Hidden Tape Emergency

House Republicans held an emergency session on HR 1076, the NPR funding cut. What was the emergency?

A hidden camera captured NPR executive Ron Shiller saying that NPR would be better off without federal funding. But that’s not all. Shiller also ripped into the tea party movement as a bunch of “gun toting racists,” adding “and not just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic.”

Republicans have had NPR on their agenda for years and a phenomenal and bogus tape by James O'Keefe became their next big deal. O'Keefe claims to be acting in the tradition of undercover investigative muckrakers. But the GOP’s new majority seized O'Keefe’s misleading editing, distorted quotes, and untruth and promoted it as gospel. The emergency was on.

Here is an interview with O'Keefe.

As I wrote on Blogcritics, when you can listen to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity for free, who needs NPR? It reaches 33 million listeners through its member stations, with its 36 bureaus and offices around the world, and local coverage produced by more than 270 independent NPR member public radio stations across the country. Republicans hate that. In the House of Representatives they voted their conscience, and this tells us everything we need to know.

It’s not about the money. It is all about the content. The GOP doesn’t like NPR content because they are focusing on a small percentage of it that they disagree with. I am sure Rush Limbaugh agrees with me.

The left politics or right politics argument that is being bandied about is referred to as the False Dichotomy Fallacy, which excludes anything in the middle. The majority of NPR programming is neither left nor right. NPR stations broadcast programs ranging from A Prairie Home Companion and The Thistle & Shamrock to Car Talk and Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me. The news programs Fresh Air and All Things Considered must drive the GOP nuts.

There is nothing like a tempest in a tea party pot, which is what the new House majority seems to be all about. Their emergency meeting on NPR funding is just one of many items on a growing list to stuff that they know is doomed to successful failure. There are health care bills they know they can't pass, abortion bills they know they can't pass, climate bills they know they can't pass, and budget bills they know they can't pass.

The voters that elected them must really be impressed with the amount of time, money and energy their House GOP representatives have spent on defending the Defense of Marriage Act, recklessly accusing Muslim Americans of disloyalty, and pushing culture-war bills related to vouchers, English as the 'official' language, and 'In God We Trust.'

NPR's funding would have been an issue whether or not O'Keefe made that tape. Senator Saxby Chambliss agrees about that, but also says, “You know, an awful lot of conservatives listen to NPR. It provides a very valuable service.” The Georgia Republican also thinks that “total elimination of funding is probably not the wisest thing to do.” He is being politically kind.

Other than NPR stations, radio is owned by the right. Television is owned by the sponsors. That’s why journalism and television have become as oil and water. Television journalism has become an oxymoron. The reason is that television is show business.

“Mack, guys like you [journalists] are like icing on the cake. We don’t really need you,” the Sales Manager of WJCL TV, Savannah, said to me after I got pulled off of a story I was working. “If it doesn't sell beer or cars, it doesn’t go on the air.”

As to news presenters, they are their own little institutions. They are actors playing the rolls of journalists. They are talking hairdos. The scripts they read are becoming more and more shallow, almost vapid. Their script writers are too lazy to use Google.

Incidentally, if you think that one broadcast or cable news organization is any better than another, please think again. Aside from NPR and PBS, all other “self-respecting news organizations” ask themselves two basic questions. Does it sell beer? Does it sell cars?

O’Keefe’s productions sell both.

Marching in Madison

What did the Republicans expect other than an outdoor media event in Madison?

“I hope I’m inspiration just as much as others are an inspiration to me,” Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker said last week. He just did not say what he inspires. State Democrats walked out of the legislature, preventing a quorum and thus a vote and people came out to demonstrate, of which Madison has a long tradition.

Walker, “Wisconsin’s new union-busting governor”, as Paul Krugman called him, announced plans to cut the bargaining rights and benefits of public workers. The measures in question would prohibit unions from bargaining over issues other than wages. They would stop unions from having dues deducted from state paychecks and require them to hold annual elections to stay in existence.

