Calmer voices amid scare-tactic fearmongers

Quality commentary on the bailout:

Bankruptcy, not bailout, is the right answer

It makes me sick when people lay the current financial crisis at the feet of deregulation, ignoring government’s hand in the creation of this economic Frankenstein’s monster. From the article:

This bailout was a terrible idea. Here’s why.

The current
mess would never have occurred in the absence of ill-conceived federal
policies. The federal government chartered Fannie Mae in 1938 and
Freddie Mac in 1970; these two mortgage lending institutions are at the
center of the crisis. The government implicitly promised these
institutions that it would make good on their debts, so Fannie and
Freddie took on huge amounts of excessive risk.

Worse, beginning
in 1977 and even more in the 1990s and the early part of this century,
Congress pushed mortgage lenders and Fannie/Freddie to expand subprime
lending. The industry was happy to oblige, given the implicit promise
of federal backing, and subprime lending soared.

This subprime
lending was more than a minor relaxation of existing credit guidelines.
This lending was a wholesale abandonment of reasonable lending
practices in which borrowers with poor credit characteristics got
mortgages they were ill-equipped to handle.

I’ll tie this back into the debate from Friday–I’ve rarely heard so many things of which I need to be fearful. If you swallowed the debate hook, line and sinker you’d probably believe we’re on the brink of another cold war with Russia, that the economy is going to grind to a complete halt, that we should be scared out of our pants over Iran, etc., etc., etc.

Thank goodness there are people keeping a cool head in the midst of the “whatever works” school of campaigning and governing (see, e.g., fear). I know I’m going far afield here but I’ll bring it back quickly. Take a look at September’s Cato Unbound topic on responsible psychoactive drug use (brilliant discussion that I would be happy to drive traffic to). It drives me crazy that people believe it is legitimate for government to provide misleading or inaccurate information for the purpose of achieving a public policy goal.

I think it OK (meaning not unconstitutional and not outrageous if the
majority want it) for the government to promote health and well being
through public health campaigns that seek to change behavior,
particularly when the campaigns are directed toward youth. I generally
prefer for such campaigns to achieve their ends simply by providing
accurate information, but acknowledge that sometimes appealing to
emotions or providing only selective information is more effective at
changing behavior.

Don’t misunderstand the author here . . . “selective” information is merely a euphemism for lying to the public. It’s “spin” (with all the negative connotations that implies) . . . “technical” accuracy leading to inaccurate conclusions based on the knowledge of how people will interpret provided data from a “trusted” source.

Translate that into any topic . . . the economy? The War on Terror? I don’t know that all slippery slopes have the same grade, but when it comes to information we receive from our government, we seem to be pretty far down a pretty slippery slope already. I understand national security, which is to say that it is a legitimate reason to potentially withhold information, but it has been so misused over the last several decades even there it seems there is little reason to trust what we are being told.

So I take these dire warnings from Paulson in late-night meetings to Congressional leaders with much less credibility than perhaps others are. But let’s stop teasing Wall Street with a big government bailout, and let them get about the task of picking up their pieces. It can be done. We’ve seen them do it. But they’re going to drag their feet as long as there is the promise of free money out there. No reason to bite the bullet if you might get a Get Out of Jail Free tomorrow, right?

I hate living in a battleground state,

but it does make for some interesting scientific education about what motivates us:

6 Brainwashing Techniques They’re Using On Your Right Now.

How many of these have you seen lately? (No, I’m not talking about #1 . . . You’ll get that when you get there).

If you hear there will be discussion in front of your school board about “Teaching the Controversy” . . .

this year, or in the next couple of years, it will probably involve materials coming from the Discovery Institute, Christian fundamentalists’ front group for trying to tear down evolution. Here is one example of “Teaching the Controversy” this year from NC, but you know it is happening elsewhere.

