The Romney Gaffes

By now everyone who will care has heard about the statements Mitt Romney made in a millionaire fundraiser back in May that was released by Mother Jones. And arguing it was "out of context" won't help here, especially since the full video of the event is now available with transcripts.

Calling nearly half the country moochers in effect, people that can't take responsibility for themselves and need government help, isn't going to be popular. And the facts are amazingly wrong; about 47% don't pay income taxes because they are in interesting categories such as the 2/3 that have payroll taxes (something Romney doesn't pay), the the elderly who don't have an income, or the soldiers fighting overseas whose combat pay isn't taxes. Sure there are some left that indeed don't work hard and are not responsible, but it's no where near 150 million people in the US.

That coupled with statements of how Palestinians don't want peace or that Latinos becoming a voting block for Democrats like African Americans are would be bad for the country, and this hasn't been a good week. But fortunately, we can still get some comedy joy out of this.

Take it away, Jon!



But that just wasn't miserly enough.  Hmm, maybe this?

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - An Elegant Message to the 47%
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

Oh, what joy. But really, if Romney wins now I don't know what to think.

Cold Fusion: Basic Science?

Well, this is an odd thing said by Mitt Romney.

A couple of days ago I linked to Science Debate and how they got the presidential candidates to answer some good science questions, and the Romney team gave the more extensive answers. One of those things Romney and Obama were for (and how could you be against it) was innovation and research.

But it seems Romney wants to look into cold fusion? Is this a slip of the tongue?

It doesn't look like it.

I do believe in basic science. I believe in participating in space. I believe in analysis of new sources of energy. I believe in laboratories, looking at ways to conduct electricity with -- with cold fusion, if we can come up with it. It was the University of Utah that solved that. We somehow can’t figure out how to duplicate it.

That reference to the University of Utah is about the results from Pons (of Uni of Utah) and Fleishmann (of Uni of Southampton) back in 1989.  In their experiment, they thought they had gotten fusion at table-top temperatures. However, neither of the conductors of the experiment were physicists (their expertise was in chemistry, not that there's anything wrong with that), and their results didn't have checks for fusion that they should have otherwise been familiar with. Their results were discredited in little time.

Does Romney really want to continue this sort of research? Does he think it's legit? Well, it may not matter since he wouldn't decide funding so directly if he were President. But there is already enough science bunkum in the current GOP. We don't need any more of it in energy policy.

Clinton at the Dem Convention

It looks like former President Bill Clinton gave a rousing speech at the Democratic National Convention, which again I didn't watch. I saw a lot of happy tweets, especially from Hemant Mehta (twitter here), but most importantly I cared about what got through the fact checkers.

Last time the Dems were pushing a number of jobs created under Obama, and those numbers were spun. But Clinton was able to correctly cite the 4.5 million new private-sector jobs in the last 29 months. And he also got the other major facts in his speech on  the economy and the Romney plan correct. A run-down on how his facts check out is done here.

Other facts Clinton got right:

• Jobs creation greater under Democrats than Republicans by nearly a factor of two.
• The Romney plan means either skyrocketing debt increases, tax increases on the middle class, OR deep spending cuts. Note the "or", so he was careful in not saying what Romney's plan was (since Romney is being coy about that).
• Debt grew spectacularly under Republican control (his numbers were just a little off on one point, but still close to the doubling of the debt under Bush 42, and definitely correction about the quadrupling of the debt under Reagan and Bush 41).

More fact-checking was done as well, and overall Clinton has a great overall score card.

So this was a speech that not only motivated a lot of liberals, but it also got the facts right, even fixing up the mistakes others in the part were making. No wonder Clinton was a Rhodes scholar.

You can watch is long speech here:

The Democratic Convention

As before, I have made no plans to watch the Democratic National Convention, so if there are any empty chairs I will have to find out later. It also means I see what was said after the fact checkers get to work.