It should be noted that Wisconsin’s pension fund is better off than most pension funds in the US. The state does not suffer the large shortfalls that other states face and it has a 7.5 percent unemployment rate, well below the national average.

“Workers’ rights — including the fundamental right to organize and bargain for better pay, benefits and working conditions — are under attack in states from Maine to Ohio, from Wisconsin to Florida,” said Gerald McEntee, president of the main union of Wisconsin state employees.

“It’s like Cairo has moved to Madison,” First District Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) said. Never mind that the Wisconsin protesters, unlike those in Egypt, have jobs, homes, families, plenty of food on their plate, police protection, and are engaging in completely risk-free protests.

Besides, even Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santorum, and Glenn Beck denounced the uprising in Egypt and insisted that President Obama should have helped Mubarak put it down.

Like many Republicans in states like Wisconsin, Walker came to power last November by defeating union-backed Democrats. Now those newly elected Republicans are attacking union wages and union power, as they face budget gaps in those states that were largely created in the first place by Republicans prior to 2008.

The Mid-East comparison trivializes the protest in Madison. That is what a media event is: a shiny bit that attracts attention and rhetoric but no substantive discussion. It is the false analogy that a protest is a protest is a protest to which I object. The whole purpose of a protest is to call attention, foment debate and call for amendment, and it should affect the discussion that emerges when Wisconsin Democrats return.

Governor Scott Walker is one heck of an inspiration, all right, especially for those who are interested only in power and not in consequences. He certainly is not interested in making any concessions or negotiating with anyone. He most certainly is not interested in bargaining with state workers. He wants to terminate their ability to bargain. That appears to be his Republican brand of politics.

Begging the rhetorical question of whether Wisconsin is the Tunisia of collective bargaining rights has a lot of coincidental appeal, but it is off point. The point is what President Obama called “an assault on unions” which is all about politics, especially in center-left Madison, where it is cold.

However, the spring will come, the freeze will thaw and the protests will be what used to be called a Kodak moment. Follow it on Twitter and Facebook.

Patriot Action: Suspending the 4th Amendment

After the Republican House procedurally failed at their first attempt to have the Patriot Act extended, they succeeded and passed it with little debate. The bill now goes to the Senate and begs a very important question. Where is the oversight on this issue? The answer is, there isn’t any oversight. There is fear mongering, like the claim that our country is facing unprecedented threats both at home and abroad. What threats? Where at home? Where abroad?

The Patriot Act is the post-9/11 law created during the Bush/Cheney administration that violates the 4th Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. Its authorization is so broad that the government does not even have to specify the suspect’s name to get a warrant. It authorizes the following:

1. Examination of library and bookstore records of suspects, along with hard drives, tax documents and gun records, without being required to show probable cause

2. Roving wiretaps on a terror suspect without the government specifying the suspect’s name to get a warrant

3. Surveillance of so-called “lone wolf” suspects, permits secret intelligence surveillance of non-US persons who are not affiliated with a foreign organization. Although it has never been used, the Congress seeks to renew it without debate.

Additionally, National Security Letters (NSLs) permit the government to obtain the communication, financial and credit records of anyone deemed relevant to a terrorism investigation even if that person is not suspected of unlawful behavior.

The ACLU also offers a detailed look at how congress and the public “have yet to receive real information about how these [Patriot Act] powerful tools are being used to collect information on Americans.” The ACLU makes it easy for you to contact your Senator. Reasonable suspicion or probable cause before undertaking an investigation that infringes upon a person's privacy is suspended under the Patriot Act, which needs to expire.

The House vote came in and by a margin of 65, approved the Patriot Act extension. As the NY Times reported, “it is likely that the Senate will approve the House’s bill — putting off a larger debate over the provisions until later in the year.”

Or so we hope.

In the Senate, a bill proposed by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) would extend the provisions for three more years without new safeguards. Another bill by Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) would make the provisions I mentioned permanent. Although Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) offers a bill that would add several safeguards, it also extends the expiring provisions in the Patriot Act through 2013.