In the wake of the Dover Disaster (a disaster for the Discovery Institute specifically and creationists/fundamentalists/evangelicals in general) the Discovery Institute has gone about trying to find ways around textbook requirements in order to get their ideas into public school classrooms. That tactic? “Supplementary materials”. As noted by John Timmer (introduced below), supplementary classroom materials often don’t have to meet the same standards as textbooks.

ArsTechnica recently brought in . . . whatever term you use for someone with the following credentials:

John got a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry (yes, that’s possible) from
Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology
from the University of California, Berkeley. He’s done over a
decade’s worth of research in genetics and developmental biology at
places like Cornell Medical College and the Memorial Sloan-Kettering
Cancer Center. In addition to being Ars’ science content wrangler, John
still teaches at Cornell and does freelance writing, editing, and
programming, often with a scientific focus.

to review the Discovery Institute’s new Supplementary Materials.

I would quote the rather damming final summary paragraph, but that would only distract and take the focal point away from the fact that the body of the review is a masterpiece in disembowling of these substandard “educational” materials. Here is a sample:

This presentation can also be considered a “bait and switch”—take a
real scientific controversy, tell your readers that it exists, and then
substitute in the controversy you’d like them to think exists without
comment. This is obvious in the section on the fossil record, where the
Reply section contains a long list of academic discussions of the
limitations in our collections of fossils. That section wraps up by
claiming these limitations, “have led some scientists to doubt that the
fossil record supports the case for common descent.”

Who are those scientists? Well, poor Malcolm Gordon (who actually wrote
in favor of common descent) gets dragged out again, but the rest aren’t
actually scientists, nor are their publications peer-reviewed science.
Instead, there’s a book by an Italian creationist and another by
Discovery Institute Fellows, including some of EE’s authors. The bait of real issues has been switched to a statement that isn’t actually supported by the footnote.

As a libertarian and someone who believes in the principles of federalism, I am generally in favor of decisions relating to educational standards being handled as locally as reasonably possible. However, as a strong believer in the principle of the separation of church and state, I believe there is a valid rational prohibition against either overtly or subtly trying to insert religious instruction into public schools, and that’s exactly the direction, the kind of pandering, that these materials support.

If our local school board, or the state educational board, started flirting with these materials or the DI, you can be certain I will be circulating this article to them. Just say to no non-science (in this case the similarity to nonsense being intentional) in science class.

More communist than China, more socialist than France

Add this article to the one below:

How We Became the United States of France

I’m starting to wonder whether, in the “first world” of countries, there is anything other than an awful mix of quasi-capitalism, nationalistic fear-mongering, and big government (e.g. massive taxes and tiny freedoms).

Seriously, the United States certainly had its problems back when freedom meant freedom–everything wasn’t sunshine, rainbows and tulips. And our fledgling nation was helped by seemingly endless natural resources. But we are not the nation we were, and neither major political party seems to have any inclination to look back and try to cull the good from the bad. Instead we look to the new role models of the world–China for national security, France for economic advice, Russia for foreign affairs.

It’s just a truly sad state of affairs, to know that you are living in the decline of power. Had we not abused our position, had we not driven down the road to hell with the bestest of intentions, maybe we’d still lead in education and innovation. Maybe we wouldn’t be looking down our economic backs at the pursuit of China and India.

The most interesting thought to me is that for years conspiracy nuts have been talking about things like the “New World Order” or “One World Government” or whatever . . . where the shadow brokers of power consolidate governmental power worldwide into the UN or some similar body to impose the world onto the United States, to destroy our economy and our values.

Did I miss the takeover? With China adopting more free market policies, with the U.S. government taking over entire industries . . . it looks to me as if the material distinctions between major governments are fading away. Maybe we did miss the invasion, while looking to the government to save us from ourselves. Is there some first world government model that is inescapable whether you are a Constitutional Republic or a one-party authoritarian state? Are modern governments trapped into becoming nearly homogeneous because of the power of the rich and the demands of the poor and middle class?

