Posts tagged as “Politics”

[twenty twenty-four day ninety-eight]: no, the anthill doesn’t come back stronger and better designed

Published April 7, 2024 by centaur

Above is what looks like a massive anthill at the border of the "lawn" and "forest" parts of our property. It's been getting bigger and bigger over the years, and that slow growth always reminds me of Mr. Morden's comments in Babylon 5 about the Shadows' plan to make lesser races fight:

JUSTIN: "It's really simple. You bring two sides together. They fight. A lot of them die, but those who survive are stronger, smarter and better."
MORDEN: "It's like knocking over an ant-hill. Every new generation gets stronger, the ant-hill gets redesigned, made better."
Babylon 5: Z'ha'dum

But the Shadows were wrong, and what we're seeing there isn't a redesigned anthill: it is a catastrophe, a multigenerational ant catastrophe caused by climate, itself brought to light by a larger, slow-motion human catastrophe caused by climate change.

Humans have farmed, built and burnt for a long time, but only now, in the dawn of the Anthropocene - that period of time where human impacts on climate start to exceed natural variation of climate itself, beginning roughly in the 1900s - have those effects really come back to bite us on a global, rather than local, scale.

For my wife and I, this took the form of fire. Fire was not new in California: friends who lived on homes on ridges complained about their high insurance costs as far back as I can remember. But more and more fires started burning across our area, forcing other friends to move away. Then three burned within five miles of our home, with no end to the drought in sight, and we decided we'd had enough.

We moved to my ancestral home, a place where water falls from the sky, aptly named Greenville. And we moved into a house whose builders knew about rain, and placed it on a hill with carefully designed drainage. They created great rolling lawns, manicured in the traditional Greenville "let's fucking force it with chemicals and lawnmowers to look like it was Astroturf" which we are slowly letting go back to nature.

In this grass, and in the absence of pesticides, the ants flourished. But this isn't precisely a natural environment: they're flourishing in an expanse of grass that is wider and more rounded than the rough, ridged forest around it. In the forest, runoff from the rains is channeled into proto-streams leading to the nearby creek; at the edge of the lawn, water from the house and lawn spills out in a flood.

Each heavy rain, the anthills building up in the sloped grass are washed to the mulch beds that mark the boundary of the forest, and there the ants start to re-build. But lighter rains can destroy these more exposed anthills, forcing them to slowly migrate back up into the grass. That had already happened here: that was no longer a live anthill, and unbeknownst to me, I was standing in its replacement.

No worries, for them or me; I noticed the anthill was dead, looked down, and moved off their territory just as the ants were swarming out of their antholes, fit to kill (or at least to annoyingly nibble). But the great red field there, as wide as a man is tall and twice as long, was not a functioning anthill: it was the accumulated wreckage of generation after generation of ant catastrophes.

In the quote, Mr. Morden was wrong: knocking over an anthill doesn't make it come back better designed. Justin got it a little better: the strongest and smartest do often survive a battle - but they walk away with scars, and sometimes the winners may just be the lucky ones. Conflict may not make people better - it can just leave scarred soldiers, wounded refugees and a destroyed landscape.

Now, the Shadows were the villains of the story, but every good villain needs a good soundbite that makes them sound at least a little bit good, and it's worth demolishing this one. "The anthill comes back better stronger and better designed" is designed to riff on the survival of the fittest - the notion that creating survival pressure will lead to stronger, smarter, and better individuals.

But evolution doesn't work that way. Those stronger, smarter, and better individuals have to have existed in the population in the first place. Evolution only leads to improvements over time at all if the variation of the population continues to yield increasingly better individuals generation after generation - and that is not at all guaranteed. The actual historical pattern is far closer to the opposite.

Now, people who should know better often claim that evolution has no direction. I think that's because there's a cartoon version of evolution where things tend to get more complex over time, and they want to replace it with another cartoon version of evolution which is blind and random - perhaps spillover from Dawkins' attempts to argue with creationists using his Blind Watchmaker idea.

But that's not how evolution works at all. Evolution does have a direction - just like gravity does. Only at the narrow level of the fundamental laws operating on idealized, homogeneous substrates can we say gravity is symmetric, or evolution is directionless. Once the scope of our investigation expands and the structure of the world gets complex - once symmetry is broken - then gravity clumps matter into planets and gives us "up", and evolution molds organisms into ecosystems and gives us "progress towards complexity".

But the direction of evolution is a lot more like the gradient of air around a planet than it is any kind of "great chain of being". Once an ecosystem exists, increased complexity provides an advantage for a small set of organisms, and as they spread into the ecosystem, a niche is created for even more complex organisms to exceed them. But, just like most of the atmosphere is closest to the surface of a planet, most of the organisms will remain the simplest ones.

Adding additional selection pressure won't give you more complex organisms: it will give you fewer of them. The more stress on the ecosystem, the harder it is for anything to survive, the size of the various niches will shrink, and even if the ecosystem still provides enough resources to support complex organisms, the size of the population that can evolve will drop, making it less likely for even more complex ones to arise - and that's assuming it doesn't get so rough that the complex organisms go extinct.

Eventually, atoms bouncing around in the atmosphere may fly off into space - just like, eventually, evolution produced a Neil Armstrong who flew to the moon. But pouring energy into the atmosphere may slough the upper layers off into space, leaving a thin remnant closest to the planet - and, so, stressing an ecosystem will not produce more astronauts; it may kill them off and leave everyone down in the muck.

Which gives us a hint to what the Shadows' real plan was. They're portrayed as an ancient learned race, so presumably they knew everything I just shared - but they're also portrayed as the villains, after all, and so they ultimately had a self-serving goal in mind. And if knocking over an anthill doesn't make it come back better designed, then their real goal was to keep kicking over anthills so they themselves would stay on top.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Me, near sunset, taking picture of what I thought was a live anthill - until I looked more closely.

[twenty twenty-four day twenty-one]: it’s too cold to be stingy

Published January 21, 2024 by centaur

Look, I get it: giving money to pandhandlers is not necessarily the best way to help lift people out of homelessness, and can often be counterproductive. Out of all the money that I've given to people, I'd say one out of three of them I could tell benefited from it (for example, one guy immediately bought food), one third were scammers (for example, one "hungry" guy immediately bought alcohol), and one third, I dunno. That's one reason that signs like this go up in public squares all across the country:

But look at the kind of day that this sign was having. It didn't get above freezing until noon. It's too damn cold to be stingy to people who ask for things from you. Jesus said "Give to all those who beg of you" and while sometimes we can't follow that advice given the context, yesterday was not one of those days.

This is part of a whole trend of "hostile architecture" where we structure our societies to make things difficult for people who are homeless - closing the parks, making benches hard to sleep on, stealing the possessions of the homeless (either as a condition of going into a homeless shelter, or outright theft by the police) and eliminating low-cost housing that could provide a path out for the homeless.

I'm not sure what the right answer is, but when it's fifteen below freezing, the right answer is not "no".

-the Centaur

[twenty-twenty four day thirteen]: are you registered to vote?

Published January 13, 2024 by centaur

2024 is shaping up to be one of the most consequential American elections in recent history, in which our first twice-impeached ex-president is running AGAIN for the highest office in the land. When he ran for office the first time, it wasn't clear precisely what he would do if elected, and Clinton had her own problems.

