God wants you to vote!

The separation of church and state does not mean that the individual voter should not consider his religious belief(s) in how he will vote.  Nevertheless, one should make sure his conscience is not self-contradictory, before he uses it as a measuring stick by which he chooses a candidate.

Rev. Franklin Graham says, in one and the same sentence, that God is in control and that evangelicals have no one to blame but themselves.  Not only are Graham's facts off, but the sentence is self-contradictory.

A terrible argument with a true conclusion.

I try to be logically consistent--which is to say that I try not to contradict myself.  Nevertheless, I am sure I do some times.  At times it is because my opinion has changed on an issue (in this sense, I am not embarrassed in the least by my contradictions, which are a sign of growth and learning).  Other times I have not fully understood an issue from all angles.  But I try not to contradict myself within the course of one and the same argument.  Jennifer Rubin, WP blogger, has an interesting article today on the problems with the primary process (at least on the GOP side).  Her conclusions (as ideas, not as conclusions) are quite interesting.

Nevertheless, good logic is not a matter of good conclusions (only), but of strong premises.  In the course of her argument, Rubin claims that the test of a GOP candidate has become to narrow:

The problem is the second half of this part of the argument:

You cannot claim both that the strainer is incredibly fine and that Romney somehow made it through.  Romney conformed to almost none of the conditions Rubin has described in the second paragraph above--he's not a life-long conservative by most standards; his position on immigration included the insane notion of "self-deportation"; he had little blue-collar appeal (47% remark did not endear him to this demographic); and he did little to wow conservatives with his rhetoric.  So, if you read her article today, just skip to the end:

Sometimes, where there's smoke there is just smoke.

President Obama won 100% of the vote in 59 precincts in Philadelphia.  This sounds an awful lot like the kind of percentage one expects in a dictatorship.  After all, isn't it statistically impossible to win by such a margin?  In a country (with a diverse population), yes.  But not in a precinct with homogeneous demographics.

(Full article).
Certain watchers cried, "foul!" regarding what appeared to be %150 voter turnout in certain parts of south Florida.  As it turns out, sometimes, where there is smoke there is just smoke.  The county simply counted each page of the ballot rather than each ballot: turnout was half of what was reported (two pages per ballot).  There may have been some serious glitches in this election, but Philly and south Florida provide no evidence of systematic fraud (yet, in any case).

Long live the Planet of Alderaan.

Governor Rick Perry has dismissed talk of Texas' secession from the Union.  I wonder how he feels about these other petitions.

Citizens United vindicated?

This week, James Bopp, the lawyer who successfully defended the Citizens United case before the Supreme Court, claimed that Obama's victory has vindicated Bopp's position.  "The lesson here is all the hype over independent spending was just completely overblown...  Nobody can buy an election."  (Full article at Mother Jones).  Bopp seems to be referring to the fact that Sheldon Adelson, Karl Rove and Linda McMahon all spent enormous amounts of money on campaigns that lost miserably.  Bopp takes this as an indication that he was right to defend the pouring of unlimited and undeclared money into campaigns.  The problem is that the Citizens United case was about constitutionality, not the affects of such a policy.  The question is rather more philosophical than practical--just because one can inject enormous sums of so-called dark money into an election without influencing the outcome of said election doesn't mean you should be permitted to do so, or to use Jeff Goldblum's words from Jurassic Park, Bopp was "so preoccupied with whether or not they could, [he] didn't stop to think if they should."

That's Democracy! (or not).

When I talk to students about democracy (the history of the institution in ancient Greece), I like to remind them that the word does not mean, as we are always taught, power to the people.  Deme is a Greek word which originally referred to the smallest geo-political unit within a polis (think: municipality).  In this sense, democracy means power to the municipalities (the word eventually comes to refer to the people living in those municipalities, and then simply people).  Kleisthenes saw that self governance was more easily accomplished on the local level--after all, who knows the local issues and problems better than those immediately affected?  For this reason, I've always been sympathetic to the notion of secession (at least in principle).  However, I cannot help but laugh at this:

Here is the full story.

The issue is not that secession is bad in principle, but that the petitioners seem to be driven by the fact of Obama's reelection.  In other words, this is a slightly different version of the classic, "if Obama/Bush/Gore wins, I'm moving to Canada".  The possibility that your candidate may lose is a part of any democracy which relies on voting.  Seceding from the union will not change that--unless your intention is to secede so that you can establish a dictatorship.

Every vote counts, but some more than others.

After every election cycle (presidential or otherwise) post game analysis begins.  Who were the winners and losers?  What went wrong?  What worked?  Fox News seems to be analyzing a different election, asking whether or not his reelection should have taught him.  They continue this narrative still.  Back in Kansas, there are real lessons to be learned.  This week the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case over the Voting Rights Act.  Here's a quick primer:  The Act was passed in 1965, requiring states with a history of discrimination at the polls to have any changes to voting procedures (change in early voting, change of polling stations) to be approved by the federal government.  Not all states are subject to pre-clearance, and many are calling this part of the Act (the Act which enforces the 15th Amendment) unconstitutional and discriminatory.  The case brings up a larger issue--voting procedure in the US.  Leading up to every presidential election you hear over and over that Ohio will decide who wins, or Florida, or Wisconsin.  This is because the election is not decided by popular vote (which is exactly as it sounds--the candidate with more votes wins) but by the electoral college--in other words, a candidate doesn't win votes, but states (hence the awkward pause caused Rove's refusal to admit that Obama had won Ohio).  Among the many (and obvious) problems with this system is the fact that the members of the electoral college do not have to vote with the citizens (depending on the state).  The electoral system is so dysfunctional that Florida can close its polls more than 40 hours after the winner is declared (which leads to the ridiculous circumstance of Romney conceding Florida more than 40 hours after he has lost the election).  It seems that, while we say, "every vote counts", some votes count more than others.  If there is one lesson to be learned from this election (sadly, we have not already learned this lesson: in 1824, 1876, 1888 and 2000 the president elect lost the popular vote) it is that the system of voting, counting and weighing votes needs to be revised.  Nevertheless, I think there are two major lessons, not one.  The second is that Citizens United needs to overturned as unconstitutional.  But more on that later.

