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ED VS. LOGICAL FALLACIES, PART 15: P.B.A./INEXPLICABLE

(Note: Be sure to check in tomorrow - big things on tap. So excited.)

As my friends over at Non-Sequitur point out, some logically flawed arguments are so bizarre, convoluted, and flat-out...wrong that they defy description. We've all been there, confronted by an argument so incoherent and stupid that we don't even know where to begin responding. Non-Seq and other logic-oriented writing dump these arguments into general categories with names like Unclassifiable, Uncategorizable, Inexplicable, Things that are False, or Plain Bad Argument. Ending up in this netherworld means that one or more of the following is true of an argument:

COMRADES, UNITE IN DEFENSE OF THE MOTHERLAND!

I make a habit of telling my students to keep in mind one of Karl Marx's fundamental theories for analyzing socioeconomic and political issues: Ask yourself "Who pays?" and "Who benefits?" I do this not because I desire to turn them all into Marxists, as I find much of Marxism quite stupid. These questions greatly increase the odds that one's understanding of why something that may or may not make sense is happening. It's also a useful way to figure out who's getting it broken off in their collective ass - and who's doing the breaking.

Let's apply these very basic questions to Our Leader (and Congress) as they cook up another nauseatingly cynical "stimulus" plan that consists of sending people big checks 4 months before the election. First of all, why is "stimulus" necessary? For the past 7 years - hell, up until just a few weeks ago - the economy was So Goddamn Strong That We Can Hardly Believe It. It was the Greatest Story Never Told. President Bush, his Treasury Secretary, Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, Fox News....they were breathlessly extolling the magnitude of our economic power. Press fast forward and leap from early December 07 to late January 08. Now economic indicators are "mixed," Americans are "worried," and the economy needs tens of billions in stimulus. Boy, that was fast.

Who's paying? You are, dumbass. Setting aside the stock-footage, often-promised-but-never-fucking-works Supply Side nonsense about how tax cuts/rebates pay for themselves (several times over!) this is simply another (conveniently, of course, long after Bush is history). It's like a cash advance or payday loan. It's a little more like John Doe 2008 borrowing from John Doe 2010. Most of all, it's another example of the "Me! Me! Me!" generation of baby boomers borrowing from their kids while they crank up the Limbaugh and give us all the finger.

I digress.

So who benefits? The knee-jerk reaction might be to say that low income taxpayers do (given that the benefit of an even payment across all incomes is regressive). But honestly, tell me what $600 is going to do for someone whose home is being foreclosed. Or on the brink of bankruptcy. Or balls-deep in debt, getting the utilities disconnected, and so on. If any of that applies, $600 is going to forestall the inevitable for a few more weeks. At best. No, the actual beneficiaries are lenders. They're the ones getting a huge infusion of cash as opposed to the peanuts and individual person will receive.

Our Leader does not give a rimjob from a $3 whore about you, your financial problems, or your mortgage. Regular Americans have been having problems with these issues in increasing numbers for a couple decades. No, what changed between 12/1/07 and 1/29/08 is that the stock market took a dive, mortgage lenders (and banks in general) have released cascading waves of gloomy forecasts and poor results, and the financial industry as a whole is starting to get very uneasy about the bottom line.

A CNN poll (and forgive me, I can't find it at the moment) showed 50% of the respondents indicating that they plan to use their check to pay bills, with about 30% of the remaining half either lying or not very bright ("Ima spend me this bitch on onea dem Vizio TVs!"). I guess the President and Congress thought it might ruffle some feathers to announce "Government to hand banks $150 billion" so setting up the taxpayer as a middleman makes good public relations sense.

Cynical? Borderline Marxist? Paranoid? OK, well, offer me a better explanation of why the economy was fantastic 8 weeks ago and in need of billions in handouts today. Please.

HEY! LOOK! OVER THERE!

I think that if I had to boil 8 years of George W. Bush down to one essential characteristic it would have to be the doggedness with which he attacks the third or fourth most important cause of any given problem. We as a nation do not have much difficulty identifying problems. It's that next step that leaves half of us stunned and confused. The other half is apparently very easily distracted.

Take tonight's SOTU (ginandtacos tip: read it, which takes 5 minutes, as opposed to 90 minutes of televised torture) for example. Our Leader believes that we're having some problems with our national pocketbook. We all agree, right? The solution: an executive order that will eliminate a small percentage of earmarked discretionary spending. Yes....um....that is clearly the solution. I might, on the contrary, posit that the quarter-billion-dollar-per-day Iraq sideshow is the actual cause of our financial conundrum.

This fits a pattern quite nicely. People can't afford healthcare, so we need tort reform (malpractice insurance apparently comprising 90% of the cost of healthcare). Terrorism is a problem - let's invade Iraq. Precipitous decline in blue-collar employment? Extend the richest 5 percent's tax cut. Foreclosures out the ass? Send everyone a check for $600. It really amounts to little more than an extended exercise in seizing upon available current events as remotely plausible excuses for railroading 30 year-old conservative talking points through Congress. In 2000, I think this man entered office with a chart; on the right side were three solutions ('Cut taxes", "Send everyone a check", and "Invade Iraq") and blanks for the problems.

It's amazing, isn't it? Imagine conducting your own affairs this way. I'm having trouble with my dissertation - better sell my car. My health isn't great, so I've decided to learn how to lay hardwood flooring. Let the wisdom flow. The one benefit of all this is that it will not be hard for future generations of children to be given an example when they ask what "specious" means.

PERSPECTIVE

Among important stories about John Edwards' haircuts, Hillary Clinton's tipping habits, Mike Huckabee's band, and Rudy's impending/stirring comeback in Florida, the mainstream media seem to be missing a very important point about the primaries thus far. Shocking, I know.

With 1.5 exceptions (Nevada and the Hillary vs. no one Democratic non-primary in Michigan) the nominating contests thus far have shown significantly higher turnout on the Democratic side. While I'd strongly caution anyone from reading too much into this too soon, it's certainly interesting in light of a decade worth of Rove Era GOP "turnout machine" handjobbing in the media. They've long relied on the idea of a smaller yet far more reliable and committed base. It has reached Conventional Wisdom status. But I wonder if that confidence holds for 2008.

