Showing posts with label spin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spin. Show all posts

Who was that masked Hispanic?

I know you are, but what am I?

Yes, we live in entertaining times. The Republicans wallow in the Slough of Despond (taking such comfort as they can in the mud they find there) and the right-wing is contorted in angst and paranoia. (Are they really paranoid if we're out to get them?) In past years, it seemed that no GOP talking point was too absurd to be treated with respect by the supposedly mainstream media. Now, however, it appears that the Republican noise machine may have blown a gasket or two. When they pumped up the propaganda organ to attack President Obama's first nomination to the Supreme Court, quite a few people recognized hot air when they saw it.

Nice.

In particular, the snide attacks on Sonia Sotomayor's “first Hispanic” status deflated rather quickly. It must be quite embarrassing to lecture someone for not doing his homework, only to find out that your “correction” needs correcting. In case you missed it, the argument was that Benjamin Cardozo was actually the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court. He served on the high court from 1932 to 1938. Here's a comment from Israel Jewish News that was cheerfully picked up by Free Republic:

Uh, I guess that Obama's PR team isn't capable of looking back in Supreme Court history 70 years? I know the drive-by media can't possibly do any research—that's nothing new. If Obama told them he was going to put the first person on the moon, they would probably just report it without remembering we already did that too.
Was Justice Cardozo a twofer? Hispanic as well as Jewish? It's a bit of a puzzler, because if Cardozo is considered Hispanic, then so am I.

And I doubt that I am.

Wikipedia cites a biography of Benjamin Cardozo as the source for the claim that the Cardozo family considered itself to be descended from the Marranos of Portugal. These were Jews who converted to Christianity (as least in appearance) to avoid expulsion from the Iberian peninsula (the western end of Europe that comprises both Spain and Portugal). There's no particular reason to doubt the Cardozo family folklore. The last name is common enough in Portuguese circles (although the “Cardoza” variant is dominant).

It's quite possible, therefore, that Benjamin Cardozo was descended from Portuguese Jews. Does that make him Hispanic? It gets down to a matter of conflicting definitions.

My own family would deny being Hispanic, although we might concede being Latino. That opens up a whole new controversy, of course.

“Latino” can be construed as referring to Latin America. That would leave out the Portuguese. It could also be construed as referring to descent from Latin-based Roman culture. If one tries to pare that back to those cultures that retained Latin-based languages, we have the nations whose primary tongues are the Romance languages of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, and Romanian. Good luck sorting that out.

In this country, one sometimes hears the term “Luso-American” applied to people of Portuguese descent. (Or, as my college roommate liked to render it, “Loser-Americans.”) It's not very common, however, and I know of no consensus among the members of my ethnic cohort concerning a preferred nomenclature. We aren't a particularly overt minority.

Sonia Sotomayor, on the other hand, is a thoroughly unambiguous case. The Supreme Court nominee is a puertorriqueña who will clearly be the high court's first Hispanic/Latina member. The critics who advance the name of Cardozo as a counterexample are just plain wrong, but I understand their point. They're gleefully mocking the Obama administration for failing to perform the due diligence that would have discovered a false fact. The Bush administration, after all, used to find false facts all the time.

It was sort of its speciality.

Read more...
Labels: , , , ,

The once and future scapegoat

Twisting Clinton's legacy

Most people thought it was just a clever joke when The Onion greeted the inauguration of George W. Bush with the headline “Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is Finally Over.” It was, unfortunately, perfectly prescient. Although Bill Clinton left office amid complaints that he had failed to live up to expectations, his successor burnished Clinton's reputation to a high and resilient shine. When graded on the curve, Bill looks damned good.

Clinton haters are left grasping for straws when they try to pin all the ills of the world on the 42nd president. After eight years of the 43rd, you'd think those matters would have been resolved. Instead, any problem that existed during the Clinton years pales in comparison with the pratfalls, fumbles, and outright disasters of the Bush years. But never fear. The dedicated Clinton hater will spring to Bush's defense anyway, peering back over the years for the tiniest scrap of evidence to shift blame from 43 to 42.

Dad didn't like it when I gently mocked his I-told-you-so message about Newsweek's silly “socialist” cover. Although my father is not the biggest Bush fan in the world, he took offense when I said, “The housing market and the nation's banking system were just the most recent disasters under his administration. [Bush] must be proud of the smoking ruin he left behind for others to clean up.” Dad thought he had me now. He issued a weary wiser-than-thou rebuttal to his ignorant young left-wing son who, unlike himself, evidently did not experience the horrors of that ancient era known as the nineties:

I wish it were that simple. I remember Janet Reno threaten to sue any loan company if they did not loan money to anyone just because they were poor or minority. so the banks had to loan. That was a liberal policy and it kept growing until it burst. you can not blame that on W. tho he acted more like a liberal than a conservative.
Oh, yes, Bush's failures are due to his liberal policies. Right. And then there's Janet Reno. She insisted that banks lend money to anyone. I have heard legends of her reign of terror and dimly recall news accounts of her exploits back when I was a downy-cheeked lad in my forties.

Geez, Dad. Give a grown-up son a little credit, why don't you? To the keyboard!
Nonsense, Dad. You're remembering something that didn't happen. The Clinton administration opposed the discriminatory practice of redlining, which automatically denied you a loan if you lived in certain areas. Automatically! Banks wouldn't even bother to look at your application if you came from a Zip code they didn't like. The U.S. Department of Justice under attorney general Janet Reno went after banks that used redlining. Nothing in the legal settlements between the DOJ and various banks required anyone to issue loans to unqualified applicants. Instead the settlements stopped the banks from issuing automatic denials. Individuals had to be permitted to apply, no matter where they lived. They were still, however, subject to nonarbitrary lending qualifications.

Did some banks issue loans to people who couldn't afford them? Definitely. We know they did. But it's not because the feds made them do it. It's because the banking institutions got greedy and figured the housing bubble would continue to expand forever and they could write more paper indefinitely.

Ask your grandson if you don't believe me. He saw first-hand how people in his office were giving loans to unqualified applicants because they thought they could get away with it (and simply offer a refi when the loans became untenable). And under the Bush administration the federal regulators didn't raise a finger to stop them.

Go ahead and blame Janet Reno, if you like, but I know enough about what really happened to not fall for it.

-Z-
How sharper than a serpent's tooth is the e-mail of an informed child.

Read more...
Labels: , , ,

Overcoming sanity

It's not crazy when they do it!

Remember “Bush derangement syndrome”? Right-wingers were quick to hurl that charge at anyone who dared criticize the most incompetent administration in American history. They didn't like it when people pointed out that George W. Bush was continuing as president the unbroken line of failure and underachievement he had established as an Air National Guard pilot, oil man, baseball team owner, and state governor. To criticize him was to hate him, they said, and a clear sign of Bush derangement syndrome (BDS).

