I think it’s funny that the mainstream conservative movement, which back in 2008 appeared terrified that a Democratic administration might try to limit the 2nd Amendment, is now seemingly terrified that the same Democratic administration–with regard to Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab–has decided not to limit the 5th Amendment.
It would seem to me that if you are worried that your political opponents will use threats of death, destruction, and mayhem to limit one set of rights, you wouldn’t want to use the same threats to limit another. It would seem…
To be fair, I think that the inverse of the conservative position (supporting trials for people like Abdul Mutallab but insisting on strict weapons bans) is an equally contradictory one held by the mainstream left. It’s just this particular contradiction has been very loud recently, and no one seems to be calling anyone out for simultaneously holding opposing opinions.
Gallup has two very interesting polls out that seem to pinpoint two specific ways of thinking in the US.
One poll reveals that 36% of Americans have a “positive image” of the word “socialism” while 58% have a negative one. (6% had apparently never heard either term enough to form an impression of them.)
A second poll says that 37% of Americans are worried that the government won’t regulate businesses strongly enough, but 57% are worried that government regulations will be too strong. (Again, 6% were obviously busy trying to figure out the difference between their asses and various holes in the ground, and didn’t hear the question.)
Given that these two separate surveys pulled in such similar numbers for such similar questions, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to suggest that just over one-third of the country has a basic left-leaning outlook as the basis of their political ideologies, and, conversely, just over half leans to the right. (And, of course, 6% of Americans are apparently too stoned at any given time to tell the difference between a newspaper and a microwave burrito.)
If these numbers do accurately represent the basic ideological divide in the US, it would go a long way to explain why Democrats always seem to be pushing towards the right, and talking about the “center” and “compromise,” while Republicans have taken to consolidating their message and punishing dissent within their ranks. If just over half of Americans tend towards the right, it is up to the Democrats to lure potential voters away from the Republicans. Likewise, it’s up to Republicans to hold their lines.
I was going through the xkcd.com archive last night when I found this comic. I have to say, it hit a little close to home. (Click the comic to see the last panel.)
Even better than the comic is the caption when you scroll over it on the xkcd page. It’s funny how way back in 1985 Orson Scott Card was able to get the Internet so right and yet so wrong.
Amendment 28
- The rights and freedoms granted in the Constitution apply as rights only to individual, natural persons. With regard to corporate entities these rights may be restricted or repealed by Congress, by the legislature of any state, or by any local government at any time through the normal legislative process.
- Individual, natural persons within the United States retain all their Constitutionally protected rights and freedoms regardless of the status of these rights for corporate entities. The rights of individuals may never be restricted or repealed, except as explicitly provided for in the Constitution.
I’m not sure if Section 2 is necessary, but I’d feel pretty dumb if I accidentally got everyone’s rights eliminated due to poor phrasing or an unexpected interpretation of the amendment. Kind of like how Texas may have accidentally outlawed marriage, which I think is hilarious, but it’s still a lesson for anyone messing around with the law. Also, I figured it couldn’t hurt to reestablish that our civil rights apply to everyone “within the United States” and not just to citizens. Some people seem to have forgotten that.
Two things popped into my head when I saw that James O’Keefe–the guy responsible for filming and, apparently, heavily editing the ACORN videos last year–and three other people had been arrested for messing around with Senator Mary Landrieu’s office telephones in New Orleans.
The first was that I will be very interested to see what happens when this investigation gets going. It’s the same thing I said when the ACORN videos came out, so it seems that this O’Keefe character just pulls stunts that require significant amounts of time to be resolved. The accusation in the nola.com article that they had “a listening device in a car blocks from the senator’s offices,” is interesting, but seeing as how I haven’t been able to confirm it with any other newspaper, I have to call it unsubstantiated for now.
The second was simply the phrase, “That’s cute. He’s like a little G. Gordon Liddy.” Just my bias, I guess.