Consider, just for starters, that Barack Obama (295,091) got more votes in South Carolina than the top two GOP finishers combined (McCain and Huckabee, ~279,000). Look at the balance of participation thus far, bearing in mind that SC, IA, and NH are not exactly hotbeds of liberalism.

South Carolina (Total)
- Democrats: 530,322
- GOP: 442,918
- Margin: +87,404

Iowa (Total)
- Democrats: 239,000 (state party estimates; individual votes not tallied)
- GOP: 118,691
- Margin: +120,309

New Hampshire (Total)
- Democrats: 284,104
- GOP: 233,381
- Margin: +50,723

Now, I wouldn't go to Vegas and bet my life savings ($32.10) on the general election based on these results. Primary turnout is so pitiful that drawing conclusions or extrapolating general election outcomes is quite tenuous. Less than 20% of Iowans participated in the Caucus, whereas nearly three times that amount will vote in November. So this does not mean "Slam Dunk Democratic victory assured." Neither is it irrelevant, however. It's not an accident that Republicans (and independents) don't feel as compelled to show up. It's an uninspiring field with no clear leader, and it shows.

I'm sure Chris Matthews understands this and factors it in to his incisive commentary at all times.

SO IT HAS COME TO THIS - AGAIN

Welcome, No Politics Friday (tm). We need you.

My roommate and I have a running joke at the moment. Whenever we see a TV commercial for a new (obviously half-baked) reality show, we pause and say, "Goddamn you, writers' strike." TV was already loaded to the gunwales with horrendous cheaper-than-original-scripted-programming reality shows. But even my jaded ass was horrified to see that the cupboard of ideas is so unbelievably bare that NBC brought back American Gladiators. American Fucking Gladiators. Again.

I make one basic assumption about media - if something (music, movie, TV, whatever) struck me as abysmal and puerile when I was 9 years old, it is very, very unlikely that it will strike me as less so as an adult. This is not an exception. But I'm sure this will be as popular as the original. Which makes me wonder - what's wrong with me? What's wrong with any of us? I have a hard time believing I am of the same species as people who like this - and most of America seems to do so.

I must reeeeally be out of touch. How anyone can watch these HGH-sweating mongoloid retards hitting each other with plastic sticks - and like it - is simply beyond me. Half a minute of it is enough to put me down on my knees, praying to an assortment of deities that a comet will strike the Earth and wipe out humanity. We have clearly failed and need to hit the reset button.

See? My reaction is atypical. I'm a bad American.

I'd like to identify the exact point of divergence at which I parted ways with my WWF/American Gladiators-loving countrymen. In my more cynical moments (i.e., when I am awake) I wonder if that moment was when I learned how to read.

Goddamn you, writers' strike.

NOBEL LAUREATE IN BEING A TARD

(Many thanks to my political science colleague David Schwab, who made these arguments so clearly in an email that I am very heavily quoting/paraphrasing him here. David, you're a game theory monster.)

The chair of my department sent out an email today suggesting that we check out an "interesting" piece by Nobel Laureate Sebastian Mallaby in the Washington Post. I say "interesting" because it is a direct quote...and because I believe the column might better be described as "retarded."

I am somewhat in disbelief in response to Mallaby's argument. That is, I simply can't believe that he's really this stupid. He's a Nobel Laureate. He brashly, nauseatingly titled the column "A Nobel Laureate's Primary" to remind us all that he's a goddamn Nobel Laureate. They're smart, right? Giving him the benefit of the doubt, we could conclude that he is simply dumbing this topic down for a general newspaper audience. But academics should never, ever do that. Whatever they gain in mainstream notoriety, they will lose to the sharpened claws of their colleagues in the field. Ask James David Barber.

Simply put, Mallaby, a Nobel Laureate in mechanism design (a specialized area of game theory), could show such a complete and appalling lack of understanding of the mechanisms of voting. His proposal is essentially to find a Condorcet winner, which is a concept that any first-year grad student (and many knowledgable laypeople) can explain. Said grad students could easily explain that not every election can or will have a Condorcet winner. Then what, Sebastian?

The heart of his proposal has some appeal to the average reader - let's end up with the candidate who is preferred by the largest number of voters. Let's let voters indicate orders of preference among multiple candidates. Mallaby seems to think he has proposed a system that will do this...and more! It'll help you lose weight, too. It will make you more attractive. Apparently he had his fingers crossed that no one has ever heard of Kenneth Arrow or the General Possibility Theorem, which (again, most undergrads could explain this) proves that, given several generally-accepted criteria for rationality, renders any preference aggregation system involving more than two choices irrational.

I'm not sure Mr. Mallaby proved much aside from the fact that he can wave around an honor he has received like a flag of authenticity while simultaneously giving ample reason to question the Nobel folks' decision. Maybe a fancy title, a "novel" idea, and some big words are enough to create the appearance of authority in the eyes of high school graduates reading the paper during the morning commute, but I wonder why he'd let his academic colleagues see something that shows such an embarassing lack of understanding in his field of "expertise."

(Thanks again, Dave! You explained it a lot better than I could have.)

FILE UNDER "SUPPORTING THE TROOPS"

Since I got some pretty good traction on my rant about the V-22 Osprey boondoggle (and its habit of plummeting from the sky and killing enlisted men) I thought I'd bring you another clipping to file under "Oh Hell Yeah, We Are Supporting the Shit Out of the Troops."

I'm not the kind of person who watches the Military Channel and masturbates to the various gun porn now playing 24-7 on satellite TV, but looking at these issues from a nuts-and-bolts perspective offers an excellent snapshot of how "Support the Troops" means "Support the Military-Industrial Complex" in practice. When the choice comes down to saving the lives of the (poor, rural, or colored) enlisted people or building some $30 billion flying coffin to appease Lockheed Martin, there's really no choice at all. That's why we have 19 year old kids getting shot up in poorly armored, poorly defensible Hummers, body armor that is proven to be far inferior to an alternative product now available, helicopters that fall out of the sky and now rifles that occasionally don't fire.