But now, what Trump stands for - and would do - is clear. Even if you forget the two impeachments (no convictions) and the many indictments (not conclusive yet), Trump was more than just a poor loser hawking false claims of a stolen election: he actively tried to overturn it, and stoked the fires of insurrection on January 6th. He's a proven threat to American democracy.

And, not just a proven threat: he's an openly stated threat to American democracy. If elected, he openly admits plans to purse his enemies, Ron Desantis-style. And he's backed by the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 plan to reshape our civil-service-based federal bureaucracy into a Soviet-style system controlled by the Republican party apparatus.

American democracy is the light of the world. Whether you're Democrat or Republican, you should register to vote, and vote for almost anyone else than Trump. And if you're a Republican, you should contact your congrescritter and state your opposition to Project 2025.

Democracy is a wonderful thing - if we can keep it.

-the Centaur

[sixty-one] minus thirty-four: that trump business

Published April 6, 2023 by centaur

You know, I don't comment on politics on this blog nearly enough, and I plan on changing that. But I just found out that the statute of limitations may have passed on the crimes Trump is accused of in New York.

Regardless of the merits of the case, we shouldn't be doing things like that. All too often we let things go that we should drop, or press things that we shouldn't, because of political appearances.

Hm. What does OpenAI"s ChatGPT language model have to say about this?

Has the statute of limitations passed on Donald Trump's indictment?
As an AI language model, I cannot provide legal advice or make a definitive statement about a specific legal case. However, to provide some general information, the statute of limitations varies depending on the type of offense and the jurisdiction. In the United States, federal offenses typically have a five-year statute of limitations, but this can vary depending on the offense. State laws also have their own statutes of limitations for criminal offenses.

Regarding any potential indictment of Donald Trump, it would depend on the specific charges and the applicable statute of limitations. It is also important to note that the decision to indict someone is made by prosecutors based on the evidence and legal standards, and is not determined by whether the statute of limitations has expired or not.
the Centaur in dialog with ChatGPT.; emphasis mine.

Gee, thanks, AI overlord! Seems like the prosecutor's job here may have been to bring the indictment if they believed a crime was committed, even if the statute of limitations had passed. Let's get more specific:

What is the statute of limitations in New York?
In New York State, the statute of limitations for criminal offenses varies depending on the severity of the crime. Here are some examples:

- For most felony offenses, the statute of limitations is five years. However, for certain serious offenses such as homicide or terrorism, there is no statute of limitations.
- For misdemeanor offenses, the statute of limitations is typically two years.
- For certain sexual offenses committed against minors, the statute of limitations has been extended in recent years. For example, the statute of limitations for second-degree rape of a minor is now 20 years from the victim's 18th birthday, or within 10 years of the offense, whichever is later.

It's worth noting that the statute of limitations can be tolled, or paused, under certain circumstances, such as when the defendant is out of state or in hiding. In some cases, the statute of limitations may also be extended if new evidence is discovered.
the Centaur in dialog with ChatGPT; emphasis mine.

According to Wikipedia, what Trump is accused of - falsifying business records - is normally a misdemeanor, but can become a felony if used to further another crime. From what I've read, the prosecution has withheld a lot of facts from the indictment to improve the surprise of their case at trial, so they may have more evidence forthcoming; but "The indictment raises novel and complex legal issues." Sheesh.

This isn't the way to do this.

I understand the desire to speak truth to power, and the importance of holding the powerful to account; but the way to uphold the rule of law is NOT to ignore the rule of law so we can bring a case. There's a word for that: a kangaroo court, "a court that ignores recognized standards of law or justice," leading to show trials.

Donald Trump certainly isn't my favorite politician, and perhaps he needs to be brought to justice; but we should also presume innocence until proven guilty. Here's hoping that either the District Attorney coughs up some very good evidence that justifies his actions, or that the case gets swiftly thrown out if his actions weren't justified. I just can't see any good coming from anything between those two extremes.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Sunset in San Francisco.

Remember January 6th

Published January 7, 2022 by centaur

Recall to memory the Sixth of January,
Riot, insurrection and plot
For no justification should the January Insurrection
Ever be forgot

A little over one year ago today, lame-duck President Donald Trump directed an unruly band of his followers to "fight like hell" to overturn the election of Joe Biden, in the hope of disenfranchising me and the 81 million other Americans who voted to bring to an end Trump's dyscivic reign.

"Dyscivic" means "antagonistic to civilization." It's a word coined by alt-right pundit Vox Day to disparage the aspirations of "social justice warriors" like myself. I am a writer, and I hereby confiscate "dyscivic" and repurpose it to mean "antagonistic to the civic structures of our society" - which Donald Trump was.

Of my good friends who voted for Donald Trump, at least two voted for him precisely because they expected he would be disruptive to our existing system. One specifically said, "I voted for Donald Trump because I hoped he would blow up the Republican Party, and I'm waiting for the Democrats to go next."

Keep waiting. Even though progressives like AOC and moderates like myself don't always get along, we recognize that we share the same end goals, that our principles are compatible, and they're worth fighting for together, even if we might disagree on methods.

I don't get the same sense from my most right-wing friends, who viciously lambast politicians from their own party for not "getting on the Trump train" in every possible respect - even when those politicians have multi-decade records voting for precisely the positions my friends loudly advocate for.

Reliance on trust is toxic to any organization. It encourages dependence on personal relationships - even friendships - developed over years or decades, and makes the organization resistant to new information delivered by new people. When that trust is in leadership, it becomes loyalty ... which is deeply dyscivic.

The purpose of government is to put the use of force under rational control. To prevent one man from using that force to execute their own personal will, we create civic structures that corral the use of power. We loan power, not grant it; and when you loan power to someone, you watch them.

Over four years, we watched Donald Trump demand loyalty on an unprecedented scale in American politics - from his followers, from fellow politicians, from the machinery of government. He turned on his appointees when their understanding of their civic duties conflicted with his own petty desires.

And when the American people had had enough - when even some of my Trumpian friends switched parties because they could not abide what he was doing to our political system - Trump spat on those of us who dared to vote against him, and then tried to pretend to his followers that we did not exist.

Well, sir, our voices were heard. And we won't be silent. We know that you and your followers are going to try again - I remember watching your suppoprters meeting in the dark in the months leading up to the insurrection (holding 10pm rallies in the parking lot of a nearby grocery store). We'll be watching.

For I'm not the only one. Here's a few quotes from my fellow Americans around the web:

http://wilwheaton.net/2022/01/one-year-later/
We all know how that turned out. All but seven Republican Senators — forty-three of fifty members in the upper chamber — protected him and embraced his Big Lie. In the year since, they have doubled down on it, and they have not stopped insisting that we did not see what we saw one year ago today with our own eyes.

And:

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2022/01/06/january-6-one-year-on/
And yet, after perhaps 48 hours of unrehearsed shock, the Republican party rallied around this traitor to the republic and the constitution, and tried to rebrand an actual coup attempt into overexuberant tourism.

And not about January 6th, but important all the same:

https://angrystaffofficer.com/2022/01/03/american-war-and-american-memory/
Why is this important? Because as we look ahead into another year at the beginning of a new decade of a constantly changing world, America needs to take a hard look at herself and ask whether we are remembering or forgetting the right things. This is not only vital to our collective consciousness as to who we are as a nation, but to the success of future military operations.

I assert that remembering the right things isn't just vital to our success in military endeavors, but to each of us personally, in the aggregate, as a nation, and as a civilization. If we don't remember the true story - good and bad and ugly - then those who make up stories for their own convenience will rule the day.

