Maggie's Farm

Should libertarians fear the Dem nominee? asks Chapman at Reason. He begins:

There are no disciples of small government in the Democratic Party, and Barack Obama fits right in. His economic program is based on the assumption that the economy is to the president what a marionette is to a puppeteer, requiring his direction and responding to his every wish.

Anyone partial to free markets, restrained government, fiscal discipline and light taxation approaches a Democratic nominee's economic platform with trepidation, expecting one fright after another. Obama does not disappoint.

Read the whole thing. Of course, Repubs are only marginally better because people in government tend to become enamored of - and dependent upon - the power. To vote as a statist, you must believe in the supreme wisdom of the State and its (our) employees. Few Americans believe that.

In the end, the dividing line is between those who trust in the power and wisdom of The State vs. those who have faith in the wisdom and potential of the individual. I happen to think that The State is an ass, and foolish when it is not self-interested. No Pasaran has a bit on Statism.

These are the things folks need to be considering in these elections. Americans are ambivalent about government.

More from Chapman: This election season, both the left and right promise big government.

Well, so much for diversity and appreciating and embracing "the other." I think that thing only applies when "the other" is pathetic or damaged in some way, or manages to wiggle their way into some victim class.

Or perhaps some pomo reader, if we have one, could help me distinguish between the "good other" and the "bad other."

It sure doesn't apply when "the other" is a regular American woman, albeit one with unusual energy and coping skills. Nick Cohen on When Obama's berserkers lost the plot. (h/t, Lucianne). One quote:

For once, the postmodern theories so many of them were taught at university are a help to the rest of us. As a Christian, conservative anti-abortionist who proved her support for the Iraq War by sending her son to fight in it, Sarah Palin was 'the other' - the threatening alien presence they defined themselves against. They might have soberly examined her reputation as an opponent of political corruption to see if she was truly the reformer she claimed to be. They might have gently mocked her idiotic creationism, while carefully avoiding all discussion of the racist conspiracy theories of Barack Obama's church.

But instead of following a measured strategy, they went berserk. On the one hand, the media treated her as a sex object. The New York Times led the way in painting Palin as a glamour-puss in go-go boots you were more likely to find in an Anchorage lap-dancing club than the Alaska governor's office.

Some animals are more other than others.

Addendum: Apparently those folks at the Guardian also view people like me as "the other" - and as a primitive, apeish ignorant "other" for whom they hold contempt. They have clearly never met me. I'm an Ivy guy, and I wear ties and like guns. Call me a knuckle-dragging redneck if you want to. Story at Jules.

Addendum: From our commenter "People on the left are breaking the teeth of reason on the irrefutable fact of Sarah Palin--the other--as they gnash the grinders in their dismay. They have attacked her strength and accomplishments with sexism; they have belittled her origins with classism; and they have mocked her beliefs, leaving only the shell of their multiculturalism. Thus the lie of identity politics and multiculturalism lay in ruins."

Addendum: The Palin Problem. Rick Moran. One quote:

Most women work because they have to in order to make ends meet or give the family those vital little extras not to mention the fulfillment many women get from the feeling of independence and pride that having a job brings. Politicians have tried for years to address these women directly with varying degrees of success. Democrats have offered child care, family leave, job protections for pregnant women, and the child health insurance program S-CHIP among other programs. Republicans haven’t ignored these women but have not offered much government assistance, preferring tax credits to ease the financial burden on the family.

Palin is the first Republican politician with which these women can truly identify. She speaks their language. She sounds like them. Her family looks like their family. And when she speaks of the mixing of her career and family, she can look directly at the camera and give them a knowing smile of solidarity – as if they were neighbors casually talking over the backyard fence.

Photo is our refined, sophisticated, Euro-sensitive, metrosexual editor Bird Dog. Just your typical American voter...

Looks like we have some hurricane residue headed our way. I am always happy to see that up here - a little visitor from Africa and the tropics. Some left-over Gustav or whatever today, and Hannah on her way up here.

So it looks like a stormy-weather working weekend. Insty picked up a Joyner piece, Rich Work More than "Working Class." No kidding. I guess I qualify as rich although you wouldn't know it: I have only one house, no time-share Citation, and not enough dough to retire at my current manner of living (nor would I want to, because I like being useful).

The quoted NYT piece in the above link begins:

What’s different from [Max] Weber’s era is that it is now the rich who are the most stressed out and the most likely to be working the most. Perhaps for the first time since we’ve kept track of such things, higher-income folks work more hours than lower-wage earners do. Since 1980, the number of men in the bottom fifth of the income ladder who work long hours (over 49 hours per week) has dropped by half, according to a study by the economists Peter Kuhn and Fernando Lozano. But among the top fifth of earners, long weeks have increased by 80 percent.

This is a stunning moment in economic history: At one time we worked hard so that someday we (or our children) wouldn’t have to. Today, the more we earn, the more we work, since the opportunity cost of not working is all the greater (and since the higher we go, the more relatively deprived we feel).

Read the whole thing. I work about 55 billable hrs/week - sometimes 60+, except during July and August when things slow down and clients aren't around much. Thank God we barristers aren't unionized.

Unlike the Euroweenies and the socialists, we Americans like to work. Not everybody admits it, but we do.

BTW, read Dr. Bliss' piece below about Seduction, if you missed it (scroll down). Interesting.

I always thought that the American Promise was for freedom. John Judis clearly thinks otherwise. A quote:

(The speech) fed two other arguments. First, it figured in the liberal or progressive (to use Croly’s term) argument that government has a responsibility to make good on the American promise: through regulating the market, and through providing health insurance and education for all citizens. Second, it figured in Bill Clinton’s “New Democrat” argument (that has goes back to the Puritans) that in order to achieve the promise of American life, Americans have to exercise mutual and individual responsibility. People have to be willing to work; parents have to look after their children; corporations cannot behave like brigands. So through this notion of the American promise, Obama united the two historic strands of American liberalism: the older New Deal argument of the 1930s and the “New Democrat” argument of the 1990s.

