⇒ Palin is sainted? I think my irony-meter blew a fuse

Is it sarcasm? Serious? I just don’t know! A letter today to the Omaha paper goes to show that Poe’s law is a bitch:

I think Republican presidential nominee John McCain blew Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama out of the water when he chose America’s Joan of Arc–Sarah Palin–as his running mate.

As governor of Alaska, Palin is a real American and an expert on foreign policy, living between Russia on one side and Canada on the other. A 100 percent American and a life member of the honorable and patriotic National Rifle Association, Palin grew up hunting and fishing.

She is the best of everything, charging in to save our country and American freedom. Gov. Palin is America’s Joan of Arc

I was thinking satire when it got to the talking point that being between Russia and Canada gives you foreign policy experience part, but the ending threw me. The whole thing just raises a bunch of burning questions:

• If Palin is Joan of Arc, does that make us the French?
• So then who are the English? Islamic fundamentalists?
• If I grew up fishing, but not hunting, does that make me 50% American?
• Seriously? I mean, seriously?

⇒ The Communists are Coming!

Kearney, Nebraska, is considering adding a 1% restaurant tax to raise revenues to support development to aid tourism. I haven’t read enough about the proposal and what it’s going to fund to have an opinion on the proposal, and I can’t say I really care about Kearney’s tax squabbles. However, I can definitely enjoy the fact that the proposal has brought out some extreme sentiments in a recent letter appearing in the Kearney paper about the issue:

Just what we need, more new taxes. I have a better idea than taxing diners. We should take all of our earnings and combine them equally among all citizens. The next step is to ration everything we buy, and tell us what we can read and watch on television.

If I remember correctly, the American Revolution was largely a result of unfair taxation. So before it is too late, comrades, say, “no” to more taxation to support the Archway.

That’s where the restaurant tax money will go, just like money from the keno players who are supporting another bad idea, Meadowlark Hills Golf Course.

Have a good day, comrades.

If I recall correctly, the unfair nature of the taxation that sparked the American Revolution was that it was taxation without representation. (There may have been a few other reasons, but they don’t rhyme so let’s forget about them.) This proposed tax will have to be passed by elected representatives. This is why the legislative branch is the only one that has the ability to levy taxes, because they are most responsive to the people. If you don’t like taxes, vote for different representatives.

So, deep breath. This isn’t 1776 or Soviet Russia. The writer is not Paul Revere and the communists are not coming.

⇒ Facts, always the first to go

I love the letters to the editor written by the real crazies. The ones that talk about Osama Bin Laden’s vacation plans and then conclude with “read your bible.” I’m not too worried that these people vote, because that would require leaving their homes. And without the protection of their tin roof the satellites would definitely be able to read their minds.

No, those letters are fun. The most worrying are the seemingly sensible missives that arrive at the wrong conclusion because they just don’t have the facts right. A recent example appeared in the North Platte Telegraph:

Senator Obama’s energy policy consists of trying to reign in speculation of oil in the markets, promoting alternative energy sources and increasing the mileage standards of automobiles.

First, the automobile manufacturers have been increasing mileage standards for years, and they are currently producing smaller, fuel efficient cars which get 35 to 45 miles per gallon.

Second, alternative energy sources, e.g. wind, solar, thermal, hydro, tides can only provide a very small portion, maybe 10 percent to 15 percent, of our energy requirements.

First, average gas mileage has not improved appreciably since the days of the Model T Ford. That’s right, the Model T Ford got up to 21 mpg, which is the same as the 2005 average fleet fuel economy. US auto makers have been exceedingly slow to improve fuel efficiency, most of those 35-45 mpg cars are imports from countries that didn’t waste the ’90s building SUVs, and their small numbers isn’t enough to lift up a decades-long accumulation of poor-mpg cars lowering the average.

The second point is close to being true, if you just add “each” before the 10 to 15 percent. Take the example of California, a state that has actually been working on improving alternative energy sources. In 2007, 11.8% of their electricity came from renewable resources (wind, solar, geothermal) and another 11.7% was produced just from hydro power, according to the California State Energy Commission. And those numbers have only been growing, as California begins construction on what will be the world’s largest solar power plant. They predict this will increase the total percentage of renewable electricity to 24% by 2013 (a number which does not include hydro power). I don’t think that can be dismissed as a small portion by any standard.

The letter concludes:

Once again Senator Obama comes up with an untenable program, because he does not have the experience and good judgment to make sound decisions.

And I’m left to conclude that once again Senator Obama and his ideas have been dismissed because a letter writer didn’t have the knowledge to make a sound decision.

