Punishing Ourselves to Victory

Obama said:

The single biggest threat to our success is not the other party. It's us. It's complacency. It's apathy. It's indifference. It's people feeling like, well, we only got 80 percent of what we want, we didn't get the other 20, so we're just going to sit on our hands

And I've got to agree with that.  If all the people who voted for Obama in 2008 voted for Democrats in November, it'd be a landslide for us.  We'd slaughter them.  But the problem is that too many people have just given up on Obama.

But that was a big offense for many of the people Obama was referring to.  Apparently, the truth hurts.  So these people have to attack the man who is responsible for more liberalism than these keyboard critics of his will be in their entire lifetimes.  That's not to attack these people, but merely to state a fact:

Proving his point

Here are a sampling of comments to Obama's remark.

"Would that we had gotten 80. Seems more like less than 50%."

"All I wanted was a rollback of Cheney's acquisition of dictatorial powers for the executive, so I got 0%.  I shouldn't have been surprised; the Democrats are accountable only to the center-right."

"Our so called Dem "leaders" in Washington again showed why a large % of people who supported them are now basically disgusted we are with them. I have NEVER seen such totally ball-less group of people in my life. They deserve what happens to them in November, especially the Blue Dogs who really have NO concern for their constituents only concern for their "jobs".'

And there's a lot more just like it. 

And none of this makes any sense.  Because, yes, I suppose many of these people will be "punished" if they don't get re-elected.  But you know who else gets punished?  That's right, us.  The country.  These guys aren't just talking about kicking some traitorous Blue Dogs out of Congress.  They're talking about throwing us to the wolves. 

Anyway, I wrote three comments regarding this, and figured I'd share them here.  Enjoy!

Double-Reverse Psychocology

I'm astonished by the number of Democrats who somehow imagine that we'll get more of what we want if we "punish" Democrats in November. As if it's somehow worth it to allow Republicans to trash the country for two straight years, in the hopes that a rightwing victory will teach Democrats to be more leftwing.

But of course, what we'll get instead is two years of Republican rule, followed by Democrats who are so afraid of another loss that they bend over backwards to appease Tea Partiers. Believe it or not, but the way to strengthen your team is to support them, not attack them. I know, that doesn't feel very satisfactory, but that's how it works.

If you want Democrats to be liberals, we need to give them more seats in Congress; not fewer. And if we abandon them, they'll find someone else who will support them. That's just how life works.

Senator Rand Paul

This isn't Senator Weak-kneed v. Senator Pony. This is Senator Weak-kneed v. Senator O'Donnell.

And look, the main reason Democrats haven't done more is because they're scared. They just don't think there are enough liberals to support a liberal agenda, and that paralyzes them. By abandoning them, they just get more scared and more likely to do nothing or move to the right. It's like punishing your kid by slapping them every time they screw up. You're more likely to traumatize him than teach him to stop screwing up. And as much as I don't like scared Democrats, that's certainly better than emboldened Republicans in charge.

And again, that's what we're talking about. Maybe you'd prefer that Republicans get control of the circus again, but I don't. I'll take an ineffectual Democratic Congress over an effectual Republican one, any day. This election has real consequences.

Rahm's Peeing His Pants
 
A commenter suggested that Obama is ignoring the left because Rahm things he's got them all sewn up.  To which I wrote:
 
Really? You imagine Rahm thinks he's got the left sewn up? Because I believe Rahm's shitting his pants about the left. I think they've written off much of the left because the left wrote them off long ago.

Seriously, at this point, what could Obama realistically do to woo you back? Could he do it in the short time before the election? Or is it already too late? And at what point did it become too late?

He started his presidency with a good 10% of the ultra-left having written him off. Right or wrong, they simply couldn't support him. It didn't take long until another 10% wrote him off, followed by another little chunk. And before long, he's lost 40% of his base or more. And there's nothing that can bring them back. Not realistically. These people already gave up on Obama and the Democrats, and want them punished for their sins.

So at that point, what can they do? Because this was inevitable. Obama would never have more than 70% of the liberal base, and probably less. They went into it knowing that. Liberals just aren't like that. And so what choice do they have but to work the middle, and at least put up a good faith effort towards looking non-partisan?

And let's be serious: The Obama presidency is WAAAAAY better than the Bush years. Anyone who suggests differently is deluding themselves. As much as it's possible to find similarities between Obama and Bush, I refuse to believe that any of you would trade this for another Bush presidency or a McCain presidency. Seriously.

And that's what we're talking about. You can blame Obama and the Democrats all you want, but at the end of the day, we've got to live with two years of Republican hysteria. We'll only be punishing ourselves.

Discovery Channel Hates American Sea Captains

One of the problems with our society is that you can buy justice, in that the better your lawyer is, the more likely you'll do well in our justice system.  But frankly, I can't really think of a better system.  I mean, people should be allowed to choose who they work for, as well as who they hire as lawyers.  And I believe in allowing supply & demand to determine market prices. 

While I can think of some heavyhanded solutions which could solve this problem, I can't really see any of them being implemented.  And even if we succeeded in giving people equal justice, we'd just force the lawyers into back allies, giving advice on the legal blackmarket.

I had written a much longer post, but decided it wasn't worth it.  So I'm only leaving this.  Hope you're not too disappointed.

The Miranda Sham

The NY Times has an article about a fascinating study published by the Standard Law Review called The Substance of False Confessions (pdf), which details an analysis of forty cases in which people confessed to crimes they were later proven to be innocent of.  And the study is an excellent display of how police elicit confessions, what prosecutors do with those confessions, and what these people do intentionally and unintentional to convict the people they believe to be guilty of crimes.

And one of the biggest problems is the Miranda Sham.  While Miranda was originally conceived as a way of reinforcing our right to not self-incriminate, it's now used as a way of locking in statements, giving a technicality by which judges and juries can toss out witness testimony and ignore conflicting evidence, as long as certain words were uttered to the defendant before they were coerced into confessing.

And the whole thing is a sham.  We have the right to remain silent and if someone doesn't want to confess to a crime, we shouldn't be allowed to pressure them into doing so.  And in all of the cases presented in this study, the defendants were tricked into confessing.  They didn't want to confess and didn't even know the necessary details to confess, but due to their lack of intelligence (and more importantly, lack of lawyer), they inadvertently gave up their right to silence, though they had no intention of doing so.

In one case, one innocent person was not only pressured into confessing, but also pinned the crime on four other people.  Three of the other four also confessed.  The one who didn't had a lawyer.

Lawyers for All

And of course, had they been provided with lawyers, none of them would have confessed. Nor would they have endured lengthy interrogations, often involving lies and abuse. They didn't want to confess, but they didn't know how to not confess. And that's simply not how our system should work. We have the right to remain silent, and that right shouldn't only exist for those with the brains to demand it.  People who are too dumb to refuse to speak without their lawyer are the ones who need a lawyer the most. 

As the article states "In twenty-six of the forty cases—or sixty-five percent—the defendant was either mentally disabled, under eighteen at the time of the offense, or both."  And yet their confessions, without the presence of an attorney, were considered valid, even when experts testified that these individuals lacked the mental ability to understand what they were confessing to.  A schizophrenic who hears the "voice of God" during an interrogation is not a reliable confessor.

And just imagine if the right to bear arms was enforced similarly.  As if you only have that right if you actively pursue obtaining a gun, and the police can lock you up for hours, trying to trick you into giving them your gun; after which you've waived your right to possess it.  And then, during your trial, it's argued that you didn't have the right to bear arms because you had voluntarily waived the right, and therefore broke the law when you possessed a gun you didn't have the right to possess.

And yes, that's ludicrous.  But no more ludicrous than our current system of tricking people into confessing, and then acting as if those coerced confessions are rock-solid evidence that trumps all other evidence.  And this applies to guilty people as much as the innocent.  The right to remain silent isn't just a nicety.  It's a fundamental part of our system, which is why it made it in The Bill of Rights top five. 

If someone truly chooses to waive their rights, that's fine.  But if someone wants to remain silent, we don't have the right to trick them out of it.  That completely negates the whole purpose of having it in the first place.  The Constitution isn't just for the intelligent.

God's Mysterious Ways

A man from Charleston was "hiking the Appalachian Trail" and met quite a few people from Colorado.  He thought this might not be a coincidence and decided to ask God why so many people from Colorado were there, and God apparently told him that he was sending him a sign telling him to go to Denver and work at Tim Tebow's charitable foundation; now that Tebow got drafted by the Denver Broncos.  And so he went to Denver, gave a note to the first Bronco he saw, then stood outside waiting for Tebow; holding a bible verse for Tebow to see.

And no, I'm not making this up.  I read it right here.  Some guy actually believes that God altered the vacation plans of quite a few Coloradoans, just to send him a message.  Sure, you'd think an omnipotent being could find some slightly more direct way of communicating, but I suppose if he really COULD do anything, it'd be just as easy for him to use these mind-manipulating bankshots, as it would be to pick up the phone and tell the guy what to do.  That's what omnipotence is all about.

