Fish in a barrel

Twitter is the perfect practice area for idiot hunting, but it still doesn't prove anything.

This week the feminist website Jezebel shared a collection of Twitter chatter of racially offensive remarks about President Barack Obama after the election results came in. Like all idiot hunting expeditions, this was an attempt to demonstrate something about our society, but it really only proved that there are stupid people on the Internet.

Earlier this year conservatives passed links back and forth that showed Twitter users in America calling for the death of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker after he won the recall election and the death of Mitt Romney for winning the first debate. Many of them said they intend to assassinate Walker or Romney.

So what have we learned from this, are conservatives racists and do liberals want to murder right-wing politicians after they lose an election? Some of them are guilty, but not the entire group. There is no attempt to defend these online messages because they are a childish reaction from the fringe.

Which group is more likely to post these sort of message, liberals or conservatives? We don't know that either.

People pass around these Twitter lists to prove a point, but they are merely a collection of anecdotes, not hard data, and they prove nothing more than the idiocy of some young people on the Internet.
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Malawi's failed local corn growing policies

Tyler Cowen recently posted this video detailing the flaws in Malawi's corn policies, which restrict the import and export of corn.



As of a result of locavore-style food production policies, we see extreme volatility in corn prices, about 60 percent, from the harvest season to just before next year's harvest season when corn is scarce.

This is what happens when your food supply is restricted to the local area's climate. Imagine if there was a natural disaster that ruined the harvest in one year. This is the polar opposite of making the food supply more secure. 

Instead of hedging with the world's food supply, Malawi's corn supply depends on the whim of chance and as a result, corn becomes scarce each and every year.
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We're all doomed, doomed, doomed!

Marginal Revolution shared this pleasant little video showing how we're all going to die.



Just imagine that slow robo blade coming down on your, err, neck. Thanks, Japanese researchers, for arming the robots now that a way to power them with human blood has been developed.
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Gay marriage in Maine

While I will be voting in Massachusetts to legalize medical marijuana and doctor assisted suicide on Tuesday, my former neighbors in Maine have a vote to legalize gay marriage.

I understand some people think of this as redefining marriage. I think that is correct to an extent and it's also why we need to pass this law. Everything I wrote about this issue back in 2009 is true today when it was last on the ballot.

I confess to suspecting a lot of things about homosexuality, but only knowing two of them for sure: Gays exist, and they are not going to go away. 

With those two points in mind, we need to make sure our laws coincide with reality. Right now in Maine there are thousands of romance stories between people of the same gender that will be here on Nov. 4 no matter what the outcome.

Our current views of marriage are outdated and passing Question 1 will give them a needed update.
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I would vote for Obama if...

I enjoyed Mike Godwin's piece on Reason.com on why libertarians should consider voting for Barack Obama, but I didn't find the arguments compelling.

It's not that I've totally written off the idea of voting for the O-man. In fact, I would instantly switch from my vote for Gary Johnson if l heard the president say:

"You know folks, I've been thinking it over and it's not right that I casually joke about my drug use while ramping up prosecution on California medical marijuana, as well as all drug users. This was a bad policy to begin with, and the damage it does to young people who behave the same way I did was a mistake. That's why I am ending the war on drugs right now."

Or:

"It's been said that circumstances of history choose what a president's legacy will be. If I am granted another four years in office I will do everything within my power to be known as the Free Trade President, and have begun phasing-out all tariffs, including sugar, solar panels and tires. This will save American consumers needed money and allow our economy to prosper."

Or how about:

"As many of my liberty-focused critics have said, my administration supports killing suspected terrorists with drone strikes, even if they are American citizens overseas. This is a very complex issue and I regret moving ahead without first having a conversation with the American people. We're going to begin that dialogue right now."

Or even:

"It's well known that my economic policies have failed to rescue the economy like I said they would in 2008. Rather than blame others, I have decided to take responsibility and expand my knowledge of macroeconomics with the aid of my new advisers Gary Becker, Greg Mankiw, Tyler Cowen, Mike Munger and Russ Roberts. I haven't switched teams, but I am more open to opposing ideas."

Not likely. But what about:

"Is it just me, or does Alan Grayson remind anyone else of a smug manatee?"

