Election recap

Just some commentary on some of the elections I was following this past campaign.

First, the losers:

• Christine O'Donnell - Too bad this woman didn't win.  From early on, at least on the national stage, it didn't seem like the election was going to be about issues, but about smearing O'Donnell personally.  Ironic that the supposed party of tolerance and acceptance would slam O'Donnell for "dabbling in witchcraft" YEARS ago.  The whole brouhaha about her anti-masturbation stance (which, once again, was on MTV YEARS ago!) was unsurprisingly lampooned by every moron who had the time to attend political rallies or get air time.  Know what masturbation is?  Self-love.  Too much self-love equates to narcissism.  And O'Donnell is spot on about pornography:  It can be destructive to relationships.  Look the statistics up.  To be fair, what O'Donnell doesn't get is it's about everything in moderation.  More than anything, the O'Donnell-Coons campaign exposed rampant misogyny alive and well on the Far Left.  Most prominent was Bill Maher, who vowed to continue releasing embarrassing video clips of O'Donnell from his failed talk show until she came on his current-testament-to-how-much-sleaze-HBO-will-tolerate.  O'Donnell wisely didn't take the bait, relegating Maher to only feel he's important to the national political debate.
• Sharron Angle - Apparently, the voters of Nevada and I disagree about whether Sen. Harry Reid is representing their interests.  Angle rightly hammered Reid over the issue of illegal immigration, but may have spent too much time and money on that.  Joy Behar, clueless twit that she is, nearly torpedoed Reid in the final days with her charges of "racism" against Angle's anti-illegal immigration ads and calling Angle a "bitch" who would "burn in hell".  Angle marvelously took the high road and turned Behar's verbal bile into campaign cash and sent her flowers for helping her campaign.  Joy still wouldn't shut up, so Angle continued to laugh her way to the bank.
• Carly Fiorina - This one was a close one against Barbara "Don't Call Me Ma'am" Boxer.  Fiorina might have eked out a win here had it not been for the hairdo comments about her opponent.
• Meg Whitman - Sadly, too few people failed to see through the cheap political stunt pulled by Whitman's former housekeeper and politically-driven attorney Gloria Allred during the California gubernatorial campaign.  Allred essentially used Diaz as a pawn to give Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown an edge.  Greta Van Sustern, hardly a conservative, rightly berated Allred for conduct that definitely wasn't in Diaz's best interest.  Couple this with NOW throwing its support behind Brown, even after he or an aide were caught on tape calling Whitman a whore, and Whitman's campaign was successful at least in exposing the kind of feminism that NOW and Allred really believe in:  Empowering liberal women only.  Or in other words, sometimes promoting liberalism over female empowerment.  Hypocrites.
• Chris Barden - Doing my best to continue following Minnesota politics while living in Iowa, I was impressed with the thoroughness of his case against Lori Swanson.  However, Barden thought he was making a courtroom argument against the populist Swanson who can keep her teflon coating by pursuing companies under the guise of consumer protection.  Lest I fall into the same trap the Left has and accuse the voters of being stupid, I do have to wonder if a majority of them in Minnesota let their passions guide their votes.  After all, it's stylish to hate corporations as evil, faceless tyrannies without once considering their motivations.
• Dan Severson - Not enough visibility.  Incumbent Mark Ritchie won the last election in 2006 with the help of ACORN.  Since then, the Secretary of State position has become a politically-charged position.  The 2008-9 recount between Norm Coleman and Al Franken exemplified this.  It worries me when uncounted ballots are "found" in someone's car trunk in a close race. Evidence in a trial is inadmissible unless there is a clear and uncompromised chain of custody.  Why should it be any different for an election?  Sorry, once there's a chance the ballots could have been compromised, the safe strategy is not to count them.  I'm all for everyone's vote counting, but what about when you cease to be sure whether it's really their vote?  Ritchie's shtick has been about not disenfranchising voters.  Except, curiously, absentee voters. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the voting patterns of deployed military personnel.  Just a coincidence.  As Minnesota gears up for a gubernatorial recount, I hope Tom Emmer is more tenacious in challenging the partisan Ritchie.  However, if Minnesota ends up with a Governor Dayton, I'm comforted by two things:
• Both houses of the Minnesota state legislature swung to GOP control for the first time in decades, nullifying some of the damage Dayton could do.
• I'm permanently moving to Iowa, so any economic damage Dayton could do to Minnesota automatically would benefit the "sane" states bordering Minnesota.

