The Clam Rampant

Kasia November 12th, 2008

OK. So at least one or two of the Big Three have expressed interest in getting some of the money from that big government bailout/stimulus package that passed back in what, September? Now, I’m not going to debate whether the package should have passed – even at the time I recognized that it was beyond my meager economic competence to evaluate, and now it’s moot anyway because it’s long since passed. My question is a little more basic.

According to the news report I heard this morning, the Big Three and our governor, Jennifer Granholm, are earnestly pressing for this. However, (the news reported), some people object because the funds shouldn’t be used to prop up companies that have grossly mismanaged their resources. I paraphrase, but that’s the gist.

So here’s my question: As I recall, the package was precipitated by the apparently impending failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, plus a few other financial institutions that had apparently either been instrumental in originating most of the mortgages that have since been deemed overly risky (you know, when they went into default – hindsight being 20/20 and all that) or had purchased them as investments (because we know risky investments NEVER fail and ALWAYS bring high returns)…doesn’t it seem like…well, you know…the package was designed for companies that have grossly mismanaged their resources? Or is it just me?

And now I hear the City of Detroit is trying to get in on the action. Well, they definitely qualify as having grossly mismanaged their resources…

• Bad arguments , Cranky Clam , Current events , Detroit , Less-than-Christian snark , Politics , Rank stupidity
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Kasia July 23rd, 2008

Courtesy of Kit Brookside, here is a story about Michael Savage’s comments about autism and autistic kids.

I suggest watching the video on there – one of the anchors, Jim Watkins, has an autistic son. You can read his follow-ups on his work blog here, here and here.

I especially suggest listening to the video on the second Watkins link. Savage does emphasize that he thinks he was taken out of context, and that the “99%” he was talking about was 99% of diagnosed autism cases, not of “truly autistic” kids. However, Savage repeatedly refuses to respond to questions posed to him by the interviewer, Peter Thorne, many of which are eminently reasonable, and eventually hangs up on the interview.

It seems to me, from my very limited exposure to him, that Savage is not the kind of guy you can have a fruitful debate with. By “fruitful” I don’t mean that either one of you actually changes your mind, incidentally; I mean that you are able to actually talk TO the other person rather than AT him, and that there is some reasonable effort on both sides to at least attempt to engage the other person’s points.

Is autism overdiagnosed? I don’t know. But the thing is, Savage repeatedly refuses to give anything more than what is, essentially, anecdotal and circumstantial evidence to support his claim that it is. (Amusingly, he refuses to say what makes him an authority about this because the interviewer is not an authority on it. So if you are interviewed by a journalist, he or she has to have an advanced degree in the subject you’re speaking about? That’s a new one…)

There is a corollary to freedom of speech, you know. There’s a corollary to just about every freedom we have. Rights don’t exist in a vacuum.

The corollary here is that you can say what you want (within the limits of the law, which are pretty broad), but you are responsible for what you say; and sometimes what you say can have unintended consequences, for which you may be responsible. Sort of like how, in the Laura Ingalls Wilder book The Long Winter, Pa Ingalls points out to a greedy shopkeeper that, despite his legal right to do so, his charging as much as he can get away with for wheat that the townspeople need to keep from starving is going to end up driving him out of business come spring, when people once again have a choice of where to shop. It’s not a threat. It’s a statement of how the market works.

Kit suggests that we consider not supporting his sponsors. This blogger (Greg Reich) actually listened to Savage’s show with the explicit intention of collecting a list of sponsors, which he lists on his blog, and stated his intention to continue doing so indefinitely.

However, I don’t actually patronize any of the sponsors, except occasionally Home Depot (and I prefer Lowe’s anyway), so my boycotting won’t do much good. And I somehow don’t see him getting canned, not with ten million listeners. Again, the market at work.

If you’re of a mind to, by all means boycott his sponsors, and be sure to send them a letter explaining that you are doing so and why. Since I already don’t patronize them, I will do the only things I can do to a guy like Savage:

I won’t listen to him. And I’ll keep doing my little bit to try to keep my debates civil and reasoned.

** UPDATE ** Please note the comment in the combox by Sarah from Home Depot Communications. Home Depot disputes any advertising with or sponsorship of Michael Savage.

• "Sin makes you stupid" - Mark Shea , Bad arguments , Current events , Politics
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Kasia July 10th, 2008

I’ve posted before about the Lord sending me “spine-building exercises”. Well, I just had another one.

I’ve had a bunch of missed calls that my caller ID identifies as “Levin for…” and I had idly wondered which Levin was trying to get money from me – Carl (Senator) or Sander (Representative). I live in Sander’s district, but I’ve written to Carl before; and with political lists being the tetchy things they are, anything is possible. I have gotten mail from the Republican Jewish Coalition before, even though I am neither Republican nor Jewish. So you never know.

Well, the phone just rang and it was “Levin for” again. I decided to pick up to satisfy my curiosity, Google searches having already failed to resolve the issue.

It was neither Levin. It was the Obama campaign.

Now, I have a high school friend who is working the Obama campaign. He gets sent around the country “trying to win hearts and minds”, as he puts it. If anyone might persuade me to soften my stance on Obama, it would be him – he’s smart, articulate, knew me pretty well in high school, and (I think) is smart enough and open-minded enough to actually hear my critiques and concerns and respond to them. I don’t think even he’d be able to persuade me, but if anyone could, it would be him.

