F*ck Da Soulja Boy

Excuse the vulgarity of the title, but it is difficult to address rap music without being exposed to vulgarity.

This post is my take on the current outcry over Soulja Boy's lyrics in Let's Be Real. Specifically, everyone is in an outrage over "Fuck All Da Army Troop." There is even a movement to have Soulja Boy's music boycotted in military exchanges.

Can there be any doubt that he is disrespecting the military? I remember, during the younger Bush presidency, Democrats commenting on the low the intelligence and education of military members. How they were innocent puppets of Bush, culled from the economically impoverished, coerced into fighting for his oil empire.

There was a great outcry that, hate the war, but support our troops. Now that Obama is in office, there is not even much of an outcry over the wars, all of which are still ongoing and another log has been thrown in that fire.

Culturally, it has become taboo to criticize the military. You can tell that it is this cultural taboo at work because, by examining the entire line we see he says "Fuck Da FBI and Fuck All Da Army Troop." I have looked at hundreds of comments throughout the Internet and news articles and Facebook posts and no one says "How dare he say anything against our FBI agents!"

Ten years ago, we would have said "You should thank God you are in America, where you have the freedom to criticize the military and the government." My how times have changed. It is both taboo to thank God and to criticize government.

But is he really criticizing the military? The FBI? Maybe indirectly and certainly not intentionally (confirmed by his own apology). The next line, and many more after confirm that this song is not meant to criticize anyone directly, but rather prop up his own image. "Fighting For What Bitch, Be Your Own Man." It comes around now, to the same rhetoric we heard during the Bush years. The troops and agents are not fighting for their own cause, just jumping at the master's whip.

He even goes on to say he is no Obama. Interpreting lyrics can be tricky, specially when they don't seem to even be written in your language, or any known language. What I take from his song is Soulja Boy's expression that he is his own man, working to his own purposes with his own followers. He doesn't jump through someone else's hoops for someone else's gain. He is more his own man than even President Obama.

Of course, the fact that he was cowed into apologizing shows he jumps through hoops for the same master as every other American, the Holy Dollar.

Some of my own thoughts:

• It is not surprising that military dependents and some civilians would attack the wording. What surprises me the most is that military members have become so enamored of themselves that they would vehemently attack someone whom they think is speaking out against their profession.
• If Soulja Boy would have said "Fuck All Da McDonald's Troops" would there have been a similar uproar? Would McDonalds stop selling him Big Macs? If the line targetted Wal-Mart cashiers, would Wal-Mart stop selling him blank CDs to put his music on?
• I've listened to some samples of Soulja Boy's songs. How is it enough people listen to this garbage that it is even an issue?
• As a 20 year veteran and an American citizen, I dislike his music but support his rights to express himself and I see no intended offense leveled against anyone.
• For current news that is deliberately meant to be offensive, check out Ben and Jerrys new flavor, Schweddy Balls. It was funny 13 years ago when the comedy was flirting with it's 'unintended' offensiveness. Now it is real and on purpose.

Let Go Your Eggo

Ego. Latin for 'I'. Pronounced like eggo in Latin.

Ego, I find, is my biggest stumbling block when trying to communicate with other people. Not my own ego, does anyone find their own ego to be a problem? No, trying to communicate through ego. Allow me to give an analogy to the problem I often encounter.

I am travelling in a foreign city and enter a market. There is a fruit vendor in the market. As I approach the fruit stand, the vendor comes around and greets me hartily. "Ah, welcome to my fruit stand. This is the best fruit around." I spy, over their shoulder, some large oranges amongst the fruit. "Thank you." I say. "I think I will take a look at your sumptuous looking oranges." A look quickly passes over the vendor's face, but is just as quickly replaced with a smile. "There is nothing wrong with my oranges, just tell me how many you want to purchase." "Of course I am sure they are all fine oranges." I quickly insert, hoping to mollify an unexpected reaction. "I only meant I would like to pick for myself the most appealing oranges." Now the vendor's face becomes beet red and their lips drawn so tight spittle flicks out with their every breath. "How dare you imply I would lie about the quality of my oranges! I don't even want to sell you oranges any more! Begone from my stand!"

I could not even truly address the oranges because the vendor put themselves between me and the fruit. Any interest I had in the oranges was redirected to the vendor. Communicating about the fruit was impossible because of the ego, the 'I' of the vendor. Why is the vendor in the way? Most likely they feel intimately connected to the fruit, fruit from their own trees. Any perceived slight is seen as a slight on the part of the vendor. Let's try another analogy.

I am having some joint pain. It's another gout attack. I get them too frequently. I am not able to work this way, so I go to a doctor to get a note for my supervisor. The doctor is examining my ankle while I explain my history with gout. He briefly looks over my medical history and proclaims, "You don't have gout, this is a mild sprain. You can go back to work." Hmm. I have to ask, so I do. "Why don't you think this is gout. I have been having gout attacks like this for ten years." "I have had eight years of medical school and several years of practical experience. You are not old enough to have gout, your diet does not suggest gout. It looks like a mild sprain, which are quite common in your line of physical work."

This analogy really happened to me, while I was in the military. I finally convinced him I was having a gout attack by insisting on a urine sample being tested for high uric acid levels. Why did I have so much problem with the doctor? He ignored my own observations about my symptoms, he ignored the data in my medical record. His preconceived conclusions about gout and my work kept him from doing an honest diagnostic of my condition.

Ego is often used as a curse word. Used with a connotation of over-inflated sense of self worth. As I mean it, though, is putting yourself where you do not belong. Like between a cart of fruit and a potential customer. Like between a diagnosis that is virtually a foregone conclusion and a suffering patient. Like between a generalization and a fact, because you don't feel the fact fits you as much as the generalization does.

A Microscope Review

For a nice change, we will not be talking about politically explosive issues.

I am 'home schooling' my children. All five of them. What a chore, but what a satisfying chore! I urge anyone who has both children and the time to invest in them to try their hand at home schooling.

Now I am not doing what is traditional home schooling. I do not create their curriculum. I should say, I do not create all of their curriculum. There is a lot of freedom to add to what I teach them. Instead of traditional home schooling, I am a learning coach guiding my children through an online public school called Connections Academy. No one that I have steered towards Connections Academy has been disappointed.

The freedom to explore their education leads to many educational discoveries. We are exploring amateur radio, Latin and computer programming to name just a few. Today, I want to give a review of a device we are incorporating into our classes. A microscope.

The microscope I bought us and we are having a hoot with is the My First Lab Duo-Scope, model MFL-06. It cost me a modest $63.99 (free shipping with Amazon Prime) through Amazon.com. It is not the heavy metal behemoth you used in high school. Much of it is plastic and it feels light weight and deserving of special handling. I frequently tell Amaya to not lean on the eye piece, afraid she will break it off. Regardless of how it feels, it works great. Focus is crisp and sharp, the lights are bright, nothing is loose or jiggly.