And seriously, this is a mental illness.  This guy is absolutely bonkers if he thinks the reason all these Coloradoans were hiking the Appalachians was so that God could get this one guy's attention.  After all, God apparently still had to tell this guy what to do, so it seems God could have just spared these people the hassle and just talked to the guy directly.  And what, he's never heard of email?

Of course, I don't mean to disrespect all believers by mocking this guy, as I'm quite certain that this guy isn't representative of all Christians.  But still, this guy's beliefs should give us all pause.  After all, it's a fine line between believing the impossible and being stark raving crazy, making it especially important to stay diligent.  When it comes to the supernatural, even the impossible is possible.  But as we've witnessed in others, it's all too easy to find supernatural explanations to ultra-natural events.

As a side note: The oddest part here is how the reporter could report this news, without trying to warn everyone.  When someone's willing to move cross-country because a supernatural being told them to be close to someone else, it's probably not a good thing.  I don't see this ending well.

Tea Party Punishes Conservatives Again

I'm hoping to say more about this soon, but thought this headline made a point I've been saying since the "Tea Party" began grumbling early last year: Sen. Murkowski's Defeat Marks Major Tea Party Win.

That's right.  The Tea Party taking down a conservative incumbent is a "major win."  As far as Obama and Democrats go, these are the same fruitballs that have been attacking them since the beginning, and this represents no change from before.  No, it's the Republican Party that needs to worry.  The far-far right is on the warpath and only the craziest can survive.  And the crazier they are, the easier it is for us.

The AP Hearts Beckapoolza

To hear the Associated Press tell it, yesterday's Glenn Beck Ego Rally in D.C. is proof positive Tea Party forces are part of an epic movement in American politics which threatens to change the status quo in the next election.  Forget about the fact that these people are actually fighting for the status quo, as it was before the 2008 elections; this is about a revolution.

The article was titled "Beck Rally Signals Election Troubles for Dems," and describes "voter unrest" at this "nonpolitical rally" which they say "illustrated voters' exasperation" at the people in charge.  It described the Tea Party thusly:

The tea party is essentially a loosely organized band of anti-tax, libertarian-leaning political newcomers who are fed up with Washington

Political newcomers?  Is there some sort of evidence of this, besides that this is how these people sometimes describe themselves?  Because I've got another way of describing these people: The same a-holes who hated Bill Clinton, fervently defended George W, and insisted throughout 2008 that Obama was a Muslim traitor socialist who planned to destroy America. 

In other words, they're the sore losers on the far-far-right who attack anyone who attempts to deny them power.  How anyone can look at these people and imagine that they're some sort of bipartisan uprising of recently frustrated voters is absolutely amazing.  That might make a better news story, but it's complete and total fiction. 

When Sarah Palin whips them into an anti-Obama frenzy, it's the same frenzy she whipped them into before her epic defeat in 2008.  Or are we to forget the "paling around with terrorists" stuff and pretend as if these people were somehow fair-minded about Obama before he destroyed America?

Likely Voters Skew Angry

And what did the AP not mention in this story?  That this "voter uprising" was estimated to be a relatively miniscule 87,000 people.  And while that's at least 86,980 more people than I could probably get at a Biobrain rally, in the grand scheme of things, that's not particularly impressive.  I mean, hell, that's only 0.15% of the people who voted for McCain in 2008.  And if 53 million votes won't win them an election, why should we take Beck's angry 87,000 to be some sort of threat?

And overall, one of the big fallacies too many people are making regarding the upcoming election is that angry votes somehow count more than non-angry ones.  That's why the "likely voter" scenarios the pollsters create are skewing Republican, because angry people tell pollsters they're more likely to vote.  But this far ahead of the election, that's still an iffy proposition, no matter how much us politicos want to be able to predict the future.

As a reminder, in August 2008, McCain and Obama were often neck-and-neck.  As Polling Report shows, while some polls of likely voters had Obama in a sizeable lead at this point, CNN had it at 48-49 Obama, well within the margin of error.  In fact, for the first part of September, McCain was winning in more polls than Obama.  It wasn't until October that polls consistently showed Obama with a break-out lead,  Yet Obama went on to win by seven points, a landslide by modern standards.

And that's just to be expected.  I mean, like it or not, even a majority of voters only care enough about politics to start having real opinions once the election approaches.  And the people who have established opinions are going to be the people who are involved, but that really doesn't mean much.  Because again, angry votes don't count more than tepid ones and there will always be more tepid voters than angry ones.

And that means that all this can change by November.  To suggest otherwise is to play silly headgames with ourselves.  The desire for certainty is no assurance that it exists.

Angry Still Angry

And back to the point, Beck's angry 87,000 is much fury about nothing.  These people were angry in 2008, 2006, 2001, 1996, and every other election for the last twenty years.  These aren't political newcomers who have banded together to form a new movement.  This is an angry mob that latched onto a cutsie name to describe themselves, as a way of associating themselves with a history they refuse to understand. 

Them referring to themselves as a Tea Party is just more evidence that they're ego-driven fools who are angry that America isn't designed exactly the way they want it; whatever that is.  As Carpetbagger continues to point out, this "movement" has no real agenda, beyond ambigious goals like freedom, liberty, and truth; without any real comprehension of what those ideas mean or how we can apply them in practice.  And the whole thing falls apart once they actually start trying to say what they're going to do.  They want freedom and power.  Beyond that, it's every jerk for themselves.

But all the same, the AP is in love with the idea that they've got a new story to pimp, so pimp it they will.  Yes, they're angry, but they've always been angry and a small group consisting of less than 1% of angry Republicans isn't going to make a difference in November.  As much as these people can hurt anyone, it's Republicans in Republican primaries who have to worry.  But these people weren't going to vote for Democrats in any case, and their vote isn't any stronger than it was going to be no matter how angry they are.

As I've always said, the Tea Party is a splinter group that is as much a threat to Democrats as Ralph Nader is to Republicans.  Somehow, the media acknowledges Nader as being a thorn in the side of Democrats, yet refuses to understand how the Tea Party plays the same part.  But perhaps that's just because they listen too much to their confused rhetoric, rather than the practical implications of what they're saying.  So far this year, the only people who have been hurt by the Tea Party were conservative Republicans who weren't conservative enough.  I fail to see how that's a threat to anyone else.

The Limits of Obamascare and the Douchebag Strategy

As I've been saying since Republicans made their anti-Obama "strategy" obvious last year, it's all for nothing.  All they were going to be able to achieve with it is to get the people who already hate Obama to continue to hate Obama, while losing any chance of winning over anyone else.  Obama and Democratic fortunes rested almost entirely on the economy, and as much as Republicans might have been able to implement a strategy to win new converts, they threw that right out the window when they decided to reflexively attack everything Obama did.

But that's not to say that Republicans wouldn't have ANY impact on Obama's future, as they could certainly undermine his plans in order to make him less effective.  Sure, they could have more easily done that with bi-partisan negotiating, but they could still have an impact even by attacking everything from the outside. 

And we saw a lot of that with the healthcare debate.  By attacking Obama's healthcare plan, it made it harder for him to get what we needed, and we ended up with an imperfect bill.  But...once the bill passed, it was time to move on.  Especially as their best trick was to attack things that weren't in the bill, which got a lot harder once there was a real bill to talk about.  If anything, it was the unknown that scared most voters, with only diehard Republicans hating the actual bill. 

Yet Republicans once again believed their own hype and imagined they could continue to use "Obamacare" to attack Democrats, even if it meant attacking a bill that would help people and contained lots of popular policies that were already being enacted.

Even Republicans Don't Care

And via Carpetbagger, it looks like we've got some results on this, at least as far as Republican Attorney Generals trying to score points with Republicans.  The end result: Not much.  Not that it can be argued that the anti-Obamacare position hurt these AG's, but it doesn't seem to have done anything.  And remember, these were Republican primaries, yet there wasn't any pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.  General Election results could be a negative, assuming voters even remember.

And that's just not good enough in politics.  You really shouldn't take a high profile stance on an issue unless there's a good chance you can score real points with it.  And had "Obamacare" been filled with Death Panels and other assorted evil-doing, that would have been possible.  But as it was, Republicans were stuck trying to repeal good policies that people support, and you really can't make something your key issue if you can't mention any of the actual details you're attacking.

But Republicans are too dumb to have thought this through.  Their position is to attack Obama as much as possible, and as far as denying him victories, it's worked; though with a huge cost (they currently have no policies or mandate of any kind, beyond denying Obama victories, and are less popular than Democrats).  But once he has his victory, it's time to move on. 

Even among Republicans, they list healthcare reform in their litany of Obama abuses, but they're far more concerned with stopping the next Obama abuse; and aren't going to reward people for repealing the policy battles they already lost.  And in a general election, the results could only get worse.

But of course, their "strategy" had little to do with politics at all.  The reality is that these people opposed everything Obama did because it was the easiest thing for them to do, as it required no actual thinking and was what Limbaugh and the other talking heads told them to do.  Just because your son teases your daughter all the time doesn't necessarily mean he's got some strategy to defeat her.  He might just be a douchebag.