Fair and Balanced

With the election over, the losers are bound to do some Monday-morning quarterbacking.  This happens after every election, whether the country goes Red or Blue.  Indeed, the football analogy is apt--a football team takes the time to analyze a loss so as to not commit the same errors.  Unfortunately, in this era of meta-journalism (reporting about reporting and reporters, as if that were news), much of the blame is bound to be placed on the media itself, and I saw a good bit of this by the folks at Fox News (and other outlets) this morning.  To be clear, the media has a strong influence on any election, as indeed they should, since their job is to inform the voting public.  It's been said that the media contributed to Ford's loss to Carter in '76--when the public saw that Ford was up in the polls and likely to win, the public was reminded that they were unhappy with him.  However, recognizing that the media influences an election is not the same as saying that the media was responsible for the outcome of an election.  As I've already pointed out, simply noting that MSNBC reported more negatively about Romney than Fox did about Obama is absolutely void of meaning until content is offered (that is, quantity is meaningless without quality).  This is where fair and balanced comes in.  Often the public assumes that fair and balanced means that for each negative story reported about Romney, the same network must report a negative story about Obama.  This, of course, requires a news network to make up news on occasion just so as to fulfill this false sense of balance.  In other words, in order to do their job, journalists are forced to abandon journalistic integrity.  Scott Whitlock complained that MSNBC mocked Romney's international gaffes while fawning over Obama's world tour.  Fox News' Rich Noyes presented "Five Ways the Mainstream Media Tipped the Scales for Obama".  As I see it, there are two ways to react to these claims (not to say accusations).  First, you can deny.  This is the simplest reaction, and the one which will be chosen by most, I suspect.  Second, you can admit that this is precisely correct.  MSNBC especially took Romney to task, and much more often and much more harshly than they did Obama (and more than Fox did Obama).  This is because Romney said some of the dumbest things imaginable during this campaign (the Putin comment), contradicted himself over and over, and chose a terrible running mate (only Palin could have been worse).  Obama certainly made his own mistakes on the trail, but were I to recount them now, I'd be falling into the trap of that false notion of fair and balanced I noted above.  The articles by Whitlock and Noyes are intended to show that certain media outlets are not fair nor balanced, implying that they are not doing their jobs.  Instead, with their lists and descriptions of the Romney campaign's errors and misjudgments, they are really making that case the the media outlets they have in mind have done their job quite well.  In effect, they are asking, "why should Romney be taken to task for a mistake someone else... noticed.  Maybe Romney should call Bob Loblaw.

Science and Politics

The debate over the role of science vs. religion in politics is not new.  More importantly, it is generally not cogent--it is seldom a conversation much less a debate.  I cannot have a conversation with you if you are more willing to believe in the pits of hell than in the Big Bang.

The conversation can and should be had.  So, to kick it off, here is an interesting reflection from NPR's Adam Frank, suggesting many key issues in the presidential election are scientific, even if the candidates are not talking about it.

Fox News has an eye on voter intimidation.

This story has been making the rounds this morning. I discovered it first at Daily Kos, and then at Comedy Central.  For both web sites, the story revolved around racism--Fox News, according the Daily Kos and CC is simply afraid of the black man.  The problem with this analysis is that it misses the mark--the problem over at Fox (on this question) is not that they are not 'color blind', but rather that they are blind.  Voter intimidation is a serious offence, no doubt, and should be condemned without qualification.  However, the gentleman in the video (and until I see him act otherwise, he is a gentleman), far from intimidating voters in the video, greets them and holds the door for them.  The overlying commentary by Fox commentator Laura Ingram (and friends) is sheer comedy in this context.

Pundit accountability

I absolutely hate the word wonk--I think in part because it is so ill-defined that anyone can adopt it as a moniker without actually meaning anything (to wit, calling Paul Ryan a numbers wonk--which, as far as I can tell, means that he can count... or not).  Nevertheless, I usually appreciate (which is not to say 'agree with') Ezra Klein, author of Wonk Blog over at the Washington Post.  One of his posts yesterday piqued my interest with a title that included the words pundit and accountability.  Holding pundits accountable is important because, in part, we expect the pundits to hold the politicians accountable.  Nevertheless, after reading Klein's post, I was rather disappointed.  The blog post was not at all about accountability, but about gambling.  Many pundits have made predictions in the last days and weeks based on poll numbers (I've already mentioned Nate Silver and Ari Fleischer in previous posts).  I particularly like Nate Silver, not because I agree with him, but because he is a gambler and not a pundit--you know what you are getting with him.  But the suggestion that the pundit's function is to predict (and in some cases wager, viz., Silver and Joe Scarborough) the outcome of an election is not only wrong headed, it lets the pundits off the hook.  If keeping them accountable is simply a matter of winners and losers (the pundits, that is, not the candidates), then I see no place for pundits in the political process at all.  I am reminded of the bar which introduces gambling machines.  Those sorts of bars become sad and dessicated--no longer are they places for social interaction, but instead are where those who no longer have anything to offer society are put out to pasture.