridiculous" and tells the Grand Rapids TV station that "we are friends helping friends!"

A DHS spokesperson tells the station that it has no choice but to comply with state law, which is designed to protect Michigan children.

Now, we are missing a big chunk of information here - how much a license would cost under these circumstances, and what meeting the requirements to be licensed in the first place would be. But that is almost beside the point. It's what triggered the action in the first place, a complaint. A citizen, using the power of government to interfere in the lives and arrangements of people who were meeting their own needs without having "gotten proper permission."

Perhaps the complaint was triggered by something important, perhaps the investigation found things that the agency - once they were forced to investigate, were legally obligated to address. Perhaps there were even significant, real issues regarding child safety. We should be able to assume that, for DHS should never be wasting their time on matters of less critical urgency, and it should be staffed by people trained and experienced in making these calls for the benefit of children and the community as a whole, empowered by regulations that tell them within what circumstances they may act and to what degree - not authoritarian checklists designed to restrict discretion and ensure that the "wrong people" are not gaining an "undeserved benefit."

You know, like free childcare from someone willing to provide it, and probably no less qualified than they are themselves.

This has the stench of the doctrinaire liberal - who's quite sure that no-one is qualified to wash their own hands without having been forced to read and initial a seventeen-page "training" written in such a way as to ensure that no-one who actually needs to know the information will be able to read it.

And on the other end of the spectrum...

t r u t h o u t | Denying Health Care to Immigrants Would Be Harmful to America: "A 2007 congressional study of procedures used by six states to verify citizenship eligibility for Medicaid discovered that the six states spent $8.3 million to verify applicants' immigration status, only to apprehend eight undocumented people trying to game the system. How many physicals could have been purchased with that money? Our immigration laws prohibit the entry of any person with a contagious disease, or a physical or mental disorder that may pose a threat to others, and deny residence to those who have not received vaccinations against vaccine-preventable diseases."

This is such an obvious issue that I've hesitated to bring it up. It's contentious. It has all kinds of racial implications. It involves illegal immigrants - who are Mexicans, probably Catholic, and who - if not properly restrained - might expect some social recognition. If left unchecked, can full-scale multiculturalism be far behind?

I wax sarcastic - and I do it to illustrate how easy it is to forget the essentials while having a food-fight over trivia. If you do not happen to care for Mexicans or Appalachan Yankees, nobody is forcing you to mingle socially. That's up to you. Mind your own business and allow others to mind theirs. Do not demand that an accounting be made to prove that "those people" are not gaining some diffuse benefit they "don't deserve." Why? Because the accountants have to be PAID. You don't want "your tax dollars going to illegals." Well, if a few dollars pains you, doesn't a million per illegal found pain you more? And if to you "cost is no object" to "ensuring the law" - I reserve the right to kick your ass until your brain is restarted - because that sets the intent of the law on it's head.

If someone is flipping my hamburger or picking my collards, I would very much prefer that they did NOT have tuberculosis or hepatitis or meningitis. I would very much prefer that if their children attend school with my children - and let's not argue the importance of them doing so - I don't want my kids bringing home easily preventable diseases, much less "critters." And I frankly do not care about their immigration status, or even if they are one of the vanishingly small number of illegal immigrants who have gotten welfare benefits (such as they are in the US of A) by means of fraud.

My immune system is not set up to check passports, and neither is yours, so shut the hell up and stop sweating the small stuff.

So health care legislation that is designed with conspicuous malice to deny health-care to "illegals" makes about as much sense as making head-lice mandatory.

I rather hope that I do not have to explain these two cases have in common, but I'll do so anyhow, so that I can tie it to things you can point to when you wish to agree with me in public. As of course you will...

It's Authoritarianism - the distinct and often odious need of a certain fraction of the population to be In Charge and In Control. People - in general - have been so conditioned to respect and defer to Authority that we barely even question whether that authority is qualified - even though our ability to suspend judgment is challenged with every encounter with government or corporate paperwork. One theme that runs through it all is a surprising willingness to spend ten dollars in a probably futile effort to prevent one dollar from reaching the "wrong hand."

But any successful enterprise - public, private, communist, socialist, collective, co-operative, faith-based - whatever their political, economic or social structure and whether their efforts are valued in cash or on some theoretical Social Utility Index - ALL succeed or fail by keeping their eyes on the intended goal and being internally quite ruthless about ensuring that the process doesn't preclude the prize.

This requires a good deal of personal discipline, a willingness to review and revise procedure as advised by experience and above all, never letting the need for control over others to become the primary motive for people to belong to the organization.

The key to maintaining a lawful and orderly society is to have as few laws as possible and a social consensus about "order" that is as inclusive as possible. It's not hard to find operational definitions of what "law and order" look like, definitions that in their origins predate even English Common Law. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is one such expression - but I may not actually want you to do unto me as you would have me do unto you. Indeed, I might find what you want me to do unto you to be challenging or even distasteful. So I prefer the more individualistic "And it harm none, do as you will."

For really, that's what a civilization must require - that it's members agree to conscientiously avoid doing harm, and be accountable for those occasions when they fail to avoid harm. All else is details and window-dressing that is very appealing to those who aspire to large offices in high-status locations. And we should not have any particular objection to rewarding those with such needs in such coin so long as their efforts are responsible and professional.

But when they clearly see their privilege as being defined by the ability to screw with other people without a single thought to what direct or indirect consequence that interference may bring, it's time to renegotiate the power exchange, by means as peaceful and nonviolent as possible. But clearly, it's time to stop suggesting and to start insisting.

For right now, not only does the US social dialog amount to "sweating the small stuff," it's clear that "sweating the small stuff" has become the definition of every aspect of it's government. A government, I should point out, that is a faithful and quivering slave to the sort of people who pay for it's "services" and demand it's sops and token legislation aimed at the habits and liberties of others, with no beneficial outcome other than annoying the hell out of society as a whole. This has the predictable outcome that most people are breaking or ignoring many laws most of the time - often without any idea that there is, or could even possibly be such a law in the first place.

I am a classical, small government fiscal conservative. I temper my Jeffersonian idealism with a foundation solidly resting on the conservative pragmatism of Edmund Burke. And frankly, I favor the rights of the individual over the rights of any group of people, because it's the efforts of individuals that matter, when you get right down to it. Any large group of people - be it Greenpeace or the Tea-Party movement - is motivated by and empowered by individuals. Take away two or three key individuals and the rest will wander off, confused, searching for a new cause or a new Leader.

Well, we need to expect a lot more of those Authorities - and permit them a good deal less of our power in exchange for their services. Clearly, they've been operating at a level that exceeds their executive competence.

Strategic Vision, LLC - False Front Fraud?

