Hard data

Make up your own numbers!

My in-box is an unending source of delights. I really should unsubscribe from right-wing mailing lists, but how else would I learn shocking facts about the Muslim Marxist Dictator in the White House? For example, The Political Insider breathlessly informed me that Speaker John Boehner has boldly moved to bring President Obama to account—by filing a lawsuit accusing him of exercising his executive authority. In the comments section the most common response ran along the lines of “about time!” and “I'd rather have impeachment!” Of course, these comments were accompanied by solid, reality-based arguments and supporting evidence:

Jim: He has what well over 1,000 executive orders now? While the most any president before him had like what 45? Which I think was FDR, in his 16 year term.. It took congress long enough.. Talk about being asleep behind the wheel…

Since I am aware that Obama has been remarkably self-restrained in his use of executive orders, I knew immediately that “Jim” was full of crap. I clarified the matter for him:

Zeno: The reality is a little different. Obama has issued fewer executive orders than any president in the 20th century except for one-term presidents Ford and Bush. Obama has 180 to date. Reagan, for example, issued 381. More recently, George W. Bush had 291.

I included a link to the Wikipedia page where a tally of presidential executive orders is displayed. Nevertheless, I was quickly put in my place:

Mitch: Wrong Zeno.

(I presume he meant “Wrong, Zeno,“ but the appositive comma has fallen on hard times, so perhaps “Mitch” was merely being conventionally illiterate.) A most excellent and compelling refutation, no?

Whence came Jim's egregiously wrong but confidently cited numbers? It was as easy to discover that as it would have been for Jim to learn that he was ridiculously incorrect, but that would have ruined his argument. I got the details from Snopes, the indefatigable debunker of Internet nonsense:

The President signed 923 Executive Orders in 40 Months. It is all over the net. These sites include commentary on what the executive order is for and what it does. If this is the truth, I'm scared to think about it. Most of the past presidents have allegedly signed around 30 of them. At the end of the day an executive order circumvents the congress and senate. Fill in the blanks. Someone credible needs to research and report on this.

[Here follows a list of specific executive orders attributed to Obama, but almost all of them were actually issued by John F. Kennedy in 1962. —Z]

Feel free to verify the "executive orders" at will ... and these are just the major ones ...

EXECUTIVE ORDERS ISSUED:

Teddy Roosevelt: 3
Others Prior To FDR: NONE
FDR: 11 in 16 years
Truman: 5 in 7 years
Ike: 2 in 8 years
JFK: 4 in 3 years
LBJ: 4 in 5 years
Nixon: 1 in 6 years
Ford: 3 in 2 years
Carter: 3 in 4 years
Reagan: 5 in 8 years
Bush 1: 3 in 4 years
Clinton: 15 in 8 years
Bush 2: 62 in 8 years
Obama: 923 in 3+ years!

During my lifetime, all Presidents have issued Executive Orders, for reasons that vary, some more than others.

When a President issued as many as 30 Executive Orders during a term in Office, people thought there was something amiss.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT 923 EXECUTIVE ORDERS IN ONE PART OF ONE TERM?????? YES, THERE IS A REASON.

IT IS THAT THE PRESIDENT IS DETERMINED TO TAKE CONTROL AWAY FROM THE HOUSE AND THE SENATE.

Even some Democrats in the House have turned on him, plus a very small number of Democrat Senators question him.

HE SHOULD BE QUESTIONED. WHAT IS HE REALLY TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH????

DOES THIS SCARE YOU AS MUCH AS IT DOES ME?

This is exactly the sort of Internet spam that credulous right-wingers like my father immediately swallow whole and proceed to pass it along to their e-mail lists of fellow travelers and family members (although usually not me anymore, since I tend to respond with unappreciated but detailed refutations that irk my male parental unit). Although it's a tissue of lies, this denunciation of the president appeals enormously to those who have already decided that he is some kind of evil mastermind and would-be dictator, so it is not subject to any sort of critical examination before being further disseminated via the Intertubes. And thus the lies spread.

I think it's fair to quote Ronald Reagan, that great conservative icon, in this context: “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.” Turnabout is fair play, right? Reagan said this in 1964 while campaigning on behalf of Barry Goldwater (who in retrospect doesn't look half so insane as today's teabaggers).

Of course, Reagan stole it from Josh Billings.

Dad goes to the dogs

Who let them out this time?

Like a mischievous child with poor impulse control, my father just can't help it. When things are too quiet and too civil for too long, he has to poke someone in the ribs or otherwise pick a fight. Fortunately, he prefers a verbal brawl to a physical one, preferentially in the form of e-mail. Although he knows I don't welcome (and, in fact, disdain) his habit of forwarding crude right-wing messages, every so often he “forgets” and accidentally includes me among the forwardees. I am not amused.