It calls itself a duo-scope because it has two different light sources. One that shines up through the material you are viewing and one that shines down on the material. When I went to school (am I so old, really?) there was a metal reflector that you had to use to reflect sunlight up through the material. It was a real challenge for me to get enough light and I never really enjoyed using a microscope. Boy did I miss out on a lot! The bright LED lights use three 'AA' batteries. I do not know how long they will last. We have been using ours for four days so far. Not nearly enough time to judge the efficiency of the lights.

For optics, it has a x10 eyepiece, a x4 objective lens, a x10 objective lens and a x40 objective lens. I considered buying a microscope with a higher magnification (X1000 vs x400) but based on other reviewer's comment I decided that a clear x400 was better than a blurry x1000. I've not be disappointed with the optics or my choice in a lower magnification range. Most of the things I have viewed have looked wonderful on the lowest setting of x40 (eyepiece times objective lens). Some things have required a higher setting to see more detail but a clear image at x400 has been enough to open a whole new world of discovery.

Something that I discovered (I discovered it because I didn't read the manual to learn it) is that you cannot use the overhead light at the highest magnification. The x40 objective lens gets so close to what you are viewing that it blocks the light.

Things I wish were different. I am very pleased with the microscope. I can think of only one thing I wish was different. I wish there was a power cable for the microscope. I find it needlessly expensive, wasteful and ecologically unfriendly to require batteries. A USB connector would be ideal, but even a normal wall adapter would be useful.

I didn't add any picture because I don't have an adapter for my camera. If you want to see the outside of the microscope, just follow the links I posted. I really wish I could show you some of the great images that have been eliciting squeals of delight from my children, made my wife shudder and keep the smiles on my face.

The World Atheist Convention in Dublin adopted the following declaration on secularism and the place of religion in public life.

1. Personal Freedoms
(a) Freedom of conscience, religion and belief are private and unlimited. Freedom to practice religion should be limited only by the need to respect the rights and freedoms of others.
(b) All people should be free to participate equally in the democratic process.
(c) Freedom of expression should be limited only by the need to respect the rights and freedoms of others. There should be no right ‘not to be offended’ in law. All blasphemy laws, whether explicit or implicit, should be repealed and should not be enacted.

2. Secular Democracy
(a) The sovereignty of the State is derived from the people and not from any god or gods.
(b) The only reference in the constitution to religion should be an assertion that the State is secular. (c) The State should be based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Public policy should be formed by applying reason, and not religious faith, to evidence.
(d) Government should be secular. The state should be strictly neutral in matters of religion and its absence, favouring none and discriminating against none.
(e) Religions should have no special financial consideration in public life, such as tax-free status for religious activities, or grants to promote religion or run faith schools.
(f) Membership of a religion should not be a basis for appointing a person to any State position.
(g) The law should neither grant nor refuse any right, privilege, power or immunity, on the basis of faith or religion or the absence of either.

3. Secular Education
(a) State education should be secular. Religious education, if it happens, should be limited to education about religion and its absence.
(b) Children should be taught about the diversity of religious and nonreligious philosophical beliefs in an objective manner, with no faith formation in school hours.
(c) Children should be educated in critical thinking and the distinction between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge. Science should be taught free from religious interference.

4. One Law For All
(a) There should be one secular law for all, democratically decided and evenly enforced, with no jurisdiction for religious courts to settle civil matters or family disputes.
(b) The law should not criminalise private conduct because the doctrine of any religion deems such conduct to be immoral, if that private conduct respects the rights and freedoms of others.
(c) Employers or social service providers with religious beliefs should not be allowed to discriminate on any grounds not essential to the job in question.

It seems well thought out and leaves little to quarrel with. As a matter of fact, I only have a few peeves.

4.(c). It implies that employers or social service providers without religious beliefs should be allowed to discriminate. The entire point could vanish and have no impact. We do not want any discrimination at all, religious or otherwise.

4.(b) poses problems too. I agree with it 100%. That doesn't help. Let me give you an example. In secular humanism, which is the philosophy this manifesto espouses, humans reason their way from emotion and ego warped values to policy and law. If, for example, bestiality turns your stomach, you can reason and rationalize a legitimate framework for a law banning it. You may not just say "God forbids it." But you can still find a way to make a law against it. If it tickles your fancy to molest a moose, you can reason and rationalize a way to add it to your bill of rights. In the end, it is your values, not their source or your rationalizations that count. If you have a population that is 60-80% Christian, that is going to influence their values. Would you simply ignore the values of the majority because you can claim it is derived from religious dogma?

3.(b) ends with "with no faith formation in school hours." I feel pretty certain that the people who wrote this know it is hooey. There is always faith formation. What they are driving to is a formation of faith that nature operates without the influence of the super natural. Let's face it, that is the distinction between religious and secular education. Whether we operate in a framework of laws driven purely by nature or a framework that includes the effects of the supernatural.

1.(c). "There should be no right 'not to be offended' in law." Offensive behavior is disruptive to peaceful and orderly society. That is why there is a generic 'disorderly conduct' law on the books all across America in every jurisdiction. In America, the 1rst Amendment is limited by several constraints that have nothing to do with religion.

Overall, it's the best declaration of it's type that I have seen.

Argumentative

I've often been accused of being argumentative. I could not disagree. I do like to argue. I think, however, that our definitions are not the same.

To many, being argumentative means simply to be quarrelsome. To divide, drive contention or play the devil's advocate.

In debate, arguments are the facts (or assertions of fact) exchanged to drive a change in perception.

It has been said that people are not stupid, they are ignorant. It is our ignorance that drives most of the divergence between our perspectives. In America, where our school systems' curricula are locally driven, there is not a strong degree of common knowledge. That is one possible factor in our intractable debates.

A professor James Fishkin of Stanford University developed something called Deliberative Democracy. He directed or advised 22 deliberative polling events. In these events, a random sample of people were polled on contemporary issues. Using those as a baseline, the group would gather and discuss the issues and be provided briefing materials to educate the group on the issues in question. It was found that as the individuals became better educated on the issues and discussed them more with the group, their initial responses shifted to a more unanimous response.

I liked hearing people talk about their experience with deliberative polls in California recently...

This event was a wake-up call about how out-of-touch I really am from California politics.

I consider myself to be educated and relatively informed, but as a young, busy - VERY busy - mom who relies on Facebook posts for most of my news, I realized ... I was just totally disconnected from politics once the polls closed and the excitement went away.

Leading debate in a useful manner is my hope. Far from the current problem as outlined by political scientist Jacob Hacker...

The result [of ignorance] is a society in which wired activists at either end of the spectrum dominate the debate—and lead politicians astray at precisely the wrong moment.

Every economist knows how to deal with the debt ... But poll after poll shows that voters have no clue what the budget actually looks like.

When ignorance, hate mongering and fear mongering drive the debate we can only be driven farther apart far from consensus or valuable conclusions about policy.

As a really good example, we can find that raising the taxes and closing loopholes for people with large incomes is a necessary policy without first promoting hatred of the people affected.

I don't think of myself as a breeder of contention but rather a champion of clear rational thought. A promoter of honest debate. A fanboy of productive political debate.

Ego

It's my belief that a well composed argument is free of a debater's ego. So free of their ego that you cannot tell what their position is on a topic other than what a rational, logical and realistic conclusion to an agreed upon set of premises is.