Part of this stems from the generalized tendency of the military to resist change. It's in the military doctrine to convince themselves that whatever they're using is the best, and therefore replacements are always viewed skeptically. But the recent tests of the M4A1 standard battle rifle shows that the military is also capable of sticking its head in the sand, ignoring empirical data, and disregarding the complaints of men and women who are forced to use a weapon in which they have questionable confidence.

Briefly, the M4A1 is a very old design, modernized over the past three decades but based on the 1960s-vintage M16 design that fared so poorly upon introduction. Essentially the M4 is a carbine (lighter, with a shorter barrel for use in close quarter combat) version of the M16, using the same flawed action and equally difficult to keep clean and prevent jamming. If you're not familiar with the saga of adopting the M16 in Vietnam (it was originally designed as a cheap, plastic rifle for guarding stateside military bases, not for being dragged through swamps) you can get some background here. Let's just say it proved very difficult to keep clean, tended to jam regularly, and did not endear itself to soldiers.

After years of Congressional prodding (led by GOP Senator Tom Coburn) the Army finally conducted an "extreme environment" dust test of its rifle alongside competitors used, or under consideration, in other branches. Not to put too fine a point on it, the M4A1 was the Dennis Kucinich of this competition. Each weapon fired 6000 rounds (cleaning every 1200) in an "extreme dust" environment, like, you know, one finds in Iraq or Afghanistan. For example.

The prototype XM8 jammed 127 times, followed by the Special Forces SCAR (226) and the Marine Hk416 (233). The M4 pulled up the rear - and that's being generous - with 882 jams, nearly 4 times as many as its nearest competitor. To put that in perspective, that is 1 in 68, and a clip holds 30 rounds. So the average soldier can expect his or her rifle to jam and refuse to fire approximately once every two clips. Not to get too heavily into the mechanics of warfare, but...let's just say that one's rifle not firing is a bad thing. Imagine trying to disassemble, clean, and reassemble your toaster while someone is trying to kill you. That'll give you a rough estimate.

Of course the fine folks in command have decided that the tests were bunk, in no way influenced by the new, massive deal signed with manufacturer Colt Firearms. Top buyer General Mark Brown responded to the tests with, "The M4 carbine is a world-class weapon. (Troops) have high confidence in that weapon, and that high confidence level is justified, in our view, as a result of all test data and all investigations we have made."

Huh. That's an interesting interpretation of the test data.

Once again I suppose it's up to Congress to do something, as unlikely as that seems, because the likelihood of the Executive Branch or military-industrial gangbang dealing with an issue by prioritizing lives over lobbyists is statistically equivalent to zero. Why the military seems to believe that "pretty good" is the gold standard, irrespective of the number of superior alternatives, is baffling by any other logic.

PRIMARY LAG

So what happened this weekend? Well, history started to redeem itself.

I've been teaching classes on the presidency and presidential elections since 2005, and every semester students seem very interested in learning how to make accurate predictions - to impress friends and family, I assume. There's a very simple way to predict who will win the nominations. Just look at who has raised the most money. Really. It's that easy, as long as you eliminate as outliers a few eccentric billionaires (Steve Forbes, etc).

Romney is someone who got written off early - too early. He's less terrifying than Huckabee, less of an idiot than Rudy, and not 80 years old and pathetic like McCain. Basically, he's a good looking guy who successfully protrays himself as a moderate...and he has raised more than any of his opponents. All signs point to yes.

Hillary has outraised every candidate in either party, which historically would suggest her as a shoo-in. However, Obama's fund raising has essentially kept pace. He has raised less than Hillary, but not by much (and he's far ahead of any Republican). The fact that they're so close makes it essentially a toss-up, hence the split decisions we've seen thus far. I'd rather be the Democrats right now, as they are splitting the primaries because there are multiple strong candidates, than the GOP, who are splitting races because all of the candidates are horrendous.

One of the best races no one's talking about is the winner of the Wesley Clark Award - I can't tell if it's Fred Thompson or America's Mayor (tm). I mean, are they a couple of sacks of shit or what? Genital herpes has generated more public enthusiasm. Savor their spectacular failure, for they are failures of historic proportions, and think back fondly to the summer of 2007 when Rudy and Freddie were the front-runner and the GOP's imminent savior, respectively.

If Hillary manages to win South Carolina, I take back everything I said last week. It's over and she's the nominee. If Obama wins, as I suspect he will, the thick plottens.

THAT SPINNING SOUND

While I'd normally talk about the primaries in light of this weekend's action, I think the holiday deserves some thought today.

Martin Luther King, like "the Holocaust" or "the Founding Fathers", has become a perfunctory public relations tool. White America has the annoying tendency to bring him up as a form of tokenism, a la "And to show you how I'm down with the colored folk, I will now talk about how great I think MLK was." He's a backdrop for cheesy advertising, motivational speeches, and sidebars in textbooks. We bring him up a lot on our patronizing photo-op Trips into Harlem ("I support Dr. King.....and mandatory minimum sentencing!"). He's lauded for his "peaceful" and dignified approach (unlike that nasty Malcom X, who doesn't make white people feel quite so good about themselves). We remember and talk about, in essence, everything except what he actually stood for. We go as far as to innocuously call the holiday "Human Rights Day" just to completely de-contextualize and water down any potential discussion of the racial elephant in the room.

Let's not talk about how there are now more black men in prison than college - and that the black prison population has risen from 150,000 (in 1980) to 800,000 (today). A 350% increase in 25 years seems reasonable. Like many white Americans, I was raised to believe that there are more black people in the justice system because more black people commit crimes. I guess no one thought it strange that they apparently started committing all of these crimes in 1980. Maybe they had a national meeting and decided to go on a spree. We can't talk about that, because that would entail talking about how the entire "War on Drugs" is little more than a thinly-disguised War on the People We Don't Want In Our Neighborhoods. Of the black men born between 1978 and 1982, 16% are either dead or in prison. Think about that for a second.

Let's not talk about black/white income inequality, or the torrent of race-baiting we see from the media, talk radio, and elected officials, or the white hysteria about "reverse racism" and "racial quotas." Instead let's just warmly applaud a 45-second news story about that likeable man who had some sort of dream, a dream that, whatever it was, apparently worked out OK.

