Abomination

The purposes of this opinion post are:

1. To convice Sparky that if he is going to classify one candidate as "too corrupt to be president", that candidate must be Barack Obama.
   
   
2. To discuss the legitimacy of news sources, in particular the New York Times.
   
   
3. To reiterate my position on mudslinging.

Introduction: Why this post is wrong (in defense of those on the left)

Let me begin in reverse, by reiterating my position on mudslinging. It is not needed. It doesn't even matter if it is true. All politicians do bad things. Barack Obama has done them and John McCain has certainly done them (though I can't find many bad things done by John McCain that compare to Obama). We should discuss issues and policy (government), not rumors, theories, and mistakes from the past.

That said, I write this post and many other posts on this blog specifically for the purpose of mudslinging Barack Obama. Why do I go against my own principals? As a matter of principal, of course! I must get Sparky to drop his antics (his latest line is "F John McCain, Andrew. F Him!") and start discussing policy. The only way I see to convince him of this is to prove that, by his own standards, his candidate is unfit to be president. If I can prove this, maybe he will change his standards and think about government for once.

Barack Obama: A concise campaign history

The following are Barack Obama's responses (generalized by me, of course) to all allegations against him:

1. I voted "present" 133 times in less than three years because....JOHN MCCAIN IS GEORGE BUSH WITH A MASK ON!
   
   
2. It took me twenty years to realize that Reverend Wright is a racist who thinks that God should kill whites because....he seemed nice enough to me!
   
   
3. I launched my campaign from the house of an admitted, cold-blooded terrorist because....he seemed nice enough to me!
   
   
4. I only ever worked with Acorn because....they seemed legitimate enough to me!

Some people turn it around and say that Obama is just as racist as Wright, that he condones terrorism and cop-killing, or that he encouraged voter fraud. None of these are true! He is simply a politician! He does things that work to his advantage, no matter what those things are! By all definitions, Barack Obama is just a slimy politician.

Of course, it would be easy for me to take all those wrong stances, given the evidence. That's why talk radio hosts do it. The evidence is there! So Sparky (or anyone who mudslings McCain on a regular basis), please take this into consideration. Whenever you start a tirade on John McCain's evil corrupt doings, just remember that I love to play the devil's advocate when it comes to mudslinging Barack.

New York Slimes

Speaking of slimy.

The media is not covering the Acorn voter fraud issue accurately. The New York Times in a recent article defends Barack Obama rather than listing all the facts. They list facts all right, but I don't think they've heard the term "selective" before. NYT - On Obama, Acorn, and Voter Registration

Funny, the Slimes was glad to crucify Acorn back in July, before Acorn was connected to Barack Obama. NYT - Funds Misappropriated at 2 Nonprofit Groups

CNN, a bastian of balanced news coverage, covered the story in detail, listing all the facts. CNN (YouTube) - Acorn and Obama

What an obamanation!

Notes

If you are one of those people who never clicks the links I post, click that last one. The video is only five minutes long. Please watch it and understand how corrupt Acorn is.

The Wall Street Journal (a real newspaper) published a transcript of this video written by the Republican National Committee. (I know, Sparky, Republicans. I checked the transcript, okay? It's legit.)

Clarification: The Republican National Committee did not write or sponsor in any way the CNN news story I link to above. CNN did. The Republican National Committee just wrote down all the words in the video in the form of a transcript.

Mad libs

I will be coming out with some statistics for last night's debate, as I did with the previous two. However, this is an opinion post.

Something hit me last night. At one point, the moderator asked the order in which the candidates would address the problems of health care, energy, and entitlement (social security).

The assumption is that health care and energy are issues that are in dire need of large-scale help from the government and that social security is an already-existing government program that needs fixing because it is on the brink of destruction.

The part that hit me was that last note: social security is an already-existing government program that needs fixing because it is on the brink of destruction.

Again, social security is an already-existing government program that needs fixing because it is on the brink of destruction.

If you haven't just had the same light bulb go off that I did, let me fill you in. We'll begin with some history.

In the 1920's, times were tough and the government deemed it necessary to prohibit the use or possession of alcohol. That never went smoothly, and after thirteen years of crime-ridden black markets, the prohibition was repealed.

In the early 1930's, times were tough and the government deemed it necessary to impose higher taxes on big corporations and the wealthy. That went smoothly for less than a year, and drove the economy into the great depression.

In the mid-1930's, times were tough and the government deemed it necessary to (basically) insure the income of retirees. That went smoothly for less than a century, and now social security (and the future of some retirees) is on the brink of destruction.

In the 1970's, times were tough and the government deemed it necessary to impose windfall profits taxes on big oil companies. This went smoothly for less than twenty years, and now America has dangerously increased its dependence on foreign oil.

