(to be sung to “Old Macdonald had a Farm”)
Donald Trump is on a stump
EIEIO
And on his stump he’s got a bump
EIEIO
With a rating here and a rating there
Here a stat; there a stat
Everywhere a stat, stat
Donald Trump is on a stump
EIEIO
Donald Trump the big tycoon
EIEIO
Is now a GOP big buffoon
EIEIO
He’s a birther here, a birther there
Here a birther, there a birther
Everywhere a birther, birther
Donald Trump the big buffoon
EIEIO
The falsehood Trump must keep alive
EIEIO
From where does the President’s birth derive
EIEIO
With a trump up here, and a trump up there
Here a trump up, there a trump up
Everywhere a trump up
It’s the only way Trumpster will survive
EIEIO
Questioning Obama’s birth
EIEIO
Shows just how much Trump’s thoughts are worth
EIEIO
With a small thought here and a small thought there
Here a lie, there a lie
Everywhere a lie, lie
Donald Trump is just a chump
EIEIO
Now Trump’s “truth” shows great fatigue
EIEIO
He wants Obama out of the Ivy League
EIEIO
With a “why Columbia?” here and a “Why Harvard?” there
Here a degree, there a degree
Magna cum laude at Harvard Law? Gee!
Trump makes shit up but that’s his creed
EIEIO
Right now Trump’s in second place
EIEIO
This is the fact we all must face
EIEIO
With a billion here and a billion there
Here some bucks, there some bucks
Everywhere some big bucks
Trump could win the Republican race
EIEIO
The only way to stop Trump cold
EIEIO
Romney shows he’s bright and bold
EIEIO
With a trump Trump here and a trump Trump there
Here a trump, there a trump
Everywhere a trump Trump
Romney forces Trump to fold
EIEIO
Alas, the Mormon’s tongue got loose:
EIEIO
He says Obama should wear a noose
EIEIO
With a cinch knot here, and a lynch knot there
Here a cinch, there a lynch
Everywhere a cinch lynch
Romney really cooked his own goose
EIEIO
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Saturday, April 16, 2011
The Truth in an Easter Egg
Easter is just around the corner and it reminds me that one of the great traditions connected to that event is the Easter egg hunt. I have a suggestion: let’s all write our congressional representatives and senators and invite them to an Easter Egg Hunt on the Washington Mall. The purpose would be to condition them to actually look for an answer instead of assuming they already have one. Somehow they all seem to have lost their way to the truth and have lost the capacity to actually discover it. Since the truth is often hiding in the tall grass of doubt, maybe the Mall is not such a good place because the grass is too short to make the search an adventure. Maybe we need to move it out of town to some neutral ground where green blades of grass outnumber greenbacks. Maybe some farm in West Virginia could host the event. It could be a kind of Woodstock event for congress.
In any case, we need to encourage both Republican and Democratic congressmen and senators to cast off their cloaks of certainty and re-learn the scientific method of searching for truth they supposedly learned in high school. The scientific method, for the most part, is based on trial and error. You set up an experiment; you try out a hypothesis; it works or does not; and then you make adjustments and try again.
Right now both sides are approaching problem-solving entirely wrong. The Democrats come up with social programs and then sit on them like brooding hens, regardless of whether or not they will hatch some real results. The Republicans, rather than proposing fixes, simply want to burn down what they see as hen houses of brooding Democrats sitting on rotten eggs. Neither side continues to tinker, to experiment, to improve, to progress.
The whole process is a false binary in which conflict is supposed to result in the production of truth, when, in fact, the process always leads to merely a temporary victory for one side that will soon be reversed when the other side obtains a majority. Majority rule does not result in truth. The majority is almost never right no matter which side wins. Consensus is the only process that leads to truth because consensus is the only way a body of people can actually get there. Here’s why.
Back in 1906, an in-law of Charles Darwin named Francis Galton, the coiner of the term eugenics, of all things, went to a fair in western England where he tabulated the guesses by the participants in a guess-the-weight-of-the-ox-carcass contest. When all 800 of the contestants had finished guessing, none had come very close to the actual weight. When Galton calculated the mean of the guesses, the contestants as a body had come within a pound of the actual weight: 1,198 pounds. The mean was 1,197 pounds. Ironically, the guy who believed in eugenics had actually shown that a large body of regular folks could actually ascertain the truth while none of them could do so alone.
Would it not be a wonderful development if our elected representatives put away their one-sided certainty and actually did their own thinking, worked as a body, and reached consensus? We’d all be so much better off in developing and improving successful government programs rather than sitting on failures or throwing out the whole idea of government programs as a waste of money. Right now it’s a lose-lose deadlock.