We live in a country in which intelligent people still raise their kids to roll up the windows in "black neighborhoods," to believe that everyone on welfare is black (and they're on it because they're too lazy to work), to think that the ignorant black people are going to unfairly take the law school spots that are rightly Ours, and to think that one can believe all of these things and somehow Not be a Racist. We live in a country where we don't debate racial issues, we debate Free Republic propaganda about how MLK, if alive today, would be rubbing elbows with Trent Lott in the GOP caucus. Can't blame the right wing for trying to claim him, since he and his message have been reduced entirely to Dalai Lama-esque mascot status.

BAGHDAD UBER ALLES

Two days, two violent attacks, 140+ dead Iraqi civilians.

The surge is working! Someone get Petraeus another medal.

STRIKING IT RICH

Two NPF questions for the gentle readers.

1. So, hypothetically, if I were to print up some ginandtacos swag (maybe t-shirts? coffee mugs?) would anyone be interested or would I just have a big box of them in my garage until I die? Would you be more likely to want something relatively plain or something with a crude, utterly side-splitting joke on it?

2. A strange thing be goin' on these days...ginandtacos' views are way up but the comments aren't. If I'm being boring or talking about un-comment-worthy topics, I would certainly hope that someone would tell me. Honesty is the best policy.

Huzzah!

WHAT IS TERRORISM?

In his first best-selling book, Downsize This!, Michael Moore made a good (if terribly oversimplified) point by comparing pictures of Flint after GM moved out with Oklahoma City after the bomb went off. Of course, the image of rubble where buildings once stood was essentially the same. Apparently some urban areas in the U.S. feel the same way about big mortgage lenders, raising some interesting questions about responsibility for one's actions and what it means to be a menace to our society.

Cleveland, one of the most beyond-devastated inner cities in the land, is suing 21 large mortgage lenders for intentionally making loans that they knew could not be repaid. On the surface most readers' reaction would be to cry "Bullshit!" a la someone suing McDonald's over hot coffee. But the city has legitimate points. Waves of foreclosures significantly reduce Cleveland's already-pitiful property tax earnings while increasing the drain on city services (police, fire, and maintenance costs increase around abandoned homes). The glut of foreclosed homes in turn depresses the prices of housing in the surrounding areas. For a city already on the edge, these changes can be crippling. Their schools, already among the worst and most underfunded in America, can scarcely afford to lose additional property tax revenue.

Baltimore is also joining in the fun by suing one lender (Wells Fargo) for predatory lending in poor (read: black) neighborhoods. Rates in those areas were nearly double the rates Wells Fargo peddled in other (read: not black) neighborhoods. A racial disparity in interest rates or lending practices would constitute a federal crime, of course. Again, the city's lawsuit notes the dramatic increase in the cost of caring for abandoned neighborhoods.

Unfortunately I think this is just the first step in A) an ugly economic downturn and B) a reckoning for 30 years of attempting to maintain the "American dream" of home ownership in the face of falling real wages and disappearing middle-class jobs. Remember when Carter gave his infamous "We must lower our standard of living" speech and was practically drawn and quartered? Well, 30 years later "we" don't have to do anything - it has been done for us. When real wages don't increase and when good jobs are replaced by Wal-Mart style employment ($7/hr, no benefits, no pension) the only way to keep the dirty common folk from....well, getting pissed....is to create the illusion of wealth through credit. Sure, your wages are shrinking, but here's a couple of credit cards! That'll make up the difference. We know you'll charge more than you can pay back, but it's alright. Just make minimum payments for 30 years. At 20%.

So too goes it with home ownership. This whole "subprime lending" fiasco was perfume attempting to cover the stench of a simple fact: most Americans can no longer expect to be able to afford a home. But in order to create the illusion that they can, it has become necessary to abandon all common sense in lending standards. The only way someone making peanuts is going to get a home is at usurious rates.

People know when their standard of living falls. What they could once afford is no longer attainable. The past decade or two have been nothing but an extended exercise in distraction. John Doe can't afford his lifestyle anymore, but banks (with complicity from the political system) are more than happy to let him charge it. Banks lend money that can't be repaid knowing that they will make even more if people keep chipping away with minimum payments. Unfortunately, as the subprime fiasco is proving on a daily basis, the house of cards collapses when even those minimum payments exceed the capacity of a nation's stagnant or falling wages to pay.

STAFFED BY REAL SCIENTICIANS

Rather than seeing the headline (courtesy our pals at Feministing) "Huckabee Visits Crisis Pregnancy Center" as a bald attempt at pandering - which it is - it struck me instead as the combination of two things that make me want to punch someone.

Let me state up front that I'm not hostile to the message that "Crisis Pregnancy Centers" (the source of those PREGNANT? NEED HELP? billboards nationwide) pitch. I have no problem with a group distributing information about "abortion alternatives" as they call it. If people want to hear what they have to say, good for them. What bothers me - no, let's say "infuriates the shit out of me" - is the increasingly common false equivalency of politicians treating CPCs and Planned Parenthood as two (equal) sides of the same coin.

Abortions account for about 1% of the medical services provided by Planned Parenthood. Millions of low income people (did you know they treat men too? kids?) depend entirely on PP for healthcare they could not otherwise afford. There are doctors on staff at all time in addition to nurses, med techs, and so on. You know, the kind of stuff you find at a place that provides healthcare services.

What does a "Crisis Pregnancy Center" offer? Bulk-buy drugstore pregnancy tests and "counselors." And the quality of psychological care they provide must indeed be immense. To quote this terrific piece on CPCs that fraudulently advertise themselves as abortion clinics:

Curious, I called Austin Life Care, a prominent local crisis pregnancy center and grilled the unlucky receptionist about the services offered. She said they offered pregnancy tests and counseling. When I asked about the credentials of the counselors, she replied, "Well, we have all different levels of education and some of them are really academic."