Now the winners:

• Chip Cravaack - MN Rep. Jim Oberstar (D) thought he had a seat for life.  However, supporting economically disastrous Cap-And-Trade legislation and referring to some of his constituents as "flat-Earthers" did not endear him in those same voters' eyes.  Oberstar claims permanent residence in Maryland and reportedly only had one political contributor in-state.  That certainly didn't help his case.
• Michelle Bachmann - Representative Bachmann was a lightning rod for Dem efforts to unseat her this election.  Pelosi, Biden, and Obama all lent time to give Taryl Clark the edge in the MN-6 US House race.  Why?  Bachmann isn't part of the GOP leadership.  But she is a successful conservative woman.  Bachmann has long dealt with the naked misogyny that Sarah Palin dealt with as a vice-presidential candidate and later as a private citizen.  Two low points for the attacks on Bachmann:
• Joy Behar saying that Bachmann was anti-children.  Joy, if Michelle was anti-kid, why would she give birth to five of them and foster 23 others?
• Chris "Thrill Up My Leg For Obama" Matthews asking if Bachmann was "in a trance" because she wouldn't give him the answers he was looking for regarding whether a GOP-dominated House would conduct witch-hunts on "un-American" activities.  Bachmann's wouldn't bite and simply returned the serve:  "I imagine that thrill on your leg is not quite so tingly anymore".  Point. Set. Match.
• Dan Webster - Holding his own in a race against the mentally-deranged Alan Grayson, Webster was the victim of perhaps the most fallacious ad I've seen.  Grayson's campaign took Webster's comments before a gathering of Christian men and twisted the words completely around to paint Webster as misogynist who believed women should submit to their husbands.  For this, Grayson and his campaign labeled Webster "Taliban Dan Webster".  Too bad what Webster actually said to the men was that they shouldn't use the quote about "wives submit to your husbands".  The ad was so over the line that MSNBC left-biased "info-babe" Contessa Brewer opined to guest Grayson that the ad had crossed the line.  Grayson just smiled his creepy smile and dismissed her protests.  On election night, Grayson naturally blamed the weather for his 18-point loss.  Did I miss it?  Was Florida hit with a blizzard on election night?  Damn that Global Warming, robbing Grayson of his divine right!
• MSNBC viewers:  Seeing themselves as a foil to the "hyper-partisan" Fox News Channel by ironically, being even more partisan in the opposite direction, the MSNBC dream team has doubled down on stupid.  Keith Olbermann, a frequent critic of Fox News' hosts contributing to political campaigns (though News Corporation's rules permit them to do so as long as it doesn't impact their ability to do their jobs effectively), ended up being put on indefinite suspension after it was revealed he had given the maximum allowable contributions to three Democrats' campaigns without prior permission, in violation of NBC's rules.  Personally, I think Keith should just get a slap on the wrist for this, as his material is pure comedy gold.  Without him, the conservative Newsbusters site might have to layoff some of their bias watchdog!  Most importantly, the show could be worse:  It could be called "Countdown with Alan Grayson" now!
  
  Naturally, Rachel Maddow attacked Fox News instead of hers and Keith's employer, whining about how FNC's employees are not forbidden from these contributions.  Umm, Rachel, every employer makes their own rules.  Don't like it?  Work somewhere else!
  