One America: Finally, Obama invoked his vision of a single America--and he used it not only to put forward the promise of racial reconciliation, but as an attempt to defuse the great social divisions of the last decades over immigration, abortion, gays and guns. And that, too, dovetailed back into the idea of the American promise, which could not be achieved, Obama suggested, if America continued to be rent by incivility and social discord. It was one of the most intellectually elegant speeches I’ve heard. Besides that, I expect that it will do Obama and the Democrats a lot of good in the weeks ahead.

America is indeed divided. There is an America that wants free stuff from other people's labor, energy, and risk-taking, and there is an America that wants freedom and to be left alone by the government, to find its own way through adult life.

We are meant to build our lives, and to live with it. That's what grown-ups do in a free country.

The psychiatrist Krauthammer notes, interestingly, that there is nobody to vouch for Obama. Shrinks are trained to notice things like that: how do people relate, and to whom. Where are the witnesses to his ability? Where are his friends and colleagues? Are there any left? A quote:

So where are the colleagues? The buddies? The political or spiritual soul mates? His most important spiritual adviser and mentor was Jeremiah Wright. But he's out. Then there's William Ayers, with whom he served on a board. He's out. Where are the others?

The oddity of this convention is that its central figure is the ultimate self-made man, a dazzling mysterious Gatsby. The palpable apprehension is that the anointed is a stranger — a deeply engaging, elegant, brilliant stranger with whom the Democrats had a torrid affair.

Having slowly woken up, they see the ring and wonder who exactly they married last night.

Yes, he does seem like the elegant mysterious stranger who arrived out of nowhere like the Music Man. Immature people without personal foundations fill in those blanks with their own hopes and dreams. The reality is that he is a fine but not extraordinary black preacher/talker who has never done much, who nobody seems to really know, who carries a barely-covert communitarian message which is not my vision of America (except in my own neighborhood, where we all give eachother a hand).

Fantasy is fun, as is ego-tripping. Reality is the problem, and hard reality is often a bummer.

Let's grow up, America, and not feed on pixie-dust.

I get 90% of my ideas for my website posts in the shower. And this is probably why.

My morning shower thought for today was this: Why were the top two Dem candidates people who have never accomplished anything substantial or difficult in their lives - other than to be in elections?

(Note to John McCain: An ad asking "Name one thing Obama has accomplished in his life.")

This is not coincidence. Many politicians are not very good at regular life, but these two stand out as having only been good at being, not at life accomplishment. Being female, being black, and being medium-smart and above-average crafty and calculating. They have never run anything, made anything, or done anything: It's all about being them. As Dino notes:

Think about this: most people have someone whom they know or with whom they work, a relative perhaps, who has a thicker résumé and a longer list of achievements than the Democratic presidential candidate. Consider this: if history were different and Senator Obama had decided this year to run to become governor of Illinois, would he have been given rock-star status? Could his Republican opponent have run against him as “too inexperienced” to govern the Prairie State?

These folks are all about Jive Talkin':

Admittedly, I will always tend to vote for the more conservative candidate in any election, even if he or she is brain-damaged. That's because individual freedom and protection of our freedom is my main political agenda. That's my bias. I'm sure the Lefties approach things similarly.

However, my resume (and life experience) is deeper than Obama's or Hillary's, for sure. But that's not saying much.

Just as professional journals and newspapers are more interested in printing pieces that support hypotheses rather than papers with negative findings, so we all tend to spend more time discussing the risks of action rather than the risks of inaction.

That seems to be human nature, but it ain't rational and, fortunately, people vary across a spectrum of activity/passivity.

Passive people worry about the risks of action. Active people worry about the risks of inaction. I am more-or-less in the middle.

To discuss that half-intelligently, though, I first need to review the notion of Type 1 and Type 2 errors, now that we have taken a look at the null hypothesis a couple of days ago. 

A Type 1 error, also known as False Positive, is the error of erroneously rejecting the null hypothesis. In other words, it supports a connection which does not really exist.

A Type 2 error, or False Negative, is the error of wrongly accepting the null hypothesis. In other words, it says nothing is there, when it is, in fact, there.

For example, a blood test which has a 10% False Positive rate will wrongly tell you that there is an abnormality 10% of the time. A blood test with a 10% False Negative rate will miss an abnormality 10% of the time.

For another example, convicting an innocent person is a Type 1 error; letting a guilty person go free is a Type 2.

Depending on the matter at hand, either sort of error could have worse consequences. A Type 1 error in a death penalty case is a grievous error. But sometimes you need Type 1 errors.

My favorite example of a good Type 1 error is in the emergency treatment of appendicitis. Since medical diagnosis contains both art and luck as well as science, some error rate is inevitable unless you have the diseased organ in hand. But since a False Negative diagnosis would have dire consequences (ruptured appendix), it is necessary to do some unnecessary appendectomies on patients who might have appendicitis, but do not turn out to. In the case of emergency appendectomies: one study indicates that the Type 1 error rate is around 10%, with 18% False negatives. I would have guessed that the False Positives would be higher, and you could argue that there is room for them to go higher. The point is that, with appendicitis, you want to minimize your False Negatives by having more False Positive diagnoses - by being deliberately biased against the Null Hypothesis that there is nothing there, but without cutting open everyone with a bad stomach ache.

Thus that is the opposite of what you want in a justice system, where the null hypothesis of innocence is presumed in order to minimize False Positives.