This is how I like to roll. I think it might work too well. So well that even my own family does not know what my values and opinions are from what I write.

Even though I believe that is how an argument should be conducted, it does not mean that an editorial of sorts revealing my own thoughts and opinions should be forbidden. I hope to share as thoughtfully as possible what my opinions are on a variety of subjects with this post.

Politics. Am I a Republican or Democrat? I am not registered as either. I consider myself Independent. I, like probably most youth, had liberal leanings when I was younger. Some of my ideas sounded communist to the people I talked to. The wisdom of time and experience has matured my perspectives and expectations of reality and my leanings have shifted far enough to the right that I no longer consider myself as having a leaning at all.

Taxes and Budget. I was not a fan of Clinton. I thought it a shameful disgrace that he should be elected president at all after dodging the draft and he did not fail to live up to an expectation of continued embarrassment and shame at the way he conducted his affairs (even literally) while in office. However, I have no complaints with the 'Clinton Era' budget. I use 1997 as the golden standard. The budget was close to being balanced (about .3% of GDP more was spent than we had in revenue) and I thought the spending (as a percent of GDP, about 20%) reflected a proper re-investment in America's values.

Bush, Taxes and Budget. I have a chart. I am not linking to it here, but I will in another post if anyone is interested. In this chart, it demonstrates (to my mind) that the Bush tax cuts demonstrated that tax cuts can indeed promote economic growth. However, they also show that the cuts were too deep to be offset by the increase in revenue they created. Bush did not spend a great deal more than he should have (spending stayed very close to the 20% of GDP that I endorse), but it was not always spent in a way that I think reflected general American values.

Obama, Taxes and Budget. Again, my chart demonstrates what I am going to say, ask if you want to see it in pretty lines instead of words. Spending greatly exceeds the 20% of GDP that I endorse. GDP is, at best, stagnant while spending is through the roof. Revenue is at a terrible low, thanks to a recession and... drum-roll... unsustainably low taxes. One of those, maybe not so rare, cases where both Republican outcries of excessive spending and Democratic outcries of not enough revenue generating taxation are correct. Obama promised a lot coming into office and he has appeared too weak to deliver on most any account.

Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq was a wrong war to get into from the very beginning. I have been saying so from the very beginning but my voice carries no weight with any decision maker. I feel, from an ethical perspective, that when you aggress against someone it carries a responsibility. We cannot accomplish what our responsibility dictates because our goals are not appropriate to do so. We, in my opinion, need to get out of Iraq completely. Afghanistan is no better. Our reasons for going to Afghanistan were irrational and emotional. A war there serves only to put into practice untried training and equipment at the cost of foreign lives and interests. It does not serve our foreign interests nor are we honoring an American value to help others. So, while value can be found in putting our military through practical maneuvers, the non-monetary costs exceed the value we find in continuing. Again, get out.

Homosexuals in General, Marriage and the Military. Homosexuality as an expression of sexual orientation is nobody's business. Any policy made to promote or demote an expression of sexual orientation is a violation of civil rights and should be avoided as such. Even the idea that a law might need to be passed to allow marriage between same sex partners is ludicrous. There are military people who do not want homosexuals to serve with them. There are also people who do not want blacks, women, Muslims, etc to serve with them. None of their prejudices have any merit.

Religion. I am, myself, irreligious. I believe that religion is an emergent expression of the complex human brain. It is both fictitious and real, much like centrifugal force is something fictitious, but has a measurable and calculable effect. The question of whether God exists is nonsensical while the concept of and issue related to (for example) the Catholic Church are real and meaningful to humans.

Religion and [anything else]. Religion is a human expression and therefore most humans have to deal with religious involvement. When our values are incompatible with a religious value it causes anxiety. That anxiety can express itself in a lot of ways, but we commonly see it as expressed as a rejection of a religion as a whole, or an attempt to reject the 'offending' personal value. If I were to be asked, "Kelly, my [personal value] is against religious doctrine, am I right? Is [x] religion wrong?" The first question is usually pretty easy to answer. Any self-image is ok if you are not hurting someone else, no matter how immoral another person might feel you are. I even might find my stomach turned, but that doesn't make you wrong. The second question, again, is nonsensical. The correctness and authoritive weight carried by a religious belief is fictitious. Ignoring or adhering to religious doctrines might carry real consequences, but that is a consequence of being part of a society.

Religion and Science. Really, this issue is so blown out of proportion. The idea that religion is (generally speaking) anti-science is mostly born of ignorance and myth propagation. If anything, I would say that religion has made science the respectable and disciplined craft that it is today (barring politically motivated shameful examples from recent news). A good example is one often sited to bash religion while actually serving to demonstrate my statement. That is the example of Galileo. It is often said that the church tried to stifle science by silencing Galileo and condemning his discoveries. Far from the truth, the Church endorsed Galileo's discoveries and the mathematical theory of heliocentrism (which was not in fact Galileo's). By the time Galileo managed to get the theory suppressed, it was about 90 years old and taught in universities. Galileo believed himself to be ordained by God to make his discoveries and reinterpret scripture with what he learned. The church insisted on scientific proof before considering the reinterpretation of scripture. It can be said that no proof was good enough for the church and that would be both reasonable to say and reasonable of the church as all proof offered by Galileo was wrong! The church finally adopted heliocentrism before even the proof it had required was available. But their demand for proof, I believe, pushed natural philosophers (now called scientists and physicists) to be more rigorous and clearly define the difference between a theory and a fact and develop the scientific method.

Immigration and Illegal Immigrants. Let them all in. Except criminals. Everyone wanting to come to America should be welcome, with the caveat that they provide complete identification (including fingerprints and DNA) and that they be deported to their country of origin should they commit a criminal offense. Anyone willing to come to America to make a better life for themselves is our kind of people. Respect and rejoice!

Crime and Overcriminalization. We are greatly overcriminalizing! At the very least, we need to observe a clear difference between what kind of laws we are creating and how we should respond when that law is violated. The first, criminal behavior with criminal intent. These are people who hurt other people on purpose. They should, as is done, be tried by government agents and through proper Judicial procedure have their rights as citizens abridged. Criminal behavior without provable criminal intent should be handled the same as with criminal intent with punishment possibly suspended or even deferred. Laws designed to curb socially harmful behavior that have monetarily detrimental effect should be tried as civil cases only, tried appropriately and punished with nothing greater than the provable cost to the harmed party. Finally, laws (if society deems them necessary) designed to curb behavior that does not directly harm other people should only be enforced by social groups whose authority is voluntarily agreed upon by members of the society they serve. The results of violating those laws should not exceed corrective action that brings the perpetrator into compliance. That means, in effect, an armed sheriff should not show up to tell you your hedges exceed local policy. You should not be fined or arrested for it either. The same should be said of smoking pot in your living room.