In his most recent display of execrable taste, he sent out the following:

My Dogs

This morning I went to sign my dogs up for welfare.
At first the lady said,
"Dogs are not eligible to draw welfare."
So I explained to her that my dogs are mixed in color, unemployed, lazy, can't speak English and have no frigging clue who their Daddy's are.
They expect me to feed them, provide them with housing and medical care.
So she looked in her policy book to see what it takes to qualify.
My dogs get their first checks Friday.

Damn, this is a great country.

I managed to read the entire thing without bursting into good-natured laughter. Imagine that. I guess I can't take a light-hearted joke, can I? Dad knows that I will not keep silent in the face of such noxious trash and can be relied upon to use “Reply All” in response. Not wanting to disappoint him (even while understanding that I was feeding the troll), I fired this off:

Yes, it’s a great country, and perhaps in Obama’s second term it’ll become a still greater country in which overtly racist humor is even more disdained than it is today.

Despite years of combat, I am still unable to predict which bright and shiny thing in my ripostes will attract Dad's attention. Would he blow up at the thought of a second Obama term, a notion that haunts his nightmares? Would he take umbrage at the charge of racism? He chose the latter, and replied with wounded innocence:

sorry but I DID NOT SEE ANY THING RACIST ABOUT THE DOGS!!!

Tsk tsk. Not the dogs, old man. You.

Antics like these unpleasantly remind me of early harbingers in the days when my father was not so overtly a right-wing nutter. Even back then he couldn't always keep it tamped down. I recall some forty-plus years ago when I was sitting at the kitchen table, painstakingly filling out a college application. In those days many schools required that you attach a wallet-size photo to the finished packet. Dad peeked over my shoulder as I carefully glued the photo in the indicated spot.

“What's that for?” he asked. “Do they want to make sure you're not a nigger?”

Several seconds went by as the rubber cement set and I silently rubbed off the excess from the margins of the photo.

“Hey,” said Dad. “I asked you a question. Didn't you hear me?”

“Yes, I heard you,” I replied with a brittle voice. “I was ignoring you.” (In my brain's playback mechanism I can hear myself archly saying, “I was doing you the courtesy of ignoring you,” but I'm pretty certain that's the fictionalized version that came to me later via l'esprit de l'escalier. Maybe I'll save it for a book.)

My remark was following by more silence. Then Dad gave a short laugh and strolled off. And a few months later he did not balk at coughing up the outrageous tuition at the private school to which I was admitted. I owe the old so-and-so the world.

But he presumes. Damn, but he presumes.

Clash of the petty titans

Immovable objects

I wonder. Did Dad cheat when he and his brother played Cowboys & Indians? Perhaps you know what I mean. The kid who, when you draw a bead on him and shoot him at point-blank range, yells “You missed me!” and runs away. That's how my father seems to me. No matter how much well-grounded data supports my refutations of his inane right-wing arguments, he runs away entirely unscathed to repeat his Beck-embellished falsehoods as if they're gospel. Reality is an irritant and irrelevancy in his smugly ossified perspective on the world.

The latest contretemps began in the usual way. Dad included me in his e-mail distribution of yet another tawdry mass forwarding. The archives at MyRightWingDad.net always show his mailings to be the stale tailings of an old extremist quote mine or the whole-cloth rantings of some pseudo-scholar (bogus historians and economists are favorites). But Dad doesn't care how old they are, even if they were crudely edited to replace each occurrence of “Clinton” with “Obama.” He's beyond embarrassment.

This time my in-box contained a call to arms by someone who ostensibly loves the U.S. Constitution so much that he wants to call a constitutional convention to rewrite it. (Remember “We had to destroy the village in order to save the village”?) Once I waded past the innumerable forwarding headers (these people do not know how to forward a message cleanly), I was told that “Governors of 35 states have already filed suit against the Federal Government for imposing unlawful burdens upon them. It takes only 38 (of the 50) States to convene a Constitutional Convention.”

Both of these statements are false. They didn't even get right the number of states required to convene a constitutional convention. Big surprise.

The message then started to rant about Congress—always an easy target. (As Mark Twain famously said, “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.”)

For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of Congress. Many citizens had no idea that members of Congress could retire with the same pay after only one term

Utter bilge.

Sometimes I ignore these missives. Sometimes I slap them down. It depends on my mood—especially my exasperation level. This particular bit of stupidity was quite irksome and contained extremely easy targets. I picked one and potted it neatly:

At 03:37 PM 9/15/2010, CrankyDad@hisisp.com wrote:

Many citizens had no idea that members of Congress could retire with the same pay after only one term

Since it's not true, perhaps it's not so surprising that many citizens had no idea. On the other hand, something doesn't have to be true for lots of people to believe it or to forward it in e-mail.