And there was a significant claim made by several folks in their speeches about 4.5 million jobs added under Obama. CNN did a check, and it is only true in a rather strict sense. That many jobs have been added in the private sector since the low point of the recession, but overall it's only an addition of 300,000 since when Obama was sworn into office. On the other hand, public sector jobs are down. Added together, the number of jobs since his election is down, not up. The pay levels are also inferior.

There are confounding things, namely a major recession that started before the current President came into office, so it would be fair to count the number from when that boondoggle ended to see how effective growth is when the economy ended its free-fall. As for the public sector losses, a lot of that has been a state level where they refuse to increase taxes and so cut jobs; this isn't avoided at the federal level either.

Nonetheless, the 4.5 million jobs number is only true without deep analysis. But this is something that is complicated and arguable. Very much unlike Paul Ryan's speech which was clearly wrong in fact. One speech has spin, another is false. I can tolerate some spin ("it's not too cold, it's perfect for a snowball fight"), but not factual negligence. Will the Dems continue to straddle the lines of fact and fantasy? Well, they are politicians. But will they go all the way as the Republicans have at their convention?

But there has also seems to be a more positive atmosphere at the Dem convention. And this speech by First Lady Michelle Obama should be memorable:

Presidential Science Debate 2012

The people of Science Debate have done some great work and have had the main candidates for US president answer some questions about their policies concerning science. There were questions about global warming, innovation, education, and vaccinations.

I noted the Romney answers were more extensive that Obama's, so it's probably a good place to get informed about the Republican challenger's positions. I also noted that Romney says here that global warming is real and due in part from human activities. While he has been flip-floppy on issues, here he has been reasonably consistent, though the rest of his party is much more strongly against the proposition that humans cause global warming and something should be done.

Nonetheless, give this a read. Sure there are plenty of platitudes (these were written by politicians and their followers, after all), but they still help us know what is going on in the potential administrations. And you definitely didn't learn it from the GOP primary debates.

As a side note, almost no one in the Congress who was asked about science questions responded; only two thus far have. And John Boehner, Speaker of the House, is flat out declined. It's probably worth while giving your representatives a call or email.

The Man with No Name and the Party with No Idea What It's Doing

By this point, you probably know about the "great" speech given by Clint Eastwood on the last day of the Republican National Convention. The 12 minutes of unscripted banter against an empty chair. To quote George Takei: OH, my!




And how it is beautifully deconstructed by Jon Stewart:



Oh, that was cathartic. Only thing that has been more so was the first season of The Newsroom. (5 stars!)

More Not Watching the Conventions

Looks like I'm doing well not to waste my time on the GOP convention, and I will let the filter services do the hard work of not vomiting for me.

Think Progress has been live-blogging, which means that a piece of rhetoric can be compared to reality effectively. I hope something similar can happen for the Democratic convention. Best way to keep people honest: show them they are wrong piece by piece. But who will do that and with accuracy? We'll see, perhaps from Politifacts.

The big speech the other night was from VP nominee Paul Ryan, and it is't getting great reviews on accuracy.  The New Republic asks if his speech was the most dishonest convention speech ever. That may be hyperbolic, but do I really want to watch old news reels just to find an even slimier pile of filth? Maybe Nixon had something not so great to say in '68 or '72, but it seems that Nixon may not have been as bad as Ryan.

Mitt Romney is up tonight. Will it be any better on the facts? Heck, the better question is can he stay consistent about his views for an entire convention speech?

The Republican Platform All Misinformed

I'm glad to not be watching the political conventions, neither Democrat nor Republican, since it's just a lot of show and hyperbole rather than anything that really interests me, at least this time around. But that doesn't mean I don't care about the platforms they present.

And when it comes to the Republican platform, Nobel-prizing winning economist Paul Krugman pretty much nails it:

Still, I get the essence. The GOP campaign is based on five main themes, three negative and two positive.

Negative:

The claim that Obama denigrated businessmen, saying that they didn’t build their own firms — which isn’t true.
The claim that Obama has gutted Medicare to pay for the expansion of health insurance — which isn’t true.
The claim that Obama has eliminated the work requirement for welfare — which isn’t true.