Citizenship and Constitutional Rights. Citizenship should not be a right, but a privilege. Children should grow up protected. All adult immigrants (everyone not a citizen should be considered an immigrant except Native Americans on tribal properties) should have universally recognized rights. You want more rights? Like owning firearms or engaging in political activity? Become a full citizen. 2 years military service and a citizenship test! There are more immigrants who know what it means to be an American citizen than there are American citizens (not fact checked, just throwing in my wild estimation). Don't get all scared-y cat on me. Not the same military service as our wonderful, all volunteer service. Basic training, drill, learning a skill useful to defending the society you value. Give it two years and then move on to enjoy the civilian side of the society you served or re-up into the full voluntary service that might get you killed.

Capitalist or Socialist. I endorse socially responsible policy. Even though it comes with some soul-searing strings attached, I support the desire for freedom, independence and self-reliance typically characterized by parties in a free market. I am a product of one of the most socialist sub groups in America, the Armed Forces. Although a high number of the membership is paid at or near poverty levels, every member enjoys housing, the utilities necessary for housing (such as electricity, gas, water and sewage), food, unobstructed access to free health care, dental care and eye care. Plenty of other services are also provided such as free training, legal assistance and security. It works really well, but it's not for everyone.

Post is long enough. If you really want to know, ask. I will tell you my real opinion on any topic. I'm not that shy. But if you try to guess from the arguments I post, you are likely to misthink you know who I am.

Sucker Punch

I hate it when people get suckered by emo-political editorials. Therefore, I feel compelled to examine an article that has had that effect on thousands.

The article in question is Why Americans are so Angry written by Senator Sanders in the Huffington Post.

I won't argue whether his editorial is spot on about why American's are angry or not because I would have to be able to read minds, 308 million minds, to be sure. Let's just assume that everything he says really does make Americans angry. Is what he says makes them angry true? Or, more importantly, is he really on our side?

In my opinion, this article serves only one purpose. It feeds into the popular hate myths of Americans to make you feel that Senator Sanders deserves your support. He is on your side, feeling your pain. It is a political maneuver and it deserves to be resisted on those grounds.

First, I will give a readers digest condensed version of what he says. Republicans and Democrats are all wrong and messing up the country. I'm on your side. Yep, that's it.

Specifics:

The rich are getting richer. Their effective tax rate, in recent years, has been reduced to the lowest in modern history. Nurses, teachers and firemen actually pay a higher tax rate than some billionaires. It's no wonder the American people are angry.

The popular straw man, 'the rich.' A poorly defined target for the common man to funnel his angst against. There are two things to point out about this paragraph. First, while the rich are getting richer (and there really can be found nothing wrong with that) Americans in general are getting richer. Our poor are wealthier. Our middle class is wealthier and our rich are wealthier. Second, the paragraph shifts from generalities to specific cases while leading the reader to feel the statements still apply generally. While I am sure there are some billionaires who found loopholes that allow them to pay a lower effective tax rate than nurses, teachers and firemen this is generally not true and is not something that should generate ire at all wealthy people.

Many corporations, including General Electric and Exxon-Mobil, have made billions in profits while using loopholes to avoid paying any federal income taxes.

This is true and are specific cases that can be addressed. The senator could do more for Americans by proposing bills that close these loopholes than drumming up empty support for a politician proposing no bills to address this issue at all.

The sum of all the revenue collected by the Treasury today totals just 14.8% of our gross domestic product, the lowest in about 50 years.

Again, what is wrong with this? Nothing exactly, but it is lumped with other material that would lead you to believe that we are drawing too little revenue because of tax loopholes. Not true at all. Senator Sanders may be innocent of deliberately misleading his readers, but it is misleading. As a percentage of our GDP, our revenue is lower because our tax rates are lower. Tax rates have dropped over the last 50 years because we are wealthier and can afford to function on a smaller percentage of our productivity. This year, our revenue will be 14.4% of GDP, the lowest it has been since 1950. 50 years ago, in 1961, it was 17.8%. However, actual tax revenue has risen from 94.4 billion current dollars to 2.1 trillion current dollars.

So...we are taxed less but have more. Is that really something to stir up animosity about, Senator Sanders?

In the midst of this, Republicans in Congress have been fanatically determined to protect the interests of the wealthy and large multinational corporations

The Republicans in Congress have been fanatically determined to protect the interests of all tax paying Americans. While Democrats have spun the extension of tax cuts to the middle class as 'The Obama Tax Cuts' and the extension to cuts for the wealthy as Bush Tax Cuts, they were all Bush Tax Cuts. They were all extended during the Obama administration's term.

A lot of confusion has been sewn about the issue but Republicans introduced tax cuts for everyone. Democrats want to end some of the tax cuts. No one made unilateral tax cuts for the wealthy. This segues into...

If the Republicans have their way, the entire burden of deficit reduction will be placed on the elderly, the sick, children and working families.

More hogwash. Not a single fact supports this. In 2007, the last year for which I have reliable data and four years after the Bush tax cuts, the tax group identified by Senator Sanders paid only 3% of tax revenue. 85% of the tax revenue was paid by the top 25% earners. Republicans want ALL Americans to pay less taxes, not just the wealthy. The wealthy, even with tax breaks, still carry the country's tax burden on their shoulders.

The Republican plan with the tax cuts was to give people a chance to do more with their money, hopefully causing an overall increase in revenue with a lower overall tax rate. It actually worked. From 2003 to 2006, the tax revenue from the wealthy doubled even though their overall tax rate was reduced.

President Obama and the Democrats have been extremely weak in opposing these right-wing extremist proposals.

Obama and the Democrats have been weak in resisting proposals they are not in favor of, which is puzzling as they have had the numbers to bulldoze through whatever bills they want. However, while it is largely in the eye of the beholder, I would not consider tax cuts to be 'right-wing extremism.' Sometimes people use terms so much they loose their meaning like the prolific use of terms like rape, slavery and terrorism.

Although the United States now has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major industrialized country...

While this may be true, again it is not a problem on it's own. If the poor were getting poorer so the rich could get richer, that would be morally reprehensible. However, everyone is getting wealthier in America, generally speaking. Humans have an innate sense of fairness. We perceive that the system is unfair if some people have more than others. However, our system was set up to allow people to achieve to the best of their abilities. Through skill, environment, luck, whatever, some people are achieving a great deal. Instead of hating them for achieving more than us, we should congratulate them on what they achieved. If we are actually unhappy with our own achievements, we should recognize that as an unrelated circumstance that we can personally address without attack other people.

Democrats have not succeeded in getting any new revenue from those at the top of the economic ladder to reduce the deficit.

If he means that Democrats have not succeeded in get new revenue as a percentage of their income, that is true. If he means that they have not gotten more revenue in terms of real dollars, that is not true on a federal level. Now at a state level, exactly what you would expect to happen happened. Some states increased their local tax rate on the wealthy and the wealthy moved to another state, lowering their overall tax revenue while increasing the tax rate. Why that lesson from the states does not trickle up to the federal Democrats is beyond me. It is a special kind of naive to say "This doesn't work anywhere else, but it will work for me!"

Instead, they've handed the wealthy even more tax breaks. In December, the House and the Senate extended President George W. Bush's tax cuts for the rich and lowered estate tax rates for the wealthiest Americans.