The Right to be Offensive

One of the biggest mistakes conservatives make is listening to conservatives. Well, that’s the biggest mistake anyone can make, but generally, it’s only conservatives who are at risk of this. And the reason that’s such a mistake is because conservatives are so results-oriented. It’s not about weighing the options and determining the best position. Conservatives determine what result they’re wanting, and then find ways to rationalize that position. And for as much as that position differs from the one they should have gotten, it’s naturally going to be wrong.

And thus it is with the race issue. Not all conservatives are racist. Far from it. Nor are only white people racist. But…if you’re going to be a white racist, you’re going to be a conservative. It’s simply a conservative position, while the liberal position is to oppose white racism. Not that liberals support any racism, but it’s generally racism from whites that they push back against, as that’s clearly the more serious problem.

And the odd thing about conservative racism is that it was initially the explicit position, with liberals taking the opposite stance. But now, much of conservative racism is actually a pushback against liberal opposition to racism.  As if it's somehow ok to support an offensive position, just as long as you don't like the people who oppose it. And unfortunately for the entire conservative movement, this has pulled even non-racist conservatives onto the racist team; not because they’re racist, but because they oppose all liberalism.  But really, if your position supports racism, then you're a racist, whether or not you personally hate people of other races. 

And conservatives understand this when it comes to terrorism, as anyone who defends Bin Laden's right to kill Americans, ipso facto, is on Bin Laden's team.  Yet somehow, they imagine that they can defend the right to be racist without actually being racist.  But...if your policy forces blacks to the back of the bus, you're just as bad as the people who actually force them there.

It's the Context, Stupid

And this gets me around to my point: Laura Schlessinger and the N-Word. I have no idea if Laura Schlessinger is a racist. For all I know, some of her best friends could be n-words, and they're totally comfortable with her telling them that.  Frankly, the lady totally creeps me out and I never want to know Dr. Laura enough to find out what she really thinks about black people. 

But...her rant about how white people should get to use the n-word certainly would put her on Team Racist.  It's bad enough that she used the word eleven times, but by actually attacking someone who was offended by it, she certainly showed which side she's on.  And unfortunately, far too many conservatives agree that they should have the right to use that word, simply because some black people use it.

And the concept that conservatives are having so much trouble here is context. Context is everything, as it gives people an idea of what you're talking about.  The same words spoken by two different people can have wildly different meanings.  It's assumed that a black person isn't racist against blacks, so if a black person uses the n-word, it's assumed that weren't insulting blacks.  But...if a black person uses the word while insisting that blacks are stupid and lazy, then they'll be attacked just as much as if a white person said it; possibly more.

Similarly, if I, as a white person said “White people really need to be more sensitive towards the feelings of black people,” it’d be different than if Obama said it.  That's just common sense.  And the point isn't that people get to insult people of their own race or that black people get to use certain words white people can't.  It's that the context of the situation tells people what the words mean. 

PC For Me, Not for Thee

Conservatives know this, except for when it comes to them defending their right to insult minorities.  For them, not only do they feel they have the right to insult minorities, but they also feel they have the right to attack anyone who's offended by these insults.  That's what Dr. Laura was doing, as well as anyone else who attacks "political correctness."  Unsurprisingly, they don't seem to feel the same way when people insult Christianity.  It's all fun and games until someone disses Yahweh.

And that's what made Dr. Laura's remarks so wrong.  Not that she was using it directly to insult anyone, but that she was trying to mainstream the word in order to make it so black people should feel ashamed if they're offended by it.  It's like someone reporting a burglary and the police tell them to shut up and stop being so materialistic.  Not only are racists allowed to be racists, but their victims have no right to complain.

For as much as "political correctness" is a horrible thing for conservatives to endure, it really just amounts to basic human kindness.  Just because we have the right to offend people doesn't mean that people should be forced to accept offensive remarks.  If you have the right to make a remark, I have the right to complain about it.  And that's the part of free speech that conservatives have trouble grasping, as they truly want to believe it only applies to them.  Everyone else just needs to learn to shut up and suck it.

When Destroying America is Pro-American

One of the more mind-boggling aspects of conservatives is their insistence that they're not racist, while all the while defending the South's right to secession during the Civil War; as if contining to fight battles for dead racists doesn't reflect badly on you.  Fortunately, many conservatives don't see things this way, but all too many do.  And they'll assure you that their arguments are not in support of slavery, but support for the right of states to leave America.  As if we're to imagine that if California, New York, and Massachussetts chose to leave America to protest the Iraq War, these people would support such claims.

And so I'm reading about how a conservative pollster polled conservative bloggers regarding The 25 Worst Figures In American History, eighteen of which were liberals; most of whom are still living.  Either American history has gotten a whole lot worse in recent years or conservatives have very short memories.  And someone commenting on that noted that none of the people listed were Civil War Confederates, which should be odd, seeing as how the Civil War was surely the most perilous time in our history. 

I mean, imagine if Al Qaeda could even remove one state from the Union, and you can begin to understand why having a bunch of them leave at once might be a problem.  But apparently, it'd only be a problem if terrorists or liberals did such a thing.  But if REAL Americans want to destroy America, it's an American thing to do.  Or something like that.

Hardly Shocking

And here's the comment you've been waiting for, in response to the mention of Confederates as "worst figures."

Hardly shocking since the leaders of the Confederacy simply took their states out the Union as would be presumed since those states voluntarily joined. Their dispute was entirely political over an unfortunate system that was entirely legal in the US until the Union outlawed slavery in the states outside of Union control to avoid a negotiated settlement.

Of course.  They were just exercising their right to end their voluntary cooperation with the other states, so naturally that's not a bad thing for America at all.  But of course, it was.  I mean, even if it can be argued that these states were within their rights to secede (they weren't), that should still put them on the American history shit list.

But no.  Apparently, it's perfectly acceptable to destroy half of America, if you're having a political dispute with a group that won't negotiate.  Oh, and as a correction, in case you needed one: The Union HADN'T outlawed slavery prior to secession.  In fact, seven states had withdrawn from the Union before Lincoln even took office. 

This wasn't a reaction to imperious federalism.  This was a powerplay by people upset that they had lost an election.  (Huh, I wonder why that sounds so familiar.)

Involuntary Contracts

And the big joke is his "voluntarily joined" nonsense.  Just because you voluntarily signed a contract doesn't mean you get to unilaterially get out of it, and there was no provision in the Constitution to withdraw from it.  Once they signed in, they were stuck with it.  And if that wasn't the case, then the states wouldn't have been so wary of joining.  If it had been assumed that they could withdraw whenever they liked, there wouldn't have been a problem.  And hell, if anyone gets into a contract involuntarily, they have more right to invalidate it than if they get into it voluntarily.  I fail to see why it should be assumed that the Constitution has an escape clause.

And the southern states knew that, as their argument for leaving wasn't that their participation was voluntary, but rather, that America had failed to uphold their part of the contract; thus voiding the contract.  And that IS a valid reason to get out of a contract.  You can read South Carolina's Declaration of Secession, which lays out their case that that by creating laws that opposed slavery, Northern states were infringing upon the Southern state's rights by not enforcing slavery in Northern states. 

So basically, if Southern states weren't allowed to subvert laws in Northern states, this somehow violated the rights of Southern states.  And again, this "victimhood by not permitting me to victimize others" somehow rings a bell for me.

I was going to finish this post, but screw it.  I have too many of these unfinished posts lying around, so I figure it's best just to submit it unfinished than to let it die.  You can just fill in the rest by giving a recap of the opening, and imagining that I've tied it all back together with some pithy phrase that shows how stupid it is for conservatives to continue to defend secession.


Oh, and I also forgot to include a section on the second half of his comment, in which he explains that treason by the Confederates is comparable to FDR creating Social Security and regulations.  Yet oddly, Roosevelt really WAS on the list, while no Confederates were.  Conservatives are very weird people.

We're All Illegal Now

Saw the headline: .14th Amendment: Is Birthright Citizenship Really in the Constitution?  And I thought, "uh oh, better get the Maalox."

And I was kind of hoping this would be some sort of slamdunk against the "anti-baby anchor" crowd who insists that illegals are bad because they're illegal, and that applies to their kids born here who are legal.  But no, the article was really just an anti-Birthright fluff piece that didn't really take the topic seriously, which meant giving the anti-immigrant position while glossing over the reality.

And here's the meat in the article, explaining why Birthright Citizenship might not be required of us:

Section 1 of the 14th Amendment begins this way: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."


The key phrase here is "subject to the jurisdiction thereof."

Illegal immigrants are not subject to US jurisdiction, in the sense that they cannot be drafted into the US military or tried for treason against the US, said John Eastman, a professor at the Chapman University School of Law, in a media conference call Monday. Their children would share that status, via citizenship in their parents’ nation or nations of birth – and so would not be eligible for a US passport, even if born on US soil, according to Dr. Eastman.

Uhhh, what?  Illegal immigrants aren't subject to US jurisdiction?  Really?  Whose jurisdiction are they under and why do we keep arresting them if they're not in our jurisdiction? 