⇒ “Palin adds gravity to ticket”?! WTF?

Remember in 2000 when commentators complimented the choice of Dick Cheney to be Bush’s VP because they felt he added gravitas to a ticket with a two-term governor at the head? Yeah, hindsight is hilarious.

If the Grand Island Independent wanted to catch my eye, well they certainly succeeded. Today’s editorial entitled “Alaska’s Sarah Palin adds gravity to Republican ticket” even made me do a double-take. Apparently the editorial writers felt that if you’re going to stretch the truth, you shouldn’t do a half-assed job of it. The first whopper comes in the second paragraph:

Gov. Palin was thoroughly vetted by the McCain camp prior to the decision and now every aspect of her personal and public life is being scrutinized, dissected and hyper analyzed the by the press, politicos and the electorate, as expected and, in fact, the custom throughout the history of this republic.

Really? Because it sounds like the vetting started just a day before he made the announcement. If McCain really knew about all the stuff to begin with then he’s done a piss-poor job of damage control. But the real doozy has to deal with experience:

On the issue of experience, a strong case can be made that she possesses better credentials than Sen. Obama. Certainly Sen. Obama is a gifted, charismatic and deserving contender for the nation’s highest office. He has shattered the race barrier and clearly exceeded the tests for political, oratorical, diplomatic, intellectual and leadership capacities. He is a proud man of impeccable character.

However, Sen. Obama lacks the executive level leadership experience that Gov. Palin has gained as Governor of Alaska.

Of course, that case depends on saying “executive” before “experience.” Using that criteria, Palin has more experience that Obama, Biden and McCain combined. Now, I am partial to governors running for higher office. But the reason I think they do better is because they don’t have to vote on bills with numerous subjects clumped together. A senator has such a long voting history that you can say all sorts of nasty things with half-truths. The United States hasn’t elected a sitting senator since 1964 1960, with JFK. Instead, we’ve gone with two-term governors. (Two terms is considered a pre-requisite to run for president, which is why George Bush ran in 2000 instead of his one-term brother Jeb.)

Bit of trivia: the first Republican woman to win a governorship was Kay Orr in Nebraska in 1986. The election was unusual because her opponent was also female, leading to the first all-female gubernatorial race in the country and a definite assurance that Nebraska would have its first–and as of yet, only–female governor. The first female governor was Nellie T. Ross of Wyoming elected in 1924.

Finally, the editorial gets to the most important strategic reason behind the choice:

What Sen. Obama has done to remove race as an obstacle, Gov. Palin will do for the status of women. She picks up where Sen. Clinton left off in advancing the acceptance of a female leader in the White House.

Actually, I’m pretty sure that Clinton has already shown that the electorate is willing to accept a female candidate for president, much less VP, just as Obama has burst open that door for mixed race candidates. And I’d much rather have a female president by election than because McCain died. Besides, Palin is 24 years too late to make history since the whole picking a woman to get a boost of energy has already been done by the Democrats. Here’s hoping it fails just as badly for the Republicans.

⇒ Hail Mary and Pass the Votes

I can always trust columnist Cal Thomas to provide a laugh, particularly when he writes on the issue of church and state. Or, as with his most recent column, Democrats and church and state. The op-ed covered a wide range of topics with the general theme being that Democrats will never succeed at getting votes from religious folks because the Democratic agenda is incongruent with the Godly agenda. I can only assume that the Godly agenda is like the gay agenda, except the exact opposite.

He particularly takes on the issue of Democratic Catholics and communion:

[…] In 2004, the Archbishop of Boston, Sean O’Malley stood by a statement he had made the previous year that pro-choice Catholics are in a state of grave sin and cannot take Communion properly.

[…] Appearing last Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tried some theological hair-splitting.

She described herself as “an ardent, practicing Catholic,” but then said the church had only held its pro-life position for the last 50 years and that during the previous 2,000 years it had reached different conclusions about when life begins.

In an unusual public rebuke of a leading political figure, Washington, D.C., Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl said Pelosi was “incorrect” in her statement that the church had differed over the years about when life begins.

Wuerl added, “We respect the right of elected officials such as Speaker Pelosi to address matters of public policy that are before them, but the interpretation of Catholic faith has rightfully been entrusted to the Catholic bishops. Given this responsibility to teach, it is important to make this correction for the record.”

There are some things you shouldn’t trust to the Catholic church, among them are an understanding of the historical doctrines of their own church and young boys. Catholics know as a matter of faith that their religion as led by the pope is inerrant in spiritual matters, which makes it easy to brush aside those pesky facts. Such as the long and colorful history of teachings on abortion within the Catholic church.