The extension to 'The Bush Tax Cuts' (which I remarked on earlier in this post) is not 'even more tax breaks.' They are the same tax breaks since 2003. The estate taxes were lowered, as they have been over and over, from a max of 55% in 2001 to 35% this year. But again, the tax cuts are for everyone, not just the wealthy. The wording only serves to stir hate for the wealthy, Republicans for pushing tax cuts and Democrats for not successfully resisting tax cuts. But again, on it's face, their is nothing inheriting bad about tax cuts. Not only does it mean more money in every tax paying pocket, but it has been shown to actually increase overall revenue in the past.

In April, to avoid the Republican effort to shut down the government, they allowed $38.5 billion in cuts to vitally important programs for working-class and middle-class Americans.

What is a vital program and how much it deserves to be funded is food for another blog meal. I would like to point out the clever crafting of words. 'Republican effort to shut down the government." There is not a complete capitulation on either side of the isle. Why is it not referred to as a Democrat effort to shut down the government?" Or an Obama effort, he is actually working out the plans to shut down the government. My protests hardly matter. Not only do I think the Republicans do share an enormous part of responsibility for this issue, Democrats are much better at spin and will always make the Republicans look like they are on the bad side of an issue. Republicans, in this way, are like the parents of the country. They accept that if they are doing their job right, they won't be appreciated for it for years to come. Right now, however, both sides of the isle are more interested in succeeding against each other than they are in the substance of what they are succeeding at. I mention this in my previous post Universal Health Care.

Now, with the U.S. facing the possibility of the first default in our nation's history...

Word games. America is always facing the possibility of it's first default. The fact that we are still waiting for our first is a testament to how well we are doing.

the American people find themselves forced to choose between two congressional deficit-reduction plans.

If we were a Democracy, this would be true. We are a Republic and Americans are not faced with any choice at all. That, I believe is the real source of American frustration. We are powerless. Even when we think we are voting into office representatives who will act in our interests, we find this not to be true and we are powerless to do anything about it. We can either face up to our share of the blame for putting wankers in office and let them get away with what they are doing or we can channel our frustration at convenient targets, like Republicans, talk show hosts, the wealthy, a sibling with different political views, a Humvee owner...

The plan by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, which calls for $2.4 trillion in cuts over a 10-year period, includes $900 billion in cuts in areas such as education, health care, nutrition, affordable housing, child care and many other programs desperately needed by working families and the most vulnerable.

I haven't read the plan but if it's true, it's despicable and very un...Democrat. I don't bother grumbling too much about proposed bills though. It is pointless. Let's see what bill gets past, after debated and amended. That is what counts.

The Senate plan appropriately calls for meaningful cuts in military spending and ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But it does not ask the wealthiest people in this country and the largest corporations to make any sacrifice.

Exactly what sacrifice does Senator Sanders suggest? If he is referring to tax revenue, far from '[not] any sacrifice', they already pay most of the tax revenue to pay for American excesses. Does he want to harvest rich women's embryos for stem cell research? Oh, no, his voting record shows he is against that.

The Reid plan is bad. The constantly shifting plan by House Speaker John Boehner is much worse. His $1.2 trillion plan calls for no cuts in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

A shifting plan is a sign of a responsive planner. However, both plans are obviously too flawed to be passed. But is Senator Sanders correct in the eyes of Americans? Not cutting funding to two wars is much worse than cutting funding to Americans in need? Although I would like to see both wars end, we desperately need to take good care of Americans, their education, health care and welfare.

While all of this is going on in Washington, the American people have consistently stated, in poll after poll, that they want wealthy individuals and large corporations to pay their fair share of taxes

Promoting more myth. Yes, polls show that American say they want wealthy individuals to pay their fair share. However, wealthy Americans actually pay more than what the average American considers fair, they just don't know it. Instead of speaking truth, he promotes the myth. I discussed this in a previous post called Blame it on the Rich where Sam Harris tried the same intellectual dishonesty.

In other words, Congress is now on a path to do exactly what the American people don't want. Americans want shared sacrifice in deficit reduction. Congress is on track to give them the exact opposite: major cuts in the most important programs that the middle class needs and wants, and no sacrifice from the wealthy and the powerful.

Congress is going to do what it always does. It is going to drum up constituent support by either proposing bills that make them look better or make other people look worse. It is our responsibility to stop feeding into the emotional game and sternly remind our representatives what we want of them, what we are paying them to do. No where does Senator Sanders suggest any solution at all, even contacting your representative. Instead, he wraps up his article with the real clincher...

Is it any wonder, therefore, that the American people are so angry with what's going on in Washington? I am too.

His "I'm with you guys!" Now that we are all on the same side, he has 7,674 Facebook 'likes' and the American people have ... nothing. We are just reminded of all the angst politicians have been feeding into for the last couple of years. At least there is another clear winner. The company that makes ant-acids.

inDefensible of Marriage Act

The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is a piece of legislation that defines marriage for the federal government as a union between one man and one woman. It was signed into law in 1996 by President Bill Clinton.

Two important aspects of the legislation are that it defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman as I already stated and that it leaves the power to enforce it's legislation to the state.

I don't believe this was ever good legislation but it was a start. By making this law it forces our conscience on the issue, a civil liberties issue. It is a seed that, through good debate, will inevitably lead to positive social reform.

Not all debate is good. This article at the Heritage Foundation gives good examples of bad arguments. So bad, I wanted to go over them to point out how bad they are.

The article attempts to defend DOMA by linking it to the welfare of children. I see two fundamental flaws in this maneuver.

First I would like to say that I am not attempting to argue whether the testimony of Tom Minnery, Senior VP of Focus on the Family, is correct or not. We can, for the moment, assume it is true that children raised in a one man and one woman household are more likely to be well adjusted.

The article leads with "...the government's profound interest in sustaining the integrity of the institution of marriage because of the unique contribution of a married mother and father make to child welfare."

The first and most obvious negation of this argument is that marriage and parenthood are two different things! This argument belongs to a debate about whether gay couples should be allowed to raise children, not in a debate about whether they should be allowed to get married.

That point is so strong that my other arguments are really moot, but I will throw them in for good measure anyway.

Even if it were true that children are more well adjusted in a traditional family setting, many children are not. There are millions of children living in poverty. There are children with no parents. Children of single parents. There are innumerable children living poorly in traditional families as well.

Where in that spectrum would children of same sex marriages fall? Unless you can say they would be better off living in the streets without parents, this is a pretty poor argument indeed.

As a civil rights issue, I don't believe that even a majority vote should be allowed to abridge the rights of citizens. As a nation, we may still be a bit immature on the issue; however, we can look at our past an clearly see similar civil rights issues with more clarity. For example, if we were talking about women's suffrage or abolitionism we would not hesitate to say 'of course.' It was not always 'of course.' It took a great deal of debate and social maturing to get where we are.

If we are wise, or at least have wise leaders, we do not have to endure the same growing pains over and over. We can learn from our past trials and act accordingly.

Blue Cheese

We are buying a house that needs lots of 'TLC'. A real fixer upper in a bad way. I had intended my next post to be about that but elbow pain delayed my writing anything until this stray thought stuck in my head.

