The dumbest thing I heard in the past week

The shooting in Tucson has given rise to a lot of useless nattering. We'll never know for sure what set the gunman off -- even his own explanation, if he ever gives one, will probably not bring light.

This, of course, has not stopped the various factions -- conservative, liberal, Republican, Democrat, pro-gun, antigun -- from using the occasion to hop on a soapbox and start slinging accusations.

But the item that caught my attention this week was the reported e-mail exchange between Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. If you haven't heard or read about it, write "Palin Beck e-mail" in the search box of your favorite search engine.

To say that Beck is given to hyperbole is akin to saying elephants have big ears and long trunks. But I'd have to say this time he was off the charts.

Beck encouraged Palin to hire some security to protect herself and her family because -- get this -- if something happened to Palin the republic might fall.

Oh, yeah? This republic withstood wars that threatened to unmake it, including a little donnybrook in the 1860s that started because of an express intention to split up the republic. Iit withstood presidential assassination attempts and assassinations, the lunacy of a couple of morons who blew up little children in Oklahoma and 9/11, among other things.

But if something happens to La Sarah, it's going to fall apart? I don't think so.

C'mon, Glenn. Do you really hold the American public with such little regard?

Someone explain to me again why anyone listens to this guy.

Time to put away the carping

The presents have been opened. The family have returned to their respective homes.

The joy of being with my children remains, along with some sadness that the time together couldn't longer, but that's what happens when they grow up and begin to build their own homes.

The trees are still up and lit -- one of my favorite parts of Christmas because the ornaments remind me of the years gone by. I'm sure they'll come down this weekend, and I'll miss the lights each evening.

As glorious as the Christmas season is, one aspect will not be missed: the annual carping about putting the Christ back in Christmas. The message has been the same for decades, only the reason for carping has changed.

The phrase used to be bandied about because we were afraid Christmas had become too commercial, now it is seen as a remedy to the so-called War on Christmas.

Thing I haven't figured out is why we keep pushing that worn out phrase. Christmas is more commercial and secular than ever. Do we really think that continuing to fuss about it is going to stem the tide, especially when the nation is even more diverse religiously than before? No one has ever satisfactorily explained to me how giving overworked, harried store clerks "permission" to violate their companies' rules wins hearts and minds to Jesus.

We are so combative these days. Editorial letter writers complain about every perceived slight to Christianity and whine that no one worries about offending us. Heck, they don't have to worry. We're offended by just about anything -- or nothing -- these days. Our sense of outrage grows almost daily.

We are a bunch of spoiled, former only children who have suddenly been faced by younger siblings. "Mom, he's picking on me again!" is our cry.

Of course, our mothers would have told us something along the lines of, "Honey, just ignore him. He's just try to get your goat. Every time you react, he gets what he wanted."

Of course some Christians suffer injustice, even persecution. But most of the stuff being carped about fails to rise to those levels. And given that Jesus warned us that the world would be against us, why do we continue to be surprised when it is, even here in America?

We are not called to protect the American way of life; we are called to live as the faithful disciples of Christ. And no, the two are not the same, no matter how much we believe that Christianity forms the underpinnings of our our culture and government.

We'd do well to complain less. And we'd also do well to remember that Jesus' harshest words were not to the Romans and pagans of his day. They were directed at the community of faith. The people who believed they enjoyed God's favor.

Maybe, just maybe, if we were to listen, we would hear the Master's voice telling us that the problem lies not so much with the government and the boards of corporations and "the media" but in ourselves.

Who are "they"

I was fussing about something one day -- don't remember about what because I fuss so much -- and whoever the poor victim was who had to listen to my ravings interrupted with a question.

"Who are 'they'?"

You know how it goes. You're upset so you start nattering about how they did this, and they did that, but you don't ever indicate who "they" are. My listener wanted to know specifics. If my rant was the usual kind of fussing, I probably had no specific individuals in mind, and the whole concept worked better if I didn't become specific.

As long as my oppressors, or villains, or whatever were some nebulous "they," I could be as indignant as I wanted and also put myself in the position of powerless victim.

Though the phenomenon probably goes back to the beginnings of human consciousness, I've been unusually aware of how we use nonspecifc groups to feed our rhetoric these days.

One favorite group of long standing is, of course, the Liberal Media, often referred to as the Mainstream Media. The Media are responsible for an enormous number of our current woes, and we all apparently know exact who "they" are.

Except we don't. The New York Times is one favorite whipping boy, but some of its writers go off on their own tangents and produce articles that agree with a particular complainer's point of view. When that happens, The NYT may be freely quoted without the Liberal or Mainstream tag.

A current favorite is the Government. Whatever the Liberal Media aren't busy ruining in our society, the Government is. The Government is this evil, wasteful, horrible entity whose only purpose seems to be to make life miserable. Until, of course, we have some problem we want solved.

Amorphic groups can work on the other side of an issue as well.

The Founding Fathers are often invoked in support of a number of causes. Whatever you want to see happening in society can be backed by bringing them up.