Positive:

The claim that Ryan has a plan to balance the budget — which isn’t true.
The claim that Romney has a plan for economic recovery — which isn’t true. (The Economist: “The Romney Programme for Economic Recovery, Growth and Jobs” is like “Fifty Shades of Grey” without the sex).

 Hmm, seems like there's a pattern. Could it be, oh, I don't know, complete misrepresentation of all relevant facts?

Then again, what do I know? Aren't there two sides to every issue?

Yes, The GOP Is Crazy Anti-Woman

My previous post about how those in the Republican Party are amazingly anti-woman because of their abortion policies, namely to restrict abortion access even to rape victims, would seem to paint a broad brush. I even advocating not voting for anyone in the GOP.

And my brush was accurately wide it would seem. As reported by the Huffington Post's Amdana Turkel, more than 40 of the Republican candidates for Senate and House oppose abortion for rape or incest victims.  This is based on the "good marks" given by RNC For Life, which approves 2012 candidates based on their abortion stance. It was interesting to see no one from Ohio on there, but there are two Michigan Reps running this year, one of whom is an incumbent.

And even though the Onion effectively satirizes this, it is rather clear that the Republicans do have a War on Women, and their denials are both politically savvy and showing how ignorant of how damaging their policies are. You can't end funding to Planned Parenthood and care about women's health, yet Texas and various goons in Washington want to do just that. You can't run panels about birth control without any female representatives and then call women requesting access to it "sluts". Oh, and you can't be ignorant about how rape can and does cause pregnancies, something you would hopefully research before legislating unless you are a professional dipshit.

(We can add to that another idiot that thinks only gay sex can transmit HIV.)

You know, this is definitely enough reason no one should vote for the GOP even if they are pro-life, as I argued in my prior blog post. If we add to that the dismissal of the science of climate change and evolution by the party at large, and the economic policies that just don't work and are likely counter-productive (as evidenced in Zombie Economics), and remembering the gross incompetency of the prior Republican administration (false-leads into Iraq War, crap response to Katrina, deregulation allowing banks to promote sub-prime loans that helped lead to the 2008 collapse), and there is simply no rational reason to vote Republican.

Unless all your income is via capital gains, then you will pay less than 1% on income taxes (while my taxes go up!). And you have no sense of community or compassion. Then it might seem reasonable. In a pig's eye.

Todd Akin and the GOP: Science and Ethics Failures

There has been plenty of coverage of the extremely stupid and dehumanizing statements of Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri's 2nd district about how "legitimate rape[s]" don't cause pregnancies. I mean, fuck, I hate even having to write what he said.

Rape is about the worst thing you can do to a person, perhaps even worse than murder because of the shame and guilt and weakness is causes the victim, not to mention potentially seeing your rapist again. And then having to raise a child due to the most horrific thing that could happen to you against your will? And by against ones will, I mean not being allowed to terminate the pregnancy.

Because that is what this crap is about from Akin and his acolytes. They want to end abortion in all cases. No matter how you became pregnant, be it through a passionate night with a failed condom or assault with a weapon and forced into compromising positions; all wish to be banned.

And how unfortunate that that statement is NOT an exaggeration. There have been numerous states submitting and something passing laws to limit access to abortion (Arizona passing law to make life begin effectively before conception; Utah producing legislation to make even miscarriages potentially illegal and acts of manslaughter), including language that has no exceptions, and now it's going to go Prime Time. Various news outlets and commentators have discovered that at the Republican National Convention part of the party platform will be the effort to make all abortions illegal. No exceptions. No compromises. The Republican VP also sponsored a bill that make all fertilized eggs persons, which means it would ban stem cell research and prohibit in vitro fertilization (IVF). So even medical needs, from future treatments to people actually wanting children, are restricted by such a bill. That all means the anti-abortion stuff is right at the top of the GOP, not something in their fringes.

Which of course makes all the people in the GOP that poo-poo Akin for saying what he did ring perfectly hollow. And Akin himself claims he misspoke, but he still wants abortion to always be illegal. Which means he isn't sorry about what he thinks, but he is sorry about the packaging he used to market his vile filth.