  So how does this benefit the 12 viewers MSNBC has left?  Well, with the upcoming acquisition of the channel by Comcast, some changes to their business model might be forthcoming.  I doubt Comcast will tolerate MSNBC being a losing business venture like GE's Jeff Immelt did, mainly because Immelt has used MSNBC as a propaganda machine to promote policies that ultimately benefit GE.  Olbermann's departure quite possibly was prearranged, and Phil Griffin just looked for a pretext.
  
  In the end, I am a strict laissez-faire capitalist.  I believe competition among the news companies is good, and a FNC monopoly on cable news would be no better the monopoly CNN held for many years.  Competition keeps 'em honest, and a MSNBC that competes with FNC on actual news reporting  rather than just news commentary benefits everyone.
  
  Yeah, I know.  Keep dreamin'.

This election, I noted that there's one of those universal constants with regards to how lefties handle getting trounced in an election:  Blame the loss on voter stupidity.  I recall being at a Democrat-heavy election party in '08 when the news announced Bachmann's win then.  I recall a lefty at the party saying something to the effect that Bachmann won because the voters in the 6th district were "in-bred morons".

Keep thinking that way, lefties.  Don't take the pounding as a reminder of who the boss is, and adapting yourself to meet the boss' interests and needs.  Just say the boss is wrong.  No wonder you're in the unemployment line...

"Sticks and stone may break my bones, but names will never hurt me."

That was the saying that I always heard from my mother as I was growing up.  Nowadays, we are told that "words can hurt."

Uh, no.  Words have no power over you unless you let them.

For example, if some "enlightened" smug Prius-driving liberal calls me a global warming denier, I simply terminate any hopes of having a rational debate with him.  I'm through with the game of spending time defending my character.  It's easier to attack someone's character than their logic.  Hence the negativity of political ads.  The moment I stop to explain why I'm not a denier, the liberal has won:  He/she has moved the argument to their comfort zone-- They attack me, I defend myself.  Some think this is the way to "win' the argument.  It's not.  It's merely a way to stop it.  One of three things happens:

1. The smeared person switches to defense mode and the original discussion ceases.  Score 0-0, smear agent successfully covers up the holes in their argument with fresh coat of tar on the other's character.
2. The smeared person takes the high road and walks away.  Score 0-0
3. The smeared person gives the smear agent the knuckle sandwich he/she so richly deserves.  Score 0-0.

 So with this latest whining from Gays and Lesbians Against Accurate Depictions (GLAAD), I want to throw my support behind Vince Vaughn.  He's absolutely right when he says humor can bring us together.  GLAAD's over-reaction to a line in a movie is what pulls us apart and polarizes us.  Here's the line:

 Ladies and gentlemen, electric cars are gay.  Not homosexual gay.  But my-parents-are-chaperoning-the-dance gay.

As Al Capone (played by Robert DeNiro) said in The Untouchables:  "You know, we laugh not only because it's funny, but also because it's true."

And that's the ticket.  Electric cars are gay.  It takes a significant amount of manhood depression to drive something that reminds you that you need to pick up AA's from the store!  Masculinity, in it's purest form, is about men tapping into their primitive sides.  Men are on average physically stronger, larger, and more aggressive.  Don't blame me, blame biology.  Blame the testosterone flowing through me as I hammer out this screed.  Blame thousands of years of history.  The Amazons were the exception, not the rule.  Why is it any surprise that most men would shy away from being too civilized?  That's what an electric car represents:  That you care about your impact on the planet.

Screw that!  What men's names are familiar to us thousands of years after they lived and died? Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, and Attila the Hun.  Do we remember the men who sought to lessen their impact on the planet?  Will we remember Al Gore in a thousand years?  Or 500?  Or 250?  No, because the man is a hypocrite.  He wants his fellow men to act against their nature, to be more civilized, never mind that poor Al has gotten plenty of press for his own wasteful lifestyle.  If Caesar was apologetic for who he was, accounts of it have certainly not survived the test of time.  Had King Leonidas been more "civilized", he might have found a way to strike a deal with the Persian Empire and dramatically changed the face of civilization 2000 years later.