And...huh?  I thought the whole point to this amendment was to determine who was a citizen.  Yet, this guy's arguing that they're not citizens because they're illegal, and they're illegal because they're...illegal.  Yet, all we'd have to do is make them legal from birth, which is what we currently do, and then they're not only subject to our jurisdiction, but we can also draft them in the military and try them for treason.  In fact, that'd be a great answer to ALL illegals: We make them legal and then they're legal.  I have yet to see some reason why we need to make it so difficult for them to become citizens.

And hell, just as easily this rationale could be used to deny citizenship to ALL of us.  If you can't be a citizen unless you were already a citizen, and you're not a citizen until we determine that you're a citizen, then nobody can be a citizen.  It's that simple.

One Legal Scholar Agrees

Just to show what a joke the article is, the writer says:

Many legal scholars believe that changing the policy would require changing the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, on which birthright citizenship is based. But “many” legal scholars is not the same thing as “all.”

Yuk, yuk.  How hilarious.  He found one crazy law professor who said a crazy thing, and that becomes the basis for an entire article.  And even worse, the article has a "Crazy said, Sane said" air about, emphasizing the crazy side yet not labeling it as crazy.  The reality-based position is relegated to the last three paragraphs, and only cites one person making the claim. 

I'm sure this was because the writer really wasn't taking it seriously, and didn't see the need in actually emphasizing the reality-based position.  But still, by treating it seriously and acting like both sides have a valid case, it helps legitimize the crazy position.  And that's absolutely something that real journalism shouldn't do.


BTW, of the things I learned in the comments section there is that 100% of an "anchor babies" don't complete college and 90% don't complete high school, and they're all criminals and drug smugglers.  I also read all about how they're only interested in getting free handouts and stealing our jobs.  But hey, these people aren't racists.  They're just telling it like it is.  Ugh...I really need to learn to avoid Yahoo messageboards.

A-Hole Atheists

Over on Facebook, I've got a "friend" that's an ok guy.  In fact, I only put "friend" in quotes to distinguish him from real friends, as I just don't consider sharing a few thoughts with someone on a website enough to form a true friendship (though I do have a few actual friends online).

And he's part of the atheist community I've found myself in there, which mostly consists of the same sixty or so people who all seem to be friends with one another.  (This guy, for example, has sixty-two friends in common with me; and they're mostly the same sixty-two friends I have in common with the rest of his sixty-two atheist friends.)  And I suppose I don't mind that at all.  Sure, I don't necessarily "like" all of these people, but they're like-minded enough that I don't dislike them; unlike the Facebook bigot I mentioned in my last post.

But of course, one of the big issues I have with many of these atheists is their hardcore anti-Christianity.  Because, I just don't get it.  I mean, why bother?  If someone's set in their beliefs about something, why bother spending your time attacking them for it?  Atheism should be about a lack of religion, not attacks on religion.  Similarly, I don't believe in Santa Claus, but I don't attack the guy either.  And frankly, I don't like how my atheism is besmirched by anti-Christian a-holes who always have to make a point of attacking Christianity, making it so that I'm a bit embarrassed to tell Christians that I'm an atheist, for fear of being lumped in with the anti-Christian atheists. 

Honestly, I'm a live and let live sort of guy and really don't appreciate it when these a-hole atheists screw things up for me and make people assume I'm hostile towards them simply because I don't have a religion.  While I enjoy religious debates, I don't really want to take a side in it and would rather be left out completely if it means anyone's feelings are going to get hurt.  Life's just too short to needlessly make people angry.

Funny Death: Still Not Funny

Now, I should mention that I don't actually find this "friend" to be an a-hole, but really kind of wonder about someone who can read a story about human suffering and immediately make a biting criticism about religion with it.  Specifically, he read a story about someone who was trying to park their car after a church service and accidentally killed two people, and his initial reaction was to write:

god works in mysterious ways huh!


These two were "specially" selected to go to their cloud condo in the SuperMagicLand in the sky! Or...

Uhm...that's disgusting.  I mean, I like making jokes and everything, but see nothing funny about two people dying, whether or not it happened after a church service.  Human suffering just isn't on my comedy menu.  Particularly in this case, as there wasn't anything even remotely ironic or humorous about this.  Not that I ever think it's so great to laugh about someone dying, but this doesn't even approach any sort of joke.  It was just mean.
 
Senseless Humor
 
And for what?  What purpose did it serve to mock this senseless death?  Is some Christian going to see this snarky remark about God's mysterious ways and decide that they were wrong about God?  Of course not.  If anything, they'll get upset and get even FIRMER in their belief of God, just to spite the mean atheists who'd mock the death of these two people.  That's just human nature.  You get more flies with honey, and all that.
 
And I once saw the same thing from another atheist on Facebook, who thought it was clever to point to a Holocaust poster which suggested that God had gone on vacation during that period.  And so they were making a petty joke about a human catastrophe in order to make atheists feel a little more smug about their atheism.  I tried explaining that at the time, but was told that I was being too sensitive, as if it's perfectly ok to score points against Christians by making unfunny jokes about human suffering.  After all, it was just a joke.
 
And of course, why bother fighting the "mysterious ways" meme?  After all, it's a perfect argument.  All circular logic is.  It simply can't be defeated from the outside, because the arguments support themselves.  And the only criticism of a circular argument is that you can't logically use an argument to support itself.  But Christians don't have that problem, as they have faith, and faith is enough support for anything.  Logical arguments simply can't penetrate something that views logic as a fallacy.
 
So, why bother?  Why attack people who aren't necessarily doing anything against you?  If someone's doing something that hurts me or stifles my freedom, I'll stand up against that.  But if someone insists upon believing something that doesn't hurt me, I see no reason why I should bother fighting it.  If they're wanting to hear my arguments, that's fine.  I'd love to convert someone who was open to it.  But I see no purpose in feeding a fire that wouldn't hurt me if I leave it alone. 
 
And I definitely side with someone who'd mourn a senseless death over someone who insists upon using it to score a senseless victory.  Hell, I'd mock a senseless death if it meant I could prevent another.  But even a funny joke isn't a good enough reason to mock human suffering.  And too often, the jokes aren't even funny at all.  Their only purpose is to make us feel smug in our self-righteousness.  And that's just not something I can believe in.

Befriending Bigots

I just read of a story of five guys in England who robbed a convenience store and killed the owner by bludgeoning him with a hammer.  And while the specific implement of death is a bit unusual, this sort of story is all too common.  And now these five guys have been caught and are likely to get the most severe punishment, and so it's a sad story all around.  A familyman shopkeeper suffered a bad death, and five youths who might have done something with their lives have now thrown it all away.

And the story would end there, except one thing...the five guys were Muslim.  And somehow, that changes everything.  And I read about this from a Facebook "friend" who I've slowly been learning is an anti-Muslim bigot who specializes in reposting stories about Muslim evil-doers causing atrocities to non-Muslims.  And that means that any offensive event becomes more fuel on the fire because Muslims are involved.  No longer are these unrelated stories of evil-doing and sadness.  Now, they're all part of the Muslim experience.

(Similarly, a story involving a drunk driver killing a nun would normally be an anti-drunk driving story, but became an anti-immigrant story because an illegal immigrant was involved.)

A Steady Anti-Infidel Diet

Here's the post from my Facebook "friend" that accompanied the link to that story:

According to sharia law in some places, it is likely that these murderers would never be arrested - were these children fed a steady diet of anti-infidel hate speech in their local mosque? How long before this type of crime is no longer prosecuted in the U.K.?

And really??  There is some chance that the UK might make it legal for people to rob and murder if the killers are Muslim?  I mean, I guess I'm not totally current with modern legal theory in England, but I'm really having a hard time believing that such a law has any possibility of getting passed.

And I should mention, the person writing this post doesn't even know if these dudes are Muslim.  They have Muslim names, and from there, it's considered fair to not only assume they're Muslim, but to assume they're hardcore Muslims who only did this because their victim was an infidel.  There are also hints that politically correctness is to blame for the newspaper not highlighting their Muslimness.

But as she said in a later comment, "the article didn't say anything about their mosque, which is why I framed my remark as a question."  And yeah, that changes everything.  Because it was just a question.

No Stereotype Here

When someone wrote that we shouldn't stereotype about these guys just because they had Muslim names, my "friend" responded:

Yes, of course, other than identifying them as Muslim, there is no "stereotype" here - being aware of what ideology might be driving a group of youngsters is not "stereotyping," especially when one knows a great deal about that ideology and its history. Not bringing it up would be egregious - and what would be another reason they could be so heartless? Are they just natural-born killers? So, labeling them as such is fine, so long as we don't blame the ideology that might have driven them!

And yeah, it's not stereotyping Muslims to assume that these guys were trained to kill infidels by their religion, if you know that Muslims are just like that.  It'd be "egregious" to not assume that their religion taught them to be heartless and cruel.  They might have been driven by their ideology, so it's best to assume that that's the case and add it to the pile of Muslim atrocity stories that all normal people collect.

