What the People Respond To.

There is something that losers do (as in people that have lost, not people that are unworthy)  - complain about the test being unfair.  Sometimes they are right - the test is unfair.   For example, if you are entering a swimming contest, but they include the time it takes to take off your clothing and put on your bathing suit, that's unfair.

But more often they are wrong, the test was fair, they simply didn't understand what the test was.  This is most often the case with politics.

The politicians complain about either the media not covering or the people not caring about their point.  This proves they don't deserve to be president.   The people have no obligation to understandor believe you, you have an obligation to understand the people.

When you complain about no one covering or caring about your opponent 'corrupt' activity with an AIDS Charity guess what - that means you are wrong about their behavior being out of line.  Frankly, America doesn't care if a Secretary of State gives access to monsters that have given large sums to an AIDS charity.   We are fine with that.  


When you complain about being treated unfairly for your own relatively minor sins involving word choice, guess what - if they people don't vote for you because of it, that means the people think YOU ARE WRONG.  It is not a minor sin, it is a big one.  They are the ones that make that judgement call, not you. 

One of the major advantages of Democracy is that it forces the politicians to pay attention to the people, not the other way around.  Voting is not a test of the people that they win or lose, it's a test of the politician and the politician is the one that wins or loses.  (The term in office is the test of the people).

Part of the problem is the friendly bubble.  When you run for office you surround yourself with people that think you would be a good candidate. This makes understanding and playing to your base very easy.

But it also can make understanding and playing to the undecided and opponents very hard.

You have to know what they care about.  You can't convince them to change their mind using the same techniques that work on your base.  Your base believes what you say without evidence.  Your base disbelieves what the opponent says even if they have evidence.  The independent voter looks on you as if you are the liar, at least as much as your opponent.

Trump's techniques don't work at all on the independent voter.  Which is why he is going to lose.

Church and State: Taxes

In the United States we have laws preventing churches from engaging in political speech.   We don't arrest the holy men, we just take away their tax free status.  When some people hear about this they get all upset - mainly because they think we are taxing holy men.   No - we are taxing criminals.  

The thing they forget is that in the US, we accept ALL religions.  Including the 'bad ones'.  It's not just the Catholic church, the Protestants, the Jews, that get tax free status.

It's also the Mormons, the Muslims, the Scientologists, and the Moonies (until a court found them to be propagating political views, so it took away their tax status).  But that's not the worst of it - it's also The Children of God, Heaven's Gate, the Branch Davidians, the Order of the Solar Temple, and Jim Jone's The People's Temple.

And don't forget those TV Evangelists that tell poor people to send them money, all the while living in mansions and buying airplanes for personal use.  While the people sending them money are literally unable to pay their own rent.

So how do you tell the difference between a "real" religion and a cult?  Well, we can't.  There is NO way to do it.  NONE.   As strange as you think some of the religions are, in the eyes of the law, they are the same - as long as they obey the law.  That doesn't just mean not killing people, not forcing them to work for free - it also means obeying the law to not interfere in our political process.


All of them get the same tax free status.  Yes, even the Branch Davidians had legal tax free status, - at least until they got caught breaking laws. 

Lots of people have abused these laws.  Not just the violent and crazy cults I mentioned.  There are also the thieving liars.  People that start a church not because of a true belief in god, but simply out of a greedy desire to not pay taxes.  They even have a preferred system, called "the prosperity gospel".  You preach that giving money to the church will put you in God's favor.   This is NOT in any of the 'real' bibles - not the christian, Jewish, or Muslim versions.   They just made it up for their own benefit.   You can do that too, and it's all legal.  It just requires you to be a soul-less, corrupt, evil, son of a bitch, willing to lie to everyone about what you belief - and not get caught doing so. 

The United States has not found a legal, constitutional way to stop them.   Because the real problem is not their philosophy, but the fact that they don't really, truly believe in it (with perhaps some exceptions for those that are really good at self-deception).  

[If you find a way to stop them, that does no make a value judgement on their religion  (the US Constitutions says the government shall not make value judgements on religions - we accept all, no matter how bat shit crazy it is, because of how badly the English and other European countries did at judging religions), speak up.  But I doubt you can, lots of very intelligent people have tried for a very long time.]

But we did find a way to stop ONE clear and obvious abuse of religion - political lobbying.

Remember - the US is supposed to not favor any one religion.  As politicians are not supposed to favor any one religion, that means religions should not be trying to tell politicians what to do.  If the politicians obeyed, that would mean favoring one religion over the other ones that disagreed with them.  So any religion that attempts to influence politics is attempting to violate one of the most sacred principles of our Constitution.

Which is why we made it illegal for churches to do this - with the minor punishment of removing their tax free status.  This stopped just one of the several abuses 'fake' religions that were set up only for tax purposes.

Is this evil?  No.   Churches are not entitled to tax free status.   Do you think that the Moonies, who worship a North Korean man and want to establish a world wide government ruled by Moonies should get tax free status?

The Mormons have walked a very fine line, basically running the state of Utah, but being careful to not step over it.  So we let them stay tax free as long as the church itself doesn't engage in political lobbying.

God's honest truth say there is nothing about democracy or capitalism that exempts churches from  paying taxes.  That is just an old hold over from the European custom of not taxing churches because they were basically an arm of the government.

Unlike the Middle ages, we have religious freedom, there should be no connection between church and state, so there is no reason to give ANY church tax free.  We have however graciously given all churches tax free status on the one condition that they don't get involved in politics.

You break that rule, you give up your special, UNEARNED status.  The same rule applies to the Moonies, the Mormons, the Muslims, the Protestants, the Catholics, and the Jews.

How should we talk about political opponents?

Politicians  love to insult their opponents.  Watching Trump and his pawns use words like "stupid", "evil", "crooked", and "liars" proves the point.

That is not helpful - not to society as a whole, nor to their election chances.  Why not?  Because while it engages the faithful, it does not convince the independents and worse, it enrages the victims of that name calling.

Because that's what it is, just name calling.  Even when it's true, (yes, both sides - Democrats and Republicans - have stupid, crooked liars working for them), it in no way convince any real independent to vote for them.

Frankly, it's like a small child calling another child 'poopy head' - it doesn't convince an adult they are right, it just makes you look childish and pisses of the independent.  Pure Insults (where the character and nature of the activity is by definition wrong/evil), are LESS effective than claims of excess (where you imply that "it's OK to do this a little, but that is just way too much.")

So, if those kinds of insults don't work, what does?

Here are a few words to call your opponent, that actually increase your political chances, rather than just make your base happy:

Paranoid
Partisan
Cheap
In the pocket of big...
Racist
Politically Correct
Religious Fanatic
Virulent Atheist
Callous
Reckless
overly trusting
Asleep at the wheel/negligent
Arrogant

For example, I could call Donald Trump a callous, arrogant paranoid, partisan, racist.   Or the GOP could use other words on that list to describe Hillary.

The advantages of these words, are clear I am avoiding ascribing an evil motivation, and instead describing character flaws.  I make no claim that Donald Trump wants to do evil, just that he will make major mistakes because he doesn't know better.   You can be all of those things and STILL get into heaven.

Why is this important?

1)   When you attack motivation, you are making a claim that is both very hard to prove and unlikely for you to have any real evidence of it.  If you did, you would be pressing charges, rather than having to convince people not to vote for them.  No one is going to vote Madoff (an actual crook) into the White House.  If they were really that bad, they would be in Jail, rather than have convinced many good people to vote for them.   Everyone knows you have no real evidence of the crooked/evil/bad motivation, and your words get dismissed as just a partisan attack.