With regards to Catholic teachings on abortion, the important point isn’t where life begins, but when the fetus is ensouled, because that was when human life began. This point has not always been assumed to be at conception. For example, Pope Innocent III (1161-1216) stated that the soul enters the fetus at the time of the quickening–when the woman first feels movement, usually around weeks 18-20. A later pope said ensoulment happened at conception, and then yet another reinstated the “quickening test” and even gave it a definite date of 16.5 weeks. I do wonder what studies he conducted to determine such a precise, and inaccurate, time.

Pelosi: 1, Catholic Arch-Bishop: 0.

The issue of giving communion to pro-choice politicians is particularly interesting, considering abortion is the only issue that the Bishops have raised as a possible litmus test. Given that the official church policy is anti-death penalty and anti-Iraq war, should politicians who support either be denied communion? The church also holds the view of theistic evolution, so should creationists be denied communion? Heck, 96% of married American Catholics use a modern form of birth control, according to the Church’s own statistics, should they be denied communion? I think we can see how this gets ridiculous quite fast if applied in any sort of rational manner. I guess it’s a good thing the Bishops are so good at ignoring reason and their own history so easily, otherwise there would be no one at all to receive the eucharist, and I kinda doubt they want that.

⇒ On “sensible centrists” and why I hate them

Out of the long list of logical fallacies (as usual, wikipedia provides a fabulous list that anyone who enjoys debate should take the time to read thoroughly), the two I hate the most are an odd pair. The first, a false dichotomy, occurs when the two choices presented do not accurately reflect all the possible choices (such as “You’re either with us or you’re against us”). These types of dichotomies will often use the two most extreme positions, excluding the center, to make their case in favor of one.

The second is a false compromise, or gray fallacy, that argues that the correct position must be the middle ground between the two extremes (such as “Some people say homosexuality is a sin and some people say it isn’t, let’s compromise and say it’s a demi-sin”). The two provide a peculiar pairing because of the inherent tension between either ignoring the middle or favoring it too much. So my hackles were raised today by a letter in the Omaha World Herald that showcased the latter fallacy:

In response to letters about whom to believe in the global-warming war of words, I live by one rule about the “truth.”

I believe there are not two sides to every story, but cynically, three sides. There is one side and the other side, and somewhere in between is the “truth.”

After I learned that rule, life became very simple. If we wait for it, the “truth” will come shining through like a summer sunrise.

The largest problem with the false compromise is that if we always assume the truth is between two sides, then either side can “shift” the truth by moving towards an extreme. This is referred to in politics as the Overton Window, which essentially describes the range of politic discourse in terms of a window that can be pulled to either side. An current example of this theory is the way in which talk of gay marriage moved the window to the left and has opened up room for “moderates” to call for civil unions. (I put “moderates” in scare quotes because I seem them as lazy practitioners of the false compromise. Marriage is a fundamental right and anyone with a shred of principle should have recognized years ago that “separate but equal” is never as advertised and an unacceptable compromise.)

Essentially, the political discourse becomes defined by the extremes as the “sensible centrists” split the difference. But climate change is a scientific question, so it doesn’t really have a middle. There are just facts, and we do our best to understand them. This tactic isn’t a bad approach for other areas like a he-said, she-said dispute, although even then I would question the wisdom of always assuming the facts are in the center. The facts are wherever they damn well please.

One of my favorite comics, I Drew This, illustrated this issue well:

Blended Kittens and Sensible Centrism

As a cat-lover myself, I have to agree, sensible centrists suck.

⇒ A Paucity of Hope

Perhaps it’s the natural result of living as a liberal in Nebraska, but I have always had very low expectations for politicians. I don’t expect them to represent my views, and I know that when they talk about sharing my values, they don’t mean my values. (For example, I happen to value equality over the “traditional definition” of marriage.) I just hope that things don’t get worse, and that they occasionally get a little better. Even that small hope is rarely justified.

This could be the point at which I would exclaim that Obama’s mantra of hope and change has encouraged my idealistic core to emerge from its hard shell of cynicism. But it hasn’t. Even at my tender age I can see how politicians come by every 2 to 4 years with flowery language and empty promises. They may even mean it, but the sausage factory that is Congress can turn even the best of intentions into 500-page behemoth bills that only partially accomplish the original goal with the added bonus of at least a dozen additional objectives and earmarks galore.

However, I think it’s the wrong choice to toss one’s hands up in exasperation and declare a pox on both their parties. There are differences, even from my extremely liberal perspective, although there might not be as many as I would like or in as many places as I would like. I would vote for the “Anybody but McCain” option, since it’s easier to dislike a candidate than to like another.