The promotion of the government-subsidized Chevy Volt demonstrates this affront to masculinity.  It's civilization telling us to stop hunting our food, to stop living how and where we want to live.  And when a movie line taps into our built-in response against being shackled by civilization, another group comes in and tries to shackle our speech and our minds.  GLAAD wants gays and lesbians to be accepted?  Fine, I accept them.  But stop your futile efforts to change the way I speak and think.  You'd have an easier time changing Earth's orbit around the Sun.

Bucking the trend

According to a couple of articles I came across, I do not fit the stereotype of a conservative.  At least not the stereotype that liberals envision when they think of conservatives.

The articles dealt with how choice of vehicle indicates political leanings.  Drive a small, fuel-efficient car, you're probably a tree-hugging liberal living in a cramped studio apartment in an urban center.  Drive an SUV, you obviously don't give a shit about the environment, you hateful urban-sprawl-promoting suburban redneck!

Well, wrong on both counts.

I have two cars.  One is a sports coupe.  The other is an entry-level SUV.

I've had the sports coupe for a few (12) years now.  It suited my purposes when I first got out of college.  I needed something to get me from point A to point B without burning a ton of fuel to get there.  I needed only to move my person back and forth to work.  Don't get me wrong.  I still wanted something a little fun.  Something with enough power and handling to extricate me from a potentially life-threatening situation.  Still, it gets 25/29 city/highway mpg.

A few years later, I decided to spin out on black ice in an intersection and put it into a snowbank.  I extricated it without too much difficulty, but I realized I wanted something a little better suited to traveling on icy roads.  Something will all-weather tires.  Something a little more grown up.

In the midst of high gas prices, I exploited the laws of supply and demand and purchased an SUV.  An entry-level SUV that didn't perform too badly on fuel economy: 21/25 mpg.  I didn't get an SUV because I enjoy burning fossil fuels.  Quite the opposite.  Burning that fuel quicker means I have to replenish it more frequently.  And that costs me money.  But when you can grab a load of lumber for a landscaping project, pick up a new office chair, and stop at the grocery store on the way home, it means you'll use less gas than a similar two or three trips in the sports coupe.

Fuel efficiency is important to me, but cargo capacity has become more important as I've aged.  And during a recent move, towing capacity showed its value as a potential time- and money-saver.  Exactly how heavy a trailer can a Prius tow anyway?

Oh, those clever Dems!

Voting is like driving:  Choose "R" to go backward, "D" to go forward.

Oh my, how clever!

Wait a minute.

I don't have a "D" on my gear shift.

Instead, I have the numbers 1-5 and an "R".  Hmm, guess the analogy falls apart for me.  No offense to automatic drivers, but I prefer to do something besides push the pedals and hang on.  It's the same with voting.  Making a choice and then disengaging from the experience for the rest of the journey seems kind of dumb to me.

Actually, since it's the progressives in the White House now, let's continue the driving analogy.  What does "P" stand for on an automatic shift lever?  Going nowhere fast.

Also, when driving, going forward constantly is impossible.  You have to turn from time to time.  Sometimes you turn left.  Sometimes you turn right.  Do too much of either, and you end right back where you started.

What about that cliff ahead?  Do you go forward, over the cliff?  Or do you turn?  Even better, do you reverse?

Why do liberals always screw up analogies?

Then again, maybe I've over-analyzing a bumper-sticker-sloganeering mentality.

Debate with these people is impossible...

All of the deniers- we refuse to grace them with their chosen name, "skeptics"- are dangerous for they create a false debate around the existence of climate change and divert attention from the real debate: "What are we going to do about climate change?".

-- excerpted from "Hall of shame | Rising Tide UK"

Remember what I've said before about the people who throw around this term "denier"?  They've indicated a cessation in their own critical thinking.  Anthropogenic climate change should not be and should never be something to be believed in.  Nor should it be something that is not believed in.  I will credit the so-called "Separation of Church and State" crowd with the notion that matters of faith and matters of science should not co-mingle.