-Z-

No doubt Dad would either ignore my correction or yell “You missed!” and run away.

I was wrong. He decided to emulate his hero, the uncouth Rep. Joe Wilson.

You lie!! I never wrote that and I thought that you would NEVER do that.

Perhaps it's a liberal trait because I hear Obama do it all the time and any one that does not see it is deeply indoctrinated

Best wishes, dad..

“Best wishes”? My father has officially turned into a jerk. I replied, but not quite in kind.

Dear Dad:

Name-calling is not an argument. It is pathetic and sad. Have you ever considering using actual evidence to support a claim? Please identify any one-term member of Congress who retired at full pay. You can't, because it never happened. That makes me right and you wrong. Try to deal with reality.

You are entitled to think me mistaken and to disagree with me, but you have a lot of nerve to accuse me of dishonesty. I prefer facts while you embrace any forwarded Internet nonsense that agrees with your preconceptions. Apparently this does not embarrass you in the least, but it embarrasses me.

Don't bother to reply to this message unless it's with the apology you now owe me.

-Z-

My father was unrepentant. Since a good offense is always a good defense, he responded with his own demand for an apology:

Dear son!!
The fact remains that I did not write that. It was a tiny part of that e-mail. and you e-mail my family and friends claiming that I had written it. So you owe me an apology too. sorry to offend you, Dad.

Oh, boo hoo! Now he's whining that I shared my refutation of his claim to the list of people who received the original spam-mail. Sorry, Dad (but not very). When I'm in truth-squad mode, expect my corrections to go out courtesy of Reply-to-All. He also complains that I picked on one “tiny part.” I doubt, though, that he would have been happier if I had gone point by point through the entire mendacious message.

Note well, however, how the old bastard has a tiny fig leaf to cling to. “I did not write that,” he says. Right, he merely forwarded it. And that's all I claimed, too. But if you go back to my original rebuttal, you'll see how my e-mail program cited the text to which I responded:

At 03:37 PM 9/15/2010, CrankyDad@hisisp.com wrote:

That's Eudora's quoting style. Dad has seen it a dozen times before, but now he conveniently forgets and imputes the e-mail program's quote header to me, as if I had personally written it and accused him of personally writing the statement he forwarded. I'm sure it gives him a nice sense of grievance to nurse.

He neglects to consider that every recipient of my correction was also an original recipient of his forwarded message, so absolutely no one is under any delusion that he is the original author of the piece and absolutely no one was tricked by his duplicitously liberal son into thinking he wrote lies. Nope. He never really writes anything. He just forwards delusional right-wing rants and implies his agreement with them.

Take some responsibility, old man.

I did not take his “sorry to offend you” as any kind of apology. I did not respond to his message at all. In fact, he's gotten nothing but silence from me ever since. He called me a liar and I demanded an apology. He still owes me one.

There it sits.

Forwarding to the nth power

Redundant spam

What is it with people who compulsively forward “interesting” e-mail? Apparently the effort of clicking the “forward” button in their e-mail program is as much as they can do. It always seems to be too much trouble to clean up the “interesting” item, even if it's been quoted so often that the body of the document contains multiple copies of the item of interest, along with pages and pages of the e-mail addresses of previous victims of compulsive forwarding.

This characteristic of forwarded e-mail is as common as large fonts, ALL CAPS, and frenetic punctuation!!!!!11!!!1! (And let's not forget misspelling.)

All of this was true of my father's latest bit of forwarded enlightenment, which contained two copies of a “modest solution” (with none of Swift's wit) to the problem of senior health care. Dad earnestly believes that the Obama administration is out to get him, since he is—in his own words (perhaps, however, cribbed from a Limbaugh broadcast)—past his “expiration date.”

I'm sure you've heard the ideas that if you're a senior you need to suck it up and give up the idea that you need any health care. A new hip? Unheard of. We simply can't afford to take care of you anymore. You don't need any medications for your high blood pressure, diabetes, heart problems, etc. Let's take care of the young people. After all, they will be ruling the world very soon.

So here's the solution. When you turn 70, you get a gun and 4 bullets. You're allowed to shoot 2 senators and 2 representatives. Of course, you'll be sent to prison where you will get 3 meals a day, a roof over your head and all the health care you need!

I'm not certain why each senior gets a shot at two U.S. representatives, but it's probable that the originators of this winsome satire are quite unaware that we each have only one representative in the lower house of congress. That is the level of expertise I've come to expect from forwarded e-mails.