But I do like Obama. Or more accurately, I like how his candidacy has brought liberals out of the woodwork. I smile when I see an Obama sticker on a car in Nebraska. Showing support from Obama thus becomes a way to signal to others that we do have a presence in Nebraska. And the number of people builds as others begin to think, ‘Hey, maybe we do have a chance.’

Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, his campaign builds support by showing its current support. And so the hope generated by the campaign is not really about Obama. It is about all of the people who are planning to vote for him, and even us in Nebraska, who begin to think that we have a chance of giving him an electoral vote or two. I haven’t been watching the convention because the scripted pageantry bores me, but I can’t wait to see the reaction in the letters to the editor. I’m glad the 50-state strategy and Obama’ war-chest are bringing the electoral fight to Nebraska. It might be a small hope, but it’s the largest amount I’ve dared have in a long time.

⇒ To vote and die, but not to drink

Twenty-one is a triangular number, an octagonal number, a Harshad number, a Fibonacci number, and a Motzkin number. It is the name of a movie and numerous songs. And since January 1, 1985, it has been the legal drinking age in Nebraska, and every other state in the union.

And the number is back in the news thanks to the Amethyst Initiative, a petition of over a hundred college presidents, which has certainly proven successful in its goal of generating discussion about the drinking age in the United States. As usual, the discussion has quickly made its way through the beating public pulse to the opinion pages. One of the most effective arguments in favor of lowering the drinking age appeared in a very short letter to the editor today in the Grand Island paper:

I am writing as a Veteran of the US Navy. At 18, we could sign up, vote, give our lives for our country……but can’t have a drink. What’s wrong with picture?

This was essentially the same argument that encouraged the ratification of the 26th amendment, which lowered the legal voting age to 18 in 1972. Later that year, the drinking age was lowered in Nebraska to 19 (which is the age of the majority in our state, another peculiar law that Nebraska shares with only one other state–Alabama). There it would remain for only 8 years, before being raised to 20 in 1980 and finally to 21 in 1985. Young adults retained the right to vote, but lost the right to drink. Which is interesting, considering the number that drink between the ages of 18 and 21 is a great deal higher than the number that vote. Perhaps if we actually voted in higher numbers we would be able to regain the latter right. Now there’s a good political slogan: “Vote and drink!”

⇒ Short, but to what point?

I like pithy letters to the editor, but a few too many aim for pithy and end up incomprehensible. Here’s an example in the Lincoln paper:

This N-word, R-word, Q-word anti-intellectualism is on the borderline of killing the C-word: communication.

Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks, unless denied otherwise.

Leave freedom of speech alone.

I understand the general gist, but I’m perplexed as to the meaning of the middle paragraph and how it relates to the first and last sentences. On the other hand, it would make a good fortune cookie. I’m also a little confused how those words would in any way add to intellectual communication. I suppose we could have an intellectual discussion about those words within the context of a piece of literature, but I rather suspect that isn’t what the writer is talking about.

My guess is that this letter is in response to the recent letters arguing that the use of the word “retard” in Tropic Thunder is offensive. Still, it hasn’t much to do with the proposed boycotts, since freedom of speech guarantees right to express opinions, while the boycott is arguing it’s rude to use a few particular words. They’re not saying that Congress should ban the use of the word “retarded,” just that such use deserves a boycott. Final thought: when I first saw c-word–horrible person that I am–I immediately thought “cunt.”

⇒ At least they know which party controls Congress

Many of the pro-drilling letters over the past few weeks have mentioned the Democratic-controlled Congress, usually in a sentence such as “the Democrat-controlled Congress [has] continually blocked legislation to increase our domestic oil production” (from a letter I discussed earlier). That knowledge puts these letter writers in the slim majority of American adults (53%) who know which party controls the House, as determined in a recent pew poll.

The poll asked two other knowledge questions: Can you name the Secretary of State? and Who is the Prime Minister of Britain? These were correctly answered by 42% and 28%. My immediate reaction was surprise at the high number who knew Gordon Brown was prime minister. Was it a multiple choice question? So I looked at the questionnaire itself (page 32) and sure enough, respondents were given four names to choose from, although they did have to come up with Condi’s name unprompted. Here are the four names (followed by percentage who chose that name):

• Gordon Brown (28%)
• Robert Gates (4%)
• John Howard (5%)
• Rupert Murdoch (5%)

Hmm, I wonder why they picked two Australians for the list (well, one Australian and one Australian-American). I guess Australia and Britain are both islands. What a depressing poll, to make the letters to the editor seem positively politically well-informed.