In the 1990's, times were tough and the government deemed it necessary to greatly strengthen Affordable Housing requirements on banks, giving them quotas to meet on loans to less-fortunate communities. That went smoothly for less than twenty years, and now the entire housing market (and economy) is on the brink of destruction.

In 2003, the government (parts of it) deemed it necessary to invade Iraq. That went smoothly for less than a year, and only now are American forces beginning to make a real difference. And now, because of this misplaced and mismanaged war, thousands of Americans have lost their lives and the United States' debt to foreign nations has been dangerously increased.

Of course, the above is common knowledge. Let's play some mad-libs and figure out some more interesting things. Try and fill in the most witty, zany, wacky government ideas you can! Just make sure it makes sense given the government's history of helping the American people.

In the early 2000's, times were tough and the government deemed it necessary to _____________. That went smoothly for _______________ and now ______________.

Try this one!!

In the early 2000's, times were tough and the government deemed it necessary to universalize health care. That went smoothly for thousands and thousands of years, and now everybody's health is perfect.

It's obvious!! How about this:

In the early 2000's, times were tough and the government deemed it necessary to reinstate the windfall profits tax on big oil. That went smoothly for thousands and thousands of years, and now America is completely energy-independent and global warming is gone.

History proves it!! Another logical one:

In the early 2000's, times were tough and the government deemed it necessary to ban hand guns. That went smoothly for thousands and thousands of years, and now there is no violence.

Come on people, it is only logical! Big government works!

Enough fun with mad libs and sarcasm. Let me return to my original point.

The moderator asked the candidates which they would address first: health care, energy, or social security.

Social security is the failed government program of that trio. If government takes over health care, it will be the failure-to-fix for presidential candidates in the 2050's.

Nobody is under the illusion that social security will be "fixed". "Fixed" means deleted. It means people will have to save money for retirement. Bill Clinton once famously said that more people under thirty believe they will see a UFO than believe they will ever receive a social security check. He was right. They are right. Social security bombed.

Let's not do this with health care.

As for energy, both candidates propose aggressive spending in the energy sector. My stance is and has always been that this is good, until the day that the government decides to take over the energy sector and own it. Once that day comes, I will protest it just as much as I protest universalized health care.

The problem with capitalism is that some people prosper and some people don't. Some people get great health care and some people don't. There is suffering involved.

The problem with socialism is that the suffering culminates in a big disaster down the road, after years of ignorant bliss. Human suffering cannot be removed from any equation, only shoved to one side or another.

For years, affordable housing has delayed the suffering of people who don't like living in apartments. They are suffering now.

For decades, social security has delayed the suffering of seniors who couldn't manage to save enough. They will be suffering soon.

Now, Democrats want to delay the suffering of people who can't afford good health care.

If you're one to delay suffering, go ahead and vote for it. Me? I recognize that life is ugly because it must be ugly. If someday it is not, we will cease to be human.

Computers

I haven't graduated yet, but I know a thing or two about computers.

The Government did not invent computers, you ass.

http://www.maxmon.com/timeline.htm

Follow Up 2: Debate 1 Analysis

In my last post, I promised that I would repeat my debate statistics experiment for a third time. I did. Once again, as with the second time around, I used my debate tracking tool.

The results were the same.

Presidential debate statistics (2)

Refer to my last post.

It has now been verified twice! Please, correct me where I am wrong.

Follow Up: Debate 1 Analysis

A few days ago, I posted some approximate statistics and some factual generalizations about the first presidential debate. After receiving some feedback on the reliability of my statistics, I decided to improve the experiment and do it again. (Original post here)

So, I programmed a debate tracking tool. Although the tool is still in its infancy (and quite buggy), it works. It allows me to generate verifiable statistics regarding any debate. I now have a set of verifiable statistics to back up some of my original statistics.

Verifiable debate 1 statistics

In fact, I am so happy with how the tracker works, I will be repeating this exact experiment once again to guarantee accuracy. I encourage you to do it as well! Watch the same YouTube video that I did and track the same statistics. Please!

To wrap it up, this experiment verified the following generalizations:

• McCain talked about his own record about twice as much as Obama talked about his own record.
  
  
• McCain talked about Obama's record more than Obama talked about McCain's record.
  
  
• Obama mentioned George Bush seven times more than John McCain did.
  
  
• McCain talked more about his own record than he did Obama's record. Obama talked more about McCain's record than he did his own record.

Again, I will be re-verifying these same three statistics using my tracker. You may think I'm obsessive. You're right. I am obsessed because it makes me very, very mad when people blame fact on inaccurate statistics. It makes me mad, for example, when people tell me that I am not right about Obama focusing on Bush and blathering more than John McCain rather than making actual references. The only 'proof' that they have is that I am not an objective observer, so my statistics must be made up.

In your face.

