Obama, Born In Kenya! Fake Birth Certificate!
I’ll admit, I’ve made some “birther” comments in the past, but never seriously. The reason for that is as follows:
- Lets assume Obama was born in Kenya.
- His mother was an American citizen.
- He is an American citizen by birth.
- Therefor, he is a natural born US citizen, even if Stalin personally delivered him into this world.
There are 3 requirements to be eligible, which are as follows:
So given all of this, who cares where he was born? Unless there is a dispute about his mothers citizenship or who is mother actually is, I’m not aware of any, than the whole issue is merely one of curiosity.Oh, and it also makes for decent jokes, so lets remember that and dub the crazies crazy and those making jokes joke makers, not lunatics or racists.
Q. Why did Obama wait so long to release his birth certificate?
A. He didn’t have a registered copy of PhotoShop.
President Barack Hussein Obama has finally released his actual birth certificate, proving that he really was born in Hawaii, our 57th state.
It was recently reported in the news that the President had been accidentally locked out of the White House. For that one panicked moment Obama thought that they must have found his real birth certificate.
On The Role Of Complexity In Governments And Business
I don’t recall who said this, but the quote consists of words to the effect of:
Beyond a certain point, complexity is fraud.
Just seven words, one comma, and a period, and there you have the cause of just about every problem we face. People from every political, social, political, economic, political, scientific, and political persuasion are guilty of this and it always stinks. However, given a certain level of complexity, one is not likely to be able to locate the exact source of the stink, not at all unlike milk poured into a classroom heater in the winter, not that I know anything about that sort of behavior.
Luckily, I have an example handy that everyone should be familiar with, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. I happen to have a copy handy- what? No not printed out, what, do you think I’m made of money? If I were to print it out, entire forests would have to be clear cut to make the paper, and therein lies my point.
I have a PDF copy, and I have actually made attempts at reading selections from the law. In fact, though I have no evidence of this, I would bet money that I have read more of it than almost any member of Congress, the Supreme Court and last but not least, the President. If your sharp you might be thinking that length does not automatically equal complexity, and you would be right, but what length does do is make complexity easy to take to the extremes.
How can you be for OR against this law if you have not read it? Going further, how can you be for OR against this law if you have read it, but the complexity is so high that any level of comprehension is almost out of the question? The one cop out for those like myself who are against the law might be that something in it is so abhorrent, that one can fairly say one is against at least that part of the law with a reasonable level of understanding, and it could also be said that if you are for a portion of the law, and in both cases I am referring to the “individual mandate”, that you might know enough to be for that provision. However for those in favor of the law, liking one portion of the law, and supporting the rest of it on that basis alone is just as bad as favoring it and knowing nothing about it.
In the interest of not dragging this out too far, I want to touch on business now. Do you know what a credit default swap is? I do, and they are complex, one might even say that they are complex to the point of being fraudulent, as the law colloquially known as “Obamacare” is. A significant portion of the recent banking crisis has its routes in credit default swaps, and many, many other similarly complex financial instruments. You have to understand that even people who know what a credit default swap is, and how it is supposed to work, even those who trade in these things cannot even begin to fully understand what the hell they are getting into. (I only said I know what they are, not that I fully understand everything about them.)
Within that complexity, it’s easy to hide how risky the debt may actually be, that is, if anyone even knows how risky it is or isn’t. With the glut of sub-prime mortgages out there now, and even more so 3 years ago, it shouldn’t surprise anyone if it were to turn out that no one actually did their homework.
Complexity is not in and of itself a bad thing, but unnecessary complexity, whether intentional or not, is a horrific thing and is one of the principles underlying basic libertarian philosophy. It’s not just that the admittedly somewhat nebulous concept of freedom is held to be important, it’s that libertarians realize that the larger and more complex an entity is, the more likely it is to become tyrannical or at the very least inefficient and rife with waste and fraud. At least within the private sector the association and power, and so the consequences of failure, are entirely voluntary associations and risks.
In closing, when needless complexity is injected into things, be they laws or financial instruments, those things are only a hairs breadth away from fraud. The US Constitution is the shortest written constitution in the world, yet it has underlain the stability of the United States for the last 230 years, and by extension a significant portion of the world for the better part of the last 100 years, all accomplished with only 4400 words or so.
With over 425,000 words in the Obamacare text alone and another 1.1 million words in the regulations written to impose it upon us, fraud is an apt word to use to describe that level of complexity, and the word fraud is also an apt title to pin to any number of other laws and further any number of business practices; practices that are not infrequently undertaken to avoid or comply with the aforementioned laws.
I don’t have any power to peer into the hearts of men and learn their true intentions, but if laws and contracts, etc., are made so complex that understanding is realistically impossible, they are, on their face, fraudulent.
I’m too lazy to hyperlink anything at the moment, so your Google-Fu must be strong.
A legitimate political movement
I keep hearing people say that Occupy Wall Street is a legitimate political movement…
They just want “fairness”.
The violent acts are from a handful of “bad apples”.
Sure, a couple of days ago they mailed fake anthrax to banks and tried to blow up a bridge, but those people don’t represent the movement…
Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi both say that OWS is a legitimate movement.