I don’t know the answers, I only think our direction is a sad one. Neither major Presidential candidate strikes me as truly caring one whit about change. Neither truly wants to change the direction of this country. And whether that change would be massive government control, or Chiacgo-school economic reforms, at least I could respect a candidate that really wanted change. That stood up and fought for something other than a slightly more or less mealy than the status quo that we choke down every day. This path is a slow death spiral towards irrelevance. I wonder how soon we will be able to look for the next paradigm shift in government, the next evolution in moving forward? That will at least be an interesting thing to look towards.

What a wonderful world we live in.

CFI: It’s time for science and reason

Hat tip to Pharyngula.  The message this video has to convey is important, and so I’ll let it speak for itself.

Why are our political ideas so entrenched? Science offers clues.

Thought this was a fascinating article on the correlation between fear and politics:

Political views ‘all in the mind’

You hear a lot of people talk about the “politics of fear”, and it turns out there may be something to that when dealing with the Republican base, and I’m saying that more observationally rather than critically (despite the fact that there are critiques to that approach).

What I don’t like about fear is that it isn’t part of a calculated, considered assessment and response. When you react purely out of fear, your almost random action is just as likely to exacerbate a problem as solve it.

Not being afraid is not the same thing is being stupid. For example, you hear about people fearlessly going into wild animal areas at zoos, and generally that kind of stupidity doesn’t end well. But there are people standing outside the zoo cage who aren’t afraid, but nonetheless conclude that it isn’t a great idea to climb into the hippopotamus habitat at their local zoo. I think this point gets lost on some people in political debates. Libertarians with an isolationist bent when it comes to military deployment are often accused of, essentially, pandering to terrorists–that if we aren’t afraid of terrorists to the point where we are willing to expend vast sums of money to go invade and violate the sovereignty of foreign nations then we must be stupid. Or that our calculated decision that these types of military actions aren’t in our best interest will only egg terrorists on because the terrorists will believe their fear tactics are working–that surely we are reacting out of fear and appeasement of terrorism than out of rational analysis.

Of course, fear isn’t always a bad thing. There isn’t always time to make detailed calculations and analysis; sometimes conviction and action in the face of fear provides an invaluable initiative. It’s just as true of humans as it is of flies (hat tip to io9.com for the link). When dealing with a life-or-death situation, or any highly time-sensitive issue, having conviction and making a fast first move based on stereotypes and other preconceived notions can can be the difference between victory and defeat. Fear can trigger this kind of non-thought action. In other words, victory in such a manner under imminent life-or-death circumstances has its own framework of moral justification, but not so much in other circumstances. A certain demographic or segment of the population believe don’t make that distinction–they believe that winning, in and of itself, is all that is important regardless of principle. But the bottom line is that initiative has deep roots in evolutionary biology, it’s just that the thresholds of fear vary significantly across individuals. And apparently have some direct correlations to our political views.

Fascinating stuff.

What’s the draw of pre-apocalyptic stories?

I read with interest io9.com’s article on the growing popularity of pre-apocalyptic movies, compared to post-apocalyptic movies. The post-apocalyptic concept had big audiences during the Cold War, sparked in my thought by the relative newness of the suddenly-potentially realistic possibility of total nuclear obliteration. Before that, probably the only thing people “realistically” thought could wipe out the entire world was God.

The io9 writer ascribed greater meaning to pre-apocalyptic stories this way:

We may or may not be living in a pre-apocalyptic world right now, but most of us are definitely not living in a post-apocalyptic one. The only thing post-apocalyptic stories tell us is that some of us may survive the end of everything, in whatever reduced circumstances. But pre-apocalyptic stories have a lot more meaning — they tell us how to use our last days, and whether it’s worth struggling against the looming disaster.

I would have gone one step farther than that in the first sentence. I believe one of the biggest draws to pre-apocalyptic movies is not that we may or may not be living in a pre-apocalyptic world, but that from a subjective perspective every day we live is a pre-apocalyptic experience to our ultimate individual apocalypse–our death. Pre-apocalyptic stories about the world are a macro-level view of our own internal dialogue about what we do with our life every day.

A lot of the stories described deal with the knowledge of a future event that is perceived as either unavoidable, or avoidable only at great effort. It’s date may or may not be known. Even in the Termiantor movies when the date “Skynet” was switched on was a known quantity, that was only an “end date” . . . the protagonists had up to that time to affect change, but not more unless intervening events provided more, and quite possibly a lot less. I think our lives are viewed much the same way. I may not know the day I’m going to die, but I know what my life expectancy is (roughly), so I can’t count on having much more than that time, and I may have significantly less time.

In these pre-apocalyptic stories, the protagonists are often trying to, obviously, prevent the apocalyptic event with the kind of fervor that we don’t normally run around with trying to stave off death. But not always true . . . Deep Impact comes to mind, where the apocalypse, at least for some, becomes unavoidable, and how do people deal with that. I think stories like that tend to be more uncomfortable, because they hit closer to home. We are all going to die, and we would rather watch movies about how heroes go about preventing the inevitable than movies about people trying to deal with the inevitable (unless they’re doing something very heroic while grappling with the inevitability, and even then that’s generally frowned upon as not being happy-ending enough). Let’s face it, most of us are, at best, heroes in small ways rather than big ones. Being a good parent, or a good friend, or being a volunteer, or a charitable contributor. Rescuing a dog.

I don’t think it’s necessary to invent artificial apocalypse scenarios, whether it is putting faith in ancient Mayan calculation, or the Biblical warnings of the end of the world (which was originally supposed to have come shortly after Jesus’ death), but I do think it is important to ascertain potential apocalyptic events that have their basis in fact, such as the potential consequences of global warming or how to deflect a giant asteroid, or, if humanity lasts far into the future, how to escape Earth permanently.

At the end of the day, we are all living in our own pre-apocalypse. If you would be unhappy with your legacy if you died tomorrow, then what is holding you up?

You can say it isn’t totally true, but you know it’s part true. U.S. slipping towards state control (communism/socialism)

US Is “More Communist than China”: Jim Rogers

Hyperbole by the interviewee? Maybe a little.

But not by that much. The Federal Government has now taken it upon itself to prop up pretty much the entire U.S. housing market.

A mess of fomented by bad government policy, now compounded by our decision to go for the quick fix that will ensure continued pain in the housing market for years to come–read the article for some of the potential issues down the road.

Free markets aren’t pain free.  They don’t guarantee success for everyone.

But free markets and small government is a sustainable system.  What we have now, what we are moving towards, is the literal bankruptcy of government caused by decades of asinine and ignorant interventionist foreign policy, by the ever-increasing size of government both in terms of social programs and also in the restriction of the freedoms of its citizens, by the massive bureaucracy regulating in some way all facets of commerce.

Maybe the only thing not sustainable under a libertarian system is The People–democracy.  Libertarians base their belief structure on the fact that people at heart are good, and want freedom.  But when armed with the power of the federal government, and the knowledge that, at least in the short term, something can be gained “free” by nothing more than the cost of your vote to vote those in office who will take from all to give to you.  Maybe the temptations of the power of government, wielded by those in a democracy who have little to lose by adopting a policy of greed by force, is just too much responsibility for the public to handle maturely.  The temptation to take by force with no consequence.  It boggles my mind, but here we are.

This story should be linked everywhere.

Obama confuses me–do we read them their rights, or kill them?

Obama to Palin: ‘Don’t mock the Constitution’

I don’t fully understand how Obama is positioning himself on the War on Terror.  In an effort to . . . gain the votes of independents? . . . he has adopted pretty much every Republican stance regarding the War on Terror.  On this topic the differences between McCain and Obama can be measured in nanometers.

Is there anything wrong with pointing out that a lot of our success in Iraq has been achieved by religious segregation, assassination, and, obviously, torture?  And in spite of the ignorance of our leaders for years about the Muslim socio-political landscape?  When we pull out and all of our carefully-constructed (and U.S. enforced)  walls and barriers start to come down, what happens?  We’ve brought the problematic militias on board . . . when we leave and they’re in power, what is the check on that power?  What prevents them from reigniting the sectarian violence that exists outside of the context of al Qaeda in Iraq?  Unless, of course, we unofficially make Iraq a colony of the U.S. by leaving a permanent military presence.