I did not and do not hate George Bush, although I did despise him and his policies. That's different. It appears, though, that Bush's departure from office has opened the door to a new and more virulent syndrome. I speak, of course, of “Obama derangement syndrome.” Those who suffer from it don't so much suffer from it as wallow in it. The on-line asylum known as Free Republic is the perfect place to see the ODS brigade in gibbering action.

Yes the usurper is truly frightening. I find it difficult to look at him. I am not kidding. I think he has very cold cold dead eyes. He is a back stabber. Smiles at you and then knifes you. He knows exactly what he is doing. His mistake is implementing his plans too quickly. He has shown his hand and even politically unaware people are taking notice. I really can’t stand the sight or sound of him. I avoid him as if he were Satan himself. I need not hear a word he says. It is all lies.

9 posted on Sunday, March 15, 2009 4:58:21 PM by TheConservativeParty
(Democrats are bastard coated bastards with bastard filling.)
Fascinating, isn't it? I remember thinking, every time that I saw Bush's simpering face in the newspaper or on television, how embarrassing it was that he was our nation's chief executive. I considered him a shallow and ignorant man who pandered to the most narrow-minded constituencies in the country. I did not, however, think George W. Bush was evil incarnate—pure malice walking among us in human form. (Dick Cheney has that job covered.)

But the ODS crowd is right up there with the paranoid John Birch Society members of the 1950s and 60s. You know, the loonies who considered Dwight Eisenhower (of all people) to be a “conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy.” Today the inheritors of the wingnut legacy spew their hatred at the new man in the White House, delighting in calling him “Hussein” and spelling his last name with a zero in place of the O. They really think he has a plan to destroy the United States.

The insanity may be just beginning.

Read more...
Labels: ,

Pat Boone's excellent adventure

But it was only a dream

To be fair about it, Pat Boone was the first to admit that his dream could have been caused by something he ate. (I'm guessing it was a pineapple, green pepper, and anchovy pizza.) For him, though, it was anything but a nightmare. No, it was total wish fulfillment, fraught with epic craziness right from the beginning:

News Bulletin: In a stunning, unprecedented civilian uprising, President Obama, Vice President Biden, Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid were recalled and sent packing. Practically overnight, responding to the national emergency, an extraordinary election propelled entertainer/activist Pat Boone into the White House.
That's the way dreams are, of course: entirely independent of reality. There are no constitutional provisions for recalling the president, vice president, House speaker, and Senate majority leader. And if Boone is thinking of impeachment, that doesn't apply to legislators. It's a fantasy, right along with the notion of a special election for president—yet another thing that is not in the constitution. There's an order of succession for the presidency and it leaves no room for Pat.

First of all, I wonder what Pat has been smoking. Second, why doesn't the U.S. Constitution exist in his dreamland? It's strange how much contempt the super-patriotic demonstrate toward our founding documents. (They're not really patriots at all, are they?) He fantasizes about having Newt Gingrinch back in his old job as Speaker of the House. I guess Boone's alternate universe allows U.S. presidents to appoint the congressional leadership. Does the man who thinks President Obama is a socialist hunger for the opportunity to be a fascist chief executive?

Pat Boone rushes through his frenetic extremist agenda, giving the military absolutely everything it wants and then imagining the revocation of the economic bail-out measures. President Boone fantasizes how happy Americans will celebrate the collapse into Chapter 11 bankruptcy of the country's banks and lending institutions and automobile companies. They won't mind, you see, because the national debt won't be as large under a Boone administration—unless, of course, the prostrate economy pulls the rug out from under the federal government's revenues.

But President Boone is ready. He and his fantasy-league secretary of the treasury, Steve Forbes, ride to the rescue with the flat tax:
With Secretary Forbes' guidance, we instituted the long-sought flat tax, greatly simplifying the whole process and making it much fairer to everybody. Nobody would pay more than 10 percent, and with family deductions, lower-income folks would pay little or nothing. Amazingly, by ridding ourselves of a 700-page code and all the loopholes still in it, and by taking undue burdens off businesses, statistics showed that the government would do better than it ever did before with all its labyrinthine complexity.
Boone commits the usual sin of pretending that a flat tax is required for tax simplification. Nonsense. It's an entirely separate issue and there's no inherent reason that a progressive tax structure has to be as complicated as the one we have.

As for “long-sought,” Boone is talking about the plutocrats who relish the thought of shifting the tax burden toward people with lower incomes. That's what the flat tax would do. He tries to finesse the issue by offering a family deduction that would wipe out the tax obligation of some low-income families, but it's an implicit acknowledgment of the key idea behind progressive tax rates: poor people pay less. Dollars may be created equal, but they don't stay that way. A dollar in the pocket of a poor person is subsistence. That same dollar in a millionaire's pocket is negligible. As described, even Boone's cherished flat tax contains two de facto tax brackets and lacks ideal flatness. No one dares support a truly flat tax.

Boone natters away at various other ideas, such as returning to the gold standard, revoking foreign aid, and fighting abortion. Then he turns his magisterial attention to education:
As a man who intended to be a teacher myself, I issued an ultimatum to the teachers' unions: They would return to basic math, including arithmetic, and basic English (the mandated official language), and basic science devoid of unproven theories like evolution, sticking instead to factual evidence and not discounting “intelligent design” as the more scientific basis for life and existence. All history books would again detail the reasons America was founded, and tell the stories of our Founding Fathers and national heroes—not latter day revisions. Teachers' pay and advancement would depend on the test scores and comprehension of their students.
What a teacher the world lost when Pat Boone was diverted into the entertainment industry! How fortunate we are that the end of his singing career has freed him to become a political pundit and teach us all how the world should be.

Too bad he's an idiot, prating about intelligent design as if it bears any relationship to science or reality, insisting on turning the Founding Fathers back into brightly colored two-dimensional cardboard cut-outs, and creating a situation in which teachers have to teach to a state-mandated test to preserve their careers. It's a Republican paradise!

Having created the plenipotentiary presidency of George W. Bush's dreams, Boone ends his own nocturnal emission with an edict to the judiciary, which he expects to tremble before him:
And a final ultimatum was directed to the courts, from the Supremes on down to local judiciary: “Hands off religion, as the First Amendment dictates. And you will no longer legislate from the bench. Keep your personal ideas to yourselves, and enforce the legislated will of the people.”
Hey, Pat! You want the will of the people? Then pay attention! Last year the people gave Barack Obama 365 electoral votes and a popular-vote margin of several percentage points in making him president of the United States. The people also gave the Democratic Party large majorities in both houses of congress. The people have spoken.

You really ought to wake up and listen.

Read more...
Labels: , , ,

It only looked progressive

The breakthrough that wasn't

James Flournoy is dead. I was a little surprised to learn that he had still been alive. The former Republican candidate for statewide office in California reached the age of 93 before passing away. Tributes poured in from all quarters, including the warm words of erstwhile rival Jerry Brown, who was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying, “He was a wonderful man and a true gentleman.”