2009-09-26T10:23:00.000-07:00

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Nate Silver over at fivethirtyeight.com just dropped a grenade into the wonkosphere. If you aren't familiar with fivethirtyeight, it's where you go if you want to know how good polling numbers are and the best publicly available insight into what those numbers mean.

One of the things I learned while exploring the statistical proprieties of the Iranian election, the results of which were probably forged, is that human beings are really bad at randomization. Tell a human to come up with a set of random numbers, and they will be surprisingly inept at trying to do so. Most humans, for instance, when asked to flip an imaginary coin and record the results, will succumb to the Gambler's Fallacy and be more likely to record a toss of 'tails' if the last couple of tosses had been heads, or vice versa. This feels right to most of us -- but it isn't. We're actually introducing patterns into what is supposed to be random noise.

Sometimes, as is the case with certain applications of Benford's Law, this characteristic can be used as a fraud-detection mechanism. If, for example, one of your less-trustworthy employees is submitting a series of receipts, and an unusually high number end with the trailing digit '7' ($27, $107, $297, etc.), there is a decent chance that he is falsifying his expenses. The IRS uses techniques like this to detect tax fraud.

Yesterday, I posed several pointed questions to David E. Johnson, the founder of Strategic Vision, LLC, an Atlanta-based PR firm which also occasionally releases political polls. One of the questions, in light of Strategic Vision LLC's repeated failure to disclose even basic details about its polling methodology, is whether the firm is in fact conducting polling at all, or rather, is creating fake but plausible-looking results in order to increase traffic and attention to its core business as a PR and literary firm.

I posed that question largely as a hypothetical yesterday. But today, I pose it much more literally. Certain statistical properties of the results reported by Strategic Vision, LLC suggest, perhaps strongly, the possibility of fraud, although they certainly do not prove it and further investigation will be required.

The discussions on his threads tend to be both sprightly and incomprehensible - with perl code and statistical expressions used without regard to the safety of bystanders.

SCIENCE!

If you want to see what "getting your ass peer-reviewed all over the bar" looks like, go watch. Nate seems to be holding his own, but it's kinda like watching fencing without knowing the rules, which are statistics and math.

But there are a number of other questions regarding the credibility of Strategic Vision, LLC , (http://www.strategicvision.biz ) one of which being that it is NOT the polling firm, Strategic Vision, Inc, (http//www.strategicvision.com)

So, not only confusingly similar names, but similar domain names. Similar enough to be grounds for legal action, I would think.

I'd consider that, coupled by the low-rent, post-office-box "Offices" to be a classic indicator of a possibly questionable group, as is the immediate reaction of Strategic Vision, LLC to earlier, more basic questions by Nate. Parsing this requires no understanding of the math or the science. It just requires an appreciation of human nature.

...in regards to Nate Silver's statements, we categorically deny them and will refute them. We have a call into our attorney on this and fully intend to take action that will vindicate us. I wish Nate had contacted me directly yesterday when he began this tirade, I could have answered his questions fully to his satisfaction prior to damage being done to our reputation. Now that he has made these accusations and posted them online, I must and will defend our company's reputation through all legal avenues available. The reason that we are going the legal route is he has attempted to do severe damage to our reputation and what is he going to do when we disprove him just say I am sorry. That isn't enough at this point.

The issue that concerned Nate Silver was that SV(LLC) does not disclose their methodology - how they collect their data from whom they collect their data, by what means, and what do they do with the data once they get it in order to wring meaning from it. Actually, he was more blunt than that, asking the most fundamental questions that one should never HAVE to ask firms of this type:

1. Are you actually polling anyone at all? Or are you just throwing some numbers up on a webpage and hoping nobody calls you on it?

2. What is the location of your "offices" in Tallahassee, Madison and Dallas? Why is there no street address or phone number listed in association with them? How come none of the locations show up in a Yahoo! or Google search?

3. Why would you pick the name "Strategic Vision, LLC" for your company when the name "Strategic Vision, Inc." was already in use by an extremely well regarded, San Diego-based research firm that has been in business for more than 30 years? Are you deliberately trying to confuse your potential clients and leverage Strategic Vision, Inc.'s much stronger brand name?

"We have a call into our attorney " is really all the answer a conscious human being needs, as
a commenter on the tampabay.com story cited below points out.

Wow. This is a public relations firm we're talking about? That sort of response is what I expect from an engineer-turned-CEO or frat-boy-turned-CEO who will hire a PR professional in a few days to undo the damage they just did.

And their attorney is going to tell them that filing suit is pretty much the dumbest thing they could possibly do because it will give Nate Silver the opportunity to look at all of their data and question their employees and principals under oath, and then discuss his conclusions in a public forum where he can't be sued for what he says (litigation privilege).

As things stand, they can fall back on "well, Mr. Silver didn't have all of the data, and he made some minor errors, and it's all really just a big understanding" but that won't work if they've had to produce everything in discovery and the defense has had weeks or months to go over it with a fine-toothed comb. Litigation gives Nate Silver a bigger magnifying glass to search with and a bigger megaphone to announce his conclusions.

Posted by: blakdawg | September 25, 2009 at 09:56 PM

Which leaves everyone wondering - what value can be placed on the SV(LLC) polls, which tend to break in favor of Republicans when SV(LLC) polls people about politics. It should be observed that many polling firms DO have a "house effect" that breaks one way or another, and that their polls are nonetheless considered entirely respectable. These firms generally ARE transparent about their data collection and data analysis. But there's a difference between a "house effect" and "lying," and if the question can arise, it must be resolved, so that nobody gets confused as to the difference.

The question is fairly important to Nate, considering that's what he does - evaluate polls. It's also a matter of concern to the polling industry as a whole, and that's how this whole mess arose. Jim Galloway explains:

[T]he American Association for Public Opinion Research, a kind of brotherhood of pollsters, publicly censured Strategic Vision for its failure to cooperate in an investigation into voter surveys conducted during the 2008 presidential primaries.
New Hampshire was the main focus – you’ll remember that Democrat Hillary Clinton surprised everyone with her win there. Twenty-one organization were asked to provide their statistical internals in order to help figure out what went wrong.

A final report was published in April. One finding: Techniques for developing polling models – weighting and such – are becoming increasingly murky. Often they’re declared to be trade secrets, and protected as such. The AAPOR argues that transparency is the only way to maintain public confidence in polling.

Said the association today, in a statement posted on its Web site:

Strategic Vision LLC was the only polling firm that did not provide sufficient methodological information (as defined by the AAPOR Code) about its surveys and refused to provide that information in response to AAPOR’s repeated direct requests.