My father knows better, but far be it from him to change one jot or tittle of the received wisdom of forwarded spam mail. When he thinks a piece of e-mail will get my goat, he cheerfully passes it along as is. Naturally, I respond in a similarly cheerful vein:

This brilliant plan is certain to work, Dad, except that I'm afraid senior citizens will quickly run out of members of congress to murder. You'd better act quickly, before they're all gone.

Of course, it would only be sporting to warn Rep. Nunes that you're gunning for him. Shall I forward this to your congressman, or will you? And maybe a copy to Homeland Security, too.

Dad may have to reconsider. Rep. Nunes is a Republican, and I think Dad would prefer open season on Democrats (and other socialists like that).

I think we have a misfire.

Once too often to the well

It's dry, damn it!

Perhaps you've noticed the unfortunately reflective (and repetitive?) nature of recent posts at Halfway There as your faithful blogger gnaws at his personal obsessions. If you keep complaining about how people keep doing the same damned thing over and over again, you've fallen into the same practice that you've been decrying. Usually I can disguise this unsavory habit by varying the way in which I approach my pet issues. When I gripe about weird students, it's usually about different ones; their peculiarities have potentially diverting distinctions. When I crab about my family's religious compulsions or political backwardness, it can be about a variety of dogmas or domestic issues.

At best, I'm presenting a dazzling series of variations on a theme. At worst, I'm devolving into a curmudgeon. In fact, I am gripped by the dark dread that I am turning into my father. (Insert piercing shriek right here.)

When it comes to Dad, our disagreements are like picking at a scab. Leave it alone, damn it! But am I talking to him, or to me? I tell myself I cannot leave his political thrusts unanswered lest he become smug under the assumption that he has bested me with the strength of his arguments, but I've railed at him without apparent effect.

He. Never. Learns.

But perhaps the conclusion of our latest bout is different. (See how hope springs eternal?) There is at least the glimmer of a possibility that this is so. For some bizarre reason, Dad was seized by an impulse to fire a shot across my bow on Tuesday, the very day before I was due to show up at the family farm for Christmas. I say “a shot across my bow,” but I actually believe he was aiming below the water line. He just missed. Not even close. As usual.

I did not dither very long over Dad's e-mail. If I left his sally unanswered, it would be pending business when we met on Christmas Eve, while he strutted about as the unopposed victor. If I returned fire with a withering broadside, perhaps he would refrain from returning to it once we were in each other's company. It was worth a shot (or several shots, as it were).

Dad's e-mail attack was his customary velvet glove affair—more in sorrow than in anger—but between the lines it appeared he thought he was scoring a most telling hit:

My dear Son,

I am glad the election went the way it did for you. But I am very, very sad for the future of America. I once lived in a country that had a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

No more now it is rules and regulation by the state and it gets worse every election I still believe in self reliance and self responsibility. I do not expect to be around to see Americas demise.

But it is sad that is coming to pass.

I do not understand why so many people want the government to control their lives and (provide for them) The only way the government can do that is to take from those who achieve. I am forwarding a article that foretells what looks like Americas future.

As always wishing you the best of everything

Your DAD.

---

At heart, it's the same America-is-doomed jeremiad of his previous message. I had demolished that particular missive in gory detail. What profundity was Dad serving up this time for the tender ministrations of my rhetorical carving knife? I was instantly and profoundly disappointed. He was recycling old, old Internet spam from the aftermath of the disputed presidential election in 2000. Lame!

Subject: An interesting e-mail I received..................

HOW LONG DO WE HAVE?

This is the most interesting thing I've read in a long time. The sad thing about it, you can see it coming.

I have always heard about this democracy countdown. It is interesting to see it in print. God help us, not that we deserve it.

How Long Do We Have?

About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.”

“A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.”

“From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”

“The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years.”

“During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. from bondage to spiritual faith;
2. from spiritual faith to great courage;
3. from courage to liberty;
4. from liberty to abundance;
5. from abundance to complacency;
6. from complacency to apathy;
7. from apathy to dependence;
8. from dependence back into bondage”

Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:

Number of States won by: Democrats: 19 Republicans: 29

Square miles of land won by: Democrats: 580,000 Republicans: 2,427,000

Population of counties won by: Democrats: 127 million Republicans: 143 million

Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Democrats: 13.2 Republicans: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: “In aggregate, the map of the territory Republican won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country. Democrat territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare...” Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the “complacency and apathy” phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the “governmental dependency” phase.

If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegal's and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.

If you are in favor of this, then by all means, delete this message. If you are not, then pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.

WE LIVE IN THE LAND OF THE FREE,
ONLY BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE

True statement enough but ... more so because of the Grace of God.