Remember, the Big Lie was the foundation for the Final Solution.

Let's make sure that doesn't happen here.

-the Centaur

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

Published April 8, 2021 by centaur

tl;dr: Opponents of things should never be appointed to oversee them. So President Biden has nominated David Chipman to lead the ATF - and he was wrong to do so. It's not that Chipman isn't qualified to lead the ATF - he's a 25-year ATF veteran. It's that Chipman is explicitly disqualified to lead an agency that oversees firearms - because he's a gun control advocate. It's not that he can't be trusted to make good decisions: he can be trusted to make bad ones. Previous presidents have made the same mistake. To lead the EPA, Donald Trump nominated Scott Pruitt, a noted environmental skeptic who had sued the EPA. To serve as ambassador to the UN, George Bush nominated John Bolton, a noted United Nations skeptic who said that it does not really exist. Political cards on the table: I voted for Joe Biden, and I'm happy with him. And while I'm a gun rights proponent - if the Second Amendment didn't exist, we'd need to invent it - I recognize both the need for and constitutional legitimacy of gun legislation, which shouldn't be set in stone as our society evolves. But intellectual and moral integrity demands that if I call an opponent out for their misbehavior, that I also call out allies for the same behavior. Calling out misbehavior only on one side is worse than hypocritical: it undermines trust in the political system, and encourages further distorted value judgments. And humans are great at distorting value judgments when emotions are involved. From the most basic arguments all the way up to the most complex adjudication of fact and law, our moods and emotions affect whether we judge something to be true or false. In a way, we should expect this: researchers like Antonio Damasio have shown that rational decision making breaks down in people whose emotions are impaired, because the value judgments provided by our emotions are necessary for making mental decisions. But a functioning emotional system can also lead us astray: emotions can impair our judgments. Studies show we're more likely to screw up simple if-then syllogisms if they're emotionally charged. Even judges, trained to be impartial, are more likely to make mistakes with legal arguments on "hot" political topics. Heightened emotion distorts perceptions, leads us to attribute our feelings to arbitrary targets we come across, and reduces self-control - precisely what you don't want to have in someone who needs to make impartial decisions about something, and precisely what you do have in the person of a political activist. Now, I'm not questioning Chipman or Bolton's integrity (Pruitt's lack of integrity is well documented, down to his sound-proof booth), or Chipman or Bolton or Pruitt's patriotism, or their expertise. But all three of them are interested enough in the areas they later oversaw to have gone into them as opponents. In our public life, there is politics, and there is civics, and the two should not mix. Politics literally means deciding how to allocate scarce resources, and it is right and expected for us to dive in rough and tumble to ask for what we want - a participatory political system grants moral authority to a government. But government's purpose is to bring the use of force under rational control, and more broadly, to allocate resources correctly when policy has been made. Inevitably, decisions will need to be made on matters of fact at an agency - and a political partisan can be trusted to screw them up even if they're trying not to. When a partisan appoints a opponent of something to oversee it, the person that they've appointed will, very likely, whether they want to or not, "lean their hand on the till" to make things come out for their own partisan ends - meaning they will, sooner or later, fail in their civic duty to make an honest decision. If you're passionate about something, you might feel that it's all right to put a partisan in charge of it, because then you'll get what you want. But that's evil, on two grounds - first of all, because you are subverting the political process to get a result through the back door that you can't through the front. But more importantly, impartial decisions will need to be made - and by putting a partisan in charge, you're explicitly hoping for them to make a wrong decision to help implement your political desires. Tyrants, bigots and the corrupt throughout history have employed the same tactic. Stop doing it. Regardless of our political desires, we need to step back and decouple our understanding of people into (at least) two parts: their politics, and their competence. If their political orientation isn't a direct conflict of interest for to the matter at hand, their basic competence is the primary qualification for doing the job. I was happy when Trump picked Bolton as National Security Advisor: whether I agree with their politics or not, Bolton had the experience to do the job and the attitude towards the job to do it right. Bush should never have appointed Bolton to the UN: even when he made the right decisions, we couldn't trust them. I might not have agreed with Scott Pruitt politically, but as a lawyer and state Senator, he was well qualified to be Attorney General of Oklahoma. It was morally wrong for Donald Trump to appoint a climate change denier to lead the EPA, and, predictably, that led to Pruitt lying about climate issues. I thank David Chipman for his service at the ATF, and would approve of his nomination to another agency. But the moment that he joined a political movement against guns, he disqualified himself from overseeing gun law enforcement, and if confirmed, he will inevitably make some serious mistakes. -the Centaur Pictured: Chipman, Pruitt, Bolton

A Day Without Women Would be the End of the World

Published March 9, 2017 by centaur

Today, March 8th is International Women’s Day, a day that began commemorating the anniversary of a women workers strike – and so perhaps it’s also being celebrated as A Day Without a Woman, another strike designed to call attention to how important women are to our society. But, science fiction writer that I am, I couldn’t help but think of literal day without women - and so, over on the Adventures of Jeremiah Willstone site, I talk about how “A Day Without Women Would be the End of the World”.

-the Centaur

Effective Beverages

Published February 11, 2016 by centaur

So after a gut punch, one of the most important things to do is to take time out to recuperate.

But funny thing is, the highly effective sangria above wasn’t the thing that broke me out of my funk. When something bad happens, I try one of the following strategies to feel better:

Take a nap. Or just go to bed. Sleeping can sometimes reset your emotional state. When I had my big crisis of faith in the 90’s, converting from Catholicism to Episcopalianism, I slept for like a day and a half, rethinking my whole life. Of course, if you can’t fall asleep, that’s no good - I was up to 5:50AM this morning, so blech.
Take a walk. This can also provide metaphorical distance from your problems. During my crisis of faith, I walked around my apartment complex again and again, taking an inventory of my whole life, weighing and evaluating everything I could think of. Today, when I tried the same strategy, I was snarling at the air, so blech.
Change your scene. Talking to uninvolved humans, not connected with your dramas, really can help. I had an interview with a candidate, a technical conversation about deep learning with a TL, and, later, after my mood was lifted, another technical conversation with my waitress at Opa! about the econometrics of developing nations.

As for why that last conversation happened …

Which goes to the next item on the list ...

Try shopping therapy. Doesn’t work for everyone, but I’m a bookhound. I ended up going to the Stanford Bookstore to try to pick up a book on large scale machine learning (it had sold out). The books themselves weren’t the solution, but I’m getting to that - but it did involve the books in a tangential way.
Get some coffee. The inventor of the idea of separation of powers, Montesquieu, reportedly once said “coffee renders many foolish people temporarily capable of wise actions” and I’ve found that to be true - which perhaps suggests that we should install a Starbucks in the Congress and change the structure of our political debates, but nevermind. It helped.

You’ll note that nowhere in here is “get a drink.” That’s a terrible idea - if you think you need a drink, you probably shouldn’t have one, as needing a drink is the road to alcoholism. For that reason, and many others, I always stop at one drink per day - period. No matter how strong the drink, it’s almost impossible for a one hundred and eighty pound male to get drunk on just one.

Having a drink after you feel better, on the other hand, can be a great relaxer. But how do you get to that relaxed state? Well, one thing I try is, well, trying to resolve the problem.