Instead of my suave, smart high school friend, I had a clearly nervous kid who sounded like he might have been early in college, at the oldest, stumbling over his basic talking points.

I was courteous, and I was honest. I told him, upon being asked, that I was NOT an Obama supporter; that I was not registered with a party; that one of my biggest objections to Obama is his extreme position on abortion, which seemed to surprise him. So I asked if he was aware that Obama had opposed the Infants Born Alive Protection Act. He suggested that what Obama maybe thought was that the federal government had no business stepping in; that the decision should be left to the woman.

I said “I think if you look at the record, you’ll find that you’re mistaken about Obama’s thoughts on the federal government stepping in; because he’s already said that his first priority as President would be to sign into law the Freedom of Choice Act, which essentially strips states of any ability to regulate abortion at all. Now, if you were to say that the Feds shouldn’t be involved in abortion but it should be left to the states, I think you’d have an argument to make – and a Constitutional one at that -” here he interjected and said, “Yeah, that’s what Roe says” – and I said “- and that’s fine, but apparently Obama agrees with some lobbyists who don’t think Roe goes far enough.” His response to that?

“Well, but if you think of the alternative, McCain, he’s more likely to appoint justices…” and something about “women’s rights”.
At that point I almost laughed out loud. I told him that I was pro-life, and that he and I had very different ideas of what women’s rights were and whether abortion was good for women.
He was obviously keen to get off the phone, but dutifully stuck to his script and thanked me for my time, said he hoped I’d still consider Obama and “sticking with the Democrats” – I told him I’d love to consider “sticking with the Democrats” if they’d have nominated a less extreme candidate. He said something about a “lot of other issues”, and we ended the conversation.

I did tell him that I respected his enthusiasm and what he was trying to do. And I concluded the conversation with “God bless you.”  (I’m sure his receiver was already halfway to the cradle by then.)

He’s right. There are a lot of other issues. And those matter.

But everything I’ve seen about Obama so far, even putting life issues aside for the moment, makes me mistrust him. I’m sure he’s a genial, likable guy in his personal life, but he’s just shown himself to be too “any way the wind blows” for me. I guess the only thing I can say for him is that, in spite of some of the things she’s said that have damaged his campaign thus far, he hasn’t thrown his wife under the bus, so to speak. And I’ll trust that that’s because he loves her, not because he knows that throwing her under the bus would poll badly.

With respect to the kid on the phone, I wish I’d had the presence of mind to tell him some of the other things that bother me about Obama – though frankly, maybe from a tactical standpoint it’s better that I not have. You know, so he can’t be prepared to answer them from the next person?  :-p  OK, that was mean – I’m sorry, Kid From the Obama Campaign.

Since the kid wasn’t terribly confident, I don’t think I really gained a whole vertebra…but it was definitely good practice for me to speak up for life.

• "Sin makes you stupid" - Mark Shea , Bad arguments , Politics , Pro-Life , Spine-building exercises
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Kasia July 9th, 2008

First, related to the subject of cars, I saw one of the most annoying bumper stickers yet on my way home today.

It read: “When Bush took office, gas was $1.49 a gallon.”

O-kay. Now, I’m not a big fan of President Bush, and the sentence as stated may be factually accurate, but there’s an unstated but obvious conclusion that the person displaying the sticker wants you to draw.

Let’s look at the unstated argument:

(Stated) Premise 1: When Bush took office, gas was $1.49 a gallon.
(Unstated) Premise 2: Gas is now over $4 a gallon.
(Unstated) Conclusion: It is Bush’s fault that gas is over $4 a gallon.

Or, alternately, Unstated Conclusion: If Bush had not taken office, gas would not be over $4 a gallon now.

Like I said, I’m not a fan of President Bush on…well, really quite a wide variety of issues. In fact, I think the only things he and I agree on are life issues, and some specific points about the “War on Terror”.  And those are important, I’ll grant you.

But no matter how much I disagree with him, and don’t especially care for him or his policies, I think that’s a ridiculously unfair critique. Gee – do you think anything ELSE could have contributed to higher gas prices? Like, say, 9-11, Hurricane Katrina smashing up the refineries, OPEC wanting to increase their profits and/or stick it to the West, broken pipelines from outdated infrastructure, increased demand for petroleum products, crazy speculators…

Now, I will be the first to say that some of President Bush’s policies probably haven’t helped matters. In fairness, the same can be said of some of the Democratic Congress’ policies, like not drilling in ANWR.

There are too many variables here to blame it all on Bush. Give the flagellating a rest. Your arms have got to be tired by now.

My other item of interest to report: telemarketers and cold solicitations are getting ever more creative. A few months ago I received a mail solicitation that I opened out of confusion and curiosity, because they had printed my name and address in such a convincing color and font that I really thought it was handwritten. It wasn’t.

Well, today I received another “new one”. Another handwritten or handwritten-looking envelope, which I opened out of curiosity. Guess what was inside?

One of those pink “Important Message” slips that receptionists use to take a message in an office. My name, the date, a first name and number of the person to call, “Please Call” checked, and “Great News!” in the message area. And I’m 99% sure this is handwritten, not printed.

I’m half tempted to call, just to see what they’re trying to sell me; but I think I’ll just leave it alone. Creativity aside, whatever they’re selling, I don’t want them to get the idea that this is an effective way to get my business.

• Bad arguments , I hate cold solicitations , Politics
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