No Need to Think Anymore

It used to be that with few exceptions the real ideologues in economics were on the left. Those days are long gone. There are almost no hard-core communists anymore, except maybe in Cuba. Instead, all the "it doesn't matter what's factual, I know the Truth" commissars are on the right.

Here's a helpful little hint as you go down the road of life — do not pay attention to Austrian economists. Believe me, you'll be better off. If your economist isn't British and gay, there's no need to listen.
In America, the Republican party has abandoned all reason and just become ranting and raving. This happened sometime around the election of Bill Clinton. There used to be a half-dozen reasonable Republicans, but they all jumped ship onto the new, conservative, Democratic party in the US.
The Democratic party contains anyone who's actually in favor of a balanced budget (and actually means it, rather than using it as a talking point and then spending lavishly and crazily when given the first opportunity.)

Larnin

So. Education.
You can't talk about teaching without instantly being subjected to a political firestorm.
Which is disappointing because I want to know about the science of pedagogy. As it turns out, good luck with Google on that search.
From what I can tell, nobody really knows. They know some things but...
1. Well first of all, nobody can really agree on what needs to be learnt in public education in the US. And
2. As it turns out public education is really freakin' expensive. We spend a lot of money on it. And almost all that money comes from local (rather than Federal or income) taxes.
But all I want to know is how do I teach somebody something.
3. Different people learn different ways. It's probably important for you to learn how you learn stuff. And it may be that an individual person learns different stuff in different ways. Like they might do better learning history from doing their own reading but better at math in a classroom. Or, you know, vice-versa.
Now here's a thing which I kinda wonder about. The military. They teach a lot of people a lot of stuff. They train people in all kinds of things. Heck, they have colleges and universities.
And, oddly, they're somewhat immune from the political whims of education fads.

And does it involve cats?

So my question is: what do they do?

Prive... Prilev... Priv...

I'm one of those middle-aged, middle-class, straight, white, men who objects to the term "White Privilege".
One reason is because I can't spell the word "privilege" worth a damn.

The other is because the bulk of the things we talk about when we're talking about the "privileges" are not privileges, they're rights. But elevating the fact that I'm very unlikely to be shot by cops when I'm walking down the street to a "privilege" I think we end up denying the fact that a right denied does not create a privilege.
Which, to me, sets us back a whole step.
John Scalzi has, once again, put better thinking into something. He suggests that being a straight white male is like playing a video game at the lowest difficulty setting.
To which I say "exactly". That doesn't mean the game isn't difficult. It doesn't mean that other people, on higher settings, can't play. But there are lots of things much easier to play because of being an American white guy.

Elective Influence

You know, even as a former union organizer, I've been opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act because it allows a union to bully workers into signing cards and not a secret ballot in order to make the union their bargaining agent.

Because the way I see it, why not just make elections happen faster?

Well, presumably they are now. Faster. Which means that the entire system is more fair. I mean, that seems to be the case on the face of it.

I'm a big fan of the secret ballot. It works both ways -- the employer can't force you to vote one way or the other and the union can't either. In fact, in some cases there's more than one union trying to organize a workplace.

War with Russia

The Republicans are really hot to go to war with Russia. I have no idea what makes them so excited about getting into a war with Russia, but they are.
Of course, it's difficult to manufacture an excuse to go to war with Russia. Russia clearly doesn't care very much about any countries which it doesn't share a border with. But the Republicans are very giddy about the prospect of either a war with Russia directly or a proxy war with Iran.
Mitt Romney thinks that Russia is America's "Number one geopolitical foe." It's the sort of thing which makes you think "Wait, what?"
How is Russia a geopolitical foe of the United States at all?
But remember, the second Bush Administration ran a proxy war with Russia though the state of Georgia.
I don't see that there's any reason they wouldn't do that again if they had the chance. Setting up missiles in Poland, attacking Iranian installations, whatever the Republicans can get away with they will. They are hot to go to war with Russia. And that could be disastrous in a way we haven't seen on earth in over 50 years.

Norabbit.

It almost doesn't matter what else Barack Obama does, if he doesn't actively pursue a war with Russia we'll be better off under an Obama administration than a Romney one.

The Times

Sometimes someone makes a comment on the Internet which is just so dead-on that you can't believe how out-of-it big papers like the New York Times are.

In regards to the Times' hand-wringing about being perceived as "skewing left", Deborah Weiss says:

Basked a bit in the warm glow? A strong current of skepticism holds that the paper skews left? Oh, please. The paper's failure to endorse McCain-Palin in 2008 wasn't evidence of a leftward skew, it was merely evidence of a slight skew toward sanity, from which the Times seems to have recovered very nicely.

Debbie Hayford gets a +1 from the Internet today.

Chickenhawks

Draft-dodger Ted Nugent wants to kill the President.
—
I find the complete disconnect between reality and what the NRA thinks to be somewhat fascinating. They desperately believe that, somehow, Obama is going to take their guns away. The Orlando Sentinel asks if Nugent embarrassed the NRA. But obviously the NRA can't be embarrassed.

In fact, Obama not doing anything is part of the conspiracy to take away our guns. Get it? Right. Exactly.
The NRA likes to think of itself as a one-issue organization. And of course it isn't. But I suspect that the nuttiness will work against them in the general election because to the undecideds and the independents, they just look like a bunch of nut-jobs.
So if you were a pro-gun-rights and pro-Obama person, what organization could you possibly join?