But of course, that's the definition of stereotyping.  I mean, if there was evidence that these guys were hardcore Muslims who were taught that it was ok to kill infidels, that'd be one thing.  But this person is basing her assumptions purely on their names.  She doesn't even know if they're practicing Muslims.  Yet, we should assume they are, because Muslim "ideology and history" shows that to be the likely case. 

And what is the basis of her "great deal" of knowledge" of Muslim's ideology and history?  What else: Fellow bigots who highlight these stories with the emphasis on how Muslims always do violent, horrible things; creating a vast fever swamp of Muslim bashing stories.  Somehow, they fail to grasp how easy it would be to find all the murderers, rapists, and thieves in our prisons who were raised as Christians and pin this on Christianity. 

If the only stories you notice of a certain religion or race are the negative ones, then it's easy to imagine that everyone in those groups are bad people.  But it's not about whether you can find some bad people in a group, but whether those people represent the group as a whole.  And if you focus solely on the negative and insist that these attitudes reflect the group as a whole, while ignoring all the good people in that group, then you're a bigot.  There's simply no other way about it.


Post Script: I confronted this bigot by telling her that she's a bigot and explaining what makes her a bigot (something I've almost never done) and was immediately unfriended.  No argument.  No explanation.  It was over.  And thank god.  While I really did have some slight hope that I might be able to get through to her and convince her to stop hating Muslims, I truly was sickened by her ignorance and hatred, which only grew the more I read her material.

This all happened awhile ago and I never finished this post or another that I wrote about her (which I might post soon), because the topic was so upsetting for me.  I should also add that I have no idea how I became "friends" with her, and had no encounters with her outside of seeing her disgusting bigotry appear on my screen. 

While there are very few "friends" on Facebook that I actually consider to be friends, this person clearly belonged in the "cockroach" category.  I had forgotten all about this until I started looking through my unfinished posts for something to post, and am now quite happy to have gotten rid of this person from my life.  While I generally believe in giving everyone a chance, in hopes of building a bridge between us; there are always exceptions.

The Dork Patriots Strike Back

Terrorism is the last refuge of the powerless.  It's what you use if you believe the system is rigged against you and you have no other option for protecting what you value.  But apparently, there's a much safer option if you want to take control of your life by bonding with allies and smiting your enemies: The Internet.

While I've long witnessed conservatives waging hard-fought battles from the confines of their living rooms on websites like RedState and FreeRepublic, where they imagine they're giving liberal traitors a thorough thrashing with their strong rhetoric and truth-loving patriotism; we've now uncovered a new battlefront conservatives have adopted in order to fool themselves into believing that they're actually accomplishing something with their meaningless lives. 

They're now using Digg to popularize conservative stories and depopularize liberal stories, by grouping together and blindly supporting/burying whatever stories their fellow conservative Diggers tell them to support/bury.  And one of the biggest of these groups: The Digg Patriots.

Influencing the Wind by Spitting

And really, the whole thing's just sad.  Seriously sad.  Because these aren't truly dumb people.  They mean well.  They want to have an impact on life.  But, for whatever reason, they're relegated to spending large amounts of time trying to influence the world by clicking on buttons on their computers, as if that's some sort of substitute for actually doing something with their lives. 

And I'm sorry, while I'm a bit unfamiliar with Digg (never having used it), I just can't see how this could have any real impact on things.  I mean, most people don't even read the news, let alone get influenced by it.  Hell, you've got real conservatives making real news every damn day and even THEY have limited success in influencing anything.  And anyone who gets their news from Digg is likely to be someone who already has their mind made up and isn't going to be influenced by the stories they read.  It's the people who DON'T read news every day that you need to influence, and this isn't going to get through to them at all.

Yet, for these conservatives, it's all they've got.  This is their plan to take control of their lives.  And while I'm sure a majority of the Digg Patriots didn't get too absorbed in it, it's quite obvious that many of these people take this VERY seriously. 

The Bozo Patriots

Here are a few choice quotes that Alternet provides:

“The more liberal stories that were buried the better chance conservative stories have to get to the front page. I’ll continue to bury their submissions until they change their ways and become conservatives.”
-phoenixtx (aka vrayz)

Whether I agree with Bjornski, Anamaly100, PhilPerspective, Novenator, JanineWallace, UncaJoe; a couple others I can’t think of right now, I bury `em anyway. *ACTUALLY* each of them has been “dead-on, balls-accurate” (an industry term) at least once in the past week or so, and it sort-of pains me to be dishonest by burying them anyway, but then I remember . . . I’m not up for re-election!
-BentheDog

I personally vote for a complete blackout on lib subs: Bury every comment (including the conservatives “helping” to pop the story). No up-votes (no matter how much you agree).
-asami21

I’ve been permanently banned 4 or 5 times. You gotta make sure you got a month or so between [accounts]. …The libs make a big deal out of start dates on profiles after one of us returns from getting permanently banned. Maybe we should have 10 or 15 identities created so the next time one of us gets a permanent ban we could come back with an identity that was created weeks or months before. Kind of like Jeff came back as Benthedog and they had no clue.
-Phoenixtx

And seriously, whether or not you think gaming Digg is a problem, this is just pathetic.  Because you know these people think they're actually accomplishing something here.  This is their power.  This is their glory.  This is just sad.  Really, there are so many problems to solve and prizes to win in the world, and for these people to waste their time supporting/attacking news all day instead of doing something useful really bothers me on a fundamental level.

But...they've found an outlet for their powerlessness that doesn't involve blowing people up, so I guess I shouldn't complain.  Perhaps we should think about creating covert Digg groups for potential terrorists to join and give them a sense of power to their otherwise impotent lives.  That's all most of them were after anyway.

Bad Science Strikes Again

Yes, I've been a huge bum lately and haven't posted anything, and this really isn't much better.  But it's something.  Here's a post I made on Facebook, regarding an experiment that showed that pancreatic cancer cells LOVE fructose.  Enjoy!

While this study is interesting, I definitely have issues with the statement the main researcher made, suggesting that this study means we should act to restrict high fructose corn syrup.

I think this paper has a lot of public health implications. Hopefully, at the federal level there will be some effort to step back on the amount of high fructose corn syrup in our diets.

A real researcher would naturally be cautious and understand that this one study doesn't prove anything, as that's just not how science works. Science works by building a knowledge base in order to understand why these things are happening. One study, or even a handful of studies, doesn't prove anything. This study is just a building block of science, not an end result which demands immediate action.

The fact that they think we should take active steps based upon one study that didn't explain why this is happening would indicate that the researchers were biased and were attempting to find this exact result, in order to give us this exact conclusion. And that's just a bad way to do science, as it's too easy to devise a study to fit what you're looking for; even if that's not what you're intending to do.

Unfortunately, there's very little pure research done these days, as the easiest way to get funding is to set-out to prove a specific thing. If the sugar industry is funding you, it's because you were attempting to prove that sugar is safe. If an anti-diabetes group funds you, it was because you're proving sugar isn't safe. That's just how it works. That's not to say that these people are necessarily corrupt or anything, it's just that it's a perversion of science. Even well-meaning people can fool themselves into performing bad science, and if these researchers actually imagine that this one study should dictate public policy, they've probably engaged in bad science.

I mean, seriously, if their experiment showed that glucose cells grew more than fructose cells, would they have told us to drink more soda? I don't think so. They got the result they were looking for, and that's never a good thing.

My Immigration Fears Were Misplaced

Per John Bouma, the attorney arguing in support of Arizona's new immigration law:

In Arizona we have a tremendous Hispanic heritage. To think that everybody that's Hispanic is going to be stopped and questioned ... defies reality.  All this hypothetical that we're going to go out and arrest everybody that's Hispanic, look around. That's impossible.

Well, ok.  That changes everything.  I had assumed that this law would end up getting every Hispanic in Arizona stopped, questioned, and arrested.  But if it's not feasible for them to harass every Hispanic, then I guess there's not a problem.

I can't wait to use this justification for everything.  As long as every gun owner in America isn't sent to an Obama re-education camp, there's no problem with outlawing guns and rounding up their owners for re-education.  As long as every Christian isn't forced to renounce Christ as their lord and savior while being waterboarded, such a law would be legal.  I mean, to imagine we could get them all would defy reality.

Once upon a time, the informal standard was that it was better to avoid laws that harassed any innocent person.  It seems we've now flipped that on its head and as long as every innocent isn't harassed, we don't have a problem.  How interesting.

Glenn Beck's Real Economic Lesson

Most conservatives have an odd belief that because they support what businesses do, that they must inherently know something about how businesses work and the economy as a whole.  And I've generally found that, for the most part, they don't know what the hell they're talking about.  And my biggest complaint against liberals is that they don't take economic classes, which would allow them to realize that conservative economic policies aren't just immoral; they're just plain wrong.

And so I'm reading TPM and see that they cover the second installment of Beck University, Glenn Beck's latest money-making scheme to convince rightwing rubes to fork over even more of their soft-earned money.  And this one was even worse than the first.