I will not quibble. No one had a harsh word to say about Mr. Flournoy and I think it likely he was exactly the even-tempered and delightful man portrayed in the news reports of his death. However, there is less to the James Flournoy story than meets the eye, although press accounts would seem to argue otherwise. Here is what Jon Thurber says about him in the Los Angeles Times:

James Flournoy, the Republican candidate for California secretary of state in 1970 who was the first African American nominated by either major party for a partisan statewide office, has died. He was 93....

Flournoy, a prominent lawyer in Los Angeles for decades, was one of the few black politicians in the GOP at the time.
However, no one bothered to provide the context for Flournoy's campaigns—a context that saps the man's political career of much of its pioneering significance, for all that Flournoy himself was a gracious and accomplished man.

You see, Flournoy's nomination for statewide office on the Republican ticket was a fluke, even though it happened twice. It was not a sign of enlightenment and progressive values in the state Republican Party. In 1970, when Flournoy threw his hat in the ring for the job of secretary of state, his most significant asset was his name. The incumbent state controller was Houston Flournoy, one of the most well-regarded and popular elected officials in California. Although James and Houston were not related, they shared an usual last name. People who liked the state controller were happy enough to pull the lever for another Flournoy for secretary of state (or perhaps they even thought it was the same Flournoy).

The Democratic candidate for secretary of state that year was Jerry Brown. In all fairness, the same thing could be said of Brown that I just said of James Flournoy: His greatest asset was his name. Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown, Jr., was the son of Edmund G. “Pat” Brown, the former two-term governor of California who would always be famous for defeating Richard Nixon in 1962 (and sparking Nixon's infamous “last press conference”). Jerry Brown rode his famous name into the secretary of state's office and used that platform to prepare for a later successful campaign for governor.

Jerry Brown's rival in the 1974 gubernatorial contest was Republican Houston Flournoy, vacating his position as state controller to take a shot at higher office. While Jerry and Houston were squaring away against each other, who made a run at the state controller's office? None other than James Flournoy, this time going after the office being vacated by the other Flournoy. It didn't work that time, possibly because Houston Flournoy's profile was even higher as a result of his campaign for governor and James Flournoy was now known as the guy who had lost to Brown in 1970. Another Republican got the nomination that year.

Not one to give up, James Flournoy took a second crack at the controller's job in 1982, this time winning the Republican nomination in a year when no one felt there was any chance of knocking off the Democratic incumbent. Flournoy was buried in a landslide, losing by over 1.5 million votes in the November 1982 general election. It was the end of a political career that never really went anywhere, but gave California's Republican Party the unlooked-for distinction of being the first major political party to nominate an African American for statewide office. But it wasn't anything more than pure political opportunism by the GOP leaders who thought they might be able to parlay the coincidence of Flournoy's last name into an upset victory. And James Flournoy, nice guy that he was, didn't object to taking a chance that lightning might strike.

By an interesting coincidence, back in 1970, while James Flournoy was writing a footnote to California's political history as the first black man to win a statewide nomination from a major party, someone else was preparing to become the first black man ever elected to statewide office. It was in the contest for the nonpartisan position of state Superintendent of Public Instruction. Although the candidates in that race lacked official party labels, everyone knew that incumbent Max Rafferty was the Republican (he had previously run as the GOP's candidate for U.S. Senate) and challenger Wilson Riles was the Democrat. The state Republican Party backed Rafferty for re-election while carefully averting their gaze from Rafferty's deliberately race-baiting campaign.

Sure, they might have had James Flournoy on their ticket as their candidate for secretary of state, but all was fair in love and politics. Right?

Read more...
Labels: , , ,

Prager's pragmatics

You must agree

It's a pity that he is going to hell because he denies Jesus, but Dennis Prager is still one of my mother's favorite talk show hosts. His conservatism is of a more high-toned nature than that of the general crowd and thus appeals to my mother's gentility. (I swear that's not a pun on “gentile”; it just came out that way.)

Anyway, Prager lacks Limbaugh's overt nastiness and misogyny while still being very conservative, so my mother finds him simpatico. I check out his program every so often to see what the polite right-wingers are talking about these days (and to learn what Mom is listening to). He has some skill at sounding reasonable, but it's mostly just a lower-decibel version of the same right-wing cant.

Prager recently aired a debate with Christopher Hitchens, part of which I heard. Prager trotted out one of his favorite “proofs” that religion is both normative and desirable. Perhaps you know it. Prager asks you to suppose that you encounter ten men coming out of a dark alley. Scary! But wouldn't you be relieved to know that they were coming from a Bible study class?

That proves Bible study is good, I guess. Or that people who study the Bible are good (as long as they don't take too seriously all those passages about stoning people). Or, at least, they aren't likely to be muggers.

Well, neither are people who just came from a PTA meeting, or a night class, or a computer club. Hitchens said he'd rather they came from a seminar on Tom Paine, the irreligious author of Common Sense. Prager and Hitchens agreed that that would be unlikely, but only Hitchens seemed to regret that fact.

Prager's parable is a low bar for establishing the significance of religion, isn't it? He commented on his favorite gambit in his Townhall column, saying, “I have always specified ‘Bible class’ because I assume that in America, anyone with common sense would in fact be very relieved if they knew that the 10 strangers, all men, approaching them in a dark alley were committed to either Judaism or Christianity and studying the Bible.” For some reason, Prager was at pains to exclude non-Judeo-Christian creeds from his roster of goodness. I imagine it would deflate the point he was trying to make. The United States is a (Judeo)Christian nation, you know. “I therefore pose this question to make the rather obvious point that nearly all of us instinctively assume some positive things about normative Judaism and Christianity in America.”

Prager revised his scenario for a show in which he discussed the definition of marriage. Once again, the listener is asked to imagine being approached by a group of unknown individuals. Wouldn't you be worried if it was all guys? Wouldn't you be relieved if it turned out to be a collection of heterosexual married couples walking hand in hand? (I think the hand in hand part is crucial.)

For me, personally, I think the degree of relief would depend on the amount of body art and the fraction of Ace Hardware's inventory dangling from piercings, but perhaps that's just me. We could ask Dennis. He certainly appears to think that Proposition 8 makes us safer at night in California.

But as far as relief is concerned, I'm sure I would be just as much at ease if the approaching group consisted of hand-in-hand gay couples. Gay boys out on the town are not likely to be muggers. What have we to fear? Well, in my case, perhaps some trenchant observations about my complete lack of style sense or fashion knowledge. (I'm sure that Prager understands that all gay boys are obsessed with appearances and superficialities.) It would, however, be mostly harmless.

Is Prager mostly harmless? I wonder.

Read more...
Labels: , ,

More creationist lies

You'd think God would mind

Why is it that devout creationists don't feel bound by the absolute truths of God's word? No matter how you divide up the tangled text of Exodus 19, the Ten Commandments always end up containing a rule against bearing false witness. Nevertheless, those who purport to take the Bible seriously barely hesitate before lying about evolution, Darwin, or any other target of their disdain. Apparently it's okay to lie if you're doing it for the greater glory of God.

