I just realized right now that Media Bias is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I'm looking at the polls and I see that Obama has a huge lead in CBS/NYT polls. These are the media outlets that are often denounced as having a liberal bias. The result of that is that conservatives avoid those media outlets, and liberals start flocking to them. Thus, when CBS and the New York Times polls their consumers, they find that a majority of them are liberal and the poll results skew left. As a result of that, these media institutions assume that the American public is more liberal than it really is, and they then operate under liberal assumptions, and thus become the very liberal media that they were accused of being.
Any thoughts?
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Tuesday's Notre Dame/SMC Observer opinion page included a column by Professor Charles Rice from the Notre Dame Law school addressed abortion, one of the single most important campaign issues at Notre Dame, and one that the rest of the country doesn't really care about.
If you don't feel like reading it yourself, here's the general jist of it:
The Pope has declared that "A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate's permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia." However "when a Catholic does not share a candidate's stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons."
Charles Rice takes this one step further to declare that Catholics cannot vote for Barack Obama, since there are no other "proportionate reasons" for a Catholic to vote for Obama that could make up for the 1.3 million lives lost annually from abortion. "Opposition to the current wars cannot justify a vote for Obama," according to Rice, and a Catholic voter cannot "justify that vote because he thinks Obama's position is superior on economic or social issues"
This is an argument that I hear a lot on a Catholic college campus, and I think right now it's finally time to take a stand against it. I've heard this argument way too many times and gone silent on it.
This argument assumes that banning abortions is the only way to decrease the occurrence of abortions and that the issues of poverty, health care, and welfare are irrelevant. This argument also assumes that the President is actually going to be capable of filling the Supreme Court with pro-life activists, that they will overturn Roe v. Wade, and that either the U.S. Congress or every state legislature in the country will subsequently ban all abortions.
This argument is patently ridiculous but, in the pursuit of fairness, I'll accept it's unfounded assumptions before I tear it apart anyway.
I'll even take these assumptions one step further and suggest that abortions will no longer happen if they are illegal
I would argue that even if this was all true, which it isn't, that I could still find enough proportionate reasons to vote for Obama.
That means that I want to look at the other policy issues of the candidates and see which candidate will cause the most death. The winner should get the official Catholic stamp of approval.
Let's start with abortion, and I'll include the ridiculous assumptions that I promised I would. Let's call it a handicap.
This would mean that 1.3 million people more people will die during an Obama presidency that would not die during a McCain presidency. So let's add it to the score
assuming Obama and McCain will serve 8 years as president (unlikely in McCain's case, but whatever) that adds up to 10.4 million. That's a lot of babies to save, but I'm going to assume that McCain will save all of them as president.
Lives saved by Obama: 0
Lives saved by McCain: 10,400,000
ok, we're done with abortion. Let's move on to the health care
The National Coalition on Health Care found that Obama's plan would help insure 47% of the nation's uninsured, while McCain's plan would insure only 5% of those people.
Reuters found that 109.7 out of every 100,000 Americans die each year from the lack of adequate health care. With a population of over 301,139,947 , that means that well 330,350 American deaths are the result of inadequate health care. This is primarily because of the 47 million Americans without any health insurance
If Obama's plan provided insurance for 47% of these people, we can see 155,264 lives saved per year, simply by providing them with quality health care. John McCain's plan, by insuring only an additional 5% of these people, would only save 16,517 lives every year. That's a difference of 138,747
and if we're going to compare this with abortion, we'll also have to assume this statistic over 8 years. That's a +1,242,112 for Obama and a +132,136 for McCain
Lives saved by Obama: 0+1,242,112=1,242,112
Lives saved by McCain: 10,400,000+132,136=10,532,136
but wait! there's more!
What about the environment?
Obama and McCain want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and have set strict long-term goals for a cap-and-trade system.
Obama plans to reduce emissions 80% by 2050
McCain plans to reduce emissions 66% by 2050
that's a 14% gap in goals. But what does that mean? The campaign websites were not specific about shorter term goals, but I was able to put together a simplistic chart that would roughly place the goals of both campaigns over the 2012-2050 period
Thanks Microsoft Paint!
So how do emissions relate to saving lives?
A Cornell study finds that 3 million people die every year from these emissions.