For more than one year, AAPOR was unable to obtain the following basic information about Strategic Vision LLC’s polling in New Hampshire and Wisconsin: who sponsored the survey; who conducted it; a description of the underlying sampling frame; an accounting of how “likely voters” were identified and selected; response rates; and a description of any weighting or estimating procedures used. AAPOR considers the release of this information for public polls to be a minimum requirement for professional behavior among those who conduct public opinion research.

The important part of the story for me, is this:

“What we are asking for is people in the profession to behave in a professional manner, and to release the methods through which they do their research – because these are crucial to understanding it,” Miller said. [Peter Miller, president of the AAPOR, is a professor associated with the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.] “That’s our whole interest. That’s all we care about. We’re not trying to make some claim about the quality of Johnson’s research or anybody else’s.”

Here’s the catch:

“We’re saying we can’t know anything about quality if we don’t know what you did,” Miller said.

The argument in the thread at fivethirtyeight has raised the question as to whether Nate's analysis of SV(LLC's) polls (he used data from over a hundred polls they had done) has succeeded in pointing out data manipulation, or if it has simply detected noise that would ordinarily result from their sampling and data analysis.

I have no idea. At this point, I doubt anyone else does.

But then - as the The American Association for Public Opinion Research pointed out - that's precisely the problem.

Science!

2009-09-25T11:11:00.000-07:00

I must be a very strange person, for if asked to name favorite music, They Might Be Giants are right up there with Leonard Cohen, AC/DC, The Sex Pistols, Scott Joplin and The Traveling Wilburys.

All these artists manage to scratch my brain in one or more ways. A TMBG song is something that will make you wonder if you actually liked it - and make you play it all day to figure it out. On the other hand, when they want to get down and say something important, they can do that too. Turns out they have done several children's albums, and having "taught the controversy" about numbers and letters, their latest one is about science. The intro song, "Science is Real," explains in a simple way what science is, what it's for, and how it works.

In this particular climate of ignorance, a children's song that explains rationalism and the scientific method is important.

Just think about trying to write a song that does that and which a three-to-five-year-old would want to dance to and which doesn't make adults want to scream and run from the room.

The album is called Here Comes Science and is available at Amazon and the other usual places. It makes a perfect gift - for teachers and the children of relatives who might not value that book-larnin' stuff so much. You might just want to slip a copy to the school librarian, too. :P

Rhetorical Question: Is this sign racist?

2009-09-16T21:23:00.001-07:00

IMG_1487
Originally uploaded by NineTwelvePhotos

If you need a reason to understand why reasonable people from left to reasonably right of center are pretty much convinced that opposition to health care reform has everything to do with the black president who's for it and little to do with any rational reason to be against it - well, heeer's your sign!

I'm not saying there aren't legitimate criticisms of the Democratic HCR proposals. Indeed, the latest one is getting rocks thrown at it by people loosely described as "intelligent carbon based lifeforms."

That's because it's a crappy bill intended to please corporate lobbyists. It's so crappy it doesn't even deserve a partisan or ideological critique. Further, it's probably a fairly cynical ploy on the part of a lawmaker to avoid having to choose between staying bought and getting re-elected.

It's a sad day when the advocates FOR universal health care also have to be the critics of bad health care legislation. That's the case when no conservative can speak without their words being tainted with crap like this.

But then, who's fault IS that? Evil is flourishing because good men have done nothing..
Since the Regan administration.

There is no conservative moral high ground in the United States today, and the Tea Party movement is proof of it. Anyone willing to stand with someone who will say such a thing - much less argue that it's not "really" racist - is unworthy of consideration. And I think little better of those who simply choose to say nothing at all. I dropped my support of Ron Paul for far less than this.

Racism requires such concentration upon tending one's prejudices that it becomes impossible to think around it. You cannot develop public policies to benefit everyone in any rational, conservative, intelligent, efficient way if your first priority in government is to make absolutely sure that "certain people" are kept down and never, EVER gain any benefit from anything government does. It's an extraordinarily expensive way to go about accomplishing very little.

That sort of willful incompetence is harmful to everyone. Even white racists who think they are doing a "heckuva job." See that smiling face above, so proud of her wit, so happy that someone stopped to take her picture. If it doesn't insult you to the very core of your being that ANY intelligent, qualified lawmaker does anything to pander to such stupid people - you have little appreciation of the fiscal impact of that pandering.

If you happen to recognize her, don't be shy. Thank her for making it too embarrassing to be known as a Conservative in polite company.

Let me be explicit, lest I be misunderstood. In no way should this woman or anyone like this woman be threatened. No violence, not a hint of outrage.

The proper response to this is no different than a child who has a childish, public tantrum. It is ignored, and if it persists, the response is a deadly quiet, precise reminder of the behavior expected of young ladies and gentlemen and to what degree such behavior marks the offender as unworthy of association with their betters.

Then they are escorted away from the presence of the grownups.

THAT is the proper response to offensive misbehavior on the part of children of all ages.

Keeping the Moral High Ground.

2009-09-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

A little reminder on the tactical and strategic value of maintaining the moral high ground.

t r u t h o u t | The Moral Character of Our Country: "What the revisionists fail to understand is that morality is not a tool of advantage for the strong and/or the privileged to be used and appealed to when it is in their interest to do so, and when it is not, to be modified, ignored, or manipulated. Nor is morality a prop, a façade through which we may proclaim our superiority and/or condemn others. If morality is to have any meaning at all, it must recognize as a fundamental principle the dignity and the rights - the lives and well-being - of ALL human beings. If we do not value persons, all persons, not just members of our particular community, religious group, ethnic group, gender etc., and respect their dignity and their rights, then all other things, whether it is property, possessions, national boundaries, the flag etc., lose their meaning and their value as well. Like justice, morality is blind and requires universal and equal application, holding everyone to the same standard. It is the hypocrite, the rogue nation, that attempts to modify the tenets of morality, or argues that it be ignored, or rationalizes loopholes (collateral damage) through which to pursue their individual or national interest.

Further, the refutation of revisionism rests not on moral argument only but on sound war fighting science as well. Contrary to the view of the revisionists, knowledgeable military tacticians who understand the nature of asymmetrical/counterinsurgency warfare, realize that despite what may have been the perception in the past, morality and military science share common concerns. Consider, for example, the status of noncombatants. While much mental effort has been expended explaining ('rationalizing' is probably better) that innocent deaths, though regrettable, are necessary and justifiable as collateral damage, both the moralists and the military theorists such as Gen. Stanley McCrystal, the commanding officer of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, agree that killing noncombatants is not only immoral and illegal but counterproductive to achieving the military goals necessary for success (victory) in asymmetrical/counterinsurgency war, i.e., winning the hearts and minds of the people. It has become clear, therefore, that morality and military science are fundamentally compatible and the move to abandon or 'modify' the former indicates a lack of understanding of the latter. Collateral damage, then, is not only morally disingenuous, it is militarily unsound and those who advocate that we abandon or modify this particular moral (and legal) criterion are both morally and militarily misguided and lack expertise in both areas of study."