Tricky.

The second 2009 issue of Answers Update from Answers in Genesis continues AiG's struggle against Darwin in particular and reality in general. The newsletter depicts Lincoln's visage as portrayed by the statue in his memorial in Washington. Across Lincoln's chest they've printed the words, “Our focus this month should be on Lincoln, and not a racist man like Darwin.”

There are at least two problems with the implications of AiG's declaration. Was Darwin a racist while Lincoln was not? The case of the Great Emancipator is a complicated one. Although he abhorred slavery and was the instrument of its abolition in the United States, he was enough a creature of his times that he was willing to go on record in support of the superiority of whites. In the fourth Lincoln-Douglas debate, he said, “I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.... I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

Thus Lincoln is not the perfect foil with which to skewer Darwin for any alleged racism. What about the other half of AiG's claim. Was Darwin truly a racist? Answers Update notes that Darwin referred to “degraded” people who were “savage.” That's neither remarkable nor particularly significant, since any well-to-do English gentleman could be expected to so characterize the living conditions of the native of Tierra del Fuego and other primitive lands. (Oh, oh! I just said “primitive”!)

Furthermore, Answers Update tells us that Darwin would rather have descended from a monkey than from a dark-skinned savage. Is this really what Darwin said? The source of this item is a passage in The Descent of Man, in which Darwin said:

For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper, or from that old baboon, who descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs—as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.
It seems that Darwin is merely citing man's well-known inhumanity to man and pointing out that humanity is not the exclusive possessor of virtue.

After this bit of quote-mining, AiG offers the following additional evidence:
Also, the subtitle of Darwin's main work On the Origin of Species further reveals his racist beliefs: “The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.”
(AiG added the emphasis to “favoured.”) There is it, then. Darwin stands condemned by his own choice of words.

Except that we know better. And, we suspect, so does Ken Ham, who leveled these accusations against Darwin in his AiG radio program and then echoed them in Answers Update. Darwin is not using “race” in its narrow sense as applied to humans. The word is used in The Origin of Species in a much broader sense. Ham is almost certainly consciously lying when he spins the subtitle of Origin to tar Darwin with the brush of racism.

Consider, if you will, the following excerpts from Darwin's Origin:
Nevertheless, as our varieties certainly do occasionally revert in some of their characters to ancestral forms, it seems to me not improbable that if we could succeed in naturalising, or were to cultivate, during many generations, the several races, for instance, of the cabbage, in very poor soil—in which case, however, some effect would have to be attributed to the definite action of the poor soil—that they would, to a large extent, or even wholly, revert to the wild aboriginal stock.

When we look to the hereditary varieties or races of our domestic animals and plants, and compare them with closely allied species, we generally perceive in each domestic race, as already remarked, less uniformity of character than in true species.
You see that? Darwin even applies the word to cabbages. Is he therefore wickedly insulting the Cruciferae (and we could therefore denounce him as a “cruciferist”)?

I don't know what Darwin thought about cabbages in general, so I won't venture an opinion. I will, however, venture the opinion that Ken Ham belongs to the species known as Homo prevaricator.

Read more...
Labels: , ,

When liars figure

Although the figures don't lie

Misleading numbers are everywhere. Is it innumeracy or mendacity that spawns them? Sometimes I think it's both. Remember the bogus argument that autoworkers were making $70 an hour? That grotesque exaggeration was spread by right-wingers who embraced its propaganda value. Some of them probably knew it was false but didn't care.

Does Bill Saracino care when he peddles bad numbers? Does he even know that he's doing so? He uses simple arithmetic to calculate his misleading results, so it's possible he has great confidence in their accuracy. It's difficult to say. It's not, however, difficult to discern their bogosity. Check this out, from the February 5, 2009, installment of the Sacramento Union:

The stimulus bill gives the Coast Guard $572 million for “acquisition, construction and improvements.” It is claimed that these funds will create 1,235 new jobs. Grab your abacus and do the math. The cost of “creating” each of these occupations comes to $460,000 per new job.
We see that Bill cared enough to put “acquisition, construction and improvements” in quotation marks but not enough to read the words. “Acquisition” suggests buying property or matériel; that doesn't go into the pockets of the workers. “Construction” says that things are going to be built. Labor is by no means the only cost of construction projects. The results will be new Coast Guard facilities with a useful lifetime of decades. “Improvements” are in this same vein.

But Bill isn't done:
The Department of Defense gets $200 million to install plug-in car stations for its plug-in cars, of which it has 53,526. We taxpayers get each plug-in station for the bargain price of $3,700 per car serviced.
He evidently has a key on his calculator that permits him to do division. Good for him! But once again he neglects the minor consideration that the plug-in stations will create jobs for construction workers and electricians, that the stations will used for decades, and that the DoD's need for such stations will undoubtedly grow in the future. It's a long-term investment with immediate job-creation aspects.

One more:
The bill proposes $600 million for the federal government to buy new cars. The feds already spend $3 billion a year on a fleet of 600,000 vehicles. America’s Big Three automakers got more than $25 billion in December’s $750 billion pork-fest. Do they really need $600 million more? Does the federal government really need $600 million worth of new cars?
If only Mr. Saracino understood some of the more arcane functions of his calculator, he would see that $600 million is 20% of $3 billion (assuming he gets the troublesome decimal place right; percentages are tough). I'll admit that $600 million is real money (as Everett Dirksen might have said), but 20% is not staggeringly large. (I'd like a 20% pay increase, please, but it won't make me a millionaire.)

Bill eventually has mercy on us: “I could go on—oh, how I could go on—but I think you get the ugly picture.” Yes, we get the ugly picture. You're an innumerate propagandist for the right wing. But just to show there's no hard feelings, here's a nice calculator trick that you'll enjoy.

Read more...
Labels: , , , ,

Four-letter word

Short words and small minds

Oh, oh. We are apparently in the grip of a tsarist resurgence. Had you noticed? The national media assures us that this is so. This is especially true of the petulant right-wing publications that are having trouble processing the fact that liberals triumphed in the last election. (Liberals! In a center-right nation!) But even the more moderate national press isn't exempt. Here's a sampler of examples:

President-elect Barack Obama is nearing an appointment of his “car czar” and appears to be focused on Steven Rattner, the financier with close connections to the Democratic Party, according to people briefed on the conversations. —New York Times, January 13, 2009

Role of Federal Tech Czar to Be Defined by Obama. —Washington Post, November 14, 2008

Sen. James M. Inhofe, ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, asked Nancy Sutley, Mr. Obama's pick for Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) chairman, whether she would be undermined by the new climate czar, Carol M. Browner. —Washington Times, January 19, 2009

Obama Era of 1,000 Czars Ushers in Caesar. —NewsMax.com, November 14, 2008.