Some have argued that it is like the tree falling in the woods with no one around and asking if it makes a sound. The tree’s falling creates a disturbance whether anyone is around to hear it or not. Moreover, the use of such a postulation demonstrates a lack of understanding of the issue, if not ignorance.

If you pardon the reference, the issue is clear cut. First, The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,” which the Patriot Act allows, especially whether or not a person knows it. Second, “no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized,” which the Patriot Act authorizes.

Of course many English colonists, perhaps even a majority, asked the same question, “Why get worked up over things that only theoretically threaten liberty?” No one asked you to concern yourself about the “right of the people” or civil liberties at all. The Constitution takes care of that, whether or not you know it.

While many writers are concerned with pontificating about Egypt, a subject vastly beyond their understanding, concern about their own liberties go ignored. To keep our eye on the ball, compromising our constitution affects us more than current events abroad in Africa. Egypt now has no constitution. Its military accomplished that. It is our Bill of Rights that is threatened here at home by our Congress that demands our concern.

The reason for concern is as the American Civil Liberties Union motto states, “Because Freedom Can’t Protect Itself.”

Landmark or Landmine: Roe v Wade

“I am committed to protecting this constitutional right,” President Obama said in a statement. “I also remain committed to policies, initiatives, and programs that help prevent unintended pregnancies, support pregnant women and mothers, encourage healthy relationships, and promote adoption.” Mr. Obama said the 1973 Supreme Court ruling “affirms a fundamental principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters.”

We’ll see how that commitment works.

The phrase that it “ain’t what you say, it’s the way that you say it” comes to mind whenever I consider landmark Supreme Court decisions, none more so than that of Roe v Wade. Whenever the 38-year-old case comes up, the next words to follow are “that legalized abortion.” Those three words express an often repeated opinion of what the Court ruled when it struck down Texas criminal abortion statutes as “…vague and over broadly infringing the plaintiffs' Ninth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.”

What the ruling says is different than such a “that legalized abortion” modifier. It would be more accurate to say of Roe that “the unborn have never been recognized in the law.” In fact, it is exactly what Justice Harry Blackmun wrote. Roe is not about abortion.

Roe is about the right to privacy which, while not specifically articulated in the Bill of Rights, comes from a previous landmark decision, Griswold v Connecticut. In that 1965 case, the Court identified a constitutionally protected right to privacy, which the Court reasoned prohibited states from denying birth control to married couples. In that case the Court ruled that the Constitution protected a right to privacy by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

As the Roe decision declares, “State criminal abortion laws, like those involved here, that except from criminality only a life-saving procedure on the mother's behalf without regard to the stage of her pregnancy and other interests involved violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects against state action the right to privacy, including a woman's qualified right to terminate her pregnancy.”

It is not a carte blanche for the termination of pregnancy, however, as Justice Blackmun wrote. “We, therefore, conclude that the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified, and must be considered against important state interests in regulation.”

The controversial nature of public opinion relating to abortion and to the Roe decision is polarized. The opposing sides try to be careful with their use of language, as in what they call themselves: Abortionists or Pro-Choice on one side and Anti-Abortionists or Pro-Life on the other. Both sides are highly politicized and their confrontations have a history of violence.

The prevailing view of the Pro-Choice side is characterized by organizations such as the National Abortion Federation. As a “professional association of abortion providers in North America,” the NAF says, “We believe that women should be trusted to make private medical decisions in consultation with their health care providers. NAF currently offers quality training and services to abortion providers and unbiased information and referral services to women.”

The more activist Pro-Life side is characterized by organizations such as the Pro-Life Action League, which organizes and participates in marches, such as the recent one in San Francisco. The League says, “We confront the abortionists and abortion promoters wherever they are. We picket and demonstrate outside abortion facilities, pro-abortion events, the offices of abortion organizations like NOW and Planned Parenthood and even abortionists' houses. We infiltrate their meetings and groups.”

Each side of the abortion issue has a different position on when life begins, at conception or later. It is an argument that has its roots in the 19^th Century. But the Roe v Wade decision side steps that debate, leaving it outside of the rule of law.

