Senator Voinovich,

I am writing to you today to urge you to support the President and his push for Health Care/Health Insurance Reform. I believe that you are as concerned as I am about the state of the health care system in this country, and the impacts that it has on your constitutents in all walks of life, and in our ability to compete abroad, particularly for Ohio's manufacturing base. I am certain that we will not agree on all of the particulars as I strongly support the existence of a public option for health insurance, but i urge you to think about the consequences for the state and for the country if no bill passes.

( Read more... )

You know, constantly anticipating that people won't "get" basic historical facts and accommodating that ignorance, only perpetuates and expands that ignorance.

Why is it that in school, we are expected to know these things, but as soon as we get out of school, they are never mentioned again, and then we are surprised that people forget?

On Twitter, a librarian of all people, misquoted Thomas Jefferson (claiming it was a quote and not a paraphrase) from his 1801 inaugural address. The original quote is "We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists." but the quote was changed to "We are all Republicans, we are all Democrats." Because, he then argued with me, this was mass media and no one would "get" the original quote.

Why not? Why isn't it considered basic knowledge of American history that we should recall, at least vaguely, that the first two political parties were Federalists and (Democratic) Republicans, and that the relationship between Adams and Jefferson, and their two parties, were quite rancorous. Jefferson left the country rather than preside over the passage of the Alien & Sedition Acts. Maybe if we expected most people to remember this kind of knowledge more often, and used it in public discourse, more people actually would, and they'd understand better why it's important?

Maybe some people won't "get" it right away, but why not use this as a teachable moment? Why not use the correct quote? Or why get so pissy with me because I suggest its sloppy and wrong to call it a quote when it's actually not.

I'm getting really frustrated listening to the news.

Even on the so-called "liberal media", which does a better job than "moderate" or conservative media, the need to sensationalize and listen to non-mainstream opinions from science or economics does nothing more than cloud reality rather than illuminate it.

I know a lot of people who are just like them. Rather than exercise good critical thinking skills, they are drawn to non-mainstream views regardless of the merits. They think that simply by opposing the mainstream they are "thinking critically" even when the non-mainstream position has little or no empirical support.

Consider the views on evolution or climate change. Evolution is a fact; it had happened; it is happening. We can see it in the lab and in nature. And yet a significant portion of the population rejects it. Climate change is the same problem. Climate changes. We have seen it through a dozen different lines of evidence, and we have watched it occur in our lifetimes. We are causing it right now, and yet I know plenty of otherwise intelligent people who reject all the evidence. Sometimes because they think they are smarter than the "experts", the people who spend their whole lives becoming knowledgeable about just one thing.

The same damn thing is happening on the economy. The best economists in the world are in agreement, Nobel Prize-winning economists, that we are doing too little to help the economy, that the best comparison to be made is between now and the Great Depression... and yet, news reporters don't bring in economists with the mainstream view, they bring in economists who support doing a Hoover. They compare the current situation to what happened in the 1980s under Reagan and interview Pat Buchanan of all people to explain why Obama is doing the wrong thing. All we have to do is cut taxes! Ignoring the obvious fact that taxes are already lower now than they were. The conservative media is even stupid enough to suggest that we just need to cut interest rates....except that they are already nearly zero. They talk about the unemployment rate being the same as it was in the Reagan era recession, but our unemployment is still dropping. And to make matters worse, it already doesn't include people who are working part-time instead of full-time because in last 30 years, in some industries (like mine) that became the "standard". To compare now to then is ludicrous. Apples and oranges. The unemployment situtation started out worse, and so we are in far worse shape than we were in the 80s. We don't have the tools to deal with the problem we did in the 80s. We can't solve this problem the way it was "solved" in the 80s. Interviewing Reagan era conservatives is totally counterproductive. Constantly comparing this situation to the Reagan era is counterproductive. The analogy is a false one. The stock market has dropped, what, 50% since September? What else is there to compare it to than the Great Depression? And listening to conservatives want to talk about doing Hoover-era policies of just cutting taxes and implimenting a spending freeze is totally insane. Once again, they are denying reality and ignoring the advice of people who actually are experts. And then they get upset when they are accused of being anti-intellectual. They are anti-intellectual, and so is our media.

The problem with our politics today is that one side wishes to base their decisions on facts, and one side wishes to ignore them. As long as that is the case, politics will be ugly and we will just shout past each other. And, unfortunately, a large portion of the population will continue to make decisions based on pure nonsense. Even more unfortunately, they have a lot to say about my life.

I just had a thought....

The plummet in bank stocks today was apparently initiated by fears of bank nationalization. (Citibank is down to $2 a share... if you are looking to make money, this might be a place to start if you can stomach holding Citibank shares.)

Now, the Obama administration has not indicated that they are looking to nationalize the banks. In fact, quite the opposite, they'd like to salvage them without doing so, and think that it will not work the way it does in smaller European countries because these banks are so big.

Instead, the notion seems to be coming from an article (indeed, several) that appeared in the Wall Street Journal (the latest today) that insist that that's what the Obama people want to do. These are the same people that insisted during the campaign that Obama was a "socialist" and would do all sorts of extreme things.

Does it seem like it's conservatives that are making the market going into a new freefall based on their insane fears, and not based on reality? Sure, I'm sure this was related to other things, but I keep hearing these things and after a while, the coincidences are starting to bug me.

I don't generally repost links or stuff that I find elsewhere unless it's really interesting, but I would have to class this one as scary.

Job losses in current "recession". Via Time, from the Speaker of the House.

Edit: Or here, how's about all the recessions since WWII?