In other words, we have a bunch of people from the Jumpin' Jesus Pentecostal Church, some of whom have mail-order degrees in Theology. Huckabee visited the Carolina Pregnancy Center, whose "counseling" program is an evening Bible study group. One of the primary excuses used to funnel money to these groups (they spring up daily and wildly outnumber PP, a testament to the low start-up costs associated with renting a storefront and handing out pee tests from Walgreen's) is that they provide "education." Spend a few minutes browsing the websites of CPCs and you can see what a crock of happy horseshit this is. Among stock gems like "How to tell your boyfriend" and "Telling your parents" is information about the only medical condition (ahem) they appear to care about treating: "Post Abortion Stress Syndrome." Which, unlike postpartum depression or the psychological damage done by bombarding emotionally fragile people with guilt and brimstone, isn't real. They're also not above making up medical information, telling women that abortion will make them sterile and cause cancer. I guess that's the kind of freedom inherent in not having any real medical professionals involved.

Yet more laws and more states seek to legitimize these places as legitimate providers of medical and educational services. Texas forked over $5 million (think of all the pee tests that will buy!), Congress has shelled out $60 million to CPCs in pursuit of Just Say No: The Sex Edition programs, and Congress wants to give them ultrasound machines. I find this last point particularly disgusting. Without the doctors to use them (ultrasounds are a medical procedure, not a "look at baby's toes" service) all that will do is create a shinier veneer of providing medical care where there is none to be found. Why is state money earmarked for organizations whose only "public service" is pimping their ideological message and flat-out wrong educational material?

They must really have a powerful, relevant message if they need to lie so much, misrepresent themselves, and suckle the tax dollar teat to stay afloat.

ED VS. LOGICAL FALLACIES, PART 14: NON CAUSA PRO CAUSA

I usually prefer to space these out a bit but sometimes fate intervenes. In this case, by "fate" I mean Newt Gingrich. When you recover from the shock of the idea that Newt Gingrich could be the source of a logical fallacy, continue.

Non Causa fallacies are straightforward; they involve attributing causality where none exists. As Fallacy Files notes, however, not all such arguments are fallacies. It can be a simple mistake or something that turns out to be incorrect even when based on the best available evidence. A doctor in the 1500s who concluded that too much blood in the body caused illness was not using a Non Causa argument - he was simply making the wrong causal inference because he had limited knowledge and information. A true NC argument ignores or neglects evidence of the real causal relationship while asserting one for which no evidence exists. While the most popular Non Causa is the "correlation = causation" variety, that topic deserves to be covered separately and I'll focus on more straightforward matters here.

Causality is a tricky issue anywhere outside of the hard sciences. In the social sciences or economics, such arguments are inherently inductive and, to some degree, subjective. What really causes poverty? Crime? Unemployment? Voter turnout? Of course we cannot say with certainty. However, we can say with certainty what does not cause those things. The record of a city's football team does not cause poverty. Low voter turnout is not caused by the number of White Castle restaurants in one's area. Crime is not caused by solar flares. So while several things can be argued to cause those phenomena, thousands of other things can be ruled out.

I'm going to let Newt take it away at this point, from his appearance on ABC's This Week pimping his new book of fresh, radical solutions, Real Change.**

Michigan was in a recession when the rest of the country was growing. Other than the states hit by Katrina, Michigan which had been hit by a Democratic governor, Democratic legislature, raised taxes. Yet none of the candidates are willing to be radical enough. Real Change focuses a long section on Detroit. Detroit has gone from a 1,800,000 people in 1950 and highest per capita income in the United States to 950,000 people and it ranks today 62nd in per capita income. And yet nobody want to get up and say…tell the truth. The truth is large bureaucracies are destructive . High taxes are destructive. The system we built discourages any businesses from opening up in Detroit. The schools don’t deliver. They uh they do deliver paychecks. They do take care of the union, but they don’t deliver for the kids (...) So I think we need dramatically deeper and more fundamental change.

Got that? The decline of the Rust Belt (and the utter devastation of places like Cleveland and Detroit, for whom "decline" is far too prosaic a term) is the fault of electing Democrats, "high taxes" and "bureaucracy." This completely disregards the fact that Detroit has no more "bureaucracy" than any other large urban area, many of which are not declining, and that high-tax states like Illinois, New York, and California are the economic engines of America. And let's also ignore the number of Democrat-electing areas that aren't experiencing these problems. If we put our heads together and really thought about it, might we come up with some better causal explanations?

Maybe. Perhaps we could look at the the fact that Detroit has been hemmoraging high-paying manufacturing jobs for 40 years thanks to free trade agreements. We could note that Michigan's largest employers by far, the Big Three auto manufacturers, have been run into the ground by mismanagement, corner-cutting, and horseshit products. We could point out that the "failing" schools have been defunded to a degree that might make Trent Lott blush. You could question all of these explanations, but do you think they might be a little stronger or explain more of the problem than electing Democrats and having bureaucracy?

The sad thing about Gingrich is he can't even aspire to make a decent illogical causal inference in the form of a correlation = causation fallacy. The conditions he blames are so vague and all-encompassing ("bureaucracy," "high" taxes, and voting for Democrats) that to say they correlate with anything is an incomprehensible stretch. Spike Milligan said that money can't buy friends, but it can buy a higher class of enemy. Sadly, in Newt's case education, money, and experience have bought him neither a clue nor a higher class of bad argument.

**(In case you were wondering, his new, fresh, radical solution is to reduce spending and cut taxes)

REDEFINING SHADY MATH

Before I talk in significant depth about Mike Huckabee's "FairTax" - the latest branding of the conservative wet dream of a National Sales Tax "replacing" the IRS - let me give you a quick introduction to what kind of shady fuckers we are dealing with. Huckabee claims that the sales tax rate would be 23%, but it's 30 cents on the dollar. How is that 23%? Well, 30 cents is 23% of $1.30, which is the cost of a $1 purchase after the tax is added.

They are calculating the tax rate as a percentage of the cost with the tax included. Because 23% sounds a lot less intimidating than 30%, which is what 30 cents on a dollar is the last time I checked.

I believe that his championing of the "FairTax" says more about who Huckabee is than anything else. And make no mistake, he is a pandering, lousy politician who happens to be right of William F. Buckley on essentially everything. The ask-no-questions, read-the-press-release-into-the-camera media bought heavily into his effort to sell himself as a moderate, but the reality is that he's a Baptist preacher with no foreign policy knowledge and economic ideas that consign most Republicans to the loony fringe.

The idea of "scrapping the IRS" has inherent appeal, and people like Huckabee know it. Never too proud to pander, they beat on the IRS straw man every time they start to slip. The idea of scrapping it in favor of something called the "FairTax" is almost too cynical to measure. Like a person who introduces a statement with "I'm not a racist..." is inevitably about to say something really racist, calling something "FairTax" is the finest possible indication that it is really, really unfair.

The national sales tax is the kind of issue that used to separate the contenders from the fringe in the GOP. You could expect to hear it once every four years from the likes of Phil Gramm, Jack Kemp, or some other Why Is This Guy Running case. That a leading contender like Huckabee is pitching it in 2008 shows you just how far our political discourse has shifted to the right. Why is it not a more mainstream idea? Getting rid of the IRS sounds awesome, right?

Sales tax revenues are both wildly unpredictable and severely regressive. The more money you make, the smaller percentage of it you pay in sales tax. And in any given year, the amount of tax revenue will depend on how much people decide to spend. So the challenge of mainstreaming such a bizarre idea is to make it "fair" to the poor and revenue-neutral compared to the current system.

In the contemporary example, the FairTax gives a "prebate" - a check for a couple of grand per year - to each household to offset the taxes they pay on the first $20,000 of income/spending. Not only does this require the government to front half a trillion in cash each year, but who exactly is going to take care of this? There's no IRS, after all. Well Huckabee proposes that the "United States Fair Tax Federal Revenue Administration and State Tax Authority Reconciliation Service" will handle the bureaucratic side of things. Does that sound like a small, efficient organization? Does keeping track of how much money is being mailed to whom every year sound like a simple job? No, what Mike Huckabee is disingenuously promising is to give the IRS a new name. That's helpful.

Second, the fine print on the FairTax notes that 30% (oops, I mean 23%) is the minimum rate that will be required. The Brookings Institute estimates that a revenue-neutral rate based on 8 years of Bush spending would be 44% whereas the Joint Congressional Committee on Taxation estimates 57%. The group's estimate of 30% (sorry, 23%) assumes massive reductions in federal spending - in the midst of a $200 million per day war. And these estimates are before the "exemptions" that would inevitably follow for things like home mortgages.

Let's play along for a second and pretend that it's revenue-neutral at something like 40%. So we enact the new plan. If it's revenue-neutral and doesn't require appreciably less bureaucracy than the current system, what the hell is the point of making the change? It's simple - people under $30k pay nothing in taxes, those between $30-$100k get a tax hike, and those making six figures get an enormous tax break. Families that spend most of their income (i.e. the poor and middle class) will part with more of their money than before, whereas earners who save/invest a lot will pay not a penny on that income.

Mike Huckabee has gotten a great big pass on this. Can you even imagine what would happen if a Democrat proposed a plan that would raise taxes on incomes between $30k and $100k to forty or fifty percent?

ED VS. LOGICAL FALLACIES, PART 13: ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE

(I'm doing a real post today because yesterday was substandard)

Someone trained in formal logic is going to point out that the use of anecdotal evidence is not a fallacy per se, and that is correct. However, it lends itself so readily to the construction of other fallacies (specifically of the post hoc, unwarranted generalization, or regressive variety) that I feel justified in pointing the spotlights at it.

Anecdotal evidence is simply using an example or anecdote - "I know a person who smoked 2 packs per day and lived to be 90" - to support an argument without acknowledging the extent to which it can be generalized. Often, as in the example I just used, anecdotal evidence is cited to contradict something supported by all available evidence. There's no logically sound way to argue that smoking isn't bad for you, so bring up an (unverifiable) anecdote of someone who beat the overwhelming odds. Like its friends heresay and conjecture, anecdotal evidence strikes at the heart of how good arguments are constructed and supported. If the evidence for an argument is unverifiable, unfalsifiable, or statistically improbable then the argument, regardless of whether or not it has merit, is invalid. I would be equally incorrect to argue "I know someone who smoked and died of lung cancer, so smoking is dangerous." Correct conclusion, but irrelevant to the "evidence" cited.

Talk radio and right-wing columnists are an excellent source of anecdotal evidence (not to mention heresay, conjecture, and sweeping generalizations). Deeply serious and respected NY Times columnist Bill Kristol, please step up and support my claim! (from "President Huckabee?"):

At a Friday night event at New England College in Henniker, (Huckabee) played bass with a local rock band, Mama Kicks. One secular New Hampshire Republican’s reaction: “Gee, he’s not some kind of crazy Christian. He’s an ordinary American.”

Anecdotal, and totally unverifiable. How much of the population feels this way? Is it this person or millions of Republicans? To the deeply serious Bill Kristol, one guy's offhand comment is proof of Huckabee's "widespread appeal" to non-Bible thumping Arkansans. Another gem comes from Rush Limbaugh's reaction to the New Hampshire primary, which he blames on his pet theory of "Out of state buses" (i.e., candidates bus in voters from other states to illegally participate in the primary). Rush supports his theory based on callers (heresay) who "saw a lot more people than usual" at their town polling places (anecdotal) and concluded (conjecture) that this is because voters were imported from other states. That's the complete Trifecta of bullshit non-evidence categories in one argument. Thanks Rush!

Anecdotal evidence...isn't. That phrase is a misnomer. I should emphasize that evidence for valid arguments can be anecdotal; this fallacy doesn't mean that your argument is wrong, but rather that your evidence doesn't prove it one way or the other. Maybe hypnosis and miracle dietary supplements can cause weight loss. If that statement is true, it's not because you know someone who tried it and lost 30 pounds.

GREEK LIGHTNING

Here's another happy reminder of how Great the Greatest Story Never Told economy truly is. Creative free-market types that we are, Americans are finding a clever way out of the whole home mortgage crisis: arson. Or, as my ethnic-slur-a-minute high school community called it, "Greek Lightning." I think the classic form of the joke was two Greek guys standing in the kitchen of a gyros stand saying "Remember, no work tomorrow - fire in kitchen tonight."