2)  They can explain how they got other people to vote for them without insulting the character of their supporters.  It's OK for me to like someone that's reckless - that person may have done a lot of good work even if they are reckless.  Similarly, the focus ceases to be on the nature, but instead on the extremeness, i.e. you can be religious but still decide not to vote for a religious fanatic.

3)  They don't involve assumptions that ONLY your own people make.  Almost everyone thinks that being reckless is wrong, and they also think that being paranoid is wrong.   It's not like claiming that they are horrible spendthrifts.


Calling Hillary "crooked" will not convince anyone not to vote for her.  Only people that dislike her will believe you.  It's not convincing.   It won't affect her supporters, and doesn't do much to the independents.  If she really were crooked, the FBI would have arrested her, and they didn't.

But if you call her ignorant of proper security procedures, quite a few Democrats would agree with you, and you might convince independents to vote against her.

Similarly, calling Trump evil won't do anything to any Republicans or independents. But if you bring up the fact that he never EVER admits he or anyone working for him was wrong - whether you are talking about plagiarized speeches, stopping all Muslim from entering the country, whether Hispanics and women vote for him - then you make independents question whether they can trust him and remind Republicans that he is not what the party wants.

Why poliiticans lie.

How do you tell when a politician is lying?  His lips are moving.  How do you tell when a politician is telling the truth?  When he's confessing.

All politicians lie - on both sides.   Republicans can point at Hillary and Obama etc, Democrats can point at all the Bushs, Cheney, Trump, etc.

If they lie so much, why do we keep electing them?   Because we DEMAND they do.  It's our own damn fault. Some of the more honest ones try to avoid lying simply by changing the subject.

Why do we demand they lie? Three very specific reasons.

1.  We give them no win situations, often set it up with contradictory goals.
2.  We punish them more for admitting they were wrong than we do for being wrong.  The worst example of this is when we punish them for changing their mind.  Lying goes unpunished, while admitting an error gets you thrown under the bus.
3.  We demand certainty and the use of hyperbole to prove sincerity.

No win situations are a common situation, often intentionally set up as traps - that's how we get the contradictory goals in the first place.   A good example of this was the Cash for Clunkers program.  in 2009, the US set up a program to give large incentives for people to trade old older cars (25 years+) in for newer vehicles.    It was originally designed to help fight pollution and to limit oil use, as the fuel requirements were for a vehicle of >22 mph for the newer cars and <18 mph for the older ones.  That's basically a 22% improvement.  The cars were disabled to prevent them being resold/re used.

But it was sold to congress and to the American people in part as an economic boost for the car industry.  That would be the secondary goal.  Guess what - it was a lie to convince republicans (pro business, anti-pollution prevention) to vote for it.  And as it was a lie, it had no real economic benefit.   If you check the wiki page, the first thing they talk about is the economic effect - basically null.  But the environmental effect was real - average mph per clunker was 15.8, new cares averaged 25.4, a 61% improvement.  This was a clear win from the point of view of environmentalists, but from a political viewpoint it was a guaranteed no win situation.  Goal posts were ignored, and people attacked the issue on the 'goals' declared by the opponents of the bill, rather than the goals of the proponents.


Politician being punished for admitting they were wrong is very common - they get accused of being a flip-flopper.    George Bush made that wonderful, humble quality into an insult they used to great effect against Kerry.   But we never punished George Bush at all for begin wrong about weapons of Mass Destruction, for being wrong about torture, etc. etc.  The weird thing is the goal of an argument is to CONVINCE someone to change their minds.  Changing their minds is the DESIRED end result, not a bad thing.  Losing an argument does not make you a worse politician, it means you are not perfect and are not an arrogant asshole that refuses to admit you are not perfect (talking to you Trump).

Certainty is practically a requirement.  We never accept "I don't want to raise taxes, and won't do so unless the circumstances warrant it".  Instead we demand "READ MY LIPS, NO NEW TAXES".  Then we slam the honest man for admitting that a recession hit as soon as G. H.  W.  Bush took over after Reagan, so he had to raise taxes.   He never should have had to say say that lie, we made him do it.


We get the politicians we deserve, not the ones we want.   Given our future - Hillary or Donald, that means we deserve to go to bed without dinner.   Hillary was pushed into making extreme statements about her innocence  - all of which she clearly believed, even if she was also clearly wrong.  Donald has discovered the simplest way to get votes is to ignore the truth and instead speak to what people WANT to hear in the most extreme way possible, thereby guaranteeing he will lie.   He can never admit he was wrong, whether it is about a judge or a Jewish star.

Hopefully we at least deserve someone that knows what is possible, even if she doesn't know how to get there, rather than someone that knows what he wants, and doesn't care if it is possible or not.

"Telepathic" political pundits.

There are a lot of simple ways to tell when your argument is wrong.   There is one very specific on that I see all the time, and I want to talk about a bit more:


You try to tell other people what your opponent believes.  *
* Exception - if you are an actual telepath and really can read minds, then tell me what your opponents think. Also, I have some questions about what my last date was thinking.


People do this all the time.   It often happens when someone is proven wrong and is too arrogant to admit it.  So instead of trying to figure out where they made a mistake, they look for a 'mistake' their opponent 'must have made'.   Sometimes their opponent really was an idiot, and their own prejudice makes them think that all/most/many of their opponents must be that stupid.

Sometimes they were the idiot who totally failed to understand their opponent's intelligent argument.  Instead they of understanding what their opponent really said, they twist it around to something idiotic.  If I say "We evolved from primates", and some fool responds "Take that back about my mother!" 
 
Note, if most of your opponents are that stupid, why didn't you win?  When an adult can't beat an 'idiot', there must be something seriously wrong with the adult, or that 'idiot' is a lot more competent than you think.

So never talk about what your opponent believes - it always means you are wrong.

If you want to find out what your opponent believes, ASK THEM.  If you want to write about it, look for something they said in print and you can point at and prove that particular opponent wrong.  Why in print?  Because that increases the chances you are talking about a belief held by more than just one strange guy.

More importantly, it doesn't matter what your opponent believes.  Just because your opponent's argument is wrong doesn't mean you are right.   Most of the old Fairy Tales were lies expressly to children in order to get them be good.   There may not be a witch in the woods, but the kid still should NOT go into the woods.   Bears may not have houses, but don't break into them, eat their food, and sleep in the beds.

So don't tell me what other people think, tell me what you think.  Otherwise I will laugh at you for the arrogant, prejudiced, fake telepath that you are claiming to be.

"Check Your Privileged" is evil.

Sometime before April 2006, an autocratic idiot, possibly at Shrub.com came up with an incredibly  evil concept. They coined the phrase "check your privilege" in a rather inept attempt to explain to racists that the reason why blacks, latinos, women, lbgt, non-christians, etc. etc. do poorly is because of systematic biases that do not affect tall, white, straight christian male Americans.

Some people still think it is a socially acceptable way to explain things.  Let me be clear, those people are wrong.  It does not in any way explain anything to a prejudiced person.  It makes things worse.  Yes, often people that have never had their rights violated do not understand how pervasive the problem is.  But using the word privilege makes it harder, not easier, for them to understand the problem.



This is partly because it is often used as an insult, but that is a side issue.

It is NOT a 'privilege' to:

• Walk down the street without being catcalled.
• Not be stopped by a police officer for walking/driving/standing while black, latino, etc.
• Wear my religious gear, including artifacts of faith - such as a kirpan blade.
• Get a mortgage based on my financials without regard to race, gender, etc.
• Get married to the man/women of my choice without regard to my own gender

Those are not privileges. These are Rights.  Constitutional Rights in America, Chartered Rights in Canada, Human Rights in England, etc.