Emphasis mine.

This argument apples just as strongly domestically as internationally. It applies to the "war on drugs, the "war on terrorism" and the "culture war," particularly when we see these situations re-framed in such a way as to make our ethical principles "more flexible" to "fit the emergent nature of the situation."

The author was pointing out the moral dimension of health care reform, and reasoned their way to this observation. Ultimately, all actions are governed by ethics, simple, broad principles from which we draw our morals.

Warfare, far from being a "special case" in which the "ordinary rules" do not apply, is a case wherein the the cause and effect dynamics of human nature are painted in blood for all to see. The Karma of war has sharp teeth and moves swiftly indeed; actions that are unethical, unjust and stupid breed resistance from the enemy and demoralize those who are supposedly on "your side."

This is exactly the situation celebrated by chairman Mao's observation that "The revolutionary swims in a sea of peasants." And that very understanding is being illustrated with rocket grenades built, smuggled and even fired by ordinary Afghans and Iraqis of no particularly fixed religious or ideological orientation more complex than "get the HELL off my LAWN!"

You would think that Republicans would understand that most basic motivation. The fact that they do not indicates some moral and practical confusion as to who's lawn it actually is.

And so I draw the circle closed. When one group of people sees another group of people in terms of a problem that stands in the way of achieving their goals - problems that can, may or must be eliminated to achieve that goal - what we have are incompatible moral structures. It's not exactly a stretch to understand why people targeted for elimination will determine that to be an immoral act, one which entirely justifies a response. Obviously, there are no better placed people to understand the depth of delusion here than - in the alleged words of Boss Tweed - that half of the poor hired to kill the other half.

When morality becomes a means to rationalize expedient action, instead of a framework to define RIGHT action, it becomes, at best, an impediment. It's certainly not an argument that is persuasive to those who, in examining it's tenants, can easily see themselves as being "the next group up against the wall." C.F. The Solidarity Movement.

Ideology counts, but it counts with a sword. And in the other pan of the balance, we weigh the Politics of Personal Survival. That which weighs more, well... I suppose in pragmatic terms, it depends on where the sword cuts - and it's a persuasive argument against using it at all.

Ideological movements tend to create their own antithetical movements which in turn tend to be traduced by opportunistic bastards who see them as a horse to ride to immortality and damnation.

It's an environment that encourages the development of absolute moral systems that work from xenophobic first principles. To mention two, but hardly the only examples, the Dominionist theocratic movements within the Conservative Evangelical Protestant movement and of course the equally un-scriptural and immoral theocratic Islamic movement exemplified by Osama Bin Ladin.

Each show distinct similarities in rhetoric and rationalizations to the equally delusional religions of Communism, Fascism and "New World Order Neoconservativism."

For both groups, "right" is defined as actions that advance the group and "wrong" as things that disadvantage the group - as defined by their hierarchical leadership, of course.

Frankly, I attribute much of the growth of these groups to the breakdown of the concept of the rule of law and respect for the individual, much of which was sacrificed on the alter of the Cold War by all participants.

But ultimately, all individuals of any intelligence must come to the conclusion that if a nation or cause would not hesitate to sacrifice them in the name of "national interest" or "national security" or "for the good of the People" or for the "advance of the Cause," they understand that the most fundamental tenant of the social compact with them no longer exists.

That fundamental tenant is that they are as significant to the society as any other person, that their value does not flow from wealth or position or status; that these things are role and reward, a product of a complex interaction between fortune, necessity, opportunity and education, all of which depends upon those that the pathological narcissist would dismiss as being "Useless Mouths."

When you are somewhere within the top third of the pyramid, it makes very little sense, even in an hierarchical, patriarchal, disorderly authoritarian sense - to blow up the bottom third.

It makes the creation of a different pyramid an imperative, for it defines the leadership as being unworthy, having violated the social compact. Self-preservation is the strongest motivation of all, and there is no higher cause for creating a social order than mutual self-interest.

Therefore, violating that compact is a misdeed that is both grave and self-defeating.

When you have large numbers of people within a culture who see their interests as being in conflict with a much greater number of individual, lawful citizens, and who see no problem with acting unethically toward those people, who rationalize their unethical and unjust activities with exactly the same words and reasons as do incompetent generals who are quite willing to "destroy the village in order to save it," they have made a fateful choice. They have designated more enemies than they can possibly dispatch, and, short of a dignified redefinition of the terms of engagement, they are in a situation defined long ago by the Great Sage of War, Sun Tsu.

12. Therefore, in your deliberations, when seeking to determine the military conditions, let them be made the basis of a comparison, in this wise:--

13. (1) Which of the two sovereigns is imbued with the Moral law? (2) Which of the two generals has most ability? (3) With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven and Earth? (4) On which side is discipline most rigorously enforced? (5) Which army is stronger? (6) On which side are officers and men more highly trained? (7) In which army is there the greater constancy both in reward and punishment?

14. By means of these seven considerations I can forecast victory or defeat.

Note that the moral high ground is Sun Tsu's most important consideration. And here's another observation from him that is of immense importance to the current world situation.

2. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.

3. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.

4. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.

5. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.

6. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.

You got some impressive points there, Jethro

2009-09-15T16:44:00.000-07:00

Watch CBS Videos Online

Related story via CBS

...many black voters saw Wilson's actions as part of the heated rhetoric from conservative activists whose protests, including one on the Capitol grounds Saturday, have included depictions of Obama as Adolf Hitler and the comic-book villain the Joker, according to those attending the meetings. It was one thing to have such remarks at town hall meetings during the summer recess but completely different during a presidential address to a joint session of Congress, Clyburn and other black Democrats argued, and Democrats needed to stand up for the nation's first black president.

Clyburn has not publicly called Wilson's remark racist, but he told reporters immediately after the speech that Obama is the only president to have been treated in such a manner.

Some black lawmakers were more direct.

Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.), who received hate mail from constituents during Congress's August break, said Wilson had just returned from the rowdy town hall forums at which the most heated accusations were leveled at Obama.

"I think he was caught up in a moment. The issue is: Would he have done that if the president were white?" Scott said, adding that few Republicans opposed the "level of rhetoric" against Obama in August. "We've got to realize racism is playing a role here. I'm hopeful that this will be a wake-up call for us to get it off the table."