There is too much emphasis on conflict in American culture and therefore in government as well. Our justice system is meant to operate on the principle that out of a fair and thorough conflict between prosecution and defense will result a fair verdict. However, we all know that the side able to afford the best lawyers has a better chance of winning regardless of the truth. We also know that the lobbyists with the most money have greater influence over congress than do the regular folks. If we could somehow find a way to elect politicians who can and will think for themselves and not be influenced by big money and party line then we have a chance of getting ourselves governed well rather than governed least or big, a Morton’s Fork at best. If we truly want to move away from adversarial thinking, we need to stop electing so many lawyers and start electing more scientists. Science is the most uncertain discipline where theories don’t pass for fact. That’s why there is considerable humility among scientists who seldom argue their case by ignoring evidence in order to maintain a belief.
The Easter egg hunt is a good place to start. Those congressmen who collect the most eggs get to lead the discussion and present their best legislation for consideration. It would be a far better system than the one we have now.
In any case, we need to encourage both Republican and Democratic congressmen and senators to cast off their cloaks of certainty and re-learn the scientific method of searching for truth they supposedly learned in high school. The scientific method, for the most part, is based on trial and error. You set up an experiment; you try out a hypothesis; it works or does not; and then you make adjustments and try again.
Right now both sides are approaching problem-solving entirely wrong. The Democrats come up with social programs and then sit on them like brooding hens, regardless of whether or not they will hatch some real results. The Republicans, rather than proposing fixes, simply want to burn down what they see as hen houses of brooding Democrats sitting on rotten eggs. Neither side continues to tinker, to experiment, to improve, to progress.
The whole process is a false binary in which conflict is supposed to result in the production of truth, when, in fact, the process always leads to merely a temporary victory for one side that will soon be reversed when the other side obtains a majority. Majority rule does not result in truth. The majority is almost never right no matter which side wins. Consensus is the only process that leads to truth because consensus is the only way a body of people can actually get there. Here’s why.
Back in 1906, an in-law of Charles Darwin named Francis Galton, the coiner of the term eugenics, of all things, went to a fair in western England where he tabulated the guesses by the participants in a guess-the-weight-of-the-ox-carcass contest. When all 800 of the contestants had finished guessing, none had come very close to the actual weight. When Galton calculated the mean of the guesses, the contestants as a body had come within a pound of the actual weight: 1,198 pounds. The mean was 1,197 pounds. Ironically, the guy who believed in eugenics had actually shown that a large body of regular folks could actually ascertain the truth while none of them could do so alone.
Would it not be a wonderful development if our elected representatives put away their one-sided certainty and actually did their own thinking, worked as a body, and reached consensus? We’d all be so much better off in developing and improving successful government programs rather than sitting on failures or throwing out the whole idea of government programs as a waste of money. Right now it’s a lose-lose deadlock.
There is too much emphasis on conflict in American culture and therefore in government as well. Our justice system is meant to operate on the principle that out of a fair and thorough conflict between prosecution and defense will result a fair verdict. However, we all know that the side able to afford the best lawyers has a better chance of winning regardless of the truth. We also know that the lobbyists with the most money have greater influence over congress than do the regular folks. If we could somehow find a way to elect politicians who can and will think for themselves and not be influenced by big money and party line then we have a chance of getting ourselves governed well rather than governed least or big, a Morton’s Fork at best. If we truly want to move away from adversarial thinking, we need to stop electing so many lawyers and start electing more scientists. Science is the most uncertain discipline where theories don’t pass for fact. That’s why there is considerable humility among scientists who seldom argue their case by ignoring evidence in order to maintain a belief.
The Easter egg hunt is a good place to start. Those congressmen who collect the most eggs get to lead the discussion and present their best legislation for consideration. It would be a far better system than the one we have now.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
The Audacity of Cuts
Young Paul Ryan has a plan
EIEIO
And In that plan he has some Cuts
EIEIO
With a Cut Cut here, and a Cut Cut there
Here a Cut, there a Cut, everywhere a Cut Cut
Young Paul Ryan has a plan
EIEIO
Paul Ryan should work in a deli. He can deliver cold cuts faster than a baloney factory. But he’s not alone by a long shot. He is simply the point man for the Republicans who think cold cuts are the answer to America’s woes because to suggest that increasing taxes might be part of the answer is to fly in the face of conservative ideology: taxes are bad; tax cuts are good; government is bad; free enterprise is good.
If their god “Free Enterprise” aka “Free Market” were such a great, all-worthy god, why are so many people out of work two years after the economic meltdown? Why are the rich getting richer during this same period? Why is there so little trickle down? And why do Free Market worshippers continue to believe that by making the rich even richer that somehow that will result in a better life for the masses?
Blind faith in a system, any system, is a mistake. To believe that a final answer has been reached economically and that answer is Free Market Capitalism is simply dead wrong. Anything man invents or evolves is simply a link on an evolutionary chain, not a Nirvana. There is no perfect plane or car or atomic power plant. Tinkering must continue. Rethinking must occur if things are to improve. To make an economic system a holy untouchable is to render it a god. As Robert Frost said in his poem “The White-tailed Hornet,” “Won’t almost any theory bear revision?”
What Free Enterprise advocates do not take into account are the losers. They ignore losers; they blame them; they fail to take them into account; they let them eat cake. And eat cake they will. As George Orwell once said, “When you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. You want to eat something a little bit tasty.” And you end up with an obese nation, but that’s another topic even if it signals the essential difference between the rich and poor modes of thinking.