“Texas urges that, apart from the Fourteenth Amendment, life begins at conception and is present throughout pregnancy, and that, therefore, the State has a compelling interest in protecting that life from and after conception. We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.”

If the debate is outside of the rule of law, it is not outside of the legislation of laws. The American Civil Liberties Union cautions that Congress is trying attempting to legislate around the Roe decision, “making access to abortion services harder to obtain for low-income women.” The ACLU says, “No woman plans to have an abortion, but that is the point of health insurance.” It contends, “That’s why the majority of plans currently include coverage for abortion care. Politicians should not be working to take away coverage that already exists for most women.”

While that may or may not be, the question becomes how legislators will respond to their constituencies and to public opinion. The group Priests for Life president, Father Frank Pavone, asserts that even after 38 years the public still does not understand what the ruling in Roe means. “Perhaps it is more accurate to say our nation is beginning to awaken to the fact that Roe’s policy – imposed by a Court rather than voted on by the people’s representatives -- has never represented what the majority of Americans think about abortion.” Perhaps.

So, what is that thinking? Let us turn to Gallup where you too can look at the data. Two years after the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling “gave sweeping constitutional protection to abortion”, Gallup asked Americans to say whether they believe abortion should be "legal under any circumstances," "legal only under certain circumstances," or "illegal in all circumstances."

The survey results said, “In the most recent period, from 2005 to 2009, the majority of all age groups favored the middle "legal only under certain circumstances" position.” Gallup further observed that even though the topic of abortion is a contentious social issue, “in recent years, the generational distinctions have blurred.” Gallup asked about abortion, not about the right to privacy.

Given the mood swing of the country that put a new Republican majority in Congress with its avowed anti-abortion agenda, the President’s right to privacy commitment is either to a Constitutional landmark or to a political landmine.

# # #

Originally published on Blogcritics, January 25, 2011

Assassination and the 2nd Amendment

In March, 1968, I turned 18 barely a month after the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. Within 3 days I reported to my draft board and registered, otherwise a deputy Sheriff would have come to my high school to escort me to the bus station and a free trip to Ft. Benning, Georgia, but I digress. At my recently desegregated high school, I enjoyed my deferment. The only times I remember thinking about such violence was after watching the nightly news.

By 1968, with no Internet, laptops or cell phones, television had become the dominant news medium, following from the live televised assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald five years earlier. Night after night at supper time, anchors Bob Young (ABC), Walter Cronkite (CBS) and the team of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley (NBC) reported the carnage of the Vietnam War and the outrage surrounding the Civil Rights movement. Sound on film replayed the gunfire and the violence.

I had seen Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on television. Of him I heard mostly vile things, since I lived in the rural South where the idea of “separate but equal” still held and the term “African-American” was unknown. I recall thinking at the time that he and other leaders of the civil rights movement were sure putting themselves in harm’s way by their exposure like targets, especially Dr. King who was all over television leading marches and being interviewed.

April 4, 1968, James Earl Ray shouldered a Remington.30-06-caliber rifle with a Redfield 2x7 scope and pulled the trigger.

My hero and presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy broke the news of Dr. King’s assassination to a crowd in Indianapolis. Kennedy spoke of King's dedication to "love and to justice between fellow human beings," adding that "he died in the cause of that effort." Rioting broke out in Memphis and 4,000 guardsmen were called out. Other cities burned, but Indianapolis did not. "I had a member of my family killed,” Kennedy said, “but he was killed by a white man."

June 5th, 1968, Sirhan Sirhan pulled out a .22 caliber revolver and fired eight shots.

I do not remember hearing calls for any kind of gun control, though, until after the failed Reagan assassination attempt, March 1981, when John Hinckley fired a .22 caliber Röhm RG-14 revolver six times and wounded both the President and his Press Secretary James Brady. It made the nightly news after it appeared within minutes on CNN. Subsequently, after a seven-year battle, President Clinton signed into law the Brady Bill, which requires a five-day waiting period and background checks on handgun purchases.

