Candidate Mitt Romney
Photo Credit: CNN
Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney gave a speech about his faith today. Romney, a Mormon, indicates that if his faith hurts his candidacy, “so be it.” He spent time drawing comparisons between himself and John F. Kennedy – something that would probably have Kennedy turn in his grave. The title of this article is that Romney is a dangerous man.
He’s not dangerous because he’s a Mormon (this religion is as valid as any other religion) or because he is a Republican. He’s dangerous because he is a political creature who changes his position to garner support from the base of the party as it suits him. To get elected as Governor of Massachusetts, he was pro-choice. To get the Republican nomination, he flip-flopped and is now pro-life. He’s now using his faith as a means to rally the conservative religious minority in this country to rally to his side as the “moral and faithful” candidate. Pish tosh.
I wouldn’t comment on his faith except he brought it up, and brought it up publicly. I don’t know Mr. Romney, he may well be a good human being. But, I can say, his public faith is a faith of convenience and rings hollow. Candidates for the Presidency should focus on the core issues of the campaign, not their religion or faith. And the ridiculous quote that is being repeated, “Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.” is pure, 100%, grade-A, horse hockey. It is nothing less than a propaganda slogan.
Freedom requires judgment, intelligence, and emotional maturity. The #1 enemy of Freedom in the world today is religion. The two concepts are 180 degrees offset. Imagine if children had the vote, Romney would be up there talking about his faith in Santa Claus. It’s functionally the same discussion. I sincerely hope our country is collectively intelligent and self-aware enough to reject this type of naked pandering for what it is. Mixing government and religion is a disaster, you can see that from the last 7 years of so-called leadership. Let’s not repeat history.
And Mr. Romney, I didn’t know John Kennedy, but I can say sir, with some degree of certainty, that you are no John Kennedy. Get over yourself.
As mentioned previously, I’m working to bring some monetization to this blog. I don’t want to do it in such an intrusive way that it annoys people into not visiting, but I do want to harvest some benefit from the traffic that rolls through these parts on a monthly basis. To that end, I’ve started an experiment with Kontera, a contextual link advertising system. The way it works is that it “reads” what I’ve written and selects particular words/phrases that it finds interesting and highlights them as a link.
When a reader mouses over the link, a little window appears with more information about that word/phrase that might provide the reader with interesting information and may cause the reader to click the box to fetch that information. I don’t know how well it will work and I don’t know how annoying it will be, but it’s worth a try. If you have comments about this experiment, please feel free to share them in the comment field below. I am interested to understand what visitor’s experience is when reading content from this site.
Here’s what a representative Kontera pop-up look like:
Have you ever wondered why geothermal goes so incognito when the renewable electricity market is so visible? There could be a number of reasons, but we believe it has to do with accessibility to the public and ease of identifying resources.
Photo Credit The Pennine Way
When a lay-person sees the tree above, they can easily posit that wind contributed to the unique shape of the tree. And, since we know generally how trees grow, it’s easy to deduce that there is strong, consistent wind current present in that area. Thus, when people think about wind as a renewable resource, it’s accessible. There is no magic: wind exists and like a child’s pinwheel, it can cause things to move which is sufficient to make the connection.
Photo Credit The Safari Company
When a lay-person sees the photo above, they can reason that it is dry and that it’s likely that the sun shines there on a routine basis and rain/cloud cover aren’t the norm for the region. The connection between a strong sun presence and the potential for energy is very clear to humans, it’s accessible.
Photo Credit: UNR
Now contrast the image above with the tree and desert. What do you observe about the physical characteristics of this land? Does it look like this might be a place one could harness natural resources to generate renewable electricity? This photo happens to be from Nevada’s Dixie Valley, a known geothermal resource area. There is a functioning 60MW geothermal plant in close proximity. The only surface manifestations of the energy potential are hot springs. It’s much less accessible to a lay-person thinking about hot, fractured rocks with super-critical heated water trapped under a cap rock waiting to escape. Can you visualize it? Unless you’ve been around the industry or have a geology background, the chances are that it’s tough to comprehend.
The journal
Live Science took a page from VH1’s “Where are they now?” publishing an article on
“Whatever happened to Geothermal?” It’s an interesting article and covers many of the issues. Given that geothermal is the only baseload renewable power source (yes gravity hydro is close, but until droughts are solved, it’s not quite baseload) it seems inevitable that geothermal will be “rediscovered” as an energy source.
