7-Election '08

This is my third US presidential election (2nd one that I get to vote in) and I am loving it. I think it's a crazy system, but oh, boy, do I love all the high drama.

Today I heard about something that really tickles my fancy. 7-Eleven customers can choose between Obama or McCain coffee cups and the results of the informal poll are tallied daily. Apparently this poll correctly predicted the results of the last two elections.

In the 2000 7-election their George W Bush coffee cup outsold the Al Gore cup by just 1%. The 2004 7-election results tracked identically with published national results. 51% for Bush and 40% for Kerry

As a former marketer, I think this is a brilliant marketing campaign. Kudo's to the marketing team at 7-Eleven. You can follow the results daily.

I hope that this year, before all the journalists start commenting on polls, that they do a short statistics course so that they can correctly report on polls. I become rather irate when I read reports that claim that candidate x has overtaken candidate y in the polls by 2 percentage points, only to discover that the margin of error is 6% and the difference between the candidates is only 2%. How difficult is it to understand the concept of a margin of error? Then there are all the gleeful reports where the journalists haven't checked the study design...

The Daily Show On The Bail Out

Sometimes I think that the only sensible political commentary is made by the comedians.

Sam Harris on Sarah Palin

As most of my friends and family are aware, I totally aghast at the love affair that a good part of America seems to be having with Sarah Palin.

I'm horrified that people want as a leader of this country, someone who is just like them. I don't want someone just like me as president. I want someone who is super intelligent, highly educated and well versed in international and national politics. I also want a clear thinker, not someone who thinks that her god is the cure for all that ails this country. Sam Harris writes what I wanted to say so much better than I ever could:

The problem, as far as our political process is concerned, is that half the electorate revels in Palin's lack of intellectual qualifications. When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. "They think they're better than you!" is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. "Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!" Yes, all too ordinary.

We have all now witnessed apparently sentient human beings, once provoked by a reporter's microphone, saying things like, "I'm voting for Sarah because she's a mom. She knows what it's like to be a mom." Such sentiments suggest an uncanny (and, one fears, especially American) detachment from the real problems of today. The next administration must immediately confront issues like nuclear proliferation, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and covert wars elsewhere), global climate change, a convulsing economy, Russian belligerence, the rise of China, emerging epidemics, Islamism on a hundred fronts, a defunct United Nations, the deterioration of American schools, failures of energy, infrastructure and Internet security … the list is long, and Sarah Palin does not seem competent even to rank these items in order of importance, much less address any one of them.

Palin's most conspicuous gaffe in her interview with Gibson has been widely discussed. The truth is, I didn't much care that she did not know the meaning of the phrase "Bush doctrine." And I am quite sure that her supporters didn't care, either. Most people view such an ambush as a journalistic gimmick. What I do care about are all the other things Palin is guaranteed not to know—or will be glossing only under the frenzied tutelage of John McCain's advisers. What doesn't she know about financial markets, Islam, the history of the Middle East, the cold war, modern weapons systems, medical research, environmental science or emerging technology? Her relative ignorance is guaranteed on these fronts and most others, not because she was put on the spot, or got nervous, or just happened to miss the newspaper on any given morning. Sarah Palin's ignorance is guaranteed because of how she has spent the past 44 years on earth.

I care even more about the many things Palin thinks she knows but doesn't: like her conviction that the Biblical God consciously directs world events. Needless to say, she shares this belief with mil-lions of Americans—but we shouldn't be eager to give these people our nuclear codes, either. There is no question that if President McCain chokes on a spare rib and Palin becomes the first woman president, she and her supporters will believe that God, in all his majesty and wisdom, has brought it to pass. Why would God give Sarah Palin a job she isn't ready for? He wouldn't. Everything happens for a reason. Palin seems perfectly willing to stake the welfare of our country—even the welfare of our species—as collateral in her own personal journey of faith. Of course, McCain has made the same unconscionable wager on his personal journey to the White House.

In speaking before her church about her son going to war in Iraq, Palin urged the congregation to pray "that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God; that's what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God's plan." When asked about these remarks in her interview with Gibson, Palin successfully dodged the issue of her religious beliefs by claiming that she had been merely echoing the words of Abraham Lincoln. The New York Times later dubbed her response "absurd." It was worse than absurd; it was a lie calculated to conceal the true character of her religious infatuations. Every detail that has emerged about Palin's life in Alaska suggests that she is as devout and literal-minded in her Christian dogmatism as any man or woman in the land. Given her long affiliation with the Assemblies of God church, Palin very likely believes that Biblical prophecy is an infallible guide to future events and that we are living in the "end times." Which is to say she very likely thinks that human history will soon unravel in a foreordained cataclysm of war and bad weather. Undoubtedly Palin believes that this will be a good thing—as all true Christians will be lifted bodily into the sky to make merry with Jesus, while all nonbelievers, Jews, Methodists and other rabble will be punished for eternity in a lake of fire. Like many Pentecostals, Palin may even imagine that she and her fellow parishioners enjoy the power of prophecy themselves. Otherwise, what could she have meant when declaring to her congregation that "God's going to tell you what is going on, and what is going to go on, and you guys are going to have that within you"?

You can learn something about a person by the company she keeps. In the churches where Palin has worshiped for decades, parishioners enjoy "baptism in the Holy Spirit," "miraculous healings" and "the gift of tongues." Invariably, they offer astonishingly irrational accounts of this behavior and of its significance for the entire cosmos. Palin's spiritual colleagues describe themselves as part of "the final generation," engaged in "spiritual warfare" to purge the earth of "demonic strongholds." Palin has spent her entire adult life immersed in this apocalyptic hysteria. Ask yourself: Is it a good idea to place the most powerful military on earth at her disposal? Do we actually want our leaders thinking about the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy when it comes time to say to the Iranians, or to the North Koreans, or to the Pakistanis, or to the Russians or to the Chinese: "All options remain on the table"?

It is easy to see what many people, women especially, admire about Sarah Palin. Here is a mother of five who can see the bright side of having a child with Down syndrome and still find the time and energy to govern the state of Alaska. But we cannot ignore the fact that Palin's impressive family further testifies to her dogmatic religious beliefs. Many writers have noted the many shades of conservative hypocrisy on view here: when Jamie Lynn Spears gets pregnant, it is considered a symptom of liberal decadence and the breakdown of family values; in the case of one of Palin's daughters, however, teen pregnancy gets reinterpreted as a sign of immaculate, small-town fecundity. And just imagine if, instead of the Palins, the Obama family had a pregnant, underage daughter on display at their convention, flanked by her black boyfriend who "intends" to marry her. Who among conservatives would have resisted the temptation to speak of "the dysfunction in the black community"?

Teen pregnancy is a misfortune, plain and simple. At best, it represents bad luck (both for the mother and for the child); at worst, as in the Palins' case, it is a symptom of religious dogmatism. Governor Palin opposes sex education in schools on religious grounds. She has also fought vigorously for a "parental consent law" in the state of Alaska, seeking full parental dominion over the reproductive decisions of minors. We know, therefore, that Palin believes that she should be the one to decide whether her daughter carries her baby to term. Based on her stated position, we know that she would deny her daughter an abortion even if she had been raped. One can be forgiven for doubting whether Bristol Palin had all the advantages of 21st-century family planning—or, indeed, of the 21st century.

We have endured eight years of an administration that seemed touched by religious ideology. Bush's claim to Bob Woodward that he consulted a "higher Father" before going to war in Iraq got many of us sitting upright, before our attention wandered again to less ethereal signs of his incompetence. For all my concern about Bush's religious beliefs, and about his merely average grasp of terrestrial reality, I have never once thought that he was an over-the-brink, Rapture-ready extremist. Palin seems as though she might be the real McCoy. With the McCain team leading her around like a pet pony between now and Election Day, she can be expected to conceal her religious extremism until it is too late to do anything about it. Her supporters know that while she cannot afford to "talk the talk" between now and Nov. 4, if elected, she can be trusted to "walk the walk" until the Day of Judgment.

What is so unnerving about the candidacy of Sarah Palin is the degree to which she represents—and her supporters celebrate—the joyful marriage of confidence and ignorance. Watching her deny to Gibson that she had ever harbored the slightest doubt about her readiness to take command of the world's only superpower, one got the feeling that Palin would gladly assume any responsibility on earth:

"Governor Palin, are you ready at this moment to perform surgery on this child's brain?"

"Of course, Charlie. I have several boys of my own, and I'm an avid hunter."

"But governor, this is neurosurgery, and you have no training as a surgeon of any kind."

"That's just the point, Charlie. The American people want change in how we make medical decisions in this country. And when faced with a challenge, you cannot blink."

The prospects of a Palin administration are far more frightening, in fact, than those of a Palin Institute for Pediatric Neurosurgery. Ask yourself: how has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth—in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn't seem too intelligent or well educated.

I believe that with the nomination of Sarah Palin for the vice presidency, the silliness of our politics has finally put our nation at risk. The world is growing more complex—and dangerous—with each passing hour, and our position within it growing more precarious. Should she become president, Palin seems capable of enacting policies so detached from the common interests of humanity, and from empirical reality, as to unite the entire world against us. When asked why she is qualified to shoulder more responsibility than any person has held in human history, Palin cites her refusal to hesitate. "You can't blink," she told Gibson repeatedly, as though this were a primordial truth of wise governance. Let us hope that a President Palin would blink, again and again, while more thoughtful people decide the fate of civilization.

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin

Michael Palin for President

If Sarah Palin can be a breathe away from president, then I want Michael Palin for president, at least he means to be comedic.

Bush seeks to create never ending state of war.

Thanks to The Raw Story we read:

As the nation focuses on Sen. John McCain's choice of running mate, President Bush has quietly moved to expand the reach of presidential power by ensuring that America remains in a state of permanent war.

Buried in a recent proposal by the Administration is a sentence that has received scant attention -- and was buried itself in the very newspaper that exposed it Saturday. It is an affirmation that the United States remains at war with al Qaeda, the Taliban and "associated organizations."

Part of a proposal for Guantanamo Bay legal detainees, the provision before Congress seeks to “acknowledge again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us and who are dedicated to the slaughter of Americans.”

The New York Times' page 8 placement of the article in its Saturday edition seems to downplay its importance. Such a re-affirmation of war carries broad legal implications that could imperil Americans' civil liberties and the rights of foreign nationals for decades to come.

Read the entire story here

Glen Beck and Penn Jillette on...

Can't say I disagree with them. I don't think I will be able to look at my children in the eye and tell them that I am a rational principled person if I vote for either Obama or McCain. How have we managed to get ourselves such appalling presidential candidates?

Your neighbors' political donations

This is a post for the incurably nosy.

Whenever elections roll around, the Silverberg household is a lone Independent/Libertarian, sometimes Republican (if it's Ron Paul), voice in our neighborhood. We're the ones with the yard signs calling for a lowering of property taxes and a reduction of government intervention in private lives in a sea of households who appear to relish the idea of government intervention. Talk about feeling out of step. I often wondered though how the people who don't place yard signs vote. Based on what I talk about later in this post, I realize that we are even more out of step with our neighbors than I thought.



I was reading a post this morning on Mom to the Screaming Masses about Googling yourself. Of course I had to Google myself and I discovered my name on "The Huffington Post". I just had to go and have a look at why I was there. It turns out it was a history of my political donations. (don't get all excited, Marc and I had never made a political donation before Ron Paul's abortive presidential campaign, so it looks pretty miserable).

The really neat feature is that if you are incurably nosy, like I am, you can see where all your neighbors' political donations go. You even get to look at a neat little map awash with elephants and donkeys.

Wolf in sheep's clothing

Nothing in the homeschooling community makes me angrier than the Homeschooling Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). It's a wondeful scam. A group of uber right wing, Christian fundamentalist, Republican, neoconservative males hit on the perfect way to fund their political action group.

They purport to support homeschoolers for all their legal problems. What they do in reality is use push right wing, political agendas. Right now they are supporting Huckabee for president. If I see one more headline about homeschoolers supporting Huckabee I am going to throw up. Please people, homeschoolers do not support Huckabee. The HSLDA supports Huckabee and they only represent a VERY small portion of homeschoolers. Homeschoolers by their very nature are independent and are not represented by any one body.

Huckabee is not a friend of homeschoolers. He's a foe. Arkansas became much less homeschooling friendly during Huckabee's tenure. Huckabee is all about federal intervention in education. This can only be bad for homeschoolers. As homeschoolers we should want the federal government out of education.


The HSLDA also wants more federal involvement in homeschooling as is seen by their HONDA bill. I wish they would leave well alone. Education is a state issue. We do not need national organizations, who are out of touch with the local issues, getting involved in legislation at any level.

I'm tired of reading their "Urgent" alerts full of scares that are in reality recruitment tools. I've lost count of the number of new homeschoolers in VA who think that VA is a homeschool unfriendly state and that you need legal protection thanks to the HSLDA. VA is an easy state in which to homeschool. Our two statewide organizations have a good relationship with the department of education and the legislature. Sometimes we have misunderstandings at local levels or a new official tries to flex some muscles, but on the whole, it all works well. However, the HSLDA thrives on adversarial relationship. They need them in order to survive. Who needs a legal defense association if problems can be solved easily and amicably?