If you love data, and who doesn’t, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has a graphic on its home page that updates how many people are shot in America so far this year and so far today. As I originally posted this article with Blogcritics, the numbers reported 5000 people shot to date, 175 today.

In the aftermath of the Giffords’ shooting, you may or may not know that Arizona has virtually no restrictions on guns and recently became the third state to allow people to carry concealed weapons in public places without a permit. The state also recently allowed concealed weapon carriers to take their guns into bars and just last year became the third state to make it legal for adults to carry a concealed weapon without getting training and a background check.

Arizona House Speaker Kirk Adams is one of 61 Republicans making up two-thirds of the 90-member Legislature. According to AP, Adams said last year's bill to legalize carrying concealed weapons without a permit wasn't a mistake. "Arizona remains a place that is respectful and adamant about our Second Amendment rights, and I think the people of Arizona support that," Adams said. The state ranks 5th in the nation in gun deaths, behind Wyoming, Louisiana, Alaska and the District of Columbia.

What a contrast exists between 5^th ranked Arizona and 1st ranked Washington, D.C. on so many levels. But I want to stick with gun possession and get to the 2^nd Amendment. The District of Columbia banned the possession of handguns, making it a crime to carry an unregistered firearm and the registration of handguns illegal. Ultimately, the D.C. handgun ban went to the Supreme Court in District Of Columbia v. Heller, which overturned the ban.

Justice Antonin Scalia is the longest-serving justice on the Supreme Court and wrote the Court’s opinion in Heller. “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” He continued, “Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

Judge Scalia further wrote, “Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.”

Let me point out that the founders wrote the 2^nd Amendment to protect citizens from Congress, not from home invaders. The whole idea dates back to the 17^th century when the Catholic Stuart Kings, Charles II and James II, sought to protect themselves from overthrow by disarming insurgent Protestant militias. By the time of the founding, an English subjects’ right to have arms was understood to be an individual right protecting against both public and private violence.

By the way, how many shootings happen in home defense? I cannot find the data. But, again, I digress. As Justice Scalia wrote in Heller, “…we do not read the Second Amendment to protect the right of citizens to carry arms for any sort of confrontation, just as we do not read the First Amendment to protect the right of citizens to speak for any purpose.”

Assassins shot and killed both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F.Kennedy in 1968. An assassination attempt on Representative Gabriel Giffords killed Judge John Roll and 5 other people in 2011. Laws and public policy cannot prevent assassinations. Public figures, such as John Lennon, will always be vulnerable. The only things that have changed in this regard, since I was in high school, are how quickly we find out about such tragedies, how many more shooting deaths occur each year, and how public opinion on the 2^nd Amendment has become politicized.

Article originally published as Assassination and the 2^nd Amendment on Blogcritics.

A Tragic Update

After Sarah Palin posted the rifle scope cross hair target map on her Facebook page, she entered the frontier of sedition using Twitter. “Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!” The recent Tucson, AZ, shooting atrocity confirms Palin’s seditious speech. Palin deserves derision for such speech and for not pulling down her “Target map” until one of her targets was publically shot in the head.

Palin’s speech is protected under the 1st Amendment. The murderer’s right to bear arms is protected under 2nd Amendment. The terrorist himself did not reload and in retreat was apprehended. However he can count on the 5th Amendment’s guarantee of “due process of law” – ironic since he killed a judge.

After Palin’s followers are instructed on what to say (on Facebook and Twitter), they will assert that no connection to her seditious speech can be made other than for its tragic coincidence. They will say that she is in no way responsible for such a terrorist act as the Tucson public murders, especially since the gunman does not appear to be one of her “peace-seeking Muslims.”

In fact, the SarahPac went to work immediately to crank out its public relations mop job. It insisted, among other things, that the cross hairs on the target map came from the US Geological Survey.

Soon enough Ms. Palin herself will be fed lines to repeat to incriminate the liberal lame stream media, you watch. The public relations kids working for the media millionaires have been busy little people keeping the public eye sore. You can bet that the Arizona PR people are plenty busy, too.

