SansPretense

This is the first debate I’ve watched this year since it’s the first I caught streaming over the internet.  At this point, I essentially agree with this run-down from Red State, as well as Ace’s assesment on Perry’s performance.  It wasn’t a knock-out on his part, but he didn’t make any major mistakes.  This was basically “beat-up on the Texan” night, as Perry was clearly the focus of the questions, the other candidates responses, and the demonization of the heavily biased moderators.  Unfortunately for everyone else, Perry survived it quite well.  Under these circumstances, I think Romney and Perry essentially had a draw in this debate.

My thoughts on the other candidates:

Ron Paul!!!!  He’s like the kid who tells you that he loves his kitten.  You kind of go  “awww” and agree that the kitten is nice and that the kid is sweet.  Then, before you know it, the kid throws the kitten in the microwave and turns it on.  Ron Paul is that kid, and the kitten is common sense. 

Santorum impressed me the least.  I didn’t like too many of his answers, and I don’t remember the ones I did like.  He doesn’t come off as a commanding presence.

Neither Bachman nor Cain impressed me as much as I thought they would.  I’m sorry, but Backman has not shown any effective leadership that makes me believe she can run the country.  She doesn’t show any statesmanship that I can see.  She sounds more like a politician pandering to the tea party than someone having any real ideas about enacting her policies.  I agree with her positions on most of the issues, but I’m not seeing effective leadership from her.  Maybe if she had actually accomplished anything in Congress…

Cain sounds more like he’d fit in as a Cabinet Secretary than a politician.  I think he would be more effective there, get some political experience, and maybe be in a position for president in the future.  Right not, he still sounds unprepared for politics.

Huntsman is a RINO and true career politician.  We might as well have McCain up there again.  I get the impression that he doesn’t really believe half the things he says, but feels the need to say them. 

Speaking of RINOs, Romney is sounding pretty good, but he always “sounds” good.  Then he defends RomneyCare – which is basically Obamacare - while claiming that the latter needs to be repealed.  He then says stupid things about Social Security.  Sorry, but Perry is right.  Social Security is a ponzi scheme.  Again, we might as well have McCain running.

Finally, Newt Gingrich impressed me with his responses.  He’s a thinker.  Unfortunately, I get the impression that he’s too invested in the establishment to take risks…I wonder how I got that impression…

I wish Santorum, Huntsman, and Paul would go ahead and drop out.  I’d include Bachman, Cain, and Gingrich in that list, but frankly, I like the impact they have on the national dialog.  Maybe we can get those three to moderate a debate…

In any case, Perry’s entrance is definitely a plus.  I’ll have some comments in the near future concerning the politicization of science, which came up the debate.  There’s been some interesting developments with global warming the last few months that deserve some attention, mainly because of the drama between researchers.

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I haven’t blogged in awhile, and I figured it’s time to dust some cobwebs off.  Besides, I feel like there’s something to be said that, although it has been stated before by myself and others in various ways and social media platforms, really requires more than a few hundred characters on facebook and a link. 

Here’s a question: What is our responsibility to future generations of Americans or even the world?  Imagine you were given a choice: live comfortably and leisurely knowing that your actions, lack of actions, or lifestyle condemns future generations to a life of hardship.  Would you choose that option or do you believe that your children or grandchildren deserve better?  (Afterall, isn’t that one of the arguments for protecting the environment?)

I believe we all have an obligation to future generations.

For the last few years (at least that’s how long I’ve been aware of the problem), many of us who have been paying attention to the budgetary numbers coming from Washington have been absolutely shocked.  (The numbers are at the end of the post.)  This isn’t a partisan issue and it’s not one that will only become a problem for some distant future generation.   It’s an existential issue that has already become a crisis.  The existential part is not an exaggeration!  Just ask Greece and other European nations who are in danger of losing their sovereignty.  The problem is with Entitlements and is now.  Medicare will run out of funds within the next 10-15 years or sooner.  At that point, services automatically gets cut (by law). 

The issue is very much linked to the economy (again, see the previously linked video).  The high unemployment numbers seem to be structural, not temporary.  Job growth has been halted since Obamacare passed, except, apparently, in red states who have initiated pro-jobs reforms (the numbers from TX are amazing), shrinking the size of government and limiting Union power.  Meanwhile, Administrative officials keep saying stupid things because, frankly, they have nothing more to offer. 

The current Republican field of candidates is very lacking on their ability and leadership when it comes to the debt, deficit, and Entitlement reform.  They want to avoid the scare-mongering of the Democrats and the media.  Maybe that’s good politics.  But is it responsible citizenship?

So that brings me to Paul Ryan.  The blogosphere has been abuzz all day on the possibility of Paul Ryan jumping into the race for president, just days after Rick Perry’s official announcement completely changed the Republican primary race.  Ed Morrisey at Hot Air, who seems to be excited about the Perry run, is not so enthusiastic over a Paul Ryan candidacy.  Others, seem to disagree.  Count me in with the latter group. 