When you call these things as privileges, not rights you are saying these violations are not so bad.  You are saying that certain people get the advantage of not having to deal with them.   These things do not happen to tall, white, straight christian male Americans but that is not an unearned privilege that can/should be taken away from them, putting them in the same place as minorities.

That is the idea of an autocratic, dictatorial tyrant, not a democracy.

When you talk about "privileges" in this manner, including the incredibly obnoxious phrase "Check  Your Privilege", you are being totalitarianist.  You are making the problem worse, not better.

Anyone using the words "Check Your Privilege" is worse than the racists they are talking to.    The racist may not be aware of rights being violated, but at least they know Rights exist.

In Defense of PACs

Political Action Committees are almost universally despised.

They allow politicians to avoid responsibility for 'their' advertisements, raise ridiculous amounts of money, and have a history of poor use of the funds.  (Some of them have been accused of diverting money raised for political speech into the hands of the people that run the PAC).

While all this is true, I have recently come to see certain benefits to PACs.  I'm not entirely sure (yet) that PAC's are not evil, but here are the ideas I have been mulling over.

1) PACS, while they may increase (or at least maintain) the big money in politics, put a wall up between the politicians and the money.   Which means large donations to PACs can not hide the kind of outright corrupt bribery made famous by Boss Tweed.   While the money may still be stolen for non-political speech, it will be stolen by the people running the PAC, not the politician.  The politicians may still be corrupt, but we have cut out at least one major method of them stealing from the people.

2)  Attack ads are not anything new, they have always been around.   While the PAC's do protect the politicians from blame, it also allows truly ethical people to run.   At one point in time a saintly man could NOT win an election because he could never get down and dirty enough to beat the devilish men willing to do or say anything.   Some people think this is why McCain lost the 2000 GOP Primary (Bush's people accused him, among other things of being the father of his adopted black child, while McCain said nothing that bad about Bush).  The existence of PACs allow a saintly man to run and still win, if only because his less saintly allies can act without his knowledge or permission.  


Let's assume that PACs are here to stay.  What can we do to make our elections fair while keeping the PACs.

1. Start actually enforcing strict "no cooperation" rules.   If you run a PAC, you can never talk to anyone connected to a political campaign you are funding.  Not on the phone, not in person.  Put in an exception for listening to public addresses (speeches, ads, etc.)
2. Require that only US citizens election may donate to a PACs.   Foreigners, and corporations (which may be secretly owned by foreigners) are not allowed to donate to a PAC - but they may of course independently pay for their own advertisements.  
3. Require the PAC to list on their website - WITHIN ONE DAY, any donation that exceeds $10,000 and whose name was on the check.  We can set this to some other limit, such as the cut off for the lowest possible tax bracket, currently about $9,000.  When you check your bank account on-line you see it that same day, no reason we can't do a similar rule using modern technology.  Free Speech is a legal right - but there is NO right to anonymous free speech.  
4. Make a "No Shouting" rule.   Limit spending by any one PAC to more than 1/2 as much the second candidate raised.   Money may be speech, but we don't let one person monopolize the conversation.  Both candidate's speech should be far more important than someone that isn't running.  Similarly, no person may contribute more than that same limit to PACS - so no one can give 1 billion to two PACs that proceed to each spend the maximum allowed.

If we enact these rules, PACs lose a lot of the problems we have with them.  No more will US politics be dominated by anonymous speech from the wealthy.

Why Obama Should Pardon Edward Snowden

First, for purposes of this article (and only this article), I am going to make a false assumption.

We will presume that the NSA's actions are entirely legal, appropriate and in no way an invasion of privacy or an abridgement of American rights. Edward Snowden has clearly committed a crime of treason and by all rights should go to prison.


Now, given that 'fact', I still say President Obama should pardon Edward Snowden, with certain conditions (specifically he must return to the US to answer questions in front of a closed session of congress and no longer talk tot he press about anything that happened prior to his pardon, and agree to never again reveal any information whatsoever about his work for the US government).

Why should we do this?

First, given the situation with Julian Assange, we already know the likely outcome for Snowden.  Most likely he will remain outside of US clutches, in the worst case locked up in an embassy of a foreign country. If we offer a pardon, we can at least avoid the embarrassment of having another Assange case out there.  Ending bad publicity is itself worth it.

Second, obtaining him will not end the issue, it will instead make it worse.  If we get him back it will look like we are holding a political prisoner, even if (as we presumed in this article) he is a traitor to this country and deserves no less than life in prison.

Third, capturing him will in not way discourage others from following in his footsteps.  Instead it will do the opposite.  Look, this is no man selling secrets to obtain a better life.  He had a better life and gave it up for principle.  He (and many others in this country) considers himself a patriot willing to give a six-figure job, a model girlfriend, and a home in Hawaii, all to fight the nasty evil dictatorship.  It doesn't matter that he is wrong and the US is a benevolent democracy.  He (and those that agree with him) considers himself to be Nathan Hale.  He regrets that he has but one life of pleasure to give up for his country.

You do not discourage heroes by imprisoning them.  That ENCOURAGES them to fight on.     The people that think we need to discourage copy cats are right - but trying to put Snowden in prison will not in any way discourage them. 

Fourth, the way you convince honest, honorable men to lay down arms is to offer them trust and forgiveness, not jail.  It discourages others by making them look stupid, not heroic.  What, the hero is bravely standing up to fight against the injustice of being told he is pardoned and can go on his way????

Fifth, it would stand as a beacon to other countries showing them the fair, democratic way to handle dissent.  By pursuing Snowden we give China, Iran, and other countries moral standing. See, the US is no better than they are, we have our own 'political prisoners'.   By pardoning Snowden, we show them that a truely powerful country can handle a bit of dissent - as opposed to dissenters as criminals, we forgive and forget.

Sixth, we get control of the situation back. He will have to agree to certain conditions, we get to question him and we can stop further leaks of information other countries may want.



I see little if any upside from pursuing a criminal case against Snowden.  I see huge international political capital to be generated if we pardon him.

We don't need Morphine, we have Asprin????

One in a while I see people complaining about the problems of major bulwarks of our civil defense, often using the existence of other, relatively minor legal protections as an excuse to get rid of our most important rights.  For example some claims that we don't need the fifth amendment because we have laws against torture and unreasonable punishment.

But you see, the rules against torture are actually rather weak  I would call them paper thin..  Government torture happens all the time.   I am not just talking about being water boarded by the CIA, I am talking about police officers routinely using pain on criminals.  Part of the problem is that the line between torture and other, reasonable activities is rather blurry.  Hit a guy?  Is it torture, self defense, or an accident?   Or perhaps you were trying to get him to obey a reasonable order.

The fifth amendment however is a huge giant wall, one or the strongest protections we have. Punish a guy for not answering a question, that's a fifth amendment violation.  We easily see that and know it is wrong.

Lets talk a bit more about the thin line between torture and legal activities.  Cops love Tasers and they don't restrict them to preventing violence.    In fact, the very famous line "Don't Tase me Bro."  came from such an incident.  The guy was not a danger to anyone, he simply was refusing to cooperate with the police.  He wouldn't leave an event, and wouldn't give up the microphone.  (Source)

The cops tased him not because he was a threat, but to force him to obey.  They caused him pain and physically controlled him.  Some would say that is torture.  They hurt him to convince him to obey.   They didn't put hand cuffs on him first, they made no attempt at all to control him without pain, they moved directly to pain.  

Torture is not used just to get information.  As per the US legal definition:


(1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;


Tasers are supposed (i.e the company says their purpose is to) to be used not to obtain compliance, but to deal with dangerous situations.  As per Wikipedia:

"Tasers were introduced as non-lethal weapons to be used by police to subdue fleeing, belligerent, or potentially dangerous people, who would have otherwise been subjected to more lethal weapons such as a firearm."

Instead, they are often used as 'pain compliance' devices.  The difference between pain compliance and torture?   If you are under the control of the cop, it is torture.  If you are not yet under their control, it is pain compliance.  Who decides if you are under their control?  The cop.  With no second judging of his decision.
Torture is a relative word.  Hence the controversy under George Bush where moronic lawyers tried to argue that water boarding is not torture.   But there are many circumstances where torture is perfectly legal.   It is easy and COMMONPLACE for cops to claim you were resisting arrest and therefore use pain compliance.

They can even make that claim if you are already arrested, in handcuffs, in prison, and on the floor crying. They just have to claim you were not complying.

The fifth amendment is the big gun.  It is the brick wall.  Other laws are the small arms, the velvet rope.  We can't depend on the rope line to hold back the cops, we need the brick wall.

In part because if we have the brick wall, as opposed to just a rope line, it lets the cops slam you up against the brick wall, without worrying about going over it by mistake.  If we have just a rope line, then cops will mistakenly cross it.

You don't demolish the brick wall because we have a velvet rope.  You don't get rid of morphine because we have aspirin.  The Fifth Amendment, which protects US citizens from self-incrimination is the strong protection and we must keep it that way.

It doesn't just stop torture, it stops many other problems caused by the police.  For example it stops the government from punishing you for not revealing something that you don't know (no matter how much they THINK you know it.  It also helps stop the government from learning things they have no right to know - such as your sexual orientation, accidentally or on purpose.  
Similarly, laws against excessive prosecution are not enough.   We need some ways to incentive criminals, some discretion by the government.   Given that we want to the cops to be able to talk to the criminals, and even bribe/punish them, we need strong laws that stop them from going too far.   If the cops won't even let you remain silent, that's going too far.  Honestly, if we really need the information, we can always offer immunity.

If immunity is not worth the trade, then don't demand they speak.

On Snowden Leaks

First let me discuss the facts about the Snowden leaks.

1. Snowden was an employee of a private contractor.  He did not work directly for the government.
2. Snowden had access to top secret information.  Specifically he ran computer programs that had the ability to obtain certain specific information about people's electronic communications, including american citizens.
3. He leaked the existence of those programs to the press.
4. He fled to Hong Kong
5. He then publicly admitted what he had done.
6. He claimed he did it because he had moral objections to the existence of that tracking abilitiy, believing it to be an immoral and unethical invasion of american citizen's privacy, that should be illegal.
7. Some members of the government want him arrested for treason
8. Some members of the government want to arrest the press for releasing that information.

I have not talked about this for a while because it is a complex issue.

First, let me talk about crime in general.   Intent, or the mental state of the criminal, is key to most crimes.

If you go to a car that looks like yours, put the key in, it works, and you drive off, then most people don't think you have committed a crime - even if it turns out to be someone else's car (car manufacturers re-use keys, so this can happen - it used to be common).

Similarly, the difference between:  Murder (tried to kill), manslaughter (tried to hurt, but killed), gross negligence (didn't care if he got hurt/died so did not take precautions), and an accident (took reasonable precautions but he died anyway)  are all about intent.

Mr. Snowden's actions clearly indicate he was attempting to be a whistleblower, not a traitor.

1. He leaked to the press, not to a foregin nation or terrorist organization
2. He publicly admitted responsibility, risking jail time
3. He only released the information about what the government was doing.  He with-held sensitive specific information, instead of releasing everything he had access to.

This brings us to the first question:

Should it matter what he was trying to be?  That is, should we judge him by the results alone, or take into account his intent/motive?

Yes it does matter.   By giving a reduced/no punishment for whistle-blowers as opposed to traitors, we as a government and a culture gain the following:

• Incentive for whistleblowers as opposed to simply spying for foreign powers.  (leaking to the press rather than a foreign organization, admitting your actions)  We as a nation are much better off if we know what they know, rather than being left in the dark about them knowing our secrets.   It also saves us money in the investigation, prevents innocent people from being targeted, and allows us to fire him immediately (which we did), as opposed to leaving a spy in our midst.
• Incentives for whistle-blowers to report actual crimes (even if you don't think Snowden was a whistle-blower.   By treating people trying to be whilstle-blowers better than traitors, we encourage people to be whistle-blowers, as opposed to terrifying them into submission with possible false claims of treason.  
• The knowledge that whistlblowing is legal/punished less than treason also encourages us to TRUST the government.

These are all valuable qualities that governments can not buy except by treating people trying to be whistleblowers different than regular traitors that do it for money.

The technical definition of treason says either "wages war against the US, adheres to enemy, giving them aid or comfort".  Snowden clearly did not intend to do any of those things.  He should not be treated as a traitor, if for no other reason than to encourage other people considering revealing top secret information to leak it to the press and publicly admit their guilt as opposed to leaking to China and keeping their identity secret.

Next up, did he do it by mistake?

Second question:

Was he really a whistle-blower, or just a traitor?


Polls show that Americans have mixed views on Snowden.  The numbers are all between 40% and 60% approval dissaproval.

It doesn't matter.  You see, you don't convict someone of a crime if 40% of people think he's innocent.

This is America.  If there is reasonable doubt, you go free.   40% thinking he is a patriot is reasonable doubt.

It's too close a call to send a guy to jail for something many of us consider to be a patriotic act. 

We don't even need to know if he actually was a whistle-blower.  We just need to ask does a reasonable person have reasonable doubts about his actions?   At least forty percent of our population does.   Therefore he is innocent.

More about this later (see the last issue).

This brings us to the third question:

Should the NSA be contracting our 'suspect' work to private industry, as opposed to doing it in hourse?

This answer is a clear NO.  This is a horrendous mistake on the part of our government.  Even assuming the electronic surveillaince in question is legal and appropriate, it should in NO way be done by private industry.

We don't let military contractors operate nuclear weapons.  The weapons in question are too powerful and too dangerous.  They may build them and even maintain them, but we insist they hand them over to the US government and we guard and operate them.

You don't let private contractors do the work that has extreme issues.   We don't let them control our nuclear issues and we certainly should not let private contractors spy on American citizens. 

What's appropriate for the US government to do is not always appropriate for contractors to do.

Even assuming the espionage in question is appropriate for the US to do, it can not in any way be appropriate for us to pay private contractors to do.


Should the electronic surveillance in question be legal?

To answer this question, lets start out discussing what should be happening.

I expect our government agencies to be MORE concerned about security than our privacy.  They should be trying to push up as close as possible to the wall of what is legal.  It is not their job to safeguard our privacy, it is their job to safeguard our country.

If they are not taking risks and getting close to the edge of what is legal, then they are failing.

Traditionally the 'movie' traitors do something like the following:

• Reveal technical secrets on how to make top secret devices
• Reveal top secret names of people who operate in secret and  would be at risk if their identities become known.
• Reveal top secret locations that cold be targeted by enemies.
• Reveal specific military plans currently being executed, allowing the enemy to counter-act them.

He did none of these things.  Instead he revealed the current practices of the USA, not it's current plans, nor even the possible capabilities (just because Snowden couldn't listen to your phone calls doesn't mean no one else working for the US government can't)

They claim that by maintaining secrecy of our current practices, they can make it harder for the bad guys to counter them.  Note, our capabilities keep increasing, so the bad guys still have to take more precautions than just avoid what they know we used to do.

There is a technical term for this type of secrecy:  "Security through Obscurity"  If your opponent does not know how you do things, it makes it harder for them to defeat your efforts.   But if you check the wikipedia page I linked to you can instantly see what a bad reputation Security through Obscurity has.

Honestly, the food industry wanted to do a similar thing.  We laughed and told them NO.  We required them to list all the ingredients, if not the proportions.    They clearly have an interest in preventing their competitors from knowing what they put into their food.   Why didn't we let them keep their ingredients simple?   Because our personal interest in knowing what we are consuming is more important.

Similarly, our personal interest in knowing what information the government is gathering on us FAR exceeds any minor increased efficiency the government gains by having the terrorists not know for certain some of the things the government is doing.

Especially when a large portion (over 40%) consider the government's actions to be questionable, if not innapropriate.

If your actions are close to the wall between ethical spying and unethical spying, then you have to accept the fact that the public will get to examine at least the actions that are closest to the wall, if not the ones far from it.

You want security through obscurity?  Then do your stuff away from the wall.  Not right up next to it.

The NSA leak did damage security, the same way requiring food companies to list their ingredients damaged their profits.   That is, it damaged security a tiny, insignificant amount, and gave the country a massive amount of information that we desperately needed.

It is our job to determine whether your security measures are worth the effort.   Therefore you must reveal the most questionable security methods you use to the public.  If you want to keep something secret, then you create a public, more invasive 'throw away'  method and see how the public responds to you admitting you do that.  If they object, then you cancel the 'throw away' method and then reveal the one you wish you could keep secret and hope they accept it.

You definitely should not under any circumstances, keep your most invasive privacy violating security methods secret.  

Because the damage that your most privacy violating methods do the country will always be greater than the damage you are protecting.   If only in  destroying the people's trust in the government and creating a climate of distrust.


Conclusions:

Snowden may not be a hero, but he is definitely NOT a traitor.  The NSA has clearly made some bad decisions - having private contractors spy on American Citizens???? Shame on you for stupidity, let alone privacy violations

We need to slap the NSA down and have them re-think their strategies. 

How to tell if you are a Partisan Fool.

There is nothing wrong with being partisan.  It just means you believe in a cause.  We should all believe in causes, and I pity the person that doesn't believe in anything.  I would go further and say:

If you don't have something worth dying for, then you don't have anything worth living for.

 But you can take things too far.  You can care more about your beliefs than they are worth.  Being willing to kill anyone that thinks a certain brand of cookies doesn't taste good is not a good thing.

Neither is putting the needs of your political party above the needs of your country.  Even if you think your party is correct and the other party is sent by the devil himself to destroy your country, you still can NOT put the needs of your party above the needs of the country.  Not even for a little bit.

So lets talk about the cases where people have their priorities backwards, where their partisanship has gone to the extreme and they are nothing but a joke.

Here are signs that you are a partisan fool:

1. You do whats best for your party, even if it is bad for your country.
2. You insist that EVERYTHING has to do with your group.  Anything bad you ascribe to enemies of your party, and anything good must be caused by your party.
3. You can't conceive of a good person being both informed and not on your side.  You think the only reason good people are not for you is that they are ignorant/uneducated.
4. You can't conceive of an informed person thinking your issues are irrelevant.  If they understand your issues than they must either be good people and on your side or bad people and your enemies.  No one is allowed to be informed yet remain neutral  (Thus you think the media must either be with your or against you, no neutrality)  "You are either with us or against us."
5. You can't conceive of being wrong on even the smallest of side issues.  You think any scientific studies that prove you wrong must be invalid - done by the opposition and designed to fail.
6. You defend (or refuse to attack) members of your own group even when you know they are wrong (or have committed a crime).

Political Parties are not the end all and be all.   The good of the country is far more important.

When you do these six things you are placing your partisan political party above the country, and have crossed the line from a loyal politically active person, and become a traitor to your own country.

It doesn't matter if you are liberal, conservative, fascist, communist, libertarian, monarchist, theocratic,republican, democrat, progressive, royalists, tory, whig, bull moose, or anything else.

Putting any political party above and beyond the country proves you to be a fool not worth listening to.   Political parties exist to serve the country, not the other way around.

The ACLU Agrees with me.

Just a short update.

A while ago I posted here and said the recent snooping by the government may give people standing to sue the government.  Previously  the Supreme Court said they could not sue to stop being spied upon because they could not prove they were being spied upon.


This article says the ACLU agrees with me about the snooping.

Government's snooping on reporters.

First a little background.   The right to privacy in the US  has steadily been eroded over the past ten years.  Partly by the internet, partly by the fear of terrorism.

There are all sorts of new privacy laws we need:

• Right to photograph cops, because after all, they are photographing us all the time.
• The right to end a corporate online relationship(and kill their tracking of you-  and their data)
• The right to SEE all the data they have collected on you 
• Require a warrant to search emails (everyone expects them to be private despite the court ruling that they are not - look at how often people send incriminating evidence through them).
• The right to have online photos of your removed or have the face distorted. - unless the poster has a signed permissions to use said photo.

These are just a few things that could and in my opinion should be set up.   Clearly privacy is under attack and we need to fight back.

Now lets talk about the federal warranted search of reporter's communications.  Th FBI was trying to identify the source of leaked information, particularly about a foiled terror plot involving the CIA operating in Yemen.

Originally it was clearly reporters should be given more respect when the government tries to snoop on them.  No longer.   The line between reporter and blogger and random citizen has begun to blur significantly.

The actual scandal is relatively small.  No reporters charged or even brought in for questioning.  No emails read or telephone calls listened to.   Just reporters telephone records obtained.  So they know who spoke to who, but not what they said.

It is a scandal and it is at the very least questionable behavior by the FBI.  But compared to what happens in Russia and China, it is not a huge deal.  There reporters get jailed or killed.

In my mind, the AP should in fact use government snooping.  Specifically, they should point out that they now have proof that the US government is snooping on them and try to kill the FISA Amendments Act.

They, unlike Amnesty International, can now claim that they have been concretely injured by the existing, known snooping, and therefore can sue to stop the FISA warrant-less wiretapping that Amnesty International failed to stop (in Clapper vs. Amnesty International) because Amnesty International could not prove they were being snooped on.

The AP can prove that the government was snooping on them and they can therefore claim the burden of proof has shifted to the government.

Why Conspiracy theories are always wrong.

Conspiracy theorists make a lot of rather simple mistakes.

Here are a set list of the mistakes common to almost all conspiracy theories

1. They fail to take into account that in a free country, their are always intelligent, ethical people in government, the press, and most importantly the political party out of power.  They have huge motivations to expose the conspiracy.  And by intelligent, I mean more so than the conspiracy theorist.
2. They fail to take into account that conspiracies break down over time.  The longer the claimed conspiracy, the more likely someone will have discovered it and proven it to the public.   
3. They fail to understand that the more people in on the conspiracy, the more likely it will get exposed.
4. Bosses usually have motivations to expose conspiracies done by their subordinates, but hiding one from your boss is MUCH harder than it is to hide it from random people not in the organization.
5. They fail to realize that the conspirators know all of facts 1-4.

Lets start with some basic facts.  Few people will meet more than 100,000 in their entire lifetime.  One of those 100,000 people will be smarter than all the rest.

But the USA has over 300,000,000 people.  That means the smartest person you know, most likely has about 3,000 people smarter than them, in this country alone.   Quiet a few of them go into politics and some go into the press.

I guarantee you that there are people working for the government and for the press that are smarter than EVERYONE you have ever met.   That means if you can figure it out, they did before you did, and they probably predicted that you would.

Conspiracies break down over time.  First your opponent figures it out, and then they tell the world and the world believes them, because they get real, solid evidence (not bad video, not clearly faked documents, etc.)