What is the difference between the Bay Area’s 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, in which 63 people died; northwestern Turkey’s 1999 İzmit earthquake, in which 17,000 people died; and southern Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, in which a quarter of a million people are feared to have died? The answer is building codes.
In the US building codes exist, and they’re enforced. In Turkey they exist–kind of–but a few bucks in the right hands can make them go away pretty quickly. In Haiti there are no building codes whatsoever.”
If you’re anything like me, you want to help out the people in Haiti, but–thinking back to the political situation there prior to the earthquake–you’re worried that your money will either go to a fly-by-night scam or to fund soldiers “clearing streets…bringing law and order” rather than to the food, water, or doctors you had expected.
Well, I found this list of charities from the American Institute of Philanthropy. They all seem like worthy places to donate your money that spend little on administrative costs and won’t likely pay to help send down troops. I’ll be picking a group off this list.
Back in November, when a bunch of emails between climatologists were acquired by the anti-global warming crowd, climate scientists were accused of a lot of nasty things–not the least of which was writing computer programs that were rigged to show global warming was happening regardless of what data were plugged in to them. Global warming opponents urged scientists to simply rely on the data rather than using “tricks” to skew their graphs, and then danced around the Internet gleefully slandering empiricism.
At the time I thought it was a bit contradictory for global warming’s opponents to claim that scientists could write computer programs capable of skewing any climate data to make it appear that global warming was occurring, and that they should just observe the data without employing their “tricks.” It seemed to me that if the data were so malleable that scientists could make it say anything they wanted, there would be no benefit from studying it in its raw form. (It would be like telling someone to study the fundamental shape of clay.) Likewise, if the raw data were understandable, then scientists should be able to make graphs that bring out the data’s true meaning, or graphs that don’t make sense, but not graphs that say anything they want. (It would be like taking Lincoln Logs and trying to build a sports car. The structure of the logs won’t allow them to form a car’s shape.)
But I’m not a scientist, and lots of scientists were handling the issue nicely, so I kept all that to myself.
Then, on Monday, Bad Astronomy posted a graph devised by Princeton astronomers containing the entire visible universe…one graph. It was neat because the y-axis showing distance was based on logarithms, so each hash mark going up the side not only denoted an increase in distance but an increase in the increase in distance. (First 10, then 100, then 1,000, and so on.)
It reminded me of the global warming emails since the graph had quite obviously been skewed to make 1,000 Kiloparsecs take up the same amount of space as 1,000 Kilometers using this logarithm “trick” to steadily change the represented distances. It also made me realize why it can be important to fiddle with how data are presented on a graph. After all, even objects as comparatively close together as the planets of our solar system can’t be graphed easily or meaningfully if the distances are kept proportional. (Case in point.) If you were to create a graph of the entire universe with accurately proportional distances, it would be a giant file of empty space. And there wouldn’t be much use in that.
None of these “tricks” suggest a conspiracy regarding the size of the universe, just like the global warming emails didn’t suggest any conspiracy regarding the climate. Data sometimes just needs to be tamed and organized before people can make sense of it.
Alas, this has been old news for months now. I just thought I’d share.
I first saw the term “Great Recession” a few weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal. Then, suddenly, it was everywhere. Although people have apparently been saying it since around January of 2008, it really took off in mid-December, which is when Google News and Wall Street Journal searches start to pick it up.
The fact that the term suddenly appeared across the Internet recently could signal a general agreement among financial writers that the current crisis is finally far enough along that it can be named, put on a shelf, and treated as part of history in order to free up the more general phrase “the current financial crisis” for use when we hit the next one.
More importantly, though–and by “importantly” I mean worrisome–is if the financial community has decided that this one is over, then they’ve also decided that they survived. And when people survive something epic, they tend to see it as a proof of their worth and invincibility.
I guess I’m not surprised, although when I first heard this on the radio this morning, and the story started out, “Fox News has hired…” I thought it was going to be Lou Dobbs.
I don’t know what John McCain’s campaign managers were thinking when they unleashed this person on us.