The previous links have already made the case for Paul Ryan’s candidacy.  He has stated over and over that he doesn’t want to run, especially for the sake of his family.  So why would he reconsider this late in the game?  I like this analogy:

“With Paul, it’s more about obligation than opportunity,” says another Wisconsin Republican. “He is determined to have the 2012 election be about the big things. If that means he has to run, he’s open to it.”
…
One Ryan confidante used an analogy to make the point. Ryan sees running for president like taking a swan dive off a cliff. In the early stages of the race, when he started getting calls urging him to run, Ryan began walking away from the cliff at a brisk pace. Then, when Daniels announced that he was passing on a bid, Ryan stopped in place and turned around. In the weeks since, he’s slowly made his way back to the cliff and he’s now peering over the side trying to decide if he makes the leap.

The cliff is not just for the presidency.  Paul Ryan is determined to make that cliff about the future path of this country.  Are we going to go follow Europe down the path of decline as a direct result of an affordable, dehumanizing, cradle-to-grave Social nanny state?  Or do we turn the ship around and again follow the rockier, but more prosperous path of liberty? 

Here’s my question question to Paul Ryan (not like he will see it): if you don’t make the first leap, then who will and when? 

I think – or at least hope – that there are a lot of people behind Paul on that cliff.  If he makes the leap, a lot of us will follow.   The challenge will be to convincing the rest of the public to come, too.  And the public might actually be ready to have the right conversations.

Many people, like me, spend way too much time posting links on facebook and bitching about the problems.   I guess that’s got to change.  The crisis is here, and how we can expect our reluctant leaders to do what is right when we’re unwilling to provide the support that is needed.

The numbers:

The official national debt is $14.6 trillion, or over 98% of the US GDP, or $130,578 per taxpayer.  Well, that’s OK, right?  We just pay it off over many decades like a normal citizen would any debt.  According to some economists, deficit spending during a recession is good, right?  The problem isn’t that we have deficit spending over a few years, it’s that’s 98% debt to GDP number that keeps going up.  We’re borrowing $2 for every $5 we spend.  The effects are not good for the economy or the West, or the world.

The long term numbers are even more terrifying: the US has $115 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities (some sources place the numbers higher).  That means we are passing on to future generations over a million dollars per taxpayer.  We are essentially borrowing money and placing the burden on US citizens that haven’t even been born yet.  The US currently has a total of $76 trillion in assets (not GDP, assets).  That’s a lot of wealth creation that cannot happen with a barely growing economy.

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Not sure how many of my 5 readers have heard about this story, but I wanted to comment on it.   The gist of it is this: A school district in Mississippi canceled the high school prom because the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of a lesbian student, named Constance McMillen (18 years old).   She wanted to bring her girlfriend (another student) to the prom and wear a tuxedo.  The school said no to the tux and no to the “date” (they apparently could go separately?).   The school, at the time they canceled, said that they hope a “private party” would step-forth to hold the prom.  Presumably, this was their way of taking the legal and political (remember, small-town Mississippi politics in the middle of the Bible-belt) issues surrounding the lawsuit out of their hands.   I cannot fault them for this decision, and several private parties have stepped-up to help these kids have a prom, including a hotel owner from New Orleans who offered to bus the kids down from northeastern MS and hold it for free at one of his properties.

A few points:

1) My issue with this is on tactics and not on whether the girl should be allowed to go to the prom with the date of her choice.  I think that’s an issue for the parents within the community to decide.  This is about kids, not adults, and even their freedom is limited until they are 18 (and even at 18, if they are attending a school function).

2) The ACLU is known to use these bullying tactics to push their agenda.  Instead of working for social change by dialog and other forms of speech, they push a lawsuit.  The school district, whether you agree with their reaction or not, was responding to the bullying when they canceled the prom.  The girl said that she didn’t think the school would react the way it did, which I find amusing.

3) Now since the ACLU didn’t get their way, they are pressing another lawsuit to force the school to hold the prom.  More bullying.  This would be like the government passing a law that you cannot discriminate against gay couples for adoption and then forcing the Catholic adoption agencies to stay open instead of closing due to moral obligations.

4) The original lawsuit was not claiming discrimination.  As Ed at Hot Air points out:

It’s interesting to me mainly as a legal matter: Per the ACLU’s complaint, this is not a discrimination claim. It’s a First Amendment claim, alleging that McMillen would essentially be engaged in a form of speech (“communicative content”) about her orientation in wearing a tuxedo and bringing a girl to the prom. That’s weak — she’s not going to prom to make a statement, she’s going because she wants to dance and have fun with her girlfriend — but because the Equal Protection Clause has never been held to apply to sexual orientation, the ACLU really has no choice but to try the speech argument. Not sure it’ll work, but then the point isn’t to win the suit. It’s to turn up the heat on the school district until the bad publicity makes them cave or, at the very least, scares other districts that might do this into thinking twice. Working like a charm so far.

The bottom line is this:  Coercing people to do what you want even if they don’t does NOT bring about good will and social change.  It puts people on the defensive, and actually hurts whatever progress you are trying to make.