SLIGHTLY MORE POPULAR THAN GINANDTACOS!

I'm experiencing a slight New Hampshire hangover (metaphorical) and a wicked bout of the flu (not metaphorical). Sorry, today's a quickie. The bitchin' stuff I had planned for this week will wait until next. Tease.

A few weeks ago I exhorted you to bust out the TiVO and record some evidence of the Fox Business Network's existence before it's too late. It didn't exactly take the Amazing Kreskin to predict that network's inevitable failure, but I would never have predicted it would be this bad: the network is averaging about 6000 viewers during the day (you know, when the markets are open). To put that in context, FBN, which has no doubt cost News Corp some amount in the 8-figure range thus far, has about twice as many viewers as ginandtacos (cost: $7 per month).

Please note: this website's traffic is certainly nothing to brag about. But, hey, it's within striking distance of Rupert Murdoch's latest ratings poision! I'm going to sleep well tonight.

NEW HAMPSHIRE HAS ITS MOMENT

So this figures to be a very late night, but I'll give NH its moment. After all, the world only gives a shit about it for a couple weeks (and one big night) every four years. One thing is true, and not just media hype: thus far, this is a primary season unlike any other. It's enough to make someone as lame as me really excited. Here are some ideas, feel free to add your own alongside your reactions.

1. I had some serious doubts about Fred Thompson's viability, but I'm not going to pretend that I thought he'd be this bad. I'm past pointing out the obvious (he's finished) and now I'm simply marveling at the historical shittiness of his stillborn campaign. Remember when all those right-wingers were so excited about him? Good times.

2. Hillary Clinton has really dug in her heels and made a stand. Can anyone be optimistic about her odds, though? After she gets her ass handed to her in South Carolina (and probably Nevada) she will be, at best, 1-for-4 in January. Assuming she hangs on tonight, is having a narrow win over Obama in New England really an inspiring accomplishment for hat-hanging? This is a state in which she should be cruising. Instead it's 10:30 PM and she's sweating it out. Kudos to her for her victory, but I can't say it inspires confidence.

3. Giuliani is pathetic. Despite his repeated insistence that he wasn't trying to win the early races (a dubious strategy in any case) he spent more than almost any other candidate - $3 million plus. And he's duking out 4th place with Crazy Uncle Ron Paul's circus sideshow. When you're neck-and-neck with the joke candidate, things are not going well for you.

4. This story does an excellent job of illustrating how little public opinion polling is worth.

5. Mike Huckabee did better than I thought - he cracked the top 3 - but it's fairly obvious how limited his appeal is outside of Jesusland. If, as I suspect, this is McCain's high point (a la 2000), I still think that Romney is well-positioned. The commentators are speaking of him in dire terms, but the guy has a shitload of money and is the middle ground between the religious zealot and the 71 year-old war cheerleader.

6. Almost 60% of the voters in New Hampshire took Democratic ballots. That's two straight lopsided margins in favor of the Democrats. It will be very interesting to see how this shakes out in SC.

7. If Edwards is serious about refusing to exit the race prior to the convention, he's A) delusional and B) going to do significant harm to Obama.

Things feel very unclear at the moment, and I suspect that anyone who argues otherwise is lying.

CHARLIE WILSON'S GLARING OMISSION

As I plan to be back on here Tuesday evening with NH Primary bloggin'-a-plenty, I will keep this relatively brief. More accurately I'll keep it brief because in the time between conception and actual blogging on this topic, another able blogger covered many of the same points already.

So let's talk about the trainwreck "feel good" hit of the winter, Tom Hanks' delightful Charlie Wilson's War. Leave aside the fact that I find Mr. Hanks and his grating aw-shucks-ain't-I-a-good-guy demeanor almost unbearable. Leave aside the fact that Julia Roberts' lips look like someone stapled two enormous millipedes to her face. Let's instead focus on the fact that this historical tale is somehow told as a charming, quirkly, feel-good story. It ends (caveat: I refuse to dignify this by paying to see it) with a mass of Afghan "freedom fighters" chanting Charlie Wilson's name, waving about their American-provided Stinger missiles, and gushing with love for the Red White and Blue.

Seriously.

My first reaction, the moment I first heard of this film (in the form of a trailer in the theater), was to turn to my film companion and say "Um, how are they going to get around the fact that those mujahadeen we armed to the teeth eventually became al Qaeda?" Apparently, I have now learned, the way they get around it is by ignoring it and ending the movie with a syrupy God Bless America pep rally. Those radical Muslim "freedom fighters" (now known as Terrorists) sure do love America! Roll the fucking credits! Quick! Before anyone starts asking questions!

Recasting alcoholic, ass-pinching lout Charlie Wilson as the lovable Tom Hanks (you know, that guy Tom Hanks is in every goddamn movie) was enough of a middle finger toward historical accuracy. Warping the American involvement in the Soviet-Afghan War into a tale of how hardcore Muslims came to love America is...well, it's just a bridge too far.

OL' DIRTY BASTARD, LEGAL COUNSEL

I have a lot of neat stuff planned for this week, but since Tuesday and Wednesday are likely to be swamped with NH Primary talk I want to go with something not explicitly political today. Don't worry, it's still trenchant.

So by now I hope you've heard that the RIAA has finally leapt the chasm that separated their behavior toward customers from outright hostility. Yes, now it appears that they are taking the position in court that making electronic copies of legally-purchased CDs for personal use is illegal. Let me clarify what they are arguing in case it is unclear: you purchase the new Tremendous Fucking CD (who isn't?). Then you decide to rip a copy on your PC to add it to your iPod - which is, you know, what people do with CDs these days.

STOP. ILLEGAL. NOT ALLOWED, sayeth the RIAA.

You're not redistributing the music, nor are you stealing it. But their new legal position is that....are you sitting down?.....if you want to put it on your iPod you need to go purchase the album again from iTunes or another legal music download site. Yup, that's what they're arguing.