---

Pathetic, isn't it? Do you remember how desperately the Republicans worked to try to make George W. Bush's 2000 “victory” look respectable after he lost the popular vote to Al Gore by half a million ballots? They seized upon things like the acreage carried by the GOP candidate. Certainly one's chest must swell with pride at the thought that one's candidate swept the empty spaces of the nation, even while losing all the population centers.

Even on the face of it, this is a very weak message. Democrats won 19 states and the Republicans won 29 in 2000? I thought there were 50 states! Bush carried more square miles? Acreage doesn't get a vote. People do. Professor Olson teaches at Hemline University? What's that—some kind of fashion school? Try Hamline instead. Remember, too, that the original version was issued in the wake of the election of George W. Bush. How much sense did it make to recycle it as a lament concerning the impending inauguration of Barack Obama?

I suggested to my father that he consider doing at least a minimal amount of due diligence before forwarding any further nonsense to me:

Once again, Dad, you don't bother to check the “information” you pass along. This supposedly interesting e-mail is something I saw a long time ago, back when Bush supporters were bragging about the fact that their candidate carried a lot more acreage than his Democratic rival, ignoring the fact that Gore actually got half a million more votes and carried states with high population densities (and therefore fewer square miles). Bush got into office based on the electoral vote, not the popular vote. Furthermore, apart from the numbers concerning square miles, most of the message is a hoax. Professor Joseph Olson had nothing to do with it and the crime statistics it contains are bogus. States that benefit the most from federal spending went to Bush, not Gore. A quick visit to snopes.com would have been enough to discover these simple facts. Check it out for yourself:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/athenian.asp

You are entitled to your opinion. You are not entitled to your own made-up facts. If you want to share things with me, you could at least take the trouble to check that they're true. You taught me that honesty was a key value but you're constantly falling victim to those who are not. People are sending you lies in your e-mail and you're taking them seriously. It just makes my case for me: Those who are worried that the United States is doomed just don't know what they're talking about. Your fears are baseless. If eight years of George W. Bush didn't destroy us, we're tougher than you think.

Your son,

-Z-

---

The Christmas holiday passed peacefully and uneventfully. The family met for a big dinner, gifts were exchanged, and all was well. Dad didn't mention his e-mail or my refutation of it. He was as nice as could be. Did he (dare I hope?) learn something this time? (At the very least: not to send stupid stuff to his obstreperous eldest son.)

I was on my best behavior, too. When Dad complained about limitations on irrigation water in the midst of California's current drought, I did not say, “Gee, Dad, I think a proud, self-reliant farmer should tell the government where they could put their subsidized water supply. Surely it is a disgrace to depend on the publicly financed state water project.” No, I did not go there.

The blue dawn

Or is it red?

My father is anguished over the state of the world. Sometimes he cheers himself by considering that he'll be dead soon, so only his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren will have to deal with the impending disasters that President Obama will wreak upon us. Other times he thinks he has one more good fight in him. That's apparently what happened when one of his right-wing buddies forwarded him an exposé of Democratic atrocities in Illinois. Surely not even his libtard son could withstand such damning evidence. To the computer!

This is what dropped into my in-box:

I am very worried about the future of our country. I have never been so narrow minded as to vote for someone just based on party, But qualifications are more important. I had hopes for Romney But he pulled out even thought he had good credentials. The Liberal media Keeps telling us that Palin has no experience-- As governor of Alaska Palin has more experience than the other three jokers combined.

I know that capitalism, in just over two hundred years has made this by far the best country in the world and the Liberals want to turn it into a socialist country and that would be a disaster. I do not want the government intruding into every facet of my life. I have sweat many buckets of sweat and some tears too, to provide for my family and I would not have it any other way.

The reason I am sending the article is that in the decades that I have lived on earth I have seen that where Liberals are in control in this country there is corruption, lawlessness and poverty. Free to live your life is a lot better than government control!!!

I LOVE MY FAMILY AND I WANT THE BEST FOR MY FAMILY!

DAD

---

That's my father at his hand-wringing best. What “article” did he find so compelling that he had to forward it with such an emotional preamble to his eldest son the moonbat? Sad to say, it did not live up to its advance billing. It was, in fact, nothing more than a sorry piece of political porn, the kind of Internet spam that true believers forward back and forth among themselves to reinforce their preconceptions. I guess the point of this one was that Sen. Obama was the product of a corrupt Chicago machine that was bent on destroying us all. Or something like that.

I confess that I have dialed it back just a bit by shrinking the scare-headline font size, which was just a bit much. I have, however, preserved all the exclamation points, that unfailingly accurate warning sign of heated inaccuracy. The misspellings remain in place, too.

BODY COUNT IN THE LAST SIX MONTHS

292 MURDERED IN CHICAGO

221 KILLED IN IRAQ

OUR LEADERSHIP IN ILLINOIS ;

SEN. BARACK OBAMA

SEN. DICK DURBIN

REP. JESSE JACKSON , JR.