A long time ago, I was stationed at Hahn AB Germany. I was married. I was young, pretty self absorbed and pretty happy. One of the routines my wife and I had was eating out at the base club. I always started my meals with a salad topped with blue cheese dressing.

Now, I never thought of myself as having a favorite salad dressing before that. As a matter of fact, I always ordered random dressings because it was easier for me to decide what I didn't like than what I did like. Without thinking about it, blue cheese dressing became my dressing of choice while at Hahn.

When Hahn AB closed down, my wife and I moved to Spangdahlem AB, still in Germany. They had a much nicer club. My wife and I went there to eat, like we normally did at Hahn. It seemed so fancy to us at the time. When we ordered our meal, I was disappointed to hear the waitress say "I'm sorry but we are out of blue cheese dressing, would you like ranch instead?" Well, I tried the ranch but didn't like it very much.

"I'm sorry but we are out of blue cheese dressing, would you like ranch instead?" became the mantra at the Spangdahlem club. As a matter of fact, I never again had blue cheese dressing in a restaurant over the next 15 years. The second time we went and I heard that they were out of blue cheese dressing I remembering remarking to my wife that I bet they just didn't have blue cheese but didn't want to say it.

Every dinner out at the fancy club was a disappointment on some minor level because of this. It's not like I dwelled on it much, this is the most I've ever thought about it, just a disappointment to start each meal with.

Shortly after moving to Spangdahlem, my wife and I separated and divorced. I'm not in any way suggesting that ranch dressing brought down my marriage, but I wonder if in the rich and complex tapestry of our lives, little disappointments like those can bring down someone's quality of life enough to make any difference.

Does letting such small matters bother you noticeably affect the satisfaction you feel in life? Can it affect the general mood, behavior and more important decisions that shape our lives?

I much more readily express my opinions about matters small and large, but I also enjoy much more in my life and give little credence to that which I would suffer. Over all, no matter what is going on, I am satisfied with my life more now than when I was young and healthy in Spangdahlem.

I wonder, what would life be like if Spangdahlem had blue cheese dressing?

Blame it on 'The Rich'

The title links to the article that I am talking about so you can read it yourself.

I don't want to make my blog about attacking people, but sometimes smart people say dumb things and my blog can serve to straighten the issues out.

To be fair, the article I am referring to is a political editorial not a well formed research paper. But more people will read this editorial than will ever read a scientific dissertation on neurobiology.

A few quick bullets distilled from the paper...

EDIT: For clarity, what I mean to say is that these are points that Harris wants the reader to draw from what he says. What he said is meant to be taken as fact, so the reader thinks they are drawing conclusions logically from facts. What my blog post is meant to show you is that this is anything but the case. The real issues of taxation, education and national energy policy are not in question and I do not mean anything I say here to be a conclusive discussion of those issues. This is meant only to dismiss the smoke and mirrors so people are left to have an honest conversation about the issues.

• All our problems are the fault of conservatives, and when it's not the same thing, religion.
• He wants to give more money to help, but in typical leftist fashion he wants everyone else forced to do it too.
• More money will fix anything, including an already over endowed education system.

EDIT: By over endowed, I am revealing my personal perspective that as the third highest funded education system in the world, our children are not suffering from not enough funding. The bottleneck is not money but policy.

Now for some meat and potatoes. Quotes from the article will be indented and in italics. Ellipsis are used to truncate long diatribes without changing the meaning of the quoted texts.

The richest Americans have gotten off scott-free during the recession.

Now we are told that we will soon receive a large tax cut for all our troubles.

It makes Sam Harris feel guilty and embarrassed.

The tax cuts are not new. They are actually extensions to existing tax cuts. Sam is not getting anything that he wasn't already getting.

Most Americans believe that a person should enjoy the full fruits of his or her labors, however abundant.

Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute has gathered extensive polling data on this subject that goes back decades. What she found is that most Americans agree ... that upper-income households pay too little in taxes. However, what most Americans think is fair is about 25%, already lower than what the wealthiest actually pay.

...throughout the 1950's...the marginal tax rate for the wealthy was over 90 percent. In fact, prior to the 1980's it never dipped below 70 percent. Since 1982, however, it has come down by half. In the meantime, the average net worth of the richest 1 percent of Americans has doubled (to $18.5 million), while that of the poorest 40 percent has fallen by 63 percent (to $2,200).

The gap in the distribution of wealth means nothing except to our sense of fairness. All across the board, Americans are richer now than they were in the 1950's. According to the National Poverty Center, in the 1950's 22.4% of Americans lived in poverty. Today, it is about 12.65% which is comparable to countries like France with 14%.

Not only do we have fewer people living in poverty, but the definition of poverty is far less severe. Poverty stricken Americans can be expected to have a roof over their heads, heat in the winter and AC in the summer as well as telephone service, Internet access, color television and access to health care. As a matter of fact, research by Robert Rector and Kirk Johnson found that almost 46% of Americans classified as poor owned their own homes.

And yet over one million American children are now homeless.

Switching from percentages to hard numbers can be confusing. Historically, there have always been more children in poverty than adults. Although I cannot find appropriate data for the 1950's, it can be assumed that as more Americans were living in poverty, that also meant more children living in poverty.

Hitting the article point by point is tiresome and giving me a headache. Let me summarize some of it and then try to wrap it up with some more point by point.

Sam Harris next harangues Republicans after denouncing some political failures like the doubling of our national debt and the $40 million subsidy of a Noah's Ark theme park attraction...both directly the results of Democrats.

EDIT: I do not mean to imply anything at all about Democrats and Republicans. As was pointed out, they all have their failings. I am instead pointing out the dishonesty of trying to associate Republicans with Democrat policy failures. It would have been more honest and effective to discuss the issues on their own merits.

There is mention of the religious fetish "self-reliance" which he rails against as he does all things religious. The opposite of self reliance, which he doesn't seem to have a problem with is dependence. What conservatives largely have a problem with is rewarding dependence. Mr. Harris represents the conservative promotion of self reliance is as an abhorrence of assisting the disabled. Really? And you call that intellectual honesty Mr. Harris? Or maybe you can point to a C SPAN recording of Republicans railing against those with Down syndrome?

EDIT: I mention Down Syndrome because Harris does. When I mention what conservatives have a problem with, I speak as a conservative. Do not be confused by this issue. Promoting self reliance does not mean you cannot help other people. Conservatives, Christians and other people who carry such negative labels all believe (generally speaking) in charity...the voluntary giving.

If Washington State's I-1098 was still up for a vote, I would say it was worth mentioning. I have mixed feelings myself. The state's tax system unfairly burdens the poor. It could use some tweaks. The suggested proposition was unfair though. It would create in income tax (Washington does not have one) but only for 2% of the citizens. Mr. Harris suggests that the only reason someone would want to defeat this unfair legislation was because they sought an environment teeming with poor and uneducated citizens. He also misrepresented how the increased revenue would be spent saying that all revenue would go to the education system. Part of the income tax would be used to offset the lost revenue from decreased property taxes and small business taxes, then 70% of what is left would be used in the education system.