The Founding Fathers wanted America to be a Christian nation. No, The Founding Fathers wanted America to be a haven for religious liberty. But what Founding Fathers are we talking about? Who are they?

Every election cycle brings up another amazing group: The American People, who always "have spoken." The only problem with that is that apparently I cease to be part of The American People about every other election or so.

Just think about all the groups that have so much influence. The Man wants to keep you down. The Religious Right wants to us to live in a theocracy. The Liberals want to create a socialist society. The list goes on and on.

Unfortunately, I find that the actual uselessness of using these nonspecific groups as support for whatever side I'm taking hasn't stopped me from invoking them. Apparently I prefer the easy argument to serious discussion and specifics.

One of my own favorite groups was Readers, as in newspaper readers who might have actually read an article of mine in the paper or magazine we produced. I have to admit I miss them as both scapegoats and supporters.

I'm in search of a new, amorphous group. Sure hope I find one soon because when I do, they're going to have some explaining to do and some causes to promote.

Only three kinds of lies

Numbers. We use them all the time; we're influenced by them; and we haven't a clue much of the time as to what they really mean.

We listened to an interesting podcast about numbers while driving home from Thanksgiving dinner with the wonderful sons. The interviewee is a journalism professor who's just published a book about what he calls "the dark side of mathematics."

Most of what he dealt with was the statistics branch of math. No better way to lie to people than by using statistics.

The amusing part of the podcast came when the prof failed to properly apply his own principles.

Citing a study that showed men have an average of seven sexual partners in their lifetimes while women report only having four, the prof declared that this was impossible, that the numbers should be close to even.

But he forgot that the study involves sampling a population and making generalizations about the population. Of course, this is the basis of modern polling, and it works in various levels of success.

But consider this. We have an unusual sample of eight people, one guy and seven women. Now, it happens that the guy happened to sleep with all seven women. So he reports having seven partners. Now what if each woman also slept with three other men during their lifetimes. Men not represented in our sample.

Bingo. We've matched the study results.

This is, of course, wildly simplified. But in a study like this one, unless you've a huge sample, you face a similar difficulty. The results may be absolutely accurate and still not be representative of the population as a whole.

But in one of those delicious coincidences often mistakenly referred to as irony, the next morning a news show I was watching reported on a "study" conducted by Popular Mechanics (one of my favorite sources for reliable research!) that showed the U.S. Postal Service handled packages more gently than FedEx and UPS.

They even included graphs, another technique the professor noted as being useful for deception, and one of my personal favorites. By manipulating the scale, you can make relatively small differences seem much greater.

Since the title is about three kinds of lies, I'll mention one more -- even though that's not what the quote refers to.

The professor noted that many studies the news media report on show correlations. You know, people who eat kale tend to have fewer cancers than people who don't, or people who drive red Fords have fewer accidents than people who drive black Pontiacs.

But correlations don't necessarily indicate cause. They can help point the way, but correlations are always starting points.

I learned so much about how to properly use numbers, I decided to do a little research and report on the results here.

Consider the graph above. I took a representative sample of approximate IQ scores of people I know read these ramblings. The first thing to notice from this graph is that I am dumber than my readers.

Note, however, that I am not myself particularly dumb. The graph clearly shows I am way above average.

But the obvious conclusion to be reached here is that reading my blog makes you smarter, so I encourage you, dear reader, to pass this along to all your friends.

Have they no shame? Nope

One of the local TV stations is spin checking the advertising for the governor's race, and doing a bang-up job. You know, as in "You're doing a bang-up job, Brownie."

Of course, doing a really good job of checking these ads could turn into a full-time job this year. Both sides are throwing around the most ludicrous claims, and the outside groups fan the flames with the nonsense they put on the air.

My favorite stupid Bill White commercial is the one where he carps about Perry becoming a millionaire while in office. Perry's assets were placed in a blind trust, which means that the manager is doing an excellent job. Oh, I know about the shady land deal accusations, but really, I wish I could find someone to entrust my money to who could turn me into a millionaire.

My least favorite White commercial, on the other hand, comes from one of those outside groups that believes it should "help" a candidate. The ad brings up the Gardisil controversy -- surely one of Gov. Goodhair's less shining moments in office.

The ludicrous part of the ad is its implication that Perry will somehow press ahead with the immunization plan if re-elected. Rick's a lot of things, politically dumb ain't one of them.

But the award for the most noxious ad goes to Texans for Rick Perry and its ad featuring a Houston policeman's widow. She talks about the man who killed her husband, an illegal who'd been arrested a couple of times and deported. The structure of the rest of the ad implies that White supported policies that led to her husband's death.

But the Houston police policies that the ad challenges would not have hampered the police from running the murderer in or out of town if they'd encountered him. In fact, he's exactly the kind of guy the policies were designed for.

The commercial then asks if Houston will remain a sanctuary city. What? White is no longer mayor. If the policies are still in effect, fuss at the current mayor. And no one with any sense claims that Houston is a sanctuary city.