GOV. ROD BLOGOJEVICH

HOUSE LEADER MIKE MADIGAN

ATTY. GEN LISA MADIGAN

MAYOR RICHARD DALY

ALL DEMOCRATS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THANK YOU FOR THE COMBAT ZONE IN CHICAGO

CAN'T BLAME THE REPUBLICANS, BECAUSE THERE AREN'T ANY.!!!!!

STATE PENSION FUND $44 BILLION IN DEBT, WORST IN THE NATION.

COOK COUNTY ( CHICAGO ) SALES TAX 10.25%, HIGHEST IN THE NATION.

CHICAGO SCHOOL SYSTEM ONE OF THE WORST IN THE NATION.

THIS IS THE POLITICAL MACHINE THAT OBAMA COMES FROM IN ILLINOIS.

AND NOW

OBAMA SAYS HE'S GONNA "FIX" WASHINGTON !!!!!

---

Can you imagine finding this persuasive? My father thought it was so good that he risked my wrath (or at least my pique) by breaking the ban I imposed on my family on forwarding Internet spam.

One good turn deserves another, so I wrote him back:

---

Dear Dad:

Thank you for your message. It contains an undeniable truth: Every day of your life has been devoted to your family and no one can deny that. It is as solid a fact as the sun coming up in the east in the morning.

Nothing else in the message, unfortunately, approaches that standard. It is, in fact, a patchwork quilt of errors and misstatements. The forwarded item about Illinois is especially absurd, a house of cards ready to collapse at the slightest puff of truth. People should learn that forwarded messages from the Internet are almost entirely worthless, and this one is no exception. People pass them around to feed their preconceptions and never seem to bother to check them. As a service to my loved ones, I will check it for you and demonstrate what's wrong with it. Although you routinely dismiss my opinions as those of someone who is naive and brainwashed, please allow me to point out that I deserve just a little credibility. I have genuine experience in government service and I know how it works. I've been a news reporter and I know about fact-checking. Let's do some fact-checking, both on what you say and what you forwarded to me. It'll be an education, which you know is my line of work anyway.

You say, “The Liberal media Keeps telling us that Palin has no experience-- As governor of Alaska Palin has more experience than the other three jokers combined.”

It's not just the opinion of the so-called liberal media that Palin was a bad choice for running mate. It's the opinion of Peggy Noonan ("[I]t is a mark against John McCain"), Christopher Buckley ("What on earth can he [McCain] have been thinking?"), George Will ("Palin is obviously not qualified to be president"), and Colin Powell ("I don't believe she's ready to be president"). Except for Powell, who served in the Bush cabinet, these are all conservative writers and columnists.

I think you also meant to say executive experience when talking up Palin's qualifications, because otherwise she has a lot less experience than McCain (26 years in the House and Senate) and Biden (35 years in the Senate), and exactly the same number of years in office as Obama (8 years in the state legislature, 4 years in the Senate). Palin's twelve years of elective office break down into 4 years as a city council member, 6 years as mayor, and 2 years as governor). I won't denigrate Palin's executive service, because leadership experience is valuable. I will, however, point out that I was for several years an elected officer for a regional computer club with thousands of members. Until last year, when Palin began serving as governor of Alaska, it seems that I had about as much executive experience as she did, at least in terms of the number of people we presided over and the number of years we did it. And I'm not quite ready to be president of the United States.

You say, “the Liberals want to turn it into a socialist country.”

No, we don't. We're liberals, not socialists. Learn the difference. We don't suggest that workers should necessarily own the means of production (though we have nothing against co-ops) and we aren't interested in a police state that controls every facet of our lives. George W. Bush is the guy who's been going in that direction, not liberals. We like civil rights and think that the government should get warrants before eavesdropping on us. It's in the Constitution.

You say, “where Liberals are in control in this country there is corruption, lawlessness and poverty.”

Nonsense. Want to talk about corruption? Nixon had Watergate (spies, bribes, and dirty tricks) and Reagan had Iran-Contra (illegal arms deals with Iran and money for Nicaraguan death squads). Clinton had Monica. Not much of a contest. Lawlessness? Crime statistics have dropped steadily during the past twenty years, during both Democratic and Republican administrations. There was a slight increase during the first Bush presidency, but that came to an end when Clinton took office. See the FBI table for specifics. For example, violent crimes have dropped from 640.4 per 100,000 in 1988 to 466.9 in 2007. The table has several other categories, with the same basic conclusions.