He then slides into irrational intellectual chaos. He admits that government is wasteful. He admits that the education system is already one of the best financed in the world. He admits that the wealthy are already voluntarily giving extraordinary amounts of money to solutions that can indeed be financed constructively.

He implies that if the money is not redistributed to be spent by others, it simply sits there. It's no wonder that Mr. Harris has only 1/1000th the wealth of Buffet. Mr. Buffet doesn't just let his wealth sit idle. If he did, he would have no taxes to pay.

EDIT: Regardless of whatever else Harris said about Buffet, he also said they he should do more. What you should think about here is that Harris said he would not do anything on his own because it would be ineffective. Buffet has taken the opposite stance and run fund raisers and voluntarily promised 99% of his considerable wealth...money that is itself not taxable. He and his whole family volunteer not only their considerable wealth but their far more precious time to those less fortunate.

He then suggests two top priorities for spending other people's money disproportionately.

The first is education. I doubt that anyone would argue that education is a top priority. At least everyone with children want a top notch education for children. Mr. Harris' solution to a well funded but failing education system? Throw lots more money at it. Even the article that he links to says that more money does not help. Smaller classrooms don't help. Wealthier or more educated parents don't help. Better teachers help.

EDIT: My own position is not so easily summed up. However, I do believe that money is not the bottleneck with education. I personally believe, as do most people that I know who think more money will not help, is that teacher protection is our most serious bottleneck. Many of our teachers perform horribly with no fear that their performance will lead to loss of their job. Maybe that should change.

His second priority is alternative energy. Here, the only useful expenditure of money would be to fund special interest lobby groups. We already have great green technologies like liquid fluoride thorium reactors. Subsidies for solar and wind generators will never allow us to dispose of fossil fuels. Because solar and wind are not always providing power, they require backup plants (yes, coal or other fossil fuels) to be idling at all times. To 'go green' you must have a power source that can always generate reliable power. So why are we not liberating our energy dependence from fossil fuels? Because of legislation against nuclear power. No matter how much money you spend, you cannot resolve this issue without a change in legislation.

EDIT: I suggest that money would be better spent on lobbying instead of educating the general public for two reasons. One, it costs less to get the same results. Two, public servants have demonstrated that they do not consider the opinion of their constituents of any value.

Some wealthy people, like Buffet and Gates, are wealthy because they invest their money wisely. To suggest that the masses will do better with their money is ridiculous. But nothing has changed since the first western democracy. The masses were promised cheap food and material comforts while politicians vied over who gets to control all the wealth.

EDIT: I was speaking of Athens when I spoke of the earliest western democracy. However, that may be a distraction. The point is that Buffet is giving billions charitably, Gates gives billions, the new wealthiest man in the world, Helu gives billions because they were smart with their money. When he was 26, Helu had $400,000 to his name. If he had given it all to charity (or had it all taxed away), we would not be getting the billions in charity that we are today. Whether we can all agree or not that this system is the best, we can at least see that it works. We let the individual build his own wealth and share it as he sees fit.

It's all Change™ and Unicorns

What an amazing era of change we live in. Two things:

First Item: The only welfare program that I fully endorse is the WIC (Women, Infant and Children) program. It ensure health and nutrition for women and children from the time a woman gets pregnant until the child is five years old.

If my tax dollars have to go somewhere, why not the helpless and innocent?

Even as a single father, they covered my children and I would have been lost without them.
562 million dollars is being rescinded from the program to pay off fraudulent claims of racist discrimination by the USDA to black farmers. Nice going scammers.

Second Item: The Service Employees International Union is a group I definitely DON'T approve of, but they are there and they are big. Nothing to do but lump it.

They have decided to cut health insurance for 6,000 dependent children because of cost increases related to the new national health care program.

After all their bullying, they are sacrificing their peoples' children. Good job bullies.

Who knew that unicorns hated children. Really, I have been trying to stay at least neutral about this new White House administration, but they make it so damn hard.

Now I see a new sign at the White House. The sign reads "For a Brave New World Full of Goodness for You, Abandon Your Children Here..."

I know, Obama, I know. It's Bush's fault. It's always Bush's fault.

Consequentialism

My brother is a smart guy. And handsome. And I love him lots. So when he started talking about how great this guy was, an author named Sam Harris, I wanted to give him a try.

When first my brother started talking about Mr. Harris' ideas and I thought maybe he was just misrepresenting them. They sounded like pretty poor arguments to me. Then I started reading some things from Mr. Harris in articles and his web site. I am not very satisfied with what he is writing so far. I want to hold out for his newest book, The Moral Landscape, but also wanted to comment immediately on something that I read.

It's called consequentialism. It is the theory that the moral rightness of your actions is not determined by your actions or your character but by the consequences of your actions. It is also known as "The Ends Justify the Means." This is a moral theory that Mr. Harris subscribes to. I do not.

I illustrate the fault of consequentialism with the following hypothetical situation. Say two brothers are celebrating Independence Day. They take their handguns into downtown Oklahoma City and fire dozens of shot wildly into the air. The first brother, in addition to some property damage, hits and disables a terrorist who is about to detonate a dirty nuclear bomb. He just saved millions of lives. The second brother hits a pregnant lady on her way to the hospital, killing her and her unborn child. He is a vile homicidal beast.

According to consequentialism, the actions of the first brother are morally right, because it turned out good. The second brother's actions are moral wrong, because they turned out badly. It does not matter that both brothers were in the same state of mind and doing the exact same thing, one of them is right and one of them is wrong. One of them is good and one of them is bad.

If we were all gods, this might be a good theory for us. However, as men, we cannot have absolute knowledge of the full consequences of our actions. We need a human method of determining the correctness of our actions. In my own personal belief, the best human method of determining the correctness of our actions is to evaluate the action itself. While it is true that bad intentioned people can hurt you doing the 'right' thing and good intentioned people can hurt you doing the 'right' thing, it is the only method by which people of limited knowledge can decide what actions are best to take, and be comforted when things don't turn out well.

Also, a society built upon consequentialism would probably eliminate most law, except tort law. As any action can be morally right, it has to be allowed. Citizens of this society would only be able to seek redress for actions that turned out wrong. Citizens concerned over lawsuits may very well take no actions at all for fear of incalculable results.

I urge anyone who takes a superficial interest in consequentialism due to the support it receives from famous authors to seriously consider it's consequences in general and how it would affect their own decision making.

Suffering

It is natural to avoid pain and suffering.

Once burned, we snatch our hand from the flame before we can be burned again.

So why is there a schism about how adults approach suffering?

Speaking in very broad generalization, conservatives and liberals approach suffering very differently and some say that it predicates their entire notions about life.

Conservatives see suffering as a natural consequence of their lives. To an extent, how they live their lives determines how much and what kind of suffering they endure. They believe that suffering can be honorable, worn like a badge. Suffering can be a challenge, giving greater meaning to their achievements. But most importantly, suffering is an unavoidable condition of being.

Liberals, on the other hand, believe that suffering arises from ignorance, avoidable outside influences and alterable imperfections in humans and human societies. Suffering is to be avoided at all costs.