In World War II there were several conspiracies.  The NAZI's tried to hide the fact that they were murdering Jews.  Hitler came into power on January 30, 1933, and the Soviets first started hearing about the Holocaust in June, 1941.   Eight years is all it took.   Yes, that's how long you can keep a major secret.   Note the Nazis were winning in June 1941.  The US did not enter World War II until Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, up until December of 1941, the Germans were crushing the Russians.  (source).    Multiple first person accounts were received describing exactly what happened

Similarly, the US began the Manhattan Project was first conceived in 1939.   The Soviets learned about it by December of 1944, eight months before the US drops the first A Bomb on Hiroshima.   They ended up with actual plans for the weapons, before the weapons were used.  Five years  is the max you can keep such a secret.

So, during wartime - when you can find patriots willing to die for their country by simply walking up to random people on the street corner - two of the most powerful countries in the world could not keep a secret for even a decade.

I absolutely assure you, that NO important secret that requires many people can be kept quiet for more than 20 years.  It will get out - and with solid irrefutable evidence.

So lets talk about bosses.  They have the ability to ask questions and fire the conspirators even without proof.  So if your boss (president, head of the IRS, whoever) doesn't know, you have to be so far above suspicion that there is ZERO chance that someone who is not your boss will suspect you.  That means the President of the USA must be in on any government conspiracy.  But he changes party.  Which means eventually he will not join it and expose it.  Then hold you up as the villain, blaming the entire other political party.

Lets talk about a non-government conspiracy.  Say for example Mrs. Obama decided that for some godforsaken reason, she wants her son to be President of the USA, even if failure means he gets thrown in prison for the rest of his life.   Keep in mind that being the son of an American, the ONLY benefit he gets is the right to be President - he would have been able to immigrate anyway and become a governor - just like Arnold Schwarnnegger.

At the very least, his mother must have been in on it.   Let's assume she also easily convinces Obamas father to be in on the secret (or maybe he wasn't present and she just tells him this.  So 42 years before I wrote this post, she falsely publishes a birth announcement in two Hawaii newspapers.  At some point, she also finds a way to add that info this Obama's father's immigration file.

She also gets one of her deer friends to confirm her lie.  She does all of this without telling Obama (why risk it?)   She then pays someone else to forge a fake short form birth certificate  (birthers claim this was a forgery).

But that isn't enough for her.  She must think so far ahead that she sees the birth certificate will be challenged.  So she pays off someone in the Hawaii's Health department to put in a real record of his birth in the records.   Then the Hawai Director of Health will confirm it as being real.

Somehow, this conspiracy genius, who has managed to get an old friend to lie about his birth, paid for a forged berth certificate, and also paid off the Hawaii government to get a real one, then FORGETS TO DESTROY THE FAKE BIRTH CERTIFICATE.   After all, if she has the real one, she doesn't need the forged one.

That is the minimum number of people.   It requires one friend, one criminal, and one member of the government to assist Mrs. Obama in the conspiracy.  And they all keep their mouths shut for decades.

All of this also requires that she gives birth alone, without anyone noticing it, Otherwise she has to hunt down the real birth certificate and destroy.

Also, there has to be some stupid reason preventing her from actually giving birth in the US.  It's not that hard to do it - illegal immigrants sneak into the USA every year to do it.  Not to mention wealthy Chinese people.

All for the minimal gain of having a black baby have the right to TRY to be president - back in the 60's when most black men have problem trying to vote.  She has no real motive to commit these major crimes.  The idea of her doing it is incredibly stupid.

OK, let's try this again - now, Obama himself decided to do it.  He has no motive until he becomes a senator.  Then, at that point, he finds that his mother, for no known reason happens to have given him a birth announcement in two newspaper that make it look like he is an American.  WHAT A LUCKY BREAK!  So Obama himself, a Senator who could easily and legally become Governor of a major state, decides to do the following:

1. First find someone to forge a birth certificate
2. Find an old teacher/family friend and convince them to lie about his birth.  
3. Pay someone to break into old immigration files and change his father's record to say Obama is an American born citizen
4. When the truth still comes out, he has to pay someone to alter the Hawaii records.  Let's assume this is the same guy for #1 and #3
5. He also has to hunt down and destroy any real birth record, not to mention pay off the doctor that delivered him..

As opposed to accepting a position as Hilary Clinton's Secretary of State, or some other similar position.

All of this has to be done by someone he trusts enough to commit multiple major felonies in his name. To be President of the USA, instead of the Secretary of State?  Worse, to be the first BLACK president of the USA?   The first one elected has to commit crimes to do it?  No way.   NO freaking way.   He would get caught, go to jail, and put back civil rights for decades.  No reasonable person that cares about this country would do it, and no one that doesn't care about this country would risk it.

Why not?  Because the person he pays to commit all these crimes will betray him..   In the first minute. Because the guy paid to do the crimes is either doing it for money or for political reasons.  If he is doing it for money, someone else (Trump) will offer more money.  If he is doing it for political reasons, the second he realizes Obama is willing to lie like that means he no longer believes in Obama - and betrays him.

The cost of the rime is all born by other people and it is physically IMPOSSIBLE for Obama to pay other people enough money to do the crime.

More importantly, he risks not just his career, but the future of the Democratic Party.   Hell, it makes more sense for a false-flag GOP non-citizen candidate to run for the Democratic primary than a real one.  

But it all comes down to risk vs reward.   For any small reward, usually the risk is worth it.  But the larger rewards always have risks that exceed them.   For a small reward, you can depend on anonymity, but not for the big ones.  You can easily still someone's wallet, but don't even think about breaking into the Federal Gold Reserve.  Why?  Because the security on your wallet would cost more than the wallet, but security for the Federal Reserve costs far less than it holds.

More importantly, Senators are smart enough to know that being the President's right hand man is almost as powerful.   Obama would have seen all the risks involved in this incredibly STUPID plan and instantly seen that being the President's Chief of Staff us far better,

But most importantly - all of this is done by the FIRST serious Black candidate for President.  No.   That title is too big for someone to try this stupid plan to get it.  The second black president, maybe.  But not the first.

And I assure the GOP would pay far more to uncover the issue than the DNC paid to cover it up.   Look at what they did in Benghazi when there was no cover-up.

Same thing for pretty much every other conspiracy theory.  People hiding aliens?  Not enough motive to do it.  Poisoning our water with fluoride?  Not enough reward for the risk.

President Bush causing 9/11?  Bullshit.   To much risk of impeachment for the relatively minor benefit.

Compare this with real scandals - the Fast and Furious gun running, the IRS scandal.  All of those are caused by INCOMPETENCE, with incompetent attempts to cover it up.

Never underestimate incompetence - and never think that your so called conspirators aren't just as incompetent.  

No, you CAN do these kinds of things in non-'free' countries.  China has no free press to investigate, nor any 'loyal opposition' party to complain and demand justice.  So who knows what goes on there.

But in the USA?  Not possible.  The Democrats or the Republicans would squeal on each other in an instant.

Printable Guns

The age of the printable gun has arrived.   For now, printable guns aren't that big a deal.

The machines to print them are still relatively expensive (over a grand), and therefore uncommon.

But that will change, their price is coming down.   While we have some time, within 5-10 years, that time may run out.

So let's assume a thriving community of millions rep-rap devices easily and cheaply available for less than $500.


Right now the Government is trying to block the downloading.  I don't think that's a good idea.

So, there are the following issues:

1. First amendment (on top of the 2nd)
2. The infeasibility of blocking the information because it is now also available in servers outside of the USA
3. The fact that the new plastic guns often look like toys.  (Resulting in cops shooting kids with actual toys because they thought they were printed guns)

Now let's talk about possible real solutions to prevent widespread possession of downloaded guns by criminals, depressed people, the mentally unstable and children.