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Would it surprise you to know that the population of the US Penal system has increased 16 times faster than the population at large? Here are figures from the US Department of Justice that show the trends over the past 25 years (1980-2005):
Population of Corrections Inmates Source: US DOJ
Since 1980, the population of people supervised by the Department of Justice has increased from 3.8x from 1.8M to just over 7M in 2005. When we simply look at incarceration (jail + prison) the population has increased 4.4x from 503,586 inmates to 2,193,798 inmates in 2005. The 1980 Census shows the population total of 227M and US Census estimates for 2005 population shows a net increase of 0.27x to 288M.
This prompts me to ask a few questions:
- Have the number of criminals increased that substantially? If so, why?
- Was law enforcement simply clueless before 1980 allowing a large segment of the criminal population to roam free post criminal activity?
- Has something changed in the way laws are enforced? And are there new laws on the books?
- At what point did we decide to become a nation of prisons?
- What impact has the privatization of prisons had on the prison population growth rate?
All interesting questions, I don’t have answers to them. I have theories about a couple of them however.
Another interesting dimension to this issue is the makeup of the prison population at large. Reuters reports that in the US, Blacks are 10 times more likely to be incarcerated for drug offenses as whites. From the article:
Black Americans are 10 times more likely to be imprisoned for illegal drug offenses than whites, even though both groups use and sell drugs at the same rate, according to a study released on Tuesday.
….
The reasons for the disparity include federal mandatory minimum jail terms for drug crimes, which he said hit blacks harder.
For instance, the mandatory federal sentence is the same for possession of 5 grams (0.2 ounces) of crack, more associated with blacks, as 500 grams (18 ounces) of cocaine, which is more often used by whites.
Read more…
HT: Rondam’s Ramblings
What to conclude from all this? Well, I’m pretty sure that no one person has “the answer”, but I believe that the escalation in the “war on drugs” coupled with federal mandatory drug sentences enabled by a culture of fear and at least nascent racism fuels this trend. The most reasonable way to derail the trend, in my opinion, is to lift modern prohibition and regulate the substances in question. In fact, prohibition actually causes more crime than it prevents. We don’t see anyone being gunned down on the streets these days to control the alcohol trade do we? The reality is, we may have put more people in jail, but the underlying behavior goes on unchanged.
No amount of will of the people, forced morality, and money will change basic human nature. After all, if one wants a cup of coffee, a cigarette, food slathered in transfats, weight loss through pills, and/or a glass of wine, one will find a way to have it. If we’re honest with ourselves, there’s zero difference between one mind/body altering substance or another – it’s arbitrary that some are illegal and others are legal and regulated. The one pragmatic and meaningful step we can take is to end modern prohibition and regulate the substances. Then law enforcement’s efforts can be channeled toward violent crime activity.
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STOP – This data has been updated for the entire season in this entry. Enjoy.
For prior CSRs, check the links at the bottom of this entry. This is the final CSR update until after bowl play is complete. Here are the results as of games completed Saturday, December 1, 2007:
Comments on each conference follow, in alphabetical order:
- ACC – No change from last week.
- Big East – No change from last week.
- Big 10 – No change from last week.
- Big 12 – No change from last week.
- Pac 10 – Washington lost to Hawaii pushing overall and no-patsy win rates down.
- SEC – No change from last week.
A little different this week, we’ve divided the conferences into Senior and Junior Leagues, effectively two clumps whatever you want to call them.
- SEC – Best overall OOC win rate, 2 BCS teams, and 9 bowl teams.
- Big 10 – Best big-boy win rate, 2 BCS teams, and 7 bowl teams.
- Pac 10 – Over .500 big-boy win rate, 1 BCS team, and 6 bowl teams.
- Big 12 – Strong overall OOC win rate, 2 BCS teams, and 8 bowl teams.
- ACC – .500 big-boy win rate, 1 BCS team, and 8 bowl teams.
- Big East – Strong overall OOC win rate, 1 BCS team, and 5 bowl teams.
- Notre Dame – Season complete – gunning for mythical recruiting #1 class.
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Come back in mid-January for a post-bowl update of the Conference Strength Report. Prior reports are available below:
