End the war on sense!

"Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages."
Samuel Johnson - 1758

America has been in a war of some kind or another for my entire life.

I see a callous and venal disregard for truth on all sides of every debate between everyone in America. This intellectual poverty astounds everyone I've met from outside the states.

I wish I knew a way out of this mess. I saw a ray of hope the other day - and oh! the irony! The Washington Post's On Faith blog called for a national debate on science policy. In a campaign thus far dominated by moral issues this would come as a welcome relief. Science - the quest for fundamental truths - could use a day in the sun. I'd love to know which national politicians could distinguish their ass from an asteroid.

It's not just truth that people try to sidestep, the framing of opinion around opinion, otherwise known as "guilt by association" gets to me. I'm more aware of it than most, as I use privoxy to eliminate web ads and translate common phrases into their logical equivalent (example - phrases like "cut taxes" gets replaced by "increase deficit spending") Unfortunately filters like this don't work on TV, and I've consumed far too much of that lately.

Ron Paul just got his 9 and a half minutes of screen time on Jay Leno, bracketed by an actor most famous for the Mission Impossible movies and his fringe religion, and a British punk band that never had a hit in the USA.

The youtubers were happy... Yea! We're on Jay Leno! Check out the video!

Most of the people in the audience weren't even born before the Police broke out of the punk sump.

But everybody else - the 10.5 million non-youtubers in middle America who actually watched the whole show - got an ear and eyeful.

As I cringed away from Johnny Rotten's harsh, atonal voice, I could imagine what middle America was feeling. People with mortgages and children in school generally don't dig the idea of anarchy, or revolution. Christians aren't particularly fond of Scientology... or the Sex Pistols for that matter.

Contrast Paul's appearance on Jay Leno with Barack Obama's. Obama got to express far more than his views on the economy - in his 15.5 minutes of screen time - and was bracketed by a pair of saner guests.

My score on Paul's Jay Leno appearance: MSM 20, Ron Paul 1.

Broadcast television has never had a good feedback mechanism. Yelling back at the television accomplishes nothing. Yelling back on youtube or in a blog feels good, but does little. Calling out all sides for reporting on events like this... well... it doesn't even feel good.

---

Time magazine just published a decent piece on Ron Paul. I wished they'd drop a few adverbs and adjectives, and spent the whole second page on real issues, but hey, it was Time magazine - I had low expectations and they exceeded them. I still had a quibble:

Their characterization of many Ron Paul supporters as nerds is um, er, far more accurate than some other things they've been called. They pegged me - though I'd prefer to call myself a software engineer.

Time doesn't allow open comments on their web pages. Boy, would I love to comment further on that piece.

All the major publications and news media would be far more credible to me if they always linked back to their sources and allowed open comments.

Later, seeing a pundit and Joel Stein, the author of that Time article, making judgements on monetary policy and Paul based on their fashion sense finally did do me in. I lost it entirely. These are the people calling the shots on the economy, showing up on television and writing for the popular press?

---

Wired published a piece about a botnet that was sending Ron Paul related spam. And - worst of all - the article didn't link directly back to its source.

My blood boiled. Wired: Show us the spam mail, including the headers. Show us the server logs. Tell us about your email setup. Show me the code - I said.

Note: I'd be pissed off if ANY candidate was using botnets, ok? I've been mad about the misuse of the Internet and the insecurity of Microsoft products for over a decade. I loathe spam and spammers. I have lost more time and work and energy to fighting off crackers, worms, and viruses than I care to think about.

So I did a little digging.

It turns out that the original researcher, Gary Warner, had posted the details from which that Wired story sprang on his
First Campaign spamming virus blog posting.

I would have been a lot less ticked off at Wired if they had bothered to publish that link.

The evidence posted there is pretty compelling that someone used a small botnet to send out some Ron Paul related spam. There's zero evidence that it was supported by the Paul campaign. I still resent the slant of the Wired piece
and would like independent verification of the virus/bot's existence. (update - independent verification now exists, and Gary Warner published a nice piece explaining his take on the whole brouhahah and making clear his opinion as to who was behind the botnet)

I asked a few sysadmins of much larger sites than mine to scan their spamboxes for this spam, too, just to see if we can independently verify Warner's results. It really would be news if finally the botnet operators had turned their interests away from sex and scams to politics.

I also sent Mr Warner an email requesting they publish some information about their setup while I did a little more digging on my own servers.

Of 3 email addresses of mine that were once widely published, each still collecting 70+ spams a day - not one has ever had a Ron Paul spam - not before, during, or after any debates. My primary email address (published widely for 5 years now) on gmail has an excellent spam filter, yet there was no political spam in my spam or inbox.