Talk to the people involved. I have a theory that if you have a problem with a person and leave it alone, your emotional reaction will be frozen, even intensified over time - a theory based on my personal experience, but backed by cognitive emotional theories which say your emotions are derived from your stance, your relationship to the people, actions and events in the world - which doesn’t change if you don’t give yourself the chance to have new experiences with those people. Thanks to the fact that it’s the twenty-first century, this can be done via text, even when people don’t have time to talk.

But the point at which it turned wasn’t when I got a drink. It wasn’t after I took a nap, took a walk, talked to people, changed the scene, got a book on political economy, got coffee, or texted the involved parties to finalize the resolution of yesterday evening’s gut punch. It happened at very strange place, as I was drinking coffee, as I was reading, as I was texting with my friends to resolve the problem, I got sucked in to the problem that prompted me to get the book, a question I heard in an unrelated political debate from last night. As is usual in these cases, I found that the debate followed the rule of thirds: on a third of the topics, my buddy was definitively wrong, on a third, I was definitively wrong, and on the middle third, there were open unresolved questions worthy of debate. And as I started to look at those questions … I had a brainflash on how to solve them.

And then on a meta-brain-flash, as I realized what tacking the problem was doing to my mental state: it was fixing it.

Do the work. Find something you love, and cultivate the ability to throw yourself into it. If you’ve had a gut punch, you might have a bad taste in your mouth about a lot of the projects you were working on … but get your brain into a new space, and all those behavior programs will execute … and give you something new to fall (intellectually) in love with.

The particular question I was tracking - how to evaluate economic policies - is something I’m going to be working on for a while, but I can give you a flavor for it: how do you know whether a political candidate’s economic policies will work? Sometimes that’s easy: for example, Democrats like to spend when the economy’s doing well, and Republicans like to cut when the economy is doing poorly - and both sides are dead wrong. An economy is not a household - cutting spending in a slump will cut the state’s tax revenues and cause an austerity spiral and increased debt; spending in a boom incurs obligations that the state can’t sustain in the next slump and increased risk. These are pretty close to ironclad laws, that operate whether you believe in big government or small or low taxes or high; those are just the dynamics of economies whether you like it or not - whether you believe it or not, suck it up.

But looking long term, some policies promote growth, and some don’t; and it isn’t always clear which is which. What’s worse, exogenous factors - those pesky world events like wars and plagues and wardrobe malfunctions - throw an unavoidable amount of static on top of whatever we’re trying to measure.

The book I’m reading gives me, so far, the impression that individual outcomes are, roughly, helped by a country’s growth, and a country’s growth is affected by things it can't control, like the luck of history and geography, and things it can, like culture and institutions, with evidence strongly suggesting that institutions matter more than culture, since some countries have kept their cultures but changed their institutions and shown amazing growth. The factors that seem to affect this most are protecting private property, having enforceable contracts, reducing barriers for investment, having a level playing field for businesses, and creating equality of opportunity for citizens … but …

But how much of this is noise, and how much is reality?

And that got me thinking: if you assumed some randomness affecting growth, could you tell apart policies that caused 1 percent growth, or 2 percent growth, or 3 percent growth?

Turns out ... you can.

The Promise of Growth v1.png

The central red line is 2% growth, projected out over 20 years. The dotted lines above and below it are 1% and 3% growth … and the grey range is the max and min of a stochastic simulation of ten different histories, each with 5% random variation from year to year, which looks something like this:

The Alternatives to Growth v1.png

The point is, if you get a gut punch - like in the bottom trajectory above - it can look like you’re running a bad policy on a time range of a decade or more before things start to get back on track. On twenty year time horizons, however, you really can start to see an affect. On even longer time horizons, having the right polices can be the difference between a country like Nigeria - rich with oil wealth, yet having a flat growth range - versus a country like the US or Japan or even Botswana or South Korea.

This doesn’t show whether I or my buddy is right - in fact, this model, even as an abstract model, would need to be augmented greatly, to get a proper range of growth rates, of randomness, of the types of exogenous influences and their timescales. But even in its current state, it shows that under a very broad set of assumptions … I and my buddy were right to wrestle over this problem.

What we do now matters, not just in the next election, but twenty years down the road.

And doing that work took me out of my slump. It connected me to an earlier conversation, to earlier problem solving skills not engaged with what I’d been doing just prior to the gut punch. The gut punch still needs to be dealt with - but now it’s just an event, not a thing that causes random spikes of rage and anger when I’m trying to drink my coffee.

And that’s how I learned a new way to deal with a gut punch.

-the Centaur

Appendix. The graphs above were generated via the following Mathematica code:

RandomGrowth[initial_, rate_, fuzz_] :=
initial (1 + rate) (1 + RandomReal[{-fuzz, fuzz}])

ProjectGrowth[initial_, rate_, fuzz_, years_] :=
NestList[RandomGrowth[#, rate, fuzz] &, initial, years]

InterpolateGrowth[initial_, rate_, fuzz_, years_] :=

Interpolation[ProjectGrowth[initial, rate, fuzz, years]]

FuzzyGrowth[initial_, rate_, fuzz_, years_] :=
Table[InterpolateGrowth[initial, rate, fuzz, years], {iterations, 10}]

fuzzyTwoPercent = FuzzyGrowth[1, 0.02, 0.05, 100]

Plot[{
Min[Map[#[x] &, fuzzyTwoPercent]], Max[Map[#[x] &, fuzzyTwoPercent]],
InterpolateGrowth[1.0, 0.02, 0.0, 100][x],
InterpolateGrowth[1.0, 0.01, 0.0, 100][x],
InterpolateGrowth[1.0, 0.03, 0.0, 100][x]},
{x, 1, 20},
Filling -> {1 -> {2}},
AxesOrigin -> {1, 1},
AxesLabel -> {"Years Downrange", "Growth Rate"},
PlotStyle -> {Thin, Thin, Thick,
Directive[Thick, Dashed],
Directive[Thick, Dashed]}]

and

Plot[{InterpolateGrowth[1.0, 0.02, 0.0, 100][x], Map[#[x] &, fuzzyTwoPercent]},
{x, 1, 20},
AxesOrigin -> {1, 1},
AxesLabel -> {"Years Downrange", "Growth Rate"},
PlotStyle ->
{Thick,
Thin, Thin, Thin, Thin, Thin,
Thin, Thin, Thin, Thin, Thin}]

I hope you enjoyed this exercise in computational therapy.

That Ground Game

Published February 1, 2016 by centaur

Poll watchers may have noticed that Donald Trump has apparently failed to come first in the Iowa Caucuses. I know at least two people - one of them being my military advisor, and the other being Trumpwatcher Scott Adams - have predicted that Trump would win the caucuses, then run the table.

I have a number of bad predictions about the race - namely, that he would bow out as he’s bowed out before, as a result of his genius brand management. He didn’t. But I did also predict that winning the nomination takes more than leading in the polls - it takes a good ground game, and that with half of Republican voters unwilling to vote for Trump, he had a hard road ahead of him.

Now, there are forty-nine states left, and plenty of time for Trump to turn it around. And a lot says he might - Adams would say because he’s a Master Persuader, some of my friends because they think he’s awesome, and my old high school history teacher would say populist demagogues are always popular.

But, if Trump wants to bow out when the going gets rough, as Trump did before the last two times he ran, he will have accomplished a genius act of brand management. You can’t buy publicity like he’s gotten through his antics, and he’s made the things he cares about the focus of the campaign. Kudos to his skill.