Moreover, he is not somehow isolated from the grassroots of the conservative movement in the US. His ideas about rape and conception actually come from "research" done by various duchenozzels. The Week nicely recaps the history of this line of argument, going even into the Middle Ages; however, the most recent version of this "theory" came into politics in about the 1980s with James Leon Holmes and state Rep. Stephen Freind. And it is clear that there is no scientific basis for it; an estimate puts about 32,000 pregnancies in the US as due to rape.

But why even think something so awful and patently untrue? Because an excuse is required to keep a straight face when proposing a ban on all possible pregnancies. It's cognitive dissonance run wild! It also shows a contempt for women, since it means that if they are pregnant they must have wanted it. How different is that from the crass statement that drunk women in miniskirts are asking for sex (and potentially raped)? No, no, no. She must have wanted it to happen, and it's her fault for not controlling her vagina correctly (oops! I just caused my blog to be censored in Michigan). Yet, the premises are delusional, far worse than merely false, and clearly anti-woman, and thus anti-human.

What also belies the GOP saving face is that there are figures in the right wing who still support what Akin said, claiming he was right all along. Bryan Ficsher of American Family Association (AFA) and the radio program Focal Point on American Family Radio tweeted this:

Mike Huckabee is also helping Akin, saying how even people conceived by rape can become contributors to society and be great. As if anyone is saying a child born but conceived under un-ideal circumstances is less a member of the community. No, the problem is forcing a woman to carry a child after she was forced in into sex and having the worst experience on her life. It also destroys any sort of family planning, meaning the child is less likely to have a stable home. And it looks like Mike has never heard of the philosophical mental experiment of the violinist.

Another ass of the Religious Right, D. James. Kennedy, who is Akin's spiritual leader (no wonder he is dead to human compassion) also believes women invite rape; they had it coming because they wear clothing that's attractive. Everyone, get your women burkhas, and don't let them leave the house without a male escort. It's what they deserve for having breasts, you know.

And you can guess where all things shit is derived: preachin' from the Bible. And even though the book has rather little to say on abortion, it is religiosity that has done the most to prop up such anti-woman policies. It basically sacrifices the autonomy of the woman to religious dogma; it parallels all too well the sacrificing of Isaac by Abraham for his deity of choice (who just happened to be testing him). Put human compassion and well-being on the alter, for the fires create a perfume to the imagined sycophant.

What makes this worse is that the arguments promulgated by these nuts also infect the rest of secular society, including the atheist community. Do 20-week-old fetuses feel pain? There is not a consensus that favors it, mostly because the neural network of the body isn't properly developed until later; the nervous system isn't developed well enough until about week 27 to have some control of body functions, and studies seem to place the time to potentiality feel pain at about the seventh month (third trimester). How about a link between abortion and breast cancer or depression? Bullshit. And so on.

But if you are one to think that a fetus at any age is fully human and deserving of rights, that abortion is murder, and you wish to minimize deaths, then also consider this: the abortion rate in a country where abortion is legal is about the same or lower than a country where abortion is illegal (as determined by the World Health Organization). But worse, in the nations were abortion is illegal, it is much less safe, and that means women die in the process. That means no saved babies and more dead women. Abortion laws save none and kill others.

Now, this is not to deny that there are no circumstances in which abortion may be immoral; I do not claim to know what is necessarily right on the fringe ends of what could happen. However, it is very much the case that the sorts of laws that the folks in the GOP are trying to pass do only harm, save no one (not even babies), and demote women to second class citizens. Again.

This makes all this Kuhscheiße anti-humanist. It demotes human values, human suffering, human desires for a dogma not backed up by facts or the well-being of the people we know and care about (and know for a fact are sentient). And that means it should be against the values of what is being called Atheism+, elaborated on by Greta Cristina, and philosophically considered by Richard Carrier (Dan Fincke, another philosopher, has some useful observations as well). This needs to be the new wave in the atheist movement, one that actually cares about human rights. And human rights include women's rights unless you a misogynist, in which case you are not a humanist. Same way a racist cannot be a humanist.

