Why Civil Debate is all but impossible

Some people are picking up on stuff like this:

With the public’s trust in his handling of health care tanking (50%-44% of Americans disapprove), the White House has launched a new phase of its strategy designed to pass Obamacare: all Obama, all the time. As part of that effort, Obama hosted a conference call with leftist bloggers urging them to pressure Congress to pass his health plan as soon as possible.

During the call, a blogger from Maine said he kept running into an Investors Business Daily article that claimed Section 102 of the House health legislation would outlaw private insurance. He asked: “Is this true? Will people be able to keep their insurance and will insurers be able to write new policies even though H.R. 3200 is passed?” President Obama replied: “You know, I have to say that I am not familiar with the provision you are talking about.” (quote begins at 17:10)

Oh noes! President Obama is “not familiar” with that provision!

Why? BECAUSE IT ISN’T THERE.

During the July 20 edition of his Fox News program, Sean Hannity falsely claimed that “if we look at the provisions of the bill, it’s pretty astounding. For example, if you’re not — if you don’t have private insurance the year that this bill is passed, you can’t get that later on from your employer.” In fact, section 311 of the tri-committee House health care reform bill allows employers to meet coverage requirements by offering employees “coverage under a qualified health benefits plan (or under a current employment-based health plan (within the meaning of section 102(b))) in accordance with section 312.”

From section 311 of the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009:

SEC. 311. HEALTH COVERAGE PARTICIPATION REQUIREMENTS.

An employer meets the requirements of this section if such employer does all of the following:

(1) OFFER OF COVERAGE. — The employer offers each employee individual and family coverage under a qualified health benefits plan (or under a current employment-based health plan (within the meaning of section 102(b))) in accordance with section 312.

(2) CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS COVERAGE. — If an employee accepts such offer of coverage, the employer makes timely contributions towards such coverage in accordance with section 312.

(3) CONTRIBUTION IN LIEU OF COVERAGE. — Beginning with Y2, if an employee declines such offer but otherwise obtains coverage in an Exchange-participating health benefits plan (other than by reason of being covered by family coverage as a spouse or dependent of the primary insured), the employer shall make a timely contribution to the Health Insurance Exchange with respect to each such employee in accordance with section 313.

Section 312 states that an employer “offers the coverage described in section 311(1) either through an Exchange-participating health benefits plan or other than through such a plan.” It also provides that the employer must contribute a certain portion of the costs of the plan.

From section 312:

SEC. 312. EMPLOYER RESPONSIBILITY TO CONTRIBUTE TOWARDS EMPLOYEE AND DEPENDENT COVERAGE.

(a) IN GENERAL. — An employer meets the requirements of this section with respect to an employee if the following requirements are met:

(1) OFFERING OF COVERAGE. — The employer offers the coverage described in section 311(1) either through an Exchange-participating health benefits plan or other than through such a plan.

(2) EMPLOYER REQUIRED CONTRIBUTION. — The employer timely pays to the issuer of such coverage an amount not less than the employer required contribution specified in subsection (b) for such coverage.

(3) PROVISION OF INFORMATION. — The employer provides the Health Choices Commissioner, the Secretary of Labor, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the Secretary of the Treasury, as applicable, with such information as the Commissioner may require to ascertain compliance with the requirements of this section.

(4) AUTOENROLLMENT OF EMPLOYEES. — The employer provides for autoenrollment of the employee in accordance with subsection (c).

The bill defines a “qualified health benefits plan” as “a health benefits plan that meets the requirements for such a plan under title I and includes the public health insurance option.” Title I of the bill does not prohibit employers from enrolling employees in private plans.

As Media Matters for America has noted, Hannity previously cited an Investor’s Business Daily editorial citing section 102 of Title I to falsely claim that “if you don’t have your insurance the year this legislation is implemented, you can’t have a private insurance company.” In fact, that provision establishes the conditions under which existing private plans would be exempted from the requirement that they participate in the Health Insurance Exchange. Individual health insurance plans that do not meet the “grandfather” conditions would still be available for purchase, but only through the Exchange and subject to those regulations.

From the July 20 edition of Fox News’ Hannity:

HANNITY: Now he said — he did say tonight, I think it was on the Jim Lehrer show –

DOUG SCHOEN (Democratic pollster): Jim Lehrer, yeah.

HANNITY: OK, he did say tonight that he’s willing to push off or he believes it’s inevitable that this –

SCHOEN: Let it bleed a little, I think [inaudible].