To go on the record, I think Trump’s a poor choice for President. He’s anti-American, frequently insulting immigrants (like my grandfather) and veterans (like my father) and everyone who opposes him (like half the people a real President would have to deal with in office). He’s a loose cannon, frequently tossing out crap ideas that would sabotage our relations with our allies; some people call that “first offer in dealmaking,” I call that “being an untrustworthy liar.”

Now, not all his positions are anathema to me, and he’s got some good features. For example, he has a lot of business experience, though a number of his business ventures have failed or gone bankrupt; people who know a little about business (but think they know a lot) call that “compartmentalizing his ventures to protect him from losses”; people who know a lot about business at scale call that “gross incompetence” as a real businessman doesn’t let a business setback get spun into a public bankruptcy. But he has lots of experience running really big things, and would likely manage the running of the office passably.

But we can’t let him do that. We can’t trust Trump to respect his office. We had a bad enough time Bush skating on the edges of impeachable malfeasance until Obama took over and showed us how being a rogue president was done - but both Bush and Obama respected the office. If given the opportunity, Trump wouldn’t respect a congressional subpoena - he’s the one who does the firing, remember? So we need to make sure not to give him power he would have to give up when he’s impeached.

Sigh. Jeb!, why’d you stumble? Hillary, what was in your head when you set up that email server? And Sanders? Cruz? And what about Robert Jefferson Shmickelwhaite, former mayor of Benson, Arizona, that almost unknown guy who should have run who had all the experience and all the right positions but decided to sit it out this round?

Regardless, I love America, and whoever wins is my President.

But, if you’re going to run, even if you’re a “populist” or “Master Persuader” or even just “Making America Great Again”, it would behoove you to look at the math and make sure you’ve got a ground game when the time comes to stop polling and start voting. Ground game - that is, an actual nationwide campaign organization that, like, gets out the vote for your guy or gal.

Worth checking into.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Donald Trump, taken by Alex Hanson, used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, under which you are free to share or remix the work as long as it is attributed to Alex Hanson.

Nobody knows nothing about the future except it’s going to happen

Published January 23, 2016 by centaur

Screenshot 2016-01-23 15.43.15.png

WTF? Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York, running for president as an independent? As a liberal Republican?

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2016/01/23/bloomberg-out-ruin-hillary-clinton-party/mKsbeYSs7I3ocd6O9mwZJI/story.html

Q. Why is this coming out now if Bloomberg doesn’t plan to make up his mind until March? What’s the game plan?

A. Michael Bloomberg realizes that he could be in the best position to become the first independent elected candidate, going all the way back to 1912 when Teddy Roosevelt ran as a Bull Moose and won 27 percent. Bloomberg is a nationally known figure, and he has financial resources — he doesn’t need the financial support and structure of a party. Both sides will say that Bloomberg is running to help the other side — that’s always the way it is with a third-party candidate. But Bloomberg does not like Bernie Sanders’s social democratic philosophy at all. And I don’t think he likes Donald Trump’s statements on deporting people who are here illegally. Bloomberg has very good political instincts, and he is sensing that a lot of Americans are probably concerned, too.

Regardless of how it turns out, I don’t recall anyone predicting this. Let’s check the Google for answers, doing a search from the beginning of last year to the middle of last week … welp, I’m wrong, someone’s been talking about it, though as of October they were predicting that he won’t run, and that this is yet another in a series of endless rumors:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/stop-trying-to-make-bloomberg-happen/411514/

Are you into gambling? You are? Well, here’s a tip: Don’t put any money on Michael Bloomberg becoming president, no matter what you read in the New York media.

[reviews history of unfulfilled rumors from December 2006 to October 2015]

Perhaps this is all a charade—Bloomberg playing it all off until the moment he launches his campaign. Or you could just take it from Mike, whose bluntness and frankness his friends always cite as an important qualification: “I’m not going to run for president, period … No way, no how … It’s just impossible … No is the answer. Plain and simple.”

So it looks like this is another Wild Biden loose in the theater - watch out, raar. On the other hand, few people predicted in advance Trump would run again - as far as I know, not even professional Trump-watcher Scott Adams - so I go back to the one thing I know about presidential politics (actually, this is a sum of many things I know, but this story tells it well), which is this:

The Parable of the Man Who Was Obscure

Back in the day, there was a man who was obscure. He was so obscure, in fact, that no-one ever remembered anything he did: he even went on a nationally televised game show and none of the contestants could recognize him - though one did figure out he was a former governor. The man decided to run for president, but he was so obscure he had name recognition of two percent, and in the Iowa caucuses, he came in second after Uncommitted.

Hopeless, eh?

We now call him former President Jimmy Carter.

[cue scratchy audio clip of Paul Harvey saying “And now you know the rest of the story.”]

Nobody knows nothing about the future except it’s going to happen.

-the Centaur

A mild political prediction

Published January 22, 2016 by centaur

In case you haven’t noticed (because you’ve been living under a rock), Donald Trump’s the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nominee. Seeing these three articles today, I noticed a common theme (other than that they’re all left leaning, but they’re not the only one seeing this, as you’ll see in a moment), and I’d like to make a prediction:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/opinion/coming-to-terms-with-donald.html?_r=0
Americans of all races, creeds and political persuasions are united today in the realization that, good grief, Donald Trump actually could become the Republican presidential nominee.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/national-review-donald-trump-debate_us_56a24a3ce4b0404eb8f14410
National Review's editors denounce Trump for shifting his political stances and describe him as "a menace to American conservatism who would take the work of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as heedless and crude as the Donald himself.” … the magazine is paying a price in the short term for its anti-Trump issue, with the Republican National Committee disinviting it from a CNN debate next month.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigant/friday-talking-points_b_9057478.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
The essays were contradictory in their reasons for loathing Trump, and the editor himself was writing supportive words about Trump earlier this year, but never mind. Consistency is the hobgoblin of sane non-conservative pundits, after all ... We personally have long been predicting a Republican Party major freakout when they all woke up to the fact that Donald Trump has been their party's frontrunner all along. So we have to say that in the past few weeks (since this freakout has begun in earnest), we have been enjoying the fray from the sidelines.

My prediction?

My prediction is: cartoonist and pundit Scott Adams will point out that he predicted Trump’s rise all along. Scott's been chronicling Trump in his “Master Persuader” series, and if he doesn’t take the comment “the essays were contradictory in their reasons for loathing Trump” as a tell for persuasion, I’ll start wondering if Scott been replaced by a pod person:

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/135324448866/the-lucky-hitler-hypothesis-trump-persuasion A tell for a Master Persuader is the outlandishness of the criticisms. Jeb Bush is not a persuader, and no one accuses him of anything but running an ineffective campaign. No one believes Rand Paul is really an elf that makes cookies in a hollowed-out tree. But they would, if Paul were a master persuader instead of a policy wonk … Now compare Trump, Obama, and Hillary Clinton. Trump is routinely compared to Hitler. Obama is considered by many to be a Muslim sleeper cell. But Hillary Clinton is generally accused of ordinary flaws such as incompetence, dishonesty, etc. Clinton is not a master persuader. If she were, a third of the country would believe she is a practicing witch. A real one. And no, that is not a joke.

I don’t often agree with Scott Adams (mainly because he is well trained in what he calls the pseudoscience of hypnosis, but I’m trained in the science of cognitive psychology, and some of the things he thinks are true about how the mind works were refuted long ago; also, we have political differences), but he’s always, always entertaining.