A Response To Michael Hawkins (Guest Michael Hartwell)
Posted on behalf of a Young, Hip Conservative. I’m not in the middle of this though, so don’t take it that way, I’m just an innocent bystander, albeit one facilitating a dispute. (Rather than put the whole thing in a block quote, I just italicized it, thought it would look better)
I wasn’t sure if I should respond to a critical post (1) Michael Hawkins wrote at Forthesakeofscience about me. I loathe having online discussions with him because of his tone, long-windedness and unwillingness to consider counter evidence. I didn’t want to leave a reply in his realm of control (I doubt he’d edit a reply in the comments, but I didn’t want to take a chance) and I avoid writing about personal issues on my blog. That’s what this is. Nate is a mutual friend of both of us and was kind enough to host a reply here. This post is mostly written for my friends, and I hope to hear from them.
Hawkins made three major accusations: I make an unacceptable number of typos, I am a poor writer and I don’t research the subjects I blog about thoroughly.
A lot of this spilled out on Facebook, where he proceeded to troll me by asking if I have a reading disability over and over. I do not, of course, and he asked it in a manner that would make it degrading to answer him directly.
As for his first point about typos, I absolutely agree with him. I started my blog following a newspaper layoff, but I now work full time and have increased my rate of posts to at least once every other day. That’s an explanation, not an excuse, because it’s still unacceptable. For what it’s worth, I am inspired by this to concentrate more on proofreading.
His second point about my writing style I flat out deny. Writing style can not be quantified, but I think this comes from different preferences. Of course, I find my stance to be superior and consider myself a good writer.
I take my writing philosophy from Orwell, Strunk and White (3) and believe in using sharp, simple sentences that are easy to comprehend. This gives my writing more power, in my opinion, and I reject cumbersome academic writing that makes the reader slow down to interpret obscure words. Curbing ones vocabulary takes a lot of effort, but that is my preference.
I am also a journalist (outside of my blog) and have to write in that style a lot, which makes it habitual. Hawkins repeats the cliche that journalism is written for a junior high reading level. This is nonsense. Writing clearly is not a vice, and more writers should strive to make their prose digestible.
He also linked the blogger profile I filled out three years ago and says I lied when I put “science” as my industry. I don’t remember filling it out three years ago, no one maintains or looks at blogger profiles, and I assume I wrote that because I was out of work and was starting a science blog and wanted it in that category.
What seems to be the crux of his post was an accusation that I use false facts. This is a big accusation which I completely deny. I use the scientific worldview as a mindset for writing about issues, including political issues. That is what makes my blog stand out.
I regularly say things that could get my head on a stick, (4)(5)(6) and have to back them up. I also carve out a niche using economic lessons in things like desserts (7) and video games. (8) These are original ideas that require hard work.
Going back to my days as a right-wing columnist in a liberal school, I always enjoyed hearing students (and occasionally professors) tell me that they disagree with my politics, but enjoy reading my work because my arguments rely on facts, not rumors, myths or emotions.
One column I wrote in college, however, was factually wrong and I still regret it. I was sympathetic to intelligent design and said it should be dismissed with studies, not written off. I had spent hours and hours reading about it, but I missed some key facts. I even wrote about it on my blog years later to show that people can learn, and we should be willing to say we were wrong.
This is what people who love science do, but for some reason, Hawkins used that to criticize me. What a bunch of hogwash. He wrote:
“He’s almost proud of the learning experience, in fact. It was certainly needed, but I’m not so sure touting one’s former ignorance is the way to go – at least not for a journalist.”
I am certainly proud of myself for letting evidence switch a position, even one I had stated publicly. I do not think we should blindly grip the positions we have, but constantly question and evaluate them, and if needed, change them. That’s the kind of reputation I want to have; not one of pretending to be born wise and unmoved by experience.
What’s interesting here is that Hawkins and I are writing for the same people,. I’ve always said I write a conservative blog with a liberal target audience. As such, I go out of my way to be respectful to them so they will consider my points. I keep in mind that I have political opponents, not enemies. I’m also secular and that world view shines through a lot of what I write. I have written things insulting groups before, such as Marxists, but generally I find it more satisfying to write respectfully. Also, insulting someone is a good way to get them to stop reading, and how can you change minds if your opposition won’t read what you write?
Hawkins is a left-wing atheist and writes for the same audience. However, he’s not an outsider and as such feels free to pepper his pieces with insults to a common foe. He doesn’t have to worry about turning conservative readers away because he never intends them to visit his blog.
Hawkins often comes off as an angry Internet forum poster who intends to derail discussions, even when he has a point to make. He also sees everything in black and white. “Bigot” is a word he throws around casually. There is no distinction between a young person who violently attacks gays, or an old woman who votes against gay marriage out of ignorance simply because she was born in unenlightened times.(9) Everything must be one extreme or the other.
If you tell someone they are stupid, and then make an argument against their position, you have sealed them off from agreeing with you. To admit your argument was correct would would imply that they were right when they called you stupid as well.