Democrats emphasized that it was not just members of the Congressional Black Caucus seeking to reprimand Wilson, and that a broad cross section of Democrats supported the measure, including Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.). Hoyer had argued publicly that Wilson had to make a formal apology from the well of the House chamber or face some sanction.

But Wilson has refused to offer any apology beyond the private phone call he made Wednesday night to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. In a show of defiance Monday, the lawmaker was the first Republican to speak when the chamber opened for a round of brief speeches. Rather than apologizing, Wilson hailed the "patriots" who attended his August town hall forums and opposed a "government takeover" of the health-care system.

But, isn't racist speech protected by the First Amendment? Yeah, but racist ACTIONS are not, and may well mandate the application of the SECOND in extreme circumstances. You see, armed mobs of stupid people are a not inconceivable problem, thanks to racist rabble-rousers like Wilson.

Just accommodating their pin-headed xenophobia bears a price, as Digby shows with real numbers and stuff by ganking a comment from their blog in toto. The full post ain't much longer, and in service of this cause, one good gank deserves another:

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Comment Of The Day

by digby

From Pseudonymous in NC:

Let's talk about real costs. A 7% payroll tax and $120/month -- that's what gets your average French person his/her healthcare -- copays, prescriptions, the works. No unexpected bills, no sticker-shock, no wrangling with insurers.

I'd pay that. I could afford that. I'm not going to pay for dogshit insurance from a corporate parasite, though.

I would guess that's something a lot of people would agree with --- if anyone would make the argument.
.
digby 9/15/2009 01:00:00 PM Comments (33) | Trackback (0)

Liberals, progressives and smart people have a learned aversion to provoking teh stupid, for we all know what happens next: sudden, mindless violence. But since it is sudden and mindless, it can be provoked to enlighten those witnessing the offense.

Come to think of it, we may be seeing just that. It's one of the biggest monkey wrenches in the Community Activist toolkit. But if I were a member of a group committed to provoking such a circumstance, well, I'd be wearing body armor under this t-shirt and packing me some hi-test pepper spray.

Compelling Points by webcarve
The Stupid, It Burns! Oval Fire by webcarve

Monday T-Shirt Rescue and Linkfest.

2009-09-14T11:40:00.001-07:00

I've been doing internet chores all day, one of which was to get started on fixing my Zazzle stores. They've been improved, you see. And you know what that means... a lot of work. So I figured I'd try to get started on turning a pile of designs into some sort of coherent organized form.

And of course, I found some old designs I rather liked. Most of these have been used in blog posts over the last several years, but some haven't, and some are topical again.

I'm interspersing with stories I thought worth a thought, with an eye toward there be some vague relationship...

Spafford 2.0 Template by webcarve
Many t-shirt designs available at zazzle

On Being Hated In a Nation of Assholes

by: David Sirota
I'll put it bluntly: We are becoming a nation of haters - a nation, really, of assholes, or at least dominated by assholes. And sure, maybe we've always been that way - but what's different is that it's become almost impossible to pretend otherwise. There's no more delusions, no more fantasies. Despising one another and ignoring the substance of issues has become the defining mark of Americanness in the 21st century - and that's a tragedy.

Human Genome XX T-Shirt by webcarve
View other Geek T-Shirts

Great Minds Think by webcarve
Browse Graphictruth T-Shirts

HL Mencken on Religion by webcarve
Create custom t-shirts with zazzle

Get off my lawn! T-Shirt by webcarve
View other My friends T-Shirts

And that kind of sums up my view of the general mood out there in the blogosphere today, what with tea party louts and screaming health care opponents. It's all rather depressing, and the biggest reason I take time to make shirts is to take the edge off.

Upon a careful consideration of views expressed within the public square.

2009-09-12T17:47:00.001-07:00

IMG_1302
Originally uploaded by NineTwelvePhotos

Oh HELL no!

Thank you for leaving no doubt whatsoever about which direction to go in order to reach Civilization from here.

Please, as a matter of principle, I implore you to refuse any form of Government subsidized, sponsored or regulated health care.

Your principled stand will make a lasting statement worthy of your sacrifice!

KICKASS Fired Up! Ready to GO! design for Health Care Reform

2009-09-12T16:40:00.000-07:00

It's time to apply astroturf production values to the most important "Progressive" issue.

It boggles my mind that this is even considered a "progressive" cause. I mean, Teddy Roosevelt tried to get this done. It is a no-brainer, taken for granted, basic issue for the rest of the developed world. To this Anti-authoritarian, fiscally conservative Libertarian, my view is, "if not for things like this, what the hell is a government for?"

I run the numbers through my mind and I compare the roughly 4 to 5 percent overhead of various forms of government sponsored and regulated health care to the double-digit overheads of "private enterprise" "solutions", couple that with the rape, pillage and burn tactics that lack of any useful regulation has permitted and I can't see any honest person supporting this Status Quo. Unless their health care depends on supporting it, of course.

This is not about "govenrment intruding into your life." This fight is really about who's government it is, and who does it benifit. Currently, it aint you. It belongs to corporations.

Well, it's time to crotch-kick them back into their proper place.

Here's two designs ready to go, with extensive templates that include your twitter or other social media details. They are telegenic, designed to grab attention and feature your cause. And they are affordable. More so in bulk. I will be making versions of the graphics publicly available if you want to make your own buttons or shirts, but if you want only a couple, this is probably your best option.

Fired UP! Ready to GO! Dark Multitemplate Shirt by webcarve
See more Fired up T-Shirts

Fired UP! Ready to GO! Light Multitemplate Shirt by webcarve
Create a custom tee shirt using Zazzle

Unethical Sluts : A Blog Post in three Unnatural Acts.

2009-09-11T10:18:00.000-07:00

Wanna have a quick look-see to find out what one of the poster-boys for Family Values gets up to on your dime and your eyeball-time?

I have absolutely no problem with legal prostitution. I'm a Libertarian. It's your right to do things that make me think you might be kinda sad and pathetic in spots, but I think it's a relatively responsible way of getting needs met without harm to others, while being willing to admit that my thoughts about you are "My stuff, not your stuff."

But by "harm" I don't just mean the risk of STD's or other personal consequences. I feel you are entitled to enjoy all the karma you generate - positive and negative. By "harm" I mean embarrassing your friends, family, colleagues and sponsors. People you owe for helping you get where you are. People who have every right to expect some discretion on your part, for even if they are not morally deserving, they are arguably contractually entitled.

I'm quite willing to let adults be adults, if they are responsible about it. And it harm none, do as you will. But the first clause is at the front for a reason. One of the most obvious occasions of harm is when stupid is found in "unholy congress" with arrogant.