And the funniest part about it is that, as part of the lesson, the "instructor" actually admits why he got the job: Because he's the cheapest.  Here's the "lesson" in economics he attempted to impart, as given by TPM:

"The number one concept to best understand wealth," Buckner explained, "is to understand the value of your time."

"Why?" Because once you understand the value of your time and how best to use it, you "won't produce that which you are not the lowest cost at producing."

Buckner elaborated, kind of: If Joshua is the most efficient pie-maker, and Jennifer can make cheaper cakes, then they should each play to their strengths to maximize output and minimize cost.

For example, "why am I here?" he asked. "Truthfully, I'm the cheapest."

And...no.  In case you weren't lucky enough to take an economics class by someone who actually knew what they were talking about, let me assure you, this isn't economics.  Or at least, it's not modern economics. 

As one commenter at TPM pointed out, this guy is basically promoting Mercantilism, a discredited economic system that predates Adam Smith and modern economic theories, which basically says that you should only produce what you produce best.  And again...no.  That's definitely not the best way to produce wealth.

Profits, Not Costs

Rather, our modern economics is based upon the idea of profits, and that you should sell products that will earn you the most money.  It doesn't matter if Joshua is the most efficient pie maker, if he can sell his cakes for twice as much profit.  If he makes a pie for a dollar and can sell it for five dollars but make a cake for two dollars and sell it for ten dollars, he should make cakes.  After all, eight dollars is more than four dollars; even at Glenn Beck University.

It's all about how much you can sell your product or service for; not how much it cost to make it.  Costs don't even factor into how much you should charge for a product or service.  It's all about how much someone's willing to pay for it.  I mean, I can produce blogposts for free, but because I don't get paid for them, it's not a particularly good use of my time; financially speaking. 

And of course, the ultimate lesson here is this dude's own worth.  As he said himself, he's doing this because he's the cheapest, and had Beck wanted to pay a real economist, he would have had to pay a lot more.  But Beck realizes that his rubes will buy whatever he has to sell and if they're dumb enough to shell out money to Beck University, they're too dumb to realize what a crappy lesson they're getting.

So the great deal Beck's getting isn't because this guy is so cheap, but because Beck's rubes are so dumb that they put real value to his valueless lessons by paying for it.  It was Beck's name that added economic value to this endeavor.  The "professor's" cheap lesson merely increased the profit margin.  But that was because there was no point in paying more for a lesson that wouldn't be learned anyway.

Republicans: As Stupid as they Seem

Over at WaMo, Carpetbagger's got a post about how Republicans are Economic Illiterates, because they keep saying that taxcuts don't cost any money, which is why we need more taxcuts.  And of course, progressives came out in droves to insist that these guys really do know what they're talking about, but they're lying for political and economic gain.  And some of them are insisting that Obama and the Dems are part of the problem, or else they'd do a better job of attacking Republicans for it. 

As one guy put it, '"Polite" and "deliberative" don't cut it in politics.'  Yes, because "rude" and "knee-jerk" will prove to be so much more effective.  Somehow, we're supposed to forget that "polite" and "deliberative" won us the Whitehouse; despite assurances by these same people that "polite" would get Obama stomped by McCain.

But my question for them is: Why should we assume that these guys are lying?  These same people display on a daily basis that they're completely ignorant about some of the most basic issues of the day, often saying things that hurt them politically.  And for as much as there's a possibility of them beating us in November, it's in spite of their politics and policies; not because of them.  People might be upset that Obama isn't doing more (though I think this is overstated), but it sure isn't because Republicans are giving anyone a better alternative.

So, why should we imagine that they're any brighter about economic policy?  If they can't even develop a proper political strategy beyond "Keep tossing more red meat to Teh Crazies and hope for the best," why should we imagine that they know anything about tax policies?  Especially as their statements on tax policies are incoherent, and aren't particularly compelling.  Now, perhaps I'm wrong and our country is brimming with moderates and Democrats who are clamoring for any party who promises more taxcuts for the rich.  But I kind of think that this is only red meat for the people who are already pulling them to the right, and isn't going to win over anyone.

So I just think it makes more sense for us to assume that they really ARE this dumb, and if they knew what they were talking about, they'd be making big bucks on Wall Street, rather than having to work every day in Washington; eternally begging for campaign contributions from people much smarter than themselves.  For Republicans, politics is what you do when you're good at talking but can't think of anything useful to say.

Preying on the Fearful & Naive

When I think "Hitler," I think extended unemployment benefits and bank bailouts.  Oh, wait.  No I don't.  I think "murdered six million Jews" and "tried to take over Europe."  And for as much as people have a visceral loathing for Hitler, I'm pretty sure it's not because people associate him with socialism. 

And yet, Iowa Tea Partiers give us this:

Fearful and naive, indeed.  Yeah, no scaremongering going on here.  Hitler, Obama, and Lenin are all socialists who promoted change.  It's just natural to link these three together. 

The Message is Socialism

Curiously, it seems the Tea Partiers finally agreed to take down the billboard, so the stories I'm finding on this all mention how they took it down, quoting the group's spokesman saying:

They are absolutely right in their criticism because the image of Hitler just totally wiped everything else and it misrepresents the tea party movement.  They were right from the standpoint that the image was not a positive reflection on the tea people.

Not that that's such a great mea culpa, as he's saying it was wrong because of how it made the "tea people" look.  Does that mean he still stands by how it made Obama look?

And that's a little different from the justification he gave earlier in the day, when I first read the story:

"The purpose of the billboard was to draw attention to the socialism. It seems to have been lost in the visuals," Johnson said. "The pictures overwhelmed the message. The message is socialism." He said he didn't know of any plans to remove the sign.

Yeah, the pictures overwhelmed the message.  I'm sure the Wall Street Reform = Hitler connection made a whole lot more sense in the written form.

Hitler = Hitler

But of course, it didn't.  The reason you associate someone with Hitler is because you're saying they're evil.  And as I've said before, unless the person you're associating with Hitler intentionally exterminated millions of people while starting a war that killed millions more, it's not a comparison you get to make.

And seriously, aren' there maybe a few more recent socialists that Tea Partiers could associate with Obama, if their big message was that Obama was a socialist?  Maybe a few heads of state in Europe?  Or are we to pretend that Europe doesn't have socialism?  But of course they do and Tea Partiers have absolutely no problem reminding us about that.  But hey, if they think Europe's so bad, why not put up a billboard associating Obama with the sort of dreaded socialists he's supposedly trying to emulate? 

Oh yeah, because they were trying to scare people into thinking that Obama's the next Hitler.  You know, because Hitler got rid of co-pays for preventive medicine.  With holocausts like that, who needs breast cancer?

The Economics of Real Waiter Wages

Minnesota State Rep and presumptive GOP gubernatorial nominee Tom Emmer got in hot water for proposing to cut waiter wages in the state, allowing restaurants to credit waiter tips towards minimum wage; effectively lowering their hourly rate by over $5 an hour.  And he justified that with his belief that many of these people make over $100k annually, and don't really need the extra money.  And hopefully, all of the Minnesota waiters who make over $100k will vote for Emmer, while the rest will vote for his opponent.

And one of the things Emmer used to justify his belief that this cut won't effect their wages was a study by two professors at the University of Nebraska titled Do higher tipped minimum wages boost server pay?  And I just had to read this study, because I find it mind boggling that you could somehow cut someone's wages without reducing their wages.

Here's what the professors had to say about it:

Do servers earn more in states with higher tipped minimum wages? We hypothesize no ceteris paribus premium to such servers. The reason is that the national market for servers is very competitive and we contend that it will equalize pay between states. Servers in states with lower tipped minimum wages may migrate to states with higher wages, or businesses in states with higher tipped minimum wages may relocate to states with lower wages. The resulting adjustments in server demand and supply will dissipate any interstate ceteris paribus differences in pay.

And I have two words for that: Uhm, no.  I can only imagine that these two professors have literally zero experience in the restaurant industry, as their vision of supply & demand as a corrective in this is entirely absurd. 

Real World v. Fantasyland

And the main problem here is that there is no national market for waiters.  A waiter isn't going to move from Arkansas to Minnesota for their higher minimum wage.  The waiter market is local only, and they compete to work for the best restaurants in their town.  Nor is a restaurateur going to close his restaurant in Minnesota and move to Arkansas to save on waiter costs.  That's absurd.  People just don't do these things.

And even their economics are wrong here, because supply & demand don't apply in this case.  Because it doesn't matter how many waiters move to MN for their better minimum wage; they'll still all be paid the same minimum wage and receive the same in tips.  Even an infinite supply of waiters won't make them get paid any less than the minimum wage. 

If anything, the higher minimum wage would force a restaurant to hire fewer waiters, so the waiters would make more in tips.  Or, the increased expenses would mean fewer restaurants would open in MN, so the remaining ones could charge more to pay for their more expensive employees.  But it doesn't matter what the supply & demand for waiters is, as their price still can't go below the minimum wage.

So not only is supply & demand not applicable to the waiter market, the minimum wage completely negates any effect it might have.  Honestly, if these professors haven't figured out how minimum wage affects supply & demand, they really need to go back to school.