Being too kind, Obama campaign. The policies are pre-1900!

That makes the talks I showed in my blog post the other day, especially the one by Annie Laurie Gaylor, so very important. Women's issues must be the sorts of issues of caring, compassionate, decent human beings, and all the flak that people like Rebecca Watson, Natalie Reed, and so many others have received is worse than unjustified--it's down-right immoral and hurting everyone. This also means that when it comes time to vote, there is no way I can vote for anyone that associates with a party that in its platform and in its major candidates promotes legislation that will hurt everyone. "Babies" will still die; women will die; the sick will find less hope for treatment, and wanting couples will remain without the child other women are forced to have. Everyone loses. Add to that the anti-contraception bullshit that also seems to be going through the GOP this year, which will only increase the number of sought-after abortions, and you have a party of ignorant thugs. A vote for anyone associating with this party is a vote against humanism. And I don't usually vote straight ticket, and I don't want to this time either (I need to consider some of the other politicians more closely this year, at least at the local level), but with my added Ohio powers, I must do what I can to make sure this country doesn't return to the 19th century.

Please, at least consider not doing the same.

Update: Awesome video from Mr. Deity on the subject: The Mourning After Pill, just in case you enjoyed your rape.

Note: this should and does NOT make fun of rape victims. It satirizes the idiotic arguments from the goons of the GOP and Religious Right. This is not Tosh.0.

Living in Ohio Gives Me Slightly More Power

With elections coming up, one thing you will see a lot is polls. Each news network has their team of statisticians grinding away and desperately trying to make it TV-watchable (The Daily Show is going to have plenty to work with soon), but there is a really good aggregate site FiveThirtyEight. Currently it predicts the election for Obama, but those numbers will become more or less meaningful in the coming weeks.

But the most interesting fact was the analysis that suggests which states are most likely to decide the election and which citizens have the most say in who becomes President of the United States. And I happen to be lucky enough to be in the best state for that now: Ohio.

It has been said that whoever wins two of the following states will carry the election: Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Currently, Pennsylvania is looking Democrat and Florida slightly Republican (which may be getting a bump due to the convention in Tampa), so that makes the way Ohio goes more decisive. Ohio has also been more of a toss-up state in recent elections.

All that means is that my voting in Ohio has more weight than if I still lived in my home state. Now, I didn't move to Ohio for voting reasons but for work/education, so don't think I'm trying to rig the election. That is what the voter ID laws are supposed to do.

Praying the Lies Away? Barton Still Wrong

Previously I mentioned that pseudo-historian David Barton had his book pulled by a Christian publishing company because they lost confidence in its contents. Not least because he makes things up. And of course he is trying to strike back at his detractors. He appeared on Bryan Fischer‘s American Family Radio.



Sorry if you watched that.

But here is the interesting bit to me. Barton attacks the authors of a book that debunks his work, and those authors are themselves conservative Christians. Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims about Our Third President by Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter goes through the sorts of myths people like Barton have propagated (also nicely debunked by Chris Rodda's Liars for Jesus), and Throckmorton gets the biggest barrage by Barton and Fischer. It's odd they attack Coulter less since he is a political science professor, while Throckmorton is a psychologist. Why?

Because Throckmorton used to think that you could change a person's sexual orientation. Yeah, the idea of "pray the gay away." Now, one thinks that such an idea can be refuted simply by asking yourself when you choose to be attracted to the opposite sex (I think it was a Tuesday for me), but Throckmorton did his research over years and finally concluded that it doesn't work. And that is a sin that discredits historical analysis?

To quote Fischer:

[Throckmorton] believed in reparative therapy, for instance, for homosexuals… and it seems like when he changed his mind about that, when he switched sides on the issue of homosexuality, then it was inevitable that in the course of time, he was going to be an enemy of the Truth, basically, in all of its forms.

Oh, the non sequiturs!

Has the Religious Right becomes so anti-empirical that any deviation from their artificial dogma it discounts everything they say?

This is why I make my creed of "where does the evidence point", because anything else just hurts my brain.