Too Many Czars? —Sacramento Union, January 22, 2009
It's scary, I tell you. The latest item, published in the Sacramento Union, is from the columnist Peter Hannaford, a relic of the Reagan years who has yet to come to terms with the 21st century (and apparently wasn't too crazy about the 20th either). As Hannaford puts it,
The Obama White House starts out with no fewer than eight “czars” (including at least two czarinas). There is one each for the economy, energy, health care, counter-terrorism, government performance, regulations, urban affairs and education.

All modern presidents have had staff specialists for various major topics. The National Security Council and Council of Economic Advisers have been with us for decades. The idea is to develop information and options for the president in various areas independent of the bureaucracies of the cabinet departments. A specialist, however, is one thing, a czar quite another.

The term “czar” implies that the person holding the title is supreme in his particular area, not only coordinating the work of various relevant agencies, but also determining priorities and conveying the president’s orders.
Yes, the term “czar” smacks of supreme arbitrary authority. Imagine the effrontery, the nerve, the cheek of the Obama administration to so lightly assume the trappings of totalitarianism!

Except...

It didn't.

Go ahead and check the White House website. In fact, try searching it with Google (now that President Obama has revoked the Bush blockade on search-engine indexing of on-line executive branch information). Use “czar site:whitehouse.gov” to see what you get.

Nothing, basically. All the hits are from the Bush administration. Nothing from the new Obama administration, despite the new president's supposed fondness for creating positions for a new horde of little despots and using titles from the days of imperial Russia.

Carol Browner, the energy (or climate) czar? She's actually Obama's “energy coordinator,” although Time magazine headlined her appointment as “Energy Czar: Carol Browner.”

Cass Sunstein? The president has appointed him as chief administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs within the executive branch's Office of Management and Budget. The Chicago Tribune, however, heralds Sunstein's nomination with “Left not sold on Obama's regulation czar pick.”

I think I gave the game away with that one, right? Sunstein's real title is just too long. The Tribune's headline writer would be hard pressed to fit “head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs” into the space allowed for an article heading. Even “OIRA administrator” would be a challenge, but hardly anyone would understand it.

There are only two reasons that “czar” is the word of the moment:
  1. It's short, fitting into headlines and serving as a convenient synonym for much lengthier titles. It's not perfect, but convenience rules the press in circumstances like these.
  2. Right-wing commentators have so little to work with these days that they seize upon anything as a basis for their fulminations. After eight years of autocratic rule by their boy George, they need a way to project the hubris of the past onto the new occupant of the White House.
Reason (1) I fully understand, especially in print media, but I decry its casual use in broadcast media and don't see why newspapers insist on using it in the main body of their articles (as opposed to headlines). Laziness and convenience are not difficult to understand.

Reason (2) I also understand, but for those wingnut propagandists I have no patience. They are spinning as hard as they can, trying to whip something out of nothing. (It ought to work. They turned a transplanted Texas lackwits into a president.) For them I have a four-letter word other than “czar”:

Forget you!

Darn. I think I misspelled it.

Read more...
Labels: ,

The lidless eye

Evil stalks us

An unsleeping malice has crept up from the Dark South and lain in wait for me. Today it pounced. I was minding my own business, tending to the fuel requirements of my vehicle, when the gas pump came to electronic life and began to bombard me with commercial advertisements. Yes, a northern California Shell station had become infested with TV ads, with small televisions blaring out commercials from atop each pump. It was a nightmare come true.

The ads were interspersed with public-service announcements, offering me advice about road conditions. I guess that's supposed to make it all okay. Then the screen flashed an in-house ad for PumpTop TV, extolling the benefits of shoving advertising into yet a another new venue. (Yesterday, the inside surfaces of restroom stalls; today, the tops of gasoline pumps; tomorrow, the world!) The purveyors of this new intrusion into our lives are not shy when it comes to bragging about their intentions:

PumpTop TV is a premier Out-of-Home Digital Media network that delivers current news, entertainment and advertising to millions of drivers as they fuel their vehicles at the gas pump. Daylight-viewable LCD screens mounted at eye level on top of gasoline pumps at select, high-volume gas stations provide a broadcast television-like experience (video and audio) to a desirable, captive audience out of the home.
Yeah, “captive audience.” They actually say it.

Damn them.

Apparently this new venture has been building for a couple of years. Westinghouse brags that their equipment is now installed in some 700 service stations. The invasion apparently began in Los Angeles in the first half of 2007. I was blissfully unaware of its gradual encroachment on northern California until the ads began to blare at me.

I will not go to that gas station again, but I fear I am fighting a doomed rear-guard action. The soulsuckers are here.

I'm too mild-mannered to use the hammer from the toolbox in the trunk of my car, but I can think of some nice new applications for contact paper.

Damn.

Read more...
Labels: , ,

Snubbing Sully

Credit where it's due

The editorial cartoonist for the McClatchy newspapers decided this weekend to honor the hero of the New York City airliner crash. You might be thinking that Rex Babin chose to sing the praises of Chesley Sullenberger, the veteran pilot who lives here in California and whose cool-headed response to the air-borne emergency resulted in the survival of his plane's entire crew and all of its passengers.

Nope. Babin says God did it.


Now if only God had chosen to be more helpful during other plane crashes. The ones in which he let people die. But I guess he was busy.

Read more...
Labels: ,

No longer with stupid

Going ... going ... gone!

The days dwindle down to a precious few and George W. Bush is nearly out the door. He and his remaining handful of die-hard supporters are spinning like dervishes in their efforts to salvage some shreds of historical respectability for him. It's not easy defending the James A. Buchanan Lifetime Achievement Award for Lousy Presidents. His accomplishments are all like the “most improved” awards they give to lousy high school athletes who no longer mess themselves while on the playing field:

For example, George W. Bush kept us safe (if you don't count 9/11). George Bush made sure Iraq would not have weapons of mass destruction (but found out that they didn't have any). He overhauled the leadership of FEMA (after his original appointees completely screwed up during the Katrina crisis).

What is an unrepentant Bush lover to do with a record like that? It's a difficult task, but Melanie Morgan is eager to give it a try. She lost her talk-show position at KSFO last year, but she still has an outlet for her right-wing opinions at WorldNetDaily. She writes the Hot Talk column (which is an amusing rip-off of KSFO's “Hot Talk 560” slogan). Her January 9 post was a tongue-in-cheek welcome to the new president and a wistful farewell to the departing incumbent:

Ever since Bill Clinton left office—and left the stained blue dress behind – I began reading celebrity gossip magazines for entertainment. I love the tawdry talk, which has been in low supply with the Bush administration.

Let's face it: The Bushes are downright boring. No interns.
Yeah. Boring Bushes. No scandals at all.
So, even though the Bush administration has kept us safe from terrorist attacks since 9/11, I have to admit I love the excitement of the Chicago mob's takeover of the White House. President-elect Barack Obama is rebuilding the Arkansas mafia before our eyes and, just to up the ante, he's giving the keys to the White House to the Chicago Political Machine.

Even before Mrs. Obama decorates the living quarters, scandal is following Obama like stink on a dead skunk.
Good old Melanie. Still nasty after all these years.