Misery loves company and, unfortunately, tragedies build audience share.

Ratings will go up as those rich bloviators of hate -- Palin and her contemporaries Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh -- become beneficiaries of the Tucson tragedy. Thoughtful people who find them distasteful will just dial them out. Their followers, however, will wrap themselves in the flag and the 1st Amendment and try to blame the liberals for the Tucson murders, since such is the way of that trio’s audience.

Elected officials such as President Obama, Speaker Boehner, and others have shown considerable statesmanship for the circumstances. Senator Robert Kennedy showed remarkable statesmanship in the aftermath of Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968. Back then, hatred and hateful speech were quite common, but their mediums of expression were more up-close and personal. RFK was later murdered.

The Speaker has a job to do, part of which is the waste of time the new Republican majority is involved in with passing a bill to repeal a law along strict party lines. The bill, when passed, will go to the Senate and, should it pass the Democratic majority there, will go to the President who signed the law in the first place. It will take a two-thirds majority in the House and in the Senate to override his veto.

Statesmanship is admirable. It just doesn't last long. As to the continual AP assertions that Ms. Palin is a presidential contender, let us hope that idea is put to rest in respect for those who lost their rights to life, liberty, and happiness.

140 Characters, Huh

The point of this exercise is to see just what a 140 character limit looks like. That sentence has only 80 characters. This makes it to 140. [27 words]

It confirms my observation that Twitter is ideal for teaching people how to write good cut lines. Present active voice helps to pull it off. [25 words]

It is almost like saying that one has 29 words or less, so long as the words are short, to make a point. Using bigger words buggers it up. [29 words]

Just like everything else in journalism, the re-write is where it is at. There is nothing that cannot be improved, especially the new Tweet. [25 words]

Personally, I have trouble thinking that Tweeting is important to anyone without a broadband gadget and an extra $30 bucks a month to spend. [24 words]

Then again I probably said the same sort of thing when I was forced to use a word processor instead of an electronic typewriter by my boss. [27 words]

“Damn it Jim, I’m a writer, not some digital space scribbler!” Bones McCoy barked. “Besides that, the character count includes quote marks.” [22 words]

And the good doctor would have been correct, even if he used the word quote instead of quotation; but I am digressing from my original point. [26 words]

At some point the discussion about danger has already been discussed by others. Things like texting while hiking or driving get people killed. [23 words]

Perhaps a discussion about just plain flat being rude is in order; although to date I have not read anything about Tweeting while copulating. [24 words]

For those waiting for me to bring up Sarah Palin in the Tweeting context, wait no more. I just did, by shrinking political discourse process. [25 words]

Can you imagine how much money it would cost to get the Klondike Twitterer to endorse a broadband texting gadget? Think of an i-Palin device. [25 words]

It would doubtless have an American language debasing app and another one that makes up words. But I hope that’s all in some distant future. [25 words]

In the long run, writing a letter by hand, using a pen and ink, and developing personal handwriting may actually become in vogue and return. [25 words]

Hopefully I have made my point. The average word count in this exercise was 25 words. And my point, in case you missed it, was get over fads. [28 words]

It’s not like I wrote about the Hoola-Hoop. Think of a fountain pen as a hand held, fluid medium, friction driven, analogue texting devise. [forget the count]

# # #

originally published on Blogcritics as "140 Characters, Huh", December 30, 2010

Piss Poor and Other Expressions

Ever wonder where the term “piss poor” comes from? Here is your lesson.

Animal skins used to be tanned with urine. So families used to all pee in a pot and then once a day take it and sell it to the tannery. If you had to do this to survive you were "piss poor". But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot. They "didn't have a pot to piss in" and were the lowest of the low.

Welcome to the 16^th Century.

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June. However, since they were starting to smell, brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor: hence the custom of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all came the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it: hence, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water!"

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof: hence, "It's raining cats and dogs."

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed: hence a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection: hence, canopy beds.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt: hence, "dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh [straw] on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way: hence, a thresh hold.