Rich people or winners have the privilege of being able to think long term and are patient about the future which will also belong to them if they play their cards right. Poor people are so focused on survival and instant gratification today that long term thinking is sheer luxury. Planning for the future is something to get around to tomorrow when there is enough food around for beyond today.
There was a time when poor people left home, even left their country to find a better life. It is still true for people who immigrate to America today. In the past when the United States was still being settled, if you ran into trouble, you could go west, find land, homestead it, and start a new life. Today there is no land to homestead. The West is settled. If you were a southern black, you could move north and find a job in a factory. Today, there are fewer factory jobs because many factories have moved abroad where cheaper labor can be found. The poor are essentially stuck without resources or wherewithal to make a move to a better life. They have mostly terrible schools in their neighborhoods, a fact which signals they have little means of escape even for the next generation.
Conservatives are all about conserving the status quo whereby they remain the winners and losers just need to find their bootstraps. Losing has to do with individual character and slothfulness, not a structural flaw in the system. After all, if the poor just started to develop some long-range plans, they too could succeed. The problem is you need to believe that tomorrow can be better in order to even consider long-range thinking. If you are just scraping by, a long range plan is less realistic than winning the lottery. That’s why the poor per capita are the most frequent players as a group. In many cases winning the lottery is their only hope.
Meanwhile, we’ll watch the Republicans try to save one of their own, this time Congressman Ryan rather than Private Ryan, as they foolishly and consistently tear down all those liberal bridges to nowhere called entitlements while their constituency, the Haves and Have Mores, bask in the sunlight of the conservative spirit.
Robin Hood must be rolling in his grave.
EIEIO
And In that plan he has some Cuts
EIEIO
With a Cut Cut here, and a Cut Cut there
Here a Cut, there a Cut, everywhere a Cut Cut
Young Paul Ryan has a plan
EIEIO
Paul Ryan should work in a deli. He can deliver cold cuts faster than a baloney factory. But he’s not alone by a long shot. He is simply the point man for the Republicans who think cold cuts are the answer to America’s woes because to suggest that increasing taxes might be part of the answer is to fly in the face of conservative ideology: taxes are bad; tax cuts are good; government is bad; free enterprise is good.
If their god “Free Enterprise” aka “Free Market” were such a great, all-worthy god, why are so many people out of work two years after the economic meltdown? Why are the rich getting richer during this same period? Why is there so little trickle down? And why do Free Market worshippers continue to believe that by making the rich even richer that somehow that will result in a better life for the masses?
Blind faith in a system, any system, is a mistake. To believe that a final answer has been reached economically and that answer is Free Market Capitalism is simply dead wrong. Anything man invents or evolves is simply a link on an evolutionary chain, not a Nirvana. There is no perfect plane or car or atomic power plant. Tinkering must continue. Rethinking must occur if things are to improve. To make an economic system a holy untouchable is to render it a god. As Robert Frost said in his poem “The White-tailed Hornet,” “Won’t almost any theory bear revision?”
What Free Enterprise advocates do not take into account are the losers. They ignore losers; they blame them; they fail to take them into account; they let them eat cake. And eat cake they will. As George Orwell once said, “When you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. You want to eat something a little bit tasty.” And you end up with an obese nation, but that’s another topic even if it signals the essential difference between the rich and poor modes of thinking.
Rich people or winners have the privilege of being able to think long term and are patient about the future which will also belong to them if they play their cards right. Poor people are so focused on survival and instant gratification today that long term thinking is sheer luxury. Planning for the future is something to get around to tomorrow when there is enough food around for beyond today.
There was a time when poor people left home, even left their country to find a better life. It is still true for people who immigrate to America today. In the past when the United States was still being settled, if you ran into trouble, you could go west, find land, homestead it, and start a new life. Today there is no land to homestead. The West is settled. If you were a southern black, you could move north and find a job in a factory. Today, there are fewer factory jobs because many factories have moved abroad where cheaper labor can be found. The poor are essentially stuck without resources or wherewithal to make a move to a better life. They have mostly terrible schools in their neighborhoods, a fact which signals they have little means of escape even for the next generation.
Conservatives are all about conserving the status quo whereby they remain the winners and losers just need to find their bootstraps. Losing has to do with individual character and slothfulness, not a structural flaw in the system. After all, if the poor just started to develop some long-range plans, they too could succeed. The problem is you need to believe that tomorrow can be better in order to even consider long-range thinking. If you are just scraping by, a long range plan is less realistic than winning the lottery. That’s why the poor per capita are the most frequent players as a group. In many cases winning the lottery is their only hope.
Meanwhile, we’ll watch the Republicans try to save one of their own, this time Congressman Ryan rather than Private Ryan, as they foolishly and consistently tear down all those liberal bridges to nowhere called entitlements while their constituency, the Haves and Have Mores, bask in the sunlight of the conservative spirit.
Robin Hood must be rolling in his grave.
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