I can think of a better way to mark the occasion of Bush's departure. It's time to listen to the tribute composed by the Pet Shop Boys for former British prime minister Tony Blair. I'm with Stupid celebrates the political love affair between the leaders of the U.S. and the U.K. Despite being a man of the moderate left, Blair cozied up to George Bush to such a degree that he was widely dismissed in his own country as Bush's poodle or lap dog. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe clearly agreed. Now that Stupid is departing, we can enjoy the Pet Shop Boys' song with a smile instead of a grimace.

Read more...
Labels: , , ,

Conservapedia versus reality

Reality is winning

The well-known liberal bias of reality seriously irks conservatives. They have responded by declaring that they make their own reality, but that didn't pan out too well. They have worked to build an alternative universe where Fox News is the voice of truth and the GOP is God's Own Party. Conservapedia is part of that alternative universe, the conservative counterpart to Wikipedia.

Conservapedia first came to my attention when its founder Andy Schlafly (yes, the spawn of Phyllis) appointed himself a peer for purposes of peer-reviewing a scientific research paper on E. coli mutation. Aschlafly (as he unselfconsciously styles himself on the Conservapedia site) demanded that Richard Lenski “post the data supporting your remarkable claims so that we can review it.” (Schlafly is the holder of a B.S.E. and a J.D., which he proudly appends to his name, so he's more than qualified to evaluate research in biology.) There followed an exchange between Lenski and Schlafly in which Lenski thoroughly eviscerated Schlafly, and even dangled the guts in Schlafly's face, but Schlafly never seemed to grasp the offal truth. The one-sided fight was followed with much amusement by several blogs, including Pharyngula, which is where I learned what was going on.

Since then I have always been able to count on Conservapedia as an infallible source of comic relief. It's actually difficult sometimes to remember that Schlafly and his minions are in dead earnest. The Conservapedians take themselves very seriously, which is probably one of the reasons Aschlafly mistook himself for a scientist.

Now Schlafly turns out to be The Shadow, who knows what lurks in the hearts of men. In particular, Schlafly knows that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Probably, anyway. The likelihood is so high, at least in Schlafly's opinion, that he insists on including his speculation in the Conservapedia entry for the next president of the United States. You'll have to risk going to Conservapedia itself if you want to track down all of the references yourself. I didn't preserve the links in the following excerpt. I did, however, stick in a bunch of comments, which you'll find embedded in braces:

Obama will likely be the first Muslim President

The argument that Obama is a Muslim is largely based on his Islamic background. It also includes:
  • Obama's background, education, and outlook are Muslim, and fewer than 1% of Muslims convert to Christianity.[26][27] {Notice how Aschlafly assumes that Obama at least used to be a Muslim, because otherwise the argument about the paucity of conversions is inane.}
  • Obama's middle name (Hussein) references Husayn, who was the grandson of Muhammad,[28] which most Christians would not retain.[29] {On what basis does Aschlafly think that it's common for Christians to change their names to remove non-Christian antecedents?}
  • Obama recently mentioned his religion as “my Muslim faith.”[30] {Aschlafly pretends not to know that Obama was referring rhetorically to McCain's welcome refusal to insinuate that he was a secret adherent of Islam.}
  • Obama said the Muslim call to prayer is “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset,” and recited “with a first-class Arabic accent” the opening lines: Allah is Supreme! ... I witness that there is no god but Allah ....”[31] {I think Handel's Messiah is wonderful, but that doesn't make me a Christian.}
  • Obama stated that the autobiography of Malcolm X, a Nation of Islam leader who became a Muslim, inspired him in his youth.[32] {Damn, but this one is weak! I once read Moby Dick, but I'm not a whaler.}
  • Obama raised nearly $1 million and campaigned for a Kenyan presidential candidate who had a written agreement with Muslim leaders promising to convert Kenya to an Islamic state that bans Christianity.[33] {The citation is to WorldNetDaily, so that tells you all you need to know about their credibility.}
  • Obama's claims of conversion to Christianity arose after he became politically ambitious, lacking a date of conversion or baptism.[34] {This is actually good, because it means Obama isn't one of those who prattle on about the date of their “second birth.”}
  • On the campaign trail, Obama was reading “The Post-American World” by Fareed Zakaria,[35] which is written from a Muslim point-of-view.[36] {Shocker! That Fareed is such an Islamic militant!}
  • Contrary to Christianity, the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya encourages adherents to deny they are Muslim if it advances the cause of Islam. {Yeah, so?}
  • Obama uses the Muslim Pakistani pronunciation for “Pakistan” rather than the common American one.[37] {This may prove that Obama isn't really an American, since we can't pronounce foreign names!}
  • Obama was thoroughly exposed to Christianity as an adult in Chicago prior to attending law school, yet no one at law school saw him display any interest in converting. Obama unabashedly explained how he became “churched” in a 2007 speech: “It's around that time [while working as an organizer for the Developing Communities Project (DCP) of the Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC) in Chicago][38] that some pastors I was working with came around and asked if I was a member of a church. ‘If you're organizing churches,’ they said, ‘it might be helpful if you went to a church once in a while.’ And I thought, ‘I guess that makes sense.’” {Law school is one of the best places to convert to Christianity, right? Why wait till pastors recruit you when you could fellowship with law professors?}
  • Obama is mentioned as helping to organize the 1995 million man march led by black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan from the Nation of Islam. [39] {Obama attended the march but criticized the organizers in an interview with a Chicago newspaper. Was he criticizing himself?}
  • Obama has chosen the Secret Service code name “Renegade”. “Renegade” conventionally describes someone who goes against normal conventions of behavior, but its first usage was to describe someone who has turned from their religion. It is a word derived from the Spanish renegado, meaning “Christian turned Muslim.”[40] {Presidents don't pick their own code names. The Secret Service assigns them.}
  • Obama enjoyed a bigger increase in voter support in 2008 (compared to 2004) by Muslims than by any other voting group, including blacks;[41] “Muslim turnout in the U.S. elections reached 95 percent, the highest Muslim turnout in U.S. history.”[42] {Proving exactly nothing, except perhaps that Muslim voters despise the GOP.}
  • “President-elect Barack Obama has yet to attend church services since winning the White House earlier this month, a departure from the example of his two immediate predecessors.”[43] {Obama should be more willing to disrupt church services by his security-accompanied presence.}
Obama tries to downplay his Islamic background by claiming that his Kenyan Muslim father was a “confirmed atheist” before Obama was born, but in fact less than 1% of Kenyans are atheists, agnostics, or non-religious.[44] {What? No record of Obama Sr. joining an atheist church?} There is apparently no evidence of any Christian activities or local church participation by Obama while he was in Massachusetts from 1988 to 1991, nor of Barack Obama's joining of a Mosque (The Islamic house of worship) at any time in his life. Finally, Obama abruptly left his radical Christian church in Chicago in 2008, when it became politically controversial, without first finding another church to join. Obama was sworn into the US senate on a Bible.
After the Lenski affair, no one can possibly be surprised that the standards for evidence at Conservapedia are skewed in whatever bizarre way Andy Schlafly prefers. Even some of the moderators at Conservapedia have noticed this and are concerned. One of them summarized the dissension in the right-wing ranks:
The facts, however, remain that:
  1. DanH—a strong editor and respected sysop—quit this project in disgust at what he saw as an attempt to “smear” Obama as a Muslim.
  2. PJR—the most patient and eloquent defender of YEC I have ever encountered—categorically refutes the idea that there is any credible evidence that Obama is a Muslim.
  3. Conservative—principal author of several of Conservapedia's defining articles—remains wholly unconvinced of the strength of the Obama/Muslim case, and is concerned that its inclusion in the article could damage Conservapedia's credibility.
  4. Tim/CPAdmin1—one of the original members of this project—has repeatedly objected to its inclusion.
  5. And finally, ChrisS—again, one of the original Conservapedians—even felt moved to describe this article as the most sorry excuse for an encyclopedia entry I have ever seen.
What kind of synthesis do you hope to achieve in the face of such demonstrably principled opposition? These are not lone, liberal voices. These are long-standing contributors who collectively insist that this is plain wrong and must be removed.