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For any of you keeping up on today’s major blog story, I thought I would make some comments from the perspective of a scientist on the controversy. 

Science relies on open debate.   When I first saw the story, my instinct was to give the scientists the benefit of the doubt: many discussions within a scientific research group, if taken out of context and without a thorough understanding of the mathematical and scientific issues involved, could sound to a lay person as “scientific misconduct” especially when people read into them what they want to.  However, the more I read these emails, that doesn’t seem to be the case.  The public is surely blowing some out of context, but with so many of the emails pointing to the same forms of scientific misconduct, there seems to be a very worrisome pattern.  If these emails truly are evidence of what they seem to be, it hurts the scientific community as a whole by degrading public trust.   I keep waiting for someone to put them in perspective from the point of view of CRU, but they seem to be more suspiciously silent than I would expect…

If you haven’t been following the news, basically one of the leading climate change research institutions, the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, or CRU, had their email servers hacked.  The anonymous hackers posted a large file containing emails and some scientific data that they took from the server.  CRU has confirmed the hacking and that the emails appear to be genuine.  There are many news sites and bloggers covering the story, with the previous link being to the Herald Sun, and Australian newspaper.   Ace of Spades HQ picked up the story (twice, lol), which is where I learned about it. 

Let’s put this story into some context, and I’ll be as neutral as I can.  First of all, contrary to what the news media may have led you to believe, the scientific discussion for or against global warming is not a cut-and-dry, black-or-white one.  Even within the community of scientists that believe in anthropogenic (man-made) global  warming climate change (AGW), there is a debate over the details.  There are questions over how sensitive the climate is to additional CO2, whether or not some (if not all) of the warming can be attributed to solar activity, and there is many discussions over just how to analyze – and interpret - the data.  The details of all of this is for a different post.  The important thng to note is this: different ways of analyzing the data can lead to drastically different interpretations nad results, especially when dealing with a politically heated topic as this.   Steve McIntyre, one of the major players in this story/debate - isn’t a climatologist.  However, he has been researching this topic for quite some time, and his arguments have been quite compelling.  He runs the site Climate Audit (which is suffering from major server overload since this story broke), and has been attacking the “Hockey Stick” graph for quite some time, along with the methodology of the authors of the graph, Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes.   The emails that were hacked are correspondence between Mann and other authors at CRU.

Because Climate Audit is running so slowly right now, I suggest reading the story at Watts Up With That (WUWT), who mirried Climate Audit’s post.  WUWT has a good selection of damning emails here. 

  Here are a couple of selections (below the fold):

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So now I am sitting in another Canadian restaurant and bored again. So time for more stereotyping and generalizations…

So I watched dancing with the stars last night for the first time. Some of the ball room dance instructors seemed fake and manipulative of their celebrity students…I suppose that’s because they were on tv and dealing with celebrities. They couldn’t possibly be like that in real life, right? (And yes, I know not all ballroom instructors are like that, so don’t get all pissy…)

I did enjoy the dancing, though, Aaron carter is an idiot. I hope he gets voted off. That snowboarder is an idiot, too, but his teacher is hot. So he should get to stay.

I think I found the gay area of Vancouver, but I can’t be sure without further observations that I don’t really feel necessary.

And Sam, I have some cash on me. :-p

I’m at a different restaurant, but I’m eating lasagna again tonight. The waitress said people like it better than the chicken.

This part of the city literally has a coffee shop on every block. Sometimes more. I’ve seen starbucks on opposite sides of the street right across from each other. Draw your own conclusions.

Coffee is one of those things that really highlight the differences between liberals and conservatives.

To a liberal, the brandname on the cup of coffee you are carrying aroud is a status symbol. It tells a lot. Is the coffee from a local shop? Or a chain? Where did the bean come from? A country or company conscious of it’s social responsibilities? And the most important two factors: does it impress the right people and did it cost a lot?

To a conservative, coffee is simple. Whereas the above list are items of conversation to liberals in a coffeeshop, a conservative would have a conversation like this: “dammit, my machine is broken. Just pour me a cup so I can get to work. What? What the hell is a venti? Flavor? No black please Fine whatever. I need to get to work. How much?! Are you out your mind? This would cost a $1 at the gas station. Whatever, I need to get to work. Here. Thanks.”

The lasagna was lacking and the bread tasted funny. But the tiramisu (sp?) was wonderful. Now for a drink…

And later…

Sweet. I made it back to the hotel in time to catch the end of dancing with the stars! It’s a dance off! So louie (the snowboarder) has the hotter pro partner, Chelsea, but I like Michael Irvin better. His partner is pretty too, of course, and doesn’t seem as big of a…nm.

Oh wait, we’re supposed to decide based on dancing. Louie, dancing a jive, messed up on a pivot, which I can relate to, and Michael was struggling with his samba technique. This is a tough choice. Overall, I felt michael’s was cleaner. I vote for them…and the judges say…they agree!

Bye Chelsea. Sorry I had to go with Michael and anna. Call me?

Ok time for another drink…

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