To New Blog Readers

New blog readers, welcome! Thanks for reading. If you are new to my blog, please just read the following points:

• Please leave comments! At the bottom of each post there is a link that says "0 comments". If you click that, you will be able to leave comments on my blog.
  
  
• Please check out my posts from September and August! To do this, click on the dark grey arrows located on the right side of the screen.

Thanks! Rock on.

VP Debate Stats

The VP debate has just ended.

Literally minutes before the beginning of the debate, I finished programming a version of a debate tracker which I will be using to generate statistics on all the debates (as well as to verify my statistics on the first debate).

Here are the results: http://andrewpeace.com/debate-tracking-tool/results.php?id=1

Note: For "Referenced their own record" I only included instances where the candidates referenced themselves. For "Referenced their opponent's record" I included instances where they mentioned their opponent or their opponent's principal (the opposing presidential candidate).

Please, verify any of the events marked in the log. Here is how you do so:

1. Find a video of the debate (try YouTube)
2. Find the moment when the moderator begins the first question (my synchronization event)
3. Look at the time the event occurred in my log and add that time to the time on your video source where the moderator begins the first question.
4. Once you have added the times, skip forward to that time on the video to see the event happen.

Of course, my tallies are subject to human error. They may be off by one to seven seconds. If you find an event in the log that is off by more than seven seconds, TELL ME! I will admit I made a bad tally. I will shout it from the rooftops. I will post it on this blog in bright red lettering. Please, verify.

Peace!

Greenfleece

GreenPeace is a backwards organization.

Like all backwards things (mirror images, cabooses, Democrats) GreenPeace does benefit the world in some ways. However, like some backwards things (Democrats), GreenPeace could be doing so much better.

Literally minutes ago, I spoke with the Boston City Coordinator for GreenPeace. I can't remember her name right now, but I will work on finding that.

I ran into her at Northeastern, where I go to school. I have also frequently run into GreenPeace volunteers at Porter Square in Cambridge as well as on Newbury Street. I worked near Porter Square for about six months and saw GreenPeace volunteers there at least five times. Yet, I have been living full-time in Jamaica Plain for over a year and have never seen a GreenPeace rep there. Not within five miles of my apartment. Not on Center Street, not near Jamaica Pond, not on Washington Street.

I will let you draw your own conclusions on that, but I will also draw for you the conclusions that were given to me by this young lady of whom I speak.

When I told her what I have just told you, she told me that she had just moved here from Iowa three months ago and didn't know the city and surrounding areas very well, so that was why she didn't have anybody posted in Jamaica Plain.

So I asked her why I had never seen GreenPeace volunteers in Jamaica Plain before she took charge three months ago. She told me that they have to place volunteers in places where they can interact with one person every thirty seconds, which is why they are most often found in popular places like Newbury Street, Northeastern, and Cambridge.

I informed her that both Centre Street and Washington Street are very busy during summers in Jamaica Plain.

"Well", she said, "GreenPeace has tried that before and they had some problems with that. So, unfortunately I just kind of have to go with what GreenPeace says. If I had more volunteers maybe I could put some in places like that."

Mhmm. Maybe.

By the way. Here is the qualification for being a GreenPeace city coordinator:

A minimum of 1-2 years of experience in face-to-face fundraising, direct marketing or customer service and a strong interest in environmental issues.
GreenPeace.org

What was that last thing? Strong interest in...huh?

GreenPeace is not interested in affecting social change. They are interested in getting your money, throwing it at things, and keeping some of it.

This lovely lady (who, admittedly, was very nice) talked to me about a campaign that GreenPeace is working on right now involving Kimberly Clark, the parent company of Kleenex.

GreenPeace Kimberly Clark campaign

This campaign is better than nothing, but it is backwards.

Rather than educating you about using less tissue (or conserving in general), GreenPeace simply asks you to sign up for their club, pay them monthly, and hope that they do things you think are good. This is why they don't volunteer in busy poor areas, only busy wealthy areas. Their main interest is money.

Instead, GreenPeace should focus on busy poor areas. Rather than collecting money, they should give out free handkercheifs. In case you are a GreenPeace member and don't know, a handkercheif can do the same things that those evil Kleenex things do, but they are washable and reusable. GreenPeace wouldn't even have to spend money on this! Don't you think there would be some company somewhere that would spend a couple million bucks if their logo was splattered all over everyone's handkercheifs??

But of course, GreenPeace is full of liberals. Liberals do not expect you to change and become better. They expect you to give them your money and hope they can solve your problem for you.

Doy!