Good night (and good luck). —JohnZ 17:39, 18 November
How can Aschlafly respond to this detailed and specific indictment? Not a problem:
We respect the views of a minority among us (and note that the minority you cite has displayed almost no experience with Islam and/or Islamic education). Regardless, obviously logic prevails over even the opinion of a majority.

—Aschlafly 17:46, 18 November 2008 (EST)
No question, therefore, why Andy is resolutely standing his ground. Unlike his in-house critics, Schlafly is an expert on Islam.

Just as he is on biology!

Read more...
Labels: , , , ,

My latest euphemism

A gift horse in my mouth

The orthodontist peered into my mouth and poked at my retainer.

“Hmm,” he said. “This could use a bit of activation.”

Activation?

“What's ‘activation,’ Doc?” I asked. “Some kind of term of art that orthodontists use?”

The orthodontist grinned at me (he had nice teeth). He plucked the retainer from my mouth and picked up a pair of stainless-steel needle-nosed pliers.

“It means your retainer can use some tightening.”

He tweaked the retainer's wire with his pliers and fit it back in my mouth.

“Feel okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

I was breaking in a new retainer. My old one no longer fit because I had neglected to wear it after a couple of crowns installed by my dentist made it difficult to wear. The new retainer was supposed to coax my teeth back into better alignment, too, since they had drifted a bit during the retainerless years. Hence the periodic tightening. I mean, activation.

My colleagues at school were delighted with my newly discovered euphemism. Even the humor-impaired felt inspired to try their best:

“I like to get activated on Friday night.”

“I'm staying on my diet until my belt needs activation.”

“My students think I'm an activated grader.”

“I like babes in activated jeans.”

“Hey, if you're inhibited, will people say you have an activated ass?”

Hey yourself, guy. That last one didn't work at all. If you're not an orthodontist, beware of trying to use their lingo.

Read more...
Labels: ,

Once too often to the well

It's dry, damn it!

Perhaps you've noticed the unfortunately reflective (and repetitive?) nature of recent posts at Halfway There as your faithful blogger gnaws at his personal obsessions. If you keep complaining about how people keep doing the same damned thing over and over again, you've fallen into the same practice that you've been decrying. Usually I can disguise this unsavory habit by varying the way in which I approach my pet issues. When I gripe about weird students, it's usually about different ones; their peculiarities have potentially diverting distinctions. When I crab about my family's religious compulsions or political backwardness, it can be about a variety of dogmas or domestic issues.

At best, I'm presenting a dazzling series of variations on a theme. At worst, I'm devolving into a curmudgeon. In fact, I am gripped by the dark dread that I am turning into my father. (Insert piercing shriek right here.)

When it comes to Dad, our disagreements are like picking at a scab. Leave it alone, damn it! But am I talking to him, or to me? I tell myself I cannot leave his political thrusts unanswered lest he become smug under the assumption that he has bested me with the strength of his arguments, but I've railed at him without apparent effect.

He. Never. Learns.

But perhaps the conclusion of our latest bout is different. (See how hope springs eternal?) There is at least the glimmer of a possibility that this is so. For some bizarre reason, Dad was seized by an impulse to fire a shot across my bow on Tuesday, the very day before I was due to show up at the family farm for Christmas. I say “a shot across my bow,” but I actually believe he was aiming below the water line. He just missed. Not even close. As usual.

I did not dither very long over Dad's e-mail. If I left his sally unanswered, it would be pending business when we met on Christmas Eve, while he strutted about as the unopposed victor. If I returned fire with a withering broadside, perhaps he would refrain from returning to it once we were in each other's company. It was worth a shot (or several shots, as it were).

Dad's e-mail attack was his customary velvet glove affair—more in sorrow than in anger—but between the lines it appeared he thought he was scoring a most telling hit:

My dear Son,

I am glad the election went the way it did for you. But I am very, very sad for the future of America. I once lived in a country that had a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

No more now it is rules and regulation by the state and it gets worse every election I still believe in self reliance and self responsibility. I do not expect to be around to see Americas demise.

But it is sad that is coming to pass.

I do not understand why so many people want the government to control their lives and (provide for them) The only way the government can do that is to take from those who achieve. I am forwarding a article that foretells what looks like Americas future.

As always wishing you the best of everything

Your DAD.
At heart, it's the same America-is-doomed jeremiad of his previous message. I had demolished that particular missive in gory detail. What profundity was Dad serving up this time for the tender ministrations of my rhetorical carving knife? I was instantly and profoundly disappointed. He was recycling old, old Internet spam from the aftermath of the disputed presidential election in 2000. Lame!

Subject: An interesting e-mail I received..................

HOW LONG DO WE HAVE?

This is the most interesting thing I've read in a long time. The sad thing about it, you can see it coming.

I have always heard about this democracy countdown. It is interesting to see it in print. God help us, not that we deserve it.

How Long Do We Have?

About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.”

“A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.”

“From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”

“The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years.”

“During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. from bondage to spiritual faith;
2. from spiritual faith to great courage;
3. from courage to liberty;
4. from liberty to abundance;
5. from abundance to complacency;
6. from complacency to apathy;
7. from apathy to dependence;
8. from dependence back into bondage”

Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:

Number of States won by: Democrats: 19 Republicans: 29

Square miles of land won by: Democrats: 580,000 Republicans: 2,427,000

Population of counties won by: Democrats: 127 million Republicans: 143 million

Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Democrats: 13.2 Republicans: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: “In aggregate, the map of the territory Republican won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country. Democrat territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare...” Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the “complacency and apathy” phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the “governmental dependency” phase.

If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegal's and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.

If you are in favor of this, then by all means, delete this message. If you are not, then pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.