HANNITY: — artificial deadline — but the more people become aware of what’s in this thing, if we look at the provisions of the bill, it’s pretty astounding. For example, if you’re not — if you don’t have private insurance the year that this bill is passed, you can’t get that later on from your employer.

BETSY HART (Chicago Sun-Times columnist): Yeah, Sean, you know, I mean, if anybody should want a universal health care coverage plan, it’s me.

Basically, what you have are desperate, gullible people being lead about by liars.

What Happens When Everyone Has Access

I love the internet; there is just so much information available at one’s fingertips.

But there is a price: if the data is available for the intellectually competent, it is also available for the dummies, woos, crack pots and morons who haven’t a clue as to how to properly use or interpret it:

Many scientific organizations, such as the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, now put data (some near real-time) on their Web sites. The information ranges from raw numbers from weather stations to computed values of, for instance, monthly global temperature anomalies, which represent temperature deviations from a historical average. Typically researchers make corrections and adjustments as they check equipment and replicate experiments.

In today’s politically charged environment, though, these routine corrections have become ammunition in the warming war. For example, last November Internet users found that raw data erroneously replicated from Russian weather stations contributed to a suspiciously high temperature anomaly that Goddard published. Two years ago the blog Climate Audit, run by amateur scientists and self-described “science auditor” Steve McIntyre, found that an error in a computer algorithm had ranked 1998 as the warmest U.S. year, instead of the correct 1934. (The change did not significantly affect global values: 1998 was still the earth’s warmest year as ranked by satellites, although Goddard has 2005 as slightly warmer.)

But perhaps the mistake that got the most publicity for skeptics happened in February as an automated system of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) published information on the extent of Arctic sea ice. It contained a small but strange hitch indicating that enough ice to cover California was suddenly gone. Internet readers pounced, sending e-mails to the center and also to skeptical bloggers such as meteorologist Anthony Watts. His blog, Watt’s Up with That?, is read daily by about 21,000 people around the world (according to Quantcast, which compiles Web site statistics), and Watts’s post about the error mushroomed across the Web. Within hours the NSIDC withdrew the data, ultimately finding that the glitch resulted from a faulty sensor on a satellite. The NSIDC scientists admitted the mistake, corrected the problem using a different sensor and audited all past data.

But the public-relations damage was done. Skeptical bloggers and their readers called the NSIDC’s competence into question and accused it of tweaking data. The NSIDC sent out a press release pointing out that real-time data are always less reliable than thoroughly reviewed archived data.

Word of the otherwise prosaic issue spread via news reports, and the NSIDC took its lumps. “We were too naive,” admits Walt Meier, a researcher at the center. “We weren’t prepared for how closely people were watching.” The science community knows that such adjustments happen all the time, he says, but “the undermining of public confidence in our data comes from ignorance of use.” But he still believes that open-source data are “ultimately a great thing.”

If there were any justice, these crackpots, imbeciles and woos would be denied all benefits that derive from properly done science (e. g., computers, medicines, vaccines, etc.) but that isn’t going to happen.

Republicans: their own words (21 July 09)

Just a question: how are we supposed to have civil discourse when we have incredibly stupid, ignorant people who are sold on an unfalsifiable idea?

This is why I limit who I speak to.

The very idea that they actually lost the election (fair and square) is lost on these imbeciles.

Photos From FANS 24 2009

21 July 09 (am)

Workout notes 3.5 mile walk with Olivia yesterday, and then I lead a yoga class (as a substitute).

Today: 3.75 mile walk to yoga, yoga with Ms. Vickie, then 4.25 mile walk back. My left “behind the knee” area was slightly whiny, but felt better when I was warmed up enough to pick up the pace a bit.

Topics The Sun is undergoing a “lower than normal” sunspot cycle:

Indeed, last year marked the blankest year of the Sun in the last half-century — 266 days with not a single sunspot visible from Earth. Then, in the first four months of 2009, the Sun became even more blank, the pace of sunspots slowing more.

“It’s been as dead as a doornail,” David Hathaway, a solar physicist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., said a couple of months ago.

The Sun perked up in June and July, with a sizeable clump of 20 sunspots earlier this month.

Now it is blank again, consistent with expectations that this solar cycle will be smaller and calmer, and the maximum of activity, expected to arrive in May 2013 will not be all that maximum.