Poverty? That's a Republican specialty. Check out the poverty rate from 1959 to 2005. When did poverty drop the most steeply? In the Kennedy/Johnson years. It rose again in Reagan's first term and then slowly dropped, rising again during George H. W. Bush's one term. It dropped during Clinton's two terms and has been slowly rising during George W. Bush's administration. There's probably going to be a spike in 2007 and 2008 because of the economic crisis we've been in. George can try to blame it on the Democratic Congress he's had to work with for two years, but they've done pretty much everything he wanted in terms of legislation. He's having trouble shifting the blame from his administration. Even John McCain has started blaming him.

Now what about that Chicago business? It took me only a few minutes to discover that this forwarded message is as bogus as any other piece of Internet spam.

First off, 292 murders in Chicago versus 221 deaths in Iraq over the same six-month period. How foolish does someone have to be to take this seriously? They're comparing murders in the Chicago area with American troop deaths in Iraq. That's not a fair comparison at all. There are a lot of other people dying violently in Iraq. Iraq is not a safer place to be than Chicago. According to the Chicago crime statistics, 442 people were murdered in 2007, so perhaps the 292 number for six recent months is correct. According to Iraq Body Count, which works directly from published accounts, in 2007 there were 40 civilian deaths per day from gunfire and executions, plus an additional 21 deaths per day from suicide attacks and vehicle bombs. In six months, therefore, nearly 11,000 Iraqi civilians die. On the whole, I'd rather take my chances in Chicago.

According to Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, 208 American soldiers were killed in Iraq during the first six months of 2008, so the claim about 221 seems reasonable enough. I'm not sure, though, that “reasonable” is a word I want to use to describe a body count that includes my cousin.

Still, it's just not a valid comparison to Chicago.

The message claims that Democrats fill all of the leadership positions in Illinois and mentions Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. How did they miss Reps. Roskam, Kirk, Weller, Biggert, Johnson, Manzullo, LaHood, and Shimkus, all Republicans? Yes, there are more Democratic congressmen than Republicans from Illinois, but there are still plenty of Republicans.

It's true that the governor of Illinois is a Democrat, although his name is Blagojevich, not Blogojevich. His predecessor, however, was a Republican named George Ryan. He went to prison last year on federal corruption charges. And, by the way, the murder rate in Chicago has been lower during Blagojevich's term than they were during Ryan's.

Do you see now that there is almost no worthwhile evidence in the Chicago hit-piece?

I'm tired of all this, Dad, but my main point is simple. Stop believing stuff you get from the Internet. Stop worrying that the liberals are going to destroy civilization after the November election. Republicans are losing because they've done a terrible job. We've had eight years of miserably bad leadership. Obama will probably be better and I expect that he will be.

Take care, Dad.

Your liberal son,

—Z

Oppose discrimination. Vote No on Proposition 8.

It's all relatives

They serve me rancid spam

I love all my family members, of course. Even the ones whose fingers I want to break. You know which fingers, too. The fingers that tap the Forward button in their mail-readers and choke my in-box with indigestible spam. The poor dears have poor impulse control. And deep-seated gullibility. One of my cousins even forwarded me the message that said Microsoft and AOL would send us cash if we forwarded enough chain e-mail. Gullible? Heck, that's cow-kick-in-the-head stupid!

Bending over backward to be fair, I must admit that most of the junk caught in my spam filter is from non-family sources. So far none of my cousins, siblings, nieces, or nephews have sent me fliers about increasing my penis size or alleviating erectile dysfunction. Nor have they forwarded any appeals from Miriam Abacha to help her smuggle millions of dollars out of Nigeria—this one is so old it used to show up on paper in our snail mail! But I sure wish they would learn to visit snopes.com before they forward another single piece of e-mail! I've grown weary of trying to stem the deluge by sending back links to one or another of the urban-myth-busting pages at Snopes, but the lesson doesn't seem to take.

Perhaps even more noisome than the scam mail are the “inspirational” messages intended to bring me closer to God and make me one with the universe. These reek. They're poorly written compilations of sticky-sweet sentiments that make my gorge rise, and they always end with the exhortation to share the message with ten, twenty, or thirty friends (friends I long to get rid of, no doubt). Such e-mail is as encrusted with accretions as Magellan's vessel was encrusted with barnacles after its circumnavigation of the globe. The accretions come in the form of multiple headers (mostly dozens of e-mail addresses) that push the actual message down several screen pages and paragraphs added by the forwarders (who extol the most mindless dreck as brilliant or even divinely inspired; check out the cloying “Christian alphabet” if you doubt me. It's quite popular).