This difference can be seen when discussing policies that are meant to directly affect suffering like schools shifting focus in sports from competition to cooperation leading all participants to receive awards.

For me, I would rather have the courage to bear my suffering and the genuine sympathy of my companions than an indifferent kindness that removes my suffering. To quote C.S. Lewis

Kindness...cares not whether it's subject becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering.

While love and kindness are not exclusive of each other, kindness without love leads to cruelty.

The Great Debate...Disappointment

I think very highly of debate and argument. They are powerful tools for elimenating false knowledge and strengthening yet-to-be-proven-false knowledge. Debate serves everyone. When done right.

All too often, I get interested in a debate only to watch it devolve into one of the two most insidious irrelevancies. Those being ad hominen attacks and the misrepresentation of opposition's arguments.

Ad hominen attacks take several different tacks and they are all common and all wrong. Let me highlight a few examples.

Ad hominen abuse. This is where an attempt to invalidate a position takes the form of a personal insult against another person where the insult has nothing to do with the subject matter at all. For example, telling someone they are stupid. By casting unrelated aspersions on the character or virtue of your opponent, you hope that their position has been invalidated.

PZ Myers has been held as a supreme example of a person who uses these kinds of attacks. I am not willing to sift through all of his prodigous blog posts to come up with good examples, but a random poke gave me immediate results with his response to a question as follows (shortened for my post's sake)

...you know zip about biology, isn't it rather arrogant of you to be questioning ... science? Aren't you presuming a bit much to be pestering a biology professor ...

Another common fallacious ad hominem attack is the Ad Hominem Circumstantial attack. This one is so common you may be wondering how it could be wrong if it is used all the time. This one is most recently seen in debates about Global Warming. It is used by all sides of the argument. Al Gore is making money off of his position so his vested interests somehow make his arguments false. Deniers are paid by oil companies so that somehow makes their scientific arguments false. The person's circumstances do not in any way validate or invalidate their premises or conclusions.

Another that I would like to point out is the Ad Hominem tu quoque. This is where a person's argument is invalidated because the person acts in a way inconsistent with their point. Attacks against Al Gore serve as another fine example. Citing his huge personal home's energy use and frequent flying as hypocritical proof that he must be wrong.

But the various Ad Hominem attacks can we waded through, like wading through smelly murky swamp water. It's unpleasant and distracting, but it can be done. The worst, and probably most common problem that threatens debate is the Straw Man argument. That is where the opponent's position is misrepresented, making it easier to prove false. For example, the misrepresented premise of Natural Selection's supposed "creative power" as stated by Dr. Hovimd in his Creation Seminar Series. That publication is so full of logical fallacies that I had to use it to educate my son on logic and debate.

Another logical fallacy that I just take for granted is called Contextomy. This is where an opponent is quoted out of context. I am so used to this that I automatically verify all quotes to the best of my ability. Even when someone is quoting themselves. You will be surprised at how poorly people remember what they said as an argument carries on.

Entitlement

Inalienable rights and legal entitlements. What things do we, as humans or Americans have rights to?

We started with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Over the many decades we have added a bit of fluff and we have recently decided that healthcare should be added to the pile of rights.

I like working with absolutes. It frees up the mind from the quagmires of iffy reasoning and rationalizing. I find myself a simple rule and that is my first premise in an argument. It takes a lot of work to get around it.

My simple rules for entitlements is that, first, no one has a right to the products and services of another person. Second, making a law that says it is so doesn't make it so.

I will demonstrate my second point first and then propose a thought experiment for the first point.

Entitlement programs are not coupled with obligatory mandates. Therefore, your rights to services and products do not guarantee that said services and products will be available. Even the most assured resource available to the United States federal government is not in endless supply, tax revenue. It leaves bitter infighting between special interests groups who want their programs fully funded while there is not enough money to fully fund all programs. So, saying it is so just doesn't make it so.

For my first point, that no one has a right to another person's products or services, here are two thought experiments. You could make them real experiments, but if you are honest enough, or watch television programs like Man, Woman, Wild then you shouldn't need to try them.

Strip down a person to their skivvies and drop them in the middle of nowhere. Tadda, they have access to all of their inalienable rights. They don't seem to have welfare payments or health care though.

Now, for all the other entitlements that the legislative body of our government has seen fit to grant us, try this modification.

Drop two folks who don't know each other in the middle of nowhere. Have one individual spend two or three tough days making shelter, providing fire and hunting and preparing food. Have the other individual sit on their butt smoking weed the whole time. On the third day, when the need for munchies completely overcomes the second person, take any weapons the first person may have fashioned for hunting away from them and have the second person demand their entitled portion of whatever the first person has.

It all seems pretty straightforward to me.

Okay, classroom. For homework, read a historical account of Plymouth to find out why William Bradford, one of the leaders of the Pilgrims referred to the redistribution of wealth 'vanity of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients applauded by some of later times'.

Universal Health Care

It's been quite a while since I posted anything. No apologies or anything, that's just the way it is.

I was reading just a few short minutes ago about the resistance to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, colloquially known as Obamacare.

I read one individual's take on this resistance as a fear of change. I don't believe this to be true. Polls, public sentiment, and legislator efforts all point to a nearly universal desire for health care reform.

Another individual's perception, who identified themselves as not an American citizen, viewed resistance as a desire to protect personal wealth and our ability to own more 'stuff'. I also do not believe this to be true and will demonstrate why with figures. Forgive me if you are not American and these figures insult you, but things are what they are.

• Americans lead the world in charitable giving. $306 billion were given by individuals. An additional $38.5 billion in donations were from foundation grants and $15 billion from corporations (2007 figures).
• 39% of Americans volunteer their time for non profit work, second only to New Zealand (2010 figures).
• 71.5% of doctors who work solo or in two-doctor offices offer Charity Care (2008 figures).

Clearly Americans are not as selfish as is popularized by liberal pundits, major media outlets or Hollywood.

Here is my take on it.

My viewpoint is not from a unique circumstance; but perhaps people of my circumstances and perspective are not prone to the vocal outbursts required to weigh in on political issues and be noticed.

Most of my growing up was done in active duty military service. 20 years in the United States Air Force. There are several characterizations that can be given to military communities. Two important ones are a respect for each other, without exception, and esprit de corps. These two elements are decidedly lacking in the civilian community.

Even though our military members are individuals with varying interests, political views and backgrounds, it could be said that they cast one shadow and speak with one voice. Not that they agree with each other on everything, but that they do not divide themselves over these disagreements.

Their civilian brothers and sisters seem so inclined to divisiveness because of a lack of respect and a lack of commonality. While the main ideological divide seems to be personal protections and responsibility versus communal support and security, these are not mutually exclusive positions. But having no sense of group, there has to be winners and losers. Without respect, there can be no appreciation of another's perspective.

The battle is enjoined with buzzwords and rationales, but the battle is not fought because we have ammunition. Sides are drawn over ideologies and we fight because we want to be winners and we want them to be losers.

In an America where citizens respect each other and are united as Americans, we would all be winners, regardless of the value of the legislation. It would either be seen as a small step towards a goal or a large step towards that goal.