Debate 1 Analysis

I just re-watched the debate on YouTube. While I watched, I kept tally scores on each candidate in several categories. Here are the results:

Mentioned George Bush:
Obama: 14
McCain: 2

Mentioned their own proposed policy:
Obama: 64
McCain: 70

Mentioned opponent's proposed policy:
Obama: 12
McCain: 21

Mentioned/alluded to their own record:
Obama: 20
McCain: 38

Mentioned/alluded to their opponent's record:
Obama: 23
McCain: 33

Mentioned a specific piece of legislation that they proposed:
Obama: 0
McCain: 2 (League of Democracies, 9/11 Commission)

Please note: These numbers are not intended to be exact. I watched the debate in real time and made tally marks along the way. These numbers do not represent exact statistics. However, I will maintain that they give a fair representation of what really happened in the debates. Each number is surely off by a few tallies, but no numbers are off by magnitudes and any mistakes towards one candidate were surely repeated against the other candidate equally.

Factual Generalizations

Whether or not my numbers are perfect, any count or re-count of the same statitics will reveal the following true generalizations:

• McCain and Obama both talked about their own proposed policy about equally.
  
  
• McCain talked about Obama's proposed policy about twice as much as Obama talked about McCain's proposed policy.
  
  
• McCain talked about his own record about twice as much as Obama talked about his own record.
  
  
• McCain talked about Obama's record more than Obama talked about McCain's record.
  
  
• McCain mentioned legislation that he proposed. Obama did not talk about legislation that he proposed.
  
  
• Obama mentioned George Bush seven times more than John McCain did.
  
  
• Obama mentioned George Bush's policy more than he mentioned John McCain's proposed policy.
  
  
• McCain talked more about his own record than he did Obama's record. Obama talked more about McCain's record than he did his own record.

The Conclusion

This debate turned out exactly the way that any reasonable person predicted. Obama talked more about nothing than John McCain. John McCain talked more about actual records more than Barack Obama. Barack Obama focused on Bush because he knows that John McCain is stronger and better than Bush. He knows John McCain is a maverick and he must hide that fact.

More notes

I counted George Bush references by making a tally every time a candidate mentioned Bush's administration directly and did not relate the actions of the Bush administration directly to their own actions (both candidates did this at least once). If I had counted the number of times a candidate referenced "the last eight years" or "the last four years", Barack Obama's score assuredly would have been over twenty and John McCain's would have remained the same.

I started out with also counting the number of praises and criticisms issued by each candidate. I stopped doing this when it became too difficult to keep track of. However, when I stopped (about midway) Obama and McCain had criticized each other equally. Obama had praised John McCain several times, and John McCain had praised Barack Obama zero times.

So, I'm making it up, right Sparky?

Ok. Go ahead and do it yourself. Produce your own numbers. I plan to do it again sometime soon and come up with a new set of numbers which will assuredly be different than these but will also assuredly produce the same patterns.

Great Video

Very good video from sixty minutes:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/28/60minutes/main4483612.shtml

The 60 minutes team stayed with Henry Paulson through the ongoing bailout negotiations. Fascinating!!

The most fascinating to me: Henry Paulson literally did get on one knee and ask Nancy Pelosy and the Democrats not to blow things up. Pelosy said, "It's not us, it's the Republicans." And he said, "I know, I know".

Just because I will most likely vote for one, doesn't mean I like 'em!!

Up next: Debate analysis.

Also, I will be going back (for the fifth time!!) to the economic crisis. A revealing debate with Sparky the other day as well as a few other things have brought me to the realization that I am definitely right about the economic crisis. Read on!!

And by the way, if you are new to my blog, read the post entitled "Please Please Me". It gives some good info.

I am not the only crazy one!

Regarding my theories on the economic crisis, Sparky told me yesterday that I was wrong because nobody else has the same idea. Housing post 1, Housing post 2, Housing post 3.

First of all, Sparky, we do not look to the news media for a fact-based, logical discussion of any issue or historical event. We wait until people with brains think about it and write about it in credible articles and books.

Second of all, I am not the only one! I just Googled Community Reinvestment Act, and I found a good editorial in the Boston Globe and a bad editorial in the National Review Online that both agree with me. The Community Reinvestment Act forced lending institutions to give loans to people they knew would default.

Boston Globe editorial
National review online editorial (this is junky...but mostly correct!!)

I might not be right, but I am certainly not crazy!!

...I am right, though.

Debate commentary coming next!!

Vexing Texting

Me: Hey do you know if the debate is on tonight?

Sparky: It is on but mccain aint going lol at 8pm

Me: Of course. Obama is at his best when He's unopposed

Sparky: Um im sry that obama stays 2 his word and doesnt pull out 2 days before

Me: In the midst of the largest crisis in years. Of course He's not really any help anyways i'm sure so he'd rather blab to himself for an hour

Still waiting on another response...

Yes, I am an instigator!! Sorry!

[CORRECTION: We were both wrong. As of two hours ago McCain is participating. And it's at 9PM. NYT]