What Else Was Cooking?

In those old days, people cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while: hence the rhyme -- "Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, "bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the fat."

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.

By the way, those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing death by lead poisoning. This happened most often with tomatoes. Thus for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They [the dead drunks] were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait to see if they would wake up: hence, the custom of holding a wake.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night -- the graveyard shift -- to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer.

There will not be a quiz.

________________________________________________________

This unsolicited piece was edited by Tommy Mack McEldowney without permission from an email that circulated without attribution. Seasons Greetings.

Political Post Hoc and Other Fallacies

The sedentary post-Obama election electorate has been aroused to a state of apathy. Consider the hasty generalization fallacy that Americans are frustrated and angry with government. Earlier this month Gallup reported, “Americans' frustration with Congress is directed at both sides of the aisle -- with job approval ratings of 33% for the Democrats in Congress and 32% for the Republicans in Congress.” Gallup also admits, “What is not clear, however, is why the ratings are so low.” It is not anger. It is boredom. Rhetorical fallacies make politics dull.

The post hoc fallacy gets its name from the Latin phrase "post hoc, ergo propter hoc." The translation is "after this, therefore because of this." Put another way, because B comes after A, A caused B. Try "President Obama was elected to fix the economy, and then the budget deficit went up. Obama is responsible for increasing the budget deficit."

My personal favorites are the ad hominem and tu quoque fallacies. What a combo. They sound naughty and translate "against the person" and "you, too!" Here is how cool Latin is. “The reason you cannot believe Obama is that we don’t really know who he is (ad hominem) or he is an elitist (tu quoque).

Rhetorical fallacy is not just a tea party Republican gambit. Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter and member of the Democratic National Committee said of Obama, “… frankly I don’t like him. I feel like he is an elitist. I feel like he has not given me reason to trust him.” Elitist derides elite as elitist. But I digress.

Back to fallacies in English, Republicans seem particularly fond of the false dichotomy fallacy. In essence they set up a situation and offer only two choices. They eliminate one choice so that only their preferred choice remains, never minding any other choice for consideration. “This country is in terrible shape. Either we defeat the Democrats and take over congress, or we continue to threaten our children’s future. Clearly no one wants to threaten our children’s future, so we must take over congress."

Robert Kennedy said, “One-fifth of the people are against everything all the time.” That could describe the tea party, if I used the RFK quote to base my case that midterm election rhetoric is rife with fallacies. Actually, I just did and I used the appeal to authority fallacy for that feat.

# # #

originally published at Blogcritics.org as "Political Post Hoc and Other Fallacies"

Opinion Polls Don’t Vote

I have calculated that individual public opinion occupies a space of 334,540,800 cubic inches: 1 mile wide times I mile long times 1 inch deep. Our problem is that the over reporting of polling data is too much with us. The statistical size of the undecided vote suggests that there is no huge shift in public opinion. The much touted anger and rage being recited to us every minute, should we listen, is exaggerated on purpose and exacerbated by advertising based visual media. The reason is the contrary of what is being reported -- the midterm races are not that close. However, if they appear to be close, then the more beer, cars and pills to treat erectile dysfunction can be sold.

Money is flowing into media to go after the undecided vote to be sure. A flood of money will be spent on negative advertizing. But I question just how undecided voters really are. Depending upon which group of pundits one hears or which newspaper opinion page one reads, the rhetoric tends to fall along For-Obama or Against-Obama lines. Yet neither of those arguments convinces anybody of anything.

Washington Post columnist David Broder notes, “The history of midterm elections shows regular gains for the opposition party, and so far all the polls look upbeat for the GOP.” However, the flaw in the polling argument is that of voters not aligned to either political party. They are not undecided. They are nondecided. If they vote, it will probably be across a previous party affiliation they had, grudgingly or not. As a result the survey numbers are rendered ambiguous -- a best guess.