If any of those lines come out of his mouth I'll be on the front lines chanting "Four More Years!"
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Not convinced

I've seen an article passed around this week from Patheos blogger Libby Anne called How I lost faith in the pro-life movement. It presents itself as a character arc from a liberated woman who was born into a far-right family and has come to terms with her own beliefs, but instead it's a weak argument that insists no one really opposes abortion because they don't support a hodgepodge of left wing political positions. She concluded:

The reality is that so-called pro-life movement is not about saving babies. It’s about regulating sex. That’s why they oppose birth control. That’s why they want to ban abortion even though doing so will simply drive women to have dangerous back alley abortions. That’s why they want to penalize women who take public assistance and then dare to have sex, leaving an exemption for those who become pregnant from rape. It’s not about babies. If it were about babies, they would be making access to birth control widespread and free and creating a comprehensive social safety net so that no woman finds herself with a pregnancy she can’t afford. They would be raising money for research on why half of all zygotes fail to implant and working to prevent miscarriages. It’s not about babies. It’s about controlling women. It’s about making sure they have consequences for having unapproved sex.

Well, there's some big assumptions here. Her conclusions far outpace the arguments she attempts to use as a foundation.

The theme reminds me of a series I did back in 2010 about simplistic arguments where people assume their opponents secretly agree with them, but have hidden motives. It's a lazy way of thinking in black and white terms to avoid seeing a world of gray.

Anne does make a strong point that people who are opposed to abortion should support birth control because it stops fertilization from happening. She then makes a few assertions that those in the pro-life movement are universally opposed to birth control. There were no citations to back this claim up.

She does not make it clear the extent is she talking about the people who actively campaign against abortion and the people who say they are morally opposed, but are not politically active. The most charitable reading is that she is referring to those who are activists, but her failure to distinguish will leave some readers misinformed.

Data from a Gallup poll released in May revealed 50 percent of Americans identified themselves as pro-life (compared to a mere 41 percent who said they are pro-choice) while only 8 percent of Americans said they are morally opposed to birth control. With 3 percent of responders in between, that left 89 percent of Americans who reported no moral objection to birth control.

I will write a correction if someone can show that I'm wrong to assume the entire group of people who do not support birth control are also opponents of abortion. That means that the overwhelming majority of abortion opponents, 78 percent, have no moral objection to birth control and a mere 16 percent of them fit the image Anne painted.

Anne repeated a ridiculous argument that one can tell the pro-life movement isn't serious because it doesn't finance itself with 5K fundraising events. Clownish statements like this both clutter up the essay with junk and erode her credibility.

Then there's the barrage of left-wing assumptions. Merely supporting birth control isn't enough; to meet the unrealistic standard she has set to prove moral motivation one has to adopt left wing economic policies like increasing welfare for mothers and government funding of birth control.

It runs through the entire checklist of cliche progressive birth control misdirection. Use of the word "access" to dodge public vs. private debates; check. Assertion that President Obama's gave everyone birth control out of the aether, instead of mandating health insurance companies provide it by raising rates, and labeling the whole thing free, check. Assuming opposition to any of these means of paying for it is the same as opposing the legality of birth control, check.

She also quotes a study that insists this method of forcing private health insurance companies to provide birth control without a co-pay (mistakenly referred to a "free") is going reduce three-quarters of abortions in the country. I wanted to see if any of the anti-abortion folks have come up with good counter arguments and I found this piece by Ben Domenech.

What Libby Anne completely ignores is that the majority of abortions are sought by women who are the least likely to have employer-based insurance – namely, the poor. While the vast majority of insurance plans prior to the contraception mandate already covered abortion and contraception services (with co-pays), according to the Guttmacher Institute, only 13 percent of abortions are charged to insurers. These employer-covered women aren’t the ones who are seeking more abortions. While abortion rates are trending down overall, they are increasing among the poorest Americans – 42% of all abortions were from American women below the federal poverty line in 2008. 

 For these women, the likeliest to seek out and obtain abortions, Obama’s contraception mandate for employers will make no difference whatsoever.

The whole thing reminds me of the essays written by former atheists who have seen the light of God, where its clear that they were so easy to convert because their now-discarded views were primitive and shallow. In both cases, we would learn much more from someone who had a deep understanding of the issues and has shed strong arguments in favor of superior ones.
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Has Peter Morici ever been told?

Once again Peter Morici, who is commonly introduced as an economist because he teaches some economics classes at the University of Maryland, has written a bogus opinion piece claiming that a disaster is good for the economy. That is, the unwanted destruction of valuable resources leads to a greater number of resources in the same area.

Morici has been penning articles like this for a long time, and he's immediately smacked down by people like Don Boudreaux and Mike Munger. What's different this time I noticed is that the commenters to the original article tore it apart right away.

Boudreaux has called Morici out on these claims before. Henry Hazlitt even wrote a book about why Morici is wrong in 1946. They are far from alone in their criticism.

What I don't understand is why Morici keeps on trucking like nothing is up. Does he know that he's a court jester? Has no one told him the gaping flaws in his arguments so he can respond to pick up the remains scraps of his dignity?
I don't advocate violence or criminal activity, but since Morici is claiming it's in everyones interest to destroy, why hasn't he asked anyone to burn down his house?
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