For operators of satellites and power grids, that is good news. The same roiling magnetic fields that generate sunspot blotches also accelerate a devastating rain of particles that can overload and wreck electronic equipment in orbit or on Earth.

There are also effects on the weather:

The Sun, the Danish scientists say, influences how many cosmic rays impinge on the atmosphere and thus the number of clouds. When the Sun is frenetic, the solar wind of charged particles it spews out increases. That expands the cocoon of magnetic fields around the solar system, deflecting some of the cosmic rays.

But, according to the hypothesis, when the sunspots and solar winds die down, the magnetic cocoon contracts, more cosmic rays reach Earth, more clouds form, less sunlight reaches the ground, and temperatures cool.

“I think it’s an important effect,” Dr. Svensmark said, although he agrees that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that has certainly contributed to recent warming.

Dr. Svensmark and his colleagues found a correlation between the rate of incoming cosmic rays and the coverage of low-level clouds between 1984 and 2002. They have also found that cosmic ray levels, reflected in concentrations of various isotopes, correlate well with climate extending back thousands of years.

But other scientists found no such pattern with higher clouds, and some other observations seem inconsistent with the hypothesis.

Terry Sloan, a cosmic ray expert at the University of Lancaster in England, said if the idea were true, one would expect the cloud-generation effect to be greatest in the polar regions where the Earth’s magnetic field tends to funnel cosmic rays.

“You’d expect clouds to be modulated in the same way,” Dr. Sloan said. “We can’t find any such behavior.”

Still, “I would think there could well be some effect,” he said, but he thought the effect was probably small. Dr. Sloan’s findings indicate that the cosmic rays could at most account for 20 percent of the warming of recent years.

Even without cosmic rays, however, a 0.1 percent change in the Sun’s energy output is enough to set off El Niño- and La Niña-like events that can influence weather around the world, according to new research led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

Climate modeling showed that over the largely cloud-free areas of the Pacific Ocean, the extra heating over several years warms the water, increasing evaporation. That intensifies the tropical storms and trade winds in the eastern Pacific, and the result is cooler-than-normal waters, as in a La Niña event, the scientists reported this month in the Journal of Climate.

In a year or two, the cool water pattern evolves into a pool of El Niño-like warm water, the scientists said.

Because there are crackpots who deny climate change out there I feel obligated to say this: the lead scientist of the above study says that he was just ferreting out the smaller, natural changes from the larger human-caused changes. (hat tip: 3-quarks daily)

Psychology
Here is a Scientific American paper on perfectionism:

* Perfectionists can become discouraged by failing to meet impossibly high standards, making them reluctant to take on new challenges or even complete agreed-upon tasks. The insistence on dotting all the i’s can also breed inefficiency, causing delays, work overload and even poor results.
* Perfectionism can encompass some positive qualities, including a drive to succeed, an inclination to plan and organize, and a focus on excellence. So-called healthy perfectionists embrace the trait’s sunnier side while minimizing its darker features.
* In recent years researchers have developed tools to parse and measure the beneficial, along with the detrimental, aspects of perfectionism. In addition, they are developing treatment programs that push perfectionistic tendencies in a more positive direction.

Here is what I found interesting:

Perfectionists may also adopt inefficient work habits that hurt their actual performance. They may labor slowly, agonizing over every detail, spending much more time on a project than it warrants—and often without much additional benefit. They may procrastinate, because projects that must be perfect often seem daunting [see “I’ll Do It Tomorrow,” by Trisha Gura; Scientific American Mind, December 2008/January 2009]. Robert Abatecola, 42, spent five years researching Victorian plastering techniques before he got around to repairing the cracked walls in his San Jose, Calif., home because he wanted to be sure to preserve the 1896 Queen Anne–style house’s historical authenticity.

No one is a perfectionist in every situation or area of life. Some people are persnickety about the neatness of their home, others about their work, still others about their physical appearance or about relationships—for example, wanting to pen the ideal personalized note inside dozens of holiday cards every year.

And this:

The winning formula for a perfectionist, psychologists say, is the ability to strive for excellence without being overly self-critical. Those who adopt this strategy, so-called healthy perfectionists, are relaxed and careful in their quest for success; they focus on their strengths and find great satisfaction in their achievements. Bowen, the lacrosse champ, may be one of these. So may 28-year-old Jennifer Perrone of Atlanta. In addition to her career as a wildlife biologist, Perrone sells Mary Kay cosmetics. She alphabetizes her file cabinets and labels her tool drawers; she finished planning her May 2009 wedding, literally writing the last check, the previous October. Perrone believes that she is highly effective. She does not push herself beyond what she knows she can do, and other than annoying her fiancé when she bugs him to take off his shoes in the house, she says, “It’s difficult to think of a time when it didn’t work to my benefit.”

In fact, research conducted over the past 15 years has associated positive perfectionism with greater achievement, such as higher grade point averages and better performance in triathlons. Positive-striving perfectionism leads to better health and mood, more sociability and higher levels of life satisfaction. When Bieling and his colleagues separated positive perfectionists from unhealthy ones in their 2003 midterm-exam study, they found that the positive perfectionists felt better prepared for the exam and got higher grades than either unhealthy perfectionists or nonperfectionists. Olympic athletes also turned out to be positive perfectionists when assessed by Frost’s test in a small survey published in 2002.

By the way, I am ANYTHING but a perfectionist; I need to become more of a perfectionist. (hat tip: 3 quarks daily)

Side note: Yes, I know lots of people who refer to themselves as “perfectionists” and yet I see scant evidence of it in them.

Social

The Wall Street Journal cites pay inequities (difference between CEO and worker pay) as a problem??? I nearly fainted when I read this.

Marine Corps: recruiting from group homes for the mentally ill?

This is going to be short, but should get the notice it needs and the corrections in a system that is broken, in a military breaking, in many ways, because of the failed policies of the previous administration and those beating the drums of war but unwilling to serve!

Joshua Fry Was Recruited Out of Group Home for Mentally Disabled

Autistic Marine Court Martialed and Given Bad Conduct Discharge

This had just started coming out yet this kid has been jailed apparently for slightly over a year. Not only was he recruited he went through boot, in the Marines, and was integrated into the Corps with No Objections, then did time as it was going through the military system, and was sentenced to more military prison time!

A Marine whose recruitment is under investigation because he is autistic was sentenced to four years in prison at his court martial Monday, but in a plea deal he will be released for time already served and receive a bad conduct discharge.

This now Marine suffers from Autism, and known condition. The recruitment should never have happened, but how was it nobody, from Command on Down, at a number of places, stopped this all from happening.

Ok, a bit of honesty: back in 1981, I was doing some temporary duty with a recruiting station (Navy) and yes, many were screened out due to low scores on a mental abilities exam. But the Army recruited these by the bushel and, remember, recruiters are often under enormous pressure to “make goal”. So these things happened even then, though there is evidence that standards have been lowered due to the strain on our armed forces.

Health Care

President Obama is taking his case for health care reform to the internet.

In a reflection of a legislative strategy that has left no stone unturned, President Barack Obama on Monday called on like-minded bloggers to help his administration keep the heat on lawmakers to pass health care reform.

“It is important just to keep the pressure on members of Congress because what happens is there is a default position of inertia here in Washington,” the president said during an invitation-only conference call. “And pushing against that, making sure that people feel that the desperation that ordinary families are feeling all across the country, every single day, when they are worrying about whether they can pay their premiums or not… People have to feel that in a visceral way. And you guys can help deliver that better than just about anybody.”

In a roughly 25-minute session with a handful of prominent progressive bloggers, the president also asked for help combating disinformation about his health care plan.

“I know the blogs are best at debunking myths that can slip through a lot of the traditional media outlets,” he said. “And that is why you are going to play such an important role in our success in the weeks to come.”

The call demonstrates just how heated the health care debate has become in recent weeks and how much ammunition the administration is willing to bring to the table. At various points in the call, the president offered a strikingly detailed synopsis of his political strategy and health care policy as a whole.

Racism: Far From Dead

Even Harvard professors aren’t safe:

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of the nation’s pre-eminent African-American scholars, was arrested Thursday afternoon at his home by Cambridge police investigating a possible break-in. The incident raised concerns among some Harvard faculty that Gates was a victim of racial profiling.

Police arrived at Gates’s Ware Street home near Harvard Square at 12:44 p.m. to question him. Gates, director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard, had trouble unlocking his door after it became jammed.

He was booked for disorderly conduct after “exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior,” according to a police report. Gates accused the investigating officer of being a racist and told him he had “no idea who he was messing with,” the report said.
Gates told the officer that he was being targeted because “I’m a black man in America.”

Harvard professors are now suspects for break ins?

Yes, this will get some play. But think about how many times this has happened to people whose public stature is less.

Yes, this happened in a “blue” state; racism isn’t exclusive to the south.