Note that last category.  Children, even  pre-teens , will be perfectally capable of building a gun in this situation.  While you may want adults to be able to print one out, as well as your own possible kids, what about others?

Very few people will be willing to let EVERY SINGLE kid in junior high school have access to a gun printing device.

Especially as they may leave them around for their younger kids to play with.





So here are some reasonable legal solutions to this coming problem.

1. Make it a new federal offense to print, paint or even posses a real working gun that is not painted/printed in a dark color.  Sorry, we need to protect the kids, you give up certain colors to be used solely by children.   This would be an add-on offense, counting as a separate felony for making it and for possessing it.  Similarly, they should continue to, by law, require a metal implant to aid metal detectors.  Printing, selling, or even possessing one without  such an insert would be an add-on felony., 10 years, no parole.   Why?  Because you do this only to hide a crime.
2. Pass a law that states while you can legally download gun plans, the government has the legal right to track your IP address, and doing so is considered sufficient evidence for a federal warrant if that IP address is associated with anyone that is on the government's "can not legally buy a gun".  (Note, it's already legal for the government to track your IP address, this just makes it clear that a warrant is justified.)
3. When such a blueprint is downloaded, the government has the right to send a message to the IP address daily for 3 weeks notifying the IP address that a gun has been downloaded.  This is to let parents know that their children may have done so. 
4. Any commercial business that lets customers rent their 3D printers should legally be required to prevent people from printing guns without first undergoing a background check.  
5. If you print a gun and then sell it, you need a license - even for a single gun.  Otherwise people could claim they only sold 1, when in fact they sold 1,0000.   This rule would only apply to selling printed guns, not to selling regular guns.

Note that this won't stop terrorists from printing guns and bring them onto aircraft.  Expect that to happen relatively soon.   We will need better weapon detection devices - I say devices that can smell gunpowder.

"This Time It's Different"

Every generation think it is special.  Their parents couldn't possibly have gone through what they did.

Yes, it is true that this country is slightly more divided now then it has been in the past, but the issues are not that different.  Here is a rough list of important issues by decade (give or take 5 years).

• 1780s and 1790s: Tax issues (Whiskey Rebellion), creating the nation, Supreme Court 
• 1800s  Louisiana Purchase, Slavery,  staying out of English/French war
• 1810's  War of 1812 (see English/french war above), Federal bank?, slavery, Keeping Europe out of Americas
• 1820's:  Taxes, Banking, Indian removal
• 1930s':  Financial crisis, Indian Removal
• 1840s:  Fighting with Mexico about Texas
• 1850:  Slavery, civil war coming
• 1860 Civil War/Slavery ends, Constitutional changes
• 1870s: Reconstruction, civil rights, Female suffrage
• 1880s:  Corruption in government, gold standard, monopoly/labor strikes, Female suffrage
• 1890's Spanish American war, Hawaii, Gold Standard, Female suffrage
• 1900's:  Trust busting, Female suffrage
• 1910's  Trust-busting, federal income tax, corruption fighting, World War I  (keep away from Europe), Female suffrage, prohibition
• 1920 's: economic issues - low taxes, then stock market crash,  prohibition
• 1930:  Depression, World War, prohibition (repeal)
• 1940's  World War II,beginning of desegregation
• 1950's  Korea, Cold War  racism/civil rights
• 1960's Cold War, Civil Rights, Space program,  Medicare and Medicaid, Vietnam, Abortion
• 1970s  Nixon scandal, good buy Vietnam, goodby gold standard, Environmentalism, Salt I (nuclear proliferation), Abortion
• 1980's  Anti-government, anti-=taxes, Abortion
• 1990's  Gay rights become a real issue, Abortion
• 2000s  Terrorism, attempts to cut entitlements  Healthcare bill, gay rights, Abortion,  Legalize Marijuana
• 2010 Gay rights, abortion,  Legalize Marijuana

So at heart the four main issues have always been:

1. Economics
2. Prejudice/discrimination
3. Wars
4. Public Safety

There is one more issues that don't fit these four neat categories - specifically abortion.  While on the surface it is a public safety issue with a dash of discrimination, it is dramatically different from all other issues.

Abortion is a relatively new issue  that people feel strongly about and does not fit into those categories.   It might end up being a new, re-occurring theme.  Why is it so different?  The other issues are all at heart answerable by science, but abortion can not be 'solved' by science.

The true heart of the abortion issue is what counts as a person.  If you consider a just fertilized egg to be one, then abortion is killing babies.  If you don't, then abortion is a simple surgical procedure similar to getting a vasectomy in that it prevents you from having unwanted children.   But the question of person-hood is at best a philosophical one, or more likely a religious one.  Science can not tell us the answer.


But lets get back to the big four long term issues government fights over

In general the economic battles tend to get settled.   Eventually either people realize the new idea is garbage without trying it out, or they do try it out and it either works or fails.  If it works they keep it,  fails it gets over-turned.  Then someone comes up with a new idea and the process starts all over again. 

Prejudice appears to be the same battle fought repeatedly, slowly having the prejudiced people lose, then the anti-prejudice people move on to the next group that is being picked on.  There is real progress being made consistently on that issue, from the original compromises allowing slavery all the way to the current fight about gay marriage.

War on the other hand seems to be a constant issue - staying out of them, or getting into them, there is no real progress made on the general issue, we just keep changing the name and location of the war.

Finally, Public Safety is a rather interesting question.  This includes gun issues, drugs, alcohol, pollution, and healthcare in general.  In general, this gets treated like economics.   Slowly ideas get tested and then either accepted if it works or over-turned if it fails.  Strangely enough, liberals and democrats fight over this a lot.   If it is portrayed on moral grounds, the conservatives will spend money, otherwise the safety measures are considered 'too expensive'.  Unless of course they think the safety measure itself is considered unsavory in some way (HPV vaccine), then they complain on moral grounds rather than economic grounds.

But it takes a lot longer to solve Public Safety issues and people keep bringing up failed ones (assualt weapons), while simultaneously people keep killing successful ones as well (background checks on guns).

The heart of the matter is that we really only have 4 main issues in American Politics, (plus abortion).  Things are not all that different now than they 100 years ago when it comes to what we argue about.

Free Will

There is a common deterministic view of the human mind as being just a bunch of tiny, hard to see gears.  It claims that if you had omnipotence, then you could predict every action done by a human being.  By that belief no one is responsible for their behavior/actions because it was all per-determined at the big bang.  They think you have no free will, you are just a robot.

It came about from a 19th century view of physics  as a deterministic nature.

Now adays most people recognize quantum mechanics mean that no matter how much knowledge you have, you can not predict the human brain, because at at very small level, it is not deterministic.

The deterministic then respond that this just means everyone is random.  They claim that again, you have no free will, you are just a robot with a random number generator.

This again is lacking in understanding.  First, it misunderstands a lot of quantum mechanism.  It is NOT just a random number generator for Einstein's proverbial God's Dice game.  Instead, quantum mechanics is far more complicated and many claim that no one understands it.  Among other things, there is an 'observer' portion of quantum mechanics that is NOT random.  That is, when you observe things, it changes the outcome (see Schrodinger's Cat).

But lets ignore the physics and get back down to philosophy, as that is the core of the model and a far more important question.

Here are some given assumptions.

1.  If everything is 100% accurately predictable, you have no free will, because your actions are predetermined.
2. If your actions are random, or 100% accurately predictable except for a random factor, then again you have no free will, you are just a random number generator's output.
3. For true free will to exist there must be some inherent core personality that is neither random, nor entirely predictable, but instead is internally consistent, not entirely determined by birth, (and therefore at least partially learned), and that determination is not random, but PATTERNED.