WE LIVE IN THE LAND OF THE FREE,
ONLY BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE

True statement enough but ... more so because of the Grace of God.
Pathetic, isn't it? Do you remember how desperately the Republicans worked to try to make George W. Bush's 2000 “victory” look respectable after he lost the popular vote to Al Gore by half a million ballots? They seized upon things like the acreage carried by the GOP candidate. Certainly one's chest must swell with pride at the thought that one's candidate swept the empty spaces of the nation, even while losing all the population centers.

Even on the face of it, this is a very weak message. Democrats won 19 states and the Republicans won 29 in 2000? I thought there were 50 states! Bush carried more square miles? Acreage doesn't get a vote. People do. Professor Olson teaches at Hemline University? What's that—some kind of fashion school? Try Hamline instead. Remember, too, that the original version was issued in the wake of the election of George W. Bush. How much sense did it make to recycle it as a lament concerning the impending inauguration of Barack Obama?

I suggested to my father that he consider doing at least a minimal amount of due diligence before forwarding any further nonsense to me:
Once again, Dad, you don't bother to check the “information” you pass along. This supposedly interesting e-mail is something I saw a long time ago, back when Bush supporters were bragging about the fact that their candidate carried a lot more acreage than his Democratic rival, ignoring the fact that Gore actually got half a million more votes and carried states with high population densities (and therefore fewer square miles). Bush got into office based on the electoral vote, not the popular vote. Furthermore, apart from the numbers concerning square miles, most of the message is a hoax. Professor Joseph Olson had nothing to do with it and the crime statistics it contains are bogus. States that benefit the most from federal spending went to Bush, not Gore. A quick visit to snopes.com would have been enough to discover these simple facts. Check it out for yourself:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/athenian.asp

You are entitled to your opinion. You are not entitled to your own made-up facts. If you want to share things with me, you could at least take the trouble to check that they're true. You taught me that honesty was a key value but you're constantly falling victim to those who are not. People are sending you lies in your e-mail and you're taking them seriously. It just makes my case for me: Those who are worried that the United States is doomed just don't know what they're talking about. Your fears are baseless. If eight years of George W. Bush didn't destroy us, we're tougher than you think.

Your son,

-Z-
The Christmas holiday passed peacefully and uneventfully. The family met for a big dinner, gifts were exchanged, and all was well. Dad didn't mention his e-mail or my refutation of it. He was as nice as could be. Did he (dare I hope?) learn something this time? (At the very least: not to send stupid stuff to his obstreperous eldest son.)

I was on my best behavior, too. When Dad complained about limitations on irrigation water in the midst of California's current drought, I did not say, “Gee, Dad, I think a proud, self-reliant farmer should tell the government where they could put their subsidized water supply. Surely it is a disgrace to depend on the publicly financed state water project.” No, I did not go there.

Read more...
Labels: , , ,

Are you smarter than Ann Coulter?

Take this easy test!

I haven't written about Ann Coulter in quite a while. For one thing, she had grown boring and no one seemed to be paying any attention to her during the presidential campaign. Coulter continued to write her syndicated rants, but her public appearances apparently ceased. Perhaps the reports that Coulter had had her jaws wired together were true. Whatever the situation, I have not been wasting any words on her, the has-been pundit best known for her confusing advocacy of both family values and recreational fornication. No one among my vast dozens of readers has complained about her absence from my posts.

But Ann has caught my attention again, if only briefly. An example of Coulter's reasoning power plopped into my e-mail in-box and I inadvertently read a few lines. It was probably the title that hooked me: “One Plus One Equals 20 Extra Votes for Franken.” Coulter, you see, has taken up cudgels on behalf of threatened incumbent Norm Coleman, who is at risk of losing his U.S. Senate seat to Al Franken. It all depends on the result of various court challenges and the tedious Minnesota recount. Coulter wants to stir up confusion with accusations that will make it easier to declare the election “stolen” if Franken triumphs in the end:

The day after the November election, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman had won his re-election to the U.S. Senate, beating challenger Al Franken by 725 votes.
Coleman “had won” the election? That's a presumptuous bit of phrasing when there were plenty of ballots left to count, as well as a mandatory recount pending. But Coulter's intent is plain: Paint Coleman as the victor so that any recount is necessarily a vile attempt to steal his victory. According to Ann, the minions of evil got to work quickly:
Then one heavily Democratic town miraculously discovered 100 missing ballots. And, in another marvel, they were all for Al Franken! It was like a completely evil version of a Christmas miracle.
And by the time the various counties in Minnesota had finished checking their tallies and correcting their election-night reports to the secretary of state's office, Coleman's tentative lead was further reduced:
Then another 400-odd statistically improbable “corrections” were made in other Democratic strongholds until—by the end of election week—Coleman's lead had been whittled down to a mere 215 votes.
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn what Coulter thinks is “statistically improbable.” I've seen enough examples of how mathematically incompetent right-wing Republicans can be. Coulter's argument suggests that she is well-nigh innumerate, as I will now demonstrate.

Perhaps you're smarter than Ann Coulter. Consider, if you will, the following number. Examine it closely.

And now for something completely different. Please examine this second number. Scrutinize it with the full power of your keen intellectual faculties.

Did you notice how it differs from the first number? Did you? If not, I'll give you just a little hint:

Now do you see? Aha! The second number has an additional digit. The numeral 1 appears in the location famously known as “the hundreds place.” That is, the number 1 actually represents the quantity 100. The omission of a single digit—even one as small as a 1—can have a significant impact. This was observed in Minnesota's Pine County, as noted in a post-election report in The Pine City Pioneer:
On Thursday, Pine County announced they had made an election night mistake—something that happens commonly and is fixed in the following days by the county's canvassing board. But due to the closeness of the race for U.S. Senate, the error caused more drama that it normally would have.

On election night, Partridge Township reported their results correctly. Al Franken had received 129 votes in the township. Because of a county data entry error, only 29 votes were reported to the Secretary of State's Office.

Another 100 votes added to Franken's total means he is within .011 percentage points—236 votes—of Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman. Coleman received 143 votes in the township.

Pine County Auditor Cathy Clemmer said the mistake was nothing out of the ordinary. It's up to the canvassing board to take care of any discrepancies in the days following the election.

“This is the normal process—this is usual,” Clemmer said. “It’s nobody's fault. That's why we have in place in what we do in the state of Minnesota.”
Ms. Clemmer is obviously trying to sound like the sweet voice of reason so that we don't suspect her of collusion in the great international communist conspiracy to deny Norm Coleman a second undistinguished term in the U.S. Senate. We're supposed to believe that a single-digit error in a tally of Franken votes could change Franken's total by a 100 votes—with none for Coleman! This astonishes Coulter, who can't imagine it occurring innocently. She's already explained to us that the extra 100 votes for Franken are a miracle. They're statistically improbable. The only explanation must be some dastardly partisan plot! At least, that's what Coulter would have us believe.

That is, unless you're smarter than Ann Coulter. And the chances of that are pretty good.

Read more...
Labels: , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Sexy Nude Celebrity Hot Female Celebrity