-the Centaur

Perhaps I Spoke Too Soon …

Published December 1, 2015 by centaur

… when I claimed Scott Adams appeared to be right on the question of Donald Trump’s supposed meltdown. Scott, as you recall, claimed this was part of an elaborate three dimensional game of chess designed to trounce Carson, whereas I was claiming that Trump was possibly sabotaging his own campaign. Trump’s initial bounce and Carson’s stumble led me to award this to Adams.

Since then, Trump has publicly mocked a handicapped reporter, and demanded CNN cough up five million dollars to appear at the next debate. My predictive filter says Trump’s doing more self-sabotage. Scott’s filter says Trump will suffer a slight dip, then increase in the polls. Trump is actually just increasing in the polls, no dip. So, um, advantage to Scott, me, randomness?

My high school history teacher’s predictive filter would say, “Populist demagogues are always popular.”

Your predictive mileage may vary.

-the Centaur

What If I’m Wrong?

Published November 22, 2015 by centaur

Recently I went on the record about a seemingly self-destructive speech by Donald Trump. By going on the record, you can test your predictions. For the benefit of those who don’t care a whit, I predicted (more or less) that Donald Trump was deliberately self-destructing (or laying the groundwork for it) and Scott Adams predicted Donald Trump was going after Carson. A little time has gone by; let’s look at those polls.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/2016_republican_presidential_nomination-3823.html
Screenshot 2015-11-22 21.42.30.png

By my scorecard, that’s Scott Adams 1, Anthony Francis, 0. Of course, time will tell, and things have happened recently to change the game (for example, 5 major terrorist attacks in 5 countries around the world, in which even I will admit Trump sounds better suited than Carson, sorry). But the hypothesis that he was deliberately self-destructing was at least premature, and the hypothesis that he’s trying to nail Carson seems good. Certainly, in the last few weeks, Trump’s popularity has risen to that of, say, Bernie Sanders, so he must be doing something right.

As Scott might remind you, it’s not good to bet against popular internet cartoonists. They might be right. On the other hand, I think the words “I was wrong” are three of the most beautiful words in the English language. They’re a sign of learning.

-the Centaur

Beirut and Paris

Published November 15, 2015 by centaur

My heart, prayers and condolences go out to all those who lost their lives in the deadly attacks in Beirut and Paris yesterday, and to the families, friends and loved ones who are suffering in the aftermath of this outrage, which over the past few days killed almost 200 people in France and Lebanon. This has got to stop … but for now, you are all in my prayers.

Going on the Record about Donald Trump

Published November 14, 2015 by centaur

AS some of you may have noticed, real estate mogul Donald Trump is making his second (or third) run for the presidency (depending on how you count), and has been having quite a good show of it - topping many polls despite saying and doing a lot of things that would have doomed another candidate - such as disparaging American prisoners of war, associating immigrants with criminals, and, most recently, associating his opponents with pedophiles.

As a left-leaning moderate, I’m not fond of many of Donald Trump’s policies. But I am fond of Dilbert, and the excellent blog by Dilbert creator Scott Adams, in which Scott wrestles with many difficult and interesting ideas so you don’t have to (but you should). In the blog, Scott’s been chronicling Trump’s rise to power with what he calls the Master Wizard Hypothesis, which, in a nutshell, says that there are great techniques of persuasion, Trump is an acknowledged master, and most of the crazy things that Trump is doing are carefully engineered to get and keep your attention. Regardless of your politics, Scott says, you should pay attention to what Trump is doing, because you’re watching a master class in persuasion unfold on a national stage.

Scott, a trained hypnotist and student of persuasion himself, goes further to say that a Master Wizard’s persuasion often puts people into cognitive dissonance, where a person becomes uncomfortable when they are presented with information they don’t want to accept. Well, as a trained cognitive scientist, that characterization makes me a bit uncomfortable, because I see the conscious (or unconscious) persuasion embedded in that characterization, persuasion which is in the favor of someone trying to be a persuader: the framing is that someone presented with “information” is “feeling uncomfortable,” hence is being irrational. However, because one thing that can trigger discomfort is someone exhibiting a violation of what you perceive to be a standard, it’s also perfectly possible that you can feel uncomfortable confronted by new “information” that contradicts new beliefs not just because you are inconsistent … but because the presented “information" is wrong. So, in this argument, people could possibly just be upset with Trump not because he’s a Master Wizard … but because they sincerely disagree with him in their judgments about facts and policies.

As it happens, I’ve entertained for a while an alternate hypothesis about what’s been going on about Donald Trump, and it seems like it might be playing out. In fact, I’ve almost been scooped on it, so at first I wasn’t going to write anything. But Scott Adams has done something great with his hypotheses: he’s put his predictions about Trump on the table, so he can be proved wrong later. Feynman argued the same thing: you’ve got to stick your neck out far enough for it to get cut off in order to really see the truth. So, I wanted to go on the record about what I think’s going on with Donald Trump.

For reference, here’s what I think people are saying about Donald Trump:

Malignant Narcissist Theory: Donald Trump is an insufferable blowhard who’s doing well because he’s an outrageous bully with an ego so enormous he’s resistant to normal modes of shame, and is airing all the dirty laundry of the Republican party that the politer and saner politicians with greater experience have tried to sweep under the rug. Many political analysts hold this theory, and assume Trump will eventually implode somewhere between the debates and the campaign trail because the majority of Republican voters, and certainly most Democratic voters, will never vote for him (and there’s data for that). The idea, you see, is that roughly twenty five percent of people is the most who’d ever vote Trump, so he’s maxed out.
Master Wizard Hypothesis: Donald Trump is a highly experienced, well-trained businessman, expert at the art of the deal and his own brand management, who’s mastered a semi-secret art of persuasion. His campaign is a sequence of carefully crafted stunts designed to implode his opponents, one by one, because Donald Trump has no shame, merely a cold, calculating, highly trained brain designed to put the whammy on people, slowly convincing them to turn his way so he can ultimately get his way. Scott Adams believes this, and has analyzed in depth how many seemingly weird things Trump does actually make a lot of sense.
Tell It Like It Is Hypothesis: Donald Trump is a smart, intelligent, conservative man who’s gotten fed up with the way things are going in this country, like many other conservatives, and is gaining popularity because (a) he’s saying what many conservatives are thinking (b) he’s telling it like it is, without a filter (c) he’s got a lot of experience running a successful business and (d) now he’s applying his decades of experience to politics, hopefully making America great again.

These all seem like alternatives, but they’re actually closer than you think. They’re all based on the idea that Trump has no shame (which isn’t likely true), has a lot of experience at business (which is almost certainly true), and is saying things that the Republican base wants to hear. The spectrum seems to be whether you think some of his more colorful antics are because he’s an arrogant bully (politicos), a skilled persuader (Adams), or a genuine conservative (the Republican base).

Now my hypothesis.

Genius Brand Management. Donald Trump is a billionaire whose greatest asset is his brand, and he’s an American who cares about his country. Running for President, while it costs money, gives Trump an enormous amount of free publicity - he’s getting an enormous force multiplier from all this media attention, far more than he could by building more hotels or casinos, starting another reality TV show, or running ads. While doing this, he decided to - sincerely - raise all the issues he really cares about in the election, or at least the things he cares about which resonate with Republican voters. Trump simultaneously gets an enormous brand uplift and sets the tone of the presidential campaign to be about issues which matter to him. If he’s elected, great: he’s run a mammoth multinational corporation, and can handle the Presidency. If not, he’ll bow out … just as he’s bowed out of every other flirtation at candidacy since 1988.