The problem is that Democrats don’t have the balls to stand up and say that our neo-colonial policies are a significant financial drain on our country and we would be much, much, much better off entering a period of relative isolationism compared to the past 60 years.  They don’t have the balls to say that yes, all suspects should have their day in front of a court, here in the U.S., or elsewhere.  They don’t have the nutsack to state that it is our interventionist policies that created an environment conducive in the long term to fomenting enemies of the country.

We just killed a major terrorist in Pakistan.  He used to be our friend, when it suited our purposes . . . surprise, surprise!  How many of those people are we training now?  Arming now?  Short term gain, long term failure.  And if your answer is otherwise, why is it different now than it was before?  Why is history going to give us a free pass this time for the same failed foreign policies of the past 60/70/xxx years in the Middle East?

Take Obama’s latest mixed message:

On the one hand (from the article referenced above):

Calling it “the foundation of Anglo-American law,” he said the principle “says very simply: If the government grabs you, then you have the right to at least ask, ‘Why was I grabbed?’ And say, ‘Maybe you’ve got the wrong person.’”

Okay . . . but wait (from the same article):

“My position has always been clear: If you’ve got a terrorist, take him out,” Obama said. “Anybody who was involved in 9/11, take ‘em out.”

So . . . if we spot a “terrorist” from 100 yards out, or from space, we can put a bullet in their head or drop a bomb on their house–that’s all good, apparently (regardless whether we hit the right target or not, or if they are actually guilty of the crimes we suspect them of).  But if we capture them, they should have rights?  Talk about selective application!  I understand that sometimes you have to hit someone from distance (despite the many civilian deaths that have resulted from those kinds of strikes, even with today’s technology), but the underlying issue is that Obama’s rhetoric is indistinguishable from McCain.

Keep in mind that if I absolutely had to vote between Obama and McCain, I would vote for Obama, but he’s not the great change agent he’s hyped as.  He’s more of the same, and he proved it when he didn’t vote against the bill giving telecoms retroactive immunity for illegal spying activities.  If he can be “convinced” that it’s ok for telecom companies to receive retroactive immunity for breaking the law in being complicit in illegal spying on Americans, why should I or anyone else have any confidence that he’ll protect our Constitutional rights in other ways?  Sure, he’ll push the pet Democrat rights like abortion, but when it comes to the power of the government and corporations vs. the rights of the people, the rights of human beings . . . he’s already shown his colors.  Sure, he’ll talk a good game about not taking big corporation money–he doesn’t really need it anyway, but he hasn’t shown me that he has any inclination to really put his foot down.  And that’s a damn shame.

You don’t want to mock the Constitution?  Don’t say we’re going to go around assassinating people.

If we really wanted change, this election would be between Kucinich and Paul.  This campaign couldn’t be shallower if it was a kiddie pool.

Google’s Open Source Browser–private browsing

I just read via Techmeme about Google’s new, open source browser project called Chrome.

Lots of goodies, such as the potential to speed up javascript. But also a private browsing feature similar to what is in existing browsers and upcoming in IE8.

With the open source nature of the project, we won’t have to worry about back doors being embedded in closed source code. There is a legion of users out there who will be snooping around the code.

All of the tools are out there to really privatize your browsing and online communications. All we need now is a galvanizing event that really pushes adoption. I would have thought that retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies for cooperating illegally with the current administration in spying on Americans would have been an excellent trigger point.

However, I think people distinguish between making a phone call and communicating over or browsing the Internet, despite the fact that voice communications are more often now occurring over the same technology.

But if it is one thing we can be sure of, it is that there will be other, large invasions of privacy ongoing. If there are enough people not accepting of it, then the trigger point will come.