Now, this isn't the only counter-attack Barton and his allies have performed. There are also some things going on between Chris Rodda and lackey Rick Green. Green said he would post any substantive response to Barton's work that showed a factual error. And as is predictable to the dogmatic, an attack on an idol is automatically wrong. And Barton is the same; PhD-holding folks that agree with him are right, and PhD-holding folks that don't are liberal, commie, socialist, god-hating, baby-eating monsters that are destroying True America.©


Nonetheless, that a significant number of conservatives are loosing faith in Barton that he can't keep his books on the shelf means things are going against him. Will he be replaced? Stay vigilant.

David Barton on Jefferson too Full of Lies for Publisher

David Baron is a famous (infamous?) pseudo-historian, specializing in early American history. He is a favorite of the Religious Right because he tries to argue from the primary documents that the US was founded as a Christian nation, on Christian values, and not on Enlightenment values. And, heaven forbid, none of the Founding Fathers were deists; in his interpretation, they were nigh-on evangelical (not the denomination, but in the attitude of spreading the gospel).

He has written several books before, and they had be addressed by historians as full of mischaracterization and even fabrications. One of the best volume to read just for that is Chris Rodda's book Liars for Jesus (currently in its first volume). It is thorough, and you will learn some real American history while you're at it.

Nonetheless, Barton published a new book which pretty much repeated the same old, same old, in The Jefferson Lies. The 'lies' were supposed to be those things promulgated by liberal professors to disguise the real Thomas Jefferson. And wouldn't you know it, the book isn't better researched than before. NPR did a review of it, and the verdict is very bad.

How bad? As bad as the publisher pulling the book from shelves! The publisher, Thomas Nelson, received complaints from multiple sources, and then they pulled the book due to lack of confidence in its content.

This may not be the end of the book's life, however. Barton can go to another publisher (there are plenty of publishing houses that don't mind this sort of criticism and even thrive on it), and he could self-publish. Nonetheless, this is a significant and public blow to his credibility. Will it sting long?

You decide!

Hat tip to Hemant Mehta, thanking Greg for the links.

How Did This Happen?

Mother Jones Magazine, a progressive investigative paper around since the 1970s, had done an interesting, though to me frightening, bit of research about the average household income from 1979 to 2007 in America. The obvious thing was that the rich in the USA had the vast majority of the wealth, something that has been found in previous research for some time. Hardly shocking, and because it has become so commonplace it hardly moves anyone to action except the most liberal.

The graph that really caught my attention though was this:

As can be seen, the growth income for the bottom 80% of the country was non-existent for about three decades, and after taxes it was negative. Conversely, the top 20% made money, even after taxes, and the top 1% more than doubled their income. It is also interesting that there appears to be a correlation between when the rich take a hit and when the lower income levels go up, but without actually analyzing the raw data I can't say if this is statistically significant--that is, a real result or an artifact of my eye.

I can't think of better data that disproves the supply-side economics slogan that rising waters lifts all boats. When 80% of a country can get poorer while the GDP grew on average throughout this same period, that is a model worth setting out to sea.

On the other hand, there are empirical facts that show that income disparities actually hurt economies. This has been shown by researchers Roberto Perotti (“Growth, Income Distribution, and Democracy: What the Data Say”, Journal of Economic Growth 1(2) (1996): 149-187) and some at the World Institute for Development Economics Research. The same research also finds that high equality rates can be damaging as well, which explains by communist systems have been historically problematic.

What this means is that the current model of giving more tax breaks to the top 1% in this country is not going to bring salvation but only exacerbate the problem. Besides, if the poor keep getting poorer, then they cannot afford the products of the super-rich, and having the majority of your potential market kept out due to income disparity is going to hurt in the long run. Also, the way many in the US have been able to increase their standard of living is increasing their debt, and that won't work indefinitely as well.

Unless there is a significant change in policy about taxation, and one that is the exact opposite of libertarians and Tea Party activists, the middle class and poor are only going to get squeezed more and more. But I have great difficulty fathoming how 80% of the nation can get less well off and think tax breaks for those outside above their income bracket will be their salvation. It hasn't worked now from 30 years. What's it going to take?