First note, there is a word for something that is not random, not entirely predictable, but is internally consistent and not determined by the creator/birth.  It's called Art.   Yes, Art, not Science is the key to understanding Free Will.  
 
Assume for example God exists (God is not neccessary for this argument, but positing his existence makes the discussion easier, as God acts as an Omniscient creator who could predict your actions).  God choose to create people as works of art, rather than either engineering projects (robots) or random number generators (robots whose programming was choosen at random).

Can God create something so he could not understand it?  The answer here is yes (Not sure if he could create a stone to heavy for him to lift, that's a different question).   He creates it in an artistic fashion instead of a planned one.  He looks at the over-all forest, not the trees as he creates us.  He lets the micro stuff fall randomly, but makes sure that the total creation follows a specific pattern.   

If we were talking about painting, think of God as randomly throwing balls of paint at a wall that has a specific stencil design protecting it.  Yes, the paint is random, but it will still spell out the letters "FREE WILL" because of the stencils.

Such a design is not random OR determined.  There is a third choice of patterned.   Patterned does not fall in between those two extremes.  Instead it is something VERY different from either of them.   You see, it is not a black/white choice of determined or random.  Nor is it a choice of 'gray'.  Instead it is a choice of the color purple (one of my favorites).    It is neither determined nor random, but something different.

Now, patterns are the key to life - on both all scales.  On the large scale, life has a set pattern of symmetry.   On a small scale, life is a complex pattern of cells, on a micro level, DNA is just a pattern.

Life is about patterns, and human minds are the ultimate expression of that pattern. We are not robots, nor random number generators.  We are patterns.  And our patterns have free will.

Right to counter-sue for false DMCA

The DMCA allows people to sue for copyright infringement.

The problem is it is clearly being abused.  We definitely have copyright infringement, but it is not that hard to find cases where:

1. Secondary media people suing the original artists for infringing their rights (some knowingly, some out of just plain stupidity)
2. People using the DMCA to stop political speech
3. Copyright owners mistakenly requesting their own postings be removed

Even the best people tend to make mistakes about 3% of the time.  (Microsoft's numbers for example)


So what do we do about the bad actors  - the scum that aren't doing it by mistake, but are doing it on purpose.

Well, the courts do let you sue:  (OPG vs Diebold)   But that route is expensive and by no means assured.

It also may not work at all against poor people or those that have money to spare.

I suggest a simple law - all DMCA notices must be filed with the new Consumer Protection agency.  They and only they can then forward it on to the offender.  The forwarding would normally be automatic.

If they find you have abused the system in the past, (more than 5% of your filings have been rejected), then you pay a fee to file the DMCA take down notice, refundable if the complaint is not overturned within three months.



The fee could start out at $100 for 5% bad DMCA, then double for every 5%  (i.e. at 10%, you pay $200, at 15% you pay $400, at 20% you pay $800).

For people that have placed less than 20 complaints, pretend that their total complaints are 20  (so 1 bad complaint and no other complaints count as 5% not 100%)

More important than the money, it creates a list of bad actors.  People that can not be trusted.  Make this list explicitedly admissable in court cases.

How to spot bad reporting

The easiest way I know to spot bad reporting is to look for the lack of comparisons.

Here is a perfect example.

It's a great little story about how the veteran suicide rate is 22 per day, not 18 as previously believed by The Department of Veterans Affairs.  Over a year, 22/day is 8030 veterans committing suicide a year, vs 6570.

What horrible news!  Four more veterans suicide every day! (1460 more a year)

Uhm, excuse me, but out of how many?  More importantly, how does that compare to the suicide rate of the general population?

As per the VA.gov, there are about 22.7 million veterans (as of 9/30/2010).

That means a bit less than one out of every million veterans try to commit suicide every year.  22/22.7 million works out to 9.7 out of every 100,000 veterans.   That's not that much.   Let's compare it to non-veterans...

And the rate for non-veterans is...  (source)

about 12 non-veterans out every 100,000 non-veterans.

That's right - American veterans are less likely to commit suicide than non-veterans.   Not that surprisingly - we screen our soldiers and don't let people with serious mental issues join the army (it's where we keep all the tanks, missiles, and bombs, after all).


The real truth is that our veterans are NOT crazed lunatics.  They are sane people who have undergone horrible situation for their country (and pay), but have NOT been broken.  They handle it and handle it well.

That is not to say that we should not help our veterans.  They deserve all the help they can get, particularly when often their current problems are a direct result of the sacrifices they made for their country.

Instead, my point is that when you read news articles, you have to look for important comparisons. Any good reporter should include that information.  A bad one is either too stupid to get it (and therefore not worth reading), or worse, a liar who found the information but decided to withhold it  (and therefore can not be trusted).

If they don't give the right comparison, don't listen to them.

Politifact and Boehner

Conservatives don't like Politifact.

Mainly because Politifact keeps saying they lie.  Worse, it shows conservatives lying more than liberals.  Some conservatives claim this means Politifact must be biased.

Which proves that those conservatives are rather foolish and easy to fool.  Obviously it is quote possible for one side to lie much more often, and if that is the case, then an unbiased fact checker would show that.

If you want to know if someone is biased, you look at the ratios between the categories.  There is something called a bell curve.  Basically it looks like a bell.  I occurs whenever you have something that is at least partially determined by three or more random values.   Intelligence and Height are two really good examples of this.

So is the truth/falsehood of dramatic statements told by politicians running for President.  Their statements are not off the cuff, they are mulled over by a team of people.  Those people pump up the drama on true statements (making them only partially true) and tone down the lies in false ones (making them partially true)


For those cases, the number of True and Pants on Fire should be smaller than the number of half true.   

If you check the people that Politifact checked, then all of the following had more half true statements than True + Pants on Fire combined (and all of them gave more True than Pants on Fire)

Barack Obama 121 Half true vs 106 True or Pants on Fire
Mitt Romney  56 Half True vs 49 True or Pants on Fire

Joe Biden  17 Half True vs 15 True or Pants on Fire

Paul Ryan   7 Half True vs 5 True or Pants on Fire *


*Note Paul Ryan did get 12 Mostly False, the step below Half True -  he might be naturally a liar or Politifact could be biased against him, I don't know (OK, I do know, but for the purposes of this article, let's pretend I don't.).  Even then, the rule still applied - True and Pants on fire were rarer than half true.


That same rule does NOT apply to Chain emails.  Instead Chain Emails are heavily weighted for falsehood.  It is almost a straight line going from few totally true (6), increase all the way to 70 Pants on Fire.  No one fact checks chain emails, there are no consequences to the original writer (but they should be forbidden from the internet.  So they keep getting exaggerated.

Now that bell curve that the presidential candidates follow?  The congressional Leadership does not follow the bell curve at all. 

Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, are all rather evenly distributed.  Nanci tends toward Half truths (Is she considering a run for presidency?), but otherwise she and the other two men are fairly even. across the board.  It looks like they simply are not as good at weeding out the lies, or making true statements more dramatic.  They just say what they think.

But not John Boehner.  John Boehner's statement distribution is just STRANGE.  He has  17 True, 3 Mostly True, 5 Half True, 11 Mostly False, 17 False and  1 Pants on Fire.

It looks to me like he has one (and only one) honest man working for him, feeding him truths.  But  he gets most of his information form outright liars, with that honest guy putting his foot down and objects to the Pants on Fire stuff.

It might be that John himself is the one honest man, but why did he hire all those liars and why is he letting them feed him all those False statements?   Does he have a split personality? Maybe it's his wife, telling him all these true statements and threatening to leave him if he says something that's clearly pant's on fire. Maybe it's not a person, but software.

I don't know.   John Boehner, you have me stumped.  I'd love to know why.