So, under this theory, Donald Trump would likely implode sometime between the debates and the campaign trail (where a majority of votes, not just topping a poll, matters, and a mammoth grassroots organization is needed), but regardless of whether he implodes, he’s going to have a huge uplift in his brand, and will have set the course of the campaign.

Last week, Trump appears to have imploded with a long winded speech, different from his usual polished self, in which he ranted about his opponents, outlined his policy approaches about just about everything, and ultimately finished with "How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?” His opponents have gone wild, and Janell Ross wrote an article which crystalized what I’d already been thinking: Donald Trump might be self-sabotaging. You read it there first, folks, but just so I would have the opportunity to be proved wrong, here’s what the other people predict.

Malignant Narcissist Hypothesis: The arrogant blowhard’s finally imploding. Example: at HuffPo.
Master Wizard Hypothesis: Trump’s now moving against Carson. See Scott Adams’ analysis, in which he points out Trump’s engineered a linguistic kill shot comparing Ben Carson’s pathological temper to incurable pedophilia.
Tell It Like It Is Hypothesis: Trump is just speaking from his heart, and won’t be hurt by telling it like it is. See this New York Times article "Republican strategists in the state were skeptical that Mr. Trump’s latest over-the-top outburst would seriously erode his support."

And now my take:

Genius Brand Management: Trump, having watched campaigns since the eighties, is fully aware that at one point half of Republican voters said they would never vote for him, and that falling behind Carson at this point could cost him the jockeying position he needs to get the nomination. So he makes an impassioned plea for attention, simultaneously trashing his rival as a last ditch hope, giving his brand one last spike - and reiterating what he thinks is important about the campaign.

As Scott might say, I remind you I don’t know who’s going to be President. I’d be a dumb man to bet against the author of Dilbert; I literally have his book on systems versus goals on my desk at work. (I haven’t gotten to it yet, but soon - I get the gist from his blog). And other politicos certainly are more practiced at this than me; I’ve only been following politics closely since, oh, when Bush was running. Bush Senior. The first time. Remember, against Reagan? I do.

SO anyway, the best hypothesis will win, because you can’t fake reality any way whatsoever. I’m going on the record saying I think Trump is bowing out of the race. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. But if Trump has started to bow out, I’ll think about my Genius Brand Management hypothesis, recall that I said to myself that a smart man wouldn’t just use all this free publicity to pump his brand, but to make a statement to the American people about what he cared about. And then I’ll think about this phrase from his speech:

"I've really enjoyed being with you," Trump said. "It's sad in many ways because we're talking about so many negative topics, but in certain ways it's beautiful. It's beautiful."

Sure sounds to me like someone who has issues he cares about, bowing out after he’s said his peace.

-the Centaur

Why Bipartisanship is Dead

Published December 30, 2012 by centaur

Ever feel like bipartisanship is dead and the two parties can't agree on anything? Well, there's a reason for that: even if they agree, they can't pass anything. The House of Representatives has a rule which says the only bills that can be brought to the House floor are ones approved of by the majority of the majority party:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/12/30/168309508/fiscal-cliff-debate-why-the-very-few-rule-the-many-in-congress

But having enough votes is not enough. In fact, it is likely the package will not even be brought to the floor for debate and a vote. How can this be? Even if a majority of the whole House (Republicans and Democrats) were prepared to swallow the Senate deal, they won't get a chance unless Speaker John Boehner brings it to the floor. And Boehner probably won't. He has adopted a rule that no measure will be voted on unless it is supported by a majority of the majority party — that is, his party, the Republicans.

Now, I understand that there are many people, particularly on the right, who believe the job of politics is not to get good things done, but to prevent the government from doing bad things. So this kind of stalemate may seem appropriate. But for people on the left and right who just want to get to consensus, find a solution and move on, it seems crazy.

Even if John Boehner, Speaker of the House, came to agreement with President Barack Obama about the latest crisis, even if a overwhelming majority of the House and the Senate agreed with him, a minority of House representatives could prevent a deal from being reached. The Senate is in the same state: if a single senator filibusters a bill, it takes a supermajority of senators to break it - essentially, again blocking the country's progress based on a minority.

I strongly believe in the rights of the minority. I used to say "the majority is always wrong". But I've come to understand partisans, who put allegiance to their party over the good of the country, are almost always more wrong than the majority. Three procedural rules make partisans a grave danger to our republic: closed political primaries (so only partisans can be nominated by their parties), the House majority of the majority rule, and Senate filibusters.

Time to end all three of these, so we can move forward on things a majority of the country can agree on.

-the Centaur

Dawn of a new day

Published November 6, 2012 by centaur

The 2012 election season is over. Win or lose, be proud of yourselves, Americans. You made your choice.

Win or lose, be proud of yourselves, Americans. You made a difference.

God bless America? God bless democracy.

-the Centaur

Vote Yourself!

Published November 6, 2012 by centaur

Yes, the election is OVER today ... but the outcome is up to YOU!

My wife and I have an election evening ritual to review all the candidates and make our decisions.

To find out where to vote, check out Google's Voting Guide, which will tell you where the polling places are, who's up for election, and what the referenda are in your district, if any. Since we're in California, we also used resources like the KQED Proposition Guide, the San Jose Mercury News endorsements, and the LA Times endorsements - less for the endorsement value than the discussions they prompted. For some more obscure races, the Smart Voter site and simple Googling helped.

I've already stated my reasons why I think Obama should remain President:

... the left of us are going to vote for the guy who passed healthcare reform, repealed don’t-ask-don’t-tell, ended the war in Iraq, repaired our relations with the world, and made a good-faith effort to close Guantanamo, and the moderates among us are going to vote for the guy who saved the auto industry, passed the stimulus, refused to prosecute those who were prosecuting the war on terror, repeated Bush’s surge trick in Afghanistan, piffed Osama bin Laden, and finally put the smackdown on Gaddafi the way Reagan wanted to oh so many years ago.

And in the same article, I outlined why I have a hard time voting for Republicans for the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, or for California state offices - though I think they make swell governors and have voted for a few of them myself, and they can be excellent local representatives. (Though I mostly voted for Democrats this time).

The propositions are a murkier matter: I recommend voting against the deceptive Proposition 38, which says it provides money for schools but will actually most likely cause a loss of six billion dollars to schools, against Proposition 31 which is a grab-all reform of the state legislature, against Proposition 32 which is bankrolled by corporations in an attempt to prevent unions from doing the same kind of bankrolling, and in favor of the backwards Proposition 40, where a yes vote actually means to leave the new election districts the way they are - and even the backers of the measure have backed off their support (meaning, even the people who wanted you to vote no now want you to vote yes). For the bulk of the rest of them, it depends on your feelings about contentious issues like the size of government, the food labeling, and capital punishment. Vote your (well-informed) conscience.

But vote! Because, remember, cats can't vote ...

And if they could, it would be just for more food.

-the Centaur

Pictured: our vote by mail ballots, which enable us to vote the night before and walk the ballots over to the polling place at our leisure. Go democracy! Hooray America! And if you're not in a democracy like America's, you should think about getting yourself one!