If I deny ACC, does that mean you believe in it?

On the other hand, if, based upon the evidence I've seen so far, such as:

• The infamous "Hockey Stick" graph that was published in 1998 by Professor Mann, whom refused to share either the raw data or his model upon which he drew his conclusion for years, even though the study was funded with taxpayers dollars.  In 2005, he made available the source code to the model.  When it was released for scientists to peer review, their criticisms of the methodology were reinforced by a third-party panel assembled at the behest of members of Congress. 
• The e-mail scandal that wasn't a scandal, I guess, at the University of East Anglia, with excerpts describing a massaging of the collected data and collusion to suppress a view at odds with the grant recipients' money-maker.
• Thousands of surface temperature monitoring stations across the U.S. with data corrupted by their placement next to A/C exhaust fans, asphalt parking lots, etc.
• The uncomfortable truth that some of the same scientists who tell us with certainty that the globe is warming were telling us, with similar certainty, that the globe was entering into another ice age. Granted, scientists do draw the wrong conclusions from data sometimes, but I've not heard a compelling argument in which the scientist does the following:
• Acknowledge he/she was wrong.
• Do a little bit of introspection as to why he/she arrived at the first conclusion, now regarded as erroneous, and what assumptions were incorrect, and what outlier evidence incorrectly discarded.
• Show how, upon correcting these flaws, the new conclusion is supported

Those are just some examples, but you get my point.  But the ACC proponents have moved from "Here is the evidence to support our hypothesis" to "You must believe!" or "Just trust us, we know we're right!"

Sorry, I'm an engineer.  The just-trust-me explanation only works for that one area where I acknowledge science, logic, and reason are useless to me.

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Women.

I keep trying to read the Huffington Post...

... but to see things from their point of view, I'd have to have my head pretty far up my ass.


You see, I don't live in an ideological/political echo chamber.  I try to watch Keith Olbermann.  I try to read the Huffington Post.  When liberal commenters leave their "home" blog URL as part of their comments on a conservative blog post I read, I visit the site to see if there's an insight, a new, rational viewpoint.

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, what do I see?  Conservatives are evil.  Republicans are stupid.  Rethuglicans.  Silly Bible-thumpers who reject science.  Global warming deniers who'll look to their imaginary friend in the sky to protect them.  Crooked Wall Street types.  They only care about money!

Seriously?  Do these people live in Fantasy Land?  In my experience, nobody is that one-dimensional.  Except, of course, the conservative Christians whom are often cast as heinous villians or dunder-headed comic relief.  I've concluded that the people who leave such comments are the type who'd say they don't have any conservative friends.

That could be true in the following ways:

• Their conservative friends decline to reveal their political leanings because they do not wish to expend energy defending themselves from juvenile attacks.
• Their conservative friends wish to keep their political leanings secret out of the interest of preserving their friendships.
• These people are living in an environment hostile to the very notion of dissent and non-conformity of thought.  Certain districts of San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland spring to mind.
• Some combination of the above.

I know I've kept my religious beliefs and political leanings to myself because of the above.  I've got a friend who's hardly spoken me since he learned I didn't buy into the global warming alarmism.  My friend is a civil engineer who did his grad work at MIT, yet he called me a denier instead of a skeptic.  I blame his chip-on-her-shoulder wife.  I've got another friend who ripped on Catholics just the other night.  She's ripped on Republicans and people with small-town values (often one in the same) in the past, characterizing them as unintelligent, close-minded, etc.  She has since learned I am one of those people she has belittled and continues to belittle.  Curious how she has reconciled the contradiction.

Anonymous slander as a debate tactic

I don't know why I bothered:  Reading a newspaper, is, to me at least, a waste of my time.  The "news" is so often filtered through a columnist, copy writer, editor, executive editor, to the point where it's quite the work-out to go through and pick out facts from the writers' perception of the facts.