Last year my niece “Becky” favored me with a lengthy and aggravatingly inaccurate list of supposedly outrageous assaults against devout Christians. Becky is a naïvely observant Catholic girl who practices an unexamined faith. No doubt I neglected my duties as her godfather. I tried, however, to rise to the challenge of Becky's message and sent back a detailed refutation of every major point it contained. Mind you, she had written none of it herself. She merely forwarded it to a lengthy roster of family and friends. No doubt after I used “Reply to all” to answer her message, Becky was begged by her correspondents to leave Uncle Zeno out of future mailing lists.

A compilation of falsehoods

The forwarded message from Becky is blocked off in quote format, while my comments are in plain text. I've left in the various misspellings and infelicities just as they occurred in the original message.

In light of the many perversions and jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke, it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her "How could God let something like this happen?" (regarding the attacks on Sept. 11).

Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.

And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?"

---

Dear Becky: I get lots of stuff in forwarded e-mail. Most of it is wrong, just like this one about Anne Graham Lotz (that's her full name). Yes, Mrs. Lotz was on The Early Show right after the terrorist attacks in 2001 and made remarks similar to the ones attributed to her, but her observations are neither profound nor insightful. They're just the usual “we need to pray in school” nonsense. Keep reading and I will show you why I say this is nonsense.

In light of recent events...terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.

Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school . the Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

---

Madalyn Murray O'Hair (that's how her name is actually spelled) was an atheist who was offended that her children were required to recite prayers in a public school. She argued that religious instruction was not the business of the state and won her case in 1963. The decision did not, however, make it illegal to pray in schools. It made it illegal for the teacher or anyone else representing the school to make you pray. There's a difference. You can pray in school any time you like, especially before exams. Think about it. If you believe praying in school is against the law, you are wrong. Even so, you can take comfort in the fact that O'Hair's son later decided he was a Christian anyway.

The same thing is true about the Bible. You can take a Bible to school in your backpack and read it during free times. There's nothing wrong with that. Do some teachers think you shouldn't do that? Sure, but that's mostly because people keep yelling about how awful it is that it's banned, so lots of folks believe it is. It's not. In fact, the U.S. Department of Education published guidelines in 1995 that clearly stated, “students may read their Bibles or other scriptures, say grace before meals, and pray before tests to the same extent they may engage in comparable nondisruptive activities.” Read the whole thing for yourself in the department's on-line archives. (By the way, did you notice the year that the guidelines were published? It was right in the middle of the Clinton administration. That's right: the godless Clinton administration.)

Now some people are upset that teachers no longer lead Bible readings in public school classrooms. Therefore they are working to slip the Bible back in under the guise of education about the Bible instead of as religious instruction. Roman Catholics should be especially careful not to fall for this. The Texas Freedom Network Education Fund has issued a report titled The Bible in Public Schools. Check it out (warning: it's a 700K pdf). The most popular Bible curriculum for public schools is from the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools. It teaches that the Bible has exactly 66 books. Catholics don't believe that. The lessons are all about a Protestant version of the Bible: the King James Version.

If you want your kids to pray and read the Bible, then teach them your prayers and how to read your Bible, not whatever version gets smuggled into school lessons. People who think the government interferes too much with their lives sure have a blind spot when it comes to thinking that religion belongs in the public schools.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said OK.

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

---

Dr. Benjamin Spock never said you should not discipline your children. Who claimed he said this? Spiro Agnew. Remember him? (He's bit before your time.) He was Nixon's original vice president, who resigned in 1973 over corruption charges (he took bribes). Agnew was assigned to attack Spock because Spock was an anti-war activist during the Vietnam era. Agnew blamed Spock for hippies, drug culture, and campus unrest. The vice president and his political allies sneeringly described young activists as members of a Spock-marked generation.

In reality, Dr. Spock emphasized that discipline was a crucial element of parenting, but that it should be done lovingly instead of threateningly. Some of his comments on disciplining children are on-line. You can see how he specifically tells people to be firm in their decisions instead of letting their children do whatever they want. Still, lots of people today think that Dr. Spock said children should be allowed to run wild. Did you think that, too? Then you were wrong. You fell for a lie told by a convicted criminal.

Oh, and by the way, neither of Dr. Spock's sons committed suicide. That's another lie. Or, if we want to be more charitable, just one more foolish mistake spread around by people who don't check their sources.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with "WE REAP WHAT WE SOW."

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.

Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.

Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing?

Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they WILL think of you for sending it. Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Pass it on if you think it has merit. If not then just discard it... no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in!!

---

I thought about it, all right. No, it doesn't have any merit. And I certainly won't pass it on.

Don't trust forwarded e-mail, sweetheart. You may have thought you were passing along some valuable information, but it was a tissue of errors and distortions. The references I've provided make this quite clear. You're being taken advantage of by people with a political agenda, people who use propaganda to get you all excited and upset about things that aren't even true. Don't fall for it!

Your uncle & godfather,
Zeno