And if the intent is to suggest that if Gov. P is re-elected he will somehow put an end to Houston's policies, then I have to infer that the ad's saying he would interfere in the operations of a city in the same way he claims Washington interferes with Texas.

The candidates still have a week or so to dumbfound me. If they want to succeed, they could quit with the stupidity.

A bigot by any other name

Say you knew someone who didn't like blacks or Hispanics just because they were black or Hispanic. You'd probably believe that person was a bigot, not cool.

We're supposed to be enlightened folks these days who wouldn't admit to bigotry, believing it to be unacceptable, except in certain parts of Redneckville, where the unenlightened congregate in small groups to convince themselves of their superiority.

But a couple of incidents this past week show that bigotry can still be socially acceptable, if it's wrapped in the right package.

A letter to the editor appeared in the Star-T that at first blush extolled the virtues of Bill White when compared with the governor of our fair state, Rick "It's amazing what they can do with makeup to hide wrinkles" Perry.

The writer said he was tired of the guv and his tenure in Austin, and he was attracted to White's stance on education.

But, he said, White had three insurmountable problems: the prez, the speaker of the House, and the Senate majority leader. If White were elected, the writer proclaimed, he would probably immediately become an Obama-Pelosi-Reid pawn and lead our fair state into the jaws of ruin.

No evidence was given for this stance. No suggestion was made that White might actually be a person in his own right, capable of making decisions based on his convictions.

Nope. White has a "D" behind his name, so he must be lumped in with a stereotyped belief about Democratic leadership and be denied the governorship. Perry may not be worth anything, but he's better than a Democrat.

Next one of my Facebook "friends" posted a message to the people of a congressional district, of which the FbF (Facebook friend) is not a resident, urging them to vote against the incumbent, a Democrat, because the FbF had read that the incumbent had voted with Pelosi 97 percent of the time.

I challenged that, asking whether FbF knew the congressman, had ever talked to the man about his positions, or even knew what issues the congressman had voted against the party line about. (Hint: They were votes the FbF would have approved of because they support the FbF's values.)

Nope. Didn't know any of that. The Elephants political platform supported all the things the FbF holds dear, and even though not all Republicans fully held to the party line, the FbF was sure that Republican leadership would force any wayward members to conform and vote the "right" way.

Leaving aside that stunningly illogical reasoning, the essence of the argument comes down to one person being on the wrong side -- you know, the one that starts with "D".

Now, unless I'm missing something, believing that one side is superior based on a select set of criteria, lumping all members of another group together and demonizing them based on another select set of criteria, and refusing to judge an individual on the basis of character is pretty much the essence of bigotry.

So apparently being a racial bigot is wrong, but being a political bigot is OK. Yep. I believe I'm missing something.

Government 101

It's popular these days to blame the government for all our woes.

Government is too big, too obtrusive, the critics say. The only solution is to rid ourselves of the rats in office and pare back the bureaucracy.

But how did government get this way? Has it really ceased being of the people and for the people? Maybe not.

Take this tale as an example.

A bunch of cotton farmers grew tired of old boll weevil eating up their profits, so they banded together and decided on a plan to eradicate the bug.

In order to do this effectively, a whole bunch of factors had to come together. And pretty much the only way to make the whole thing work was to involve the government. Only the government could pass the laws that would ensure that everyone participated in the program because the program only works if every cotton farmer participates. And only the government could enforce penalties for failing to participate.

Funding for the program intially came mostly from the farmers, but government funds, state and federal, would be needed to fully fund operations. In case you didn't immediately think it, government funds mean taxpayer dollars.

Eventually, to convince all the state's farmers to participate, more and more government funds were needed. Yep, that means more taxpayer funds.

In addition, government agencies would need to provide oversight. This didn't necessarily mean that new employees would be hired, but the time they spent on this program would be footed by taxpayers as well.

To accomplish all this, the cotton farmers had to convince legislators to pass the necessary laws and work to obtain the necessary funding. They would be sweet-talked and pressured, whatever was needed to bring about the enabling legislation.

That's an abbreviated version of the process, but think about this: Groups of people in every state work on their elected representatives from every level -- from city councils to the U.S. Congress -- to convince them that in the case of whatever they want, "there oughta be a law."

And when the law is passed, often money has to be spent, and that money comes from us.

So, I ask you, gentle reader, where does the problem lie?

Now add to that the services we think we have to have. Public schools, libraries, infrastructure, police and fire protection -- the list goes on and on.

Residents of a town say, "Hey, we need a new water tower." (Or something else; pick your own example.)

They go to the city and say, "Buy us a new water tower," and city officials say, "We can't. We don't have the money. We can raise your taxes."

The residents say, "No way, but you better get us a water tower, or we'll find a new council."

So the council calls its state officials who may find funds to help out. If not, council members go to the feds.

I ask again, where does the problem lie?

Is it possible, to badly paraphrase Shakespeare, that the problem, dear friends, lies not in the politicians, but ourselves?