Case in point.  Anthropogenic climate change (ACC).  The notion that the global climate is changing, and that we're responsible.  To some degree.  Is it possible there could be debate on how responsible we are, or how much the climate is changing?


Subscribers to the ACC theory (in Sam Kinison mode):  NO!!!!!!!  HERETICS!!!!!!!!  THE DEBATE IS OVER, YOU WORTHLESS BITCH!!!!!!!





So, I browsed the on-line version of the Minneapolis Star & Sickle-- er, Star-Tribune.  It had a story discussing how some people are no longer debating if ACC is significant, but how to adapt to it.

That was what the story was about.  But commentators from both sides of the political spectrum chimed in.

Then I saw what one comment said:

The Joy of Ignorance

The gist of what several commenters to this story have to say so far is: "We don't need no stinkin' science!" Yes, I'm sure that despite the fact that researchers across the globe are taking careful measurements of weather, sea levels, core ice layers, receding glaciers, deep ocean temperatures, and the changing plant and animal ecology--the climate change deniers know better. The deniers probably come from a long line of 'intellectuals' stretching back to the Flat Earthers. Changes to one's life is fearful for many. For the rest of us, it's prudent to study what's happening with the earth's climate and to understand how humans are influencing it. I'm glad that scientists are meeting--both to discuss prevention of climate change late in the game---as well as how to adapt to it.

posted by inlandsea on Sep. 15, 10 at 11:46 PM | 

53 of 83 people liked this comment.

Nothing turns me off to debate like a term like "denier".  My best friend, a very intelligent man whom got his Master's from MIT, referred to me as a denier in the course of what until that point had been a cordial debate.  To me, calling some one a climate-change "denier" is the debate equivalent of calling them a "Nazi".  With such an emotionally-charged label, you've just forfeited the debate.

Calling someone a denier actually shows the inflexibility of your own position.  Very few things in science are actual universal laws.  Most things in science, especially life sciences, are theoretical in some part.  So when someone expresses skepticism over something like ACC because of an incomplete or corrupted set of temperature data, or the tarnished reputations of some of its leading adherents to the theory, and they are labeled a "denier", as opposed to the less-emotional, more factual term "skeptic", it betrays the ACC theory adherents' rigid and uncompromising beliefs.  How many times have they told us The debate is over?

The comment by inlandsea shows what too many on the other side think of dissent.  Deniers, flat-Earthers.  Then ascribe a psychological reason for the dissent.  Disregard things like temperature monitoring stations operating next to an A/C exhaust fan adjacent to an asphalt parking lot in July.  Disregard e-mails speaking of massaging data to get the desired results, or seeking to discredit or silence people with data that does not support your theories.  Disregard scientists who publish an infamous "hockey stick" graph that has become the Gadsen Flag for the ACC advocates and refuse to share their flawed data model for years, even though the research was publically funded.  Sadly, inlandsea is not alone in his/her thinking:  64% were OK with an analysis that demeans and then attempts to psycho-analyze someone who looks at a set of data and just doesn't draw the same conclusion from it.

I'm reminded of a recent episode of Ice Road Truckers that I was watching:  One of the truckers, Hugh Rowland, was trying to climb an icy pass and momentarily went into the opposing lane to get the needed traction, causing an oncoming truck to go into the wrong lane in turn.  The other trucker unleashed a litany of crap at Rowland over the radio.  To be fair, Rowland should have said he was going into the oncoming lane to get traction.  But the other trucker didn't even think this might be a reason.  He just started cursing Rowland out over the radio.  Rowland, of course, is brash and unapologetic, simply saying, "You're a real tough guy on the radio, but meet in the parking lot and I'll knock your teeth in."

Commenters like inlandsea are the same way:  In possession of the courage of lions when safely behind a keyboard and the anonymity of a handle.