Air Force Amy is, like hot. And we understand why you might want to have that picture with her and her delightful compatriots. But, hey, dumb-ass, did you not read the release? Did it not occur to you that this kinda makes you look like a total tool? It really doesn't show a great deal of respect for the moral viewpoints of a large swathe of your viewers. It kind of implies that you are pandering to their views in public while partying on their dime in private. Don't you think?

If you feel the desire to do things in private that completely contradict your public stance, the public stance you are being damn will paid to take, maybe you shouldn't pose for brag photos!

Morally speaking, it's no different than a whore who drugs a client and steals his wallet because zie thinks that theft and betrayal is somehow more dignified than providing expected value for promised funds arrived at after an honest negotiation.

When you claim to speak for a broad spectrum of the US Social Conservative movement, and then do stupid things that would embarrass the hell out of a large percentage of that population - well, it makes them feel like they were taken for a ride. Like they were played. Used. Led around by their noses. Fed a line. Conned. Betrayed. I would say that such feelings would be entirely valid.

But Hannity isn't even the best example of such stupidity. It's lurid and funny and awful and I'll admit using the titillation factor to my advantage - but now that I have your attention, I'm going to point out that the boobies are only significant in that they may have contributed to male stupidity. I'm going to use the next idiot to explain why. He makes Hannity look smart. And that's really, really hard.

Republican California Assemblyman Mike Duvall has set a very, very high bar for conspicuous public stupidity - and it's due to the same sort of stupid that caused Hannity to pose for a picture with Hof's stock in trade. Due to his addiction to stupid, he's managed to profoundly piss off his targeted constituency. (And hopefully, to an extent that might actually be morally instructive, as opposed to moralistically. )

He's a not just a state assemblyman. he was - wait for it - a member of the ethics committee and the utilities (energy) oversight committee. Who is taking sexual bribes. From energy lobbyists. In Post-Enron California. It's breathtaking.

His bragging violated the trust of every single person involved with him, licitly and illicitly. He was bragging of how he was cheating on his mistress - one energy lobbyist - with another lobbyist.

So, he was managing to cheat twice - with each. In their roles as lobbyists, and in their roles as mistresses. If you include his wife, it's a trifecta. When you add in the legitimate and illegitimate interests of his clients and constituents, the only appropriate word is "clusterfuck."

An interesting point is made dryly here:

In April--two months after Duvall became vice chairman of the Utilities & Commerce committee--privately owned California utility giant Sempra Energy hired Barsuglia as one of its top lobbyists, according to Secretary of State records. Barsuglia, who has a law degree and once worked as a speechwriter for Governor Pete Wilson, had previously worked at the California Retailers Association (CRA). During 25 months of work at CRA, she reported that she incurred no reportable lobbying expenses.

It's an arch way of implying "she's a whore" without actually saying it, but circumstances tend to validate that observation. But she IS a lobbyist, and frankly, the distinction between lobbyist and whore is primarily a question of style.

I condemn neither trade. I observe that human nature is human nature, and this is yet another example of pretending that human beings are different than they are, or that human needs for power, influence, sex and comfort are inherently sinful. I will assert with conviction they are not.

But the transaction costs can send you straight to hell, in a metaphorical sense. At the very least.

It seems that Orange County has been "blessed" with an "advocate" who gets his jollies, in part, by betraying trust. Who likes dirty sex and dirty deals because "dirty is sexy." That strikes me as unacceptable from any vantage. It's not the sex. It's not even the corruption. It's what those acts reveal about the sort of person he is. Someone who seeks power for the sole purpose of abusing it, while laughing at the people stupid enough to give it to him.

During his political career, Duvall has unabashedly espoused conservative  principles and is known as a partisan Republican with a knack for theatrics:  He has noisily driven his Harley-Davidson motorcycle to functions. In 2008,  Duvall blasted efforts to condone gay marriage. Legislatively, he has  proposed bills to aid the insurance industry and government contractors  feeding off the state's massive transportation kitty.  He has offered a law to alter the First Amendment rights of Americans by  banning anti-war activists from putting the names of fallen soldiers on  T-shirts with messages such as "Bush lied" on the front and "They died" on the back; he observed that the dead soldiers fought to protect freedom, and "opportunists" should not be allowed to "exploit" the sacrifices with political messages opposing war. 
Such thinking impressed certain constituencies. Earlier this year, the man who never graduated from high school received "100 percent" approval scores  by the California Republican Assembly, the state's leading conservative outfit, and the Capitol Resource Institute (CRI), a fierce guardian of traditional family values. 
"Assemblyman Duvall has been a consistent trooper for the conservative causes," CRI president Karen England announced in March. "For the last two years, he has voted time and time again to protect and preserve family values in California. We are grateful for his support of California  families.'"
Acknowledging the CRI award, Duvall observed in a press release that as long as he is in office, he would work to protect "California families" from "constant assault in Sacramento."

The Orange County News reports elsewhere that Duvall's exploits were "the worst-kept secret in Sacramento," so I leave to you to judge the repute and stature of the very family values groups that were negligent, incompetent and/or complicit in sponsoring this cheap Boss Hogg clone.

Perhaps they picked him because of what they knew him to be, rather than what they thought him to be. It's the less insulting presumption, if you think about it.

As we've seen with the Blessed Sarah, there are people who have a deal of power on the Right, particularly within the Chromefishtian right, who value a fine looking facade with a malleable core over a substantial candidate who might have inconvenient moral objections to achieving the "right" political outcome.

I need an illustration for that. Oh, yes, here it is...

Christ and the Pharisees....In this scene the Pharisees rebuked Christ, saying- "Behold thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the Sabbath Day"- but Christ reproved them saying "For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath Day"...Matthew 12:1-8 Luke 6:1-5

You may have some familiarity with the rest of the story. It's sort of an object lesson as to what happens to people who's principles transcend appearances. And it appears that in Orange County, ain't no-one willing to take a risk on a representative who might actually be living the values they profess.

Oh, no. They want people who LOOK like they do, but will never, ever, back those who are precisely what they say they are.

That's how you get "family values feminists" like Palin.

And "family friendly" "personalities" like Hannity.

It says something about how much regard these organizations and power-brokers hold "family values" types and to what degree they honor their intelligence and critical thinking skills. Oh, and the principles of your faith. That is to say, no more than I do. Possibly even less. But unlike me, they are also perfectly willing to smile, shake their hands and congratulate them on taking their daughter to the purity ball - only to make lewd jokes at their expense later.

Is it overkill to bring Sara Palin into the mix at this point? Wait, no. Not when Slate.com and Politico.com come to the same conclusion from radically different directions.

Slate observes - quite reasonably - that someone with a degree in Communications should be able to clearly articulate matters of policy and politics. At the very least, they should be able to come up with a clear, concise reason for why they decided to quit their job. Slate goes on to note she's seemingly very angry that people fail to understand her. That implies that she thinks that she's making sense.