Hocus Pocus Statistics

And so what could be the mechanism that would make it so increased minimum wages wouldn't increase actual wages?  Maybe it's because eaters know that their waiters already make minimum wage, so they tip less.  And that's fine by me, as I've never quite grasped the idea of mandatory tipping and would prefer that they be paid by the restaurant.  Or maybe it's because restaurant prices are too high, so people don't eat out as much.  Or possibly, just possibly, the results of the study are simply wrong.  And that is indeed the case.

First off, if you read their report, you'll find a bunch of statistical hoohaw that appears that they jimmied the numbers in order to flatten out any differences they would have found.  Basically, in their efforts of making "all things equal," they screwed with the numbers until everything was equal and then announced their findings that everything was equal.

And they never bother giving their results in actual numbers, but rather give you a chart that tells you (among other things) that Category 5 States have a 0.7820E-01 estimated coefficient, so you can't actual decipher their results.  They never translate this into numbers you can read.  For as much as I understand the need for statisticians to use jargon, I've generally found if they don't translate it back into English, they probably screwed with the numbers.

But then they have no problem giving you the final conclusion, which looks suspiciously like their original question, saying:

We conclude that, for the most part, servers in those states with higher tipped minimum wages appear to have no income advantage over servers elsewhere.

Surprise, surprise.  They take a bunch of numbers, run it through an incomprehensible statistical analysis, and presto change-o, come out of it with the exact answer they were looking for.  Well, not the exact answer, as they did find one group of states with higher paid waiters: States that had a real minimum wage. 

Real Wages = More Money

As they said, waiters in states that didn't allow tip credits were "paid a small premium relative to workers in states where there are no minimum wage laws."  Or written in English, waiters that received a real minimum wage got more money than waiters that didn't.  And, well, duh.  That's exactly what I'd expect to see.

In fact, the biggest problem with their study was that they focused on tip credits, rather than on actual minimum wages.  And that means they lumped states with real minimum wages with states with the bare minimum $2.13 wage, if they had higher standards including their tips.  But in the restaurant industry, these fake minimum wages are a sad joke, as restaurants generally don't pay extra to their employees on slow nights.  Trust me, I've done accounting for a few restaurants, and this isn't even the sort of thing they keep track of.  The waiters made $2.13 an hour, always.

So the proper standard should be how much a restaurant is forced to pay by law, regardless of these pretend tip credits.  And by that standard, it's fairly obvious that a real minimum wage makes a difference.  Here are the average wages paid for these categories, according to DOL's website and the numbers I crunched from the BLS:

$0 Min. Hourly - $18,134
$2 - $3 Hourly - $19,377
$3 - $5 Hourly - $19,496
$5 - $9 Hourly - $22,827

Wow, just like what you'd expect to see: The more a restaurant pays their employees, the more money they make; with employees in the highest category making almost $4700 more annually than those with no minimum wage.  Oh, and here's a shocker: The state with the highest minimum wage (Washington) has the highest waiter wages.  And of the top ten wage states, only three of them pay less than $5.50 an hour; while the bottom ten states only have one that pays more than that.

And just so you understand, those in the highest category aren't necessarily the most prosperous or most progressive states, as they include low population states like Montana, Alaska, and West Virginia.

Caveats

Oh, and there's a big caveat to all this: Most waiters don't report their real tip income, so these numbers aren't the real numbers anyway.  They report whatever the waiter got paid by the restaurants, plus whatever imaginary number they included in tips for tax purposes.  Some restaurants use a percentage to invent tip income, while others leave it up to waiter. 

And naturally, restaurants that get to credit tip-income towards minimum wage are going to be more strict about forcing their waiters to report real tip income than states that it doesn't matter.  And that's what's got to be going on here, as a quick analysis shows that tip income inexplicably goes down the more a waiter is paid.  Either people in Montana, California, and Alaska are the cheapest tippers in the country, or their waitstaff are under-reporting their tips.  Or perhaps it's because people tip less when they know their waiter's already being paid a real wage.  But in any case, it's still better to get that minimum wage than not get it.

And how about Minnesota waiters, you might ask.  They reported making an average of $22,730 for 2009, a little below the $100k Emmers talked about.  But still, it's over $3300 more than waiters in states that have policies Emmers want to emulate.  Now, maybe Emmers is cool with taking a 15% paycut to save his boss some money, but I suspect the waiters of MN might disagree.

And the most important take from all this: You really shouldn't listen to economic professors who apply economic theories to areas they don't apply.  Yes, it'd be great if people were numbers which easily flowed to where they benefited the most economically, but in real life, people have other reasons for living somewhere than their state's wage laws.  If someone moves to CA or NY to become a waiter, I suspect it has more to do with the screenplay they're trying to sell than the minimum wage they'd get waiting tables.

Capitalism Wins, Always

I'm not sure why, but most people have trouble grasping long time periods.  Like the people who deny the idea of evolution because they haven't seen anything evolve within their lifetime, failing to grasp the concept of millions of years. 

No, a slug didn't become a superior type of slug in the time it took you to go from Pampers to Depends, but civilization hasn't even been around 10,000 years, while a million years is one hundred times longer than that; and even a million years isn't a long time when you're considering evolution.  But still, a slug now is the same slug they saw as a child, so that disproves that anything can change over millions of years. 

That's a classic example of small-minded thinking: Because they didn't see something change in sixty years, nothing can change over sixty million years.  It's as if adding "million" to a number is somehow insignificant.

Watching Mountains Grow

Similarly, because people can't see society changes within a twenty year period, they insist that we'll never see changes unless we force them ourselves.  They simply can't conceive of a bigger picture with forces that are outside our individual control.  Obama's president, so Obama should be able to strong-arm anything from anyone; and that's the only way things happen.  It's all about strong people taking bold actions, and without that, nothing will change.  And if Obama can't give us everything we want right now, we'll never get it.

But that's bunk.  For as much as I appreciate the bold actions Obama has taken, he's only building on things that have been in motion for decades, and if the time's not right for something, then it's stupid to force it.  The Civil Rights movement didn't happen because MLK showed up, and had he gone in a time machine to Birmingham a hundred years earlier, he would have been lucky to merely end up in jail.  He was a strong player in the movement, but he was part of something that started long before him.

Just as the individual actions you took as a teen will effect you the rest of your life, group actions societies took decades ago are slowly coming into fruition.  And so much of this is beyond human ken.  The bigger something is, the more inertia it has and the longer it takes to move and to stop; and watching society change is like watching mountains grow.  We know it's happening, yet all the same, it just looks like the same damn piece of rock to us.

Progress in China

And that all brings me to my main point: China.  I keep hearing about how dreadful workers are treated in China and how we need to stop buying Chinese products because of this.  Or conversely, that China's going to take us over if we don't stop buying their shit.  And it's as if the conditions in China will somehow always stay that way because that's how they are now. 

But that's simply incorrect.  As I keep explaining, they will eventually form a middle-class as their increasingly growing economic needs require more and more skilled workers; both as skilled labor as well as managers, accountants, and other such administrative personnel and middle-men.  And soon, they'll be striking for better work conditions, demanding more pay, and eventually they'll form powerful unions that grow lazy and corrupt and screw everything up for them; just like what happened here in America. 

And yeah, the Chinese government will bust their heads, just as our early unions got their heads busted, but this sort of thing is simply inevitable.  By accepting limited capitalism into their country, they're stuck getting the whole damn thing shoved down their throats; and what we couldn't do with bombs or embargoes, we can easily do by buying their shit; and there's not a damn thing they can do to stop it. 

And the only way we could stop it is if we stopped buying their shit, forcing them all back into poverty.  Yes, they're being exploited, but it's obviously better for them than the alternative.  And that's why Disney's in Vietnam, while North Korea's still a backwards suckhole.  They were both totalitarian, but only the North Koreans forbid outsiders.  Same goes for Cuba, which would be a swinging destination for drunk Spring Breakers, if only we sold them our shit and bought their cigars.

iPad to Prosperity

I've been saying that for quite a few years now, and it now looks like we have evidence that I was right (not that I had any doubts).

Factory workers demanding better wages and working conditions are hastening the eventual end of an era of cheap costs that helped make southern coastal China the world's factory floor.

A series of strikes over the past two months have been a rude wakeup call for the many foreign companies that depend on China's low costs to compete overseas, from makers of Christmas trees to manufacturers of gadgets like the iPad.
[....]
They have little choice. Many of today's factory workers have higher ambitions than their parents, who generally saved their earnings from assembling toys and television sets for retirement in their rural hometowns. They are also choosier about wages and working conditions. "The conflicts are challenging the current set-up of low-wage, low-tech manufacturing, and may catalyze the transformation of China's industrial sector," said Yu Hai, a sociology professor at Shanghai's Fudan University.

And well, duh.  I mean, what else would happen?  Are we really to imagine that Americans and other westerners are so different from the Chinese that they somehow wouldn't make the same progress we made?  Could we really think that China could post huge economic gains without creating a skilled labor force that would wise-up to how they were getting ripped off? 