He also had a habit of writing sprawling replies in the comment section. I will admit that I spend more time on posts then I do writing a comment, but I honestly don’t enjoy any exchanges I’ve had with him. He makes it a point to be vulgar and rude. He also gets upset if you don’t respond to each and every point sprinkled among his replies. I don’t believe he’s willing to reverse any of his positions in a comment section. With the combination of these elements, I don’t respond to a lot of his comments. They are a chore to deal with.
For example, here’s a tidbit from a recent issue that got him upset this week. During a reply,(10) he wrote:
“For fuck’s sake. Do you read? Do you reading a fucking thing, Michael? I make the point that the President supported gay marriage nearly two decades ago, only switching his stance when he ran for higher office. Your counter? “Nuh-uh! Look! He supported marriage in 1996 but not when he ran for higher office!” Good job. Why are you a journalist? You’re fucking terrible at reading. Just terrible.”
In this case, the facts are that candidate Obama was distancing himself from what his office wrote in a GLBT-focused local newspaper two years later when he ran for the same office. During the exchange with Hawkins, I interpreted a news story as saying his aides denied his support for gay marriage in 1996, and I quoted it as such. In fact, the quote was unclear and Hawkins (correctly) interpreted it as saying his aides in later years denied the position.
This is an incredibly nuanced disagreement, but Hawkins lives in a world of black and white and was only able to respond in a childish manner. The evidence here is weak. Obama’s office filled out this survey, but wrote Undecided in the 1998 version of the survey. There are no direct statements from the president I am aware of, and Hawkins has not provided any. It’s possible he legitimately held that belief, it’s also possible this was an error from a state senatorial campaign. Reasonable people can disagree, but he is unwilling to consider he could be wrong.
When you factor in that he believes the president is also a secret atheist, its easy to see that emotionally, Hawkins HAS to believe the president agrees with him. He’s emotionally invested and sees this as a sacred fact that can never be questioned. Otherwise, with his black and white worldview, he would have to believe the president has been a bigot.
That’s all I have to say about this. I only met Hawkins in person twice, and he was pleasant to be around, if a little shy. Even though I dislike his extremes on commenting, for someone reason I liked having him as a friend. I’ll remember him for the time around Thanksgiving after we visited the Occupy Maine protest camp with Nate. Hawkins and I were shoveling the snow that fell off his roof onto his driveway and I asked when did we go from Internet rivals to friends. We didn’t know.
I wish him well with his blog and life.
(1) http://forthesakeofscience.com/2012/05/10/yhc-is-off-the-blogroll/
(2) www.Younghipandconservative.com
(3) http://www.younghipandconservative.com/2010/05/my-greatest-intellectual-influences.html
(4) http://www.younghipandconservative.com/2010/08/sex-offender-registries-are-useless.html
(5) http://www.younghipandconservative.com/2011/11/i-told-you-so.html
(6) http://www.younghipandconservative.com/2012/01/small-businesses-are-political-fetish.html
(7) http://www.younghipandconservative.com/2009/08/economics-of-drinking-milkshake.html
(8) http://www.younghipandconservative.com/2011/10/pretty-pretend-guns-are-not-right.html
(9) http://www.younghipandconservative.com/2012/04/why-i-tolerate-homophobes.html
(10) http://www.younghipandconservative.com/2012/05/president-ruins-my-favorite-talking.html
Blogroll
I just added two fine gentlemen to my blogroll. The Heathen Republican and The Right Wing Atheist. I find both to be intelligent, entertaining and pithy and anyone would be well served by bookmarking them.
Update: I’ve also added His Holiness, Ken of Popehat. Not only a great blogger, but a connoisseur of bullshit. I’m thankful that Ken makes enough time to use his considerable skills for the greater good, namely, smacking down persons unknown when they exhibit signs of idiocy and a lack of sufficient knowledge of the constitution.
Rights
I am interested in the intellectual acrobatics necessary to come to the conclusion that my right to free speech is limited but not my right to free religion. In the same vein, I would like to know how my right to bear arms is limited, but not the federal government’s right to regulate commerce.
Some people are either full of shit or…
No. Some people are full of shit, there is no “or”.
Please, don’t get me wrong here, I only advocate one restriction on any right with which we have been graced by our creator in having. (if nonreligious you should still grasp the concept I’m touching on there)
Your right to swing ends at my nose.
If your religious beliefs require you to beat yourself in the head with a steel dildo, I have no issues with that. On the other hand, if your religion requires you to beat me in the head with a steel dildo, I have news for you. My religion requires me to put 115 grains of lead into your head upon your coming at me with a steel dildo. Choose your savior wisely, says I.
I merely wonder at this because as I said, I do recognize reasonable limits on rights. But in doing so, I also include the governments rights, and the ability to require the purchase of something merely because I happen to be a citizen of the several states, grates against my sensibilities like a tax on tea. If rights have limits, that means all rights, because reason does not provide any criteria for us to decide what rights have limits and which don’t. All do, or none do. This must include the governments rights.
Rights have limits for one reason. Men, humans, are not infallible, given that, one must also accept that governments, regardless of how, when or why constituted, must also have limits, as they are constituted by men and therefore suffer all the same faults and limitations.
Including limits on the rights granted to them.
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