That's just the data I have. The sites that collect this spam for me do do some basic filtering before they hit spamassassin - I subscribe to a realtime blackhole list as one example. I look forward to more results, whatever they may be.

Sure wish Wired had a comments page, too. They've already had to revise that article once.

---

After that Wired piece appeared, this video alleged - with what appears to be actual links, and screenshots of an actual set of web sites - that a Rudy Guillani supporter paid writer Sarah Lai Stirland to slant that piece on Paul. There's some dodgy looking
pages in there, a real possibility of the video being faked - but perhaps there's a responsible sysadmin out there with a backup handy that can prove one way or the other - that the postings existed, or not. I wish archive.org captured history on a more frequent basis, and I sure hope somebody at wired... or in the MSM... or the government... investigates this claim. On one side or the other someone is due criminal proceedings.

---

I don't know what to think anymore.

I'm back to the same conclusion I came to earlier this year.

The only way to win is not to play.

I've had to battle with myself to not sink to the level of all sides in election 2008. I've had to delete all kinds of expletives and adverbs and adjectives that didn't add to the facts. (I kind of let myself go on this one, apologies).

I've used links to as many original sources I could find, on all sides, no matter what I thought. I've dug as deep as I care to go. It's been painful, and I don't want to do it anymore. I'm not cut out to be a journalist, and filtering out the effect of television, even in the small dosages I can stand, takes too much effort and energy.

I'm going to delete the flash player from my machine, logout for a good long while, and do something constructive.

See ya.

Labels: citizen revolt, democrats, election 2008, msm, national debt, red state, republicans, Ron Paul

  ¶ 1:50 PM 0 comments

  Discourse danged by deficits

The American Thinker had published a few articles that intrigued me, such as a piece on depressogenic media, but I kind of blew my cool at this piece. Rick Moran selectively reprinting just his hate mail bothered me, and further claiming that that represented all the email he got, really bothered me. Maybe it's true. I don't know. He was certainly inflammatory enough with his opening sentences to trigger visceral responses. But: my impression (and I am going to go and be scientific about this later today) is that most reasoned articles about Ron Paul with public commentary on them contain a high percentage of civil, well thought out, reasoned, individual statements.

Not a lot of “spam” to be seen there, either. Most pieces seem to be written on the spot, by earnest individuals that care deeply about these issues. I will back this up with data shortly.

American Thinker doesn't take web comments, only emails. It would have been nice to evaluate Moran's negative responses for myself. Well, not nice. Unpleasant. But statistical accuracy would be nice.

I emailed Rick Moran about this, and he suggested I write a letter to the editor of The American Thinker. Any one way flow of correspondence like this frustrates me enormously, but I wrote that letter anyway.

I kept my email neutral, merely suggesting that their publication would be far more credible to me if they had an open comment system and trackbacks. I'll go a little further in my blog, however.

Self selective amplification annoys me. It's rude to the reader and rude to the independent thinker. I immediately discount the credibility, greatly, of any article that doesn't permit open commentary on it. More people should.

It's not just the broadcast media that's rude, though. Comments made by all sides in any issue can be intolerant, misleading, wrong, biased, violent, and/or just plain wacko.

Hillary Clinton just staged a “spontaneous” bus stop. Now THAT really gets under my skin. How is that preferable to open discourse? But I digress.

I vastly prefer open, civil discussion and a mutual search for truth, and rarely get it.

Back in the 80s it always astonished me how many USENET netizens would write wonderful articles on the various newsgroups on the various issues of the day, yet never bother to print one out and send it to an editor of a major newpaper. Maybe many did. Few were published.

To me, open, even uncivil, discourse is preferable to letting the columnist or corporation control both sides of the conversation.

Still, I'd read a couple comments on another news source friday that really turned my stomach.

I was so upset that I had to take a couple days off from writing. To ease my agony I emailed the rabbi that runs The Wall. He suggested I absorb some mesilat yesharim and he told me that one way to cope with the often dirty thing called politics is to break down the word into its constituent parts:

Poli = Many
Tics = Bloodsuckers

I got a good belly laugh, hung up my keyboard, and went surfing.

[my company helped setup the webcam on the Wailing wall – 11 years and 25 million hits ago - sometimes I look at it for hours while I try to decide what to do, or what to think]

So, as of Friday I had been working for a while on two pieces, one on science and politics, the other on deficit spending and the economy. Neither was jelling. I looked up from my keyboard this morning to find that a random web commenter had made most of the points about the economy I was trying to make. Joy!

He commented (and DO click on this link, please, some good stuff here, and ask yourself, which wwas better, the article or the commentary):

The only reason we are not experiencing double, or even triple digit rates of price inflation is because of the willingness of foreigners to accept our debt and fiat dollars. Most of those trade deficit dollars go into U.S. government debt and -- THE STOCK MARKET, the rise of which is due to inflation, not economic prosperity. However, should foreigners tire of being loaded up with our debt and become too concerned because of the rapid rate at which our government is debauching our currency by massively inflating it, they will begin to disintermediate and flee out of dollars into other currencies or hard goods. If that trend accelerates, the dollar will collapse and you will suddenly find yourself paying several times as much for what you normally buy.

It happens rather frequently in the banana republics. It happened in the Weimar Republic in Germany just prior to the rise of the Nazis. It nearly happened here in the U.S. late in Jimmy Carter's term. The dollar was narrowly saved by a reduction in debt monetization and a skyrocketing prime interest rate that peaked at 20% in April of 1980.

The result of the 1980 dollar bailout was the devastating recession of 1982. Thanks to phony Republican conservatives like George Bush, along with the help of socialist Democrats, we are rapidly approaching the same dollar crises and resultant economic down-draft.

In addition, this long-term policy of deficit spending, facilitated by the Federal Reserve, has caused a steady deindustrialization of America. Our heavy industry has been decimated. How do we fight a full-fledged war without an industrial base? The deficit spending to support our world policing efforts is destroying our national defense capability.

Just to amplify that last point a little – without China and Mexico's computer manufacturing, the information economy would stop dead – and America would have few choices for chips to power all our military innovations.

With all due respect, I think if you look back, you will see that the federal budget was nearly balanced [in 2000] because of the gridlock between Clinton and Congress, not because Clinton was fiscally conservative. When there's a Democrat in the White House, Republican Congressmen tend to act more like Republicans. Conversely, when there is a RINO President, GOP Congressmen spend like they are in a contest to see how much of our money they can waste.

That's why the next best thing to having a true conservative like Ron Paul in the Oval Office is to have a Democrat President and a Republican Congress.

Gridlock is a GOOD thing.

I've long thought that Americans usually – unconsciously – voted for a representative government – one split between Democrats and Republicans – as a way to impose checks and balances no longer managed by the constitution. A one party state – of either Republicans, or Democrats – is minority rule. Broadcast media is also - too often – minority rule. It bugs me.

Labels: election 2008, hillary clinton, red state, rick moran, Ron Paul

  ¶ 11:38 AM 1 comments

  Researching Ron Paul

Over the last two days, my blog, which averages 74 readers a day normally, 90+/day or so when an A-list blogger bothers to link back - got over 6450 unique readers, according to google's adsense report, primarily through links from Lew Rockwell's blog, technorati searches for Ron Paul, and google searches.

I am publishing this data because they are the closest thing to an accurate poll of readership and interest that I can assemble and a hell of a lot more accurate than any other self selecting poll I can think of. I did some further analysis to see where in the US the readership came from, here.

My reaction? Wow. People are really motivated about Ron Paul. I got over 30 comments on my reluctant conversion, and some good points were made. I didn't know about how the Interstate superhighway system came to be, for example, and I got a steer to some excellent reading material.

Few stayed long enough on my blog to read anything else (roughly 1 in 4 clicked on another link). I still hope that I could get people on all sides of the issues to put away their axes and try to come up with constructive answers to my top 10 questions for America, but I'll keep plugging away at that, on my own, I guess.

Also I now have a little more sympathy for the redstaters (not a lot!) who have tired of the violent debates taking place in their living room. If this is the kind of welcome a typical new Ron Paul convert can expect, it's going to be a massive uphill climb for his supporters. Then again, several responses to my simple question about deficit spending on redstate did not make me feel particularly warm and fuzzy about that crowd either.

Probably the most comprehensive, well researched and heavily linked 4 pieces about Ron Paul's negatives that I know of was published at the Daily Kos (1, 3)

I'm still working through those articles. There are some potentially good points made, but far more research and thought is required on my part before coming to a conclusion. I'm still reading. I for sure don't think Ron Paul is doing himself a disservice by ignoring this sort of stuff.

Some notes:

The Kos author certainly wears his biases on his sleeve. As the fence sitter I am, I would be better persuaded by reading a piece with less adverbs and adjectives and more facts.

People of any political persuasion that use dialectic of "left vs right" or "far left and far right", lose me every time. I would really, really, really like to convince people that are trying to argue coherently about politics to frame their arguments in terms of the Pournelle Chart or something similar.

The Kos series depends heavily on descriptions of the content of a copy of a newsletter called the “Ron Paul Survival Report”, during 1993, which Paul claims he did not write. In particular, some racially insensitive comments about Rodney King in that newsletter offended many.

It would be good for the truth if somebody out there, on any side, would actually go and photocopy more of these newsletters and put them up on the web. According to At least one issue is preserved at the university of Wisconsin. Maybe more copies survive.

The Kos also relied heavily on an interview with Paul published in the October, 2001 issue of the Texas Monthly. It's behind a paywall. I invested 12 bucks in a subscription, and read that article on Dr No for myself. It was 12 bucks well spent. I also emailed the author of the piece and asked him to remove the paywall. The full content of Paul's statements on this matter were:

In spite of calls from Gary Bledsoe, the president of the Texas State Conference of the NAACP, and other civil rights leaders for an apology for such obvious racial typecasting, Paul stood his ground. He said only that his remarks about Barbara Jordan related to her stands on affirmative action and that his written comments about blacks were in the context of "current events and statistical reports of the time." He denied any racist intent. What made the statements in the publication even more puzzling was that, in four terms as a U. S. congressman and one presidential race, Paul had never uttered anything remotely like this.
When I ask him why, he pauses for a moment, then says, "I could never say this in the campaign, but those words weren't really written by me. It wasn't my language at all. Other people help me with my newsletter as I travel around. I think the one on Barbara Jordan was the saddest thing, because Barbara and I served together and actually she was a delightful lady." Paul says that item ended up there because "we wanted to do something on affirmative action, and it ended up in the newsletter and became personalized. I never personalize anything."

Some quotes from that article the kos author omitted are:

Back in his quiet, high-ceilinged office in the Capitol, the dreaded Dr. No turns out to be something different from the gun-toting, fire-breathing, right-wing militia nut his opponents would have you believe he is. Instead of a libertarian Genghis Khan, I am talking to a friendly, slender man with graying hair, wearing a standard-issue chalk-stripe suit. He would strike you as a kindly, crinkle-eyed, slightly absentminded family doctor, direct from central casting. In fact, he is a doctor, a prominent obstetrician in Brazoria County who has delivered four thousand babies, a good portion of those while serving as a congressman. He is answering, in a patient and good-natured way, a question asking if he thinks the federal government has become too powerful.
"I think it's a police state that is absolutely out of control," he says placidly, eating a modest lunch of canned soup and a white-bread sandwich at his desk. "We have eighty-three thousand federal officials carrying guns. Every regulation that is made, every federal law that is written, is done with the idea that there is a gun waiting right there to enforce it. If you don't pay your taxes or follow the regulation or use your land exactly as they tell you to, if you cut down a tree you're not supposed to or fill in a ditch, a gun will come and take your money, take your land, or put you in jail. Everything that is done up here is based on a gun. It's an armed state. It has gotten so big already, it's going to be hard to stop." He pauses, then smiles and says, "You know, I'm for gun control. I want to get the guns out of the hands of the bureaucrats."

...

What launched Paul into politics were two distinctly un-Misean actions taken by President Richard Nixon in 1971: He intervened massively in the U.S. economy by establishing wage and price controls, and he took the country off the gold standard. For Paul, these actions were unthinkable exercises of federal power. We all have our moments of clarity. His epiphany came on August 15, 1971. "I remember the day very clearly," he says. "Nixon closed the gold window, which meant admitting that we could no longer meet our commitments and that there would be no more backing of the dollar. After that day, all money would be political money rather than money of real value. I was astounded."

...

For reasons that even he cannot quite explain, in 1987 Ron Paul became the Libertarian party's candidate for president of the United States. Though his positions on most issues are identical to those of the Libertarians (abortion being the main exception), Paul admits that this was a strange, almost Sisyphean move, considering his prospects for victory. "I probably invested close to a year," he says. "It was a lot of time and effort. Sometimes I had some ambivalence about how productive it was."As it turned out, it was hugely productive but not in ways that Paul could see then. Though he got less than one percent of the vote in the 1988 presidential election, he managed to unite a vast network of true believers—not only staunch Libertarians, but also anti-gun control folks, fiscal conservatives, home-schoolers, right-to-lifers, school prayer advocates, isolationists, and people who generally felt that the U.S. government was veering out of control. Their financial support would become a key factor in Paul's return to congressional politics.

Labels: election 2008, online polling, red state, Ron Paul

  ¶ 8:36 AM 1 comments