Hell, America did it without much guidance at all, while the Chinese are well aware of how this shit works.  They've got the internet.  They watch our movies.  They know how workers are supposed to be treated.  And moreover, these guys are doing more complex work than the mine workers of yore.  The idea that China could perpetually keep them down is a huge insult; as if Chinese workers are simply too stupid to unionize.

Tides of History

And no, it's not going to happen overnight.  Big things never do.  But it'll definitely happen, and not just in China, but anywhere we buy shit from.  The more dollars that flow into a third-world country, the sooner they'll develop into second-world countries, and then eventually become first-world.  That's just how it works.  And the only way to stop it is to stop buying their shit.

Or...we can pretend that workers will magically unionize before the factories arrive and they'll all be paid great wages to sit around watching porn all day, like us Americans do.  But I don't see that happening.  Like it or not, the exploiters will pave the way to economic freedom, just as they always have, and we'll have to wait a few decades before the exploiters have to move on to greener pastures.  But a few decades is nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Someday, we'll all regret that living conditions are identical the world over; not because things were so great before, but because people just like having something to bitch about.  Life is better now than it's ever been.  Don't let anyone tell you any different.

What Would Bush Have Done?

Carpetbagger has a post called Still Taking BP's Side which highlights Nevada weirdo Sharron Angle's suggestion that the $20 billion trust fund BP set up is a "slush fund."  And Carpetbagger uses that to suggest that, as the title says, Republicans are still taking BP's side.

But I don't think that's the case regarding those who label it a slush fund.  Maybe that's the case for BP's congressmen, like Rep. Barton (R-BP), but Angle strikes me as one of the true believers: Someone who gets her news from talk radio and imagines Fox News to be a little too fair and balanced, in that they don't repeat enough of the conspiracy theories they get from radio and emails.  So in her case, I think this has more to do with her general distrust of Obama.

Obama as Bush

Now, imagine how you'd have felt if this had happened while Bush was in office and Bush met with the heads of BP and proudly announced that BP had agreed to aside $20 billion to handle claims.  You'd naturally have been suspicious. 

Because, most likely, this really WOULD be a political slush fund.  Bush would no doubt have put a political hack in charge of the fund, and while little guys would surely have gotten some dough; most of it would have gone to Bush cronies and to pump money into congressional districts they wanted to win.  And no matter how bad we thought this would be handled, we'd eventually find out that it was even more corrupt than we had imagined.  For example, the political hack would be getting kickbacks of every dollar he doled out, and taxpayers would ultimately have been the ones funding the whole thing, while BP expensed it on their tax return. 

Well, that's what they think about us.  That's what they're assuming Obama is doing.  They're not calling this a slush fund because they don't think BP should pay up.  They're calling it a slush fund because they think Obama is a political goon who only has his corrupt interests in mind, and that he's a smooth liar who's extremely good at hiding his true intentions.  And they "know" his true intentions, because of what they've picked up from talk radio and the emails they keep receiving from their crazy uncles.

Meet the Crazies

And that's what's going on here.  For crackpots like Angle, Obama is a Chicago-style thug who's doing all the stuff we saw Bush do.  And they think we're as blind as we thought they were when they didn't see what sort of guy Bush really was.  They see the same reality we see, but the context is different. 

And just as Obama's critics on the left bash him because they see everything in the context of him selling them out, just as they always "knew" he would; the crackpots on the right already "know" he's a corrupt thug, so that's how everything looks to them.  For both sides, it's just a matter of time before their suspicious are finally proven.  Until then, they'll consider all speculation to be stronger than fact.

And I now see that Angle has retracted her "slush fund" comment, realizing that it put her on the side of defending BP.  So now she's giving the bizarro postion that she supports the trust fund, but that we should have waited to determine everyone who was to blame for the spill; including the federal government for not stopping BP from breaking the rules.  And while that sounds a bit more like something a political consultant would write, it completely contradicts her "slush fund" remark and still doesn't sound very good.  It's like forbidding a murderer from pleading guilty because the cops failed to stop the murder in the first place.

And overall, this just demonstrates how dangerous the Tea Party movement is for Republicans, because these people are simply wacko.  And with Angle's recent comment suggesting that we make "lemonade" by forcing women to give birth to incest and rape babies, I think the GOP is going to increasingly regret ever hyping these fools in the first place. 

Nutritionists Suck

I know I've said this before, but nutritionists suck.  Like their whole kick against cane sugar and corn syrup, as if there's something magical about the sugars in other plants that somehow make them superior to the sugars from sugar cane and corn.  And don't even get me started on their war against fastfood.  Because yeah, that stuff's not healthfood, but regular restaurants can pack in quite a lot more calories than McDonalds; yet don't get half the attention. 

And so I see this article titled 3 Low-Cal Summer Thirst Quenchers, and I'm somewhat interested as I'm trying to lose just a little more belly fat (though I'm already in great shape) and realized that I get quite a few unnecessary calories from juice and soda.  But of course, none of the three "thirst quenchers" appeal to me; one of which was just tea with lemon and mint in it, because yeah, I couldn't have figured that one out myself.

But the second one was simply ridiculous.  It was for "Low-Sugar Lemonade," which included unsweetened applesauce, maple syrup, and mint.  And I'm like, yuck, that sounds disgusting.  I'm not sure which of those three bothers me more, though it's probably the applesauce, because there's half a cup of the stuff in there, divided into four servings; so each cup contains an eighth of a cup of applesauce.  I like applesauce, but not in my drink.

And of course, the applesauce and syrup are there as sugar substitutes, for reasons that make no sense.  And mint?  Minty lemonade?  I don't think so.

How Low Can You Go

But worst of all, the fitness guru posting this stuff actually admits that this concoction has 80 calories per serving; yet acts like that's a good thing.  80 calories?  My god, Dr. Pepper has 100 calories per serving, and I've been assured that it comes from the Devil himself.  And the powdered Country Time Lemonade I drink on a regular basis has 60 calories per serving, and I generally water it down so as to cut down on my calorie intake and actually prefer it a little less sweet.  (I also water down my juice and soda, btw.)

So I'm supposed to be impressed with a "low sugar" lemonade that has twenty fewer calories that Dr. Pepper and twenty more calories than powdered lemonade?  So much so that I'm going to put applesauce and syrup in my drink?  I don't think so.

And seriously, what the hell is the matter with these people?  Because the reality is that soda really isn't that bad for you.  It's the quantity that's the problem; not the quality.  It's that people want to drink 64 ounce Big Gulps of the stuff.  But the thing is, that's not going away just because people start substituting syrup for cane sugar.  If someone wants 64 ounces of a drink, they're going to drink 64 ounces.  And whether it's soda, juice, or maple-mint lemonade; you're going to pack on the calories if you drink that much.

If your diet recipes count on the users having the restraint to only eat and drink individual serving sizes, then you can count on them to fail.  And that's the biggest problem with why people are fat.  It's not that they're drinking soda or eating McDonald's.  It's that they're eating and drinking servings that are five times bigger than they should.  And these stupid nutritionists with their rant against specific foods while highlighting other foods which are only marginally better (and sometimes worse) doesn't help at all. 

And so people imagine they're earning healthpoints every time they take this nitwit advice, rather than realizing that there really is no magic bullet and you simply have to eat less and exercise more.

It's the Quantity, Stupid

People shouldn't be warned away from 100 calories in Dr. Pepper.  They need to be warned about the 800 calories they're getting in a Super Big Gulp; which is only 160 calories more than they'd get from drinking the same quantity of this "Low Sugar Lemonade."  They need to be told that the recommended daily serving of 2% milk they're told to drink has 9 grams of saturated fat and 390 calories; and how 2% milk has more calories than Coke.  And they need to be told that a typical burger at a regular restaurant has more fat and calories than a Big Mac.

But nutritionists refuse to do that, because that's just not something they care about.  They prefer being food nazis.  They want to tell you to avoid certain types of food, not because they're worse for you, but because they personally don't like these foods.  And so they'll tell you that weird applesauce lemonade is "low calorie," even though it has more calories than powdered lemonade; not because it's true, but because it makes them feel better.

Oh, and the worst of these?  The Eat This Not This guy, who gives moronic advice, such as replacing your 20 ounce Minutemaid Lemonade with an absurdly small 8 ounce Knudsen Lemonade, even though the calorie savings is due solely to the smaller serving size and the Knudsen has 100 more calories if you drink 20 ounces of it (a fact he fails to mention at all).  And then there's his bizarro theory that foods with fewer ingredients are somehow better for you, or that natural ingredients are inherently superior to processed ones.  As if peanuts can't kill people, or fish are somehow comprised of one simple chemical we all understand.

And these are all lies.  Stupid, dangerous lies that con people into believing that they've finally found the secret to losing weight, which doesn't require them to eat less or exercise.  Because that's all this is about, and if I could quench my thirst with 8 ounces of lemonade, I'd do it.  But until then, I'll stick to twenty ounces of watered down Country Time and try to get in a little more exercise.  Not for myself, but for the ladies.