Furthermore, voter turnout is low in midterm elections. FairVote.org says, “Turnout in midterm elections is far lower, peaking at 48.7% in 1966 and falling as low as 39.0% in 1978,1986, and 1998 remaining below 50% in midterm elections.” What that suggests is that so long as the election rules are consistent, “the same electorate can result in 60% turnout in one election and 2% in another depending on what is on the ballot and whether the election has essentially already been decided.”

“It ain’t over until it’s over.” Yogi Berra also said, “Baseball is 90% mental -- the other half is physical." So it goes with polling. The non-closeness of the elections, I contend, accounts for the weakness of the Republican candidates from amateurs such as Rand Paul, Meg Whitman, and Carly Fiorina to political hacks like Jan Brewer and Sharron Angle.

In California for example, the Fiorina senate campaign is reported to be statistically close to that of 3-term incumbent Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer. If elected, Fiorina will have to work with incumbent Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein. If not elected, as a former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, she will still be a former CEO either looking for a new big-corporation gig or living off of her new celebrity, like Sarah Palin who endorsed her. If nothing else, Palin has proved that celebrity pays better than public service.

Once non-incumbents are elected, they become junior members of a governing elite and are obliged go to knife-and-fork school to be trained in their new positions. They have no influence. They do as instructed if they want to return. They are obliged to work for their constituency by making deals, especially with other legislators of their state and of other states.

Because of my Irish heritage, I am anti-incumbent by nature. I am for term limits on congress. However, I cannot support candidates who have never shown any interest or participation in public service. By the way, one never hears the tea party Republican candidates speak about public service. To them the very concept is foreign, probably even socialist.

Theodore Roosevelt said, “A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.” The deficit is not a real issue for the mid-term elections, which are state elections. The deficit, part of the economy, is an issue of federal elections. Employment, two wars and immigration are “real issues,” as they were in TR’s time.

With an alarming dearth of policy, the present GOP is content with merely opposing everything and anything that the President does or supports. The argument goes like this: it took the GOP seven years to destroy the US economy and to create the deficit out of a surplus. The Democrats have not fixed it in the first 19 months of the Obama presidency. It is kind of like saying “We screwed it up. Only we can unscrew it.”

The War in Afghanistan has not ended. The War in Iraq is slow going. They are both products of the Bush Administration and each is astronomically costly in terms of the 3-Ms – the men, the material and the money. And somehow it is all Obama’s fault. He should have wrapped those two wars up by last Christmas. He is, after all, the Commander-in-Chief.

Immigration to a land of immigrants is the purview of the Federal government. It was a major Ku Klux Klan issue after WWI, although the Klan had little interest in Latinos except for their tendency to be Catholic -- like being a Communist or a homosexual or, say, a Muslim. Yet, somehow the Obama administration has failed to protect the Arizona border, as its tea party governor has said.

For the record, the court found Arizona Law SB 1070 to be unconstitutional [that pesky 14th Amendment, again]. Arizona legislators passed it four times when Janet Napolitano was governor and each time Napolitano vetoed it. She became the head of Homeland Security and the governorship went to Jan "headless corpses" Brewer who signed it. Unconstitutional is unconstitutional no matter what state or by who’s signature.

We tend to believe things that support our opinions and disbelieve the things that do not. With such human nature in mind, it is easy to understand the popularity of public opinion polls. The data that polls generate is enormous and critical to estimating what a well defined target audience is going to favor or reject. Survey data is the life blood of marketing and fund-raising.

It is important to remember that the public can change its mind on any issue and it does. Consider off-shore drilling. The Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico seems to have changed the opinion of Californians by a 16% swing, from a small majority that favored it to 59% who oppose drilling off the California coast. We know this because it is what the survey said.

No one surveyed me. “Undecided” is not a choice I would make anyway. “Prefer not to say” maybe, but no one asked me. And well they should not have asked me. I do not poll well. Most likely the reason is because I did not go to a mall, or did not answer my phone, or did not click on an online pop-up box. Somehow, I eluded the surveyors. But you can bet I will vote.

# # #

Article first published as "Opinion Polls Don't Vote" on Blogcritics.org.