My memory fails; can anyone think of an industry making such a lengthy, ludicrous, and aggressive assault on its own paying customers? I briefly recall Microsoft (circa Windows 98) arguing that if you had two computers in your home you had to purchase two copies of Windows, but they recanted after intense negative publicity. I can only conclude that the record industry is taking legal advice - from beyond the grave - from one Russell Jones. Like the classic Ol' Dirty tune "Here Comes the Judge" is a musical interpretation of the Onion column "I Am Fucking Insane," the new RIAA strategy provides a legal interpretation of the same principle.

Q & A

Lots of bitchin' questions in the comments. Let me take a crack at them.

1. Hillary is not out of the race, but people are just drawn to Obama. My bet is that she finishes second in NH and then will get hammered out of the race by losing NV and SC before the end of the month. She'll probably finish 3rd in both of those, in my estimation. If she ends January 0-for-4, kiss her ass goodbye.

2. I don't have a favorite, although the person I'd bet money on to win the whole show at this point is Obama.

3. Establishment Republicans hate Huckabee because he is a backward Southern Baptist Preacher character out of a Coen Brothers movie. Frankly, if Huckabee wins the GOP nomination (which I still doubt) it doesn't matter who the Democrats nominate. All that guy is missing to complete the Yokel persona is a jug band and the cast of Hee-Haw. He looks like a fucking used car salesman - and his lack of foreign policy knowledge is just humiliating.

4. The Reagan Republican coalition is splintering in the sense that no single candidate can bring all parts of it together, so they've each picked a horse - religious nutjobs (Huckabee), cut-taxes-at-all-costs suburbanites (Romney), and mouth-foaming war hawks (Giuliani). Oh, and McCain (old people). Romney is the only person who could really appeal to all of them, but unfortunately the religious right is too bigoted to let him do that.

5. McCain will do very well in NH - he won it in 2000 - and then fall off the face of the Earth thereafter. His schtick plays well there but his appeal beyond that is very limited.

I decided to give up making predictions this year, but I called this one in my head about a week ago and now I feel stupid. Now watch me start making predictions again and be totally wrong. OK. New Hampshire: Obama, Clinton, Edwards. Romney, McCain, Giuliani. Huckabee won't crack the top 3, and Obama/Clinton is basically a coin flip. If the race is decided by more than one or two percent I'll be shocked.

LOTS OF POLITICS FRIDAY

For obvious reasons, No Politics Friday will not happen today. Instead I'm substituting a series of observations about Iowa. This format seemed to work pretty well back in 2006, so without further delay...

BIRDIE

I know this is snarky and unfair, but a little birdie whom I trust dearly and desires anonymity has planted something in my ear. Based on data available to this person, he/she told me that Hillary Clinton is in for a very rude surprise tonight courtesy Obama and Edwards.

Take that for what it's worth. But if she finishes 3rd, you can stick a fork in her.

THE DOG AND PONY SHOW

On Iowa Caucus Day (for those of you who still can't f'n believe it's on January 3rd, I feel you) I encourage you to give this TalkLeft post a read. It's ostensibly about Mitt Romney, but he's pretty incidental to the point this emphasizes.

I think this Romney event summarizes just about everything that disgusts and disinterests Americans about contemporary politics. Herein we see Iowa / New Hampshire campaigning at its finest: coreographed photo ops with "normal folk" as props and background. The reporters outnumber the supporters/voters by about 10 to 1, and Romney couldn't be happier about it. After all, they're his intended audience. I can guarantee that if 1000 voters but zero reporters showed up to an event he'd be despondent (unless, of course, it was a fund-raiser). Nothing - and I mean nothing - about this event makes the setting or attendees necessary aside from branding it as "Romney visits common folk in their hovels." The candidates descend on these tiny, godforsaken towns like locusts, devouring every diner, church, and town hall in sight before moving on to the next field. After the caucus/primary, of course, you couldn't pay any of them enough to visit Keokuk or Plover or Waterville Valley again.

For someone who teaches courses about elections and the presidency, it's remarkable how little attention I can force myself to pay to the election. This process has turned into something nauseatingly cynical and flat-out stupid. The IA/NH dog-and-pony show is essentially a bunch of power-hungry millionaires playing at giving a shit about what us unwashed plebes have to say. They go on expensive "listening tours" and show up at town hall meetings, as though the semantic act of calling something a listening tour while patiently enduring the whining rabble means that the candidates really give a shit. There's nothing quite like the trademark Hillary Clinton rictus - pained, stretched too tight, and threateningly insincere - to make voters think "Wow, she really cares."

Tomorrow is a day of reckoning for many, but not all, of the candidates. Those who finish anyplace lower than 3rd might as well start writing concession speeches. Their fund raising will slow to a trickle and the campaign will quickly become a money-losing proposition. But despite their immense power, I think Iowa/NH voters feel more stunned than anything else. I can't imagine how two years of this insane media circus could leave anyone feeling more prepared to make a decision. Were I an Iowan, the hypocrisy of the East Coast elite blazing into town, momentarily pretending that they care about the ultimate flyover state, would poison my opinions of everyone involved.

RESOLVED: THIS IS NOT 2007

I know it's corny, but let's talk about our resolutions for 2008. Use the comments to tell us what you're going to do and then we can hold one another to it. In theory. Unlike most blogs, I try to talk about my personal life as little as humanly possible on ginandtacos. You want to read something interesting, not a bunch of shit about my cat, my friends, and how much I drank on Friday night. I don't even have a cat.

That said, let me state that 2007 was one of the worst years of my life. I started with mononucleosis, then saw an engagement get fouled up, then lost my job, then got it back, then lost it again, then got it back, then contracted two rare illnesses simultaneously, then sputtered academically, and then screwed up another relationship. Most importantly, I saw two friendships I thought would last forever shrivel on the vine. Suffice it to say that by the end of the year it felt a little like I was flying solo through this life. So be it. If I have to go it alone, I'm going to do it well. For the Fat Lady, as Seymour Glass would say.

So I committed to this website and as a result the daily hits have doubled in 6 months. I'm proud of that and I thank each and every one of you for reading. Those of you who comment regularly and communicate via email are almost like a circle of people I expect to see around the water cooler every morning. You're appreciated. In 2008 I want to continue to make this blog worth the world's time to read. I also intend to: