Defense of Truth

An FB post from a friend claiming this video as an Econ and Politics 101 primer prompts my point-by-point rebuttal below: Reich is the king of cherry-picked half-truth and the twice-spun straw-man argument, even when he's accurate on his facts (which he's not always--that part often turns out to be "selective" too, and usually missing proper contextualization). Conservatives think that leaving more earnings in the hands of the earners makes sense, so yes, low taxes. Conservatives think that regulation should be done from the local level up, not from the federal level down, so yes, fewer regulations. But low wages has NEVER been part of the Conservative economic argument, instead the argument is that when employers are free to let the market choose the wages, wages tend to settle HIGHER. TX and KS are 25 and 26 for average income in 2014, CA was 3 , that much is true (although 25-26 are NOT bottom of the barrel, by any stretch). But, now ask how that tra

Quick post today.  A friend with good intentions posted a list of 10 things we can do to combat hate published by the Southern Poverty Law Center , or SPLC  here .  It's got some good suggestions for empowering people when something truly racist or bigoted happens in their communities.  However, while failing miserably to maintain a veneer of objective neutrality, it let slip the following belly-laugh-inspiring list of criteria exposing its massive leftist leaning, apparently with complete blindness to its own hypocrisy: Though their views may be couched in code words, members of hate groups typically share these extremist views: • They want to limit the rights of certain groups. • They want to divide society along racial, ethnic or religious lines. • They believe in conspiracies. • They try to silence any opposition. • They are antigovernment and fundamentalist. By their own definition, even with the most charitable reading of the criteria, the SPLC hits on 4/5 o

Living in a swing state has its ups and downs--no pun intended.  But swings work best when the ropes aren't twisted.  Here's how to untwist the latest national ads targeted to Ohio and the like. The children!  Hillary cares about the children!  Children are our future.  They're innocent.  They need protection, and if you're on the fence about who to vote for, this is Clinton's play to make you think she's the person to do it.  She's been working at it her whole life, apparently.  We have footage of her talking about making sure the future's bright for all children, all the while implying that her political opponent is not.  Well, if he's not anti-children, then at least he's a racist xenophobe who doesn't want success in life for "all" children like Hillary does. Does this stuff actually convince anybody?  There's no content in this ad, only branding.  There's no concrete ideas on  how to protect children and give the

A couple of articles I've read recently, as well as a number of "conservative" friends vowing to go third party on the grounds that Trump is an immoral candidate unworthy of support, or on the grounds that "voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil" have pushed me more toward full support of Trump's candidacy than ever. I can't, of course, endorse the man.  Final judgment doesn't belong to me, but I also can't turn off what I observe.  If what he claims about himself is true, his moral compass is nowhere near aligned with mine, and his dubious sense of right makes me fear what he would do when it got coupled with the unmitigated might of the executive branch. I can't, of course, endorse the political ideals.  His positions on all the conservative ideals I hold dear and essential to the maintenance of liberty in this great land and upon the whole earth are nowhere near solid enough in substance, grounded enough in pri

Short post today. Visits from supposedly anti-war Secretary John Kerry, and President Barack Obama to the Hiroshima memorial brought up a question I've entertained in my mind on different occasions over the years--one that others had posed for me: it's easy to understand that an overwhelming show of extreme superiority was necessary to prevent Emperor Hirohito from forcing his citizens to fight to the last even in a losing war, but why Nagasaki?  Why the second bomb?  Why did the US have to kill dozens of thousands of civilians AGAIN? Beyond the explanation that cultural ideals of honor under which the society was operating at the time dictated that a warrior not submit even after the first devastatingly superior blow, I'm at a loss to understand why the Emperor didn't capitulate immediately.  Maybe it's even simpler than that: he was a tyrant dictator and was quite comfortable asking his citizens to commit suicide for him.  After all that is where we get the