Since both their plans set forth standards for far into the future, I'm going to assume in this case that they actually plan on keeping their standards permanent. If that's the case, their policies will extend beyond their presence in office. Since both their plans set aside standards for 2050, I'm just going to calculate the total lives that they can save between their inauguration and 2050 with their reduced admissions standards. I can do that, by changing the indirect variable (y-axis) on my chart. Right now that variable represents emissions standards based on percentage of modern emissions. But since we know that 3 million die every year from emissions, we can now substitute emissions with deaths from emissions.
Here's the new chart.
Note that the area under the curves are total deaths avoided over that 40+ year period. Using basic calculus I was able to estimate that John McCain's plan will result in avoiding 40.65 million unnecessary deaths from pollution over that time period. That's really good. But Obama's plan would save 45.6 million people, for an overall difference of almost 5 million people.
Lives saved by Obama: 0+1,242,112+45,600,000=46,842,112
Lives saved by McCain: 10,400,000+132,136+40,650,000=51,182,136
It's starting to get a little close. I think we can clinch it if we talk about foreign policy.
Let's start with Iraq.
Obama's plan in Iraq is to have our troops out of there by 16 months. John McCain has refused to set a date for withdrawal, but he has publicly stated that "we will win" in Iraq (withdraw) by 2013 (when he's no longer president).
So Obama will have us out of Iraq by the summer of 2010, and McCain will keep us there through his two terms in office. Two terms in the Oval Office is a total of 96 months. John McCain will keep US troops in Iraq for all 96 of them. Obama will keep our troops for the first 16 months, and the remaining 80 months we won't be in Iraq anymore.
icasualties.org, an independent authoritative website has been tracking US military, coalition, Iraq security and Iraq civilian deaths since the onset of the war. Current trends have shown that monthly US casualties have been roughly 25 deaths every month, with roughly 400 Iraqi deaths per month with very few deaths from non-American coalition forces.
If this trend continues we can count on an average 425 deaths in Iraq every month.
Under Barack Obama's plan, 6800 more deaths would occur in Iraq as a result of US policies. That number is 40800 deaths under John McCain's plan. Therefore, Obama's plan would prevent the unnecessary loss of 34,000 lives in Iraq.
Lives saved by Obama: 0+1,242,112+45,600,000+34,000=46,876,112
Lives saved by McCain: 10,400,000+132,136+40,650,000+0=51,182,136
So we're starting to get a little bit closer. Now it's time for Obama to really break away
Iran
The Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS) has estimated the likely outcomes of a war with Iran; a scenario that would include the United States, Iran, Israel, and possibly Syria, Egypt and other states in the region, and would involve nuclear and other unconventional weapons. You can see the report yourself in HTML or PDF formats.
The war, could result in a massive death toll with deaths of anywhere between 200 and 800 thousand Israeli deaths and between 16 and 18 million Iranian deaths.
Yikes!
So how does this relate to the election?
Well, John McCain's foreign policy positions and public statements on the issue should help. He wants to sanction Iran, unilaterally if necessary, and he flat-out refuses to negotiate with them to get them to abandon their nuclear program. I would go so far as to suggest that not only would he not be able to avoid the war, but that he would go so far as to encourage it.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama seems to understand the importance of diplomacy that as recently as a few days ago have proven successful in disarming rogue nations.
So John McCain looks like he wants to start a war that could result in anywhere between 16.2 million and 18.8 million deaths. An Obama presidency can prevent those deaths.
In fairness I'll take the conservative estimate of 16.2 million
Lives saved by Obama: 0+1,242,112+45,600,000+34,000+16,200,000=63,076,112
Lives saved by McCain: 10,400,000+132,136+40,650,000+0+0=51,182,136
By my calculations, a Barack Obama presidency would result in 11,893,976 fewer deaths than would occur under a John McCain presidency.
I think I found my proportionate reasons. I'm voting for Obama.
I was going through the Observer just now because I was going to use it as a basis for a new post about abortion, but then this came up, and I couldn't resist posting it
FEAR NOT, OBAMANITES
If you are worried about a possible loss for Obama, consider the
6-state firewall he has right now. Based off the Kerry States + the new automatics (IA, NM), Obama only has to win one of these states, meaning McCain must win them all:
- Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, Florida, Nevada, and North Carolina
Since
Colorado looks to be the safest bet of the firewall states, that is why I think it is the ultimate deciding state. In a landslide, there are multiple deciding states. If the other 5 states of the firewall give in, though, Colorado will likely be the last battle, meaning it will decide the election (convention coincidence?). Of course the polls could move a bit in the next three weeks. We'll just have to see...