The DC Rally

I had the good fortune to have the time to go to Washington DC for the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear under the coordination of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, of the Daily Show and Colbert Report respectively. The event was simply awesome. The music was good, the weather was perfect, and the event overall was a success.

Estimates for the rally are around 215,000 people according to a CBS-funded areal survey. Being there, I can definitely say it was huge, and over 100,000 in number. The density was impressive, but then again there were places selling food, such as friend candy. If this was a normal meal, I don't think all could have fitted onto the National Mall.

The event proved to be well-organized, from the stage performances, video montages, interaction between live performer and video recorded actor, not to mention the set-up of the jumbo-trons, speakers (very good for me since I was about 2/3rds the way in the crowd from the stage), bathrooms, and getting people to the right places. Heck, getting Cat Stevens and Ozzy Osborne on the same stage was impressive enough. And the Mythbusters trying to measure the immensity of the crowd by finding out how long a "wave" at the front would move to the back and the seismological effect of everyone jumping at the same time was awesome. When they were announced as next on stage, my friend Adam and I knew it was worth the cost of coming in the first place.

And the point of the rally? I didn't care if there was no political point because I pretty much got to go to a 3-hour Daily Show. But there was a point, and one I think reasonably well made. There has been so much hyperbole in the news and politics that it becomes impossible to try to be reasonable in what should be done in any given situation. If you think your opponent is Hitler or a witch, then it is hard to compromise on something.

Unfortunately, some didn't quite get that message. PZ Myers certainly missed it, but perhaps because he admittedly didn't watch the whole thing, or perhaps even the most important parts. Also, I think PZ is reading into the rally because he sees similarities with some of the accommodationist camp to stop being so aggressive. In reality, Steward et. al. did not attack being deep-felt or impassioned about one's opinions, but the dialog that is simply loud and obnoxious rather than reasoned. For example, just because some Muslims attacked the US in 2001 does not mean all Muslims are terrorists. Even if you think there are problems with Islam or believe it has evil parts (which I do think), you don't need to say all Muslims are evil to make a point. Also, PZ is off when he says Stewart called out those on the right for their hyperbole/propaganda, but didn't name-names or particulars with liberals. In reality, the rally masters didn't use names from either side, but instead did something better: a montage of the crazy. Colbert's montage of the divisive dialog from various TV sources showed the problem. This included clips from Glen Beck and Rill O'Reilly of Fox News (conservatives) and Keith Olbermann and Ed Schultz of MSNBC (liberals). So in reality, Stewart and Colbert point to the very examples of the sorts of things that are making the discourse in America all the more difficult. So when PZ says

Once again, we have someone bravely standing up and telling the people on their own side to stop being dicks, while being vague on the names and specifics.

he is completely wrong.

Moreover, the rally was about the irrationality of what there is to worry about in the world. Again, a montage of clips from various media sources showed the size of the "fear market", such as the world destroyed by CERN, to terrorists, to sandals, to killer bees, to communists, to sandals, etc. There were also clips of various persons using blanket statements about atheists, Muslims, fundamentalist Christians, and so on, all amazingly stupid and useless in making a sensible understanding of what to do or think.

The rally was also to highlight how the media and politics was so unlike the real world. They gave a wonderful example. They showed car traffic in DC with everyone on the road making little compromises of who merges next, and how even though they are almost of every possible opinion of things they can get on through their lives through little compromises. So when someone rides the curb to get past the rest and cut off others, he is rare and scorned. Most importantly, he is not hired as an analyst. Instead, on cable TV, you don't call upon the smartest, best-informed person but the loud-mouth that brings in ratings.

So, was the rally a success? The crowd size suggests that it was more-so than Glen Beck's Rally to Restore Honor which brought in around 87,000. At more than twice the size, does that mean twice the impact? I doubt it since the message of "be sensible" is not as powerful a rallying cry as "take back America" (from what?). I really doubt there will be any changes for the upcoming election cycle, but perhaps the 2012 election period will be affected by the promotion of the values proclaimed at this rally. Maybe there will be another in the future?