Involves politics, but not really political

Published March 3, 2012 by centaur

Andrew Breitbart is dead at 43. He was apparently a conservative commentator; I wasn't too familiar with him except for some of the scandals he broke. But the point, as John Scalzi said, is that he was 43. I'm used to hearing about accomplished people who are much younger than I am ... Larry Page, Britney Spears, Christopher Paolini, that last born when I entered high school. Occasionally people in that age bracket die. It's a damn shame, everyone says, they died so young. But when Andrew Breitbart died, while it was clear that he died young - to the point of spawning (what at first appear to be ridiculous) conspiracy theories - no-one is too surprised. Because a male's chance of dying of a heart attack triples when you move up to 35-44 year age bracket, and triples again when you roll over into 45-54. I'd enter some snark about white males like myself being worse off, but it doesn't seem to be the case. So Andrew's about the right age where people should start worrying about dying of a heart attack. So am I. God speed, Andrew. And may God be with us all. -the Centaur Pictured: a memento mori featuring my cat, Caesar, curling up in the lap of luxury next to the skull of one of his less evolutionarily successful distant relatives. Looks like Caesar had an easier time taking down that giraffe than his buddy there.

Can you conceive of a situation where you wouldn’t vote for Obama?

Published March 2, 2012 by centaur

I try to avoid too much of the politics here. My experience of blogs that dip political is that they're often shrill, partisan, and most likely to make mistakes about the things they're most likely to post - the same trap I usually fall in when I post to my friends's shared mailing group. When you're engaged enough to respond, you're enraged enough to gaffe.

But a friend and I were discussing the recent election, I said something complimentary about Romney "even though I wouldn't vote for him" and my friend responded: "Can you conceive of a situation where you wouldn't vote for Obama?" And that gave me pause.

I try to be open minded. I currently vote liberal, but I was a College Republican, with deep admiration for President Reagan and President Nixon (no that wasn't a typo), and even though accepting reality forces one to lean to the left (and trying to be moral leans one even moreso), there are very important values on the right we can't just throw out with the bathwater. Economic freedom. Gun rights. Lower taxes when possible. Limits to the size and reach of government. Promoting the needs of families, businessmen, farmers, soldiers. I'd call myself a libertarian, but that's not a good descriptor either. Short story, i try to keep an open mind.

The last election cycle was ideal for me: a Republican I admired and had supported up against an eloquent technocrat who finally broke the color barrier. I couldn't lose. I printed out Obama and McCain's political positions and went through them with a fine tooth comb, and found myself on the fence, 50-50. I was undecided right up until August 29, 2008, when McCain selected Palin as his running mate. I take running mates very seriously, especially with an older headliner, and while McCain had earned my admiration and reflected my values, Palin ... hadn't, and didn't. So (big surprise) I voted for Obama. A Democrat.

Fast forward almost 4 years, and our conversation about Romney. I saw this article, and was impressed enough to write:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romney-im-not-willing-to-light-my-hair-on-fire-to-win-conservative-votes/2012/02/28/gIQADDk9fR_story.html

“I’m very pleased with the campaign, its organization. The candidate sometimes makes some mistakes, and so I’m trying to do better and work harder and make sure that we get our message across,” Romney told reporters during a visit to his campaign headquarters here. “In the final analysis, I anticipate becoming the nominee.”
Q: Candidate Romney, where does the buck stop?A: Where does the buck stop? The buck stops here. Next question.

But (based on other conversations) my friend's a bit bitter, as he thinks there's nothing that's going to stop Obama, and was probably frustrated to see me say I'd never vote for him. That lead to the question: "Can you conceive of a situation where you wouldn't vote for Obama?" ... and this (correcting a few typos) is what I wrote:

TL;DR: No.

Conceive of? Sure. He's unmasked as a space alien or secret Communist plant or something. Or contrafactually, had McCain selected almost anyone else with real credentials combined with appeal to a moderate base (Pataki? Powell? Rice?) it could have happened in 2008.

Realistically? No, for three reasons.

The Republican establishment has moved too far to the right, becoming deliberately obstructionist (you can verify this with their public statements) turning their backs on even hardline conservatives (you can also verify this with their public statements) and now see "moderate" as a dirty word. When you vote for a President, you vote for his party, and I cannot in good conscience vote for the Republican party. When the current conservative movement implodes and the party once again is open to a variety of opinions then I'll reconsider.

Obama's values, governance and style reflect my values, understanding of the facts, and preferred way that politicians should operate. He's not a Dukakis, or Carter, or LBJ, or one of the scarier people the Democrats have waiting in the wings ... he's more like a Clinton or JFK. SO he's not a bad choice to have up there, regardless of the Republican opposition, with the possible exception of his positions on space and domestic spying.

You don't change horses in a river ... or a President in wartime.

Put another way, from the perspective of a liberal moderate, Obama is one of the most successful presidents in history, so no, too much would have to change. The Republicans would have to radically shift to the center, and Obama would have to turn into some kind of monster.
In 2016, however, who knows? Bloomberg? Romney? Christie? Could it be ... Jeb Bush? (And yes I looked up their political positions before making that statement, though I reserve the right to change my mind if they have diarrhea of the mouth in the 2016 campaign).

Partisans may pshaw at this, evidence free as their reasoning is, because I'm not even a RINO (Republican in Name Only). If you have to put a name on what I am, I'm a left-leaning moderate. I haven't voted for a Republican President since Bush's dad. But Republicans are doing nothing to sell me on their party. I listen carefully to their positions. I'm trying to learn from their wisdom and defend their important values: the steering wheel of state needs to turn both ways.

But they've been drifting to the right since Bush lost to Clinton, since Bush violated his campaign promises and drifted to the right, and people like me ended up voting for the other guy. I still remember that day when a conservative shopkeeper, who had in front of him a voter telling him he switched parties because Bush went too far to the right, stood up enraged and told me that the reason Bush lost was because he wasn't conservative enough.

Keep telling yourselves that.

In the meantime, the left of us are going to vote for the guy who passed healthcare reform, repealed don't-ask-don't-tell, ended the war in Iraq, repaired our relations with the world, and made a good-faith effort to close Guantanamo, and the moderates among us are going to vote for the guy who saved the auto industry, passed the stimulus, refused to prosecute those who were prosecuting the war on terror, repeated Bush's surge trick in Afghanistan, piffed Osama bin Laden, and finally put the smackdown on Gaddafi the way Reagan wanted to oh so many years ago.

I'm sure if I went through and extensively fact-checked this article I'd have to blunt some of my criticism and praise; the real story is always too big to fit in the boxes that we want to fit it in. In particular, I know Obama's not perfect. But I'm going to go with the guy who's willing to take on ideas from the other side, if not their votes, because all the other side is trying to do now is make him fail - even if it means turning on their own ideas ... or turning on their own. There's a lot of good on the right ... but right now, on many issues, the right's in the wrong, and is extraordinarily resistant to accepting facts, reason, or even their own history, even in areas where Obama's choosing to follow firmly in Bush's footsteps to the point some of the left want to tear their hair out.

In the end, it's not about parroting the current set of litmus positions to establish one's group identification.

It's about being effective at doing what's right.

-the Centaur

P.S. For the record, while I admire Ron Paul's clear moral compass, and would love to see Newt Gingrich debate Obama just for the fireworks of seeing two powerful minds clearly articulate their conflicting ideals, if I did have to pick a Republican candidate I would pick Mitt Romney because I think he's the most experienced, levelheaded, and dare I say moderate of the current pack. I agree with my friend: he is the best choice out of the Republican field, even though I have the option of selecting a different candidate from a different party that better reflects my personal values. Best of luck, Mitt, though I will be voting for the other guy.

Pictured: White Flag by Jasper Johns, currently hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.