(Props and Credit to Mark Nickolas of http://www.politicalbase.com)
I like to think of President Bush as the dumb kid in class who doesn't do his homework and has been struggling in class from day one. Now it's finals week for the Bush Administration and it looks like he just might pull off a passing grade.
Just this week, North Korea agreed to halt its nuclear weapons program and allow international inspectors into its nuclear plants. And do you know what North Korea got in return? It got removed from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism.
I know. I couldn't believe it either. North Korea traded a substantive advantage for a normative change in identity.
Even crazier though is the idea that the Bush administration made the right decision. This revelation has caused to me to question my very beliefs about the world. Black is now white, up is down, right is wrong, and tax cuts in the middle of a war are part of a sound fiscal policy.
I realize that my initial opposition to the idea of a comprehensive list of State Sponsors of Terror, and an "Axis of Evil", was naive. I saw such labeling of states as petty political posturing with potential negative implications. For instance, what would be the purpose of publicly labeling a Shiite country like Iran as a state sponsor of terror and a member of an Axis of Evil in the middle of a war against the neighboring Sunni Taliban? Surely we excluded a potential ally in the War on Terror and stoked the flames of conflict with a powerful country in the region for no reason!
But that was the old me. I now realize that all the offensive sloganeering that emanated from the Bush administration after 9/11 was not based at all on a moralistic (stupid) view of the world. It turns out the Administration is actually just as cynical as I am. The labeling of states as state sponsors of terror was a cold political calculation with long term benefits in sight. The power to remove a state from the list is a potential bargaining chip. All it takes is for the leadership in that state to actually buy into the idea that the list means something. And guess what? North Korea bought it. And now they're going to do what we want. Woohoo!
It really should have been obvious that the formation of this list was a cold political move from the start, just by looking at the states on the list.
Currently Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria are on the list. Former entries on the list include Iraq (lol), Lybia, South Yemen, and now North Korea.
Curiously absent are allies of ours that continue to sponsor terrorism, like Pakistan.
I'm willing to bet that Iran is going to be next on the list. The president has already started reestablishing diplomatic relations with them over the summer. The next step will be calling on them to abandon their nuclear weapons program.
Ahh, diplomacy.
So the Bush administration finally did something right with regard to foreign policy. Maybe there is something to be said about on-the-job training. Getting rid of hacks like Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz probably didn't hurt either.
Cheers, Mr. Bush
When Libertarian Presidential candidate Bob Barr came to visit Notre Dame last week he didn't have many positive things to say about the state of political discourse in America as a whole. In his speech, Barr cited Sarah Palin's refusal to answer questions from the moderator or debate opponent Joe Biden as an example of how far modern political debates have moved away from actual debate formats. She would have been “laughed off the stage” at a collegiate debate, according to Barr.
Debates at the presidential level are not debates in the traditional sense. The candidates spend little of their allotted time to answer questions from the moderator if they answer the questions at all. What they would prefer to do is use their time in the spotlight to get a message across to viewers about something they want to talk. They would prefer to either drive home a popular talking point that they want the viewers to remember or personally attack their opponents than spend time answering a question they don't want to answer and the media allows and sometimes encourages them to do so.
Last night's “town hall” debate between Barack Obama and John McCain was a perfect example of how candidates avoid answering questions in debates. I'm obviously biased, but even I would admit that I wasn't particularly impressed by either candidates' question dodging.
This got my creative juices flowing. I've seen multiple approaches as to how debates can be scored, but so far I haven't seen anyone use the one I'm about to propose. I call it, the “condensed debate”. The debate went on for an hour and a half. I've chosen to eliminate every part of the candidates' responses that do not answer the questions directly asked of them. Since most of the responses were a mishmash of talking points, bad jokes, stutters and personal attacks, the condensed debate should probably be about five minutes long. As far as scoring goes, candidates lose points each time they don't answer a question at all.
This is a work in progress and is a long time coming. I'm going to start with the second presidential campaign, and then go back to the first presidential debate and the VP debate. Hopefully I'll have the entire process streamlined by tomorrow so that I can be ready to work on the last debate. This is an ambitious project. Cross your fingers and wish me luck!