Before wrapping up, I must also comment about the signs made by the various attendees. There was much creativity there. Perhaps the best I saw had a picture of Sigmund Freud and the text "So America, tell me about your mother." Brilliant. Others include "Thomas Jefferson is my co-pilot"; "Meh"; "Pancakes"; and "Answer this: How much profit is Sharpe making from all of this?"

Give me Liberty, and Give me a Break

Libertarianism: great idea, or greatest idea? It has a romantic quality to it, with an emphasis on individuality and the belief that each of us working it out for ourselves will make us all better. This latter belief is perhaps best captured in the concept of free market economics. The more the government is willing to get out of the way, the better. Let enterprising individuals do things, from starting a small business to teaching our children.

And like most romantic ideas, it can be rather naive. For example, there was the recent spat when Rand Paul, son of Ron Paul (and named after Ayn Rand?), stated that the government should not force restaurants to not segregate due to race. The journalist John Stossel even stated that the free market would have taken care of racist businesses. After all, he (nor Paul) would want to do business in a racist institution.

Now just think about that claim. The free market would get rid of racism, at least overt, public racism in business. If that is the case, then why is it that businesses had racist policies for centuries until the 1960s when the federal government finally stepped in to make this illegal? How naive is it to say that that is what the free market would have done when it failed to do so given 100 years after the American civil war. Perhaps there were racist businesses because most people were actually racist? Take for example the situation in 1930s Germany. If you were a restaurant that served both Caucasian Germans and Jews, the white customers would be appalled to have to eat at the same place as those terrible people (horrible in their minds). Antisemitism has a long history, and what helped make it uncouth was not free markets.

In fact, free markets could very well have allowed racism and antisemitism to last. After all, if you are continuously divided from those you see as inferior, there will be nothing to deter you in that belief. Moreover, if you frequent places that have such racist policies, you are most likely to absorb this and pass it off to others, including your children. Only by some force breaking the cycle can it be possible to get away from racism. And once broken, then racism withers and no one wants to support it. The reason Stossel or Paul would not go to such a restaurant today is because they live after a time when it was socially acceptable.

And that is the problem with libertarianism. It pretends things about societies that are simply wrong. For one thing, people are not simply rational agents that constantly figure out what is best for them. Heck, we make the wrong decisions all the time, even when the correct information is given. This is also a problem for economists that blindly and dogmatically follow Adam Smith's invisible hand. Obviously Smith had insights, but his model was ultimately flawed and professional economists need to admit this.

Unfortunately, the naivete of libertarian economics is common in academia even when the evidence is there, staring them in the faces. Check out this special from Nova: Mind Over Money. When professors at the University of Chicago can be as dogmatic as seen there, no wonder a skewed version of reality reaches the public at large.

Though I like some of the propositions of the libertarians, especially when it comes to minimizing government intrusions into private matters and the maximization of freedom, there needs to be some realizations about how people and groups of people actually behave. Rand Paul has even stated that if everyone were good Christians there would be no need for laws. After all, it's not like there have ever been Christians committing crimes or starting wars or abusing children or...

We need to get real here. The loose goal of having as much individual freedom as possible is worthy of admiration, but the laissez-faire approach to governement is a failed strategy. Sure politicians can be complete doofuses, mob mentiality is not the antidote. Heck, mob mentality can lead politicians to do stupid things, such as send us to war. There is obviously a middle ground between a libertarianism as close to anarchy as possible and hyper-communism. I don't know yet where I will fall in this political spectrum (I often vote Democrat, but not always), but I know that these extremes, especially the popular libertarianism today of Beck, Palin, Stossel, Paul, and others is all too often naive and even hypocritical (i.e. the government preventing abortions, monitoring for illegal immigrants, going to war offensively, making the US a Christian nation).

When it comes to spectra, this one is perhaps useful in categorizing libertarians.


Indeed, if you have an overly-simplistic political stance, prepare to look silly.