Oh. Dear. Me.

This really does not speak well of whoever finally granted her a degree.

Politico - while not actually stating it, no doubt for political reason, presents us with with an article that might as well be titled: "Sara Palin: She Won't Stay Bought."

So, she's incoherent and untrustworthy. Harking back to Hannity's personal investigation of legal prostitution (since we are speaking of politics), I can find several woman on the Bunny Ranch site with better CV's than Palin's - QUITE aside from their physical attributes.

Air Force Amy is the current star [SO not safe for work]- a veteran, a reasonably articulate speaker, and, unlike Palin - she delivers on her promises and contractual obligations. Assuming she writes her own copy, she's better qualified for Palin's degree than Palin is.

Now, it would have been a great thing had Palin actually been what she was represented to be and still thinks she is; a woman of stature and integrity, if there had been even as much behind the facade that is Sara Palin's image as any of the girls at the Bunny Ranch, or indeed, any remotely telegenic woman with comparable paper credentials. Of which there are millions. And millions.

Counting only the politically active, church-going registered Republicans who have held political office - thousands. Rule out those who are obviously unelectable and you'd still have hundreds, so there's no way in hell that Palin could possibly have been anywhere NEAR the top of that pile.

So, do I think that Palin was willing to play the MILF card? Actually, I think that would be a vile presumption, and I don't have to make it. I DO think people making vital decisions were thinking with the wrong head, on many, many levels. But even there, had they actually gone for a person qualified in the field (because that's the only qualifications they were probably thinking of) they could have done FAR better.

No, I think they picked her because she looked good, sounded good and had no moral convictions whatsoever. In other words, I don't think she "slipped through the cracks" and I don't think it was a "vetting failure." She is exactly what the McCain team was looking for. You were simply not supposed to figure it out.

I think she was seen as having succeeded at the abuse of power, while maintaining an wholesome appearance. It appears, though, that she may be so impaired that she doesn't understand that she IS abusing power. You have to understand the concept of responsibility and cause and effect before you can get away with betraying those ideals.

Here I find myself comparing her to particular prostitutes, and I admit, I started to do with no little glee. But then I realized that it's not an unfair or even an unflattering comparison, if you think of the job in terms of doing the job you are paid to do. The careers have many similar requirements for success; communication, social skills and the ability to attract a loyal following. The differences are simply a matter of scale. Moral considerations aside - and clearly, they were.

And so I am, comparing her to a sex worker. And frankly, I know of a number who have better morals and manners than she does.

Hell, I know of a number who's morals, manners and social skills rise above the common run. But you see, those who live on the bottom of society, those who cannot call upon police or powerful friends, those people really have to avoid situations that could get them jammed up. Therefore, they tend to act ethically. Why?

Because if they don't, they tend to end up on slabs.

That sort of example will clarify your values REAL suddenly. Of course, if you want the insight without the high personal investment you might want to read "The Ethical Slut." And yes, the issues it cover are absolutely identical.

As for the people in the social media who will object to this post and who already have leapt to the defense of each of the people and all of the acts discussed above, there is only one appropriate response.

Maddow & Henke: Cronkite's heir highlights next Buckley?

2009-09-09T09:27:00.000-07:00

I had pretty much given up on finding a sane conservative perspective for my blogroll. Hell, I'd pretty much given up on the idea of calling myself what I am, an ethical anti-authoritarian, centrist pragmatist who's policy stance is always in favor of enhancing the practical freedoms and opportunities of the individual or that is to say, an actual Libertarian.

I have strong principles, but to paraphrase Issac Asimov, I try never to let my morality get in the way of doing the right thing. Indeed, I've considerably revised my moral views over the years based on the frequency of collisions between Morality and Reality.

One of the greatest problems of the Right (at this point in history) is a smugly moralistic worldview that tends to sharply restrict their ability to even notice, much less recognize situations in which there might be some complexity involved.

I've battled clinical depression my entire life, and I'm here to tell you (remarkably enough) that that degree of black and white thinking I've come to recognize as symptomatic is no virtue. It makes it quite impossible to make rational, reasonable or even sane decisions. When the medication takes effect and that mental state lifts - it can be embarrassing to look back at what one thought, said and did. Suddenly the color returns and one's life may well be seen as an offensive composition. It rather depends on who's been handing you the crayons, you see.

Now, that's a picture that speaks 10,000 words - and not one of them is worth listening to. And yet - and this is a non-partisan failing - we do. We give these people oxygen, when the only appropriate response is shunning. It's certainly tempting to point, laugh and mock - and I've done more than my share of it. It has it's place, should someone who's viewpoints are generally within the boundries of "arguable" and "sane" commit a correctable lapse. But when we get in the range of Glenn Beck Stupid, the only appropriate response is to stop listening and supporting such speech. Pointedly. En Masse.

That's not "censorship," it's self-preservation. That degree of paranoid stupidity can be contagious. To refer to Papa Heinlein, it's like strong drink; it can cause you to shoot at tax-collectors - and miss.

Refreshingly enough, this is what Jon Henke is saying as a public Conservative, on Rachel Maddow's show. Maddow is a proud left-progressive. I rather think she'd vote NDP up here.

So, two people with philosophies that are about as distinct from each other as can be imagined, having a civil, intelligent and informative conversation.

Entirely refreshing. And it led me to read more of Henke. One bit seemed worth sharing immediately, as an exemplar.

Jon Henke writes at The Next Right.

Megan McArdle has previously postulated Jane's Law.

Jane's Law: The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of the party out of power are insane.

I think it's a good generalization about very broad political dynamics. Thinking about that this weekend, I came up with the following psychological spectrum. People tend towards the left side of the spectrum when it comes to allies; towards the right side of the spectrum when it comes to opponents.

Cognitive biases are a natural human tendency and none of us (including me) are immune to them. It is useful to be aware of the problem.

Two things I like about this. First, he is unashamed of being seen using intellectual tools in public, and second, he's capable of writing short. The second impresses me in particular, I am envious, and I shall be including him in my missing Conservative blogroll.

You may have noticed a complete absence of any links to Conservative sources. The reason for that is, I've been disappointed by the public voices of the Right. If I rely on them for information, references, facts or insights, I run the stark risk of being publicly embarrassed for having said something absurd, untrue, or both. So, over the years, I've dropped them, one by one.

You might wonder why that risk doesn't occur from the Left. It does, of course - but it's possible to avoid, because while there are sites you have to be careful of, there are plenty of sites that present the raw facts first and draw their conclusions from there. And sadly, there's very little need for the left to misrepresent the positions, policies, character or criminality of much of the Right. The plain truth is damnation enough.

It's depressing, but currently, there is far more concern on the Left for the mechanics of getting things Right. And those who are not, or who prefer to hear what they want rather than what is - I treat them exactly the same as I treat their counterparts on the Right. I ignore them.

We are extremely fortunate that the wingnuttery of the Right has not been met with equal fanaticism on the left - for if that had been the case, the United States might well be the midst of a literal, armed civil war.

But as of this moment, the sane people of the left are the ones articulating the issues, and for want of an alternate, also serving (rather badly) in Opposition to themselves.

Sadly, what sane people who remain on the Right are very, very lonely. They must be encouraged, for without the voices of traditional, prudent, sane conservatism, we are impoverished of an extremely valuable perspective on life and politics.

Bleeding Heart Libertarian by webcarve

Dear Morans: What Would Edmund Burke Do (To You)?

2009-09-06T12:12:00.001-07:00

Robert Creamer writes in Huffpo about a political backlash against the Republicans for the "Death Panels" lie intended to make people fearful of health care reform.

His last two paragraphs sum up the debt they incur by this starkly, and I'm sure he's correct about the political dimension.

In their attempt to enflame the powerful emotions surrounding the deaths of loved ones by spreading intentional lies, the Republicans have stooped to a new low. The Terry Schiavo case should have taught the Republicans that some emotions are too precious to be exploited for partisan political advantage. Apparently it did not.

But when Americans begin to discover just how far the Republicans have been willing to go to stop health insurance reform, they may receive a new lesson. Republicans will learn that combining those powerful emotions with deceit can create an explosive mixture that they will find impossible to forget.

Correct - but only superficially so. However shrewdly he sees this situation, he sees it through the lens of politics, purely as a political opportunity created by an "emotional reaction."

And for that (and only to the extent that it is true, of course,) he deserves reproof. For it should be clear that there is a larger, ethical dimension that is, or should be obvious to everyone.

We ignore those larger considerations at our peril, for that leads directly to evil flourishing due to the unwillingness of good men to do what they know to be right.

The reason that both the Terry Schaivo case backfired and the current Death Panels lie will have a shocking backlash is that they are evil deeds done by evil men for evil reasons and the political justifications made in favor of doing such things are simply more lies by evil, conscious and willful liars.

To quote my shirt which quotes Edmund Burke, "All that is required for evil to flourish is that good men (and women) do nothing."

It is no accident that I quote Burke, who is correctly credited and blamed for his part in founding a long and storied tradition of philosophical Conservatism amongst the English-Speaking peoples. And yet an overview of his words and his causes reveals complexity, intellectual rigor and above all, a deep and abiding regard for doing the Right thing.

Burke was observing the injustice of law being wielded by commercial interests against the interests of the common man, and he would say no less caustic things regarding corporate theft and the misuse of political office in defense of thieves.

Burke might well be alarmed at the idea of any sort of public health insurance scheme - but I doubt that he'd balk at the idea of some sharp regulatory checks on unrestrained greed, or the application of Justice to those to those who's criminality while in service to the state brought it's honor into disrepute.

As a Whig, he of course approached Right Action in the Whig way. But for the most part, it seems, he did not place the cart before the horse. It's a tribute to the lasting import and continuing influence of Edmund Burke that the Modern Whig Party has been established.

I absolutely endorse that effort, an effort among good men and women to do something. They have realized that the GOP has become a creature of evil, a thing to be discarded and supplanted by a party that does not merely stand against this or that, but which stands staunchly for the things that are worth conserving and are worth achieving.

It is as yet still possible to do something good by political means - and as Iraq Vets, many of the founders have a FAR clearer appreciation of "Politics By Other Means" then have slide-jacking funnymentalist eliminationist peckerheads that have made their exodus from the party a moral imperative.

When someone lies to my face for the third time, in order to induce me to go along with some transparently stupid or evil deed, I stop listening. Indeed, I have no trouble whatsoever using whatever reasonable and necessary force is required in order to remove them from my front porch.

Indeed, I see waiting for the third strike to be an exercise in most Christian charity. But "Three Times is Enemy Action" is a rule of thumb that has served me well. It requires a little forbearance, but with that comes a reasonable certainty of conviction.

But clearly, I'm in a distinct minority, even should I count the current members of the Modern Whigs, It saddens me that one explanation may be my lifelong unwillingness to "go along to get along."

Perhaps if more people were more concerned about right actions and right outcomes, and a little less tolerant of those who think that there is no social problem that cannot be solved by sticking someone else with the expense or the cleanup, a civilization might arise between the borders of Canada and Mexico.

I'm not sure if this sort of situation is what Menckin had in mind when he uttered his widely-cited observation, that "Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the Jolly Roger, and start slitting throats."

What I am sure of is this; that when that temptation starts to become a creeping suspicion of an impending moral obligation... it's definitely time for good men and women to do something besides complain. Perhaps you should run for office.

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How "Moonbats" Do Apoplexy. (It's SOO Cute!)

2009-09-05T18:59:00.000-07:00

A truly FINE rant found on Democratic Underground via a Twitter recommend.

It starts off like this:

Fuck you. No, I'm not joking. I'm sick of this bullshit.

I'm sick of the way you've corrupted the public discourse. The way you've made it acceptable to hurl any insult you like at public officials. The way you blame us for the current atmosphere of hatred by accusing us of starting it with hating Bush. Like Bush didn't come on the heels of eight years of your tireless efforts to destroy Clinton by any means necessary, like Bush didn't give us good reason to complain. A couple of posters on a website compared Bush to Hitler and you've used it as free license to compare Obama to Hitler 24/7 and I'm sick of your hypocrisy, where it's acceptable to say shit about Obama that you would have had an apopletic fit (and did) if anythign remotely similar had been said about your guys. Keith Olbermann calls Cheney a fascist when he was actually using fascist tactics and you think that gives you the freedom to call Obama a fascist, socialist, Marxist constantly for no reason at all. Fuck you and your bullshit false equivelancy.

And then there's this part in the lower middle that I wish I'd written ...

I'm sick of you praising pure evil. You're letting Dick Cheney be the standard-bearer for Republicanism. Dick Cheney, a man so nakedly evil that even his friends call him "Darth"; a man so callous that Lex Luthor would recoil in terror; a man who probably has dismembered hitchhikers in those man-sized safes and kills plants by his mere proximity. Fuck you.

And then it concludes with this:

Fuck you, you scumridden shitehawks, you make me sick. Just fuck off and die.

EDIT: To remove my brief descent into sexist language. Apologies to anyone who saw it.

Prophet 451, you are so KYUUUUTE!!!!!!!!